The Storm God and the Serpent

Vritra — 'the Obstacle' — serpent son of Danu, lay coiled upon the mountains, and within his ninety-nine coils he had penned the waters of the world as a herdsman pens cattle. Drought sat upon the land. Indra, young champion of the gods, drank deep of soma until strength swelled in him like a storm-front, took up the vajra — the thunderbolt forged by Tvashtar — and went to battle riding the storm. The fight was terrible: Vritra broke Indra's jaws, but Indra struck him along the back with the bolt, splitting the serpent as an axe splits a tree. The imprisoned waters burst free and ran lowing to the sea like released cows to their calves. The Rigveda drums the deed in a formula older than the Veda itself: ahann ahim — 'he slew the serpent' — the same two ancient roots that echo wherever Indo-European speakers carried the storm god's war.

At Kiskilussa the serpent Illuyanka defeated the Storm God — beat him outright, and in one telling took his heart and his eyes. The wounded god sought mortal help. In the older version, the goddess Inara prepared a great feast with vats of every drink, and enlisted the mortal Hupasiya (his price: her bed). The serpent and his brood came up from their hole, drank the vats dry, and swollen with drink could not squeeze back into the earth; Hupasiya bound them with rope, and the Storm God came with the gods and slew Illuyanka. In the younger version, the god's own son by a mortal woman married the serpent's daughter, and as bride-price asked for his father's stolen heart and eyes; restored, the Storm God went to the sea and battled the serpent again — and when his son stood with the serpent's household, the god killed them both at his son's own demand. This tale was told each spring at the Purulli festival, when the rains return: the serpent's defeat is the year's renewal.

When the young gods' clamour woke the primordial sea, Tiamat, mother of all, was turned to war; she spawned eleven monsters, raised Qingu as her champion, and fixed the Tablet of Destinies to his breast. The frightened gods offered kingship to young Marduk of Babylon if he would face her. Marduk armed himself with bow and mace, lightning before him, the seven winds at his back, and rode the storm-chariot to meet the sea. He spread his net; when Tiamat opened her mouth to swallow him he drove the Evil Wind down her throat so she could not close it, and shot his arrow through her distended belly, splitting her heart. He crushed the skull with the mace; then, considering the corpse, he split her 'like a fish for drying': one half he arched as the sky, setting bars and watchmen that her waters not escape; from the other he made the earth — her eyes became the Tigris and Euphrates, her tail the Milky Way's bond. From the blood of Qingu, executed for treason, humankind was mixed, to carry the labour of the gods. And the gods built Babylon, and Marduk's fifty names were proclaimed.

When the gods had beaten the Titans, Earth bore one last child by Tartarus: Typhon, vast beyond telling, a hundred serpent heads at his shoulders speaking with every voice of beast and god, fire in his eyes, his stride spanning mountains. He came against heaven, and the gods fled to Egypt in animal shapes — all but Zeus. In the first battle, fought hand to hand at Mount Kasios in Syria, Typhon wrapped Zeus in his coils, wrested away the sickle, and cut the sinews from the god's hands and feet, hiding them in a bearskin in the Corycian cave under guard of the she-dragon Delphyne. Heaven hung defeated — until Hermes and Aigipan stole the sinews back and refitted them. Zeus returned on the chariot of winged horses, thunderbolts raining; he drove Typhon across the world sea to Sicily and crushed him under Mount Etna, whose eruptions are the monster's fire-breath to this day, and whose tremors are Typhon turning under the roots of the mountain.

Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent, lies in the outer sea coiled around the world with its tail in its mouth; when it stirs, the seas rise. Thor met it first in the fishing-boat of the giant Hymir: baiting a whale-line with an ox's head, he hooked the serpent itself and hauled its venom-dripping head gunwale-high, hammer raised — and the terrified giant cut the line, and the serpent sank back. (In Utgard, too, Thor had unknowingly wrestled it in the shape of a grey cat, and lifted it one paw's height, which frightened even the giants.) The third meeting is the last: at Ragnarök the serpent comes ashore spewing poison over sky and sea, and Thor, thunder-armed, meets it before the gods' last battle-line. He crushes its skull with Mjölnir — and walks nine steps from the dead thing before its venom takes him, and he falls. The storm god and the world-serpent end together; the sea takes back the drowned earth, and a new world rises green from the waters afterward.

At the crown of the world-oak sits Perun, lord of thunder, the eagle among his branches; among its roots coils Veles, lord of cattle, waters and the dead, the serpent at the bottom of the world. Veles steals — cattle, waters, in some tellings Perun's wife or children — and flees down through the world, hiding behind trees, under stones, inside houses, inside men, taking beast-shapes as he runs. Perun hunts him with lightning: every thunderbolt is a blow at the hiding-place of the serpent (which is why folk custom holds it dangerous to shelter under lone trees in a storm — the serpent may be hiding there). At last Veles is caught and slain, or beaten back into the waters below the roots; the stolen cattle — which are the rain-clouds — burst free, and the storm breaks in rain, and the world is watered. And because Veles is never dead for long, the theft, the hunt and the rain recur with every storm, year upon year.

Cast down from heaven, the storm god Susanoo came to the river Hi in Izumo and found an old couple weeping over their last daughter, Kushinada-hime: seven daughters in seven years had been devoured by the Yamata-no-Orochi — the eight-forked serpent, eight heads and eight tails, moss and cypress growing on its back, its body spanning eight valleys and eight hills, its belly forever bloody. Susanoo asked for the girl's hand, and turned her into a comb which he set in his hair. He had the couple brew sake refined eight times, and build a fence with eight gates, and at each gate a platform, and on each platform a vat of the eightfold liquor. The Orochi came, dipped one head into each of the eight vats, drank, and sank into a drunken sleep. Then Susanoo drew his ten-span sword and hewed the serpent to pieces, until the river Hi ran red. But cutting into the middle tail, his blade chipped — and within the tail he found a great sword: Ame-no-Murakumo, later called Kusanagi, the Grass-Cutter, which he presented to his sister the sun goddess, and which became one of the three regalia of the emperors of Japan.