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1. in religion, the doctrine that the world
(or reality) consists of two basic, opposed, and
irreducible principles that account for all that exists. It
has played an important role in the history
of thought and of religion.
In religion, dualism means the belief in two supreme
opposed powers or gods, or sets of divine or demonic
beings, that caused the world to exist. It may
conveniently be contrasted with monism, which sees
the world as consisting of one principle such
asmind (spirit) or matter; with monotheism; or with
various pluralisms and polytheisms, which see a
multiplicity of principles or powers at work. As is
indicated below, however, the situation is not always
clear and simple, a matter of one or two or many, for
there are monotheistic, monistic, and polytheistic
religions with dualistic aspects.
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Various distinctions may be discerned in the types of
dualism in general. In the first place, dualism may be
either absolute or relative. In …., the two principles
are held to exist from eternity; for example, in the
Iranian dualisms, Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism,
both the bright and beneficent and the sinister and
destructive principles are from eternity.
In a mitigated or relative dualism, one of the two
principles may be derived from, or presuppose, the
other as a basis; for example, the Bogomils, a

4. medieval heretical Christian group, held that
the Devil is a fallen angel who came from God and
was the creator of the human body, into which he
managed by trickery to have God infuse asoul. Here
the Devil is a subordinate being and not coeternal
with God, the absolute eternal being. This, then, is
clearly a qualified, not a radical, dualism. Both radical
and mitigated types of dualism are found among
different groups of the late medieval Cathari, a
Christian heretical movement closely related to the
Bogomils.
Another and perhaps more important distinction is
that between dialectical andeschatological
dualism. Dialectical dualism involves an
eternal dialectic, or tension, of two opposed
principles, such as, in Western culture, the One and
the many, or Idea and matter (or space, called
by Plato “the receptacle”), and, in Indian
culture, maya(the illusory world of sense experience
and multiplicity) and atman-brahman (the essential
identity of self and ultimate reality). Dialectical dualism
ordinarily implies acyclical, or eternally repetitive, view
of history. Eschatological dualism—i.e., a dualism
concerned with the ultimate destiny of humanity and
the world, how things will be in the “last” times—on
the other hand, conceives of a final resolution of the
present dualistic state of things, in which evil will be
eliminated at the end of a linear history constituted of
a series of unrepeatable events instead of a cyclical,
repetitive one.

5. The ancient Iranian
religions, Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism,
and gnosticism—a religio-philosophical movement
influential in the Hellenistic world—provide examples
of eschatological dualism. A type of thought, such
as Platonism, that insists on a profound harmony in
the cosmos, is thus more radically dualistic, because
of its irreducibly dialectical character,
than Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism, with their
emphasis on the cosmic struggle between two
antithetical principles (good and evil). Midway
between these extremes is gnostic dualism, which
has an ontology (or theory of being) of an Orphic-
Platonic type (see below Among ancient civilizations
and peoples) but which also affirms the final
disappearance and annihilation of evil with the
eventual destruction of the material world—and thus
comprises both dialectical and eschatological
dualism.
In philosophy, dualism is often identified with the
doctrine of transcendence—that there is a separate
realm or being above and beyond the world—as
opposed to monism, which holds that the ultimate
principle is inside the world (immanent).

6. In the disciplines concerned with the study of
religions, however, religious dualism refers not to the
distinction or separation of God and the world but to
the doctrine of two basic principles, a doctrine that,
moreover, may easily be compatible with a form of
monism (e.g., Orphism or the Advaita school
of Vedanta) that makes the opposition between the
One and the many absolute and sees in multiplicity
merely a fragmentation (or illusory obliteration) of the
One.
Historical varieties of religious dualism
Among ancient civilizations and peoples
Dualism is a phenomenon of major importance in the
religions of the ancient world. Those of the Middle
East will be considered here.
EGYPT AND MESOPOTAMIA

7. While there was generally
no explicit dualism in ancient Egyptian religion, there
was an implicit dualism in the contrast between the
god Seth and the god Osiris. Seth,.. , aggressive,
“foreign,” sterilegod, connected with disorder, the

