Wind god

“ He was the god of wind, and, like many another divinity in American mythology, his rule over that element was allied with his power over the breath of life—one of the forms of wind or air. Savage man regards the wind as the great source of breath and life. Indeed, in many tongues the words 'wind,' 'soul,' and 'breath' have a common origin. We find a like conception in the Aztec wind-god Tezcatlipoca, who was looked upon as the primary source of existence. ”

“ The fitful meanings of the wind, in the more boisterous moments of Æolus, through the branches, speak not louder of God than the whisper of his breath that plays with the foliage. The low and broken murmurs of the water in the gill are as audibly eloquent as the lashing of the waves of the ocean in a storm, or the wild roar of the cataract. The voice of nature, come in what form it may, brings unutterable thoughts of the majesty of the creation. ”

“ I have lived thirty-seven years, and have never seen the wind. It is folly for men to talk about the wind.” I can just imagine that boy there saying, “Why, I know more than that man; I know there is wind, for it blew my hat off this very day into the mud, and I have often felt it blowing in my face.” My friends, you have never felt the wind more than I have felt the Spirit of God. You have never seen the effects of the wind more than I have seen the effects of the Spirit of God, and of the working of the Holy Ghost, and there are hundreds of witnesses here who would testify the same thing. ”

“ And they say that this wind is a spirit and that a perfect god came into being from the waters and from the fragrance of the spirit and from the brilliance of the light. And that there is also the begetting of a female, Mind, the spark from on high which is mingled with the accretions of the body and hastens to flee away so that it may escape and not find dissolution through being enchained in the waters. ”

“ Nothing sensible is to us more unaccountable than the wind. We hear the sound of it, yet cannot tell whence it comes, nor whither it goes; but God gives it out by weight, wisely ordering both from what point it shall blow and with what strength. The waters of the sea, and the rain-waters, he both weighs and measures, allotting the proportion of every tide and every shower. A great and constant communication there is between clouds and seas, the waters above the firmament and those under it. ”

“ To bear away to heaven the souls of the dead is often an office of a wind god, and in this case of wind goddesses, for there can be little doubt that the Valkyries had some of the attributes of the wind. ”

“ You might just as well tell me that there is no such thing as wind, as tell me there is no such thing as a man being born of the Spirit. I have felt the spirit of God working in my heart, just as really and as truly as I have felt the wind blowing in my face. ”

“ The very wind itself is supposed to be the breathing of a god-spirit with extra powerful lungs; and rain, lightning, war, thirst, food and so on, each possesses a special deity, who, if not invoked at the right moment, and in the right manner, may, when least expected, have his revenge against you. ”

“ Closely related in power to the gods of the sky are the gods of wind or storm. Sometimes the god of the sky is himself the wielder of the thunder, as in the case of Zeus, and sometimes there is a special god of storm or thunder, as the Indra of the Hindoos or the Thor of the Norsemen. In Indian myths, Manabozho often wielded the thunder and lightning, and he has contests with another god of the air, Paup-puk-keewiss, the wind, a personage full of mischief, as wind gods are apt to be, like the Greek Hermes. ”

“ Be unrestrained as the wind, while carrying the Message of Him Who hath caused the Dawn of Divine Guidance to break. Consider, how the wind, faithful to that which God hath ordained, bloweth upon all the regions of the earth, be they inhabited or desolate. Neither the sight of desolation, nor the evidences of prosperity, can either pain or please it. It bloweth in every direction, as bidden by its Creator. So should be every one that claimeth to be a lover of the one true God. ”

“ Thunder-storms are always accompanied by a strong wind. God causes the wind to go forth from His store-chambers, where He has it also under custody, and blow over the earth. See a like simile of the store-chambers of the snow and hail, Job 38:22. From ויּעלה onwards, this verse is repeated in Psa 135:7. ”

