MYTHIC ANCESTORS
by Iona Miller, 2017
by Iona Miller, 2017
"I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family which is passed on from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished." --Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
"Genealogy reveals the importance of ancestry to soul. The weight of human history is in the voices of the dead, in opening the mouth of the dead and hearing what they have to say. It's the actual living presence of history in the soul, the past in the soul, not just the deeply repressed or forgotten." ~James Hillman
"To be an ancestor you do not need to be dead, but you do need to know the dead – that is, the invisible world and how and where it touches the living.”
--James Hillman
"Myths, after all, contain the greater story that never was but is always happening. Their waters run far deeper than the compelling tales told around ancient campfires to explain the seasons, the weather, and the formidable conflicts found within human societies and the human soul. Myth does server as a manner of explanation, but is also a mode of discovery, for myth is the coded DNA of the human psyche. It is the stuff of the evolving self that awakens consciousness and culture according to the needs of time and place. It is the promise of our becoming.
When we undertake to work consciously with the great old myths, a rich and varied world of experience opens up to us. We can travel with Odysseus, experience the passion play of Isis and Osiris, wander with Percival in search of the Grail, and die and be reborn with Jesus. Within the spoken or ritually enacted myth we can allow out lives to be writ larger, the personal particulars of our local existence finding their amplification and elucidation in the universals of the greater story and the larger characters that myth contains."
--Jean Houston, Personal Mythology
"Genealogy reveals the importance of ancestry to soul. The weight of human history is in the voices of the dead, in opening the mouth of the dead and hearing what they have to say. It's the actual living presence of history in the soul, the past in the soul, not just the deeply repressed or forgotten." ~James Hillman
"To be an ancestor you do not need to be dead, but you do need to know the dead – that is, the invisible world and how and where it touches the living.”
--James Hillman
"Myths, after all, contain the greater story that never was but is always happening. Their waters run far deeper than the compelling tales told around ancient campfires to explain the seasons, the weather, and the formidable conflicts found within human societies and the human soul. Myth does server as a manner of explanation, but is also a mode of discovery, for myth is the coded DNA of the human psyche. It is the stuff of the evolving self that awakens consciousness and culture according to the needs of time and place. It is the promise of our becoming.
When we undertake to work consciously with the great old myths, a rich and varied world of experience opens up to us. We can travel with Odysseus, experience the passion play of Isis and Osiris, wander with Percival in search of the Grail, and die and be reborn with Jesus. Within the spoken or ritually enacted myth we can allow out lives to be writ larger, the personal particulars of our local existence finding their amplification and elucidation in the universals of the greater story and the larger characters that myth contains."
--Jean Houston, Personal Mythology
Obsidian: Tool & Mirror
In the 60s, Colin Renfrew recognized that the black volcanic glass, obsidian was an indicator of prehistoric trade, and highly desirable before the use of metals. It could be fractured to produce sharp prismatic blades, cutting tools, or arrowheads. Long and regular blades made by pressure with a lever were used in neolithic agricultural activities. It was also polished to create early mirrors. Near Eastern obsidian in the Neolithic period was highly valued by late-Pleistocene hunter-gatherers used it before the first farming communities. It circulated around the Fertile Crescent from the late-glacial period.
In the 60s, Colin Renfrew recognized that the black volcanic glass, obsidian was an indicator of prehistoric trade, and highly desirable before the use of metals. It could be fractured to produce sharp prismatic blades, cutting tools, or arrowheads. Long and regular blades made by pressure with a lever were used in neolithic agricultural activities. It was also polished to create early mirrors. Near Eastern obsidian in the Neolithic period was highly valued by late-Pleistocene hunter-gatherers used it before the first farming communities. It circulated around the Fertile Crescent from the late-glacial period.
PRIMORDIAL ANCESTORS
Mythic Ancestors; Unburied Memories
“Not only the child’s body, but his soul, too, proceeds from his ancestry.”
--Jung, CW17, pg. 44, para. 93
These statues represent the mythic ancestors of the Natufian culture, the first pre-historical farmers (pre-Gobekli Tepe). These are the first artifacts of ancestry worship, from Ain Ghazal, Jordan. As such, they are mythic ancestors to us all, expressing the power of myth as a way of recognizing, knowing, and experiencing. Family narratives are woven through time. Manetho reports that the gods, demi-gods, and Spirits of the Dead ruled 25,000 years in Egypt before the mortal kings.
Most of the figures are full statues or have two heads on one torso, perhaps of spouses, or mother-daughter, hermaphrodites, or unknown combinations for ritual reasons. Purportedly, these are not the remains of their biological families, but mythical ancestors of the early farmers, made of reed armatures and plaster.
The icons were buried beneath the household floor and undergird domestic life. But before burial, perhaps they grabbed and talked with them, experiencing the 'other' beyond what we can rationally grasp.
Dating between the mid-7th millennium BC and the mid-8th millennium BC, the statues are among the earliest large-scale representations of the human form, and are regarded as one of the most remarkable specimens of prehistoric art from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period. They are in the Jordan Museum in Amman.
The same agrarian culture had a practice of restoring plaster faces to the skulls of their loved ones. They were found in Jericho from nearly 10,000 years ago. Some were painted and had shells for eyes. They were displayed in groups.
More than sixty plaster skulls have been found at six sites around the area of the Levant, usually dated to 7,000 – 6,000 BC, but some go back as far as 8,000 BC. One such skull was excavated in the 1930s by John Garstang at Jericho, along with five other plastered skulls, and is currently in the Royal Ontario Museum. Other sites ... include Ain Ghazal and Amman, Jordan, and Tell Ramad, Syria. Most of the plastered skulls were from adult males, with some women and children.
Genealogy is a way of honoring the ancestors with a ritual from ancient times when lists of god-kings described the natural order of things rooted in mythic and 'divine' ancestors. The only way to revision and interact with it as a gestalt matrix includes the fictional, legendary, and mythological lines of this traditional World Tree.
It is but one way to acknowledge our divinity, nobility, and humanity. Genealogy is a sure path to the heart. We can "gather our ancestors" before we are gathered unto them. We were part of their dreams before we were born. Engaging in a larger conversation with the past brings a deepened self-understanding.
The mythology of our ancestors is as important as their cosmology. In paganism, the gods were near. We can explore the mystic in ourselves and in our ancestors. Our worldview is the root of our identity and relationship to Nature and our own deep nature. Researching the cosmologies of our direct ancestors in the historical era provides a quick path into dream shamanism, as these ways are still half-remembered. Our common destiny lies beyond any worldview.
This is also a relationship to the collectivity of the dead; for the unconscious corresponds to the mythic land of the dead, the land of the ancestors. Jung was the first to link the concept of ancestors to unconscious thinking. We learn to remember what our soul already knows. Our personality is literally expressed through our ancestors.
The gods and goddesses have 'gone to seed', and we are that -- their seed, their progeny. As James Hillman says, their minds and powers are living us in poetic moments of fantasy, insight and intuition. Nature, psyche and life are unfolding divinity. We are only cut off from the dead by what we have buried and forgotten. Working with our ancestral connection means connecting to everything around us and how we are placed in the world.
Jung said transpersonal psychic life "is the mind of our ancient ancestors, the way in which they thought and felt, the way in which they conceived of life and the world, of gods and humans beings. The existence of these historical layers is presumably the source of belief in reincarnation and in memories of past lives” (Jung, 1939, p.24).
Gods are difficult to destroy or conceal. Fictitious lines of descent blend indistinguishably with medieval forgeries. Some divinities may originally have been historical persons or war-chiefs, now lost to the mists of pre-history. Seedlines codify ancient ethnic identity and empires. Later, royals added them to their lines to bolster their claims to divine rule and the founding of thrones. Though not factual, traditional genealogy was a geographical and spiritual compass.
At root, traditional genealogy is an archetypal activity, recapitulating and extending humanity's oldest activities, including the imaginal root. The aesthetic response is an ethical response -- a response of the heart an non-rational wisdom -- that values the ancestors and the genealogical history.
Genealogy is an archetypal order, an aesthetic construction, and a virtual map of the personal and collective unconscious, reflecting a principle of totality and primordial origins. We can engage the ancestors as living presences shaping our lives and identity, in nature, dreams, visions, and symptoms. We can establish dialogues with the ancestors working through personal wounds and generational trauma to heal ourselves and our ancestral lines.
Myth and symbolism are the imaginal language, a means of self-discovery, and a way of gaining access to the secrets of the psyche. Genealogy and dreams are ways of reconnecting with our whole being from its ancestral inception. Both are parts of our personal mythology, providing deeper understanding of our masculine and feminine dynamics.
The unconscious psyche is the ancestral "land of the dead," where we find meaning for our lives and understanding of our own personal myth. All our ancestors had mothers. We can acknowledge the changing of the seasons and life passages in the manner that our ancestors acknowledged it. Myth and symbolism are the imaginal language, a means of self-discovery, and a way of gaining access to the secrets of the psyche.
"Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors -- the dreams of our old men, given them in the solemn hours of the night by the Great Spirit; and the visions of our sacred medicine men, and is written in the hearts of our people." --Chief Seattle
REFERENCES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27Ain_Ghazal_Statues
http://www.iianthropology.org/archaeologybestartprehistoryainghazal.html natufians
Mythic Ancestors; Unburied Memories
“Not only the child’s body, but his soul, too, proceeds from his ancestry.”
--Jung, CW17, pg. 44, para. 93
These statues represent the mythic ancestors of the Natufian culture, the first pre-historical farmers (pre-Gobekli Tepe). These are the first artifacts of ancestry worship, from Ain Ghazal, Jordan. As such, they are mythic ancestors to us all, expressing the power of myth as a way of recognizing, knowing, and experiencing. Family narratives are woven through time. Manetho reports that the gods, demi-gods, and Spirits of the Dead ruled 25,000 years in Egypt before the mortal kings.
Most of the figures are full statues or have two heads on one torso, perhaps of spouses, or mother-daughter, hermaphrodites, or unknown combinations for ritual reasons. Purportedly, these are not the remains of their biological families, but mythical ancestors of the early farmers, made of reed armatures and plaster.
The icons were buried beneath the household floor and undergird domestic life. But before burial, perhaps they grabbed and talked with them, experiencing the 'other' beyond what we can rationally grasp.
Dating between the mid-7th millennium BC and the mid-8th millennium BC, the statues are among the earliest large-scale representations of the human form, and are regarded as one of the most remarkable specimens of prehistoric art from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period. They are in the Jordan Museum in Amman.
The same agrarian culture had a practice of restoring plaster faces to the skulls of their loved ones. They were found in Jericho from nearly 10,000 years ago. Some were painted and had shells for eyes. They were displayed in groups.
More than sixty plaster skulls have been found at six sites around the area of the Levant, usually dated to 7,000 – 6,000 BC, but some go back as far as 8,000 BC. One such skull was excavated in the 1930s by John Garstang at Jericho, along with five other plastered skulls, and is currently in the Royal Ontario Museum. Other sites ... include Ain Ghazal and Amman, Jordan, and Tell Ramad, Syria. Most of the plastered skulls were from adult males, with some women and children.
Genealogy is a way of honoring the ancestors with a ritual from ancient times when lists of god-kings described the natural order of things rooted in mythic and 'divine' ancestors. The only way to revision and interact with it as a gestalt matrix includes the fictional, legendary, and mythological lines of this traditional World Tree.
It is but one way to acknowledge our divinity, nobility, and humanity. Genealogy is a sure path to the heart. We can "gather our ancestors" before we are gathered unto them. We were part of their dreams before we were born. Engaging in a larger conversation with the past brings a deepened self-understanding.
The mythology of our ancestors is as important as their cosmology. In paganism, the gods were near. We can explore the mystic in ourselves and in our ancestors. Our worldview is the root of our identity and relationship to Nature and our own deep nature. Researching the cosmologies of our direct ancestors in the historical era provides a quick path into dream shamanism, as these ways are still half-remembered. Our common destiny lies beyond any worldview.
This is also a relationship to the collectivity of the dead; for the unconscious corresponds to the mythic land of the dead, the land of the ancestors. Jung was the first to link the concept of ancestors to unconscious thinking. We learn to remember what our soul already knows. Our personality is literally expressed through our ancestors.
The gods and goddesses have 'gone to seed', and we are that -- their seed, their progeny. As James Hillman says, their minds and powers are living us in poetic moments of fantasy, insight and intuition. Nature, psyche and life are unfolding divinity. We are only cut off from the dead by what we have buried and forgotten. Working with our ancestral connection means connecting to everything around us and how we are placed in the world.
Jung said transpersonal psychic life "is the mind of our ancient ancestors, the way in which they thought and felt, the way in which they conceived of life and the world, of gods and humans beings. The existence of these historical layers is presumably the source of belief in reincarnation and in memories of past lives” (Jung, 1939, p.24).
Gods are difficult to destroy or conceal. Fictitious lines of descent blend indistinguishably with medieval forgeries. Some divinities may originally have been historical persons or war-chiefs, now lost to the mists of pre-history. Seedlines codify ancient ethnic identity and empires. Later, royals added them to their lines to bolster their claims to divine rule and the founding of thrones. Though not factual, traditional genealogy was a geographical and spiritual compass.
At root, traditional genealogy is an archetypal activity, recapitulating and extending humanity's oldest activities, including the imaginal root. The aesthetic response is an ethical response -- a response of the heart an non-rational wisdom -- that values the ancestors and the genealogical history.
Genealogy is an archetypal order, an aesthetic construction, and a virtual map of the personal and collective unconscious, reflecting a principle of totality and primordial origins. We can engage the ancestors as living presences shaping our lives and identity, in nature, dreams, visions, and symptoms. We can establish dialogues with the ancestors working through personal wounds and generational trauma to heal ourselves and our ancestral lines.
Myth and symbolism are the imaginal language, a means of self-discovery, and a way of gaining access to the secrets of the psyche. Genealogy and dreams are ways of reconnecting with our whole being from its ancestral inception. Both are parts of our personal mythology, providing deeper understanding of our masculine and feminine dynamics.
The unconscious psyche is the ancestral "land of the dead," where we find meaning for our lives and understanding of our own personal myth. All our ancestors had mothers. We can acknowledge the changing of the seasons and life passages in the manner that our ancestors acknowledged it. Myth and symbolism are the imaginal language, a means of self-discovery, and a way of gaining access to the secrets of the psyche.
"Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors -- the dreams of our old men, given them in the solemn hours of the night by the Great Spirit; and the visions of our sacred medicine men, and is written in the hearts of our people." --Chief Seattle
REFERENCES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27Ain_Ghazal_Statues
http://www.iianthropology.org/archaeologybestartprehistoryainghazal.html natufians
THE MYTHIC ROOT
CHAIN OF GENERATIONS;
Descent from Antiquity
Iona Miller
Infinite Regress
Only a Jungian approach to traditional genealogy keeps the historic/mythic gestalt of The World Tree alive as a symbol of wholeness -- a holistic resonant field pattern. According to Jung, trees are a symbolic reference to the self, so family tree is self-defining. As well as our lineage, our ancestors also form a vast symbol chain, rooted in the mythic unconscious and pre-history.
The symbolic function is beyond innate impulse and ideological bias. Through introversion, we are fertilized, inspired, regenerated, and reborn. Self-incubation, self-castigation, and introversion are closely related ideas. Immersion in oneself (introversion) is a penetration into the unconscious, the imaginal world of psyche.
The World Tree is the Axis Mundi of genealogy, a worldwide database of genealogical connectivity. At this point travel and correspondence is made between higher and lower realms. Communication from lower realms may ascend to higher ones and blessings from higher realms may descend to lower ones and be disseminated to all. The spot functions as the omphalos (navel), the world's point of beginning.
The earliest mythologies are of the World-Tree, or Tree of Life. Aspects of the same image, sacred trees are the most common motif from the ancient world. The Tree connects our psychophysical aspects from sub-nuclear to macrocosmic scales. The trunk is the axis of psychic growth that unites Heaven and Earth, spirit and matter.
The major branch points on our shared paternal lineage trace back through genealogy, history, antiquity, and ancient anthropology through myth to reach our early hominid ancestors. The branches on the paternal tree are haplogroups. SNP markers on the Y-Chromosome define them. Deep ancestry research depends on recognizing and analyzing patterns in Y-STR marker values for discovering Y-SNPs.
The serpents of our family lines are entwined like Celtic knots in and around the World Tree. Celtic snakes symbolize the notion of rebirth. They still promise us primordial Knowledge -- unverified personal gnosis. Jung said, "the serpent is the earthly essence of man of which he is not conscious. Its character changes according to peoples and lands, since it is the mystery that flows to him from the nourishing earth-mother."
The healer traversing the axis mundi to bring back knowledge from the other world is a common shamanic concept. Anyone or anything suspended on the axis between heaven and earth becomes a repository of potential knowledge. The Tree is the means of communication with spiritual realms. It is our Tree of Voices -- Tree of Souls. Remembering is a noble and necessary act. The call of memory, the call to memory, reaches us from the very dawn of history.
On the global-level, spiritual experiences have been shown to buffer against the negative effects of stress on well-being for older adults. Spiritual experience potentially moderates the deleterious impact of a given day’s perceived stress on that day’s positive and negative affect. Thus, it relates to self-care, well being, and healing. Sometimes physical pain is a substitute for psychic pain. Healing is not always physical: it can occur in the emotional, mental and spiritual life, moderating immunity and neurochemistry.
Genealogy contains a spiritual healing potential, the living sap of the Tree, a manifestation of the sacred. It is a Grail banquet of cultures, customs and symbolism. We see in many manuscripts that wings are used to mark progress or advancement of an alchemical solution toward perfection. Crowns mark the final stage of a spirit or solution: perfection, completion, ascension. The spirit, by death or enlightenment, will produce the pure, perfected, incorruptible spirit. In alchemical terms, the incorruptible body is the potential of the philosopher's stone
Some branches of the World Tree are pruned (extinct). Others still thrive. Data entry is not fun, but it makes information analysis and pattern recognition much easier. By engaging in genealogy we create a sacred space, a sacred center. There is a deep ecology to the flow of relationships. Our return to the womb of the Mothers is a creative regression. Experientially it manifests within us as a spiritualizing instinct, a recursive "bending back" toward the primordial and divine.
We link backward to the bond that transcends the limitations of the physical form. Consciousness turns back on itself, reiterating each level of organization, de-structuring each strata as it dives deeper toward the unconditioned, formless beginning, or "unborn" state -- the Void of the Cosmic Womb. In essence, we re-enter the womb as we are initiated in the mysteries of the psyche. We re-conceive our primal self image, healed by communion with the creative Source - - our own Royal Wedding.
Religious myths give us the security and inner strength not to be crushed by the monstrousness of the universe. "Belief is no adequate substitute for inner experience, and where this is absent even a strong faith which came miraculously as a gift of grace may depart equally miraculously. People call faith the true religious experience, but they do not stop to consider that actually it is a secondary phenomenon arising form the fact that something happened to us in the first place which instilled pistis into us — that is, trust and loyalty." --Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self," CW vol. 10, par. 521
In the Red Book, Jung said this is the way:
“An opus is needed, that one can squander decades on, and do it out of necessity. I must catch up with a piece of the Middle Ages-within myself. We have only finished the Middle Ages of-others. I must begin early, in that period when the hermits died out. Asceticism, inquisition, torture are close at hand and impose themselves. The barbarian requires barbaric means of education. My I, you are a barbarian. I want to live with you, therefore I will carry you through an utterly medieval Hell, until you are capable of making living with you bearable. You should be the vessel and womb of life, therefore I shall purify you.
The touchstone is being alone with oneself."
Genealogy can be seen as a way of honoring the ancestors with a ritual from ancient times when lists of god-kings described the natural order of things rooted in mythic and 'divine' ancestors. The only way to revision and interact with it as a gestalt matrix includes the fictional, legendary, and mythological lines of this traditional World Tree. It is but one way to acknowledge our divinity, nobility, and humanity. Genealogy is a sure path to the heart. We can "gather our ancestors" before we are gathered unto them.
Mythology lost its role of explaining the forces of nature. But its role of delivering insights into the hidden, deep endeavors and fears of any human seems more alive than ever. It is a Mystery how our ancestors pass memories to us across the generations. They relate us to our ontological questions about space, time, and eternity, the deep structure of the human mind and perception, life and death -- what exists and what doesn't. Time concerns the existential nature of things -- temporal relationships.
The mythology of our ancestors is as important as their cosmology. We can explore the mystic in ourselves and in our ancestors. Our worldview is the root of our identity and relationship to Nature and our own deep nature. Researching the cosmologies of our direct ancestors in the historical era provides a quick path into dream shamanism, as these ways are still half-remembered. Our common destiny lies beyond any worldview.
"You could study the ancestors, but without a deep feeling of communication with them it would be surface learning and surface talking. Once you have gone into yourself and have learned very deeply, appreciate it, and relate to it very well, everything will come very easily." (Ellen White, Nanaimo)
Psyche creates reality every day. We have a mystical connection with our primitive ancestors. The primordial ancestors are still alive within the depths of our psyches and reach out to us with their ancient wisdom. We instinctively behave and feel the same ways as generations of our ancestors have in their lives.
This is also a relationship to the collectivity of the dead; for the unconscious corresponds to the mythic land of the dead, the land of the ancestors. Jung was the first to link the concept of ancestors to unconscious thinking. We learn to remember what our soul already knows. Our personality is literally expressed through our ancestors.
The gods and goddesses have 'gone to seed', and we are that -- their seed, their progeny. As James Hillman says, their minds and powers are living us in poetic moments of fantasy, insight and intuition. Nature, psyche and life are unfolding divinity. We are only cut off from the dead by what we have buried and forgotten. Working with our ancestral connection means connecting to everything around us and how we are placed in the world.
Jung said transpersonal psychic life "is the mind of our ancient ancestors, the way in which they thought and felt, the way in which they conceived of life and the world, of gods and humans beings. The existence of these historical layers is presumably the source of belief in reincarnation and in memories of past lives” (Jung, 1939, p.24).
In 'Extending the Family' (1985), Hillman says, "With the passing of time a sense of its power grows within one's psyche, like the movements of its skeleton inside one's flesh, which keeps one in servitude to patterns entombed in our closest attitudes and habits. From this interior family we are never free. This service keeps us bonded to the ancestors." Some report a sort of
"calling illness" until they respond to the ancestors calling them to do the work.
Genealogy is the science and art of what is emerging into the collective consciousness in one of the biggest hobbies of our era. It is a vast reclamation and reconstruction of our holographic connections, and certain emotionally toned experiences and images inherited from our ancestors, our spiritual guides. We translate meaning into life.
The entire gestalt of the World Tree is an iconic image -- a multidimensional symbol requiring hermeneutics as much as history for best practice. Genealogy has the problem of only focusing on the ancestors with surviving records, not all your ancestors. Of course, all the expansive aspects of the ancestors leave their shadow traces. With the light comes darkness. Ancestral blessings are not unaccompanied by ancestral curses.
The shadow is transmitted in a million subtle gestures and intonations. As you become aware of them in yourself, you can look back over your shoulder at your ancestors and see where these patterns came from. The family shadow is not the sole answer, but it's a place to do some work. It's a realm that is within our means to influence. When we stop passing the shadow on to the next generation, we spare them and break the chain. They don't pass it on either.
We can cut through the Fog of Lore to the mythic core. Clan ancestors are more than euphemisms. They may well be more than legends, being actual progenitors or composites of the ancient lineage. Some myths may have developed after the destruction of powerful lineages, displays of majesty, culture heroes, and ancestral temples. Royal family ancestor cults probably drew on a number of ancestral lineages.
Genealogy is the narrative of a pre-modern world. It has traditional roots in the ancient theogeny of gods and goddesses, divine-king lists and The Bible. Ancestral gods and ancestral religions developed over eons and are as old as particular branches of mankind -- gods of the blood. Astrologically determined gods and goddesses can often be found at the roots of dynastic houses. Royal houses claimed power through descent from ancestral gods.
Gods are difficult to destroy or conceal. Fictitious lines of descent blend indistinguishably with medieval forgeries. Some divinities may originally have been historical persons or war-chiefs, now lost to the mists of pre-history. Seedlines codify ancient ethnic identity and empires. Later, royals added them to their lines to bolster their claims to divine rule and the founding of thrones. Though not factual, traditional genealogy was a geographical and spiritual compass.
When Rome Christianized in the fourth century, it cut off the mythic corpus, and demoted gods to human status and allegories. The medieval period filled the gap with tales of the Holy Grail. The pagan content of mythology was codified in the mid-fourteenth century in Boccassio's Genealogy. Later, the Carolingians used such works to justify their right to rule, also citing the spurious Donation of Constantine, which the Church used to justify the appointment of rulers.
At root, traditional genealogy is an archetypal activity, recapitulating and extending humanity's oldest activities, including the imaginal root. The aesthetic response is an ethical response -- a response of the heart -- that values the ancestors and the genealogical history. Genealogy is thus an archetypal order, an aesthetic construction, and a virtual map of the personal and collective unconscious, reflecting a principle of totality and primordial origins.
Traditional genealogy considered these mythological inclusions best-practice, yet it may be more of a psychic than historical "fact" -- the product of a collision between pagan and Christian societies and their reconciliation. Historical time required a linear descent, even if it masked pagan roots at the theological fringe. Even if medieval genealogies connecting ancient kings to Adam are pure invention, they retain certain psychic values that are part of the archaeology of the collective unconscious.
Subjective mental life is a primary metaphor of
subjective Experience;
Primary Metaphor Becomes Embodied
and maps across generations.
The Grounding of the Whole is the grounding of its parts.
We reason with such metaphors.
(Lakoff & Johnson)
This argument against expunging legend and myth
from traditional genealogy practice is simple:
What happens outside us in these days is the image that the peoples live in events, to bequeath this image immemorially to far-off times so that they might learn from it for their own way; just as we learned from the images that the ancients had lived before us in events. ~Carl Jung, The Red book, Page 239.
"But if the believer without religion now thinks that he has got rid of mythology he is deceiving himself: he cannot get by without "myth."
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488
Genealogy was used to support the claims to nobility of individual families, both to differentiate them from commoners and in rivalry with other families either within the same national group or outside it.
Always when such genealogies are recorded by Christian writers (e.g. Bede, Historia EcclesiasticaI 15), the gods that appear in them will have been interpreted euhemeristically, i.e. as great kings or heroes who came to be worshipped as gods after their deaths. Descent from such great and successful men would have been regarded as a claim to nobility, while heathen gods themselves could hardly have been regarded with anything but abhorrence. Since the gods in genealogies were considered to have been really mortals, there was moreover felt to be no inappropriateness in continuing the genealogical lists back beyond them, sometimes even as far as Noah and Adam.
Biblical genealogy encouraged medieval scholars to compile genealogies stretching back to the remote past.
If genealogies were taken back to the gods in heathen times, they were presumably closely associated with the kind of legend that survives in the Eddic poems quoted above, and may have implied that those who could claim such descent were different from ordinary mortals. But if the gods were only introduced into genealogies after the coming of Christianity, then the euhemeristic interpretation of the gods must have preceded the construction of the genealogies. This latter view makes it easier to explain certain aspects of the extant genealogies, for instance the fact that many of them conflict with each other, so that there appears to have been no fixed tradition about the relationships of the gods and their human sons, and the even more striking fact that the family relationships of the gods in genealogies are very different from those they have in mythology.
It must be regarded as uncertain how common it was for genealogies in heathen times to go back to the gods, in Christian times it became almost universal. Some juxtapositions make for uncomfortable conflict both with the mythological tradition and historical plausibility.
http://www.vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/Descent-from-the-gods.pdf
THE PRIMORDIALS
These Gods are the Original race of Gods Before the Olympians, Titans, Monsters, Demigods, Mythical Creatures, and Mortals.
Hesiod's Theogony (c. 700 BC) tells the story of the genesis of the gods. After invoking the Muses (II.1-116), he tells of the generation of the first four primordial deities:
"First Chaos came to be, but next... Earth... and dim Tartarus in the depth of the... Earth, and Eros.