8. desert, and loneliness, was opposed to Osiris, the
god of fertility and life, active in the waters of the Nile.
Seth also possessed some typically dualistic marks of
amythological character: his action, as well as his
personality itself, was ambivalent; and, as a typical
trickster, he was also capable, at times, of
constructive action in the cosmos. The myths of Osiris
and Seth may be compared in various ways with
those recently discovered among the Dogon people of
the western Sudan, which contrast Nommo, a fertile
and happily mated primordial being pictured in fish
form, with Yurugu (“Pale Fox”), an unhappy, sterile
character who lives in the wilderness without a mate.
Yurugu is considered to be the element that makes
the universe complete (the same role assigned to
Seth in the Egyptian myth).
Dualism, broadly speaking, was also present in
ancientMesopotamian religion. In myths pertaining to
the origin of the gods and of the cosmos, the
opposition between the primordial deities (Apsu, the
Abyss, and Tiamat, the Sea) and the new ones
(particularly Marduk, the demiurge, or creator)
displayed some dualistic aspects. Though the earlier
deities had established the basic reality of the
universe—its ontological core—because of their
chaotic and selfish nature they resisted their own
offspring, who were later to create the now existing
definite order of the cosmos. A dualism of the
ontological—basic reality or being—versus the

9. cosmological—the form or order of the material
universe—is thus implicitly affirmed.
GREECE AND THE HELLENISTIC WORLD
Analogous dualistic concepts may be found in the
early Greek Theogony of Hesiod in his myths of the
gods Uranus, Cronus, and Zeus and the conflict
between primordial and later gods. It was in the later,
Classical Greek world, however, that dualism was
most evident. Many of the pre-Socratic philosophers
(6th and 5th centuries BCE) were dualistic in various
ways. In the teachings of Parmenides, for example,
noted for reducing the world to a static One—a
classical instance of monism—there is still a radical
opposition between the realms of Being and
Opinion—between ultimate reality and the world of
human sense experience. On the other hand, in the
doctrines of Heracleitus, noted for reducing the world
to fiery Change, the conflict of opposites (hot-cold,
day-night, beginning-end, the-way-up–the-way-down),
called by Heracleitus polemos (“war”), was exalted to
become a metaphysical principle. Though these
opposites are piecemeal dyads, their effect taken
together is as a whole dualistic. The dualism
of Empedocles, simultaneously a religious teacher
and a natural philosopher, is especially striking, for he
viewed the primordial sphere of the universe as
undergoing cycles alternately under the dominance of
the antithetical principles of Love and Discord, which
periodically break and then reconstruct it. In this
context there exist daimones (“souls”), divine beings

10. that have fallen from a superior world into this world
and exist clothed in the “foreign robe of the flesh.”
These souls are therefore subject to transmigration
through a series of vegetable, animal, and human
bodies, owing to a primitive accident for which credit
was given “to the furious Discord.”
The same antithetical principles are to be found in
Orphism, a Greek mystical school, which constituted
an independent development within Greek
religion andphilosophy; beginning in the 6th
century BCE, it was part of a “mysteriosophic” trend
that sought to attain the wisdom of secret mystic and
cultic doctrines. Orphism is characterized by its sōma-
sēma, or body-tomb concept, which saw the body as
a prison or tomb in which the soul—a divine element
akin to the gods—is incarcerated. In addition to
this psychophysical dualism of soul and body, the
Orphic idea that “everything comes from the One and
returns to the One” demonstrates a typical dialectical
dualism, in which an implicit monism is involved.
Developing on an analogous
level, Pythagorean numerical and mystical
speculation—arising from the 6th-century-BCE Greek
philosopher and religious teacher Pythagoras—also
stressed the dualistic opposition of Monad-
Dyad (One-Two) and of other dialectical pairs of
opposites.

11. Many of these
dualistic ideas, especially the Orphic and
Pythagorean ones, are also found in writings of the
Greek philosopher Plato, such as
the Timaeus,Phaedo, Gorgias, and Cratylus. In
these writings a divine part of the human soul that is
directly infused by the divinity and a mortal part
(passionate and vegetative) are defined and
considered. The mortal part is assigned to humanity
by inferior divinities, charged to do so by the supreme

