Split: Christian vs. Pagan heroism

[Magister Eckhart]

http://www.posters.ws/images/421240/lord_of_rings_return_of_king_aragorn_with_horse.jp g

"Hold your ground! Hold your Ground! Men of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers! I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship - but it it is not this day! An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the age of men comes crashing down - but is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!"

That speech, and the ride Théoden leading the Rohirrin into the right flank of the Uruk-hai army at Battle of Pelennor Fields, are the two most powerful moments in the whole trilogy. It's too bad the only Occidental heroism left in this world is found in a contemporary mythos created by a Roman Catholic Englishman.

[Cato]

http://www.posters.ws/images/421240/lord_of_rings_return_of_king_aragorn_with_horse.jp g

"Hold your ground! Hold your Ground! Men of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers! I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship - but it it is not this day! An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the age of men comes crashing down - but is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!"

That speech, and the ride Théoden leading the Rohirrin into the right flank of the Uruk-hai army at Battle of Pelennor Fields, are the two most powerful moments in the whole trilogy. It's too bad the only Occidental heroism left in this world is found in a contemporary mythos created by a Roman Catholic Englishman.

Nitpick time. :p

Technically, only the Men of Gondor (and Arnor), as the progeny of the Numenoreans (i.e. Dunedain), would be "Men of the West." The Rohirrim would be Middle Men.

P.S.

What's wrong with Catholics?

[Magister Eckhart]

Nitpick time. :p

Technically, only the Men of Gondor (and Arnor), as the progeny of the Numenoreans (i.e. Dunedain), would be "Men of the West." The Rohirrim would be Middle Men.

P.S.

What's wrong with Catholics?

You have to go and ruin my fun! :p

I really was referring more to the fact that we are not inspired these days by the heroism of our own pre-Christian mythic past. Tolkien wrote in the midst of the twentieth century; it would be nice to see the sort of epic film and glorification of Occidental values made from real Western tradition rather than a modern mythos written by a man steeped in the foreign influences of Christianity.

[Cato]

You have to go and ruin my fun! :p

I really was referring more to the fact that we are not inspired these days by the heroism of our own pre-Christian mythic past. Tolkien wrote in the midst of the twentieth century; it would be nice to see the sort of epic film and glorification of Occidental values made from real Western tradition rather than a modern mythos written by a man steeped in the foreign influences of Christianity.

There's plenty of heroism in the tales of Christian chivalry, Le Morte d'Arthur, for example, and in the transitional period from the beliefs of the heathens to Christianity (Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon).

How are Christian beliefs foreign to the west after several centuries of indigenization?

[Psychonaut]

There's plenty of heroism in the tales of Christian chivalry, Le Morte d'Arthur, for example, and in the transitional period from the beliefs of the heathens to Christianity (Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon).

How are Christian beliefs foreign to the west after several centuries of indigenization?

You can group the Arthurian Mythos as transitional too. Mallory's shows the Celtic roots a bit less but the sagas of Chrétien de Troyes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chr%C3%A9tien_de_Troyes), Gottfried von Strassburg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_von_Strassburg), and especially Wolfram von Eschenbach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parzival) are more on the order of Christian tinged Pagan tales than Pagan tinged Christian ones.

[Magister Eckhart]

There's plenty of heroism in the tales of Christian chivalry, Le Morte d'Arthur, for example, and in the transitional period from the beliefs of the heathens to Christianity (Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon).

How are Christian beliefs foreign to the west after several centuries of indigenization?

Actually if you look at Morte d'Arthur, Beowulf, and the Battle of Maldon, all the heroic aspects of the stories are heathen and Germanic (as I'm sure many heathens here will attest).

Over the centuries, Christianity has been slowly shedding the Germanic clothes it put on when it first entered the Western World. The heroism of the Crusades and of centuries of Germanic discipline and Celtic mysticism that seeped into Western Christianity have been bled out, such that nothing of it remains, really. Christianity today is probably the truest form of Christianity we have ever experienced in the West: cosmopolitan, pacifistic, and suicidal, dangerous to cultural integrity and cultural survival, and laced in the senility of forgiveness of the most heinous crimes for the sake of "peace" and "love".

In short, Christianity has in fact eaten away the core of our Western values and then promptly kicked in the shell. I would not exactly call that "indigenization".

But let's not turn the movie thread into a debate thread. Feel free to message me if you want to continue this.

[Cato]

You can group the Arthurian Mythos as transitional too. Mallory's shows the Celtic roots a bit less but the sagas of Chrétien de Troyes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chr%C3%A9tien_de_Troyes), Gottfried von Strassburg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_von_Strassburg), and especially Wolfram von Eschenbach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parzival) are more on the order of Christian tinged Pagan tales than Pagan tinged Christian ones.

Not gonna deny that, but there's such a large amount of lore surrounding Arthur and co. that some of it is very definitely the product of the Christian period. Some of the ideas, i.e. sacred kingship, are very definitely pre-Christian in origin.

[Joe McCarthy]

Originally Posted by The Wagnerian
It's too bad the only Occidental heroism left in this world is found in a contemporary mythos created by a Roman Catholic Englishman.


With respect, I beg to differ:

http://perpetuallyonline.com/ToddBeamer/images/toddbeamer.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Beamer


After United Airlines Flight 93 was hijacked, Beamer and other passengers communicated with people on the ground via in-plane and cell phones, and learned that the World Trade Center had been attacked using hijacked airplanes. Beamer tried to place a credit card call through a phone located on the back of a plane seat but was routed to a customer-service representative instead, who passed him on to GTE supervisor Lisa Jefferson. Beamer reported that one passenger was killed and, later, that a flight attendant had told him the pilot and co-pilot had been forced from the cockpit and may have been wounded. He was also on the phone when the plane made its turn in a southeasterly direction, a move that had him briefly panicking. Later, he told the operator that some of the plane's passengers were planning to "jump on" the hijackers and fly the plane into the ground before the hijackers' plan could be followed through. According to Jefferson, Beamer's last audible words were "Are you guys ready? Let's roll."

There have also been six Congressional Medal of Honor recipients rewarded posthumously for their service in Iraq and Afghanistan. Recently the first living recipient was given the CMH, Sgt. Salvatore Giunta, for his heroism in charging into heavy Taliban fire to save a comrade.

[Murphy]

Over the centuries, Christianity has been slowly shedding the Germanic clothes it put on when it first entered the Western World. The heroism of the Crusades and of centuries of Germanic discipline and Celtic mysticism that seeped into Western Christianity have been bled out, such that nothing of it remains, really.

You realise Western Christendom is called "Latin Christendom" yes? You grossly overestimate the influence Germans and Celts had on Western Christendom. The Germans did not Germanise Christianity, Christianity Latinised Germany.

And to your assertion that Christianity is foreign.. you realise Indo-European religions are also "foreign" to western Europe, right ;)? Why is it okay for our pre-Indo-European ancestors to adopt a new religion but not our Indo-European ancestors?

[Magister Eckhart]

You realise Western Christendom is called "Latin Christendom" yes? You grossly overestimate the influence Germans and Celts had on Western Christendom. The Germans did not Germanise Christianity, Christianity Latinised Germany.

And to your assertion that Christianity is foreign.. you realise Indo-European religions are also "foreign" to western Europe, right ;)? Why is it okay for our pre-Indo-European ancestors to adopt a new religion but not our Indo-European ancestors?

What pre-Indo-European ancestors? We have none! The Indo-European peoples established complete dominance over the continent and its peoples, and even if the natives were bred into the Indo-European culture, they were utterly assimilated, as any anthropologist will be happy to tell you.

Furthermore, the Indo-European religions are native to the Indo-European people; they are not like Christianity and Mohammedanism which are by their very nature divorced from a soil-rooted culture; rather, they are like Judaism or Hinduism: a people and a faith bound in one unit.

Christianity has a great role to play in the history of Europe, I would not deny this, but it is a fundamentally foreign religion to the people of Europe who are Indo-European. You underestimate just how much of your faith today owes its existence to Charlemagne; much of Vatican II, in fact, was aimed at the elimination of more "recent" styles introduced to the Church, meaning styles that owed their existence to the Germanic influence on the post-800 church and the Tridentine reforms of 1570.

You underestimate the influence exerted on Christianity through its effort to assimilate itself into Germanic culture - the whole notion of the heroic Christ and the "lord of Hosts" comes directly from Germanic heathenry; "lord of Hosts" is one of the names of Odin.

Germanic Christianity (not German, but Germanic) is the Christianity practised today; even the Tridentine Mass owes its format, notwithstanding the language, to earlier influences from Charlemagne and Alfred the Great, to say nothing of the Germanic missionaries.

[Wyn]

"lord of Hosts" comes directly from Germanic heathenry; "lord of Hosts" is one of the names of Odin.


The concept of the Lord of Hosts certainly doesn't come from Germanic paganism, heavenly armies are of course found in the Bible. As for the phrase itself, I recognise it from certain English Psalm translations, so I don't know what Hebrew phrase it translates from and if said Hebrew phrase literally translates as Lord of Hosts, but the Vulgate uses the phrase Domini exercituum (Lord of armies) in a number of places.

[Osweo]

The concept of the Lord of Hosts certainly doesn't come from Germanic paganism, heavenly armies are of course found in the Bible. As for the phrase itself, I recognise it from certain English Psalm translations, so I don't know what Hebrew phrase it translates from and if said Hebrew phrase literally translates as Lord of Hosts, but the Vulgate uses the phrase Domini exercituum (Lord of armies) in a number of places.

It's Latin, as seen in Castilian hueste;


"multitude" mid-13c., from O.Fr. host "army" (10c.), from M.L. hostis "army, war-like expedition," from L. hostis "enemy, stranger," from the same root as host (1). Replaced O.E. here, and has in turn been largely superseded by army. The generalized meaning of "large number" is first attested 1610s.


As for the Hebrew, Luther referenced it in his Ein fester Burg hymn with his "Der Herr Sebaoth" - the Lord of Hosts.

Wiki has this;

YHWH Tzevaot
YHWH Tzevaot

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Problems listening to this file? See media help.

The name YHWH and the title Elohim frequently occur with the word tzevaot or sabaoth ("hosts" or "armies", Hebrew: צבאות) as YHWH Elohe Tzevaot ("YHWH God of Hosts"), Elohe Tzevaot ("God of Hosts"), Adonai YHWH Tzevaot ("Lord YHWH of Hosts") and, most frequently, YHWH Tzevaot ("YHWH of Hosts").