The Iliad, an epic poem attributed to Homer about the Trojan War (an oral tradition of 700 or 600 BC), states that Oceanus (and possibly Tethys, too) is the parent of all the deities.[4]
TITANS
Before the time of the mighty Olympian gods and goddesses, before the time of the creation of humans, the earth was ruled by a race of giants called Titans. As the stories go, the Titans first appeared when Light emerged from out of the darkness of Chaos and the heavens, the earth and the sea were formed. These ruthless giants were so jealous of their power that when the great Titan Cronos realized he was to father a new race of gods that could threaten his unilateral rule, he swallowed his yet unborn offspring. But, despite this determined effort on the part of Cronos to eliminate all potential challengers, one son, Zeus, survives and forces his father to restore his siblings. Soon after, a great war began that pit the young gods and goddesses led by Zeus against the older Titan race. Eventually, the Titans were defeated, banished to a distant and isolated other-world and the new rulers of the universe took their place upon Mount Olympus. The rich and complex fabric of our Western mythological heritage has grown out of this myth of a pre-human world ruled by the Titans. What is of interest to us is a particular myth found in the writings of Orpheus, the myth of Dionysus-Zagreus--a story of an encounter between the subdued Titans and the favored son of Zeus, Dionysus. According to this myth, Dionysus was the child of Zeus and Persephone. One day, shortly following their defeat, the angry and vengeful Titans lured the very young yet curious Dionysus to a remote cave where he was beyond the vigilant and watchful eye of his protective father, Zeus. There, the Titans visciously attacked the youth, tearing him limb from limb and then devouring his every piece. Zeus, learning of the assault, immediately struck at the Titans who, with their bellies still full with the freshly consumed young god, were reduced to smoldering ashes. And, as the story goes, it was from these ashes that Zeus then created humankind. Thus, all of humankind is part Titanic and part Dionysian, two very different archetypal potentialities that roam our psychic landscape.
The cold, hubristic Titanic threatens to arrive. We are today witnessing an attempt at the triumphant return of the great Titans, a return that heralds the victory of the literal over the imaginal, the rational over the aesthetic, arrogance over eros, fundamentalism over tolerance, isolation over relatedness, pessimism over hopefulness, projection over responsibility, demonization over understanding, and technology over psychology. And, what should be of paramount concern to us all is the reality that the most prominent casualty of the Titanic way is Psyche in all her spontaneous, imaginal, erotic splendor.
http://www.jungatlanta.com/articles/summer05-return-of-titans.pdf
CHAIN OF GENERATIONS;
Descent from Antiquity
Iona Miller
Infinite Regress
Only a Jungian approach to traditional genealogy keeps the historic/mythic gestalt of The World Tree alive as a symbol of wholeness -- a holistic resonant field pattern. According to Jung, trees are a symbolic reference to the self, so family tree is self-defining. As well as our lineage, our ancestors also form a vast symbol chain, rooted in the mythic unconscious and pre-history.
The symbolic function is beyond innate impulse and ideological bias. Through introversion, we are fertilized, inspired, regenerated, and reborn. Self-incubation, self-castigation, and introversion are closely related ideas. Immersion in oneself (introversion) is a penetration into the unconscious, the imaginal world of psyche.
The World Tree is the Axis Mundi of genealogy, a worldwide database of genealogical connectivity. At this point travel and correspondence is made between higher and lower realms. Communication from lower realms may ascend to higher ones and blessings from higher realms may descend to lower ones and be disseminated to all. The spot functions as the omphalos (navel), the world's point of beginning.
The earliest mythologies are of the World-Tree, or Tree of Life. Aspects of the same image, sacred trees are the most common motif from the ancient world. The Tree connects our psychophysical aspects from sub-nuclear to macrocosmic scales. The trunk is the axis of psychic growth that unites Heaven and Earth, spirit and matter.
The major branch points on our shared paternal lineage trace back through genealogy, history, antiquity, and ancient anthropology through myth to reach our early hominid ancestors. The branches on the paternal tree are haplogroups. SNP markers on the Y-Chromosome define them. Deep ancestry research depends on recognizing and analyzing patterns in Y-STR marker values for discovering Y-SNPs.
The serpents of our family lines are entwined like Celtic knots in and around the World Tree. Celtic snakes symbolize the notion of rebirth. They still promise us primordial Knowledge -- unverified personal gnosis. Jung said, "the serpent is the earthly essence of man of which he is not conscious. Its character changes according to peoples and lands, since it is the mystery that flows to him from the nourishing earth-mother."
The healer traversing the axis mundi to bring back knowledge from the other world is a common shamanic concept. Anyone or anything suspended on the axis between heaven and earth becomes a repository of potential knowledge. The Tree is the means of communication with spiritual realms. It is our Tree of Voices -- Tree of Souls. Remembering is a noble and necessary act. The call of memory, the call to memory, reaches us from the very dawn of history.
On the global-level, spiritual experiences have been shown to buffer against the negative effects of stress on well-being for older adults. Spiritual experience potentially moderates the deleterious impact of a given day’s perceived stress on that day’s positive and negative affect. Thus, it relates to self-care, well being, and healing. Sometimes physical pain is a substitute for psychic pain. Healing is not always physical: it can occur in the emotional, mental and spiritual life, moderating immunity and neurochemistry.
Genealogy contains a spiritual healing potential, the living sap of the Tree, a manifestation of the sacred. It is a Grail banquet of cultures, customs and symbolism. We see in many manuscripts that wings are used to mark progress or advancement of an alchemical solution toward perfection. Crowns mark the final stage of a spirit or solution: perfection, completion, ascension. The spirit, by death or enlightenment, will produce the pure, perfected, incorruptible spirit. In alchemical terms, the incorruptible body is the potential of the philosopher's stone
Some branches of the World Tree are pruned (extinct). Others still thrive. Data entry is not fun, but it makes information analysis and pattern recognition much easier. By engaging in genealogy we create a sacred space, a sacred center. There is a deep ecology to the flow of relationships. Our return to the womb of the Mothers is a creative regression. Experientially it manifests within us as a spiritualizing instinct, a recursive "bending back" toward the primordial and divine.
We link backward to the bond that transcends the limitations of the physical form. Consciousness turns back on itself, reiterating each level of organization, de-structuring each strata as it dives deeper toward the unconditioned, formless beginning, or "unborn" state -- the Void of the Cosmic Womb. In essence, we re-enter the womb as we are initiated in the mysteries of the psyche. We re-conceive our primal self image, healed by communion with the creative Source - - our own Royal Wedding.
Religious myths give us the security and inner strength not to be crushed by the monstrousness of the universe. "Belief is no adequate substitute for inner experience, and where this is absent even a strong faith which came miraculously as a gift of grace may depart equally miraculously. People call faith the true religious experience, but they do not stop to consider that actually it is a secondary phenomenon arising form the fact that something happened to us in the first place which instilled pistis into us — that is, trust and loyalty." --Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self," CW vol. 10, par. 521
In the Red Book, Jung said this is the way:
“An opus is needed, that one can squander decades on, and do it out of necessity. I must catch up with a piece of the Middle Ages-within myself. We have only finished the Middle Ages of-others. I must begin early, in that period when the hermits died out. Asceticism, inquisition, torture are close at hand and impose themselves. The barbarian requires barbaric means of education. My I, you are a barbarian. I want to live with you, therefore I will carry you through an utterly medieval Hell, until you are capable of making living with you bearable. You should be the vessel and womb of life, therefore I shall purify you.
The touchstone is being alone with oneself."
Genealogy can be seen as a way of honoring the ancestors with a ritual from ancient times when lists of god-kings described the natural order of things rooted in mythic and 'divine' ancestors. The only way to revision and interact with it as a gestalt matrix includes the fictional, legendary, and mythological lines of this traditional World Tree. It is but one way to acknowledge our divinity, nobility, and humanity. Genealogy is a sure path to the heart. We can "gather our ancestors" before we are gathered unto them.
Mythology lost its role of explaining the forces of nature. But its role of delivering insights into the hidden, deep endeavors and fears of any human seems more alive than ever. It is a Mystery how our ancestors pass memories to us across the generations. They relate us to our ontological questions about space, time, and eternity, the deep structure of the human mind and perception, life and death -- what exists and what doesn't. Time concerns the existential nature of things -- temporal relationships.
The mythology of our ancestors is as important as their cosmology. We can explore the mystic in ourselves and in our ancestors. Our worldview is the root of our identity and relationship to Nature and our own deep nature. Researching the cosmologies of our direct ancestors in the historical era provides a quick path into dream shamanism, as these ways are still half-remembered. Our common destiny lies beyond any worldview.
"You could study the ancestors, but without a deep feeling of communication with them it would be surface learning and surface talking. Once you have gone into yourself and have learned very deeply, appreciate it, and relate to it very well, everything will come very easily." (Ellen White, Nanaimo)
Psyche creates reality every day. We have a mystical connection with our primitive ancestors. The primordial ancestors are still alive within the depths of our psyches and reach out to us with their ancient wisdom. We instinctively behave and feel the same ways as generations of our ancestors have in their lives.
This is also a relationship to the collectivity of the dead; for the unconscious corresponds to the mythic land of the dead, the land of the ancestors. Jung was the first to link the concept of ancestors to unconscious thinking. We learn to remember what our soul already knows. Our personality is literally expressed through our ancestors.
The gods and goddesses have 'gone to seed', and we are that -- their seed, their progeny. As James Hillman says, their minds and powers are living us in poetic moments of fantasy, insight and intuition. Nature, psyche and life are unfolding divinity. We are only cut off from the dead by what we have buried and forgotten. Working with our ancestral connection means connecting to everything around us and how we are placed in the world.
Jung said transpersonal psychic life "is the mind of our ancient ancestors, the way in which they thought and felt, the way in which they conceived of life and the world, of gods and humans beings. The existence of these historical layers is presumably the source of belief in reincarnation and in memories of past lives” (Jung, 1939, p.24).
In 'Extending the Family' (1985), Hillman says, "With the passing of time a sense of its power grows within one's psyche, like the movements of its skeleton inside one's flesh, which keeps one in servitude to patterns entombed in our closest attitudes and habits. From this interior family we are never free. This service keeps us bonded to the ancestors." Some report a sort of
"calling illness" until they respond to the ancestors calling them to do the work.
Genealogy is the science and art of what is emerging into the collective consciousness in one of the biggest hobbies of our era. It is a vast reclamation and reconstruction of our holographic connections, and certain emotionally toned experiences and images inherited from our ancestors, our spiritual guides. We translate meaning into life.
The entire gestalt of the World Tree is an iconic image -- a multidimensional symbol requiring hermeneutics as much as history for best practice. Genealogy has the problem of only focusing on the ancestors with surviving records, not all your ancestors. Of course, all the expansive aspects of the ancestors leave their shadow traces. With the light comes darkness. Ancestral blessings are not unaccompanied by ancestral curses.
The shadow is transmitted in a million subtle gestures and intonations. As you become aware of them in yourself, you can look back over your shoulder at your ancestors and see where these patterns came from. The family shadow is not the sole answer, but it's a place to do some work. It's a realm that is within our means to influence. When we stop passing the shadow on to the next generation, we spare them and break the chain. They don't pass it on either.
We can cut through the Fog of Lore to the mythic core. Clan ancestors are more than euphemisms. They may well be more than legends, being actual progenitors or composites of the ancient lineage. Some myths may have developed after the destruction of powerful lineages, displays of majesty, culture heroes, and ancestral temples. Royal family ancestor cults probably drew on a number of ancestral lineages.
Genealogy is the narrative of a pre-modern world. It has traditional roots in the ancient theogeny of gods and goddesses, divine-king lists and The Bible. Ancestral gods and ancestral religions developed over eons and are as old as particular branches of mankind -- gods of the blood. Astrologically determined gods and goddesses can often be found at the roots of dynastic houses. Royal houses claimed power through descent from ancestral gods.
Gods are difficult to destroy or conceal. Fictitious lines of descent blend indistinguishably with medieval forgeries. Some divinities may originally have been historical persons or war-chiefs, now lost to the mists of pre-history. Seedlines codify ancient ethnic identity and empires. Later, royals added them to their lines to bolster their claims to divine rule and the founding of thrones. Though not factual, traditional genealogy was a geographical and spiritual compass.
When Rome Christianized in the fourth century, it cut off the mythic corpus, and demoted gods to human status and allegories. The medieval period filled the gap with tales of the Holy Grail. The pagan content of mythology was codified in the mid-fourteenth century in Boccassio's Genealogy. Later, the Carolingians used such works to justify their right to rule, also citing the spurious Donation of Constantine, which the Church used to justify the appointment of rulers.
At root, traditional genealogy is an archetypal activity, recapitulating and extending humanity's oldest activities, including the imaginal root. The aesthetic response is an ethical response -- a response of the heart -- that values the ancestors and the genealogical history. Genealogy is thus an archetypal order, an aesthetic construction, and a virtual map of the personal and collective unconscious, reflecting a principle of totality and primordial origins.
Traditional genealogy considered these mythological inclusions best-practice, yet it may be more of a psychic than historical "fact" -- the product of a collision between pagan and Christian societies and their reconciliation. Historical time required a linear descent, even if it masked pagan roots at the theological fringe. Even if medieval genealogies connecting ancient kings to Adam are pure invention, they retain certain psychic values that are part of the archaeology of the collective unconscious.
Subjective mental life is a primary metaphor of
subjective Experience;
Primary Metaphor Becomes Embodied
and maps across generations.
The Grounding of the Whole is the grounding of its parts.
We reason with such metaphors.
(Lakoff & Johnson)
This argument against expunging legend and myth
from traditional genealogy practice is simple:
What happens outside us in these days is the image that the peoples live in events, to bequeath this image immemorially to far-off times so that they might learn from it for their own way; just as we learned from the images that the ancients had lived before us in events. ~Carl Jung, The Red book, Page 239.
"But if the believer without religion now thinks that he has got rid of mythology he is deceiving himself: he cannot get by without "myth."
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488
Genealogy was used to support the claims to nobility of individual families, both to differentiate them from commoners and in rivalry with other families either within the same national group or outside it.
Always when such genealogies are recorded by Christian writers (e.g. Bede, Historia EcclesiasticaI 15), the gods that appear in them will have been interpreted euhemeristically, i.e. as great kings or heroes who came to be worshipped as gods after their deaths. Descent from such great and successful men would have been regarded as a claim to nobility, while heathen gods themselves could hardly have been regarded with anything but abhorrence. Since the gods in genealogies were considered to have been really mortals, there was moreover felt to be no inappropriateness in continuing the genealogical lists back beyond them, sometimes even as far as Noah and Adam.
Biblical genealogy encouraged medieval scholars to compile genealogies stretching back to the remote past.
If genealogies were taken back to the gods in heathen times, they were presumably closely associated with the kind of legend that survives in the Eddic poems quoted above, and may have implied that those who could claim such descent were different from ordinary mortals. But if the gods were only introduced into genealogies after the coming of Christianity, then the euhemeristic interpretation of the gods must have preceded the construction of the genealogies. This latter view makes it easier to explain certain aspects of the extant genealogies, for instance the fact that many of them conflict with each other, so that there appears to have been no fixed tradition about the relationships of the gods and their human sons, and the even more striking fact that the family relationships of the gods in genealogies are very different from those they have in mythology.
