title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: Some scholars have proposed a consort goddess named "*Diwōnā" or "*Diuōneh₂," a spouse of Dyēws with a possible descendant in the Greek goddess Dione. A thematic echo may also occur in Vedic India, as both Indra's wife Indrānī and Zeus's consort Dione display a jealous and quarrelsome disposition under provocation. A second descendant may be found in Dia, a mortal said to unite with Zeus in a Greek myth. The story leads ultimately to the birth of the Centaurs after the mating of Dia's husband Ixion with the phantom of Hera, the spouse of Zeus. The reconstruction is however only attested in those two traditions and therefore not secured. The Greek Hera, the Roman Juno, the Germanic Frigg and the Indic Shakti are often depicted as the protectress of marriage and fertility, or as the bestowal of the gift of prophecy. James P. Mallory and Douglas Q. Adams note however that "these functions are much too generic to support the supposition of a distinct PIE 'consort goddess' and many of the 'consorts' probably represent assimilations of earlier goddesses who may have had nothing to do with marriage."


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: Although the etymological association is often deemed untenable, some scholars (such as Georges Dumézil and S. K. Sen) have proposed "*Worunos" or "*Werunos" (also the eponymous god in the reconstructed dialogue The king and the god) as the nocturnal sky and benevolent counterpart of Dyēws, with possible cognates in Greek Ouranos and Vedic Varuna, from the PIE root "*woru-" ("to encompass, cover"). Worunos may have personified the firmament, or dwelled in the night sky. In both Greek and Vedic poetry, Ouranos and Varuna are portrayed as "wide-looking", bounding or seizing their victims, and having or being a heavenly "seat". In the three-sky cosmological model, the celestial phenomena linking the nightly and daily skies is embodied by a "Binder-god": the Greek Kronos, a transitional deity between Ouranos and Zeus in Hesiod's "Theogony", the Indic Savitṛ, associated with the rising and setting of the sun in the "Vedas", and the Roman Saturnus, whose feast marked the period immediately preceding the winter solstice.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: The substratum of Proto-Indo-European mythology is animistic. This native animism is still reflected in the Indo-European daughter cultures. In Norse mythology the Vættir are for instance reflexes of the native animistic nature spirits and deities. Trees have a central position in Indo-European daughter cultures, and are thought to be the abode of tree spirits.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: In Indo-European tradition, the storm is deified as a highly active, assertive, and sometimes aggressive element; the fire and water are deified as cosmic elements that are also necessary for the functioning of the household; the deified earth is associated with fertility and growth on the one hand, and with death and the underworld on the other.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: The earth goddess, "*Dʰéǵʰōm," is portrayed as the vast and dark house of mortals, in contrast with Dyēws, the bright sky and seat of the immortal gods. She is associated with fertility and growth, but also with death as the final dwelling of the deceased. She was likely the consort of the sky father, "*Dyḗws Ph₂tḗr". The duality is associated with fertility, as the crop grows from her moist soil, nourished by the rain of Dyēws. The Earth is thus portrayed as the giver of good things: she is exhorted to become pregnant in an Old English prayer; and Slavic peasants described Zemlja-matushka, Mother Earth, as a prophetess that shall offer favourable harvest to the community. The unions of Zeus with Semele and Demeter is likewise associated with fertility and growth in Greek mythology. This pairing is further attested in the Vedic pairing of Dyáus Pitā and Prithvi Mater, the Greek pairing of Ouranos and Gaia, the Roman pairing of Jupiter and Tellus Mater from Macrobius's "Saturnalia", and the Norse pairing of Odin and Jörð. Although Odin is not a reflex of *"Dyḗws Ph₂tḗr", his cult may have subsumed aspects of an earlier chief deity who was. The Earth and Heaven couple is however not at the origin of the other gods, as the Divine Twins and Hausos were probably conceived by Dyēws alone.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: Cognates include Žemyna, a Lithuanian goddess of earth celebrated as the bringer of flowers; the Avestan Zām, the Zoroastrian concept of 'earth'; Zemes Māte ("Mother Earth"), one of the goddesses of death in Latvian mythology; the Hittite Dagan-zipas ("Genius of the Earth"); the Slavic Mati Syra Zemlya ("Mother Moist Earth"); the Greek Chthôn (Χθών), the partner of Ouranos in Aeschylus' "Danaids", and the chthonic deities of the underworld. The possibilities of a Thracian goddess Zemelā ("*gʰem-elā") and a Messapic goddess Damatura ("*dʰǵʰem-māter"), at the origin of the Greek Semele and Demeter respectively, are less secured. The commonest epithets attached to the Earth goddess are "*Pleth₂-wih₁" (the "Broad One"), attested in the Vedic Pṛthvī, the Greek Plataia and Gaulish Litavis, and "*Pleth₂-wih₁ Méh₂tēr" ("Mother Broad One"), attested in the Vedic and Old English formulas "Pṛthvī Mātā" and "Fīra Mōdor"."" Other frequent epithets include the "All-Bearing One", the one who bears all things or creatures, and the "mush-nourishing" or the "rich-pastured".


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: The deities generally agreed to be cognates stemming from *"Perkʷunos" are confined to the European continent, and he could have been a motif developed later in Western Indo-European traditions. The evidence include the Norse goddess Fjǫrgyn (the mother of Thor), the Lithuanian god Perkūnas, the Slavic god Perúnú, and the Celtic Hercynian ("Herkynío") mountains or forests. Perëndi, an Albanian thunder-god (from the stem "per-en-", "to strike", attached to -"di", "sky", from *"dyews-") is also a probable cognate. The evidence could extend to the Vedic tradition if one adds the god of rain, thunder and lightning Parjánya, although Sanskrit sound laws rather predict a "**parkūn(y)a" form.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: From another root "*(s)tenh₂" ("thunder") stems a group of cognates found in the Germanic, Celtic and Roman thunder-gods Thor, Taranis, (Jupiter) Tonans and (Zeus) keraunos. According to Jackson, "they may have arisen as the result of fossilisation of an original epithet or epiclesis", as the Vedic Parjanya is also called "stanayitnú-" ("Thunderer"). The Roman god Mars may be a thematic echo of Perkʷunos, since he originally had thunderer characteristics.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: Although the linguistic evidence is restricted to the Vedic and Balto-Slavic traditions, scholars have proposed that Proto-Indo-Europeans conceived the fire as a divine entity called "*h₁n̥gʷnis". "Seen from afar" and "untiring", the Indic deity "Agni" is pictured in the "Rigveda" as the god of both terrestrial and celestial fires. He embodied the flames of the sun and the lightning, as well as the forest fire, the domestic hearth fire and the sacrificial altar, linking heaven and earth in a ritual dimension. Another group of cognates deriving from the Balto-Slavic "*ungnis" ("fire") is also attested. Early modern sources report that Lithuanian priests worshipped a "holy Fire" named "Ugnis (szwenta)", which they tried to maintain in perpetual life, while "Uguns (māte)" was revered as the "Mother of Fire" by the Latvians. Tenth-century Persian sources give evidence of the veneration of fire among the Slavs, and later sources in Old Church Slavonic attest the worship of fire ("ogonĭ"), occurring under the divine name "Svarožič", who has been interpreted as the son of Svarog.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: The name of an Albanian fire deity, "*Enji", has also been reconstructed from the Albanian name of Thursday, "enj-të", which is also attested in older texts as "egni" or a similar variant. This fire deity is thought to have been worshiped by the Illyrians in antiquity, among whom he was the most prominent god of the pantheon during Roman times. In other traditions, as the sacral name of the dangerous fire may have become a word taboo, the root served instead as an ordinary term for fire, as in the Latin "ignis".


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: Scholars generally agree that the cult of the hearth dates back to Proto-Indo-European times. The domestic fire had to be tended with care and given offerings, and if one moved house, one carried fire from the old to the new home. The Avestan "Ātar" was the sacral and hearth fire, often personified and honoured as a god. In Albanian beliefs, "Nëna e Vatrës" ("the Hearth Mother") is the goddess protector of the domestic hearth ("vatër"). Herodotus reported a Scythian goddess of hearth named "Tabiti", a term likely given under a slightly distorted guise, as she might represent a feminine participial form corresponding to an Indo-Iranian god named *"Tapatī," "the Burning one". The sacral or domestic hearth can likewise be found in the Greek and Roman hearth goddesses Hestia and Vesta, two names that may derive from the PIE root "*h₁w-es-" ("burning"). Both the ritual fires set in the temples of Vesta and the domestic fires of ancient India were circular, rather than the square form reserved for public worship in India and for the other gods in Roman antiquity. Additionally, the custom that the bride circles the hearth three times is common to Indian, Ossetian, Slavic, Baltic, and German traditions, while a newly born child was welcomed into a Greek household when the father circled the hearth carrying it in the Amphidromia ceremony.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: Based on the similarity of motifs attested over a wide geographical extent, it is very likely that Proto-Indo-European beliefs featured some sorts of beautiful and sometimes dangerous water goddesses who seduced mortal men, akin to the Greek naiads, the nymphs of fresh waters. The Vedic Apsarás are said to frequent forest lakes, rivers, trees, and mountains. They are of outstanding beauty, and Indra sends them to lure men. In Ossetic mythology, the waters are ruled by Donbettyr ("Water-Peter"), who has daughters of extraordinary beauty and with golden hair. In Armenian folklore, the Parik take the form of beautiful women who dance amid nature. The Slavonic water nymphs "víly" are also depicted as alluring maidens with long golden or green hair who like young men and can do harm if they feel offended. The Albanian mountain nymphs, Perit and Zana, are portrayed as beautiful but also dangerous creatures. Similar to the Baltic nymph-like Laumes, they have the habit of abducting children. The beautiful and long-haired Laumes also have sexual relations and short-lived marriages with men. The Breton Korrigans are irresistible creatures with golden hair wooing mortal men and causing them to perish for love. The Norse Huldra, Iranian Ahuraīnīs and Lycian Eliyãna can likewise be regarded as reflexes of the water nymphs.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: A wide range of linguistic and cultural evidence attest the holy status of the terrestrial (potable) waters "*h₂ep-", venerated collectively as "the Waters" or divided into "Rivers and Springs". The cults of fountains and rivers, which may have preceded Proto-Indo-European beliefs by tens of thousands of years, was also prevalent in their tradition. Some authors have proposed "*Neptonos" or *"H₂epom Nepōts" as the Proto-Indo-European god of the waters. The name literally means "Grandson [or "Nephew"] of the Waters". Linguists reconstruct his name from that of the Vedic god Apám Nápát, the Roman god Neptūnus, and the Old Irish god Nechtain. Although such a god has been solidly reconstructed in Proto-Indo-Iranian religion, Mallory and Adams nonetheless still reject him as a Proto-Indo-European deity on linguistic grounds.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: We find evidence for the deification of the wind in most Indo-European traditions. The root "*h₂weh₁" ("to blow") is at the origin of the two words for the wind: "*H₂weh₁-yú-" and "*H₂w(e)h₁-nt-". The deity is indeed often depicted as a couple in the Indo-Iranian tradition. Vayu-Vāta is a dual divinity in the "Avesta", Vāta being associated with the stormy winds and described as coming from everywhere ("from below, from above, from in front, from behind"). Similarly, the Vedic Vāyu, the lord of the winds, is connected in the "Vedas" with Indra—the king of Svarga Loka (also called Indraloka)—while the other deity Vāta represents a more violent sort of wind and is instead associated with Parjanya—the god of rain and thunder. Other cognates include Hitt. "huwant-", Lith. "vėjas", Toch. B "yente", Lat. "uentus", Ger. "*windaz," or Welsh "gwynt."


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: The association between the Greek god Pan and the Vedic god Pūshān was first identified in 1924 by German linguist Hermann Collitz. Both were worshipped as pastoral deities, which led scholars to reconstruct "*Péh₂usōn" ("Protector") as a pastoral god guarding roads and herds. He may have had an unfortunate appearance, a bushy beard and a keen sight. He was also closely affiliated with goats or bucks: Pan has goat's legs while goats are said to pull the car of Pūshān (the animal was also sacrificed to him on occasion). The minor discrepancies between the two deities could be explained by the possibility that many of Pan's original attributes were transferred over to his father Hermes.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: According to West, the reflex may be at least of Graeco-Aryan origin: "Pūshān and Pan agree well enough in name and nature—especially when Hermes is seen as a hypostasis of Pan—to make it a reasonable conclusion that they are parallel reflexes of a prototypical god of ways and byways, a guide on the journey, a protector of flocks, a watcher of who and what goes where, one who can scamper up any slope with the ease of a goat."


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: In 1855, Adalbert Kuhn suggested that the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have believed in a set of helper deities, whom he reconstructed based on the Germanic elves and the Hindu ribhus. Although this proposal is often mentioned in academic writings, very few scholars actually accept it since the cognate relationship is linguistically difficult to justify. While stories of elves, satyrs, goblins and giants show recurrent traits in Indo-European traditions, West notes that "it is difficult to see so coherent an overall pattern as with the nymphs. It is unlikely that the Indo-Europeans had no concept of such creatures, but we cannot define with any sharpness of outline what their conceptions were." A wild god named "*Rudlos" has also been proposed, based on the Vedic Rudrá and the Old Russian Rŭglŭ. Problematic is whether the name derives from "*rewd-" ("rend, tear apart"; akin to Lat. "rullus," "rustic"), or rather from "*rew-" ("howl").


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: Although the name of the divinities are not cognates, a horse goddess portrayed as bearing twins and in connection with fertility and marriage has been proposed based on the Gaulish Epona, Irish Macha and Welsh Rhiannon, with other thematic echos in the Greek and Indic traditions. Demeter transformed herself into a mare when she was raped by Poseidon appearing as a stallion, and she gave birth to a daughter and a horse, Areion. Similarly, the Indic tradition tells of Saranyu fleeing from her husband Vivásvat when she assumed the form of a mare. Vivásvat metamorphosed into a stallion and of their intercourse were born the twin horses, the Aśvins. The Irish goddess Macha gave birth to twins, a mare and a boy, and the Welsh figure Rhiannon bore a child who was reared along with a horse.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: A river goddess *"Deh₂nu-" has been proposed based on the Vedic goddess Dānu, the Irish goddess Danu, the Welsh goddess Don and the names of the rivers Danube, Don, Dnieper, and Dniester. Mallory and Adams however note that while the lexical correspondence is probable, "there is really no evidence for a specific river goddess" in Proto-Indo-European mythology "other than the deification of the concept of ‘river’ in Indic tradition". Some have also proposed the reconstruction of a sea god named *"Trih₂tōn" based on the Greek god Triton and the Old Irish word "trïath", meaning "sea". Mallory and Adams also reject this reconstruction as having no basis, asserting that the "lexical correspondence is only just possible and with no evidence of a cognate sea god in Irish."


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: It is highly probable that the Proto-Indo-Europeans believed in three fate goddesses who spun the destinies of mankind. Although such fate goddesses are not directly attested in the Indo-Aryan tradition, the Atharvaveda does contain an allusion comparing fate to a warp. Furthermore, the three Fates appear in nearly every other Indo-European mythology. The earliest attested set of fate goddesses are the Gulses in Hittite mythology, who were said to preside over the individual destinies of human beings. They often appear in mythical narratives alongside the goddesses Papaya and Istustaya, who, in a ritual text for the foundation of a new temple, are described sitting holding mirrors and spindles, spinning the king's thread of life. In the Greek tradition, the Moirai ("Apportioners") are mentioned dispensing destiny in both the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey", in which they are given the epithet Κλῶθες ("Klothes", meaning "Spinners").


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: In Hesiod's "Theogony", the Moirai are said to "give mortal men both good and ill" and their names are listed as Klotho ("Spinner"), Lachesis ("Apportioner"), and Atropos ("Inflexible"). In his "Republic", Plato records that Klotho sings of the past, Lachesis of the present, and Atropos of the future. In Roman legend, the Parcae were three goddesses who presided over the births of children and whose names were Nona ("Ninth"), Decuma ("Tenth"), and Morta ("Death"). They too were said to spin destinies, although this may have been due to influence from Greek literature.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: In the Old Norse "Völuspá" and "Gylfaginning", the Norns are three cosmic goddesses of fate who are described sitting by the well of Urðr at the foot of the world tree Yggdrasil. In Old Norse texts, the Norns are frequently conflated with Valkyries, who are sometimes also described as spinning. Old English texts, such as "Rhyme Poem" 70, and "Guthlac" 1350 f., reference Wyrd as a singular power that "weaves" destinies.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: Later texts mention the Wyrds as a group, with Geoffrey Chaucer referring to them as "the Werdys that we clepyn Destiné" in "The Legend of Good Women". A goddess spinning appears in a bracteate from southwest Germany and a relief from Trier shows three mother goddesses, with two of them holding distaffs. Tenth-century German ecclesiastical writings denounce the popular belief in three sisters who determined the course of a man's life at his birth. An Old Irish hymn attests to seven goddesses who were believed to weave the thread of destiny, which demonstrates that these spinster fate-goddesses were present in Celtic mythology as well.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: A Lithuanian folktale recorded in 1839 recounts that a man's fate is spun at his birth by seven goddesses known as the "deivės valdytojos" and used to hang a star in the sky; when he dies, his thread snaps and his star falls as a meteor. In Latvian folk songs, a goddess called the Láima is described as weaving a child's fate at its birth. Although she is usually only one goddess, the Láima sometimes appears as three. The three spinning fate goddesses appear in Slavic traditions in the forms of the Russian Rožanicy, the Czech and Slovak Sudičky, the Bulgarian Narenčnice or Urisnice, the Polish Rodzanice, the Croatian Rodjenice, the Serbian Sudjenice, and the Slovene Rojenice. Albanian folk tales speak of the Fatit, three old women who appear three days after a child is born and determine its fate, using language reminiscent of spinning.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: The god "*h₂eryo-men" has been reconstructed as a deity in charge of welfare and the community, connected to the building and maintenance of roads or pathways, but also with healing and the institution of marriage.' It derives from the noun "*h₂eryos" (a "member of one's own group", "one who belongs to the community", in contrast to an outsider), also at the origin of the Indo-Iranian "*árya", "noble, hospitable", and the Celtic "*aryo-", "free man" (Old Irish: "aire," "noble, chief"; Gaulish: "arios", "free man, lord"). The Vedic god Aryaman is frequently mentioned in the "Vedas", and associated with social and marital ties. In the "Gāthās", the Iranian god Airyaman seems to denote the wider tribal network or alliance, and is invoked in a prayer against illness, magic, and evil.' In the mythical stories of the founding of the Irish nation, the hero Érimón became the first king of the Milesians (the mythical name of the Irish) after he helped conquer the island from the Tuatha Dé Danann. He also provided wives to the Cruithnig (the mythical Celtic Britons or Picts), a reflex of the marital functions of "*h₂eryo-men"."" The Gaulish given name Ariomanus, possibly translated as "lord-spirited" and generally borne by Germanic chiefs, is also to be mentioned.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: Although the name of a particular smith god cannot be linguistically reconstructed, it is highly probable that the Proto-Indo-Europeans had a smith deity of some kind, since smith gods occur in nearly every Indo-European culture, with examples including the Hittite Hasammili, the Vedic Tvastr, the Greek Hephaestus, the Germanic Wayland, the Irish Goibniu, the Lithuanian Teliavelis and the Ossetian Kurdalagon and the Slavic Svarog. Mallory notes that "deities specifically concerned with particular craft specializations may be expected in any ideological system whose people have achieved an appropriate level of social complexity". Nonetheless, two motifs recur frequently in Indo-European traditions: the making of the chief god's distinctive weapon (Indra’s and Zeus’ bolt; Lugh’s spear) by a special artificer, and the craftsman god's association with the immortals’ drinking. Smith mythical figures share other characteristics in common. Hephaestus, the Greek god of blacksmiths, and Wayland the Smith, a nefarious blacksmith from Germanic mythology, are both described as lame. Additionally, Wayland the Smith and the Greek mythical inventor Daedalus both escape imprisonment on an island by fashioning sets of mechanical wings and using them to fly away.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: The Proto-Indo-Europeans may also have had a goddess who presided over the trifunctional organization of society. Various epithets of the Iranian goddess Anahita and the Roman goddess Juno provide sufficient evidence to solidly attest that she was probably worshipped, but no specific name for her can be lexically reconstructed. Vague remnants of this goddess may also be preserved in the Greek goddess Athena. A decay goddess has also been proposed on the basis of the Vedic Nirṛti and the Roman Lūa Mater. Her names derive from the verbal roots "decay, rot", and they are both associated with the decomposition of human bodies.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: Michael Estell has reconstructed a mythical craftsman named "*H₃r̥bʰew" based on the Greek Orpheus and the Vedic Ribhus. Both are the son of a cudgel-bearer or an archer, and both are known as "fashioners" ("*tetḱ-"). A mythical hero named "*Promāth₂ew" has also been proposed, from the Greek hero Prometheus ("the one who steals"), who took the heavenly fire away from the gods to bring it to mankind, and the Vedic Mātariśvan, the mythical bird who "robbed" (found in the myth as "pra math-", "to steal") the hidden fire and gave it to the Bhrigus. A medical god has been reconstructed based on a thematic comparison between the Indic god Rudra and the Greek Apollo. Both inflict disease from afar thanks to their bows, both are known as healers, and both are specifically associated with rodents: Rudra's animal is the "rat mole" and Apollo was known as a "rat god".


