Abstract of the project „Notes to the Religions of Mankind“

„Religions of Mankind: Today & Yesterday“ (published by Ringgren / Ström) presents an overview
of globally important religions. Although this book has been written 70 years ago the data cannot be
considered as up to date, but many viewpoints and details are interesting.
My remarks to this document concentrate on the study of runes, runic symbols (especially related to
the runic words wuth / with respectively thiw, thuw) and the religious concepts such as divine
names, twin concepts and duality.
As far as my insight is correct the Futhark/Futhorc alphabet is dominated by the integrated initial
keywords ᚠᚢᚦ (“Futh”) en ᚦᚢᚠ (“Thuw”), which as a universal magic formula represents the divine
names Woden and Tuw or Tiw, the personal pronoun of the first person dual “wut” or “wit” (“we
both”) as well as “wisdom”, “to wit”, “witness”, “wih”, etc.
Maybe the dual form purposely has been stored in the keyword ᚠᚢᚦ (“wit”) to avoid the egoism.
The dual form has been abandoned on a large scale in the Roman Empire and merely survived in
the border areas. Including Christianity the Roman religions had been based on the IU-core, which
as a religious core inside the personal pronouns of the 1st person singular (io, iou, ieu, jau,...)
overruled the Germanic dual personal pronouns “wut” or “wit” (“we both”) and popularized the
egoistic behavior1.
Composed in the chapter “remarkable correlations” (opvallende samenhangen) I discovered a
number of details which may support these theses:
• Sacred Wih-locations (Old-High-German Wih, Anglo-Saxon Wih, Icelandic Wē, Old-
Swedish wi) and “Wit”/”Wod”-words for God (Swantewit and Wodan) will only be found
inside the Roman occupation zone.
• In contrast the “Thiw”-words may also be found in- and outside the Roman occupation
zone: *Deiwos (root: diw): → Sanskrit dewa; Greek genitive: di[w]os; Latin deus, divus; in
Lithuanian: Diévas, in Latvian/Lettish: Dievs “sky-god”....Icelandic: tyr, plural: tiwar.
• A number of sky-gods has been based on the I*-names such as in Finland: Joemo (sky), in
Lapland: Jupmel, in the Maori language Io, in Latin: Janus, Jupiter.
• Most religions registered a creation legend with a dual (or triad) set of partners based on a
dual-structured concept, including the divine names of the sky-god.

• The antipodal characters of Vishnoe (conservative) ↔ Shiva (progressive / revolutionary)

may have been symbolized by opposite etymological roots viś ↔ śīv.
• The Indo-Europeans are characterized as more individual and to tend to a more egocentric
behavior which may have been caused by eliminating the dual form. This thesis has been
described in A modified Swadesh List.
• Strange as it may seem the author does not comment the usage of the word “Adam” in old-
Persian as a personal pronoun of the first person singular. This word also correlates to the
Persian word ‫“ من‬mæn”, the Turkish word “мен” and the name of the first human being
Adam, who (as a man AND woman) has been named in the book Genesis.

1 The Role of the Dual Form in Symbolism and Linguistics