12. divinity; and the appetitive passions involved, if
followed, are held to be responsible for the
punishments that the soul will suffer during various
periods of habitation in the other world and
reincarnations in this one. Thus, God remains free of
blame for human destiny. The mortal or spoiled part
of humanity is further attributed, in Plato’s Laws, to
the “titanic nature” within its makeup—an element of
violence and impiety inherited from the primordial
rebellious Titans, sons of the Earth.
Plato’s notions of humanity were rooted in both
ontology and cosmology—i.e., in views on being and
on the orderly structure of the universe. In
the Timaeus he considers the cosmos as a single
harmony, which for the sake of completeness requires
the existence of inferior levels that are bound not only
to matter but also to Necessity (the realm of things
that could not have been otherwise and that are
hence not amenable to divine activity). A different
view is found in his Laws, which describes two “Souls”
of the World, one of which causes good and one evil.
ThePoliticus is concerned with two eternally recurring
alternating cycles in the cosmos, with successive
epochs guided either by the gods or by humans.
Plato’s central inspiration, which unifies
his metaphysics, his cosmology, his anthropology,
and his doctrine of the soul, was basically dualistic (in
the sense of dialectical dualism) with two irreducible
principles: the Idea, or form, and the chora(or material
“receptacle”) in which the Idea impresses itself. All of
this world is conditioned by materiality and necessity,

13. and because of this, the descent of souls into bodies
is said to be rendered necessary as well.
Neoplatonism, a 3rd-century-CE development from
Plato’s thought, conceived the cosmos as a harmony
with a succession of levels emanating from an
ultimate unit. There was in the system, nevertheless,
a rupture of the harmony of the cosmos
calledtolma (“the audacity”), which served as an
explanation for the descent of Soul into the material
world—and thus constituted a dualistic element.
In gnosticism, a Hellenistic religious movement that
entered original Christianityfrom earlier pagan
sources and that viewed matter as evil and spirit as
good, dualism manifested itself in a more dramatic
way. Gnostic dualism cannot be understood without
reference to both Judaism and Christianity, and
perhaps even to Zoroastrianism, since
gnostic eschatological characteristics were derived
from them.Gnosticism was also connected with
certain principles of Orphism and Platonism; reflecting
the Orphic body-tomb doctrine, for example,
gnosticism adopted a firmly antisomatic stance
(against the body) and similarly adopted the concept
of the divine soul—the pneumatic, or spiritual, soul, as
the gnostic would say, of the same substance as the
divinity—that is destined to free itself from the tyranny
of a material, cosmic demiurge (or subordinate deity).
Certain gnostics, moreover, developed a radical
anticosmism in which they registered their animosity
against the material universe by cursing the stars—
which brought them bitter reproach fromPlotinus, the

14. founder of Neoplatonism. As viewed by the
gnostic Ophite sect, which venerated
the ophis (“snake”) as a symbol of knowledge, the
cosmos comprises three parts: the superior world, the
inferior world (material and chaotic), and the
intermediate world, or logos (“word” or “reason”)—
the logos being depicted as a snake that impresses
spiritual forms into the chaotic matter. These forms—
life, soul, and vital masculine substance—are later
freed again, a liberation that completely empties the
material world.
Such gnostic views are of two types: Iranian and
Syrian-Egyptian. Iranian gnosticism is characterized
by an absolute, radical dualism: light and
darkness, pneuma (“spirit”) and chaotic formless
matter, oppose each other from eternity. Syrian-
Egyptian gnosticism is characterized by a dualism
that is mitigated (as earlier defined) but also drastic:
the inferior world, the chaotic darkness, begins to
exist only at a special moment owing to an accident in
the divine world, and this accident is usually also
identified with an “audacity,” a defect in one of the
“aeons,” or divine entities.
IRAN
In the Indo-Iranian period (2nd millennium BCE) there
were already tendencies toward dualistic thought,
especially in myths relating to monstrous and
demonic beings who still the movement of the waters
and thus make cosmic life impossible. In later archaic
Indian speculation there was also a tendency to
oppose devas (“gods”) to asuras (“demons”). Iranian

15. dualism, however, expressed itself most
characteristically in Zoroastrianism. In
the Zoroastrian religious texts, the Gāthās, there is an
opposition between two spirits, the Beneficent Spirit
(Spenta Mainyu) and the Destructive Spirit (Angra
Mainyu, or Ahriman). These two spirits are different,
irreducible principles; at the beginning they have
chosen life and nonlife, respectively. Though the
Beneficent Spirit is almost a hypostasis (the
substance) of the divinity (Ahura Mazdā, or Ormazd),
nothing is said in the Gāthās about the origin of the
Destructive Spirit. In any case, the very fact that the
Destructive Spirit is said to be the “twin brother” of the
Beneficent One does not imply that he is a son of
Ahura Mazdā but implies only that the two spirits are
“symmetrical”—i.e., equal and contrary as to their
respective efficacy and orientation.