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: Some scholars have proposed a war god named *"Māwort-" based on the Roman god Mars and the Vedic Marutás, the companions of the war-god Indra. Mallory and Adams reject this reconstruction on linguistic grounds. Likewise, some researchers have found it more plausible that Mars was originally a storm deity, while the same cannot be said of Ares.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: One common myth found in nearly all Indo-European mythologies is a battle ending with a hero or god slaying a serpent or dragon of some sort. Although the details of the story often vary widely, several features remain remarkably the same in all iterations. The protagonist of the story is usually a thunder-god, or a hero somehow associated with thunder. His enemy the serpent is generally associated with water and depicted as multi-headed, or else "multiple" in some other way. Indo-European myths often describe the creature as a "blocker of waters", and his many heads get eventually smashed up by the thunder-god in an epic battle, releasing torrents of water that had previously been pent up. The original legend may have symbolized the "Chaoskampf", a clash between forces of order and chaos. The dragon or serpent loses in every version of the story, although in some mythologies, such as the Norse Ragnarök myth, the hero or the god dies with his enemy during the confrontation. Historian Bruce Lincoln has proposed that the dragon-slaying tale and the creation myth of "*Trito" killing the serpent *"" may actually belong to the same original story.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: Reflexes of the Proto-Indo-European dragon-slaying myth appear in most Indo-European poetic traditions, where the myth has left traces of the formulaic sentence "*(h₁e) gʷʰent h₁ógʷʰim", meaning "[he] slew the serpent". In Hittite mythology, the storm god Tarhunt slays the giant serpent Illuyanka, as does the Vedic god Indra the multi-headed serpent Vritra, which has been causing a drought by trapping the waters in his mountain lair. Several variations of the story are also found in Greek mythology. The original motif appears inherited in the legend of Zeus slaying the hundred-headed Typhon, as related by Hesiod in the "Theogony", and possibly in the myth of Heracles slaying the nine-headed Lernaean Hydra and in the legend of Apollo slaying the earth-dragon Python. The story of Heracles's theft of the cattle of Geryon is probably also related. Although he is not usually thought of as a storm deity in the conventional sense, Heracles bears many attributes held by other Indo-European storm deities, including physical strength and a knack for violence and gluttony.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: The original motif is also reflected in Germanic mythology. The Norse god of thunder Thor slays the giant serpent Jörmungandr, which lived in the waters surrounding the realm of Midgard. In the "Völsunga saga", Sigurd slays the dragon Fafnir and, in "Beowulf", the eponymous hero slays a different dragon. The depiction of dragons hoarding a treasure (symbolizing the wealth of the community) in Germanic legends may also be a reflex of the original myth of the serpent holding waters.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: In Zoroastrianism and in Persian mythology, Fereydun (and later Garshasp) slays the serpent Zahhak. In Albanian mythology, the drangue, semi-human divine figures associated with thunders, slay the kulshedra, huge multi-headed fire-spitting serpents associated with water and storms. The Slavic god of storms Perun slays his enemy the dragon-god Veles, as does the bogatyr hero Dobrynya Nikitich to the three-headed dragon Zmey. A similar execution is performed by the Armenian god of thunders Vahagn to the dragon Vishap, by the Romanian knight hero Făt-Frumos to the fire-spitting monster Zmeu, and by the Celtic god of healing Dian Cecht to the serpent Meichi.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: In Shinto, where Indo-European influences through Vedic religion can be seen in mythology, the storm god Susanoo slays the eight-headed serpent Yamata no Orochi.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: The Genesis narrative of Judaism and Christianity can be interpreted as a more allegorical retelling of the serpent-slaying myth. The Deep or Abyss from or on top of which God is said to make the world is translated from the Biblical Hebrew Tehom (Hebrew: תְּהוֹם). Tehom is a cognate of the Akkadian word "tamtu" and Ugaritic "t-h-m" which have similar meaning. As such it was equated with the earlier Babylonian serpent Tiamat.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: Folklorist Andrew Lang suggests that the serpent-slaying myth morphed into a folktale motif of a frog or toad blocking the flow of waters.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: Another reconstructed myth is the story of the fire in the waters. It depicts a fiery divine being named *"H₂epom Nepōts" ('Descendant of the Waters') who dwells in waters, and whose powers must be ritually gained or controlled by a hero who is the only one able to approach it. In the "Rigveda", the god Apám Nápát is envisioned as a form of fire residing in the waters. In Celtic mythology, a well belonging to the god Nechtain is said to blind all those who gaze into it. In an old Armenian poem, a small reed in the middle of the sea spontaneously catches fire and the hero Vahagn springs forth from it with fiery hair and a fiery beard and eyes that blaze as suns. In a ninth-century Norwegian poem by the poet Thiodolf, the name "sǣvar niþr", meaning "grandson of the sea", is used as a kenning for fire. Even the Greek tradition contains possible allusions to the myth of a fire-god dwelling deep beneath the sea. The phrase ""νέποδες καλῆς Ἁλοσύδνης"", meaning "descendants of the beautiful seas", is used in "The Odyssey" 4.404 as an epithet for the seals of Proteus.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: The legend of the King and Virgin involves a ruler saved by the offspring of his virgin daughter after seeing his future threatened by rebellious sons or male relatives. The virginity likely symbolizes in the myth the woman that has no loyalty to any man but her father, and the child is likewise faithful only to his royal grandfather. The legends of the Indic king Yayāti, saved by his virgin daughter Mādhāvi; the Roman king Numitor, rescued by his chaste daughter Rhea Silvia; the Irish king Eochaid, father of the legendary queen Medb, and threatened by his sons the "findemna"; as well as the myth of the Norse virgin goddess Gefjun offering lands to Odin"," are generally cited as possible reflexes of an inherited Proto-Indo-European motif. The Irish queen Medb could be cognate with the Indic Mādhāvi (whose name designates either a spring flower, rich in honey, or an intoxicating drink), both deriving from the root "*medʰ-" ("mead, intoxicating drink").


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: A myth of the War of the Foundation has also been proposed, involving a conflict between the first two functions (the priests and warriors) and the third function (fertility), which eventually make peace in order to form a fully integrated society. The Norse "Ynglingasaga" tells of a war between the Æsir (led by Oðinn and Thor) and the Vanir (led by Freyr, Freyja and Njörðr) that finally ends with the Vanir coming to live among the Æsir. Shortly after the mythical founding of Rome, Romulus fights his wealthy neighbours the Sabines, the Romans abducting their women to eventually incorporate the Sabines into the founding tribes of Rome. In Vedic mythology, the Aśvins (representing the third function as the Divine Twins) are blocked from accessing the heavenly circle of power by Indra (the second function), who is eventually coerced into letting them in. The Trojan War has also been interpreted as a reflex of the myth, with the wealthy Troy as the third function and the conquering Greeks as the first two functions.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: Jaan Puhvel notes similarities between the Norse myth in which the god Týr inserts his hand into the wolf Fenrir's mouth while the other gods bind him with Gleipnir, only for Fenrir to bite off Týr's hand when he discovers he cannot break his bindings, and the Iranian myth in which Jamshid rescues his brother's corpse from Ahriman's bowels by reaching his hand up Ahriman's anus and pulling out his brother's corpse, only for his hand to become infected with leprosy. In both accounts, an authority figure forces the evil entity into submission by inserting his hand into the being's orifice (in Fenrir's case the mouth, in Ahriman's the anus) and losing or impairing it. Fenrir and Ahriman fulfill different roles in their own mythological traditions and are unlikely to be remnants of a Proto-Indo-European "evil god"; nonetheless, it is clear that the "binding myth" is of Proto-Indo-European origin.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: The motif of the "death of a son", killed by his father who is unaware of the relationship, is so common among the attested traditions that some scholars have ascribed it to Proto-Indo-European times. In the Ulster Cycle, Connla, son of the Irish hero Cú Chulainn, who was raised abroad in Scotland, unknowingly confronts his father and is killed in the combat; Ilya Muromets must kill his own son, who was also raised apart, in Russian epic poems; the Germanic hero Hildebrant inadvertently kills his son Hadubrant in the "Hildebrandslied"; and the Iranian Rostam unknowingly confronts his son Sohrab in the eponymous epic of the "Shāhnāmeh". King Arthur is forced to kill his son Mordred in battle who was raised far away on the Orkney Islands; and in Greek mythology, an intrigue leads the hero Theseus to kill his son Hippolytus; when the lie is finally exposed, Hippolytus is already dead. According to Mallory and Adams, the legend "places limitations on the achievement of warrior prowess, isolates the hero from time by cutting off his generational extension, and also re-establishes the hero's typical adolescence by depriving him of a role (as father) in an adult world".


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: Although the concept of elevation through intoxicating drink is a nearly universal motif, a Proto-Indo-European myth of the "cycle of the mead", originally proposed by Georges Dumézil and further developed by Jarich G. Oosten (1985), is based on the comparison of Indic and Norse mythologies. In both traditions, gods and demons must cooperate to find a sacred drink providing immortal life. The magical beverage is prepared from the sea, and a serpent (Vāsuki or Jörmungandr) is involved in the quest. The gods and demons eventually fight over the magical potion and the former, ultimately victorious, deprive their enemy of the elixir of life.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: Proto-Indo-European religion was centered on sacrificial rites of cattle and horses, probably administered by a class of priests or shamans. Animals were slaughtered () and dedicated to the gods () in the hope of winning their favor. The Khvalynsk culture, associated with the archaic Proto-Indo-European language, had already shown archeological evidence for the sacrifice of domesticated animals.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: The king as the high priest would have been the central figure in establishing favourable relations with the other world. Georges Dumézil suggested that the religious function was represented by a duality, one reflecting the magico-religious nature of priesthood, while the other is involved in religious sanction to human society (especially contracts), a theory supported by common features in Iranian, Roman, Scandinavian and Celtic traditions.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: The reconstructed cosmology of the Proto-Indo-Europeans shows that ritual sacrifice of cattle, the cow in particular, was at the root of their beliefs, as the primordial condition of the world order. The myth of *"Trito", the first warrior, involves the liberation of cattle stolen by a three-headed entity named *"Ngʷʰi". After recovering the wealth of the people, Trito eventually offers the cattle to the priest in order to ensure the continuity of the cycle of giving between gods and humans. The word for "oath", "*h₁óitos", derives from the verb "*h₁ey-" ("to go"), after the practice of walking between slaughtered animals as part of taking an oath.