It must be regarded as uncertain how common it was for genealogies in heathen times to go back to the gods, in Christian times it became almost universal. Some juxtapositions make for uncomfortable conflict both with the mythological tradition and historical plausibility.
http://www.vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/Descent-from-the-gods.pdf
THE PRIMORDIALS
These Gods are the Original race of Gods Before the Olympians, Titans, Monsters, Demigods, Mythical Creatures, and Mortals.
Hesiod's Theogony (c. 700 BC) tells the story of the genesis of the gods. After invoking the Muses (II.1-116), he tells of the generation of the first four primordial deities:
"First Chaos came to be, but next... Earth... and dim Tartarus in the depth of the... Earth, and Eros.
The Iliad, an epic poem attributed to Homer about the Trojan War (an oral tradition of 700 or 600 BC), states that Oceanus (and possibly Tethys, too) is the parent of all the deities.[4]
- Alcman (fl. 7th century BC) made the water-nymph Thetis the first goddess, producing poros (path), tekmor (marker) and skotos (darkness) on the pathless, featureless void.
- Orphic poetry (c. 530 BC) made Nyx the first principle, Night, and her offspring were many. Also, in the Orphic tradition, Phanes (a mystic Orphic deity of light and procreation, sometimes identified with the Elder Eros) is the original ruler of the universe, who hatched from the cosmic egg.[5]
- Aristophanes (c. 446 BC – c. 386 BC) wrote in his Birds, that Nyx is the first deity also, and that she produced Eros from an egg.
TITANS
Before the time of the mighty Olympian gods and goddesses, before the time of the creation of humans, the earth was ruled by a race of giants called Titans. As the stories go, the Titans first appeared when Light emerged from out of the darkness of Chaos and the heavens, the earth and the sea were formed. These ruthless giants were so jealous of their power that when the great Titan Cronos realized he was to father a new race of gods that could threaten his unilateral rule, he swallowed his yet unborn offspring. But, despite this determined effort on the part of Cronos to eliminate all potential challengers, one son, Zeus, survives and forces his father to restore his siblings. Soon after, a great war began that pit the young gods and goddesses led by Zeus against the older Titan race. Eventually, the Titans were defeated, banished to a distant and isolated other-world and the new rulers of the universe took their place upon Mount Olympus. The rich and complex fabric of our Western mythological heritage has grown out of this myth of a pre-human world ruled by the Titans. What is of interest to us is a particular myth found in the writings of Orpheus, the myth of Dionysus-Zagreus--a story of an encounter between the subdued Titans and the favored son of Zeus, Dionysus. According to this myth, Dionysus was the child of Zeus and Persephone. One day, shortly following their defeat, the angry and vengeful Titans lured the very young yet curious Dionysus to a remote cave where he was beyond the vigilant and watchful eye of his protective father, Zeus. There, the Titans visciously attacked the youth, tearing him limb from limb and then devouring his every piece. Zeus, learning of the assault, immediately struck at the Titans who, with their bellies still full with the freshly consumed young god, were reduced to smoldering ashes. And, as the story goes, it was from these ashes that Zeus then created humankind. Thus, all of humankind is part Titanic and part Dionysian, two very different archetypal potentialities that roam our psychic landscape.
The cold, hubristic Titanic threatens to arrive. We are today witnessing an attempt at the triumphant return of the great Titans, a return that heralds the victory of the literal over the imaginal, the rational over the aesthetic, arrogance over eros, fundamentalism over tolerance, isolation over relatedness, pessimism over hopefulness, projection over responsibility, demonization over understanding, and technology over psychology. And, what should be of paramount concern to us all is the reality that the most prominent casualty of the Titanic way is Psyche in all her spontaneous, imaginal, erotic splendor.
http://www.jungatlanta.com/articles/summer05-return-of-titans.pdf
In the Western world, classical antiquity is usually taken to mean the period spanning the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome – around the 8th century BC to the 5th century AD. Most earliest surviving church records in Europe date from around the mid-16th century. Written records which survived the 1,000 year gap of war, natural disaster and ‘intellectual darkness’ are rare to non-existent.
Charlemagne
A link to aristocracy may add a few hundreds years to a particular lineage, but the genealogical claims of the medieval aristocracy were often dubious. Many European royal dynasties manufactured lines of descent from figures such as Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, even Jesus Christ, for propaganda purposes. Nevertheless, historical records do at least exist for royal and noble families.
Unfortuntately, there are few contemporary documents against which to confirm these lineages. The main source is the History of the Franks, written in the late 6th century by Gregory of Tours. In addition, there is a mid-7th century document known as Chronicle of Fredegar that deals with the genealogy of the Merovingian kings, but the earlier generations appear to be based almost exclusively on Gregory of Tours. Furthermore, all subsequent chroniclers, in particular the oft-quoted 8th-century Liber Historiae Francorum, clearly draw from Gregory of Tours for the Merovingian parts of their pedigrees.
Charlemagne
A link to aristocracy may add a few hundreds years to a particular lineage, but the genealogical claims of the medieval aristocracy were often dubious. Many European royal dynasties manufactured lines of descent from figures such as Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, even Jesus Christ, for propaganda purposes. Nevertheless, historical records do at least exist for royal and noble families.
Unfortuntately, there are few contemporary documents against which to confirm these lineages. The main source is the History of the Franks, written in the late 6th century by Gregory of Tours. In addition, there is a mid-7th century document known as Chronicle of Fredegar that deals with the genealogy of the Merovingian kings, but the earlier generations appear to be based almost exclusively on Gregory of Tours. Furthermore, all subsequent chroniclers, in particular the oft-quoted 8th-century Liber Historiae Francorum, clearly draw from Gregory of Tours for the Merovingian parts of their pedigrees.
Descents from Antiquity
Internet genealogies suffer a well-known defect -- many of them accept as true many lines that are known by scholars to be false. Geni is no exception. In Geni’s early days, many users uploaded GEDCOM files with spurious and fantastic genealogies. As users we’ve done a lot of cleanup, merging duplicates and cutting bad connections, but there is a lot of work still to do.
Usually, the term “Descents from Antiquity” refers to modern efforts to find plausible lines of descent. However, it can also include traditional descents that have varying degrees of reliability.
This project is designed to help clean up the many fictitious genealogies and to focus attention on legitimate debate about extending our shared genealogy. You can help us by identifying questionable lines. It is generally unhelpful to simply say something like, “No one can prove a descent from Julius Caesar.” What is most helpful is to identify the specific generations where the evidence fails, search for reliable sources, then start a discussion.
Medieval forgeries
A common belief in antiquity and in the middle ages was that tribes took their name from a common ancestor. For example, the Historia Brittonum (Nennius, 9th century) names Alanus as the first man to live in Europe. He had a son Hiscion, and Hiscion’s four sons Francus, Romanus, Alamanus, and Brutus were the ancestors respectively of the French, Romans, Germans, and British. The name of this Alanus was probably a corrupted form of Mannus, the Old Germanic god who was the ancestor of mankind. Some scholars believe that Mannus was another name for Bor, the father of the god Odin in Norse tradition. In English, German and the Scandinavian languages we get our word man from Mannus.
When the Europeans converted to Christianity, they had a problem. Their royal families were only a few generations removed from the old gods. And, worse. Exposed to Roman arts and sciences, they discovered the idea of “historical time”. The world was older than they had ever thought about. Their royal pedigrees weren’t long enough to go back to the creation of the world.
From the Romans they learned that modern science had proved that everyone on earth was descended from Adam and Eve. (It said so in the Christian scriptures, which were absolutely true -- according the scholars.)
The answer was simple and obvious. The old gods had to have been humans, famous men and great warriors who came to worshipped as gods. And, if they were human, they must have been descended from Adam and Eve like everyone else. The trick was to figure out how.
One of the earliest surviving attempts to create this kind of genealogy is the Historia Brittonum by the Welsh monk Nennius (9th century), who recorded the following genealogy:
(1) Noah, his son (2) Japheth, his son (3) Joham, his son (4) Jobath, his son (5) Bath, his son (6) Hisrau, his son (7) Esraa, his son (8) Ra, his son (9) Aber, his son (10) Ooth, his son (11) Ethec, his son (12) Aurthack, his son (13) Ecthactur, his son (14) Ecthactur, his son (15) Mair, his son (16) Semion, his son (17) Boibus, his son (18) Thoi, his son (19) Ogomuin, his son (20) Fethuir, and his son (21) Alanus.
Nennius also tied Alanus to Rome by making him a husband of Rhea Silvia, whose twin sons Romulus and Remus are said to have founded Rome in 753 BCE. The connection is scarcely credible historically, but served neatly to graft the eponymous ancestors of the northern Europeans onto classical tradition by making them brothers of Romulus, the eponymous ancestor of the Romans.
These medieval genealogies connecting ancient kings to Adam are pure invention. They are interesting now because they show the history of history.
England
The Anglo-Saxons, forerunners of the modern English, were ruled by kings who claimed to be descended from the god Woden (Odin in the Norse versions). In later Scandinavian versions, Woden was the son of Bor, son of Búri. Some scholars believe that in the Germanic version, which included the Anglo-Saxons, Woden was the son of Mannus, the ancestor of mankind, who was son of Tuisto.
English monks kept Woden, but dumped Bor and Búri. They “discovered” that Woden was descended from Noah, but the process took several tries.
In one place, the 9th century Anglo-Saxon chronicle gives the following line. There are too few generations here, but this fragment might preserve the earliest non-divine version of Woden’s ancestry.
(1) Noah, his son (2) ---, his son (3) Finn, who was born in the ark, his son (4) Freothelaf, his son (5) Frithuwald, his son (6) Woden.
About the same time, Nennius in his Historia Brittonum gives a slightly different version. Here we get two more generations beyond Finn, which might also represent an authentic tradition.
(1) Geat, “who, as they say, was the son of a god”, his son (2) Godwulf, his son (3) Finn, his son (4) Frithuwulf, his son (5) Frithowald, and his son (6) Woden.
Nennius gives us more theology than genealogy. He says that Geat “as they say, was the son of a god, not of the omnipotent God and our Lord Jesus Christ (who before the beginning of the world, was with the Father and the Holy Spirit, co-eternal and of the same substance, and who, in compassion to human nature, disdained not to assume the form of a servant), but the offspring of one of their idols, and whom, blinded by some demon, they worshipped according to the custom of the heathen.”
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of documents rather than a single document. In another place (855), it gives a fuller line.
(1) Noe [Noah], his son (2) Sceaf, his son (3) Bedwig Sceafing, his son (4) Hwala Bedwiging, his son (5) Haþra Hwalaing, his son (6) Itermon Haðraing, his son (7) Heremod Itermoning, his son (8) Sceldwea Heremoding, his son (9) Beaw Sceldwaing, his son (10) Taetwa Beawing, his son (11) Geat Taetwaing, his son (12) God wulf Geating, his son (13) Fin Godwulfing, his son (14) Frealaf Finning, and his son (15) Woden Frealafing. (Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, Plummer and Earle (eds.), 66, 67 and note 6).
A note says, “id est filius Noe se waes geboren on þaere earce Noes.” That is, “he [Sceaf] is the son of Noah, he was born in Noah’s ark.” This detail ties the old pagan tradition to the new Christian tradition. Sceaf was a Norse god who arrived by boat as a baby to rule the Danes. Now, he is neatly made the son of the Christian ark builder.
Later monks, perhaps competing for prestige with the Franks, decided to dump Noah and take Woden’s ancestry back to Troy, then connect the Trojans to the Jewish scriptures. This version runs as follows. Note that the names of the new generations, between (10) and (16) have been drawn chiefly from nicknames of the old god Thor. Some of the other names might have been invented in a similar way.
(1) Judah, ancestor of the tribe of Judah, his son (2) Zara, his son (3) Darda, his son (4) Erichthonious, his son (5) Tros, his son (6) Ilus, his son (7) Laomedon, his son (8) Tithonius, his son (9) Memnon, his son (10) Thor, his son (11) Einridi, his son (12) Vingethor, his son (13) Vingener, his son (14) Móda, his son (15) Magi [Noe], his son (16) Sceaf [Seskef], his son (17) Bedwig [Bedvig], his son (18) Hwala, his son (19) Hrathra [Annarr], his son (20) Itermon [Ítermann], his son (21) Heremod [Heremód], his son (22) Heremod [Heremód], his son (23) Beaw [Bjárr], his son (24) Tætwa, his son (25) Geat [Ját], his son (26) Godwulf [Gudólfr], his son (27) Finn, his son (28) Frithuwulf, his son (29) Frealaf [Fridleifr], his son Frealaf [Fridleifr], his son (30) Freawine, his son (31) Frithuwald, and his son (32) Woden.
Attempts to reconcile these genealogies by equating the human Frithuwald with the divine Bor, and the human Frealaf with divine Búri have been problematic, because they end by giving Woden a set of mythical relatives that include the Ice Giants.
France
The Franks, a confederation of Germanic tribes that formed the core of modern France, claimed descent from Francus (or Francio). According to one version of the story, Francus and his people were defeated by the Roman general Drusus in 11 BCE. Francus was killed, and they were relocated to the region between the Rhine and the Danube.
Frankish monks linked Francus to the kings of Troy. The Chronicle of Fredegar (7th century) mentions the legend. It was elaborated in the Liber historiae Francorum (probably 727). Successive generations continued adding new details.
In other words, the Franks claimed to be the distant cousins of the Romans (who claimed descent from Aeneas, another Trojan). It was a nice piece of political propaganda because it fit nicely with two things the Franks wanted to emphasize: (1) as cousins of the Romans they were equal to the Romans, and (2) as cousins and equals, they were the legitimate successors of the Roman empire.
The Grandes Chroniques de France (13th - 15th centuries), a vast compilation of historic material, refers to the Trojan origins of the French dynasty.
Johannes Trithemius' De origine gentis Francorum compendium (1514) describes the Franks as originally Trojans (called "Sicambers" or "Sicambrians") after the fall of Troy who came into Gaul after being forced out of the area around the mouth of the Danube by the Goths in 439 BCE (1:33). He also details the reigns of each of these kings—including Francus (43:76) from whom the Franks are named—and their battles with the Gauls, Goths, Saxons, etc.
