Talk:Dusios

deities

Maybe I need to clarify this somehow, but dusios is a Gaulish word; that is, pre-Christian, used by the continental Celts. See references to Xavier Delmarre's dictionary. The Church Fathers routinely characterize pre-Christian gods as "demons"; however, as late as Thomas Cantiprensis, the dusii were supposedly worshipped as gods (the word diis is actually used) by the country people. Pan, Faunus, Silvanus, and Inuus are all deities (this should not have been changed); in antiquity, Incubus is also spoken of in the singular as a deity. It's the special nature of these deities that they manifest in multiples, and in late antiquity, with the rise of Christianity, they were "demoted"; but that doesn't make them elves or woodland sprites in antiquity, when they received cult in formal temples. The Dusios is consistently said to be of this type; the Church Fathers clearly and unambiguously equate Dusios with Faunus, in particular; but see Inuus for problems similar to that of Dusios, and for methodology. Cynwolfe (talk) 01:11, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

I had never heard of the incubus spoken of as a deity, but you're probably right. But on what grounds is Dusios considered a divine entity? It seems to me that most of the references treat it as a typical natural spirit, and most of the given references refer to it in the plural. At any rate it is not always considered a deity; most of the given references do not treat it as such. However, it is certainly always "supernatural", which is why I changed it.--Cúchullain ^t/c 01:39, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Because even in the rather late Thomas Cantiprensis quote, the dusii are specifically said to be sacrificed to (immolare) as gods (diis), and because the Dusios is, via interpretatio graeca/romana, said to be the Gallic counterpart of Pan, Faunus, et al. These are gods of pre-Christian religions. The paragraph was edited to remove a reference to the Greco-Roman deities as "deities"; this raised a flag. In order to say that Dusios was not considered a god of some sort among the continental Celts, you would have to think that Faunus and Pan aren't gods, which is simply an incorrect understanding of ancient religion. Augustine and Isidore specifically say the Gallic figure is their counterpart. I first came upon dusios in Delamarre's dictionary as a type of demon, but only recently started looking up the primary sources. "Supernatural" encompasses werewolves, ghosts, and all that stuff; we don't generally write articles calling beings who are objects of worship "supernatural": "Jehovah is a supernatural entity ..." Cynwolfe (talk) 11:52, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

There is nothing in the article indicating what the Gauls believed about them. The earliest references given are from Augustine and Isidore, who associate them with Silvani and the Pans but otherwise give no indication that the described beings are at all like deities, or that the Gauls themselves thought of them as such - there is no mention of worship, no implication that they are in some way sacred or holy, etc; in fact, they are specifically called "demons". The majority of the later references are similar; the dusii are threatening agriculture, having their way with women, and being a general nuisance, but there is nothing to indicate they were considered to be gods. The one exception is the very late reference by Thomas Cantipratensis, but categorically calling them "divine beings" based on this alone is too much interpretation of a primary source.

This can be solved by including information in the article on what the Gauls themselves thought of Dusios, if such material exists. Otherwise we need to rewrite the definition and intro a bit to better reflect what is actually discussed in the article. I would suggest something along the lines of "Dusios was a supernatural being of classical and early medieval Gaulish tradition, especially known as a seducer and ravager of women. The earliest written references refer to him as a malevolent figure and even a demon, but there is some evidence that he was originally a deity in Gallo-Roman tradition.[CITE] Late-antique sources regard him as a Gallic counterpart to the Greco-Roman..."--Cúchullain ^t/c 15:37, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I see you're doing some more work on the article; I'll wait until you're finished to comment further. However, would it be possible to provide the quote from Delamarre? From what I've been reading, the (singular) form dusios is not actually attested in any early sources.--Cúchullain ^t/c 15:09, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Delamarre is cited to support the claim that dusios is a word in the Gaulish language. He heads the entry dusios, singular. He says it's a "mot gaulois." Delamarre's is an etymological dictionary; it does not discuss dusios in the theological context of late antiquity. Other sources address the broader issues; these are cited, and I will be amplifying the context in which Augustine made his remarks. I hope you'll forgive me for not typing out Delamarre's half-page entry, which is packed with comparative material in other IE languages and diacritical marks I don't want to search through my keyboard to find, in addition to the quotes from Augustine, Isidore, and Papias which are already presented here in both the Latin original and English translation. If you doubt that dusios is a Gaulish word, please cite a source to the contrary. The word appears in the plural in most sources, but what's your point? The Greek and Roman deities for which the dusii are given as the Gallic counterpart appear far more extensively in literature, in both singular and plural. One assumes that Augustine knew better than we do when he chose to make this equation.

