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In a message dated 10/3/00 10:10:42 AM GMT Daylight Time, [log in to unmask] writes: > Ewald and Ewald, martyrs (695): They were brothers, they were priests, > they preached in Westphalia, they were killed by the locals, they are > buried in the church of St Cunibert in Cologne, they are named in the > Roman Martyrology, they are patrons of Westphalia. One could distinguish > them by the colour of their hair (there was 'Dark Ewald' and there was > 'Fair Ewald' - they had the same name. This looks as if it might be an echo of the Teutonic 'twin' archetype (Hengist and Horsa, et al.) Fascinating that the Ewald's even have the same name. The teutonic cults are equivalent to the Asvin and Dioscuri cults: Tacitus descibes the cult of the Alcis twins of the Germanic Nahanavali tribe which he equates with that of Castor and Pollux. Balder died at the hands of his blind brother Holdr (similarly, Cain and Abel, Romulus and Remus), and even Odin seems to have had a mysterious double called Mit-Odin (a sort of 'anti-Christ' figure?). The Mithras cult perhaps hints at a classical origin for 'light and dark' brothers, encorporating as it does the cult of twin youths called the 'dadophori', Cautes and Cautophates, represented as one holding a lit torch upwards, the other an unlit torch downwards (life and death?). Christ as the representative of the Johanine God who is 'all light' is well-known; less, perhaps, the association of his elder brother Satan with the planet Saturn, the 'sol niger' of astrology and alchemy. The 'Ewald' twins also have echoes in folklore. In 1868 a traveller in Mecklenburg saw the kindling of a 'need-fire' which, he was told, had to be lit by two brothers, or at least by two boys with the same name. (Frazer 'Golden Bough', x, 274; see also, ib., 279, 281 and 285). visit the Scottish Place-Name Society website at http://www.st-and.ac.uk/institutes/sassi/spns/index.htm %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%