In Gallo-Roman religion, Epona was a protector of horses, ponies, donkeys, and mules. Both truly white horses and the more common grey horses, with completely white hair coats, were identified as "white" by various religious and cultural traditions. The second set of horses are referred to as "the four spirits of heaven, going out from standing in the presence of the Lord of the whole world." The White Horse of the White Horse Vale Later in the Book of Revelation, Christ rides a white horse out of heaven at the head of the armies of heaven to judge and make war upon the earth. [1] She and her horses might also have been leaders of the soul in the after-life ride, with parallels in Rhiannon of the Mabinogion. Njord Njord was the Norse god of the sea, and also of wind and fertility. Hildisvini: Battle Boar. "Epona" Dissertation, Bonn 1994 (Sonderdruck aus: Bericht der Römisch-Germanischen Kommission 74.1993.). Norse God Heimdall Guarding the Bifröst Bridge. Höðr, sometimes called Hod, is the twin brother of Baldr, or Baldur, and is a Norse god associated with darkness and winter. Had seen their sunrise pass, He was a major god among the Vanir deities. Aside from his infectious smile, boundless wisdom and kindness, he is most known for dying from a mischievous trick cooked up by Loki, the trickster god in Norse mythology. The basis for the superstition may have been that the horse was a form of Church Grim, buried alive at the original consecration of the church building (the doomed protagonist in the play was a pastor), or that it was a materialisation of the fylgje, an individual's or family's guardian spirit. Al-Burāq (Arabic: البُراق al-Burāq "lightning") isn't mentioned in the Quran but in some hadith ("tradition") literature. After the horse flew back to heaven, the egg opened and the boy Park Hyeokgeose emerged. Heidrun: Heidrun is a she-goat who eats the leaves of Laerad, Heidrun produces a never-ending supply of mead for the Gods and heroes at their nightly feats. In Book I, "The Vision of the King," he writes of earliest England, invoking the white horse hill figure and the gods: Before the gods that made the gods [22], Two Christian saints are associated with white steeds: Saint James, as patron saint of Spain, rides a white horse in his martial aspect. And so, when our leaders saw this army, they ... recognised the aid of Christ, whose leaders were St. George, Mercurius, and Demetrius. Somewhere in this process, the god Loki made love to a horse — but we’ll get to that later. In the Marvel … [14], Kanthaka was a white horse that was a royal servant and favourite horse of Prince Siddhartha, who later became Gautama Buddha. In Viking beliefs, Odin was the god of magic, wisdom, and war. They are described as patrolling the earth and keeping it peaceful. [22] In his Satires, the Roman poet Juvenal also links the worship and iconography of Epona to the area of a stable. [14] The cult of Epona was spread over much of the Roman Empire by the auxiliary cavalry, alae, especially the Imperial Horse Guard or equites singulares augustii recruited from Gaul, Lower Germany, and Pannonia. A "white palfrey" appears in the fairy tale "Virgilius the Sorcerer" by Andrew Lang. He is mentioned only twice in Old Norse literature. A series of their dedications to Epona and other Celtic, Roman and German deities was found in Rome, at the Lateran. In Norse mythology, Heimdall (also called Heimdallr) is a god who possesses the resounding horn Gjallarhorn, owns the golden-maned horse Gulltoppr, has gold teeth, and is the son of Nine Fiery Mothers. [citation needed], In Zoroastrianism, one of the three representations of Tishtrya, the hypostasis of the star Sirius, is that of a white stallion (the other two are as a young man, and as a bull). Sleipnir is also the ancestor of another grey horse, Grani, who is … She was particularly a goddess of fertility, as shown by her attributes of a patera, cornucopia, ears of grain and the presence of foals in some sculptures. We do know that Odin was the most complex figure of all the Norse Gods. Loki, the Norse god whose mischief and shenanigans knew no limits, was such an ambiguous character, with his role moving from darkly malicious and evil to helpful but cunning. The West Country traditional hobby-horse riders parading on May Day at Padstow, Cornwall and Minehead, Somerset, which survived to the mid-twentieth century, even though Morris dances had been forgotten, was thought by folklorists through the 20th Century to have deep roots in the veneration of Epona, as may the British aversion to eating horsemeat. The worship of Epona, "the sole Celtic divinity ultimately worshipped in Rome … These stories were passed down in the form of poetry until the 11th – 18th centuries when the Eddas and other texts were written. The supposed autonomy of Celtic civilization in Gaul[clarification needed] suffered a further setback with Fernand Benoît's study[13] of the funereal symbolism of the horseman with the serpent-tailed ("anguiforme") daemon, which he established as a theme of victory over death, and Epona; both he found to be late manifestations of Mediterranean-influenced symbolism, which had reached Gaul through contacts with Etruria and Magna Graecia. Though some mythologies are stories from earliest beliefs, other tales, though visionary or metaphorical, are found in liturgical sources as part of preserved, on-going traditions (see, for example, "Iranian tradition" below). Sculptures of Epona fall into five types, as distinguished by Benoît: riding, standing or seated before a horse, standing or seated between two horses, a tamer of horses in the manner of potnia theron and the symbolic mare and foal. In Irish Myth Donn "god of the dead" portrayed as a phantom horseman riding a white horse, is considered an aspect of The Dagda "the great God" also known as "the horseman" and is the origin of the Irish "Loch nEachach" for Loch Neagh. Heimdall's other names were Hallinskiði, Gullintanni, Vindhlér or Vindlér, and Rig. Odin. The Hungarian name for God was, and remains "Isten" and they followed Steppe Tengriism. In Scottish folklore, the kelpie or each uisge, a deadly supernatural water demon in the shape of a horse, is sometimes described as white, though other stories say it is black. However, unlike in the movies, Thor is usually depicted with red hair and a full beard. Loki’s name thus elicits both positive and negative connotations in Norse mythology. 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