Your use of the word "ravagers" above shows that you're bringing preconceptions to the material: none of the quotes characterize the dusii as rapists. (The Greco-Roman deities are known to use force, but none of the passages in which the dusii appear choose to emphasize or assert this.) The sources are all male writers whose purpose is Christian polemic. The fear expressed is that the dusii and their ilk will seduce women, which is quite a different matter from rape. Augustine in particular is clearly not concerned with consent, and Hincmar is talking about the sexual lures that can distract married couples from their union. It is a commonplace of ancient religious studies that patristic writers regard everybody else's gods as demons, including the Olympians; that does not make them demons within their own religious system. In fact, Augustine and others sometimes seem to be using the word "demon" in a sense closer to the original daimon. And surely you're aware that Christian writers of this era find sex sinful; to generalize grossly, every sex act outside matrimony is a defilement.

For background on how religions interacted within the Roman Empire and late antiquity, read Unclean spirit and at least skim the monstrously long and still under construction Religion in ancient Rome. See also Mutunus Tutunus and Inuus for articles on similar deities who are known largely or in part from Christian sources. See Faunus, the god to whom the dusios is most often compared, on whether you might be misunderstanding the point of the comparative material as the Church Fathers saw it from the perspective of still-living rival religions; although that article could use some development, Faunus is a much more important god in archaic Roman religion than those cute little randy fauns in later art might suggest. He's an oracular god, and in this capacity associated with the title Incubus, because the visitation of a dream vision occurred to one sleeping (incubation). This is the incubus as understood also in one tradition of Merlin's conception.

My goal is to present the material neutrally. The most modern secondary sources balance the Christian POV within the context of other ancient religions, and take into consideration the particular biases of the primary sources. Cynwolfe (talk) 19:38, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

If my questions have irritated you, I do apologize. I assure you my only interest is in improving the article.

Notice the only issues I've brought up have been with the lead section, not with any other of the content. The purpose of the lead is to give a brief summary of what the article talks about; it shouldn’t include a lot of information that isn’t dealt with later. Currently, we get a lot of information – that Dusios was a god, that the word is Gaulish in origin, etc. – that is never addressed in the article. We jump right into Augustine, and there's nothing else on the origin of the word or what the Gauls themselves might have thought of him/them. We have to take it for granted that this is a deity later "demoted" by Augustine et al.

I asked about Delamarre because in linguistics, it is usual to point out that words aren't actually attested with an asterix (*dusios) or by noting it in some other way. This is important here because we’re now categorically stating that this is a word in the Gaulish language, so I wanted to hear what he says about it. This is something that probably ought to be specified in the article.

On "ravager", what I should have said was "ravisher", or perhaps "seducer" or something of the like. It was just a suggestion, implying nothing about any preconceptions I may have. Again, this was an attempt to capture what the article actually discusses - it's clear that the most notable characteristic of the being is its sexual appetite.

On the plural, I am wondering if it might not be better to discuss the being in the plural, as we do with faun, satyr, and incubus, since all the given references are in the plural ("A dusios was...")