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: Proto-Indo-Europeans likely had a sacred tradition of horse sacrifice for the renewal of kinship involving the ritual mating of a queen or king with a horse, which was then sacrificed and cut up for distribution to the other participants in the ritual. In both the Roman "Equus October" and the Indic "Aśvamedhá", the horse sacrifice is performed on behalf of the warrior class or to a warrior deity, and the dismembered pieces of the animal eventually goes to different locations or deities. Another reflex may be found in a medieval Irish tradition involving a king-designate from County Donegal copulating with a mare before bathing with the parts of the sacrificed animal. The Indic ritual likewise involved the symbolic marriage of the queen to the dead stallion. Further, if Hittite laws prohibited copulation with animals, they made an exception of horses or mules. In both the Celtic and Indic traditions, an intoxicating brewage played a part in the ritual, and the suffix in "aśva-medhá" could be related to the Old Indic word "mad-" ("boil, rejoice, get drunk"). Jaan Puhvel has also compared the Vedic name of the tradition with the Gaulish god "Epomeduos", the "master of horses".


title: Proto-Indo-European mythology

text: Scholars have reconstructed a Proto-Indo-European cult of the weapons, especially the dagger, which holds a central position in various customs and myths. In the Ossetic Nart saga, the sword of Batradz is dragged into the sea after his death, and the British King Arthur throws his legendary sword Excalibur back into the lake from which it initially came. The Indic Arjuna is also instructed to throw his bow Gandiva into the sea at the end of his career, and weapons were frequently thrown into lakes, rivers or bogs as a form of prestige offering in Bronze and Iron Age Europe. Reflexes of an ancestral cult of the magical sword have been proposed in the legends of Excalibur and Durandal (the weapon of Roland, said to have been forged by the mythical Wayland the Smith). Among North Iranians, Herodotus described the Scythian practice of worshiping swords as manifestations of "Ares" in the 5th century BC, and Ammianus Marcellinus depicted the Alanic custom of thrusting swords into the earth and worshiping them as "Mars" in the 4th century AD.


title: Ann Walton Kroenke

text: Ann Walton Kroenke (born December 20, 1948) is an heiress to the Walmart fortune. Ann and her sister, Nancy Walton Laurie, inherited stock from her father, Bud Walton (died 1995), who was the brother and an early business partner of Walmart founder Sam Walton. She is the owner of the Denver Nuggets of the NBA and Colorado Avalanche of the NHL.


title: Ann Walton Kroenke

text: Her husband, Stan Kroenke, is the majority owner and CEO of the Los Angeles Rams (NFL), Arsenal (Premier League), Colorado Rapids (Major League Soccer), and Colorado Mammoth (National Lacrosse League).


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: Lestat de Lioncourt () is a fictional character appearing in several novels by Anne Rice, including "The Vampire Lestat" (1985). He is a vampire and an antihero in the majority of "The Vampire Chronicles".


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: Lestat is introduced in Rice's 1976 novel "Interview with the Vampire", the first book of what would become "The Vampire Chronicles". His full backstory is explored in "The Vampire Lestat" (1985), which follows Lestat's exploits from his youth in the Auvergne region of France to his early years as a vampire fledgling. Lestat is the lead character in most novels in the main series, including "The Queen of the Damned" (1988), "The Tale of the Body Thief" (1992), "Memnoch the Devil" (1995), "The Vampire Armand" (1998), and "Blood Canticle" (2003). Rice later revisited the Lestat-centric series, starting with "Prince Lestat" (2014), followed by "Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis" (2016) and "" (2018).


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: According to Rice, Lestat was largely inspired by her husband, the poet and artist Stan Rice; both have blond hair and they share November 7 as a birth date. In a 2003 interview, Rice noted that the character had also taken on some of her own attributes, stating, "Stan was Lestat; he was the inspiration. Perhaps it is best to say Lestat was Stan and me. He was Stan and what Stan taught me. Lestat was inspired by Stan, and then I became Lestat." The name "Lestat" was a misspelling of "Lestan," which Rice believed to be an old Louisianan name. According to the characters themselves, who discuss the issue in "Blackwood Farm", "Blood Canticle" and "Memnoch the Devil", the name is pronounced "les-dot" "with a rather French flair."


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: Lestat describes himself as six feet tall. He has blond hair that is not quite shoulder length, and that is rather curly, which sometimes appears white under fluorescent lighting. His eyes are gray, but they reflect the colors of blue or violet easily from surfaces around them. He has a short narrow nose, and a mouth that is well shaped, but has always been slightly large for his face. His mouth can look very mean or extremely generous, but always sensual. He has a continuously animated face. Lestat's fingernails (like those of all vampires in "The Vampire Chronicles") look like they are made of glass.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: Because of his boldness, enthusiasm, and defiance, Lestat's seniors refer to him affectionately as "The Brat Prince", a title of which he is very fond. He is very vain and concerned with fashion, and will pause mid-narrative to remind the reader what he is wearing. He enjoys performing on stage, which he does as both a mortal actor in Paris, France and a vampire in his rock band called The Vampire Lestat, that he forms with a group of humans in the 1980s. Lestat is also fond of music; he sings and plays the piano and violin. Although he is illiterate as a mortal man, he learns to read and loves literature as a vampire. In one period of his life, he becomes a hermit and spends every night holed up at home, reading.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: The first language that Lestat learns is French, although he "writes" his novels in English. In "The Vampire Lestat," he notes that despite his French accent, he speaks English "like a cross between a boatman and Sam Spade" and is fond of slang.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: Lestat is portrayed in the books as being bisexual, and has male and female lovers as both a vampire and a mortal. He is attracted to whoever most interests him at the time. Most of his early experiences are with male companions; he himself explains this by saying the women in previous centuries simply were not as interesting as men. Later in the series, Lestat offhandedly mentions that he is frightened of women and finds them extremely and egregiously distracting.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: Throughout his long life, Lestat is plagued by common philosophical questions, such as "Are my actions good or bad?", "Is there a God?", "Am I in His plan?", "What happens after death?", and "What makes a person happy?" He finds himself more in love with humanity than ever before, despite his relationship with mankind being savage. For a while, he sees life as "the Savage Garden", filled with beauty and death.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: Lestat exhibits a strong altruistic nature at several points in the series. For instance, after he first becomes a vampire, he sends large gifts to his family and friends, purchases the theatre where he once worked, and settles the debts of his old manager, Renaud. Later, after his brothers and family are killed in the French Revolution, he steps forward to care for his ailing father, the only survivor, despite their hateful relationship. Lestat also frequently hunts evildoers instead of feeding from innocent victims, although he does not always abide by this rule.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: As a vampire, Lestat's abilities include telepathy, mind reading, superhuman physical attributes, and rapid healing. After receiving blood from several ancient vampires, including Magnus, Marius de Romanus, and Akasha, Lestat's strength increases dramatically and allows him to fly, perform feats of telekinesis and pyrokinesis, and survive exposure to the sun. After Lestat ate the brain of Mekare, he was infused with the spirit of Amel and became the Host of the Sacred Core, effectively making himself the most powerful vampire on the planet.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: Although he is painted as an anti-hero in "Interview with the Vampire", he is quick to defend his own behavior. In "The Vampire Lestat", he spends much of the book telling people he is hardly the monster previous narrators have made him out to be. In much of the book, (and its follow up, "The Queen of the Damned"), he is instead painted as a fun-loving hero who even leads the charge against Akasha, the vampire queen.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: Lestat was born on November 7, 1760, as the seventh son of the marquis d'Auvergne in the Auvergne region of France. Only two of his brothers survive to adulthood. While they are technically aristocrats, the de Lioncourt family's fortune has been squandered, and they live in relative poverty in their feudal castle. Lestat's mother, Gabrielle, is the only literate member of the family. Lestat's father is blind and spends his days playing chess.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: Lestat's relationships with his father and brothers are bad - he tells his mother ""I dream sometimes that I might kill them all. I kill my father and my brothers in the dream. I go from room to room slaughtering them as I did the wolves."" He attempts to escape from them several times, first by asking to remain at a monastery, and later by running away with a troupe of traveling players. In both instances, he is returned to his family. Encouraged by his mother, who sells her family heirloom jewels to purchase horses, guns, and mastiff dogs for him, Lestat takes up hunting, and soon becomes the family breadwinner.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: The townspeople of Lestat's village request his help with a pack of wolves that are terrorizing the town. He rides into the mountains and kills the entire pack of eight, losing his horse, dogs, and nearly his own life in the process. Although his bravery wins him the respect and admiration of the villagers, who present him with a lush red velvet cloak and boots made from the pelts of the wolves, he goes into a deep depression.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: Prodded by Gabrielle, he eventually leaves Auvergne with friend and lover Nicolas and heads for Paris, intending to become an actor. During performances, he attracts the attention of an ancient vampire named Magnus, who later abducts him and transforms him into a vampire against his will.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: Immediately after turning Lestat, Magnus commits suicide, leaving Lestat to fend for himself without any kind of guidance. Lestat finds himself heir to a nearly inexhaustible fortune, and begins an adventure that leads him all around the world.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: Despite his charisma, Lestat is portrayed as a lonesome individual. In his childhood, the only member of his family whom he had any connection with was his mother, Gabrielle. She is the only member of the family who could read, and she often immersed herself in novels, neglecting the mundane life around her. Lestat both admires and hates her for this, yet he is the only person of her family she can confide in; they develop a silent but strong bond. For this very reason Lestat makes a dying Gabrielle his first vampire companion when she comes to Paris in search of her son, wishing to see him before she succumbs to consumption.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: Lestat also makes his friend and lover, Nicolas de Lenfent, a vampire. They find work at a small theatre called "Renaud's". Lestat starts off as a stage hand and then, to his surprise, becomes star of the show when he steps in for another actor. Nicolas is a violinist and performs with the theatre's small orchestra. After Lestat is abducted and made a vampire, he tries to distance himself from his mortal friends and family, but he still provides for them. He buys Nicolas an apartment and many other luxuries, such as a Stradivarius violin, with his newly acquired "coin of the realm". Nicolas is suspicious, and insists that Lestat was in fact abducted from their room at night, calling out to Nicolas. Lestat gives in to the love he feels for Nicolas and makes him a vampire as well after saving him from the self-proclaimed Children of Darkness, a coven of vampires led by Armand. But Nicolas rejects Lestat and sinks into insanity. Lestat collapses Armand's coven, buys Renaud's old theatre, and gives it to Nicolas and Eleni, one of Armand's former acolytes. Nicolas founds the Théàtre des Vampires, while Lestat and Gabrielle leave Paris to explore the world. Unhappy with life as a vampire, Nicolas immolates himself in a bonfire, leaving Lestat scarred with his insanity and death.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: Another fledgling and long-term companion is Louis de Pointe du Lac. Louis is from a family who emigrated from France to North America when he was very young, he is described as young beautiful man like an angel with "fine black hair" and deep green eyes, whom Lestat turns into a vampire in 1791. For many years, Lestat and Louis live, travel, and kill together. Though Louis claims that Lestat made him into a vampire because Lestat merely wanted his fortune, Lestat refutes these claims in the following novel. He points out that he was heir to a vast fortune well before meeting him, and says that he "fell fatally in love with Louis", who reminded him of Nicki.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: Lestat and Louis "adopt" a dying orphan named Claudia in 1795. Lestat turns her into a vampire in order to tie Louis to him. While Lestat spoils Claudia and tries to teach her how to behave like a vampire, she largely ignores him and reserves her love for Louis. In 1860, after 65 years of living together, Claudia rebels and tries to kill Lestat by giving him two dead boys poisoned with absinthe and laudanum, then cutting his throat and stabbing him in the chest. With Louis's help, she dumps him in a swamp near the Mississippi River. After Lestat comes back and assaults them with the help of a young composer he has transformed into a vampire, Louis flees with Claudia. In desperation, they burn down their French Quarter house while Lestat is still inside.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: Louis and Claudia flee to Europe. Lestat follows them, and encounters them at the Théâtre des Vampires. Claudia dies from sun exposure while Louis is held captive by Armand and his followers. Armand leaves with Louis, finally feeling that he has had his revenge on Lestat for ruining his coven.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: At the turn of the 20th century, Louis once again discovers Lestat living in New Orleans in a weakened state. Louis turns his back on him in pity and disgust. This version of events, however, is also refuted by Lestat, who made no mention of contact with Louis in that era, though he had been visited by Armand and freely admits that his memory of this period is fragmented. Louis and Lestat reunite in the 1980s with a new understanding, only to be caught up and briefly separated again in the events that are detailed in "The Queen of the Damned", though in later books Lestat refers to Louis as his lover.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: Lestat has a disdain for rules and order, and states, in "The Queen of the Damned", that he has always had to be his own teacher. He openly disregards and refuses to show fear to Armand, the leader of the Paris coven, even when confronted with the possibility of execution. The only immortal Lestat appears to openly respect and defer to is Marius. Lestat seeks him out as a mentor in the late 18th century, leaving him messages across Europe and Asia until Marius decides to reveal himself. While Lestat eagerly learns from Marius, he also openly breaches many of the rules Marius seeks to impress upon him, such as the prohibition on revealing himself to mortals. Such behavior inspires Marius to refer to Lestat as "the damnedest creature" and nickname him "the Brat Prince." Lestat sought Marius out to be his teacher but the relationship turned out also to be a father-son relationship.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: Lestat is entirely responsible for the epic triumph and tragedy told in "The Queen of the Damned", after he presents himself to the world through his autobiography and formation of a rock band, singing vampire secrets. His songs waken Akasha, the Queen of the Damned, from her sleep, and she takes Lestat on as her lover while she enacts a horrible plan to take over the world. This adventure forces Lestat to think of things and people other than himself for one of the first times in his long life, and the adventure changes him forever, forcing him to begin fighting for a kind of redemption—though, as displayed in "The Tale of the Body Thief", Lestat remains his old, devilish self, revelling in his identity as the Brat Prince.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: After the mysterious and mystical events of "Memnoch the Devil", Lestat falls into a vampiric sleep from which the Mayfair witch Merrick eventually manages to wake him, forging a bond between them. After the spiritual, emotional and mystical changes within Lestat during his adventures in the heavenly and hellish realms he visited, Lestat became a legend amongst the remaining vampires, taking control of New Orleans and killing any fledgling vampires who killed mortals in his city. While it is largely due to his actions that the Talamasca—an order of scholars who study the supernatural world but vow to never interfere in it—declare a kind of war on vampires, it is also due to his efforts that no lives are taken over the course of the dispute between the two groups.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: Lestat is sought out by a desperate Tarquin Blackwood in the novel "Blackwood Farm" to help him with a problem the young vampire feels only the legendary Lestat can help him with. Though Lestat suffers losses from this adventure, he falls somewhat in love with Quinn, and the two stay close after their adventure together reaches its conclusion.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: In "Blood Canticle", Lestat falls in love with a witch of the Mayfair clan named Rowan Mayfair, who shares the same feelings towards him. Rowan eventually asks Lestat to turn her into a vampire but, despite their feelings toward one another, he painfully chose not to, because she is a guiding figure in the Mayfair family and he cannot take her away from it or from her faithful and loving husband Michael.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: Lestat appears as a major character in both motion picture adaptations of "The Vampire Chronicles" novels.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: On stage, Lestat was portrayed by Hugh Panaro in the short-lived Broadway show "" composed by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, with Drew Sarich - who was playing Armand - as the understudy.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: In the 2022 television series adaptation of "Interview with the Vampire" on AMC, he is portrayed by Sam Reid.


