A research issue

so i was researching different types of deities and i happened to be looking a death personifications. i came across crom cruach. it says on his Wikipedia page that its historically suggested that hes a fertility god, yet hes listed as a death personification. Can anyone lend assistance and help me figure out what his true domain is? any help is appreciated

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for reference.

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Try this one

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Okay, so I read up on the subject and would like to contribute to this, being interested in Celtic mythology and pre-Christian Celtic traditions myself (as I am part Irish and Welsh by blood).

Crom Craugh was indeed a fertility deity, being associated with wheat and corn. Interestingly, he has a darker associate, Crom Dubh. Crom Dubh appears in folklore. This could be from the fact that “Cruagh” could mean “corn” or “bloody” depending on how the word is used in the Irish language. When you are reading about Celtic deities, you always have to take into account that Christian scholars wrote down the lore, therefore have twisted the words to match their own world view. One possibility is that Craugh became negative due to the simple fact his name can translate as “the crooked bloody one”. Other sources claim that Crom Craugh was a graveyard guardian deity, which may be why his name can be translated multiple ways.

Crom Craugh is shown in the film The Secret of Kells as a mysterious draconic deity whose eye holds the secret of all beauty, but he is a baneful creature. I think this was just to make an interesting story, though.

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so both?

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Remember gods gain additional domains all the time throughout there evolution so yeah why not both. You can be both Life Giver & Death lol

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ive been feeling a death pull lately so i grabbed my quartz and started pendulum skrying “is this the one?” lol

Ningizidda is a god of both medicine and of death. His name means “lord of the good tree” yet he is a chthonic underworld deity. I know of several entities with dual natures like that but I can’t name them right off the top of my head.

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Some people also say life and death are two sides of the same coin, so if you look at it that way it makes more sense for a fertility god to also be a death god.

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Osiris has a similar link to grain agriculture, death, and fertility, and the British “Green Man” is also a cereal god with links to the same things. I think there are others, but the names escape me right now.

I can only speculate - a stripped wheat field after harvest looks pretty much like nothing’s ever going to grow again, even more so than a patch from which vegetables are cropped, where the soil remains visibly unchanged and weeds rotuinely grow.

Farmers often used to burn the stubble, as well, at least in Europe - another rather funereal touch!

Then from this, the seed (possibly linked to the masculine concept) re-enters Mother Earth, and a new life-giving crop arises.

(I actually think cereal is evil, the root of all slavery and genocides, and worse, but my strange views on this are off-topic to the OP!)

Anyway, the lore of a young male god who dies for his people, then rises again to bring renewed hope is pretty widespread in agricultural lands, but afaik less so where grain agriculture’s not so significant, and I think it may be linked to this, especially because cereal cropping anually is a relatively new thing, and these gods always come later on, entering INTO an established pantheon or timeline, as a new and nocel concept, they’re not usually part of the creation myths - those usually involve killing an animal or human ancestor and consuming its flesh, at an earlier date, after something that’s usually to do with water, a first or innovative sexual act, and the dawn.

I’m 99% convinced that all human lore and myth dates to either food or the weather, because those were the things that could kill you in the past, along with the possibilty of genetic manipulation and/or an elder civilsation that was dispersed, as well.

JMO and hope I didn’t ramble too much! :slight_smile: