Gemini and the Sacred: Twins and Twinship in Religion and Mythology

by Kimberley C. Patton

Publisher:

Bloomsbury Academic

, 2022

Overview

Why do twins remain uncanny to those born alone-in other words, most of us? Even with the rise of IVF and an increase in multiple births, why do we still do “a double take” when we encounter twins? Why has this been a near-universal response throughout human history, and how has it played out in religion and myth?

Through the work of leading scholars in religion, folklore and mythology, history, anthropology, and archaeology, Gemini and the Sacred explores how twinship has long been imagined, especially in the complex relationship of sacred twin traditions to “twins on the ground” in biology and lived experience. The book considers the multiple ways in which the “doubling” of a human being may be interpreted as auspicious and powerful-or suppressed as unstable and dangerous. Why has this been so and how does it affect living twins today?

Treating both famous and lesser-known twins-including supernatural animal twins-in the ancient Near Eastern and classical Mediterranean worlds; early Christianity and Gnosticism; Vedic, Hindu, West African, Black Atlantic, and native American traditions; ancient Mesoamerica, Celtic Roman Britain, and Scandinavia; and in the special, fraught bond shared by all twins, the book offers a variety of perspectives on this topic of great cultural significance.

Key Features

A comprehensive assessment of twins and twinship in ancient religion
Offers global perspectives including Africa, Asia, the Mediterranean basin and native Americas
Covers aspects of ancient literature, folklore and myth

Contents

List of Images
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
1. A Mirror: Reflecting on Gemini and the Sacred, Kimberley C. Patton, Harvard Divinity School, USA
Part I: Twins in African and the African Diaspora
2. The Code of Twins: Ìbejì in Yorùbá Cosmology, Ritual, and Iconography, Jacob Kéhìndé Olúpònà
3. Twins: Welcome and Unwelcome Danglers in Africa, Pashington Obeng
4. Marasa Elou: Twins and Uncanny Children in Haitian Vodou, Adam Michael McGee
Part II: Hero-Twins in the Americas
5. Twins in Native American Mythologies: Relational Transformation, John Grim
6. Junajpu and XB’alamkiej: The Maya Hero Twins of the Popol Wuj, Vincent James Stanzione
Part III: South Asian Legacies
7. Wars within the Womb, Wendy Doniger
8. Twins in Hindu Mythology and Everyday Life: In the California Diaspora, Vijaya Nagarajan
Part IV: Twins in the Ancient Mediterranean
9. Entangled Bodies: Rethinking Twins and Double Images in the Prehistoric Mediterranean, Lauren Talalay
10. Achilles and Patroklos: As Models for the Twinning of Identity, Gregory Nagy
11. Achilles and Patroclus as Indo-European Twins: Homer’s Take, Douglas Frame
12. Cosmas and Damian: Synergistic Brother Healers, James C. Skedros
Part V: Divine Twinship in the Ancient Near East and Eastern Christianity
13. Primordial Twins in Ancient Iranian Myth Prods, Oktor Skjærvø
14. Didymos Judas Thomas: The Twin Brother of Jesus, Gregory J. Riley
15. The Divine Double in Late Antiquity, Charles M. Stang
Part VI: Powerful Twins in the Archaeology of Myth
16. Óðinn’s Twin Ravens, Huginn and Muninn, Stephen A. Mitchell
17. Twinning and Pairing: Rethinking Number in the Roman Provincial Religious Imagery of Gallia and Britannia, Miranda Aldhouse-Green
18. Yoking the Winds: The Tears of Xanthos and Balios, Kimberley C. Patton
Part VII: Epilogue
19. Epilogue: Dialogue, Joseph O. Garrity and Philip S. Garrity
Index

Praise for Gemini and the Sacred

Kimberley C. Patton has compiled a treasure-trove of humanity’s experience of and insight into the cosmic significance of twinning/doubling. Through the expert analysis of twenty contributors on topics in material culture, ritual, mythology, and lived experience, Gemini and the Sacred offers the wisdom of the world’s great civilizations on the meaning of the cosmos, human nature, and identity. A must-read for all interested in the productive-but ambiguous-tension of sameness and difference fundamental to so much of our world.

Intergalactic in its breadth and scope, this extraordinary comparative religion collection reveals twins as Alpha and Omega in the truest sense: as co-creators of life and harbingers of death. The myriad twins of Gemini and the Sacred illuminate our endless search for wholeness in multiplicity.

Product Details

• Title: Gemini and the Sacred: Twins and Twinship in Religion and Mythology
• Author: Kimberley C. Patton
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Print Publication Date: 2022
• Logos Release Date: 2024
• Pages: 552
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9781786725912, 9781848859319, 1848859317, 1786725916
• Resource ID: LLS:9781786725912
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T11:12:19Z

About Kimberley C. Patton

Kimberley Patton specializes in ancient Greek religion and archaeology, with research interests in archaic sanctuaries and in the iconography of sacrifice. She also teaches in the history of world religions, offering courses in cross-cultural religious phenomenology. These comprise ritual studies, the mythology of natural elements, religious art and iconoclasm, the interpretation of dreams, animals in religion and myth, ritual weeping, material holiness, and funerary cult. She is involved in the ongoing discussion in the academy of the goals and methods of comparative study. She is the author of The Sea Can Wash Away All Evils: Modern Marine Pollution and the Ancient Cathartic Ocean (Columbia, 2006) and Religion of the Gods: Ritual, Paradox, and Reflexivity (Oxford, 2008). She is also co-editor of and contributing author to three other books: with Benjamin Ray, A Magic Still Dwells: Comparative Religion in the Postmodern Age (Berkeley, 2000); with John Stratton Hawley, Holy Tears: Weeping in the Religious Imagination (Princeton, 2005); and with Paul Waldau, A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics (Columbia, 2006).