This compound name occurs chiefly in the prophetic literature and does not appear at all in the Torah, Joshua or Judges. The original meaning of tzevaot may be found in 1 Samuel 17:45, where it is interpreted as denoting "the God of the armies of Israel". The word, in this special use is used to designate the heavenly host, while otherwise it always means armies or hosts of men, as, for example, in Exodus 6:26, 7:4, 12:41.

The Latin spelling Sabaoth combined with the golden vines over the door on the Herodian Temple (built by the Idumean Herod the Great) led to false-identification by Romans with the god Sabazius.

[Curtis24]

Chrisitian heroism usually involves stoic suffering. LOTR is definitely Christian heroism, read the Letters of JRR Tolkien if you need more proof(he explicitly talks about Frodo's faith in God etc.)

Paganistic heroism is different, the pagans see stoics as fools. Paganism heroism is more about fighting to live as you wish.

I see value in both, as sometimes you have to fight for what you want, other times you do have to grit your teeth and bear it.

[Osweo]

Chrisitian heroism usually involves stoic suffering. LOTR is definitely Christian heroism, read the Letters of JRR Tolkien if you need more proof(he explicitly talks about Frodo's faith in God etc.)

Paganistic heroism is different, the pagans see stoics as fools. Paganism heroism is more about fighting to live as you wish.

:confused: I can only conclude you're read none of our ancient hero tales.

[Curtis24]

No, I'm only familiar with (some) of the reinvented versions of paganism, where the emphasis seems to be on individuality and bucking social norms. Oh well, I guess I"m making shit up again :p

[Aemma]

No, I'm only familiar with (some) of the reinvented versions of paganism, where the emphasis seems to be on individuality and bucking social norms. Oh well, I guess I"m making shit up again :p

Which 'versions'? We're all a tad different you know. :D

[Magister Eckhart]

:confused: I can only conclude you're read none of our ancient hero tales.

Indeed. Unless he means contemporary "pagans", because they would certainly fight for something as shallow and material as "living how you wish". Also the Thelemic "do as thou wilt" neo-paganism has absolutely nothing to do with Germanic heathenry: neo-pagans and Wiccans are greater enemies of Asatru than Christians, in fact, for we can learn from the latter, but the former are nothing but self-interested curs.

Our ancestors fought for many reasons, but a selfish desire for personal freedom was not among them. Fealty to your liege-lord, desire for honour for yourself and your family, these are defining features of Germanic heroism.

[Psychonaut]

What pre-Indo-European ancestors? We have none! The Indo-European peoples established complete dominance over the continent and its peoples, and even if the natives were bred into the Indo-European culture, they were utterly assimilated, as any anthropologist will be happy to tell you.

:mmmm:

I thought it was pretty well established that the majority of Western European genetic stock was pre-IE. The aR1a (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1a_%28Y-DNA%29)ns didn't physically replace or outbreed the BaR1b (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1b_%28Y-DNA%29)arians; the further from the urheimat you get, the more a case of linguistic/cultural diffusion it is.

[Magister Eckhart]

:mmmm:

I thought it was pretty well established that the majority of Western European genetic stock was pre-IE. The aR1a (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1a_%28Y-DNA%29)ns didn't physically replace or outbreed the BaR1b (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1b_%28Y-DNA%29)arians; the further from the urheimat you get, the more a case of linguistic/cultural diffusion it is.

DNA isn't culture, it's just a bunch of chemicals that give a person his appearance. It is spiritually and culturally meaningless. Europe is Indo-European because our reality is Indo-European. We have no connexion whatever with the architects of Stonehenge, and any belief otherwise is pure Wiccan fantasy.

Spiritually and Culturally, the Indo-Europeans completely out-bred the aboriginal "Europeans" (since that word has no meaning until the coming of our ancestors). Our languages preserve nothing of the reality of a pre-Indo-European world, and nor does our spirituality. We are inextricably bound up in our own Indo-Europeanness.

I suppose the argument could be made that since the Indo-Europeans inevitably enslaved the aboriginals in Europe the way they did in India, creating the forth, and lowest caste, that there has been some survival, but if there has it's still negligible for our purposes because the Indo-Europeans reduced these dirt-eating moon-worshippers to their proper place.

[Osweo]

DNA isn't culture, it's just a bunch of chemicals that give a person his appearance. It is spiritually and culturally meaningless.
:eek:
Wait a minute... Didn't you cite your Great Grandparents' use of Gaelic as part of the justification for you to call yourself an Irishman??? Interesting double standards!

Some bugger in ancient Ireland spoke Celtic as his mother tongue. His Grandmother, however, was one of the few left in his region who remembered the Old Language (Para-Vasconic or whatever). She used it when gossiping about scandalous matters with other old women at the well, say. She looked after her grandson when he was a kid, and taught him a lot of crafts and charms and superstitions and the like. He passed the same to his grandkids, and they to theirs. Eventually (notwithstanding passing Norse raids and the like) something of this heritage got passed down to a feller who calls himself 'The Wagnerian'... That Old Granny (she probably figures dozens of times in your personal pedigree, as do hundreds like her) is NOT very impressed with his lack of filial piety! :eek:

I don't know NW Ulster very well, but I can say that down in my Gran's Munster, a LOT of pre-Celtic religion survived. Much of it long outlived memory of Celtic equivalents. Look into the Hag of Beare, for example, Ani, Dovinia ... AH, Ulster DOES have its Macha to take into account.
Gods, an Sean Bhean Bhocht herself might even be of significance in this context! Eriu, Banba and Fotla... These Ladies weren't known down by the Danube, when Celtic first learnt to drop their initial PIE P-s, you know.


Europe is Indo-European because our reality is Indo-European. We have no connexion whatever with the architects of Stonehenge, and any belief otherwise is pure Wiccan fantasy.
I can't believe what I'm reading! You would tell the men of Meath that Newgrange and Tara mean piss all to them? Anyone drawing ancestry from Tirconnell, whose forebears fought under Conall and his clan for the High Kingship so many times, ought to not talk so lightly of the Goddess of Sovereignty - someone intimately associated with the remains of the Boyne Valley.

The Gaels of old always stressed their link with the megalithic past. You may have heard of Newgrange's neighbour Knowth - well Cnocba had an Ui Neill dynasty build their royal seat upon it, and named their whole kingdom after it! The Northern Ui Neill from whose lands your family came had their very Inaugurations held on top of ancient barrows!

Nor is this sort of pattern unknown in the Germanic world. :....

Spiritually and Culturally, the Indo-Europeans completely out-bred the aboriginal "Europeans" (since that word has no meaning until the coming of our ancestors).
When the notion of 'Europe' first came along is highly debatable, many opinions dating it far later than the first stages of IE domination of the continent.

Our languages preserve nothing of the reality of a pre-Indo-European world,
That's simply WRONG. The substrate influence of older linguistic layers on the Insular Celtic tongues ought surely to be common knowledge by now?!?

I believe they are most felt in syntax. Study just the first few chapters of a Welsh primer and you'll see what is meant here. Some linguists have supposed that the substrate in question has much in common with Semitic of all things. :eek: :p


and nor does our spirituality. We are inextricably bound up in our own Indo-Europeanness.
It's fiendish hard to untangle the introduced from the aboriginal in these matters. And these matters are best dealt with if you put on your 'ojective observer' hat, really. I can best rely on common sense and analogy to argue this one, rather than start pulling the lore apart piece by piece; We can see how much survived the conversion to Christianity. Christianity was enforced by an organisation that was probably well ahead of its early predecessor in its capability to formulate, perpetuate and defend an orthodoxy. And yet SO much survived. How can this not have been the case when a hypotheitical proto-Druidry was the best parallel for the Church in the time in question?

I suppose the argument could be made that since the Indo-Europeans inevitably enslaved the aboriginals in Europe the way they did in India, creating the forth, and lowest caste,
Early historical Ireland provides the best way of looking at how this worked in the West. Defeated peoples were relegated to Vassal Tribe status, but often (or usually?) retained native kings, institutions and various rights. With time, many emerged from this position to reach the very top of the hierarchy. Have a look at the background of Brian Boruimha's dynasty. Find out what Deisi actually means...

that there has been some survival, but if there has it's still negligible for our purposes because the Indo-Europeans reduced these dirt-eating moon-worshippers to their proper place.
:....
I'm quite disappointed in you for saying such a thing, I really am. Sounds like an even more tasteless reworking of March of the Titans...

[Curtis24]

:mmmm:

I thought it was pretty well established that the majority of Western European genetic stock was pre-IE. The aR1a (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1a_%28Y-DNA%29)ns didn't physically replace or outbreed the BaR1b (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1b_%28Y-DNA%29)arians; the further from the urheimat you get, the more a case of linguistic/cultural diffusion it is.

Yes, but the diffusion wasn't peaceful; the so-called ARyans did invade, but, as you say, they didn't kill off or replace the natives.

[Psychonaut]

Yes, but the diffusion wasn't peaceful; the so-called ARyans did invade, but, as you say, they didn't kill off or replace the natives.

Perhaps, but by the time IE stuff spread to the Atlantic coast, those doing the spreading were not the descendants of the PIE folks—which is why almost all of the R1a in places like Ireland and Iberia is from relatively (last couple millennia) transplants.

[Wyn]

Indo-Europeans reduced these dirt-eating moon-worshippers to their proper place.

I'm perplexed by your inclusion of 'moon-worshippers', and am forced to ask what, for you as a Germanic heathen, is so awful about being a moon-worshipper? How is worshipping the moon worse than worshipping anything else?

[Psychonaut]

I'm perplexed by your inclusion of 'moon-worshippers', and am forced to ask what, for you as a Germanic heathen, is so awful about being a moon-worshipper? How is worshipping the moon worse than worshipping anything else?

Different strokes for different folks? :shrug:

The Männerbund (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3200&highlight=wolfbund) I once belonged to was as much of a lunar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A1ni) cult as it was a cult of the Wolf God (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odin).

[Murphy]

Osweo petty much replied for me, quite well I might add.

[Wyn]

Different strokes for different folks? :shrug:

Obviously. But the inclusion of it in that sentence implied that it was something that he (again, this is in the context of him being a Germanic heathen) found undesirable and worthy of his derision.

