The history of milk
Milk and mythology
Imagine a foaming white sea of milk.
In the middle are gods and demons churning the milk into butter using a snake that wriggling its way up the mountain Mandra.
When the work is done, the gods breathed a sigh of relief. The universe has been created!
This scene is taken from an ancient indian myth on creation. It starts with the god Vishnu having had enough of the fights between gods and demons and requests them to devote their powers to churning the cosmic sea of milk.
The gods wrap the snake king Vasuki around the mountain Mandra and use him as a rope. When the demons pull on the snake’s tail and the gods pull on the head, the sea of milk start bubbling and out of the foam and waves comes the most precious thing: A cow giving milk and butter.
The same theme is found in a Japanese myth of creation, describing some of the gods turning the dark prehistoric ocean to cheese by putting it in motion.
Some eastern myths even claim the first humans were made from milk. This is also found in the bible, in the book of Job where job says to God: “Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese”.
Milk was early associated with the sky
This is noticed in that the word galaxy comes from galactos, Greek for milk.
The English word for our galaxy, the Milky Way, the German’s Milchstrasse and France’s la voie lactée has the same idea as base.
Our ancestors sometimes called the prehistoric cow Audhumbla, the first living creature of the Scandinavian myth of creation, for the mother of the moon. That’s where the ancient Nordic name of our galaxy, Manavegr, “Moon Street”, comes from.
The Celts named the galaxy Bothar-bó-finné, paths of the white cow.
In an old dialect in Lancashire, England, the galaxy was called Cows path.
By: Zarah Öberg
Source: www.norrmejerier.se