16. Medieval Zoroastrian treatises present radical and
eschatological dualisms in their extreme forms.
According to the Bundahishn (“Primordial Creation”)
text, Ormazd and Ahriman have always existed.
Ormazd is represented as lofty, in the light, full of
omniscience and goodness, while Ahriman is
represented as debased, in darkness, full of
aggressiveness and ignorance. Ormazd’s
omniscience allows him to conceive and to actualize
the Creation and Time, because only these can offer
him an arena in which to accost Ahriman and
eliminate him.
The medieval Zoroastrian treatises also describe
another dual formulation, the two realms of creation
and of reality: the mēnōk (“potential, embryonic, initial,
heavenly, and invisible”) and the gētīk (“realized, final,

17. worldly, concrete, and visible”). But this opposition
does not imply a devaluation of the gētīk, of this
world.
Zurvanism, a Zoroastrian heretical movement
(c. 3rd/4th century BCE–7th century CE), was also
dualistic. The very names of Zurvān (Time-Destiny)
and the partially synonymous zamān (“time”) already
appear in the later Avesta and in medieval treatises,
in which Time is the milieu in which Ormazd and
Ahriman fight. Also, a myth attributed to Zoroastrian
priests by later, non-Iranian sources speaks of Zurvān
as the father of Ormazd and Ahriman. At times
Zurvanite mythology tends toward formulations of a
gnostic and Manichaean type (women paid
allegiance, for example, to Ahriman, who has partial
authority in the world). Zurvanism also developed
theosophic characteristics (involving mystical
insights), such as that which discerned the
ambivalence of Zurvān—namely, that although an evil
element (an evil thought or spiritual corruption) has
always existed within him, he nonetheless, so it
seems, eliminates the evil by expressing it and is thus
worthy to be identified with the supreme divinity
(Yazdān).
Among South and East Asian religions
Dualisms have also appeared in various forms in the
religions of India and China.

18. Indian dualism has involved the opposition of the One
and the many, of reality and appearance. In an
ancient Hindu hymn (Rigveda, 10.90), Purusha, the
ancient primordial Man and “the Immortal that is in
heaven,” is opposed to this world. The three quarters
of Purusha that comprise the transcendent world are
opposed to the other quarter of him (his limbs) that is
this world; i.e., the divine foundation, the divine
substance of this world, is made out of his limbs.
Early speculation on the identity of the atman (“self”)
and brahman (the very core of reality), as opposed to
the material and visible world that is subject
to maya (“mundane illusion”), has been mentioned
above.
The Samkhya school of Indian philosophy presents
another, probably later, formulation of dualism based
on two eternal and opposed cosmic
principles: prakriti(“original matter”)
and purusha (“spirit”). Matter is differentiated into
three differentgunyas (“qualities”) that articulate the
three levels of the being and essential nature of
humanity in hierarchical connection with each other.
Spirit, in itself free, eternal, and infinite, becomes
involved in matter by the development of the
latter. Salvationcoincides with the knowledge of the
state of things: “I (spirit) am one thing and It (matter)
is another.”

19. Ugo Bianchi
CHINA
Classical
Chinese thought—which began with the teaching of
the philosopher Confucius (flourished early 5th
century BCE) and ended with the close of theWarring
States period in 221 BCE—upheld the notion of a
dynamic universe and thus generally eschewed the
radical dualism that emerged in India, Iran, and
Europe. The notion of yinyang, the opposed polarities
of cosmic flux, may at first seem dualistic: yin is
associated with passivity and femininity, yang with
activity and masculinity. Yet yin and yang are not
radically separate; they complement and permeate
each other, emerging as two extreme aspects of the
constant transformation of the Dao (the “Way” of the

20. universe). Likewise, all of the ten thousand things (a
Chinese metaphor for the world) are seen as the
cumulative product of the generative forces of heaven
and earth (tiandi). Like yin and yang, however,
heaven and earth are complementary aspects of a
continuous process of creation and not radically
separate entities.
A more extreme dualism appeared as Chinese
thinkers encountered intellectual systems—most
notably, Buddhism—that originated outside China.
Even so, the emphasis in Chinese thought remained
primarily on harmony, rather than tension, between
opposites. Wang Bi (226–249), who developed much
of the terminology and many of the concepts of
Chinese ontology, distinguished being (you) from
nonbeing (wu), the latter of which he equated with the
Dao. Rather than nothingness, however, nonbeing is
pure being. Wang referred to wu as the “Great Note”
that harmonizes the other notes (beings) that
constitute the symphony of the universe.