(Source: Wikipedia, Francus)
Ireland John O'Hart (1824-1902), an Irish genealogist used ancient sources, such as the Lebor Gabála Érenn and the Annals of the Four Masters, to compile a genealogical history of Ireland, Irish pedigrees; or, The origin and stem of the Irish nation (1876). According to his work, the Irish kings are descended from Adam as follows:
(Source: Wikipedia, John O’Hart)
Note: We need to clarify the extent to which O’Hart’s genealogies follow ancient sources, and whether any of it was his own invention.
Ostrogoths
The historian Jordanes wrote De origine actibusque Getarum ((The Origin and Deeds of the Getae/Goths, c531), commonly called the Getica. In it, he gives the history of the Goths.
Jordanes traces the Ostrogothic royal family, the Amelungs (Amali), to Hulmul, son of Gapt (Getica, 14). This Gapt is thought to be the same person as the Norse god Gaut or Geat. His son Hulmul was probably the same person as Humli, the ancestor of the Danes in Norse tradition. In a vairant version, Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks (13th century) says, "Of old, they say, Humli over Huns did rule, Gizur the Gauts, the Goths Angantyr, Valdar the Danes, the Romans Kjar, Alrek the Valiant the English people."
The genealogy seems to be artificial. Athalaric (?-534), king of the Ostrogoths in Jordanes time, is presented as the 17th Amal king of the Goths since Gapt, just as there had been 17 Roman kings between Aeneas and Romulus. Thus, the Amal dynasty presented itself as a second gens Iulia, ruling both Romans and Goths. In fact, the Amal dynasty is documented no earlier than Theodoric's father or grandfather, an ally of Attila the Hun. The Goths themselves are documented no earlier than 291.
Aeneas Gens Iulia, the family to which Julius Caesar belonged, claimed descent from the Roman goddess Venus (Greek: Aphrodite) through Aeneas, her son by her lover Anchises, who was a Trojan prince.
The legend that Aeneas escaped the Fall of Troy (about 1200 BCE) and journeyed to Italy goes back to at least the 5th century BCE. By 400 BCE, Aeneas was being venerated in Italy as the god Iuppiter Indiges, the tribal ancestor of Latins and Etruscans.
In some Roman traditions, Iulus, the semi-divine ancestor of gens Iulia, was identical with Aeneas’ son Ascanius (Vergil). In other traditions, Iulus was the son of Aeneas by his Trojan wife, Creusa, while Ascanius was the son of Aeneas' Latin wife Lavinia, daughter of Latinus (Livy). And, in still another tradition, Iulus was son of Ascanius, and disputed the throne with Silvius after Ascanius' death (Dionysius of Halicarnasus).
When medieval monks were inventing new genealogies Aeneas was a popular figure. In the Norse saga, the Deluding of Gylfe, he is called Anea. Medieval Welsh genealogies called him Annyn Tro. In one Welsh source he is called a son of Brydain (eponymous of Britain) and a grandson of Aedd Mawr (Edward the Great) who lived about 1300 BCE. These chronologies are too confused to be credible.
Anna, kinswoman of the Virgin Mary
The early Welsh royal families claimed to be relatives of the family of Jesus.
According to Harleian MS. 3958, Beli Mawr was husband to Anna (who may be a confabulation of Dôn), a "near kinswoman [consobrina] of the Virgin Mary." A medieval tradition identifies her as a sister (or daughter) of Joseph of Arimathea, but the tradition is not old enough to be authentic. There is no reason to think she was an historical figure.
Dôn seems to have been a Christianized version of the Celtic goddess Anû, the mother goddess of the Celts. In Gaul she was called Belisama. In Ireland she was Danu, the matriarch of the Túatha Dé Danann, who took their name from her. The Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh legends, calls her Dôn, sister of Mâth mab Mathonwy, King of Gwynedd.
"Chronologically speaking, if Anna married a Briton after her father arrived in this country, then we must assume that she was nearer to Jesus' age than her cousin, Mary (ie. born c. 0). Beli is recorded in the Mabinogion and Welsh Genealogies as having been the father of Caswallon (or Cassivellaunus), the leader of the Celtic tribes who repelled Cæsar's invasions of 55 & 54 bc. He could, therefore, not possibly have married Anna of Arimathea. Moreover, the local ruler whom Joseph received his land gift from, is said to have been Arfyrag (or Arviragus), Beli & Anna's supposed great great grandson." (David Nash Ford, "St. Joseph of Arimathea: Ancestor of Kings?" in Early British Kingdoms (visited Nov. 21, 2011).
King Arthur
If King Arthur was a real person, as many scholars believe, then he was a war leader in 6th century Britain. Some part of his life might have been authentically recorded by English monks such as Gildas (c500-570), Bede (672/3-736), Nennius (9th century), and Geoffrey of Monmouth (c1100-c1155). However, these accounts are confused and contradictory. Arthur might have been related in some way to the Roman aristocrat Ambrosius Aurelianus, although the relationship is first recorded by Geoffrey of Monmouth, who was writing 600 years later.
There is no doubt about Ambrosius’ existence. He was mentioned in a near contemporary document by the monk Gildas, who says he won an important battle against the invading Anglo-Saxons. Some scholars believe it is possible to sketch a brief genealogy for Ambrosius, perhaps from the Roman usurper Constantine III or from a distant cousin of the Emperor Theodosius I (or both).
In modern times there has been an explosion of genealogies drawn from Grail romances that turn fictional characters from the 11th and 12th centuries into historical people. The seminal works for these genealogies are Holy Blood, Holy Gail, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln (1982) and Bloodline of the Holy Grail, by Laurence Gardner (1996). They are best characterized as “alternative history”.
Beli Mawr
The early Welsh royal families claimed to be descended from Beli Mawr.
Beli Mawr was in fact a Welsh version the Celtic sun god. Among the Brythonic Celts he was Belenus (the Shining One), a fertility god who looked after sheep and cattle. In Ireland, he was Bilé, the god of death. His festival was Beltaine (Fire of Bel), held May 1st. On that day, purifying fires were lit.
According to the Mabinogion his name was Beli son of Mynogan. Wikipedia says, "However, it should be noted that in medieval Welsh tradition, Beli Mawr is often given the patronymic fab Manogan / Mynogan ("son of Manogan"). This appears to derive from a textual garbling of the name of a real historical figure, Adminius, son of Cunobelinus; after being transmitted through the Roman authors Suetonius and Orosius, this name became Bellinus filius Minocanni in the medieval Latin text from Wales, Historia Brittonum. Thus, although Beli became a separate personage in medieval pseudohistory from Cunobelinus (Welsh Cynfelyn, Shakespeare's Cymbeline), he was generally presented as a king reigning in the period immediately before the Roman invasion; his "son" Caswallawn is the historical Cassivellaunus."
According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, his name was Heli, he succeeded his father Digueillus, and he reigned 40 years.
The Mabinogion names his three sons as Lludd, Casswallawn and Nynnyaw, or four sons Lludd, Casswallawn, Llevelys and Eveyd. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, he had three sons, Lud, Cassivelaunus and Nennius.
Brân the Blessed The early Welsh royal families claimed to be descended from Brân the Blessed and his father Llŷr Llediath.
Brân was legendary king of the Silures, probably originating as a Christianized form of the Celtic god Brân. He is one of the principal characters of the 1st Branch of the Mabinogion, which begins "Bran the Blessed (Bendigeidfran), the son of Llyr and Penarddun, daughter of Beli son of Mynogan, was ruler of Britain. Bran was the brother of Manawyddan and Branwen (Bronwen), and the half-brother of Nissyen and Evnissyen." He is said to have been succeeded by his uncle Caswallawn.
In Christian legend Brân is said to have been baptized in Rome in 36 CE. "Bran was said to have been taken as a captive to Rome where he joined the household of St. Paul. Returning to Britain, with SS. Aristobulus and Joseph of Arimathea some years later, he became among the first to introduce Christianity to the Island, hence his epithet of "the Blessed". This whole story is a late 17th century fabrication based on misinformation." (David Nash Ford, "Bran Fendigaid alias Bendigeitvran: Celtic God of Regeneration" in Early British Kingdoms(http://www.earlybritishkingdoms.com/bios/bran.html, visited Nov. 21, 2011)
The story of Brân's conversion to Christianity is probably a confusion with the historical Cunobelin (Arfyrag's father) who was thought to have been taken captive to Rome where he became converted to Christianity. (David Nash Ford, "St. Joseph of Arimathea: Ancestor of Kings?" in Early British Kingdoms (http://www.earlybritishkingdoms.com/articles/josanc.html, visited Nov. 21, 2011). Brân and Cunobelin both had sons named Caradoc, and the different Caradocs became confused. There is, no doubt an added confusion of Caradocs here, as far too few generations are given.
In Arthurian romance Brân became Bron(s), the Fisher King. He is said to have married Enygeus, a sister of Joseph of Arimathea and of Anna the Prophetess (perhaps the same person as Anna, the near kinswoman of the Virgin Mary. She had 12 sons, including Alain de Borron. This story mangles the earlier version, in which Brân was a grandson of Anna, the sister (or daughter) of Joseph of Arimathea.
In the Arthurian romance 'Bonedd yr Arwyr, Brân is made both a paternal and maternal ancestor of King Arthur.
Brutus
The early Welsh kings claimed descent from Brutus, the legendary 1st King of Britain, which is said to have been named for him.
Welsh genealogists called him Brwt. He is said to have founded Troia Nova ("New Troy"), which became corrupted to Trinovantum, and now is London. He is not mentioned in any classical source and is not considered to be historical.
Brutus was first mentioned in the 9th century, by Nennius, who says he was a son of Hiscion, grandson of Alanus (Mannus), and a descendant of Noah. One variant makes him a grandson or great grandson of the Trojan hero Aeneas, great grandson of the legendary Roman king Numa Pompilius, and traces his genealogy to Japheth, son of Noah. Another variant makes him the son of Silvius and grandson of Ascanius, the father of Aeneas, and traces his genealogy to Ham, son of Noah. [Historia Brittonum.]
Geoffrey of Monmouth says Brutus was son of Silvius and grandson of Ascanius. He was exiled from Italy. He went to Greece, and liberated the Trojans enslaved there. Then, he crossed to the island of Albion, which he re-named for himself, and became the first king. After his death, each of his sons received one-third of Britain, Locrinus (England), Albanactus (Scotland) and Kamber (Wales).
Many scholars believe the Hiscion son of Alanus named by Nennius as Brutus' father was identical to the Istro son of Mannus, who appears in Germanic tradition as the eponymous ancestor of the Istvaeones, one of the three divisions of Germanic proto-tribes.
Charlemagne
Millions of people in the world today are descendants of the Frankish emperor Charlemagne, and they can prove it. Charlemagne’s family were upstarts, however. There are no proven links between Charlemagne and his predecessors in the Merovingian dynasty. In fact, Charlemagne has only 10 proven ancestors. Using Ahnentafel numbering, his ancestry looks like this:
Some modern scholars, working with original documents, believe they have found evidence to show that Charlemagne’s ancestry can be traced, probably, to an old Roman senatorial family. The reconstruction is plausible, because the Franks who Charlemagne ruled had conquered the old Roman province of Gaul in 486, and the Franks are known to have intermarried with the surviving Gallo-Roman aristocracy.
Using this reconstruction as a starting point, many other scholars have attempted to extend Charlemagne’s ancestry further, with varying degrees of success.
Charles Constantine
Charles Constantine (c903-c962), comte de Vienne and de Bellay, was a son of Louis III the Blind (c883-928), Holy Roman Emperor. His mother was either the Burgundian princess Adelais or the Byzantine princess Anna Myakes.
The debate over Charles Constantine’s ancestry is very heated. Anna Myakes was a daughter of the Byzantine emperor Leo VI. There were negotiations to betroth her to Louis III but it isn't clear whether the marriage ever took place. If the marriage did take place, and if Charles Constantine was a son of that marriage, his ancestry would include Byzantine emperors Leo VI and Leo's father, either Basil I or Michael III.
A key part of the debate is whether Charles really had the nickname Constantine. The name was uncommon in the west, so it supports the theory, accepted by Septimani, that his mother was the Byzantine princess Anna. However, the name might refer only to his imperial ancestry. Flodoard (894-966) called him Charles Constantine, but the evidence that he used the name in his lifetime is too weak to be reliable. A diploma of his father and his own charters call him only Charles.
Érimón mac Míl Espáine
According to ancient Irish sources Érimón mac Míl Espáine brought his people, the Milesians, to Ireland about 500 BCE, and conquered it from an older race, the Tuatha Dé Danann. (See the Lebor Gabála Érenn, and others.) The story might (very arguably) have some foundation, but cannot be proven or disproven. (See above, under Ireland)
Francus French monks claimed that a Trojan prince, Francus, was the eponymous ancestor of the Frankish kings. Francus is first mentioned in Nennius' Historia Brittonum (8th century) as the son of Hiscion, and eponymous ancestor of the Franks. His Trojan ancestry came later.
In the Renaissance, Francus was generally considered to be another name for the Trojan hero Astyanax (son of Hector), who was saved from the destruction of Troy.
Jean Lemaire de Belges's Illustrations de Gaule et Singularités de Troie (1510–12) has Astyanax survive the fall of Troy and arrive in Western Europe. He changes his name to Francus and becomes king of Celtic Gaul (while, at the same time, Bavo, cousin of Priam, comes to the city of Trier) and founds the dynasty leading to Pepin and Charlemagne.[9] He is said to have founded and named the city of Paris in honor of his uncle Paris.
Gilles Corrozet's La Fleur des antiquitez... de Paris (1532) describes the French king Francis I as the 64th descendant of Hector of Troy.
In Pierre de Ronsard's epic poem La Franciade (1572), the god Jupiter saves Astyanax (renamed Francus). The young hero arrives in Crete and falls in love with the princess Hyanthe with whom he is destined to found the royal dynasty of France.
(Source: Wikipedia, Francus)
Genuissa, wife of Arvirargus
Venissa (Genissa, Genvissa, Genuissa) is a fictional person who serves to link the Welsh kings to ancient Rome.
According to Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th century Historia Regum Britanniae, she was a daughter of the Roman Emperor Claudius, whom he gave in marriage to the British king Arvirargus once he had submitted to Rome.
According to Geoffrey's account she was very beautiful, and so enchanted Arvirargus that he preferred her company to anyone else's. He founded Gloucester, supposedly named after Claudius, in her honour. When Arvirargus fell out with Rome and Vespasian was sent to enforce a reconciliation, Venissa acted as mediator between them.
