Tuisto
Also called Tuisco, Tuisto Gigas, Tuyscon Gigas.
The earth-born god at the head of the Germanic genealogy in Tacitus, whose name seems to carry the word for two.
At a glance
- Tradition
- Germanic folklore
- Region
- Germany (place of origin)
- Trait family
- The Child-Frighteners
- Symbols
- Ancestor
Near this figure
Symbols
Judged against the description by a model. Meanings are our own paraphrase.
- Ancestor is image-domain Ancestors are those gone before, at once benevolent custodians of a lineage's vitality and fierce presences that haunt, possess and shame their neglectful descendants.
why
That is a reception rather than a tradition โ a Renaissance habit of reading every ancestral figure as one of the giants of Genesis โ and the card keeps the two apart: earth-born ancestor in Tacitus, giant in the later books, with nothing in the earlier source supporting the promotion.
Traits
Read from the figure's description, which a model wrote. Open "why" for the sentence a trait came from.
Behaviour
- Mythical she-wolf ancestor of a people
why
In the second chapter of the Germania, Tacitus reports that the Germanic peoples had old songs naming an earth-born god called Tuisto, and a son Mannus after him, at the head of their descent โ and that three sons of Mannus stand behind the names of the Ingaevones by the sea, the Herminones inland, and the Istaevones beyond them.
Roles
Judged from the works' own entries, not from the description. Carries: the figure holds the role. Meets: the role is in its stories, held by something it meets.
- Father carries both readings
1 citation
- Carol Rose, Giants, Monsters, and Dragons, s.v. "Tuisto."