title: Lestat de Lioncourt

text: Lestat became the name and focus of a gothic rock band in Cleveland, Ohio, signed by Jevan Records who split up in 1999.


title: Sharknado (film series)

text: Sharknado is a series of six American made-for-television science fiction action comedy horror disaster films released by Syfy between 2013 and 2018. It has since been expanded into video games and comics, including a spin-off film, "Sharknado: Heart of Sharkness", that was released in 2015. The first two films received mixed to positive reviews from critics, while the others received negative reviews.


title: Sharknado (film series)

text: The series stars Ian Ziering as Fin Shepard and Tara Reid as April Wexler - a husband and wife who encounter "sharknadoes", tornadoes filled with sharks, wherever they go.


title: Sharknado (film series)

text: A freak cyclone hits Los Angeles causing man-eating sharks to be scooped up in water spouts and flood the city with shark-infested seawater. Bar-owner and surfer Fin (Ian Ziering) sets out with his friends to rescue his estranged wife, April (Tara Reid), and their teenage daughter, Claudia, before the "sharknado" reaches them.


title: Sharknado (film series)

text: While Fin and April are in New York City to promote April's book, "How to Survive a Sharknado and Other Unnatural Disasters", about the Los Angeles sharknado, the city is hit by a severe storm causing new "sharknadoes" to emerge.


title: Sharknado (film series)

text: Following the events of the previous film, Fin and April have remarried and are expecting another child. For his heroics in the "sharknado" battles in Los Angeles and New York, Fin is in Washington, D.C., to receive an award from the president. However, when he is there he encounters a new "sharknado" which begins to make its way down the "Feast Coast" to Florida.


title: Sharknado (film series)

text: "Sharknado 4" was confirmed to follow upon "Sharknado 3"s premiere. "Sharknado 3" concludes with a cliffhanger regarding whether or not April is killed by falling wreckage. An ad after the film promotes a Twitter campaign offering fans the chance to decide her fate with the hashtags "#AprilLives" or "#AprilDies", with the results revealed at the start of "Sharknado 4", which first aired on Syfy on July 31, 2016. Ian Ziering, Tara Reid, Ryan Newman, and David Hasselhoff reprise their roles from previous films. New cast members include: Tommy Davidson as Aston Reynolds, playboy tech billionaire and Astro-X president; Cody Linley replacing Chuck Hittinger as Matt Shepard; Imani Hakim as Gabrielle, a soldier and Matt's wife; Gary Busey as Wilford Wexler, April's rich father; Cheryl Tiegs as Raye Shepard, Fin's mother; Masiela Lusha as Gemini, Fin's cousin.


title: Sharknado (film series)

text: A fifth "Sharknado" film was confirmed in October 2016, and was released on August 6, 2017. The title was going to be "Sharknado 5... Earth 0", but on June 1, 2017, the title was unveiled to be "Sharknado 5: Global Swarming" with the tagline "Make America Bait Again", a reference to the slogan "Make America Great Again" by President Donald Trump. Ian Ziering and Tara Reid reprised their roles as Fin Shepard and April Wexler. Cassie Scerbo also reprised for this installment. Filming occurred in more than 5 countries, including the UK, Australia and Bulgaria. This storyline depicts Fin and his allies accidentally unleashing a new wave of sharknados when they deactivate an ancient device that was actually keeping the Sharknados in check, the subsequent storms escalating to the point that they devastate the planet, leaving only Fin alive, until he is met by a time-displaced version of his son Gil.


title: Sharknado (film series)

text: "The Last Sharknado: It's About Time" was released on August 19, 2018. Tara Reid, Ian Ziering and Cassie Scerbo returned. A write-up in Bloody Disgusting in February 2018 said: "In his quest, Fin fights Nazis, dinosaurs, knights, and even takes a ride on Noah's Ark." On March 28, 2018, Syfy confirmed the film would be the final installment of the series. On May 25, the film's title was revealed by a released teaser trailer. Vivica A. Fox, who had starred in "Sharknado 2", reprises her role for the final installment. With Fin the last survivor, he finds himself travelling through time to meet supposedly-deceased allies (pulled out of time by Gil at the moment before their deaths) seeking to identify and prevent the first of the modern-day Sharknados. After subduing potential Sharknados in Camelot, the War of Independence, and the Wild West, Fin is able to destroy the original Sharknado before it could escalate into the global catastrophes he has witnessed, creating a new timeline where Fin is still just the bar owner he was in the original film, surrounded by his extended family.


title: Sharknado (film series)

text: "Lavalantula" is a spin-off of "Sharknado", about fire spitting tarantulas causing havoc over Los Angeles, starring some of the cast from "Police Academy". It features an appearance by Ian Ziering as Fin Shepard - tying the film into the "Sharknado" universe.


title: Sharknado (film series)

text: A sequel to "Lavalantula" called "2 Lava 2 Lantula" premiered on Syfy on August 6, 2016. Some of the cast from the original film returned, including Steve Guttenberg, Marion Ramsey and Michael Winslow.