[Ibericus]

:mmmm:

I thought it was pretty well established that the majority of Western European genetic stock was pre-IE. The aR1a (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1a_%28Y-DNA%29)ns didn't physically replace or outbreed the BaR1b (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1b_%28Y-DNA%29)arians; the further from the urheimat you get, the more a case of linguistic/cultural diffusion it is.
Outdated theory. R1b is not pre-IE. Majority of pre-IE were hg I :

http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1000285;jsessi onid=30CD2128623EDB6BCD084115308ECECA.ambra02

[Treffie]

What pre-Indo-European ancestors? We have none! The Indo-European peoples established complete dominance over the continent and its peoples, and even if the natives were bred into the Indo-European culture, they were utterly assimilated, as any anthropologist will be happy to tell you.

Wolfgang Haak et al (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/310/5750/1016.abstract) would think differently. His team analysed 7,500 year old mtDNA which made them conclude that there is much evidence to support that today's Europeans descend as far back as the Paleolithic.

[whirlwind]

You can group the Arthurian Mythos as transitional too. Mallory's shows the Celtic roots a bit less but the sagas of Chrétien de Troyes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chr%C3%A9tien_de_Troyes), Gottfried von Strassburg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_von_Strassburg), and especially Wolfram von Eschenbach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parzival) are more on the order of Christian tinged Pagan tales than Pagan tinged Christian ones.

That's very true.
And though this is somewhat unrelated, Grimm's fairytales received quite the Christian white-wash when collected. A shame, really. Even the original German versions have awkwardly inserted mentions of God.

[Ibericus]

Wolfgang Haak et al (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/310/5750/1016.abstract) would think differently. His team analysed 7,500 year old mtDNA which made them conclude that there is much evidence to support that today's Europeans descend as far back as the Paleolithic.
In the maternal lines yes.

[Osweo]

That's very true.
And though this is somewhat unrelated, Grimm's fairytales received quite the Christian white-wash when collected. A shame, really. Even the original German versions have awkwardly inserted mentions of God.

What are you on about? Few have done more for Germandom than the Grimms. Have you even heard of Jacob's Deutsche Mythologie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Mythologie)? :....

They were especially concerned with finding the heathen remnants in extant traditions, and would NOT have 'whitewashed' anything. They would have been more likely to prune over zealous christianising out than insert it.


"They urged fidelity to the spoken text, without embellishments, and though it has been shown that they did not always practice what they preached, the idealized 'orality' of their style was much closer to reality than the literary retellings previously thought necessary."[4]

Both Brothers were attracted from the beginning by all national poetry, whether in the form of epics, ballads or popular tales. They published In 1816–1818 a collection of legends culled from diverse sources and published the two-volume Deutsche Sagen (German Legends). At the same time they collected all the folktales they could find, partly from the mouths of the people, partly from manuscripts and books, and published in 1812–1815 the first edition of those Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales), which has carried the name of the brothers Grimm into every household of the western world. The closely related subject of the satirical beast epic of the Middle Ages also held great charm for Jakob Grimm, and he published an edition of the Rejnhart Fuchs in 1834. His first contribution to mythology was the first volume of an edition of the Eddaic songs, undertaken jointly with his brother, and published in 1815. However, this work was not followed by any others on the subject.

The first edition of his Deutsche Mythologie (German Mythology) appeared in 1835. This great work covered the whole range of the subject, tracing the mythology and superstitions of the old Teutons back to the very dawn of direct evidence, and following their evolution to modern-day popular traditions, tales and expressions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Grimm

What is 'awkward' about mentioning God in a story collected many centuries after people had forgotten there'd ever been any other?! :rolleyes:

[whirlwind]

What are you on about? Few have done more for Germandom than the Grimms. Have you even heard of Jacob's Deutsche Mythologie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Mythologie)? :....

They were especially concerned with finding the heathen remnants in extant traditions, and would NOT have 'whitewashed' anything. They would have been more likely to prune over zealous christianising out than insert it.



What is 'awkward' about mentioning God in a story collected many centuries after people had forgotten there'd ever been any other?! :rolleyes:

I've read otherwise, recently, for a German Lit exam but am too drunk to figure out where the article is. Anyway maybe they didn't insert it, but it was awkward and didn't ring true.

[Curtis24]

In the maternal lines yes.

Big surprise :p

Iberia, was R1b on the paternal side spread by Indo-Europeans?

[Ibericus]

Big surprise :p

Iberia, does this R1b on the paternal line was spread by Indo-European people?
Yes. There is a recent study on it :

http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1000285;jsessi onid=30CD2128623EDB6BCD084115308ECECA.ambra02

[Curtis24]

wow, what a bunch of horny bastards :p

[Magister Eckhart]

I'm perplexed by your inclusion of 'moon-worshippers', and am forced to ask what, for you as a Germanic heathen, is so awful about being a moon-worshipper? How is worshipping the moon worse than worshipping anything else?

Moon-worship and earth-worship represent the opposite of the Germanic/Indo-European sky-god cult. It manifests differently in different places but amongst the ancient Germanics evidence is that this feminine moon-cult that seemed to hold predominance over the early peoples of Europe was completely pushed out in favour of the dominance of a higher-reaching ideal, and a far more distinctly masculine society and culture (and, of course, religion, which is inseparable from the others.

Any contemporary incarnation of paganism that includes this "earth-mother" concept or a moon-worship cult is a throw-back to people our ancestors conquered and subdued millennia ago; it's a fundamentally flawed understanding of our own history and our own religious heritage; it's part of the reason why Wicca and goddess-paganism is such an affront (actually one of the smaller reasons...) to true Heathenry.

So yes, I do disdain moon-worship, because it is tied with earth-worship, and our Indo-European ancestors were not bovine dirt-worshipping submissives but proud, strong, upward-looking warriors who placed their Gods completely outside the accessible realm of sensory perception into a truly aethereal realm (this is especially true of the Germanics, who would be founders of Western Civilisation, but also true of the ancestors of the Graeco-Romans).


All of this talk of DNA seems completely superfluous to me. It is the spiritual inheritance of Volk that is communicated through the centuries which is the defining feature of the conquest of the Indo-Europeans over the dirt-worshippers, not these base material DNA haplogroups. The conquest is to be found in our lore - the base, sexual, feminine Vanir were brought to submission by the dominate, pure, masculine Aesir. Some learning was passed to the chief God, Óðinn, whose existence is dominate by a will to know all things, but aside from this, the most influential dieties of the Vanir were completely "Aesirised": Freyja became a sword-maiden, who gathered dead in imitation of the chief death-God Óðinn. And so rather than the chaos of the hypersexual earth gods, the order and discipline of the battle-born sky gods became the defining feature of Germanic religion.

The earth gods have a place, controlled, subject to these sky-gods in the same way the the pre-Indo-European peoples have a place, controlled, dominated by the superior and dominate Indo-European tradition who do not soil their religion by playing about in the mud. It is this, rather than the good-conquering-evil world-feeling that defines the Germanic peoples: the balance of order and chaos, with one subject to, but not eradicated by, the other: the chaos serving the needs of order, like the earth-cult serves the sky-cult, the goddess-worshipping dirt-eaters serve the devotees of the sky-gods and the spiritual peasants serve their spiritual lords (look to the Rígsþula).

I hope this explanation has cleared up any questions on my reasoning for disdaining moon-worshippers, goddess-cults, earth-worshippers, neo-pagans, Wiccans, et al.

[Groenewolf]

The conquest is to be found in our lore - the base, sexual, feminine Vanir were brought to submission by the dominate, pure, masculine Aesir.

An excellent piece of writing. However I do not remember this from reading the lore. It appears more to be the other way around with the Vanir breaching the walls of Asgard and the Aesir finally making certain concessions. So I would like to know where this is based upon.

[Magister Eckhart]

An excellent piece of writing. However I do not remember this from reading the lore. It appears more to be the other way around with the Vanir breaching the walls of Asgard and the Aesir finally making certain concessions. So I would like to know where this is based upon.

You will recall that after the "breach of the stronghold"* there was peace had between the two parties.

After this peace we see a distinct change to the character of the Vanir, and a great diminishing of their significance in subsequent lore and legend - the exchange of hostages is actually quite favourable to the Aesir; they even get Mimir back after his head gets cut off. Ultimately, the order of the Aesir subdued the chaos of the Vanir, creating a balance between them in which the Aesir assume the dominant role - order is exerted over chaos - and giving rise to the Gods-Men-Giants triune, which also seeks balancing.

Indeed, far from making concessions, the Aesir and Vanir treated equally, suggesting an inability of both sides to triumph through naked force, but it is through the peace between them that the Aesir establish their dominance. This is consistent if we take the conflict to be allegory for the Indo-European invasion, for as all of these amateur geneticists never weary of pointing out, the actual people that the Indo-European people dominated were not exterminated, but subordinated.

*The meaning of which in the original is actually somewhat debated, I found out, because the original war started with the killing of Gullveig, it is supposed by some scholars that Gullveig represents an infiltrator from the Vanir, evidenced by her practise of seidhr, something unknown to the Aesir themselves before the coming of Freyja.

[Psychonaut]

Moon-worship and earth-worship represent the opposite of the Germanic/Indo-European sky-god cult.

What? This sounds like a rehashing of Frazer's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_G._Frazer) way outdated theory of the IE peoples being Sky God worshipers who subjugated Earth worshipers. Contemporary mythographers (Evolians aside) don't buy into this anymore. The picture of PIE religion that Mallory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.P._Mallory) paints in In Search of the Indo-Europeans does place the Sky Father as the head of the pantheon, but discusses solar, lunar, terran, etc. deities as being integral to PIE religiosity as well [1].

We also have it on good account that the worship of the Earth Mother was central to the religion of the ancient Germans [2]: "Nor is there anything remarkable in the individual tribes, save that they worship Nerthus, that is, Mother Earth, in common..."


It manifests differently in different places but amongst the ancient Germanics evidence is that this feminine moon-cult

What is feminine about the cult of a masculine moon God? And, what is wrong with feminine dimensions of religiosity?


Any contemporary incarnation of paganism that includes this "earth-mother" concept or a moon-worship cult is a throw-back to people our ancestors conquered and subdued millennia ago

I have never, in person, met a single Heathen (and I've met hundreds now) who refused to hail Jörð. Some of the largest blóts I've been privy to attend have been held in her honor.

Notes: Mallory, J.P. In Search of the Indo-Europeans. (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1989), 128-142.
Tacitus. Agricola, Germany, and Dialog on Orators. trans. Benario, Herbert W. (USA: Hackett Publishing, 2006), 83

[The Lawspeaker]

Germanic Christianity (not German, but Germanic) is the Christianity practised today; even the Tridentine Mass owes its format, notwithstanding the language, to earlier influences from Charlemagne and Alfred the Great, to say nothing of the Germanic missionaries.
Agreed for the most part but some of the most influential missionaries were not Germanic but Celtic. They were Irish.

