Novel Gnosis part 34: Tyr and Zisa (2024)

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Tyr is the original skyfather in heathen mythology. His major sphere of influence is justice. Zisa is his wife. Her symbol is the war boat, and she was identified by Tacitus as being the same goddess as Isis.

The Fireverse uses the names of gods as recorded in the Icelandic / Norse sources, unless the name is not recorded there. In the Icelandic, the name of Tyr's wife is not written down. However, Tyr is the same god as Ziu, and Ziu's wife's name is Zisa, so in both my novel Some Say Fire and in my personal practice I call them Tyr and Zisa.

Tyr and Zisa are Fenris’s foster parents. Tyr did what he had to do in the binding of Fenris, but it was a personal tragedy for him in a way far past losing his hand and his throne. When Fenris became “too big,” he was “too big” in the same way that Ymir was “too big” when Odin killed him. Both Ymir and Fenris would have continued to eat the universe until nothing was left if they had not been stopped. It was for this reason that Tyr participated in the binding of his beloved foster son, like any father who might send his dangerous adult child to an institution as a third option between killing him and letting him kill others. They were not enemies, and for his part, Tyr is still not his enemy, though of course Fenris feels betrayed and dreams of revenge.

In the Fireverse, Zisa is a mother goddess with no known children (except wolves / dogs, which is not quite the same.) She is ancient, the old queen, who has given way to the new queen (Frigga) with whom she is friends. Sigyn is a mystery child, a child of no known parents, who simply appears in Asgard in a magical house with magical bird and animal servants, acknowledged as Asynja by Odin which implies he might actually know who her parents are, but it is never revealed in the story. There is somewhat of an implication that Sigyn might be Berkana’s daughter, but it’s not confirmed and Berkana isn’t in the story very much. Berkana might be a name for a goddess we know by another name.

Tyr is not the only god in any mythology who has one hand. In Celtic mythology, Nuada lost his hand and therefore his kingship. He got a replacement silver hand and then eventually a functional human hand.

One thing I have learned, in writing the Fireverse and in comparing with other mythologies after that experience: the collection of symbols and images in these stories are often more important than the plot, even when the plot is transparently allegorical. Sometimes the plot is there to try to loosely connect disparate visions. Imagine if you took 10 single frames from a superhero movie, with no context or dialogue, and assigned each film frame to one side of a 10 sided die, and selected 8 different but related cultures, and 3 different visionaries in each culture, and took that 10 sided die and rolled it 7 times for each visionary and showed them those slides. Then each visionary told a story about the pictures.

The Norse and Celtic cultures both got a one handed god. In both those cultures this god was a king who lost his throne when he lost his hand. The rest of the stories of these two gods are quite different from each other, but perhaps that isn't as important as we may think.

Image: Tyr from an 18th century Icelandic manuscript, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

P.S.

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asatru

Heathen

novel gnosis

Tyr

Zisa