title: Sharknado (film series)

text: "Sharknado: The Video Game" is a 2014 endless running video game developed by Other Ocean Interactive and published by Majesco Entertainment. It was based on "Sharknado 2: The Second One" and was released for iOS on July 25, 2014. It was deleted from the App Store in 2017.


title: Sharknado (film series)

text: "How to Survive a Sharknado and Other Unnatural Disasters: Fight Back When Monsters and Mother Nature Attack" is a book by Andrew Shaffer, a real-life version of the book-within-the-movie "Sharknado 2: The Second One".


title: Sharknado (film series)

text: "Archie vs. Sharknado" is a one-shot comic book simultaneously published by Archie Comics on July 22, 2015, as a tie-in to "Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!". It deals with Riverdale being hit by a storm of sharknadoes and Archie and the gang having to deal with them as they make their way down the "Feast Coast". The one-shot was written by series director Anthony C. Ferrante, with art by longtime Archie artist Dan Parent. The comic book received an average score of 7.2/10 based on 15 critical reviews according to review aggregator Comic Book Roundup.


title: Sharknado (film series)

text: The mockumentary tells the story of David Moore, the filmmaker who first dreamed of "sharks in a tornado" and brought on disaster by using real sharks. It was written and directed by Jeremy Wagener, and released on October 6, 2015, on video on demand.


title: Sharknado (film series)

text: During the 2021 Shark Week, Discovery Channel aired a special starring Ian Ziering and Tara Reid as themselves debunking many of the shark myths from the film series. It originally aired on July 14, 2021.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: The Yellow Emperor, also known as the Yellow Thearch or by his Chinese name Huangdi (), is a deity ("shen") in Chinese religion, one of the legendary Chinese sovereigns and culture heroes included among the mytho-historical Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors and cosmological Five Regions' Highest Deities (). Calculated by Jesuit missionaries on the basis of Chinese chronicles and later accepted by the twentieth-century promoters of a universal calendar starting with the Yellow Emperor, Huangdi's traditional reign dates are 2697–2597 or 2698–2598 BC.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: Huangdi's cult became prominent in the late Warring States and early Han dynasty, when he was portrayed as the originator of the centralized state, as a cosmic ruler, and as a patron of esoteric arts. A large number of texts – such as the "Huangdi Neijing", a medical classic, and the "Huangdi Sijing", a group of political treatises – were thus attributed to him. Having waned in influence during most of the imperial period, in the early twentieth century Huangdi became a rallying figure for Han Chinese attempts to overthrow the rule of the Qing dynasty, which they considered foreign because its emperors were Manchu people. To this day the Yellow Emperor remains a powerful symbol within Chinese nationalism. Traditionally credited with numerous inventions and innovations – ranging from the lunar calendar (Chinese calendar) to an early form of football – the Yellow Emperor is now regarded as the initiator of Han culture (later Chinese culture).


title: Yellow Emperor

text: Until 221 BC when Qin Shi Huang of the Qin dynasty coined the title "huangdi" () – conventionally translated as "emperor" – to refer to himself, the character "di" did not refer to earthly rulers but to the highest god of the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BC) pantheon. In the Warring States period (c. 475–221 BC), the term "di" on its own could also refer to the deities associated with the five Sacred Mountains of China and colors. Huangdi (), the "yellow "di"", was one of the latter. To emphasize the religious meaning of "di" in pre-imperial times, historians of early China commonly translate the god's name as "Yellow Thearch" and the first emperor's title as "August Thearch", in which "thearch" refers to a godly ruler.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: In the late Warring States period, the Yellow Emperor was integrated into the cosmological scheme of the Five Phases, in which the color yellow represents the earth phase, the Yellow Dragon, and the center. The correlation of the colors in association with different dynasties was mentioned in the "Lüshi Chunqiu" (late 3rd century BC), where the Yellow Emperor's reign was seen to be governed by earth. The character "huang" ("yellow") was often used in place of the homophonous "huang" , which means "august" (in the sense of 'distinguished') or "radiant", giving Huangdi attributes close to those of Shangdi, the Shang supreme god.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: The "Records of the Grand Historian", compiled by Sima Qian in the first century BC, gives the Yellow Emperor's name as "Xuan Yuan" ( < Old Chinese (B-S) *"qʰa[r]-[ɢ]ʷa[n]", lit. "Chariot Shaft"). Third-century scholar Huangfu Mi, who wrote a work on the sovereigns of antiquity, commented that Xuanyuan was the name of a hill where Huangdi had lived and that he later took as a name. The Classic of Mountains and Seas mentions a Xuanyuan nation whose inhabitants have human faces, snake bodies, tails twisting above their heads; Yuan Ke, a contemporary scholar of early Chinese mythology, "noted that the appearance of these people is characteristic of gods and suggested that they may reflect the form of the Yellow Thearch himself". The Qing dynasty scholar Liang Yusheng (, 1745–1819) argued instead that the hill was named after the Yellow Emperor. Xuanyuan is also the name of the star Regulus in Chinese, the star being associated with Huangdi in traditional astronomy. He is also associated to the broader constellations Leo and Lynx, of which the latter is said to represent the body of the Yellow Dragon ( "Huánglóng"), Huangdi's animal form.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: Huangdi was also referred to as "Youxiong" (). This name has been interpreted as either a place name or a clan name. According to British sinologist Herbert Allen Giles (1845–1935), that name was "taken from that of [Huangdi's] hereditary principality". William Nienhauser, a modern translator of the "Records of the Grand Historian", states that Huangdi was originally the head of the Youxiong clan, which lived near what is now Xinzheng in Henan. Rémi Mathieu, a French historian of Chinese myths and religion, translates "Youxiong" as "possessor of bears" and links Huangdi to the broader theme of the bear in world mythology. Ye Shuxian has also associated the Yellow Emperor with bear legends common across northeast Asia people as well as the Dangun legend.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: Sima Qian's "Records of the Grand Historian" describes the Yellow Emperor's ancestral name as Gongsun ().


title: Yellow Emperor

text: In Han dynasty texts, the Yellow Emperor is also called upon as the "Yellow God" ( "Huángshén"). Certain accounts interpret him as the incarnation of the "Yellow God of the Northern Dipper" ( "Huángshén Běidǒu"), another name of the universal god ("Shangdi" or "Tiandi" ). According to a definition in apocryphal texts related to the "Hétú" , the Yellow Emperor "proceeds from the essence of the Yellow God".


title: Yellow Emperor

text: As a cosmological deity, the Yellow Emperor is known as the "Great Emperor of the Central Peak" ( "Zhōngyuè Dàdì"), and in the "Shizi" as the "Yellow Emperor with Four Faces" ( "Huángdì Sìmiàn"). In old accounts the Yellow Emperor is identified as a deity of light (and his name is explained in the "Shuowen jiezi" to derive from "guāng" , "light") and thunder, and as one and the same with the "Thunder God" ( "Léishén"), who in turn, as a later mythological character, is distinguished as the Yellow Emperor's foremost pupil, such as in the "Huangdi Neijing".


title: Yellow Emperor

text: The Chinese historian Sima Qianand much Chinese historiography following himconsidered the Yellow Emperor to be a more historical figure than earlier legendary figures such as Fu Xi, Nüwa, and Shennong. Sima Qian's "Records of the Grand Historian" begins with the Yellow Emperor, while passing over the others.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: Throughout most of Chinese history, the Yellow Emperor and the other ancient sages were considered to be historical figures. Their historicity started to be questioned in the 1920s by historians such as Gu Jiegang, one of the founders of the Doubting Antiquity School in China. In their attempts to prove that the earliest figures of Chinese history were mythological, Gu and his followers argued that these ancient sages were originally gods who were later depicted as humans by the rationalist intellectuals of the Warring States period. Yang Kuan, a member of the same current of historiography, noted that only in the Warring States period had the Yellow Emperor started to be described as the first ruler of China. Yang thus argued that Huangdi was a later transformation of Shangdi, the supreme god of the Shang dynasty's pantheon.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: Also in the 1920s, French scholars Henri Maspero and Marcel Granet published critical studies of China's accounts of high antiquity. In his "Danses et légendes de la Chine ancienne" ["Dances and legends of ancient China"], for example, Granet argued that these tales were "historicized legends" that said more about the time when they were written than about the time they purported to describe.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: Most scholars now agree that the Yellow Emperor originated as a god who was later represented as a historical person. K.C. Chang sees Huangdi and other cultural heroes as "ancient religious figures" who were "euhemerized" in the late Warring States and Han periods. Historian of ancient China Mark Edward Lewis speaks of the Yellow Emperor's "earlier nature as a god", whereas Roel Sterckx, a professor at University of Cambridge, calls Huangdi a "legendary cultural hero".