[Magister Eckhart]

Agreed for the most part but some of the most influential missionaries were not Germanic but Celtic. They were Irish.

In general, yes, but I was really referring more to those who played a major role in converting the Germanic peoples on the continent - and the Celtic/Germanic missionary conflict played itself out in Northern England, with the triumph of Germanic Christianity.

However, you are right to give due attention to the Irish missionaries.


What? This sounds like a rehashing of Frazer's way outdated theory of the IE peoples being Sky God worshipers who subjugated Earth worshipers. Contemporary mythographers (Evolians aside) don't buy into this anymore. The picture of PIE religion that Mallory paints in In Search of the Indo-Europeans does place the Sky Father as the head of the pantheon, but discusses solar, lunar, terran, etc. deities as being integral to PIE religiosity as well [1].


Outdated? This is still current among anthropologists; in fact, one of the chief competitors for the Urheimat of the Indo-European peoples, the Kurgan hypothesis, is accompanied by a view proposed by Marija Gimbutas regarding the nature of the charioteer sky-god culture of the Indo-Europeans.

There are other deities as well, but the prevalence of such cults in isolated tribes (as we must accept Tacitus was not describing a general phenomenon when he spoke of the Nerthus cult) is not evidence of major influence on the religiosity of the ancient Germanics. Let us assume that the Nerthus-cult was widespread, though: look at who Nerthus is. Linguistically, she's identifiable with the male deity Njörð, and there is little reason to assume that they could in fact not be the same person; Tacitus might well just have misinterpreted the whole thing. After all, there are no really significant male deities of fertility in Græco-Roman myth.

In fact the first one to jump to mind, namely Pan, isn't even a God, he's a creature. Perhaps Eros, but I do not recall any significant cult or temple devoted to him. Dionysus was not an earth-God, either; all major earthen-related deities are Goddesses for the Romans. Therefore it may not be unimaginable that Tacitus was merely trying to relate the whole thing within his own world-understanding (he does this with other deities, claiming that there are tribes who worship Hermes and Hercules).

Quite the contrary, all mythographical and anthropological evidence points to at the very least the domination of Germanic religiosity and culture with a strong sense of masculinity. The very language contains this (e.g. ON blauðr and hvatr). Any notions of a dominant or even significant goddess-cult like those of contemporary neo-paganism is pure fantasy. There is no submission of men to women in Germanic culture, nor has there ever been; the presence of the "divine feminine" is certainly very real, but as expressed above, it is wild and chaotic, and kept under control by "masculine" forces (not so different than in Hinduism, but this is unsurprising considering the shared roots of the two).


I have never, in person, met a single Heathen (and I've met hundreds now) who refused to hail Jörð. Some of the largest blóts I've been privy to attend have been held in her honor.

We'll have to get together for a beer sometime, then you can say that you have.

There are two classes of divine being I do not worship or hail: Thursar and Goddesses; Jörð is both. Like the Hebrew God, I acknowledge their existence is undeniable but the role they play in my life is minimal or, in the case of the Thursar, non-existent. Furthermore, especially in the case of Jörð, the only reason I can even think of that she's significant at all is being the mother of Þórr, and I was never much one for the Marian Cult in Christianity either: why credit a woman for the deeds of her son? A son wins honour for his father, a daughter for her mother - I know of no significant daughters of Jörð. Rather, she seems to exist solely for the purpose of giving birth to Þórr, and afterwards barely plays any role at all. She is certainly not a motherly deity the way Frigg is, or a feminine deity like Freyja.

My regard for Goddesses will probably change a bit when I have a family and need the blessings of Frigg on my house, but until that time I will leave it to women to worship Goddesses and men to worship Gods; after all, I see no reason to force an improper relationship. The Gods are like our spiritual elders in the highest sense, and the relationship of Elder to boy and Matron to girl is natural. I would say that there are only three cases where one should expect any woman to hail or bow to male deities, those being the dominant deities of our ancestors: the God of Wisdom and War and the God of Justice and Law, and (though this is subject to debate) the God of Thunder and Agriculture.

I maintain that allowing for any form of domination of an "earth-mother" runs completely contrary to our ancestors' own experience. Ostara is a minor event that has been turned into a huge festival because of the influence of Christian Easter. The real festival of that time would be the Sigrblót in honour of Óðinn. Likewise for our other major festivals (many of them celebrated in contemporary heathenry are in fact simply made-up and have scant historical grounding anyway). These massive Jörð-blóts of which you speak are likely the result of the same misled tendency to think of Ostara as significant. I would not credit them with any great theological or religious value, though I'm sure they make for good gathering places and have some minor role to play in our community of faith.

And I still say leave the Wiccans to role around naked in the mud and howl at the moon. If we want to have a real religion we can't be like that.

[Óttar]

(not so different than in Hinduism, but this is unsurprising considering the shared roots of the two).
*Ahem* I take it you've never heard of Shakta Dharma? There the feminine energy is the active, dynamic force in the universe and the masculine lies dormant and passive.


Shaktism, worship of the Hindu supreme goddess, Shakti (Sanskrit: “Power,” or “Energy”). Shaktism is, together with Vaishnavism and Shaivism, one of the major forms of modern Hinduism and is especially popular in Bengal and Assam. Shakti is conceived of either as the paramount goddess or as the consort of a male deity, generally Shiva.

People of spiritual disposition worship Shakti as the divine will, the divine mother who calls for absolute surrender. Yogis consider Shakti as the power, lying dormant within the body as a coiled serpent (kundalini), that must be aroused and realized to reach spiritual liberation. Shaktism ...

(The article cuts off there)

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/538054/Shaktism

[Wyn]

who placed their Gods completely outside the accessible realm of sensory perception into a truly aethereal realm


I still hold your position to be inconsistent, but this part of your post reminded me of a passage from Germania. A passage which leads me to believe your assumptions are incorrect:


The Langobardi, by contrast, are distinguished by the fewness of their numbers. Ringed round as they are by many mighty peoples, they find safety, not in obsequiousness but in battle and its perils. After them come the Reudigni, Aviones, Anglii, Varini, Eudoses, Suarini and Nuitones behind their ramparts of rivers and woods. There is nothing particularly noteworthy about these people in detail, but they are distinguished by a common worship of Nerthus, or Mother Earth. They believe that she interests herself in human affairs and rides through their peoples. In an island of Ocean stands a sacred grove, and in the grove stands a car draped with a cloth which none but the priest may touch. The priest can feel the presence of the goddess in this holy of holies, and attends her, in deepest reverence, as her car is drawn by kine. Then follow days of rejoicing and merry-making in every place that she honours with her advent and stay. No one goes to war, no one takes up arms; every object of iron is locked away; then, and then only, are peace and quiet known and prized, until the goddess is again restored to her temple by the priest, when she has had her fill of the society of men. After that, the car, the cloth and, believe it if you will, the goddess herself are washed clean in a secluded lake. This service is performed by slaves who are immediately afterwards drowned in the lake. Thus mystery begets terror and a pious reluctance to ask what that sight can be which is allowed only to dying eyes.

[Psychonaut]

Outdated? This is still current among anthropologists...

Is it? Gimbutas and Frazer aside, not a single mythographic text that sits on my bookshelf phrases the relationships between the Æsir and Vanir as one of one tribe conquering and assimilating the Gods of another. They all mention in passing that this was, among the Cambridge Ritualists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_and_ritual_school), a commonly held view, but contemporary authorities on Germanic myth, like John Lindow, don't take it as anything more than an historical trend whose time is gone [1].


...in fact, one of the chief competitors for the Urheimat of the Indo-European peoples, the Kurgan hypothesis, is accompanied by a view proposed by Marija Gimbutas regarding the nature of the charioteer sky-god culture of the Indo-Europeans.

Yargh, matey! Ye've some problems here. The Germanic sky God, Tyr, isn't a charioteer. Thor is, but he's not the head of the pantheon. Also, what to make of the female Sun charioteer? That's something about Germanic myth that seriously throws Frazer's theories about a dichotomy between masculine Sun cults and feminine Earth cults out of whack.


After all, there are no really significant male deities of fertility in Græco-Roman myth.

I don't know as much about Greek and Roman mythology as some here, but there is no arguing that there is not God among the Germanics who was "a textbook description of a fertility god,": Freyr—who was also part of the high trinity at Uppsala [2].


Quite the contrary, all mythographical and anthropological evidence points to at the very least the domination of Germanic religiosity and culture with a strong sense of masculinity.

One of the best preserved invocations of the Germanics [3] would argue otherwise:


Hail to thee, day! Hail, ye day's sons!
Hail, night and daughter of night!
With blithe eyes look on both of us:
send to those sitting here speed!

Hail to you, gods! Hail, goddesses!
Hail, earth that givest to all!
Goodly spells and speech bespeak we from you,
and healing hands, in this life.


There is no submission of men to women in Germanic culture, nor has there ever been

Right, but our religiosity is not about submission, that's Islam. ;)


We'll have to get together for a beer sometime, then you can say that you have.

Cool, drive on over here some weekend! :D


There are two classes of divine being I do not worship or hail: Thursar and Goddesses

Like I say, to each their own, but that's, fo shizzle, way out of synch with what we know of our ancestors' praxis.


Jörð is both. Like the Hebrew God, I acknowledge their existence is undeniable but the role they play in my life is minimal...

Seriously? She is the very ground we walk upon, that from which our food is grown, that from which all life springs. No life is possible without her. Indeed, I can hardly thing of a deity other than Sunna who is more directly and immediately involved with our daily lives.

Notes: Lindow, John. Norse Mythology. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 53.
Ibid., 121-125.
"The Lay of Sigdrifa" in The Poetic Edda. trans. Hollander, Lee M. (USA: University of Texas Press, 2004), 234.

[Magister Eckhart]

Is it? Gimbutas and Frazer aside, not a single mythographic text that sits on my bookshelf phrases the relationships between the Æsir and Vanir as one of one tribe conquering and assimilating the Gods of another. They all mention in passing that this was, among the Cambridge Ritualists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_and_ritual_school), a commonly held view, but contemporary authorities on Germanic myth, like John Lindow, don't take it as anything more than an historical trend whose time is gone [1].

Well there has to be a middle-ground found here then. The anthropologists whose studies I follow, and the mythographers whose studies you follow need to be brought into better conversation, because Gimbutas is certainly still current, and very much consistent with a similar experience of the Aryan invasions in India - I would say the problem with Lindow and other mythographers is that they do not venture to do comparative studies in the way the anthropologists do.