Venissa cannot be considered historical. She is not mentioned in authentic Roman history; her supposed husband Arvirargus is known only from a cryptic reference in Satire IV, a 2nd century satirical poem by Juvenal; and it is in any case inconceivable that a daughter, even an illegitimate daughter, of a Roman emperor could be given in marriage to a barbarian without attracting comment. Nonetheless, she and her husband, identified with the historical Caratacus, appear in many uncritical genealogies originating in the Tudor period.
(Source: Wikipedia, Venissa)
Joseph of Arimathea
The Christian scriptures say that Joseph of Arimathea was an influential member of the Sanhedrin who petitioned Pontius Pilate for Jesus’ body, but give no details about his life or family. According to the Talmud, he was the younger brother of the father of the Virgin Mary. That is, he was Mary's uncle and Jesus' great-uncle.
Some modern writers venture that he might be identified with Josephus (Jewish: Yosef ben Matityahu, Roman: Titus Flavius Josephus), a Jewish historian and an apologist for the Roman empire. However, scholars dismiss the idea. Josephus was born in 37 CE, making him a generation younger than Jesus, so it would not be possible he was Jesus' great uncle.
The first mention of Joseph of Arimathea in connection with Britain is the Life of Mary Magdalene by Rabanus Maurus (766-856), Archbishop of Mainz. Jseoph first appears as the legendary Keeper of the Holy Grail in Robert de Boron's Joseph d'Arimathie (early 13th century), which says he settled in Britain after the Crucifixion of Jesus, bringing the Holy Grail with him. The story spawned a rich literature on the same theme. Later tradition says he was a wealthy merchant who owned tin mines in Cornwall. Some popular fiction has him bringing Jesus with him to Britain to be trained by Druids there.
Lleuver Mawr (to be added)
Llyr Lediaith The early Welsh royal families claimed to be descended from Llŷr Llediath.and his son Brân the Blessed.
The story is not reliable. Llyr was a Celtic sea god, cognate of the Irish god Lir, but perhaps also a historical King of the Silures. As an historical figure, he is said to have been educated in Rome by Augustus Caesar. His home was at Dunraven castle, situated on a hill called Twyn Rhyvan (the Hill of Rome) in Glamorgan.
He was used by Shakespeare as a prototype for King Lear.
Makhir of Narbonne
Makhir of Narbonne (8th century) was the leader of the Jewish community of Narbonne, and the ancestor of an important family there. Prof. Arthur Zuckerman suggested that he was the same person as Natronai ben Habibi, an exilarch who was deposed and exiled from Baghdad (A Jewish Princedom in Feudal France, 1972). He also suggested that Makhir was the same person as Maghario, Count of Narbonne.
Zuckerman went further. In the poem Willehalm by Wolfram von Eschenbach (c1170-c1220), the hero Guillem de Gellone is the son of Aymeri de Narbonne by his wife Alda / Aldana, daughter of Charles Martel. Guillem de Gellone's real-life counterpart was Guillaume I, comte de Toulouse, son of Theodoric, a count in Septimania. Zuckerman suggested that the poem changed the names, but memorialized actual relationships. So, Guillaume's father Theodoric must have been the same person as Aymeri. Then, Zuckerman identified Theodoric / Aymeri with Makhi / Natronai / Maghario.
Scholars have dismissed Zuckerman's methodology as flawed. Nevertheless, Guillaume de Toulouse might have been Jewish. He led the Frankish forces when they captured Barcelona in 801. The campaign was memorialized in a poem In honorem Hludovici imperatoris ("In honour of Emperor Louis") (826), by Ermoldus Nigellus. The poem uses Jewish dating and portrays Guillaume de Toulouse as an observant Jew.
Muhammad
Modern genealogists have attempted to find a line of descent from the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) through the rulers of Muslim Spain.
There is a possible line, through Zaida, the wife or concubine of Alfonso VI of Castile, but it is disputed.
The first problem with the line is that it comes through Ayesha, the wife of Yazîd I, the 2nd Umayyad Caliph (680-683). The Caliph’s descendants claimed that Ayesha was a daughter of Mohammad, a link that would substantially enhance their legitimacy. However, Muslim scholars say she was Muhammad's step-daughter, not his daughter. The title Sharif is accorded only to descendants of Muhammad’s daughter Fatima.
The second problem is that it is not entirely clear that Zaïda was really descended from Ayesha. Zaïda was a daughter-in-law (and probably also niece) of al-Mutamid, ruler of the taifa of Seville. He was a descendant of Ayesha, and if she was his niece, she shared that descent. Zaïda’s first husband was (her cousin?) Fath al-Ma'mum, the ruler of Córdoba and son of the Emir of Seville. He was killed in 1091 while trying to escape a seige of Córdoba. Zaïda made her way as a refugee to the court of Alfonso VI. He was already mature (age 51), married to a queen who was ill, and was lacking a male heir. Zaïda became his concubine, converted to Christianity, and took the Christian name Isabel. She bore Alfonso his only surviving son Sancho. It is not clear whether Alfonso subsequently married her. Her tombstone, erected long after her death, says, "Aqui descansa la reina Isabel, mujer del rey Alfonso, hija de Aben-Abeth, rey de Sevilla; que antes se llamaba Zayda," which translates as "here lies Queen Elizabeth, wife of King Alfonso, daughter of Aben-abeth, king of Seville; previously called Zaïda."
The third problem is that there are no known descents from Zaïda. Her only proven son Sancho died in childhood. It’s possible, however, that Zaïda might have been the same person as Alfonso’s wife Elisabeth. Elisabeth had two daughters who became the ancestors of many European royal families. Elisabeth’s burial plaque, erected long after her death, says she was a daughter of Louis [VI], but that would be chronologically impossible. She might have been a sister of Louis VI, or the plaque might be an attempt to disguise her non-Christian identity.
Pagano Ebriaci
Pagano Ebriaci (?-c1091), of Pisa, ancestor of the Christian Ebriaci family, might have been a convert from Judaism, a son of Joseph of Fustat. The relationship is conjectural, and seems to have originated in the suggestion that the surname Ebriaci means "the Hebrew". Another theory is that the name Ebriaci might derive from a Latin word meaning drunk. If Pagano Ebriaci was a son of Joseph of Fustat, then he was a grandson of Hezekiah IV, 38th Exilarch and a descendant of King David. Pagano Ebriaci was an ancestor of Edmund FitzAlan, 9th Earl of Arundel, through Manfredo III, marchese di Saluzzo.
Scota
She is a legendary figure from whom the Scots took their name. She is said to have been the daughter of an unnamed Egyptian pharaoh. The context of her story shows that the Irish thought of her as a daughter of the pharaoh of the Exodus and a contemporary of Moses.
There are two different versions of her place in the genealogy. She was the wife either of Gaodhal Glas or of his descendant Míl Espáine.
An 11th century rescenison of the Historia Brittonum menions Scota. She also appears in the Book of Leinster, a 12th century redaction of the Lebor Gabála Érenn, where she married Geytholos (Gaodhal Glas). The earliest Scottish sources claim Geytholos was "a certain king of the countries of Greece, Neolus, or Heolaus, by name", while the Leinster redaction of the Lebor Gabála Érenn calls him a Scythian.
In variant manuscripts of the Lebor Gabála Érenn, Scota's husband was Míl Espáine.
Faced with the discrepancy, modern genealogists have created two Scotas.
There are many guesses about her father, Scota the wife of Gaodhal Glas being (perhaps) daughter of Pharaoh Cingeris, and Scota the wife of Míl Espáine being (perhaps) daughter of Pharaoh Nactabaeus. Both pharaohs are named only in medieval Irish sources, not in Egyptian sources.
Some genealogists make one or both women the daughter of whichever pharaoh they believe was the pharaoh of the Exodus.
Tamar Tephi
Tamar Tephi and Teia Tephei are said to have been daughters of Zedekiah, King of Judah, but they are fictitious. Their descents from the kings of Judah is a 19th century fraud, from a misreading of old Irish sources.
According to the colorful story, Tamar Tephi and her sister Teia avoided the fate of their brothers, who were killed by the King of Babylon at Riblah. The prophet Jeremiah spirited them off to Ireland via Egypt and Spain, along with the Stone of the Covenant, which became known as Lia Fail (Stone of Destiny). (We are left wondering why Jeremiah was not equally helpful to the rest of the royal family.)
(Source: Wikipedia, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legendary_kings_of_Britain#Tea_Tephi
List of legendary kings of Britain])
Resources
Double Cain descent - Reu
Internet genealogies suffer a well-known defect -- many of them accept as true many lines that are known by scholars to be false. Geni is no exception. In Geni’s early days, many users uploaded GEDCOM files with spurious and fantastic genealogies. As users we’ve done a lot of cleanup, merging duplicates and cutting bad connections, but there is a lot of work still to do.
Usually, the term “Descents from Antiquity” refers to modern efforts to find plausible lines of descent. However, it can also include traditional descents that have varying degrees of reliability.
This project is designed to help clean up the many fictitious genealogies and to focus attention on legitimate debate about extending our shared genealogy. You can help us by identifying questionable lines. It is generally unhelpful to simply say something like, “No one can prove a descent from Julius Caesar.” What is most helpful is to identify the specific generations where the evidence fails, search for reliable sources, then start a discussion.
Medieval forgeries
A common belief in antiquity and in the middle ages was that tribes took their name from a common ancestor. For example, the Historia Brittonum (Nennius, 9th century) names Alanus as the first man to live in Europe. He had a son Hiscion, and Hiscion’s four sons Francus, Romanus, Alamanus, and Brutus were the ancestors respectively of the French, Romans, Germans, and British. The name of this Alanus was probably a corrupted form of Mannus, the Old Germanic god who was the ancestor of mankind. Some scholars believe that Mannus was another name for Bor, the father of the god Odin in Norse tradition. In English, German and the Scandinavian languages we get our word man from Mannus.
When the Europeans converted to Christianity, they had a problem. Their royal families were only a few generations removed from the old gods. And, worse. Exposed to Roman arts and sciences, they discovered the idea of “historical time”. The world was older than they had ever thought about. Their royal pedigrees weren’t long enough to go back to the creation of the world.
From the Romans they learned that modern science had proved that everyone on earth was descended from Adam and Eve. (It said so in the Christian scriptures, which were absolutely true -- according the scholars.)
The answer was simple and obvious. The old gods had to have been humans, famous men and great warriors who came to worshipped as gods. And, if they were human, they must have been descended from Adam and Eve like everyone else. The trick was to figure out how.
One of the earliest surviving attempts to create this kind of genealogy is the Historia Brittonum by the Welsh monk Nennius (9th century), who recorded the following genealogy:
(1) Noah, his son (2) Japheth, his son (3) Joham, his son (4) Jobath, his son (5) Bath, his son (6) Hisrau, his son (7) Esraa, his son (8) Ra, his son (9) Aber, his son (10) Ooth, his son (11) Ethec, his son (12) Aurthack, his son (13) Ecthactur, his son (14) Ecthactur, his son (15) Mair, his son (16) Semion, his son (17) Boibus, his son (18) Thoi, his son (19) Ogomuin, his son (20) Fethuir, and his son (21) Alanus.
Nennius also tied Alanus to Rome by making him a husband of Rhea Silvia, whose twin sons Romulus and Remus are said to have founded Rome in 753 BCE. The connection is scarcely credible historically, but served neatly to graft the eponymous ancestors of the northern Europeans onto classical tradition by making them brothers of Romulus, the eponymous ancestor of the Romans.
These medieval genealogies connecting ancient kings to Adam are pure invention. They are interesting now because they show the history of history.
England
The Anglo-Saxons, forerunners of the modern English, were ruled by kings who claimed to be descended from the god Woden (Odin in the Norse versions). In later Scandinavian versions, Woden was the son of Bor, son of Búri. Some scholars believe that in the Germanic version, which included the Anglo-Saxons, Woden was the son of Mannus, the ancestor of mankind, who was son of Tuisto.
English monks kept Woden, but dumped Bor and Búri. They “discovered” that Woden was descended from Noah, but the process took several tries.
In one place, the 9th century Anglo-Saxon chronicle gives the following line. There are too few generations here, but this fragment might preserve the earliest non-divine version of Woden’s ancestry.
(1) Noah, his son (2) ---, his son (3) Finn, who was born in the ark, his son (4) Freothelaf, his son (5) Frithuwald, his son (6) Woden.
About the same time, Nennius in his Historia Brittonum gives a slightly different version. Here we get two more generations beyond Finn, which might also represent an authentic tradition.
(1) Geat, “who, as they say, was the son of a god”, his son (2) Godwulf, his son (3) Finn, his son (4) Frithuwulf, his son (5) Frithowald, and his son (6) Woden.
Nennius gives us more theology than genealogy. He says that Geat “as they say, was the son of a god, not of the omnipotent God and our Lord Jesus Christ (who before the beginning of the world, was with the Father and the Holy Spirit, co-eternal and of the same substance, and who, in compassion to human nature, disdained not to assume the form of a servant), but the offspring of one of their idols, and whom, blinded by some demon, they worshipped according to the custom of the heathen.”
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of documents rather than a single document. In another place (855), it gives a fuller line.
(1) Noe [Noah], his son (2) Sceaf, his son (3) Bedwig Sceafing, his son (4) Hwala Bedwiging, his son (5) Haþra Hwalaing, his son (6) Itermon Haðraing, his son (7) Heremod Itermoning, his son (8) Sceldwea Heremoding, his son (9) Beaw Sceldwaing, his son (10) Taetwa Beawing, his son (11) Geat Taetwaing, his son (12) God wulf Geating, his son (13) Fin Godwulfing, his son (14) Frealaf Finning, and his son (15) Woden Frealafing. (Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, Plummer and Earle (eds.), 66, 67 and note 6).
A note says, “id est filius Noe se waes geboren on þaere earce Noes.” That is, “he [Sceaf] is the son of Noah, he was born in Noah’s ark.” This detail ties the old pagan tradition to the new Christian tradition. Sceaf was a Norse god who arrived by boat as a baby to rule the Danes. Now, he is neatly made the son of the Christian ark builder.
Later monks, perhaps competing for prestige with the Franks, decided to dump Noah and take Woden’s ancestry back to Troy, then connect the Trojans to the Jewish scriptures. This version runs as follows. Note that the names of the new generations, between (10) and (16) have been drawn chiefly from nicknames of the old god Thor. Some of the other names might have been invented in a similar way.