title: Yellow Emperor

text: The origin of Huangdi's mythology is unclear, but historians have formulated several hypotheses about it. Yang Kuan, a member of the Doubting Antiquity School (1920s–40s), argued that the Yellow Emperor was derived from Shangdi, the highest god of the Shang dynasty. Yang reconstructs the etymology as follows: Shangdi → Huang Shangdi → Huangdi → Huangdi , in which he claims that "huang" ("yellow") either was a variant Chinese character for "huang" ("august") or was used as a way to avoid the naming taboo for the latter. Yang's view has been criticized by Mitarai Masaru and by Michael Puett.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: Historian Mark Edward Lewis agrees that "huang" and "huang" were often interchangeable, but disagreeing with Yang, he claims that "huang" meaning "yellow" appeared first. Based on what he admits is a "novel etymology" likening "huang" to the phonetically close "wang" (the "burned shaman" in Shang rainmaking rituals), Lewis suggests that "Huang" in "Huangdi" might originally have meant "rainmaking shaman" or "rainmaking ritual." Citing late Warring States and early Han versions of Huangdi's myth, he further argues that the figure of the Yellow Emperor originated in ancient rain-making rituals in which Huangdi represented the power of rain and clouds, whereas his mythical rival Chiyou (or the Yan Emperor) stood for fire and drought.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: Also disagreeing with Yang Kuan's hypothesis, Sarah Allan finds it unlikely that such a popular myth as the Yellow Emperor's could have come from a taboo character. She argues instead that pre-Shang "'history'," including the story of the Yellow Emperor, "can all be understood as a later transformation and systematization of Shang mythology." In her view, Huangdi was originally an unnamed "lord of the underworld" (or the "Yellow Springs"), the mythological counterpart of the Shang sky deity Shangdi. At the time, Shang rulers claimed that their mythical ancestors, identified with "the [ten] suns, birds, east, life, [and] the Lord on High" (i.e., Shangdi), had defeated an earlier people associated with "the underworld, dragons, west." After the Zhou dynasty overthrew the Shang dynasty in the eleventh century BC, Zhou leaders reinterpreted Shang myths as meaning that the Shang had vanquished a real political dynasty, which was eventually named the Xia dynasty. By Han times – as seen in Sima Qian's account in the "Shiji" – the Yellow Emperor, who as lord of the underworld had been symbolically linked to the Xia, had become a historical ruler whose descendants were thought to have founded the Xia.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: Given that the earliest extant mention of the Yellow Emperor was on a fourth-century BC Chinese bronze inscription claiming that he was the ancestor of the royal house of the state of Qi, Lothar von Falkenhausen speculates that Huangdi was invented as an ancestral figure as part of a strategy to claim that all ruling clans in the "Zhou dynasty culture sphere" shared common ancestry.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: Explicit accounts of the Yellow Emperor started to appear in Chinese texts during the Warring States period. "The most ancient extant reference" to Huangdi is an inscription on a bronze vessel made during the first half of the fourth century BC by the royal family (surnamed Tian ) of the state of Qi, a powerful eastern state.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: Harvard University historian Michael Puett writes that the Qi bronze inscription was one of several references to the Yellow Emperor in the fourth and third centuries BC within accounts of the creation of the state. Noting that many of the thinkers who were later identified as precursors of the Huang–Lao – "Huangdi and Laozi" – tradition came from the state of Qi, Robin D. S. Yates hypothesizes that Huang–Lao originated in that region.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: The cult of Huangdi became very popular during the Warring States period (5th century–221 BC), a period of intense competition between rival states which ended with the unification of the realm by the state of Qin. In addition to his role as ancestor, he became associated with "centralized statecraft" and emerged as a figure paradigmatic of emperorship.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: In his "Shiji", Sima Qian claims that the state of Qin started worshipping the Yellow Emperor in the fifth century BC, along with Yandi, the Fiery Emperor. The altars were established at Yong (near modern Fengxiang County in Shaanxi province), which was the capital of Qin from 677 to 383 BC. By the time of King Zheng, who became king of Qin in 247 BC and First Emperor of a unified China in 221 BC, Huangdi had become by far the most important of the four "thearchs" ("di" ) who were then worshiped at Yong.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: The figure of Huangdi had appeared sporadically in Warring States texts. Sima Qian's "Shiji" (or "Records of the Grand Historian", completed around 94 BC) was the first work to turn these fragments of myths into a systematic and consistent narrative of the Yellow Emperor's "career". The "Shiji"s account was extremely influential in shaping how the Chinese viewed the origin of their history.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: The "Shiji" begins its chronological account of Chinese history with the life of Huangdi, whom it presents as a sage sovereign from antiquity. It recounts that Huangdi's father was Shaodian and his mother was Fubao(). The Yellow Emperor had four wives. His first wife Leizu of Xiling bore him two sons. His other three wives were his second wife Fenglei (), third wife Tongyu () and fourth wife Momu (). The emperor had a total of 25 sons, 14 of whom began their own surnames and clans. The oldest was Shaohao or Xuan Xiao, who lived in Qingyang by the Yangtze River. Changyi, the second son, lived by the Ruo River. When the Yellow Emperor died, he was succeeded by Changyi's son, Zhuan Xu.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: The chronological tables found in chapters 13 of the "Shiji" represent all past rulers – legendary ones such as Yao and Shun, the first ancestors of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, as well as the founders of the main ruling houses in the Zhou sphere – as descendants of Huangdi, giving the impression that Chinese history was the history of one large family.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: The Yellow Emperor was credited with an enormous number of cultural legacies and esoteric teachings. While Taoism is often regarded in the West as arising from Laozi, Chinese Taoists claim the Yellow Emperor formulated many of their precepts. The "Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon" ( "Huángdì Nèijīng"), which presents the doctrinal basis of traditional Chinese medicine, was named after him. He was also credited with composing the Four Books of the Yellow Emperor ( "Huángdì Sìjīng"), the "Yellow Emperor's Book of the Hidden Symbol" ( "Huángdì Yīnfújīng"), and the "Yellow Emperor's Four Seasons Poem" included in the Tung Shing fortune-telling almanac.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: "Xuanyuan (+ number)" is also the Chinese name for Regulus and other stars of the constellations Leo and Lynx, of which the latter is said to represent the body of the Yellow Dragon. In the Hall of Supreme Harmony in Beijing's Forbidden City, there is also a mirror called the "Xuanyuan Mirror".


title: Yellow Emperor

text: In the second century AD, Huangdi's role as a deity was diminished because of the rise of a deified Laozi. A state sacrifice offered to "Huang-Lao jun" was not offered to Huangdi and Laozi, as the term Huang-Lao would have meant a few centuries earlier, but to a "yellow Laozi". Nonetheless, Huangdi kept being considered as an immortal: he was seen as a master of longevity techniques and as a god who could reveal new teachings – in the form of texts such as the sixth-century "Huangdi Yinfujing" – to his earthly followers.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: The Yellow Emperor became a powerful national symbol in the last decade of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) and remained dominant in Chinese nationalist discourse throughout the Republican period (1911–49). The early twentieth century is also when the Yellow Emperor was first referred to as the ancestor of all Chinese people.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: Starting in 1903, radical publications started using the projected date of his birth as the first year of the Chinese calendar. Intellectuals such as Liu Shipei (1884–1919) found this practice necessary in order to "preserve the [Han] race" ("baozhong" ) from both dominance by Manchu people and foreign encroachment. Revolutionaries motivated by Anti-Manchuism such as Chen Tianhua (1875–1905), Zou Rong (1885–1905), and Zhang Binglin (1868–1936) tried to foster the racial consciousness they thought was missing from their compatriots, and thus depicted the Manchus as racially inferior barbarians who were unfit to rule over Han Chinese. Chen's widely circulated pamphlets claimed that the "Han race" formed one big family descended from the Yellow Emperor. The first issue (Nov. 1905) of the "Minbao" ("People's Journal"), which was founded in Tokyo by revolutionaries of the Tongmenghui, featured the Yellow Emperor on its cover and called Huangdi "the first great nationalist of the world." It was one of several nationalist magazines that featured the Yellow Emperor on their cover in the early twentieth century. The fact that Huangdi meant "yellow" emperor also served to buttress the theory that he was the originator of the "yellow race".


title: Yellow Emperor

text: Many historians interpret this sudden popularity of the Yellow Emperor as a reaction to the theories of French scholar Albert Terrien de Lacouperie (1845–94), who in a book called "The Western Origin of the Early Chinese Civilization, from 2300 B.C. to 200 A.D." (1892) had claimed that Chinese civilization was founded around 2300 BCE by Babylonian immigrants. Lacouperie's "Sino-Babylonianism" posited that Huangdi was a Mesopotamian tribal leader who had led a massive migration of his people into China around 2300 BC and founded what later became Chinese civilization. European sinologists quickly rejected these theories, but in 1900 two Japanese historians, Shirakawa Jirō and Kokubu Tanenori, omitted these criticisms and published a long summary that presented Lacouperie's views as the most advanced Western scholarship on China. Chinese scholars were quickly attracted by "the historicization of Chinese mythology" that the two Japanese authors advocated.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: Anti-Manchu intellectuals and activists who searched for China's "national essence" ("guocui" ) adapted Sino-Babylonianism to their needs. Zhang Binglin explained Huangdi's battle with Chi You as a conflict opposing the newly arrived civilized Mesopotamians to backward local tribes, a battle that transformed China into one of the most civilized places in the world. Zhang's reinterpretation of Sima Qian's account "underscored the need to recover the glory of early China." Liu Shipei also presented these early times as the golden age of Chinese civilization. In addition to tying the Chinese to an ancient center of human civilization in Mesopotamia, Lacouperie's theories suggested that China should be ruled by the descendants of Huangdi. In a controversial essay called "History of the Yellow Race" ("Huangshi" ), which was published serially from 1905 to 1908, Huang Jie (; 1873–1935) claimed that the "Han race" was the true master of China because it was descended from the Yellow Emperor. Reinforced by the values of filial piety and the Chinese patrilineal clan, the racial vision defended by Huang and others turned vengeance against the Manchus into a duty owed to one's ancestors.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: The Yellow Emperor continued to be revered after the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, which overthrew the Qing dynasty. In 1912, for instance, banknotes carrying Huangdi's effigy were issued by the new Republican government. After 1911, however, the Yellow Emperor as national symbol changed from first progenitor of the Han race to ancestor of China's entire multi-ethnic population. Under the ideology of the Five Races Under One Union, Huangdi became the common ancestor of the Han Chinese, the Manchu people, the Mongols, the Tibetans, and the Hui people, who were said to form the Zhonghua minzu, a broadly understood Chinese nation. Sixteen state ceremonies were held between 1911 and 1949 to Huangdi as the "founding ancestor of the Chinese nation" () and even "the founding ancestor of human civilization" ().


title: Yellow Emperor

text: The cult of the Yellow Emperor was forbidden in the People's Republic of China until the end of the Cultural Revolution. The prohibition was halted during the 1980s when the government reversed itself and resurrected the "Yellow Emperor cult". Starting in the 1980s, the cult was revived and phrases relating to the "Descendants of Yan and Huang" were sometimes used by the Chinese state when referring to people of Chinese descent. In 1984, for example, Deng Xiaoping argued for Chinese unification saying "Taiwan is rooted in the hearts of the descendants of the Yellow Emperor," whereas in 1986 the PRC acclaimed the Chinese-American astronaut Taylor Wang as the first of the Yellow Emperor's descendants to travel in space. In the first half of the 1980s, the Party had internally debated whether this usage would make ethnic minorities feel excluded. After consulting experts from Beijing University, the Chinese Academy of Social Science, and the Central Nationalities Institute, the Central Propaganda Department recommended on March 27, 1985, that the Party speak of the Zhonghua Minzu – the "Chinese nation" broadly defined – in official statements, but that the phrase "sons and grand-sons of Yandi and the Yellow Emperor" could be used in informal statements by party leaders and in "relations with Hong Kong and Taiwanese compatriots and overseas Chinese compatriots".