Yargh, matey! Ye've some problems here. The Germanic sky God, Tyr, isn't a charioteer. Thor is, but he's not the head of the pantheon. Also, what to make of the female Sun charioteer? That's something about Germanic myth that seriously throws Frazer's theories about a dichotomy between masculine Sun cults and feminine Earth cults out of whack.

Ah, my phrasing has been misunderstood - "charioteer, sky-god culture" is meant to mean a charioteer culture and sky-god culture - i.e. "charioteer" refers to the people, not the God.


I don't know as much about Greek and Roman mythology as some here, but there is no arguing that there is not God among the Germanics who was "a textbook description of a fertility god,": Freyr—who was also part of the high trinity at Uppsala [2].

This is definitely fair but it doesn't dispute my assertion that Tacitus might simply have misinterpreted the whole thing because he was a Roman.


One of the best preserved invocations of the Germanics [3] would argue otherwise:


Hail to thee, day! Hail, ye day's sons!
Hail, night and daughter of night!
With blithe eyes look on both of us:
send to those sitting here speed!

Hail to you, gods! Hail, goddesses!
Hail, earth that givest to all!
Goodly spells and speech bespeak we from you,
and healing hands, in this life.

As I recall, this is at the beginning of the poem, and the incantation is made by Sigrdrifa (Brynhild), a Valkyrie. Does this not colour the circumstances of the prayer somewhat? Also, your translation makes it sound as if it's being said over some kind of host; it's not - it's just Sigurd and Sigrdrifa in the actual text, and this is significant.

Let's look at the original


"Heill dagr!
Heilir dags synir!
Heil nótt ok nift!
Óreiðum augum lítið okkr þinig
ok gefið sitjöndum sigr!

Heilir æsir!
Heilar ásynjur!
Heil sjá in fjölnýta fold!
Mál ok mannvit gefið okkr mærum tveim
ok læknishendr, meðan lifum."

In this first stanza, the last two lines are self-referential; a more correct translation would not be "those sitting here" but "we sitting here", and of course the poetic use of "speed" is really sigr, which means victory, but this is minor. The material point is that it's a prayer of a man and a woman together, not one said over an army or by men for men.

The fact is that Sigrdrifa has just awoken and is about to give to Sigurd the wisdom of magic runes; this is a form of seið, which is almost exclusive province of the Ásynjur. In fact, only one Æsir has access to the knowledge, the all-knowing Óðinn. Other than the all-knower, magic knowledge was considered a woman's realm because of its deceit and treachery.


Right, but our religiosity is not about submission, that's Islam. ;)

And Christianity, but that's beside the point. The point is I am extremely wary of Goddess-cults because of the feminism that seems always to permeate them and this modern female-empowerment nonsense that I've heard every "Goddess-worshipper" spouting. Men shouldn't devote themselves to a Goddess, it does something to their psyche that strikes me as fundamentally unheimlich.


Cool, drive on over here some weekend! :D

I wish! Maybe over my Winter Break we might have an opportunity to meet up.



Like I say, to each their own, but that's, fo shizzle, way out of synch with what we know of our ancestors' praxis.

Seriously? She is the very ground we walk upon, that from which our food is grown, that from which all life springs. No life is possible without her. Indeed, I can hardly thing of a deity other than Sunna who is more directly and immediately involved with our daily lives.

Notes: Lindow, John. Norse Mythology. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 53.
Ibid., 121-125.
"The Lay of Sigdrifa" in The Poetic Edda. trans. Hollander, Lee M. (USA: University of Texas Press, 2004), 234.

Ymir is the water we drink and the sky we live under, I don't see anyone paying him a great deal of heed. Giants aren't there to be worshipped, they exist to be reckoned with. Even the earth itself is dependent entirely upon the good will of the Gods to give us our food and our fertility, we don't get that from the Earth by itself. In fact, without the Gods, the earth is a very unforgiving, harsh, and unliveable place. Rain, sunlight, the winds, the beasts, all these come to us from the Gods to make Jörð tolerable. You will find no evidence of Jörð-cults amongst our ancestors, this is all the result of silly modern earth-worshipping neo-pagan hogwash borrowed from Wicca.

As I said, I do not disdain the worship of Goddesses except for myself; it is earth-worship, and this "earth mother" nonsense I hold as negative in its own right.


I still hold your position to be inconsistent, but this part of your post reminded me of a passage from Germania. A passage which leads me to believe your assumptions are incorrect:

Get me the original Latin. English translations are often very misleading.


*Ahem* I take it you've never heard of Shakta Dharma? There the feminine energy is the active, dynamic force in the universe and the masculine lies dormant and passive.

(The article cuts off there)

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/538054/Shaktism

This article is fairly misleading to the nature of the shakti in Hinduism.

Far from merely being passive and dormant, masculine forces do not produce energy at all; they exist to control of the unfettered creative/destructive energy of the divine feminine, which is chaotic and destructive. When the male power cannot or does not subdue and control the female, this happens:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Kaliposter1940s.jpg/408px-Kaliposter1940s.jpg

Shakti unbound is the utter ruination of all reality.

[Psychonaut]

Does this not colour the circumstances of the prayer somewhat?

As liturgical evidence of the Gods and Goddesses being hailed coequally, I think the point stands.


And Christianity, but that's beside the point. The point is I am extremely wary of Goddess-cults because of the feminism that seems always to permeate them and this modern female-empowerment nonsense that I've heard every "Goddess-worshipper" spouting.

This is not something I've found among Heathens I've met, even though all of them hailed both the Gods and Goddesses.


Men shouldn't devote themselves to a Goddess, it does something to their psyche that strikes me as fundamentally unheimlich.

Strange, the most blindingly powerful hierophanies I've had involve Goddesses: Night and Earth. The hierophanies revolving around Gods have never equaled the raw, knock-you-on-your-ass, power (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakti) of my Goddess encounters.


I wish! Maybe over my Winter Break we might have an opportunity to meet up.

:cheers:


Ymir is the water we drink and the sky we live under, I don't see anyone paying him a great deal of heed.

To be fair, he was dismembered. That which was a singularity is now a multiplicity.


You will find no evidence of Jörð-cults amongst our ancestors, this is all the result of silly modern earth-worshipping neo-pagan hogwash borrowed from Wicca.

Tacitus aside, Earth worship abounds in historical Heathenry and was one of the most enduring features that persists even today in Iceland with the cults of the landvættir. Kveldulf Gundarsson recently published an entire volume dealing with the land wights from an angle that is both scholarly yet informed by his being a practicing Heathen: Elves, Wights, and Trolls: Studies Towards the Practice of Germanic Heathenry, vol. I. Also, you might look to the Anglo-Saxons for evidence of the cult of the Earth Mother herself (http://spirit.lib.uconn.edu/~klaity/craft/erce.html) (yes, it is post conversion—as are most extant poems—but the evidencing of Earth worship is clear):


"Erce, Erce, Erce,
eorþan modor.
Geunne þe se alwalda,
ece drihten
æcera wexendra
and wridendra,
eacniendra
and elniendra,
sceafta hehra,
scirra wæstma,
and þæra bradan
berewæstma,
and þæra hwitan
hwætewæstma,
and ealra
eorþan wæstma..."

"Erce, Erce, Erce,
Earthen Mother.
May the all-powerful, eternal ruler
grant thee
acres fruitful
and flourishing,
increasing
and strengthening,
in high condition,
in bright abundance,
and the broad
barleycrops,
and the white
corncrops,
and all
earthly abundance..."


Shakti unbound is the utter ruination of all reality.

Kālī (lit. time) can never be bound. Like the Norns, she approaches the limit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limit_%28calculus%29) of ontological primacy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_philosophy). ;)

[Osweo]

Moon-worship and earth-worship represent the opposite of the Germanic/Indo-European sky-god cult. It manifests differently in different places but amongst the ancient Germanics evidence is that this feminine moon-cult that seemed to hold predominance over the early peoples of Europe was completely pushed out in favour of the dominance of a higher-reaching ideal, and a far more distinctly masculine society and culture (and, of course, religion, which is inseparable from the others.
I don't agree for one second with your analysis, but anyway; How is it that men worshipping a goddess are less masculine? Tell that to the Mariolators who beat the Moro out of Iberia. To Odysseus and Pallas Athena. To the hosts of Leinster over whom Brigid flew in battle, striking terror into their foes.

So yes, I do disdain moon-worship, because it is tied with earth-worship, and our Indo-European ancestors were not bovine dirt-worshipping submissives
Do you employ hyperbole merely for its own sake?
To think of the great megalithic masterpieces like Stonehenge, Newgrange, Brodgar and Carnac as the work of bovine dirt-worshipping submissives is pretty ludicrous to my mind.

All of this talk of DNA seems completely superfluous to me. It is the spiritual inheritance of Volk that is communicated through the centuries which is the defining feature of the conquest of the Indo-Europeans over the dirt-worshippers, not these base material DNA haplogroups.
'Base material'... I've always talked in terms of organic (grand)parent to child transmission, not genetic material.

The conquest is to be found in our lore - the base, sexual, feminine Vanir
"BASE" again, what a word!!! My my, did you have to wash after writing this??? :rotfl:

were brought to submission by the dominate, pure, masculine Aesir.
Eek, now I feel the need to wash myself! :eek:

And so rather than the chaos of the hypersexual earth gods, the order and discipline of the battle-born sky gods became the defining feature of Germanic religion.
You misunderstand the Aesir/Vanir thing (it has parallels in Indian mythology, indeed, and you can hardly claim that it's a mythologification of history in BOTH places), but this 'change of tone' in favour of the militant battle gods is probably better dated to the time of the increased contacts with the Mediterranean world anyway...

The earth gods have a place, controlled, subject to these sky-gods in the same way the the pre-Indo-European peoples have a place, controlled, dominated by the superior and dominate Indo-European tradition who do not soil their religion by playing about in the mud.
'base', 'impure', 'soil', 'mud'...
You sound almost as though you HATE the material world. Perhaps you're a gnostic and don't know it yet! :p "The world is evil, the body even more so!!!" :eek:

the goddess-worshipping dirt-eaters serve the devotees of the sky-gods and the spiritual peasants serve their spiritual lords (look to the Rígsþula).
:eek:

Outdated? This is still current among anthropologists; in fact, one of the chief competitors for the Urheimat of the Indo-European peoples, the Kurgan hypothesis, is accompanied by a view proposed by Marija Gimbutas regarding the nature of the charioteer sky-god culture of the Indo-Europeans.
Gimbutas wrote forever ago, and was a raving feminist whose 'theory' of IE patriarchs riding in to smash the Goddess's 'Old European' matriarchy is just pseudohistory for the sake of 'socking it to The Man'!