21. The
philosophy of the neo-Confucian thinker Zhu Xi(1130–
1200), which subsequently influenced greater East
Asian culture, gave rise to controversies between
dualistic interpretations of his system. Zhu stated that
the universe and everything in it is a combination of
principle (li; literally “pattern” but also connoting a
concept akin to natural law) and matter-energy (qi).
When principle combines with matter-energy, a thing
exists. For Zhu, principle and matter-energy are

22. obverse sides of the same coin: both are generated
by the fluctuations of the Great Ultimate (taiji). Yet,
while he insisted that principle and matter-energy are
never separate, Zhu seemed to give ontological
priority to principle, which provides order to dynamic,
chaotic matter-energy. The question of the
relationship between li and qi generated intense
debate among neo-Confucian thinkers not only within
China but also in Korea and Japan.
Matt Stefon
Among religions of the West
Dualisms have appeared in Western religions chiefly
under the impact of gnostic influences.
JUDAISM
No real dualism is found in Judaism, except in the
gnostic and theosophic forms of
Jewish mysticism known as Kabbala. The presence of
a vigorous and universalmonotheism implies not
only faith in a single creative god but also faith in a
god who is the uncontested master of history, and
neither Satan nor Belial detracts from this
absolute monotheism. Within these limitations,
however, a tendency toward dualistic thought can be
seen in such late noncanonical texts as the First Book
of Enoch (c. 1st century BCE), in which
certain angels are said to have fallen as a
consequence of their wedding with the daughters of
human beings. These angels, it is held, taught
humans the malevolent arts of magic, seduction, and

23. violence, together with such elements of culture as
writing and the use of metals. Though there is no
dualism in the proper sense in the Manual of
Discipline, one of the Qumrān texts of the Dead Sea
Scrolls, a certain polarity is nonetheless displayed in a
passage that asserts of God that
he created man to have dominion over the world and
made for him two spirits, so that he may walk by them
until the time of his visitation: they are the spirits of
truth and error. In the dwelling of light are the origins
of the truth, and from a spring of darkness are the
origins of error. In the hand of the Prince of Lights is
dominion over all the children of righteousness, in the
ways of light they walk. And in the hand of the angel
of darkness is all dominion over the children of error;
and in the ways of darkness they walk.
The context of this passage, however, is completely
monotheistic. It expresses a doctrine also found in
the Didachē, a Jewish-Christian work of the early 2nd
centuryCE (better known as the Teachings of the
Twelve Apostles), that of the two roads on which an
individual may walk, the good road and the bad, the
road of life and that of death, with God leaving
the choice of the road to one’s free will. It also
expresses the later rabbinic doctrine of the struggle
between the good and evil inclinations (yetzer) within
each human.

24. There is also no hint of dualism in the two “sources”
mentioned in the Qumrān texts, the bright source and
the dark. These are hardly dualistic principles (in the
ontological sense of the term) but are simply radical
(i.e., original) polarities in spiritual orientation. (Not
even the “Angel of Darkness,” mentioned in the same
context, is a principle, though he is a person and a
power.)
Elements of dualistic thought (in a Platonic sense) are
also found in the works of the Jewish Hellenistic
philosopher Philo of Alexandria (1st century CE),
whose philosophy was dualistic in its doctrines about
the universe and humanity but without shaking his
basic adherence to biblical monotheism.

25. CHRISTIANITY
In Christianity, dualistic concepts appeared principally
in its gnostic developments. But even in the 2nd-
century Judaizing sect of the Encratites, which was

