The Seba library treats Double Axe in 9 passages, across 6 authors (including Kerényi, Carl, Harrison, Jane Ellen, Campbell, Joseph).
One could go still further, however, and call the god himself “double ax,” “Dionysos Pelekys”
Kerényi argues that the double axe is not merely a Dionysiac instrument but an identity-symbol for Dionysos himself, the god collapsing into his own sacred weapon.
, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, 1976thesis
The axe was the symbol, the presentation of the Sky-Zeus; what acted prayer could be more potent, more magical, than to sprinkle the axe with water?
Harrison interprets the ritual wetting of the sacrificial axe in the Bouphonia as a rain-charm, identifying the axe symbolically with Zeus himself as sky-deity.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912thesis
there prevails an implicit confidence in the spontaneity of nature, both in its negative, killing, sacrificial aspect (lion and double ax), and in
Campbell pairs the double axe with the lion as emblems of the goddess’s dual nature — destructive and fertile — within the matriarchal symbolic order that underlies Western civilization’s unconscious.
, Occidental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume III, 1964thesis
Double axe and Bucranium. PM I 435: II 619; MMR 205; GGR PI. 8.3; Cook II 526, 537, 539. Double axe and horn symbol
Burkert documents the systematic iconographic pairing of the double axe with the bucranium and the horns of consecration in Minoan cult, establishing its place within the sacrificial complex of Cretan palace religion.
, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, 1977supporting
Double Axe 161, 161}
Harrison’s index clusters the Double Axe with Dionysos, Dithyramb, Dodona, and the Dipylon vase, situating it within the network of archaic Greek sacral institutions she analyzes in Themis.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912supporting
Growing out from the middle of it, probably actually… a ‘Mycenaean’ shrine with ‘horns of consecration.’
Harrison describes the Mycenaean shrine with horns of consecration in its sacrificial scene context, providing the architectural frame within which the double axe appears as a cult object.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912supporting
the ‘ox-slayer’ (Bouvtvzros) who administered the fatal blow then threw away his axe
Burkert’s account of the Bouphonia ritual shows the axe as the instrument of sacred bovine slaughter whose abandonment enacts the community’s ambivalence toward the sacrificial killing.
, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, 1972supporting
7t\xa3A\xa3KU<; [m.] ‘axe, double axe, hatchet’ (ll.).
Beekes establishes the pre-Greek substrate origin of pelekys, the term for the double axe, confirming its non-Indo-European linguistic roots consistent with its Minoan cultural provenance.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010supporting
In ancient women’s religion, this sort of ax innately belongs to the Goddess, not to the father.
Estés invokes the axe as an originally goddess-attributed implement whose ownership by the father-figure in fairy tale represents the historical displacement of older matriarchal religious forms.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017aside