After all, there are no really significant male deities of fertility in Græco-Roman myth.
Poseidon.

Quite the contrary, all mythographical and anthropological evidence points to at the very least the domination of Germanic religiosity and culture with a strong sense of masculinity. ... Any notions of a dominant or even significant goddess-cult like those of contemporary neo-paganism is pure fantasy. There is no submission of men to women in Germanic culture, nor has there ever been; the presence of the "divine feminine" is certainly very real, but as expressed above, it is wild and chaotic, and kept under control by "masculine" forces ...
You'd better not let a psychiatrist see any of these posts... ;)


She is certainly not a motherly deity the way Frigg is, or a feminine deity like Freyja.
How is a motherly figure not inherently and emphatically 'feminine'? And what of the sex of the Norns?

I maintain that allowing for any form of domination of an "earth-mother" runs completely contrary to our ancestors' own experience.
'Domination' again... :suomut:

Ostara is a minor event that has been turned into a huge festival because of the influence of Christian Easter. The real festival of that time would be the Sigrblót in honour of Óðinn.
Can you back that up from the lore?

And I still say leave the Wiccans to role around naked in the mud and howl at the moon. If we want to have a real religion we can't be like that.
This real religion of yours seems far too rooted in your own preoccupations of masculinity and femininity, that echo more the Abrahamic worldview than anything we can ascertain from the historical and archaeological sources. I trust the coming years will see you re-evaluate these positions. Just because some modern idiots and underhand political agents are swarming all over the 'feminine' doesn't mean that this HAS to be the case. They have no monopoly on it, and to retreat from this entire sphere is to give them all the more advantage over us.

If anything, look down into your own blood. Your Hiberno-Norse were very well disposed to the cult of Brigit (i.e. the Goddess Brigantia). They brought innumerable Bridekirks and Kirkbrides to Britain and the Isle of Man, and even named their sons 'Maelbrigte' in her honour.

[Magister Eckhart]

As liturgical evidence of the Gods and Goddesses being hailed coequally, I think the point stands.

I would still disagree; this is not a prayer of mass-worship but of couples, which is a distinct context.


This is not something I've found among Heathens I've met, even though all of them hailed both the Gods and Goddesses.

Then our experiences are very different. I've never met a man dedicated to a Goddess who wasn't tainted in some way by this devotion. There is a weak earth-love about them and the stain of Wiccanism that I have encountered. If you have friends who will expand my experience in this regard, please, restore my trust in goddess-worship.


Strange, the most blindingly powerful hierophanies I've had involve Goddesses: Night and Earth. The hierophanies revolving around Gods have never equaled the raw, knock-you-on-your-ass, power (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakti) of my Goddess encounters.

I do not share this experience, but it may owe to the unbridled and chaotic power of the feminine which unfettered breeds only destruction. A forest fire may be more impressive than a candle, but I think you'll agree it's better to have the candle close to your home than the alternative.


To be fair, he was dismembered. That which was a singularity is now a multiplicity.

Fair point, but if people can worship a formless God they can worship a dismembered Deity as well. Not that I'm saying he ought to be worshipped - I don't endorse the worship of Thursar.


Tacitus aside, Earth worship abounds in historical Heathenry and was one of the most enduring features that persists even today in Iceland with the cults of the landvættir. Kveldulf Gundarsson recently published an entire volume dealing with the land wights from an angle that is both scholarly yet informed by his being a practicing Heathen: Elves, Wights, and Trolls: Studies Towards the Practice of Germanic Heathenry, vol. I. Also, you might look to the Anglo-Saxons for evidence of the cult of the Earth Mother herself (http://spirit.lib.uconn.edu/~klaity/craft/erce.html) (yes, it is post conversion—as are most extant poems—but the evidencing of Earth worship is clear):


"Erce, Erce, Erce,
eorþan modor.
Geunne þe se alwalda,
ece drihten
æcera wexendra
and wridendra,
eacniendra
and elniendra,
sceafta hehra,
scirra wæstma,
and þæra bradan
berewæstma,
and þæra hwitan
hwætewæstma,
and ealra
eorþan wæstma..."

"Erce, Erce, Erce,
Earthen Mother.
May the all-powerful, eternal ruler
grant thee
acres fruitful
and flourishing,
increasing
and strengthening,
in high condition,
in bright abundance,
and the broad
barleycrops,
and the white
corncrops,
and all
earthly abundance..."

I'll look into the book. There is no earth-worship that I can see in the Anglo-Saxon poem, by the way, but rather an appeal to a masculine figure on behalf of the earth, which goes back to my point above: it is the Gods, not earth, which bring us prosperity and well-being.


Kālī (lit. time) can never be bound. Like the Norns, she approaches the limit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limit_%28calculus%29) of ontological primacy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_philosophy). ;)

Yes you've shown yourself to be a firm adherent to process philosophy in the past. I fail to see its use, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt as we continue our project of enhancing learning in the Heathen community. Call me the leader of the "dogmatic school". :p

Also, Kali is like the other Skakti incarnations in that she is controlled by her male counterpart, and when her male counterpart is absent she is a force of pure energy, i.e. pure destruction. Indeed, to borrow terms from a greater thinker than I, the Dionysian is more powerful but it needs the Apollonian to keep it in check, because once it gains dominance it cannot be subdued.


I don't agree for one second with your analysis, but anyway; How is it that men worshipping a goddess are less masculine? Tell that to the Mariolators who beat the Moro out of Iberia. To Odysseus and Pallas Athena. To the hosts of Leinster over whom Brigid flew in battle, striking terror into their foes.

Re-read the text that you quote of me. I am denouncing earth-worship; Pallas Athena is a goddess, yes, but also part of the "higher-reaching ideal" of which I speak. She was hardly an earthen diety; I admit I know little of the "Mariolators who beat the Moro out of Iberia". As for Brighid, I had a feeling the Celtic was going to come up here somewhere; remember the meaning of the name: "exalted one". There is a lifting up here that still points to the sky, goddess or not. My criticism is limited to dirt-worship and the "earth mother".

My attitude towards goddess-worship in general is a personal, not dogmatic one.


Do you employ hyperbole merely for its own sake?

Sometimes the venom of my pen flows a little too thickly onto the page, perhaps, but that often happens when one writes polemically.


To think of the great megalithic masterpieces like Stonehenge, Newgrange, Brodgar and Carnac as the work of bovine dirt-worshipping submissives is pretty ludicrous to my mind.

Any monkey can throw two stones on top of one another; the artisanal skill necessary to put big rocks on top of each other does not speak to spiritual superiority, only mathematical skill. In reality the builders of Stonehenge, Newgrange, and the rest were little more than glorified masons. If you want a contemporary picture of the people who put together massive structures, visit a construction site and try to have a conversation about religion and spirituality. They're peasants, however pleasant their company might be.


'Base material'... I've always talked in terms of organic (grand)parent to child transmission, not genetic material.

I was really referring to all the DNA discussion that has been going on in this thread and elsewhere - I discount DNA and genetics as insignificant to spirituality.


You misunderstand the Aesir/Vanir thing (it has parallels in Indian mythology, indeed, and you can hardly claim that it's a mythologification of history in BOTH places), but this 'change of tone' in favour of the militant battle gods is probably better dated to the time of the increased contacts with the Mediterranean world anyway...

I actually would argue far from being a mythologification of history, it represents a historical happening growing from the primordial myths themselves. The conquest of sky over soil is an archetypal form that defines our culture as Indo-Europeans. The myths speak through us, we do not speak through the myths. The translation "Lord of Hosts", for example, may be an English adaptation of a Latin word, but it is certainly a concept pre-existing any contact with the Latin language. Our chief gods were always war-gods; even Tiwaz was a god of War.


'base', 'impure', 'soil', 'mud'...
You sound almost as though you HATE the material world. Perhaps you're a gnostic and don't know it yet! :p "The world is evil, the body even more so!!!" :eek:

So you would say impurity, baseness, and filth are good things?

At any rate, nowhere do I call for the eradication of these things, merely their proper place below the pure ideal of the aethereal sky-god.


Gimbutas wrote forever ago, and was a raving feminist whose 'theory' of IE patriarchs riding in to smash the Goddess's 'Old European' matriarchy is just pseudohistory for the sake of 'socking it to The Man'!

I don't think that 30-40 years qualifies as "forever ago". And yes, her goals were indeed undesirable, but her research can hardly be called "pseudo-historical", and if she is right, then the flaw resides in her rebellion against a righteous and holy rule of the masculine tendency in law and society and the feminine tendency in hearth and home. Her work has great value as a tool to recognise the positive nature of our ancestral social structure in opposition to Christian and atheistic egalitarianism.

And, I maintain, she is still current; the Kurgan hypothesis especially, as well as the characterisation of the Indo-Europeans as charioteers and worshippers of sky-gods. You can't simply throw out all of her work because you don't like the fact that some of it has feminist leanings, however strong they may be.


Poseidon.

Interesting. Evidence?


You'd better not let a psychiatrist see any of these posts... ;)

Are you implying I'm not sane because of our disagreement? That's rather Bolshevik of you... (see I can play the name-calling game too).


How is a motherly figure not inherently and emphatically 'feminine'? And what of the sex of the Norns?

:confused: I'm not sure what you're getting at here. I'm denouncing the worship of an earth-goddess; if you'd read a little more you'd see I'm quite open to the worship of Frigg.


Can you back that up from the lore?

Absolutely. Good luck finding Ostara in the lore. She appears once in all writing on the subject, and that is in Bede, who gives her passing mention as what the Christian Easter celebrations replaced.

The Sigrblót, on the other hand, appears in numerous sagas, the most well-known being the Ynglinga saga.


This real religion of yours seems far too rooted in your own preoccupations of masculinity and femininity, that echo more the Abrahamic worldview than anything we can ascertain from the historical and archaeological sources. I trust the coming years will see you re-evaluate these positions. Just because some modern idiots and underhand political agents are swarming all over the 'feminine' doesn't mean that this HAS to be the case. They have no monopoly on it, and to retreat from this entire sphere is to give them all the more advantage over us.