26. not really gnostic, there were dualistic aspects that
had modified some tendencies of later Judaism.
These teachings were also particularly prominent in
the writings of the supporters of Docetism (the
doctrine that Christ, being divine, did not suffer and
die; 2nd century), who held that matter is essentially
evil and that the soul is a preexistent substance.
According to the Encratites, the preexistent soul, once
it “gets effeminated by concupiscence,” drops into the
carnal world. Since generation perpetuates the soul’s
state of decay in this bodily world, the Encratites
condemned all sexual relations.
The dualism of Marcion (a 2nd-century semi-gnostic
Christian heretic) was really a ditheism (a system
positing two gods), though common gnostic
presuppositions—such as antisomatism and
anticosmism, the condemnation of the body and the
material universe—were also present in his thought.
For Marcion, the God of the Hebrew Bible (Old
Testament) is an inferior and harsh creator demiurge,
author of the world and of humankind, who is
nonetheless completely distinct from the supreme
divinity, who manifested himself in Jesus and is a
stranger to this world.
………; the God of the Hebrew Bible is only one of the
angels, the martial angel of the Judaic nation,
although (as with Marcion) he is distinct from the
Devil, who is in fact his opponent.

27. According to Saturninus, a primordial accident
caused a wave of pneuma (“spirit”) to land in the
inferior darkness, where it is said to have remained
prisoner and now continues its existence in those
who, characterized by the presence in them of this
superior element, will later be conducted back to their
heavenly origin by Jesus, a messenger coming from
above.
Conceptions of a similar type are also found in the
“Psalm [or Hymn] of the Naassenes” (Naassene is the
Hebrew term for Ophite, mentioned above) and in the
“Song of the Pearl” in the gnostic Acts of Thomas;
here also occurs the concept of a “saviour to be
saved,” who has been sent from above and was
made a prisoner by darkness. This basic concept was
developed fully only in Manichaeism.
The gnostic-dualist view survived in late antiquity and
into the Middle Ages, both in the East, among the
Mandaeans, Yazīdī, and some extreme sects within
the Shīʿitebranch of Islam, and in the West, among
the Bogomils and Cathari. It is still present today in
modern theosophy.
Among religions of modern indigenous peoples
Religious dualism also manifests itself among
nonliterate peoples, especially in the concept of a
“second” figure, an ambivalent demiurge-trickster who
can be both a collaborator and a rival of the supreme
being and independent of the latter in origin. Such

28. tricksters include the Coyote (in North American
Indian mythology), the Raven (among Paleo-
Siberians), and the Crow (among the Southeast
Australian tribes). To these animal figures are
attributed the origin of such negative aspects of life as
death and illness. But they are also credited as
benefactors—e.g., in creating utilities in the cosmos
and in the invention of fire. The demiurge-trickster is
typically ambivalent, tremendously frightful and
efficacious, but also frequently limited in power. For
example, such tricksters are often incapable of
animating the beings that they have molded and must
therefore request the help of the supreme being in
bringing them to life. They are said to be selfish,
lonely, and unhappy, and because of these qualities
they are moved, despite their arrogance, to attempt to
relate themselves to or unite with the supreme being.
A typically dual composition (involving the
coexistence and cooperation of two elements), or
even a dualistic opposition (as two opposed elements
that function as principles in respect to the actual
creation), is found in the Dogon (western Sudanese)
notions about Nommo and Yurugu, already
mentioned. A series of words refers to both principles;
i.e., a series of realities and categories can be named
that constitute the world in its functional variety, which
transcend the simple good-evil opposition, and
according to which both Nommo and Yurugu are
dualistic “principles” essential to the actual dynamics
of the world.

29. Other dualistic concepts among indigenous peoples
posit opposite the supreme being a violent and death-
bearing second figure of a demiurgical type. The
character of Erlik in the mythologies of the Central
Asiatic Turks (e.g., among the Altaics) is typical.
Erlik is a king of the dead and master of death who
assumes the role of a fraudulent and unfortunate
collaborator with the supreme being. In stories about
the origin of the universe, he appears as an aquatic
bird in charge (under the supreme being) of fishing a
little earth from the bottom of the primordial sea—a
theme also well-known in eastern European folklore.
In other myths, a similar being spits on human beings
at the time they are created by God or breathes his
bad spirit into man or woman. Elsewhere there is
depicted an opposition of twin brothers, of whom one
is the demiurge-creator of good things and the other
of death; both, however, are the sons of a mother
goddess of heavenly origin. This pattern is
exemplified in theIroquoian myth of Yoskeha and
Tawiskaron—a myth curiously reminiscent of certain
aspects of the Iranian Zurvanite mythology.
Other ethnological polarities, or pairs of opposites
(eastern-western, celestial-terrestrial, solar-lunar
divinities, right-left, full moon–dark moon, and so on)
are dualistic in the sense of contrasting principles or
creating agencies.