(1) Judah, ancestor of the tribe of Judah, his son (2) Zara, his son (3) Darda, his son (4) Erichthonious, his son (5) Tros, his son (6) Ilus, his son (7) Laomedon, his son (8) Tithonius, his son (9) Memnon, his son (10) Thor, his son (11) Einridi, his son (12) Vingethor, his son (13) Vingener, his son (14) Móda, his son (15) Magi [Noe], his son (16) Sceaf [Seskef], his son (17) Bedwig [Bedvig], his son (18) Hwala, his son (19) Hrathra [Annarr], his son (20) Itermon [Ítermann], his son (21) Heremod [Heremód], his son (22) Heremod [Heremód], his son (23) Beaw [Bjárr], his son (24) Tætwa, his son (25) Geat [Ját], his son (26) Godwulf [Gudólfr], his son (27) Finn, his son (28) Frithuwulf, his son (29) Frealaf [Fridleifr], his son Frealaf [Fridleifr], his son (30) Freawine, his son (31) Frithuwald, and his son (32) Woden.
Attempts to reconcile these genealogies by equating the human Frithuwald with the divine Bor, and the human Frealaf with divine Búri have been problematic, because they end by giving Woden a set of mythical relatives that include the Ice Giants.
France
The Franks, a confederation of Germanic tribes that formed the core of modern France, claimed descent from Francus (or Francio). According to one version of the story, Francus and his people were defeated by the Roman general Drusus in 11 BCE. Francus was killed, and they were relocated to the region between the Rhine and the Danube.
Frankish monks linked Francus to the kings of Troy. The Chronicle of Fredegar (7th century) mentions the legend. It was elaborated in the Liber historiae Francorum (probably 727). Successive generations continued adding new details.
In other words, the Franks claimed to be the distant cousins of the Romans (who claimed descent from Aeneas, another Trojan). It was a nice piece of political propaganda because it fit nicely with two things the Franks wanted to emphasize: (1) as cousins of the Romans they were equal to the Romans, and (2) as cousins and equals, they were the legitimate successors of the Roman empire.
The Grandes Chroniques de France (13th - 15th centuries), a vast compilation of historic material, refers to the Trojan origins of the French dynasty.
Johannes Trithemius' De origine gentis Francorum compendium (1514) describes the Franks as originally Trojans (called "Sicambers" or "Sicambrians") after the fall of Troy who came into Gaul after being forced out of the area around the mouth of the Danube by the Goths in 439 BCE (1:33). He also details the reigns of each of these kings—including Francus (43:76) from whom the Franks are named—and their battles with the Gauls, Goths, Saxons, etc.
(Source: Wikipedia, Francus)
Ireland John O'Hart (1824-1902), an Irish genealogist used ancient sources, such as the Lebor Gabála Érenn and the Annals of the Four Masters, to compile a genealogical history of Ireland, Irish pedigrees; or, The origin and stem of the Irish nation (1876). According to his work, the Irish kings are descended from Adam as follows:
- Adam
- Seth
- Enos
- Cainan
- Mahalaleel
- Jared
- Enoch
- Methuselah
- Lamech
- Noah
- Japhet
- Magog
- Baoth ("to whom Scythia came as his lot")
- Phoeniusa Farsaidh (Fenius Farsa), King of Scythia
- Neuil
- Gaodhal (Gathelus), married Scota
- Asruth
- Sruth (who fled Egypt to Creta)
- Heber Scut (returned to Scythia)
- Beouman, King of Scythia
- Ogaman, King of Scythia
- Tait, King of Scythia
- Agnon (who fled Scythia by sea with the majority of his people)
- Lamhfionn (who led his people to Gothia or Getulia, where Carthage was afterwards built)
- Heber Glunfionn, King of Gothia
- Agnan Fionn, King of Gothia
- Febric Glas, King of Gothia
- Nenuall, King of Gothia
- Nuadhad, King of Gothia
- Alladh, King of Gothia
- Arcadh, King of Gothia
- Deag, King of Gothia
- Brath, King of Gothia (who left Gothia with a large band of his people and settled in Galicia, Spain)
- Breoghan, King of Galicia, Andalusia, Murcia, Castile, and Portugal
- Bile, King of Galicia, Andalusia, Murcia, Castile, and Portugal
- Galamh (also known as Milesius of Spain), King of Galicia, Andalusia, Murcia, Castile, and Portugal, married Scota
(Source: Wikipedia, John O’Hart)
Note: We need to clarify the extent to which O’Hart’s genealogies follow ancient sources, and whether any of it was his own invention.
Ostrogoths
The historian Jordanes wrote De origine actibusque Getarum ((The Origin and Deeds of the Getae/Goths, c531), commonly called the Getica. In it, he gives the history of the Goths.
Jordanes traces the Ostrogothic royal family, the Amelungs (Amali), to Hulmul, son of Gapt (Getica, 14). This Gapt is thought to be the same person as the Norse god Gaut or Geat. His son Hulmul was probably the same person as Humli, the ancestor of the Danes in Norse tradition. In a vairant version, Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks (13th century) says, "Of old, they say, Humli over Huns did rule, Gizur the Gauts, the Goths Angantyr, Valdar the Danes, the Romans Kjar, Alrek the Valiant the English people."
The genealogy seems to be artificial. Athalaric (?-534), king of the Ostrogoths in Jordanes time, is presented as the 17th Amal king of the Goths since Gapt, just as there had been 17 Roman kings between Aeneas and Romulus. Thus, the Amal dynasty presented itself as a second gens Iulia, ruling both Romans and Goths. In fact, the Amal dynasty is documented no earlier than Theodoric's father or grandfather, an ally of Attila the Hun. The Goths themselves are documented no earlier than 291.
- Gapt
- Hulmul
- Augis
- Amal (from whom the name of the Amali comes)
- Hisarnis
- Ostrogotha
- Hunuil
- Athal
- Achiulf
- Oduulf
- Achiulf
- Ansila
- Ediulf
- Vultuulf
- Hermanaric
- Vultuulf
- Valaravans
- Vinitharius
- Vandalarius
- Thiudimer
- Valamir
- Vidimer
- Thiudimer
- Theodoric the Great (454-526), King of the Ostrogoths
Aeneas Gens Iulia, the family to which Julius Caesar belonged, claimed descent from the Roman goddess Venus (Greek: Aphrodite) through Aeneas, her son by her lover Anchises, who was a Trojan prince.
The legend that Aeneas escaped the Fall of Troy (about 1200 BCE) and journeyed to Italy goes back to at least the 5th century BCE. By 400 BCE, Aeneas was being venerated in Italy as the god Iuppiter Indiges, the tribal ancestor of Latins and Etruscans.
In some Roman traditions, Iulus, the semi-divine ancestor of gens Iulia, was identical with Aeneas’ son Ascanius (Vergil). In other traditions, Iulus was the son of Aeneas by his Trojan wife, Creusa, while Ascanius was the son of Aeneas' Latin wife Lavinia, daughter of Latinus (Livy). And, in still another tradition, Iulus was son of Ascanius, and disputed the throne with Silvius after Ascanius' death (Dionysius of Halicarnasus).
When medieval monks were inventing new genealogies Aeneas was a popular figure. In the Norse saga, the Deluding of Gylfe, he is called Anea. Medieval Welsh genealogies called him Annyn Tro. In one Welsh source he is called a son of Brydain (eponymous of Britain) and a grandson of Aedd Mawr (Edward the Great) who lived about 1300 BCE. These chronologies are too confused to be credible.
Anna, kinswoman of the Virgin Mary
The early Welsh royal families claimed to be relatives of the family of Jesus.
According to Harleian MS. 3958, Beli Mawr was husband to Anna (who may be a confabulation of Dôn), a "near kinswoman [consobrina] of the Virgin Mary." A medieval tradition identifies her as a sister (or daughter) of Joseph of Arimathea, but the tradition is not old enough to be authentic. There is no reason to think she was an historical figure.
Dôn seems to have been a Christianized version of the Celtic goddess Anû, the mother goddess of the Celts. In Gaul she was called Belisama. In Ireland she was Danu, the matriarch of the Túatha Dé Danann, who took their name from her. The Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh legends, calls her Dôn, sister of Mâth mab Mathonwy, King of Gwynedd.
"Chronologically speaking, if Anna married a Briton after her father arrived in this country, then we must assume that she was nearer to Jesus' age than her cousin, Mary (ie. born c. 0). Beli is recorded in the Mabinogion and Welsh Genealogies as having been the father of Caswallon (or Cassivellaunus), the leader of the Celtic tribes who repelled Cæsar's invasions of 55 & 54 bc. He could, therefore, not possibly have married Anna of Arimathea. Moreover, the local ruler whom Joseph received his land gift from, is said to have been Arfyrag (or Arviragus), Beli & Anna's supposed great great grandson." (David Nash Ford, "St. Joseph of Arimathea: Ancestor of Kings?" in Early British Kingdoms (visited Nov. 21, 2011).
King Arthur
If King Arthur was a real person, as many scholars believe, then he was a war leader in 6th century Britain. Some part of his life might have been authentically recorded by English monks such as Gildas (c500-570), Bede (672/3-736), Nennius (9th century), and Geoffrey of Monmouth (c1100-c1155). However, these accounts are confused and contradictory. Arthur might have been related in some way to the Roman aristocrat Ambrosius Aurelianus, although the relationship is first recorded by Geoffrey of Monmouth, who was writing 600 years later.
There is no doubt about Ambrosius’ existence. He was mentioned in a near contemporary document by the monk Gildas, who says he won an important battle against the invading Anglo-Saxons. Some scholars believe it is possible to sketch a brief genealogy for Ambrosius, perhaps from the Roman usurper Constantine III or from a distant cousin of the Emperor Theodosius I (or both).
In modern times there has been an explosion of genealogies drawn from Grail romances that turn fictional characters from the 11th and 12th centuries into historical people. The seminal works for these genealogies are Holy Blood, Holy Gail, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln (1982) and Bloodline of the Holy Grail, by Laurence Gardner (1996). They are best characterized as “alternative history”.
Beli Mawr
The early Welsh royal families claimed to be descended from Beli Mawr.
Beli Mawr was in fact a Welsh version the Celtic sun god. Among the Brythonic Celts he was Belenus (the Shining One), a fertility god who looked after sheep and cattle. In Ireland, he was Bilé, the god of death. His festival was Beltaine (Fire of Bel), held May 1st. On that day, purifying fires were lit.
According to the Mabinogion his name was Beli son of Mynogan. Wikipedia says, "However, it should be noted that in medieval Welsh tradition, Beli Mawr is often given the patronymic fab Manogan / Mynogan ("son of Manogan"). This appears to derive from a textual garbling of the name of a real historical figure, Adminius, son of Cunobelinus; after being transmitted through the Roman authors Suetonius and Orosius, this name became Bellinus filius Minocanni in the medieval Latin text from Wales, Historia Brittonum. Thus, although Beli became a separate personage in medieval pseudohistory from Cunobelinus (Welsh Cynfelyn, Shakespeare's Cymbeline), he was generally presented as a king reigning in the period immediately before the Roman invasion; his "son" Caswallawn is the historical Cassivellaunus."
According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, his name was Heli, he succeeded his father Digueillus, and he reigned 40 years.
The Mabinogion names his three sons as Lludd, Casswallawn and Nynnyaw, or four sons Lludd, Casswallawn, Llevelys and Eveyd. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, he had three sons, Lud, Cassivelaunus and Nennius.
Brân the Blessed The early Welsh royal families claimed to be descended from Brân the Blessed and his father Llŷr Llediath.
Brân was legendary king of the Silures, probably originating as a Christianized form of the Celtic god Brân. He is one of the principal characters of the 1st Branch of the Mabinogion, which begins "Bran the Blessed (Bendigeidfran), the son of Llyr and Penarddun, daughter of Beli son of Mynogan, was ruler of Britain. Bran was the brother of Manawyddan and Branwen (Bronwen), and the half-brother of Nissyen and Evnissyen." He is said to have been succeeded by his uncle Caswallawn.
In Christian legend Brân is said to have been baptized in Rome in 36 CE. "Bran was said to have been taken as a captive to Rome where he joined the household of St. Paul. Returning to Britain, with SS. Aristobulus and Joseph of Arimathea some years later, he became among the first to introduce Christianity to the Island, hence his epithet of "the Blessed". This whole story is a late 17th century fabrication based on misinformation." (David Nash Ford, "Bran Fendigaid alias Bendigeitvran: Celtic God of Regeneration" in Early British Kingdoms(http://www.earlybritishkingdoms.com/bios/bran.html, visited Nov. 21, 2011)
The story of Brân's conversion to Christianity is probably a confusion with the historical Cunobelin (Arfyrag's father) who was thought to have been taken captive to Rome where he became converted to Christianity. (David Nash Ford, "St. Joseph of Arimathea: Ancestor of Kings?" in Early British Kingdoms (http://www.earlybritishkingdoms.com/articles/josanc.html, visited Nov. 21, 2011). Brân and Cunobelin both had sons named Caradoc, and the different Caradocs became confused. There is, no doubt an added confusion of Caradocs here, as far too few generations are given.
In Arthurian romance Brân became Bron(s), the Fisher King. He is said to have married Enygeus, a sister of Joseph of Arimathea and of Anna the Prophetess (perhaps the same person as Anna, the near kinswoman of the Virgin Mary. She had 12 sons, including Alain de Borron. This story mangles the earlier version, in which Brân was a grandson of Anna, the sister (or daughter) of Joseph of Arimathea.
In the Arthurian romance 'Bonedd yr Arwyr, Brân is made both a paternal and maternal ancestor of King Arthur.
Brutus
The early Welsh kings claimed descent from Brutus, the legendary 1st King of Britain, which is said to have been named for him.
Welsh genealogists called him Brwt. He is said to have founded Troia Nova ("New Troy"), which became corrupted to Trinovantum, and now is London. He is not mentioned in any classical source and is not considered to be historical.
Brutus was first mentioned in the 9th century, by Nennius, who says he was a son of Hiscion, grandson of Alanus (Mannus), and a descendant of Noah. One variant makes him a grandson or great grandson of the Trojan hero Aeneas, great grandson of the legendary Roman king Numa Pompilius, and traces his genealogy to Japheth, son of Noah. Another variant makes him the son of Silvius and grandson of Ascanius, the father of Aeneas, and traces his genealogy to Ham, son of Noah. [Historia Brittonum.]