On another note, I've found some books we can work into the article. This one by George Henderson mentions the Gaulish dusii as "impure demons believed to have commerce with mortals" (p. 46), and later as "the incubi who were thought of as consorting with mortals". This book by James Hastings says "The word dusios in Celtic probably meant an unclean demon or incubus, but the root of the word is not improbably cognate with that of the Greek [Theos]... and suggests that, at one time, the character of these beings was regarded as beneficent or neutral." No indication they ought to be interpreted as deities, but on the other hand, J. A. MacCulloch says in The Religion of the Ancient Celts "S. Augustine and others describe the shaggy demons called dusii by the Gauls, who sought the couches of women in order to gratify their desires. The dusii are akin to the incubi and fauni, and do not appear to represent the higher gods reduced to the form of demons by Christianity, but rather a species of lesser divinities, once the object of popular devotion." Ken Dowden's European Paganism briefly mentions the "Dusii or Dusiones" as a "third type of demon", in connection with Thomas of Cantimpre. However, he gives a different translation of Thomas; there is no implication that the Prussians are sacrificing to the Dusii, but rather to their own (Baltic) gods in groves associated with the dusii in ancient times. Food for thought anyway.--Cúchullain ^t/c 22:04, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Sorry if I seemed irritated. Genuinely. (Um, personal stuff intruding, I admit.) I agree that the quotation from Thomas could be construed as you note. Delamarre does not give an asterisk for the entry; it's my understanding that the asterisk indicates a reconstructed word that isn't actually attested. Dusios isn't unattested; a word isn't considered unattested if some of its inflected forms happen not to have been used in the surviving sources. Many Gaulish words are known only from a Latin text rather than a Gaulish inscription; Marcellus of Bordeaux offers several, mostly names of plants. The Latin author notes that "this is a Gaulish word" (or "the Gauls call this … "), though for some words this can be discounted for various linguistic reasons. Using plurals throughout would make for some awkward sentences; a given action in a given time and place is undertaken by an individual dusios, and it doesn't imply that only one exists. I think, though I'll check, that I say "the dusios", which to me implies "the particular one at hand." I don't think I use Dusios as simply a proper noun. I probably capitalize it irregularly because the sources veer back and forth forth from upper to lower case. I have a couple of good sources putting the Augustine quote into perspective that I still want to add. Cynwolfe (talk) 23:18, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I defer to you on the word Dusios, I was just curious what Delamarre said about it to see how we might present it. The different interpretations of the Thomas quote do have implications for the article, we should just mention both readings if that's how the secondary material are presenting it. I look forward to your Augustine sources; once you're done we'll see about adding some of the sources I found, if they end up providing anything not already covered. Cheers,--Cúchullain ^t/c 04:34, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

'deity' again

I reviewed the Thomas Cantipratensis quote. The phrase that causes problems is in eis. In classical Latin, you wouldn't find an eis next to suis diis in such an awkward fashion. If the phrase says "unless they wish to sacrifice in them (the forests) to their own gods," it actually doesn't change the overall import of the quotation as it bears on dusii. Thomas asserts that in his day, the Prussians still regard (adhuc … aestimant, present tense) the woods as consecrated to them (his, at the beginning of the sentence, with the dusii of the preceding sentence as the antecedent); that is, continuing belief in the dusii casts a sacral aura over the woods. When Thomas says they only enter the woods when they want to sacrifice to their own gods, the distinction implied by the pronoun suis is "not those other gods." If no other gods figured in the scenario, the suis wouldn't be needed.

At any rate, the question is what Augustine and Isidore meant, because they were presenting the belief of the Galli (the meaning of which in antiquity is explained in a note) — not, as later sources are, the form of belief pertaining to dusii that survived into the Christian era.

• Whatever a dusios is, this aggressively male being is consistently compared in the earliest sources to Pan, Faunus, Silvanus, Inuus, and the Incubus. (The article on the incubus doesn't deal with the epithet in antiquity, where it is connected to nightmare and dream vision in incubatio as well as sexual visitation.) These are deities; they also happen to be deities who regularly appear in multiples, just like dusii, which suggests in that aspect at least the interpretatio graeca/romana had some basis.
• I've tried to avoid 19th-century sources, but both Arbois de Jubainville and MacCullough thought the dusii were originally divinities ("lesser divinities"). These have now been cited.
• Augustine's characterization of dusii as demons is standard patristic rhetoric; Olympians are also called demons by Christian polemicists. Dis Pater, the chthonic Roman god of riches that Julius Caesar identified with the divine progenitor of the Gauls, was called a demon by the Church Fathers; it doesn't mean that the Gauls thought they were descended from a demon. It can also be hard in Augustinian usage to distinguish "demon" from daimon, particularly in this passage; Saunders notes that angels and demons here are treated as similar in form and essence.
• The claim of Thomas Cantipratensis is so late that I have trouble thinking that a belief in Gallic dusii survived in any form up to his time. But that's what he says. And you don't consecrate groves to demons; it was the practice of the ancient Gauls (aka continental Celts) to consecrate groves to deities. Thomas's distinction of 'cultivated' groves also strikes a note of authenticity, or seems at least informed, if perhaps anachronistic.

In Christian views of the Delphic oracle (see under Unclean spirit), a connection is made between the sexual receptivity of women and the desire for communion with a god of a mantic sort. These same fears manifest here. A sleeping woman is vulnerable to spiritual influences. The impurity is not just sexual. In the traditional religions of Greece, Rome, and the Near East, the dream vision could be desirable and illuminating (Apollonian) or it could be nightmarish and frightening and unsought, which tends to be represented by visitations of the Faunus type. But in the Roman tradition particularly, Faunus could also produce oracles that were useful.

I suspect that the dusios would make more sense if we knew more about the mysterious Dis Pater of the Gauls and the theological meaning of their claim to a divine genealogy as a people. According to Julius Caesar, the druids taught that all Gauls were of divine descent, not just heroes and certain aristocratic families, as was the case in Greece and Rome (with the Orphics an exception). I would speculate (though this would definitely be an original interpretation unjustified in the article) that Papias's identification of dusii and the swarming ubiquitous ficarii has to do with this belief, and a notion of "divine seed" in all human beings. The later association of dusii with manes is also highly suggestive, given that Dis Pater was chthonic.

The only thing (I think) we know about incubation among the ancient Celts is mentioned by Tertullian, citing Nicander as his source: he says that the Celts also (that is, he's making a comparison with what he's just talked about, the oracle of Amphiaraus) sleep at the tombs of their heroes to receive visions. If I'm not mistaken, the dream vision is not unknown in medieval Irish epic, though one must always be careful about calling such things traditional Celtic beliefs without accounting for the influence of Latin texts such as Vergil. There's also the tradition that Merlin was "begotten" by an incubus with a mortal woman, with an associated gift of prophecy.

Much of this would constitute original research if placed in the article; therefore, I have tried to stay as focused as possible on representing what the primary sources say, illuminating them (as in the case of ficarius) when the source assumes knowledge the modern reader can't be expected to have. I'm mainly trying to avoid two things: I'm trying not to treat the Christian sources as if they are transparent, but to recognize their value if their characteristic distortions of ancient religions are taken into account (these are predictable and accounted for by secondary sources); and I'm trying not to approach the material with preconceptions that linger from a 19th and early-20th century folklorist or wantonly comparativist approach in the J.G. Frazer mode.

What I haven't dealt with is the Breton evidence, because every source I find so far says something etymologically different, and I don't have anything sound and methodical from the last 30 years. I'm aware of the conjecture that dusios is related to theos, which would strengthen the case for calling the dusii "divinities," but I'm more of an amateur philologist than linguist, and I don't trust the linguistic methodology behind the assertion, which strikes me as not in keeping with a modern scientific approach.

At any rate, if there's one thing that emerges from the earliest primary sources, it's that dusios is the Gallic counterpart of faunus, and that therefore the nature of Faunus is the most relevant piece of comparative information (as Papias thought) in identifying what the Galli thought the dusii were. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:12, 14 March 2010 (UTC)