title: Yellow Emperor

text: After retreating to Taiwan in late 1949 at the end of the Chinese Civil War, Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang (KMT) ruled that the Republic of China (ROC) would keep paying homage to the Yellow Emperor on April 4, the National Tomb Sweeping Day, but neither he nor the three presidents that succeeded him ever paid homage in person. In 1955, the KMT, which was led by Mandarin speakers and still poised on retaking the mainland from the Communists, sponsored the production of the movie "Children of the Yellow Emperor" ("Huangdi zisun" ), which was filmed mostly in Taiwanese Hokkien and showed extensive passages of Taiwanese folk opera. Directed by Bai Ke (1914–1964), a former assistant of Yuan Muzhi, it was a propaganda effort to convince speakers of Taiyu that they were linked to mainland people by common blood. In 2009 Ma Ying-jeou was the first ROC president to celebrate the Tomb Sweeping Day rituals for Huangdi in person, on which occasion he proclaimed that both Chinese culture and common descent from the Yellow Emperor united people from Taiwan and the mainland. Later the same year, Lien Chan – a former Vice President of the Republic of China who is now Honorary Chairman of the Kuomintang – and his wife Lien Fang Yu paid homage at the Mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor in Huangling, Yan'an, in mainland China.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: Gay studies researcher Louis Crompton has cited Ji Yun's report in his popular "Notes from the" Yuewei "Hermitage" (1800), that some claimed the Yellow Emperor was the first Chinese to take male bedmates, a claim that Ji Yun dismissed. Ji Yun argued that this was probably a false attribution.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: Today, Xuanyuanjiao based on Taiwan represents an organised form of Yellow Emperor worship married to Confucian orthodoxy.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: As with any myth, there are numerous versions of Huangdi's story, emphasizing different themes and interpreting the main character's significance in different ways.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: According to Huangfu Mi (215–282), the Yellow Emperor was born in Shou Qiu ("Longevity Hill"), which is today on the outskirts of the city of Qufu in Shandong. Early on, he lived with his tribe near the Ji River – Edwin Pulleyblank states that "there seems to be no record of a Ji River outside the myth" – and later migrated to Zhuolu in modern-day Hebei. He then became a farmer and tamed six different special beasts: the bear (), the brown bear (), the "pí" () and "xiū" () (which later combined to form the mythical Pixiu), the ferocious "chū" (), and the tiger ().


title: Yellow Emperor

text: Huangdi is sometimes said to have been the fruit of extraordinary birth, as his mother Fubao conceived him as she was aroused, while walking in the country, by a lightning bolt from the Big Dipper. She delivered her son on the mount of Shou (Longevity) or mount Xuanyuan, after which he was named.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: In traditional Chinese accounts, the Yellow Emperor is credited with improving the livelihood of the nomadic hunters of his tribe. He teaches them how to build shelters, tame wild animals, and grow the Five Grains, although other accounts credit Shennong with the last. He invents carts, boats, and clothing.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: Other inventions credited to the emperor include the Chinese diadem (), throne rooms (), the bow sling, early Chinese astronomy, the Chinese calendar, math calculations, code of sound laws (), and cuju, an early Chinese version of football. He is also sometimes said to have been partially responsible for the invention of the "guqin" zither, although others credit the Yan Emperor with inventing instruments for Ling Lun's compositions.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: In traditional accounts, he also goads the historian Cangjie into creating the first Chinese character writing system, the Oracle bone script, and his principal wife Leizu invents sericulture and teaches his people how to weave silk and dye clothes.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: At one point in his reign the Yellow Emperor allegedly visited the mythical East sea and met a talking beast called the Bai Ze who taught him the knowledge of all supernatural creatures. This beast explained to him there were 11,522 (or 1,522) kinds of supernatural creatures.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: The Yellow Emperor and the Yan Emperor were both leaders of a tribe or a combination of two tribes near the Yellow River. The Yan Emperor hailed from a different area around the Jiang River, which a geographical work called the "Shuijingzhu" identified as a stream near Qishan in what was the Zhou homeland before they defeated the Shang. Both emperors lived in a time of warfare. The Yan Emperor proving unable to control the disorder within his realm, the Yellow Emperor took up arms to establish his domination over various warring factions.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: According to traditional accounts, the Yan Emperor meets the force of the "Nine Li" () under their bronze-headed leader, Chi You, and his 81 horned and four-eyed brothers and suffers a decisive defeat. He flees to Zhuolu and begs the Yellow Emperor for help. During the ensuing Battle of Zhuolu the Yellow Emperor employs his tamed animals and Chi You darkens the sky by breathing out a thick fog. This leads the emperor to develop the south-pointing chariot, which he uses to lead his army out of the miasma. He next calls upon the drought demon Nüba to dispel Chi You's storm. He then destroys the Nine Li and defeats Chi You. Later he engages in battle with the Yan Emperor, defeating him at Banquan and replacing him as the primary ruler.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: The Yellow Emperor was said to have lived for over a hundred years before meeting a phoenix and a qilin and then dying. Two tombs were built in Shaanxi within the Mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor, in addition to others in Henan, Hebei and Gansu.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: Modern-day Chinese people sometimes refer to themselves as the "Descendants of Yan and Yellow Emperor", although non-Han minority groups in China may have their own myths or not count as descendants of the emperor.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: As the Yellow Deity with Four Faces ( Huángdì Sìmiàn) he represents the centre of the universe and vision of the unity which controls the four directions. It is explained in the "Huangdi Sijing" ("Four Scriptures of the Yellow Emperor") that regulating "heart within brings order outside". In order to reign one must "reduce himself" abandoning emotions, "drying up like a corpse", never allowing oneself to be carried away, as according to the myth the Yellow Emperor himself did during his three years of refuge on Mount Bowang in order to find himself. This practice creates an internal void where all the vital forces of creation gather, and the more indeterminate they remain and the more powerful they will be.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: It is from this centre that equilibrium and harmony emanate, equilibrium of the vital organs which becomes harmony between the person and the environment. As sovereign of the centre, the Yellow Emperor is the very image of the concentration or re-centering of the self. By self-control, taking charge of his own body one becomes powerful outside. The centre is also the vital point in the microcosm by means of which the internal universe viewed as an altar is created. The body is a universe, and by going into himself and by incorporating the fundamental structures of the universe, the sage will gain access to the gates of Heaven, the unique point where communication between Heaven, Earth and Man can occur. The centre is the convergence of within and outside, the contraction of chaos on the point which is equidistant from all directions. It is the place which is no place, where all creation is born and dies.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: The Great Deity of the Central Peak ( "Zhōngyuèdàdì") is another epithet representing Huangdi as the hub of creation, the "axis mundi" (which in Chinese mythology is Kunlun) that is the manifestation of the divine order in physical reality, that opens to immortality.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: Throughout history, several sovereigns and dynasties claimed (or were claimed) to descend from the Yellow Emperor. Sima Qian's "Shiji" presented Huangdi as ancestor of the two legendary rulers Yao and Shun, and traced various lines of descent from Huangdi to the founders of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties. He claimed that Liu Bang, the first emperor of the Han dynasty, was a descendant of Huangdi. He believed that the ruling house of the Qin dynasty was originated also from the Yellow Emperor, but by stating that Qin Shihuang was in fact the child of Qin chancellor Lü Buwei, he perhaps meant to leave the First Emperor out of Huangdi's descent.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: Claiming descent from illustrious ancestors remained a common tool of political legitimacy in the following ages. Wang Mang (c. 45 BC – 23 AD), of the short-lived Xin dynasty, claimed to descend from the Yellow Emperor in order to justify his overthrow of the Han. As he announced in January of 9 AD: "I possess no virtue, [but] I rely upon the fact that] I am a descendant of my august original ancestor, the Yellow Emperor..." About two hundred years later a ritual specialist named Dong Ba , who worked for at the court of the Cao Wei, which had recently succeeded the Han, promoted the idea that the Cao family was descended from Huangdi via Emperor Zhuanxu.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: During the Tang dynasty, non-Han rulers also claimed descent from the Yellow Emperor, for individual and national prestige, as well as to connect themselves to the Tang. Most Chinese noble families also claimed descent from Huangdi. This practice was well established in Tang and Song times, when hundreds of clans claimed such descent. The main support for this theory – as recorded in the "Tongdian" (801 AD) and the "Tongzhi" (mid 12th century) – was the "Shiji"s statement that Huangdi's 25 sons were given 12 different surnames, and that these surnames had diversified into all Chinese surnames. After Emperor Zhenzong (r. 997–1022) of the Song dynasty dreamed of a figure he was told was the Yellow Emperor, the Song imperial family started to claim Huangdi as its first ancestor.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: A number of overseas Chinese clans that keep a genealogy also trace their family ultimately to Huangdi, explaining their different surnames as name changes claimed to have derived from the fourteen surnames of Huangdi's descendants. Many Chinese clans, both overseas and in China, claim Huangdi as their ancestor to reinforce their sense of being Chinese.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: Gun, Yu, Zhuanxu, Zhong, Li, Shujun, and Yuqiang are various emperors, gods, and heroes whose ancestor was also supposed to be Huangdi. The Huantou, Miaomin, and Quanrong peoples were said to be descended from Huangdi.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: Although the traditional Chinese calendar did not mark years continuously, some Han-dynasty astronomers tried to determine the years of the life and reign of the Yellow Emperor. In 78 BC, under the reign of Emperor Zhao of Han, an official called Zhang Shouwang () calculated that 6,000 years had passed since the time of Huangdi; the court refused his proposal for reform, countering that only 3,629 years had elapsed. In the proleptic Julian calendar, the court's calculations would have placed the Yellow Emperor in the late 38th century BC rather than in the 27th century BC that is conventional nowadays.


title: Yellow Emperor

text: During their Jesuit missions in China in the seventeenth century, the Jesuits tried to determine what year should be considered the epoch of the Chinese calendar. In his "Sinicae historiae decas prima" (first published in Munich in 1658), Martino Martini (1614–1661) dated the royal ascension of Huangdi to 2697 BC, but started the Chinese calendar with the reign of Fuxi, which he claimed started in 2952 BCE. Philippe Couplet's (1623–1693) "Chronological table of Chinese monarchs" ("Tabula chronologica monarchiae sinicae"; 1686) also gave the same date for the Yellow Emperor. The Jesuits' dates provoked great interest in Europe, where they were used for comparisons with Biblical chronology. Modern Chinese chronology has generally accepted Martini's dates, except that it usually places the reign of Huangdi in 2698 BC (see next paragraph) and omits Huangdi's predecessors Fuxi and Shennong, who are considered "too legendary to include."


title: Yellow Emperor

text: Helmer Aslaksen, a mathematician who teaches at the National University of Singapore and specializes in the Chinese calendar, explains that those who use 2698 BC as a first year probably do so because they want to have "a year 0 as the starting point", or because "they assume that the Yellow Emperor started his year with the Winter solstice of 2698 BC", hence the difference with the year 2697 BC calculated by the Jesuits.