Dual monotheism:
Basque ancient religion has many genies but only two Gods: Mari and Sugaar (or Maju). They are the divine couple and can well be considered a single dual God. They are the personified Yin and Yang.
What about Urtzi? Urtzi has no mythology. It can well be thought as a mere abstract personification of the Sky, much like Chinese Tian, that eventually absorbed foreign celestial deities like Zeus or Yaveh.
This dual monotheism that pre-dates polytheism is also found in other cultures:
In Daoism: Yin and Yang, fundamental principles of the Universe (not properly gods though, as they are not personified)
Some variants of Hinduism also seem to believe in this male-female dualistic monotheism: some forms of Shaivism, all of Shaktism and the related schools known as Tantra.
Guess that for monofisite religions such as Judaism, Islam and some oriental Christian churches the concept of a dual God is kind of perplexing, but it shouldn't be so for mainstream trinitarian Christianism, withe their triple God. And certainly dual monotheism it's both much more intuitive and self-explanatory than the male-only Trinity and seemingly much older.
From the primordial Chaos sprang both Gaia, the Earth, and Eros, the force of Life. This belief, described by Hesiodos at the beginning of his Theogony, seems to be deeply rooted in Europe and the Mediterranean, dating to at least Neolithic times.
Perpetual creation:
Forget about that fancy Judaic story of creation in six days, forget about any need to introduce intelligent design, not in science classes, but in your personal philosophy. The dual God does not create once but always: perpetual creation is the real thing.
But my holy book says...
Ah, you idol worshipper of words! Do you think that God only manifests in one particular book or act, or is it actually doing every time and in everything.
Your god is false... or rather a very narrow version of the real thing. Evolution definitively works better than any concievable ID and the Gods certainly know better than trying to intervene: they instead participate of the perpetual creation and change. They are the World, including you and I.
The cosmic dance is for real, your petty book is just part, a small part, of it.
Mari and Sugaar are said to meet every Friday and in such celebrated meetings they create the storms, that fertilize the land.
It's not just some distant friday in the far past... it's every week, actually maybe every single day, hour, minute, second and even Plank time.
Sorgin (pl. sorginak) , normally translated as "witch". From sor(-tu): "to create", and -gin or -gile: "doer". Sorgin: creator, possibly also linked to their role as midwifes.
Legend tells of sorginak as real people, leaders of the akelarre, practitioners of "magic" (rather herbal knowledge) and members of a secret yet widespread society. Ez geala ba geala, hamalau mila ba geala: we are not, yes we are, fourteen thousand indeed we are.
Legend tells of sorginak as genie too: the main aids of Mari, the Basque Goddess.
History tells of sorginak too: as victims of persecutions by the Inquisition: thousands were perseucted by the Inquisition or lesser judiciary, all of whom suffered tortures and many of which were burnt at the stake. The worst period by far was the 16th century.
500 years of Inquisition have left few remains to be picked up in the more illustrated 20th century by scholars, ironically some of them Christian priests.
Still we know something.
Basque religion is (as still shatters our souls in ways no other faith can) first and foremost a dualist-monotheistic religion focused on fertility. We know of only two gods: Mari and Sugaar (aka Maju), representing the female and male halves of such unique, yet dual cosmological principle.
Basque religion is an Earth-centered (ctonic) religion, where the sky is just a passage for the Goddess and God to travel and shepherd their herds of clouds and other metereological phenomena. They dwell in caves, in the most outstanding peaks sometimes. It's believed that whole ill-known realm lies underground. There, along with the dual Divinity, many magical criatures like lamiak (nymphs), iratxoak (imps) and jentilak (giants), along with the dead ancestors may live.
Izena duen guztia izan omen da. All that has a name may exist. Izena izana. The name [is] the existence.
Basque religion used to be celebrated specially on friday nights, the day of the akelarre (sabbat). It was a common practice still in the 15th century if we are to believe the inquisitors. Avellaneda was a skeptic: he did not believe in witches, so he went to the Pyrenees to find out what were all those rumors about. The locals welcomed him and made him participant of their celebration. Possibly under the effects of stramonium (or some other drug of similar type), Avellaneda flied and saw things that he would otherwise never have believed in. Back to Logroño he initiated one of the worst witch-hunts ever.
The case is that their "god" could not make such "miracles" and he was jealous.
It's said that certain witch apprentice had to recite the following enchantment to arrive to the akelarre: under the clouds, over the thorns. But he recited it wrongly: under the thorns, over the clouds, with disastrous effects. Same with Avellaneda.
But there were many other witch-hunts. And eventually the old religion went underground and vanished. Legend says that in other times lamiak were very common, being found almost in every stream, taking care of their long hair with their golden combs. Why did they disappear? The myth also has an answer: because of chapel building. In every holy spot the Christians built a chapel, one after the other, until all the mountains were Christianized, by grade or force.
And mythos in Greek means thread: Ariadne's thread.
You can follow the thread or get lost in the Labyrinth of Christian deceit.
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