Preoccupations of masculinity and femininity? I suppose you'll say that "man" and "woman" are social constructs next. That's all well and good, except that they are two very physically, psychologically, and spiritually disparate kinds of human being. The elevation of the feminine is inextricably linked to a denunciation and the fall of the masculine; why would I encourage earth-mother cults meant to elevate the earth-goddess to some special place above other deities? Our chief Gods are masculine deities, and this needs to be asserted. Abrahamic indeed: it was not the Jews, nor the Christians, nor the Arabs, nor any of their kin who elevated Óðinn to a place of honour in our lore, or gave the ancient Germanic tribes the father-son deities of Tuisto-Mannus. The positive nature of masculinity is ingrained in our very language. It was not until several centuries into the Christian Era that English even developed a word for the feminine pronoun. The masculine-feminine divide is even better pronounced in Old Norse, with the prevalent concepts of blauðr and hvatr.

The Goddesses have their place, indeed, especially sky-Goddesses, but to elevate a Goddess above a God is pure modern nonsense that poisons our faith and contaminates our cultural soul. Domination of the "earth-mother" is a deadly canker in our community of faith and we must have it out.


If anything, look down into your own blood. Your Hiberno-Norse were very well disposed to the cult of Brigit (i.e. the Goddess Brigantia). They brought innumerable Bridekirks and Kirkbrides to Britain and the Isle of Man, and even named their sons 'Maelbrigte' in her honour.

First of all, Brigantia was very brief hiccup in Roman Gallic culture, not equitable to the much older Celtic goddess Brighid.

That aside, I imagine they would be well-disposed; she shared many qualities with their own Freyja and the Græco-Roman Minerva, but we're not talking about an earth-mother here, either, we're talking about a powerful sky-Goddess.

I feel it worth repeating that my refusal to worship of Goddesses in general is strictly personal and based on experience; I myself would not participate in any such thing, but I am not dogmatically opposed to its existence in our religion. My dogmatic opposition is to the "earth-mother" concept which belongs to inferior people dominated by our ancestors.

[Brynhild]

An interesting case in point regarding the use of the word worship - Heathens don't worship their deities, they honour them. Worship is a term that I associate with people that would rather put themselves into the hands of an almighty deity who is their eternal problem solver, thus absolving these individuals of any responsibility for themselves.

Men who seriously believe that female deities have no place in any form of Heathenism would need to re-read the texts. Heathenism isn't a men's club who view women as being very little of note in terms of such honour - that has a basis in the more patriarchal religions.

Polytheism has always been a time-honoured practise, revering both the female and male deities. Don't confuse this with the Wiccan notion of the Goddess being more important. Female Heathens don't uphold such ideals. As for the Heathen males I know, they have no such qualms about honouring the female deities of equal importance either.

[Wyn]

An interesting case in point regarding the use of the word worship - Heathens don't worship their deities, they honour them.

This is rather subjective and variable. I've seen them use the word worship on numerous occasions. I've come across the use of the word faith to describe Germanic neopaganism by organisations that promote it at times, also. I don't know of a line can be definitively drawn to separate "honour" from "worship".

[Magister Eckhart]

An interesting case in point regarding the use of the word worship - Heathens don't worship their deities, they honour them. Worship is a term that I associate with people that would rather put themselves into the hands of an almighty deity who is their eternal problem solver, thus absolving these individuals of any responsibility for themselves.

I would disagree here. Worship is a form of honour, and there are many kinds. Just because we acknowledge the superiority of our Gods to us does not mean submission to them. Let us look to the root of the word:

OE worðscip "condition of being worthy, honour, renown"; literally, it is wor(th)ship.

I do not think this is foreign to our faith at all. In fact, the evidence of prostration proves that there is a strong element in our faith of acknowledging and proclaiming the superiority of the Gods. In fact to not worship the Gods seems to me more than a little ungrateful for all they do for us. You raise a horn to the Alfather and shout "hail" in the presence of others, and you can honour him. When you say with your heart "Óðinn, God of Wisdom, cast your spear over this work", and offer sacrifice, you are worshipping. What would our religion be without worship? It would be little more than a succession of glorified drinking parties.

Recall the formula of Christian worship: "I am not worthy". It is this self-denigration, not the adoration of the deity, which is foreign to our Folk and Faith.


Men who seriously believe that female deities have no place in any form of Heathenism would need to re-read the texts. Heathenism isn't a men's club who view women as being very little of note in terms of such honour - that has a basis in the more patriarchal religions.

Indeed, I agree. Men who think that Goddesses have no place are quite wrong. If you find one you may tell him I said so.

There are, however, very defined roles to be played by males and females in society, and this is certainly reflected in the relationship we have with our Gods. It is Kingship, Lordship, Chiefdom that defines our ancient political structure and "manliness" (hvatr) which is among our chief goods, so I would not disdain the term "patriarchal" so easily. There's nothing wrong in our religion with men having rulership, and it's not a hatred of womankind to assert that all beings, including women, have a proper place and should keep to it. This sense of order is extremely important, in fact, in our tradition and our scripture.


Polytheism has always been a time-honoured practise, revering both the female and male deities. Don't confuse this with the Wiccan notion of the Goddess being more important. Female Heathens don't uphold such ideals. As for the Heathen males I know, they have no such qualms about honouring the female deities of equal importance either.

And let them! I do not dispute that there are heathens who rightfully honour sky-Goddesses like Freyja and Frigg, Iðunn and Síf. Indeed, this is perfectly acceptable within the dogma of our faith. It is the elevation of the Earth Mother, the worship of this dirt-cult, these are foreign and they are in error. In order to worship the Earth for Ásatruár, one needs to worship a Thurs, and to worship a Thurs is to worship chaos, death, devastation, and deceit. I would not turn my back on the Æsir to worship their mortal foes, who are no friends of our race either. Necessary they may be to the balance, and for the act of creation, but they need none of our aid for their existence. Honour those who actually help us, who bring us prosperity and goodness: the Gods and Goddesses alone do this. We have few evils in our faith, because of the nuanced understanding of the world in which we live, but among those very few is paying worship to the enemies of the authors of our very existence. I do not damn the Thursar, it is not for us or our Gods to exterminate them, but to pay them honour and tribute? This is well off the path of sanctity.

As I said above, I choose not to worship the Goddesses: I need them for nothing, and they do little for me. This will change, I am sure, as time goes by and my priorities shift from self to family, but as it stands I don't need Frigg or Freyja, I need Óðinn for wisdom and knowledge and Týr for order in my life. So this is entirely a personal choice. Refusal to worship a Thurs is not personal: it is dogmatic.

[Psychonaut]

I do not share this experience, but it may owe to the unbridled and chaotic power of the feminine which unfettered breeds only destruction. A forest fire may be more impressive than a candle, but I think you'll agree it's better to have the candle close to your home than the alternative.

Have you experienced any hierophanies revolving around the Goddesses? If not, how can you judge its character, since those who have seem to be in disagreement?


Yes you've shown yourself to be a firm adherent to process philosophy in the past. I fail to see its use, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt as we continue our project of enhancing learning in the Heathen community. Call me the leader of the "dogmatic school". :p

You seem, to my eye, to lean heavily towards Augustinian philosophy. Much of this conversation has seemed like a polytheistic interpretation of his City of God.


Also, Kali is like the other Skakti incarnations in that she is controlled by her male counterpart, and when her male counterpart is absent she is a force of pure energy, i.e. pure destruction.

:no000000:

You got that a little bit backwards, dude. She's not the destroyer, her consort (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva), Śiva, is.


So you would say impurity, baseness, and filth are good things?

You're pulling an Augustinian kind of question begging (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question) here by predefining the feminine as impure, base and bad.


Absolutely. Good luck finding Ostara in the lore. She appears once in all writing on the subject, and that is in Bede, who gives her passing mention as what the Christian Easter celebrations replaced.

Aye, but the IE cognate Dawn Goddesses are found throughout the Indo-European world. If it were an isolated thing, we could probably attribute an error to Bede, but the Dawn Goddess, *heusos is included in every catalog of PIE deities.


The Goddesses have their place, indeed, especially sky-Goddesses, but to elevate a Goddess above a God is pure modern nonsense that poisons our faith and contaminates our cultural soul. Domination of the "earth-mother" is a deadly canker in our community of faith and we must have it out.

Hmm...how then do you account for all deities, including the male pantheon heads, being subject to the will of the Norns?


to worship a Thurs is to worship chaos, death, devastation, and deceit.

Wait, that sounds a lot like Odin: Bölverkr (Worker of Evil), Glapsviðr (Swift in Deceit), Skollvaldr (Ruler of Treachery), etc. ;)

[Liffrea]

Originally Posted by Curtis24
Chrisitian heroism usually involves stoic suffering. LOTR is definitely Christian heroism, read the Letters of JRR Tolkien if you need more proof(he explicitly talks about Frodo's faith in God etc.)

Not Quite.

Tolkien was, indeed, a committed Roman Catholic but he was also drawn to the remnant of ancient myth in northern Europe. If you read his essay, Beowulf; The Monsters and the Critics and the notes with his edition of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun you will have a better idea of the sort of hero he had in mind, think of Feanor, Hurin and of Turin and you have the indomitable (what Tolkien called godless) will to dominate and resist that he called the “theory of northern courage”, these characters were very much modelled on the Scandinavian Sagas, self reliant men, full of pride, quick to hate as well as love, and who had no fear. Tolkien saw in Beowulf a transition point between the Pagan and Christian realms but what he saw as much was an echo of a world where the Gods die, man is destroyed, but men still step up and fight the monsters (who come even if the Gods do not) even knowing they are doomed. The Christian hero may be Stoic, but in his mind he is certain of God’s love and a happy ever after ending, for the north man there was only the certainty of will, self reliance, a strong right arm and oblivion, of course many believed in an after life but in Norse myth the Gods (most of them) and man are all wolf fodder in the end.

But Feanor and Hurin were a warning by Tolkien, Frodo was very much a Christianised hero given the capacity (as Tolkien saw it) for pity and compassion, Feanor would have slain Golem, not Frodo, and for Tolkien it was Frodo’s Christian like compassion that redeems himself when he fails in his mission and is corrupted by the ring, Golem (the anti-hero) destroys the ring, not Frodo (a lesson Tolkien wanted to be learned). Gawain and the Green Knight comes closest of all I think to Tolkien’s concept of a Christian hero.

Personally I prefer Feanor and Turin.;)

[Magister Eckhart]

Have you experienced any hierophanies revolving around the Goddesses? If not, how can you judge its character, since those who have seem to be in disagreement?

In the practise of disciplined meditation they seemed to have left me alone, so I leave them alone.


