nd before the earth, the sea, or the heavens appeared,
Muspelsheim existed. A breath of heat passing over the vapors, melted
them into water, and from this water was formed a cow named Aedumla,
who was the progenitor of Odin, Vile, and Ve, the Trinity of the Gothic
nation.

There is also another tradition, probably a later, which asserts that
from the drops of water produced by the primeval breath of heat, a man,
Ymer, was brought forth. The son of Ymer was preserved in a storm-tossed
bark, his father being dragged into the middle of the abyss, where,
from his body the earth was produced. The sea was made of his blood,
the mountains of his bones, and the rocks of his teeth. As three of his
descendants were walking on the shore one day, they found two pieces of
wood which had been washed up by the waves. Of these they made a man and
a woman. The man they named Aske and the woman Emla. From this pair has
descended the human race.

The marked resemblance between the characters of the Gothic Ymer and the
Chaldean Omoroka, from each of whose bodies the universe is created,
has been observed by various writers. After referring to Mallet's
conclusions upon this subject, Faber remarks:

"They are indeed evidently the same person, not only in point of
character, but, if I mistake not, in appellation: for Ymer or Umer is
Omer-Oca expressed in a more simple form. The difference of sex does by
no means invalidate this opinion, which rests upon the perfect identity
of their characters: for the Great Mother, like the Great Father, was
an hermaphrodite; or, rather, that person from whom all things were
supposed to be produced, was the Great Father and the Great Mother
united together in one compound being. Ymer and Omoroca are each the
same as that hermaphrodite Jupiter of the Orphic theology."

We have observed, however, that in all the older traditions this
hermaphrodite conception is accounted as female, it is the Great
Mother within whom is contained the male; in later ages, however, it
is represented as male, the female being concealed beneath convenient
symbols.

The Trinity of the Goths was male; yet as Odin could not create
independently of the female energy he is provided with a wife, Frigga,
to whom "all fair things belonged, and who had priestesses among the
early German tribes." Frigga when worshipped alone was both female
and male. According to one German tradition, Tiw (Zeus), which in its
earliest conception was f