Geoffrey of Monmouth says Brutus was son of Silvius and grandson of Ascanius. He was exiled from Italy. He went to Greece, and liberated the Trojans enslaved there. Then, he crossed to the island of Albion, which he re-named for himself, and became the first king. After his death, each of his sons received one-third of Britain, Locrinus (England), Albanactus (Scotland) and Kamber (Wales).
Many scholars believe the Hiscion son of Alanus named by Nennius as Brutus' father was identical to the Istro son of Mannus, who appears in Germanic tradition as the eponymous ancestor of the Istvaeones, one of the three divisions of Germanic proto-tribes.
Charlemagne
Millions of people in the world today are descendants of the Frankish emperor Charlemagne, and they can prove it. Charlemagne’s family were upstarts, however. There are no proven links between Charlemagne and his predecessors in the Merovingian dynasty. In fact, Charlemagne has only 10 proven ancestors. Using Ahnentafel numbering, his ancestry looks like this:
- Charlemagne
- Pepin the Short, father
- Bertrade of Laon, mother
- Charles Martel, father’s father
- Rotrude, father’s mother
- Caribert of Laon, mother’s father
- ---
- Pepin of Herstal, father’s father’s father
- Alpaida, father’s father’s mother
- ---
- ---
- ---
- Bertrada of Prüm, mother’s father’s mother
- ---
- ---
- Ansegisel, father’s father’s father’s father
- Begga, father’s father’s father’s mother
Some modern scholars, working with original documents, believe they have found evidence to show that Charlemagne’s ancestry can be traced, probably, to an old Roman senatorial family. The reconstruction is plausible, because the Franks who Charlemagne ruled had conquered the old Roman province of Gaul in 486, and the Franks are known to have intermarried with the surviving Gallo-Roman aristocracy.
- Flavius Afranius Syagrius, of Lyons; a Gallo-Roman senator
- (Syagria), his unknown daughter; married Ferreolus
- Tonantius Ferreolus, a Gallo-Roman senator; married Papianilla, clarissima femina, a relative of the Papianilla who was a daughter of the emperor Avitus, and who married Sidonius Apollinaris
- Tonantius Ferreolus, a Gallo-Roman senator; married Industria
- Ferreolus, a Gallo-Roman senator; married Dode, abbess of St.-Pierre de Rheims
- Ansbert, a senator; married Bilichilde
- Arnoald, Bishop of Metz
- Dode, probably his daughter; married St. Arnulf, Bishop of Metz
- Ansegisel, probably their son; married St. Begga; daughter of Pepin I, Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia
- Pepin of Herstal, Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia; married Alpais / Alpaida
- Charles Martel, Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia; married Rotrude
- Pepin the Short, Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia; married Bertrada of Laon
- Charlemagne
Using this reconstruction as a starting point, many other scholars have attempted to extend Charlemagne’s ancestry further, with varying degrees of success.
Charles Constantine
Charles Constantine (c903-c962), comte de Vienne and de Bellay, was a son of Louis III the Blind (c883-928), Holy Roman Emperor. His mother was either the Burgundian princess Adelais or the Byzantine princess Anna Myakes.
The debate over Charles Constantine’s ancestry is very heated. Anna Myakes was a daughter of the Byzantine emperor Leo VI. There were negotiations to betroth her to Louis III but it isn't clear whether the marriage ever took place. If the marriage did take place, and if Charles Constantine was a son of that marriage, his ancestry would include Byzantine emperors Leo VI and Leo's father, either Basil I or Michael III.
A key part of the debate is whether Charles really had the nickname Constantine. The name was uncommon in the west, so it supports the theory, accepted by Septimani, that his mother was the Byzantine princess Anna. However, the name might refer only to his imperial ancestry. Flodoard (894-966) called him Charles Constantine, but the evidence that he used the name in his lifetime is too weak to be reliable. A diploma of his father and his own charters call him only Charles.
Érimón mac Míl Espáine
According to ancient Irish sources Érimón mac Míl Espáine brought his people, the Milesians, to Ireland about 500 BCE, and conquered it from an older race, the Tuatha Dé Danann. (See the Lebor Gabála Érenn, and others.) The story might (very arguably) have some foundation, but cannot be proven or disproven. (See above, under Ireland)
Francus French monks claimed that a Trojan prince, Francus, was the eponymous ancestor of the Frankish kings. Francus is first mentioned in Nennius' Historia Brittonum (8th century) as the son of Hiscion, and eponymous ancestor of the Franks. His Trojan ancestry came later.
In the Renaissance, Francus was generally considered to be another name for the Trojan hero Astyanax (son of Hector), who was saved from the destruction of Troy.
Jean Lemaire de Belges's Illustrations de Gaule et Singularités de Troie (1510–12) has Astyanax survive the fall of Troy and arrive in Western Europe. He changes his name to Francus and becomes king of Celtic Gaul (while, at the same time, Bavo, cousin of Priam, comes to the city of Trier) and founds the dynasty leading to Pepin and Charlemagne.[9] He is said to have founded and named the city of Paris in honor of his uncle Paris.
Gilles Corrozet's La Fleur des antiquitez... de Paris (1532) describes the French king Francis I as the 64th descendant of Hector of Troy.
In Pierre de Ronsard's epic poem La Franciade (1572), the god Jupiter saves Astyanax (renamed Francus). The young hero arrives in Crete and falls in love with the princess Hyanthe with whom he is destined to found the royal dynasty of France.
(Source: Wikipedia, Francus)
Genuissa, wife of Arvirargus
Venissa (Genissa, Genvissa, Genuissa) is a fictional person who serves to link the Welsh kings to ancient Rome.
According to Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th century Historia Regum Britanniae, she was a daughter of the Roman Emperor Claudius, whom he gave in marriage to the British king Arvirargus once he had submitted to Rome.
According to Geoffrey's account she was very beautiful, and so enchanted Arvirargus that he preferred her company to anyone else's. He founded Gloucester, supposedly named after Claudius, in her honour. When Arvirargus fell out with Rome and Vespasian was sent to enforce a reconciliation, Venissa acted as mediator between them.
Venissa cannot be considered historical. She is not mentioned in authentic Roman history; her supposed husband Arvirargus is known only from a cryptic reference in Satire IV, a 2nd century satirical poem by Juvenal; and it is in any case inconceivable that a daughter, even an illegitimate daughter, of a Roman emperor could be given in marriage to a barbarian without attracting comment. Nonetheless, she and her husband, identified with the historical Caratacus, appear in many uncritical genealogies originating in the Tudor period.
(Source: Wikipedia, Venissa)
Joseph of Arimathea
The Christian scriptures say that Joseph of Arimathea was an influential member of the Sanhedrin who petitioned Pontius Pilate for Jesus’ body, but give no details about his life or family. According to the Talmud, he was the younger brother of the father of the Virgin Mary. That is, he was Mary's uncle and Jesus' great-uncle.
Some modern writers venture that he might be identified with Josephus (Jewish: Yosef ben Matityahu, Roman: Titus Flavius Josephus), a Jewish historian and an apologist for the Roman empire. However, scholars dismiss the idea. Josephus was born in 37 CE, making him a generation younger than Jesus, so it would not be possible he was Jesus' great uncle.
The first mention of Joseph of Arimathea in connection with Britain is the Life of Mary Magdalene by Rabanus Maurus (766-856), Archbishop of Mainz. Jseoph first appears as the legendary Keeper of the Holy Grail in Robert de Boron's Joseph d'Arimathie (early 13th century), which says he settled in Britain after the Crucifixion of Jesus, bringing the Holy Grail with him. The story spawned a rich literature on the same theme. Later tradition says he was a wealthy merchant who owned tin mines in Cornwall. Some popular fiction has him bringing Jesus with him to Britain to be trained by Druids there.
Lleuver Mawr (to be added)
Llyr Lediaith The early Welsh royal families claimed to be descended from Llŷr Llediath.and his son Brân the Blessed.
The story is not reliable. Llyr was a Celtic sea god, cognate of the Irish god Lir, but perhaps also a historical King of the Silures. As an historical figure, he is said to have been educated in Rome by Augustus Caesar. His home was at Dunraven castle, situated on a hill called Twyn Rhyvan (the Hill of Rome) in Glamorgan.
He was used by Shakespeare as a prototype for King Lear.
Makhir of Narbonne
Makhir of Narbonne (8th century) was the leader of the Jewish community of Narbonne, and the ancestor of an important family there. Prof. Arthur Zuckerman suggested that he was the same person as Natronai ben Habibi, an exilarch who was deposed and exiled from Baghdad (A Jewish Princedom in Feudal France, 1972). He also suggested that Makhir was the same person as Maghario, Count of Narbonne.
Zuckerman went further. In the poem Willehalm by Wolfram von Eschenbach (c1170-c1220), the hero Guillem de Gellone is the son of Aymeri de Narbonne by his wife Alda / Aldana, daughter of Charles Martel. Guillem de Gellone's real-life counterpart was Guillaume I, comte de Toulouse, son of Theodoric, a count in Septimania. Zuckerman suggested that the poem changed the names, but memorialized actual relationships. So, Guillaume's father Theodoric must have been the same person as Aymeri. Then, Zuckerman identified Theodoric / Aymeri with Makhi / Natronai / Maghario.
Scholars have dismissed Zuckerman's methodology as flawed. Nevertheless, Guillaume de Toulouse might have been Jewish. He led the Frankish forces when they captured Barcelona in 801. The campaign was memorialized in a poem In honorem Hludovici imperatoris ("In honour of Emperor Louis") (826), by Ermoldus Nigellus. The poem uses Jewish dating and portrays Guillaume de Toulouse as an observant Jew.
Muhammad
Modern genealogists have attempted to find a line of descent from the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) through the rulers of Muslim Spain.
There is a possible line, through Zaida, the wife or concubine of Alfonso VI of Castile, but it is disputed.
The first problem with the line is that it comes through Ayesha, the wife of Yazîd I, the 2nd Umayyad Caliph (680-683). The Caliph’s descendants claimed that Ayesha was a daughter of Mohammad, a link that would substantially enhance their legitimacy. However, Muslim scholars say she was Muhammad's step-daughter, not his daughter. The title Sharif is accorded only to descendants of Muhammad’s daughter Fatima.
The second problem is that it is not entirely clear that Zaïda was really descended from Ayesha. Zaïda was a daughter-in-law (and probably also niece) of al-Mutamid, ruler of the taifa of Seville. He was a descendant of Ayesha, and if she was his niece, she shared that descent. Zaïda’s first husband was (her cousin?) Fath al-Ma'mum, the ruler of Córdoba and son of the Emir of Seville. He was killed in 1091 while trying to escape a seige of Córdoba. Zaïda made her way as a refugee to the court of Alfonso VI. He was already mature (age 51), married to a queen who was ill, and was lacking a male heir. Zaïda became his concubine, converted to Christianity, and took the Christian name Isabel. She bore Alfonso his only surviving son Sancho. It is not clear whether Alfonso subsequently married her. Her tombstone, erected long after her death, says, "Aqui descansa la reina Isabel, mujer del rey Alfonso, hija de Aben-Abeth, rey de Sevilla; que antes se llamaba Zayda," which translates as "here lies Queen Elizabeth, wife of King Alfonso, daughter of Aben-abeth, king of Seville; previously called Zaïda."
The third problem is that there are no known descents from Zaïda. Her only proven son Sancho died in childhood. It’s possible, however, that Zaïda might have been the same person as Alfonso’s wife Elisabeth. Elisabeth had two daughters who became the ancestors of many European royal families. Elisabeth’s burial plaque, erected long after her death, says she was a daughter of Louis [VI], but that would be chronologically impossible. She might have been a sister of Louis VI, or the plaque might be an attempt to disguise her non-Christian identity.
Pagano Ebriaci
Pagano Ebriaci (?-c1091), of Pisa, ancestor of the Christian Ebriaci family, might have been a convert from Judaism, a son of Joseph of Fustat. The relationship is conjectural, and seems to have originated in the suggestion that the surname Ebriaci means "the Hebrew". Another theory is that the name Ebriaci might derive from a Latin word meaning drunk. If Pagano Ebriaci was a son of Joseph of Fustat, then he was a grandson of Hezekiah IV, 38th Exilarch and a descendant of King David. Pagano Ebriaci was an ancestor of Edmund FitzAlan, 9th Earl of Arundel, through Manfredo III, marchese di Saluzzo.
Scota
She is a legendary figure from whom the Scots took their name. She is said to have been the daughter of an unnamed Egyptian pharaoh. The context of her story shows that the Irish thought of her as a daughter of the pharaoh of the Exodus and a contemporary of Moses.
There are two different versions of her place in the genealogy. She was the wife either of Gaodhal Glas or of his descendant Míl Espáine.
An 11th century rescenison of the Historia Brittonum menions Scota. She also appears in the Book of Leinster, a 12th century redaction of the Lebor Gabála Érenn, where she married Geytholos (Gaodhal Glas). The earliest Scottish sources claim Geytholos was "a certain king of the countries of Greece, Neolus, or Heolaus, by name", while the Leinster redaction of the Lebor Gabála Érenn calls him a Scythian.
In variant manuscripts of the Lebor Gabála Érenn, Scota's husband was Míl Espáine.
Faced with the discrepancy, modern genealogists have created two Scotas.
There are many guesses about her father, Scota the wife of Gaodhal Glas being (perhaps) daughter of Pharaoh Cingeris, and Scota the wife of Míl Espáine being (perhaps) daughter of Pharaoh Nactabaeus. Both pharaohs are named only in medieval Irish sources, not in Egyptian sources.
Some genealogists make one or both women the daughter of whichever pharaoh they believe was the pharaoh of the Exodus.
Tamar Tephi
Tamar Tephi and Teia Tephei are said to have been daughters of Zedekiah, King of Judah, but they are fictitious. Their descents from the kings of Judah is a 19th century fraud, from a misreading of old Irish sources.
According to the colorful story, Tamar Tephi and her sister Teia avoided the fate of their brothers, who were killed by the King of Babylon at Riblah. The prophet Jeremiah spirited them off to Ireland via Egypt and Spain, along with the Stone of the Covenant, which became known as Lia Fail (Stone of Destiny). (We are left wondering why Jeremiah was not equally helpful to the rest of the royal family.)
(Source: Wikipedia, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legendary_kings_of_Britain#Tea_Tephi
List of legendary kings of Britain])
Resources
- Wikipedia, Descent from antiquity
Double Cain descent - Reu