“ Who covereth the Heavens with Clouds, who prepareth rain for the earth, who maketh grass to grow upon the mountains. He giveth snow like wool, he scattereth the hoary frost like ashes. He casteth forth his ice like morsels: Who can stand before his Cold? He sendeth forth his word, and melteth them: he causeth his wind to blow, and the waters flow. And all these fulfil the will and command of God, and not the will of the faln Angels ”

“ The wind of the upper heavens will be pure and keen and strong, and not even a sleigh-ride on a winter's night can set the live blood dancing as it will dance and tingle up there above the clouds. And riding on the air, alone with the roaring engines that have become for the time a part of ourselves, we shall know at last what our earth is really like, for we shall see it as the loons see it—yes, as God and His angels see it—this old earth, on which we have lived for so many thousand years, and yet have never seen. ”

“ Will, as a quality of so-called mortal mind, is a wrong-doer; hence it should not be confounded with the term as applied to Mind, or one of God's qualities.
Wind. That which indicates the might of omnipotence, and the movements of God's spiritual government, encompassing all things; destruction; anger; mortal passions.
The Greek word for wind (pneuma) is used also for spirit; as in the passage in John's Gospel, the third chapter, where we read: “The wind [pneuma] bloweth where it listeth. . . . So is every one that is born of the Spirit [pneuma] .” ”

“ It is the wind which blows where it will, which does not run on a railroad through the sky, or stop at any particular stations in the clouds, or go by any time-table. God's Spirit comes and goes not according to any rules of ours. The publicans and sinners have it, and show it, sometimes, instead of the Scribes and Pharisees. ”

“ For if the analogy of our Lord’s discourse be carried on, we shall find it amounts to thus much: that although the operations of the Spirit of God can no more be accounted for, than how the wind cometh and whither it goeth; yet may they be as easily felt by the soul as the wind may be felt by the body. ”

“ It is God who "causes the vapours to rise from the end of the earth," drawing them up into the air from oceans and lakes by the simple yet beautiful and efficient action of the solar heat; it is God who "makes lightnings for the rain," charging the clouds with the electric fluid, to burst forth in blinding flashes when the opposing currents meet. It is God who "brings the wind out of His treasuries." In the prophet's time the winds were as great a mystery as the thunder and lightning ”

“ When there is a hot sun and a wind blowing, the sun and the wind each have a body and nature of their own, but no one can separate between sun and wind, unless God, who alone can, should make the wind to cease from blowing. ”

“ And the wind, the wind! The bare birches and cherry-trees, unable to endure its rude caresses, bowed low down to the ground and wailed: "God, for what sin hast Thou bound us to the earth and will not let us go free?" ”

“ Apart altogether from divine revelation, by which we are informed that “all deeps, fire, and hail, snow, and vapour, and stormy wind,” are “fulfilling God’s word” (which information we are bound to receive as a matter of faith if we be Christians, and as a matter of necessity if we be men of common sense, because it is mere absurdity to suppose that the “stormy winds,” &c., are not fulfilling God’s word—or will) , we now know, to a great extent from practical experience and scientific investigation, that the winds blow and the waters of the ocean flow in grand, regular, uninterrupted currents. ”

“ The primary windy conception of the Holy Ghost is traceable to that early period of society when the rude and untutored denizens of the earth, in their profound ignorance of natural causes, were very easily and naturally led into the belief that wherever there was motion there was a God, or the active manifestation of a God, whether it was in the wind, breath, water, fire, or the sun. ”

“ We cannot tell where next He will display His mighty and gracious power.
(4) The Spirit, like the wind, is indispensable. Without wind, that is “air in motion,” there is no life and so Jesus says, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he [pg 044] cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” If the wind should absolutely cease to blow for a single hour, most of the life on this earth would cease to be. ”

“ But though God used the wind as His besom to sweep a road clear for His people, the effect produced by ordinary means was extraordinary. No wind that ever blew would blow water in two opposite directions at once, as a man might shovel snow to right and left, and heap it in mounds by the sides of the path that he dug. That was what the text tells us was done. ”

“ The happy children call, And "ring around" they dance in glee, And watch the snowflakes fall. The wind, the wind, the wind, the wind, Has spread a snowy pall. But when at night the piper plays, I have not any fear, Because God's windows open wide The pretty tune to hear; And when each crowding spirit looks, From its star window-pane, A watching mother may behold Her little child again. The wind, the wind, the wind, the wind, May blow her home again. Dora Sigerson Shorter [1862-1918]
THE WIND AND THE MOON Said the Wind to the Moon, "I will blow you out ”

“ The wind too is often considered as a god, or at least as the breath of a god, and in many American languages the Great Spirit and the Great Wind are one and the same both in word and signification. The name 118 of the god Hurakan, mentioned in Quiché myths, still signifies the Storm in many a language strange to his worshipers, while in Quiché it may be translated Spirit, or swiftly moving Spirit ”

“ We wait for thy coming, sweet wind of the south!
For the touch of thy light wings, the kiss of thy mouth;
For the yearly evangel thou bearest from God,
Resurrection and life to the graves of the sod! ”

“ With them, as with the old Jews and Greeks, the same word which meant wind, meant also a man’s soul, his spirit; and so they grew to think that the wind was inhabited by some great spirit, who gave men spirit, and inspired them to be brave, and to prophesy, and say and do noble things ”

“ We do not advance the hypothesis that she is a wind-goddess par excellence, but in one of her phases she certainly typifies the revivifying power of the spring wind, which wails and sobs over the grave of the sleeping grain, bringing reanimating breath to the inert seeds. ”

“ THIS is the song of the wind as it came
Tossing the flags of the nations to flame:
I am the breath of God. ”

“ And the sun went down, and the twilight came, and the night followed, and the world of sea and land and wind and vapour was around them, and the universe of stars and spaces over and under them, and eternity within them, and the heart of each for a chamber to the other, and God filling all—nay, nay—God’s heart containing, infolding, cherishing all—saving all, from height to height of intensest being, by the bliss of that love whose absolute devotion could utter itself only in death. ”

“ Best is the Hebrew apostrophe—"come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe—that we may live. Give us of the life that is in you." And that is the mystic's prayer.
The winds of heaven were bound to make indelible impressions on the primitive mind. But few will be prepared for Max Müller's statement that the wind, next to fire, is the most important phenomenon in nature which has led to the conception of a divine being. ”

“ How dangerous and dreadful a tempest at sea is. Then wonders begin to appear in the deep, when God commands and raises the strong wind, which fulfils his word, Ps. cxlviii. 8. He raises the winds, as a prince by his commission raises forces. Satan pretends to be the prince of the power of the air; but he is a pretender; the powers of the air are at God's command, not at his. When the wind becomes stormy it lifts up the waves of the sea, v. ”

“ It may have been to arouse the attention of the disciples and make them fully awake to [218] the important event that was then taking place. And, no doubt, another reason why this rushing sound attended the Spirit’s coming was to indicate to them what great power would attend the Spirit in the work he was to carry on in the church and in the world. The wind, when it goes rushing on, in the form of a tempest, is one of the most powerful agents that we know of. It can lash the ocean into foam and fury. It can dash to pieces the noblest works of men, whether on the land, or on the sea. ”

“ A merciless young rascal is the Wind. His chief delight
Is to worry ships at sea with savage storms by day and night,
Like a dog-wolf harrying sheep, he chases clouds and scatters showers,
Lays the stately oak-trees low, and snaps the stems of fragile flowers. ”

“ Mysteries like thyself, strange Wind, thou bringest;
Unto the soul, as to a harp, thou singest
Hymns of unearthly harmony.
Type of the Spirit to whose deeps
Thou with thy deep dost call!
Of that great mystery that never sleeps,
Within the breast of all,
O Wind, whether thou blowest sad and wild,
Or gently breathest with glad tones and mild,
When in the moonlit leaves the sleeping bird
By thy bland touch is stirred ”