You seem, to my eye, to lean heavily towards Augustinian philosophy. Much of this conversation has seemed like a polytheistic interpretation of his City of God.

Ouch.




:no000000:

You got that a little bit backwards, dude. She's not the destroyer, her consort (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva), Śiva, is.

I didn't call her "the destroyer", but it doesn't take more than a quick glance to see the destructive power of the unfettered energy of Shakti. Also, Shiva's role is as destroyer, yes, but destroyer to create, while the Shakti's power is sheer ruination.



You're pulling an Augustinian kind of question begging (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question) here by predefining the feminine as impure, base and bad.

:no000000:
I'm responding to accusations against me that somehow I'm a self-hating gnostic. Re-read Osweo's quote to which I'm responding. My question is exactly what the words say: he doesn't like my use of those categories and I asked him in turn if he considers them good things.

That particular point has nothing to do with the feminine as such; I have never in the entire course of this argument called the Divine Feminine as such base or impure. My polemic has been exclusively against the earth-mother cult, so please, don't put words in my mouth. You have reason enough to disagree with me without having to do that.


Aye, but the IE cognate Dawn Goddesses are found throughout the Indo-European world. If it were an isolated thing, we could probably attribute an error to Bede, but the Dawn Goddess, *heusos is included in every catalog of PIE deities.

Error? No, I believe Bede whole-heartedly that Eostre existed, but she's a minor deity at best, and her festival has been blown out of proportion by contemporary heathenry. I never once denied her existence.


Hmm...how then do you account for all deities, including the male pantheon heads, being subject to the will of the Norns?

There are two different categories in which to work here; are you referring to the Norns, Thursar who tend the World-Tree from the Well of Urðr, or merely Norns, the dísir whose form, number, and origin is unknown and interfere in the lives of men bringing good or ill fortune?

The latter can easily be explained away as forces of order and chaos. The former might present something of a problem... however, being Thursar, it is known that they have the might to challenge the Gods, but that does not put them above the Gods. Rather, they serve a function of maintaining order through control over life and death.Their function is not, however, contained in their persons; they obtain this function. Therefore the "Will of Norns" is not an embodiment of Divine Feminine, but a transcending function served by female Thursar.


Wait, that sounds a lot like Odin: Bölverkr (Worker of Evil), Glapsviðr (Swift in Deceit), Skollvaldr (Ruler of Treachery), etc. ;)

Yes, well, he's known for leaving people on the battlefield, but that doesn't make him an agent of death, destruction, devastation, and chaos. It just means he's fickle in who he favours in combat, which makes sense considering it's not exactly in his interest to leave the best warriors alive.

[Psychonaut]

Ouch.

Don't take me the wrong way, I think it's fascinating and will surely provide much space for debate since our hierologies seem to differ so vastly. As I've said elsewhere (http://www.amazon.com/Journal-Contemporary-Heathen-Thought/dp/1452883718/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1290378296&sr=8-1), "variety truly is the spice of life, and Heathenry would be awfully boring if our philosophy were to be as dogmatically ridig as Christianity's." If everyone in Heathenry were process oriented, there would be no impetus for folks like me to grow and sharpen our ideas, just as if everyone were a theistic idealist, there would be no similar need for you guys to do the same. Friendly competition and strife make for the most fertile philosophical soil.


I didn't call her "the destroyer", but it doesn't take more than a quick glance to see the destructive power of the unfettered energy of Shakti. Also, Shiva's role is as destroyer, yes, but destroyer to create, while the Shakti's power is sheer ruination.

But that's not how Kālī is perceived by Hindus at all. The whole thrust of Tantric theodicy is that these things which are perceived as destruction are not evil, but are both necessary and divine—that the holy is as much revealed and made manifest by death and destruction as it is by life and creation.


I'm responding to accusations against me that somehow I'm a self-hating gnostic. Re-read Osweo's quote to which I'm responding. My question is exactly what the words say: he doesn't like my use of those categories and I asked him in turn if he considers them good things.

But you've already done, as Augustine, and made a hard and fast association between the earthly and the base, so a questioning of one necessarily becomes a questioning of the other.


That particular point has nothing to do with the feminine as such; I have never in the entire course of this argument called the Divine Feminine as such base or impure. My polemic has been exclusively against the earth-mother cult, so please, don't put words in my mouth. You have reason enough to disagree with me without having to do that.

Surely you can understand my apprehension in dealing with something that seems to so closely mirror the spirit/flesh divide in the City of God. While the polemic is indeed particular to Earth and her cult, I must ask upon what general principles this critique is based. Since the femininity of Earth's cultists seems to be a particular point in your critique, it only makes sense to extrapolate some underlying tension towards the holiness of femininity itself.


Error? No, I believe Bede whole-heartedly that Eostre existed, but she's a minor deity at best, and her festival has been blown out of proportion by contemporary heathenry. I never once denied her existence.

Might we simply be dealing with regionalism? The Alpine Germanics have holiday traditions which are undoubtedly native Heathen ones, yet are not found at all among the Scandinavians.


The latter can easily be explained away as forces of order and chaos.

Explained away? How would that jibe with those who have encountered them or that they are defined as subjects, not forces, in the lore?


Their function is not, however, contained in their persons; they obtain this function. Therefore the "Will of Norns" is not an embodiment of Divine Feminine, but a transcending function served by female Thursar.

Is this an exegetical or hermeneutic opinion? Because I really don't think exegesis of the texts would bear this out at all, since Winterbourne (http://www.amazon.com/Well-Tree-World-Germanic-Culture/dp/0870233521/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1290379717&sr=8-1) and Bauschatz (http://www.amazon.com/Well-Tree-World-Germanic-Culture/dp/0870233521/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1290379707&sr=8-1) have provided exegeses which disagree and are, as of yet, the only such exegeses. It the opinion is hermeneutic, I'm curious what kind of (to steal a phrase from Bohm) controlling unknown you think the Norns might be subject to.

[Aemma]

Moon-worship and earth-worship represent the opposite of the Germanic/Indo-European sky-god cult. It manifests differently in different places but amongst the ancient Germanics evidence is that this feminine moon-cult that seemed to hold predominance over the early peoples of Europe was completely pushed out in favour of the dominance of a higher-reaching ideal, and a far more distinctly masculine society and culture (and, of course, religion, which is inseparable from the others.

Any contemporary incarnation of paganism that includes this "earth-mother" concept or a moon-worship cult is a throw-back to people our ancestors conquered and subdued millennia ago; it's a fundamentally flawed understanding of our own history and our own religious heritage; it's part of the reason why Wicca and goddess-paganism is such an affront (actually one of the smaller reasons...) to true Heathenry.

So yes, I do disdain moon-worship, because it is tied with earth-worship, and our Indo-European ancestors were not bovine dirt-worshipping submissives but proud, strong, upward-looking warriors who placed their Gods completely outside the accessible realm of sensory perception into a truly aethereal realm (this is especially true of the Germanics, who would be founders of Western Civilisation, but also true of the ancestors of the Graeco-Romans).

***And Aemma's eyes come to a screeching halt!***

Is Audumla not worthy of your respect as our primeval cow whose milk fed Ymir while she licked the progenitor of the gods, Buri?

Is Mani not worthy of fairer consideration given that our Germanic heathen way is to compute using the moon and not the sun to number the years, and "days" as nights even?

Are Njordr (or Nerthus for that matter), or Freyr and Freyja, and the rest of our holy Vanir, only seen as submissives to you and not worthy of their own sanctity? :(


All of this talk of DNA seems completely superfluous to me. It is the spiritual inheritance of Volk that is communicated through the centuries which is the defining feature of the conquest of the Indo-Europeans over the dirt-worshippers, not these base material DNA haplogroups. The conquest is to be found in our lore - the base, sexual, feminine Vanir were brought to submission by the dominate, pure, masculine Aesir. Some learning was passed to the chief God, Óðinn, whose existence is dominate by a will to know all things, but aside from this, the most influential dieties of the Vanir were completely "Aesirised": Freyja became a sword-maiden, who gathered dead in imitation of the chief death-God Óðinn. And so rather than the chaos of the hypersexual earth gods, the order and discipline of the battle-born sky gods became the defining feature of Germanic religion.

The earth gods have a place, controlled, subject to these sky-gods in the same way the the pre-Indo-European peoples have a place, controlled, dominated by the superior and dominate Indo-European tradition who do not soil their religion by playing about in the mud. It is this, rather than the good-conquering-evil world-feeling that defines the Germanic peoples: the balance of order and chaos, with one subject to, but not eradicated by, the other: the chaos serving the needs of order, like the earth-cult serves the sky-cult, the goddess-worshipping dirt-eaters serve the devotees of the sky-gods and the spiritual peasants serve their spiritual lords (look to the Rígsþula).

I hope this explanation has cleared up any questions on my reasoning for disdaining moon-worshippers, goddess-cults, earth-worshippers, neo-pagans, Wiccans, et al.

No The Wagnerian. This is not so. You cut off our nose to spite our face by giving the impression that Germanic heathenry is solely based on the warrior cult. This is not so. This mud, as you call it, is born of elements much more primordial, elemental if you will, than what you care to acknowledge. The most primary legacy passed down to us from our forebears is one of soil--the meeting of fire and ice, and the Yawning Gap and everything else that spawned from that great primordial goop.

You don't offer balance with your conceptualisation of our pantheon but instead suggest that there is a primacy of one class of deities over another. This is false. Pure and simple.

[Osweo]

There is a weak earth-love about them
:ohwell: And why shouldn't we love our home and landscape? The soil that feeds us?
Consider also the 'territorial imperative' (Robert Ardrey wrote an interesting book of the same name) - what will man OR beast fight over more than land? Is the notion of the inviolability of the sacred earth of the Motherland not among the more visceral and powerful instincts in our history?

There is no earth-worship that I can see in the Anglo-Saxon poem, by the way, but rather an appeal to a masculine figure on behalf of the earth, which goes back to my point above: it is the Gods, not earth, which bring us prosperity and well-being.
An interesting way to wriggle out of it, but I would say that the use of set phrasing in the parts referring to Earth (fira modur) in that charm indicate their greater age. Earth is addressed with an obscure and presumably archaic 'erce erce erce'. The less readily understandable phrases are usually those inherited from an ancient past, and that this part involves a direct hailing indicates its primacy over the references to a god. That the god part ever existed before the conversion to Christianity is very much up for debate.

I admit I know little of the "Mariolators who beat the Moro out of Iberia".
You must at least have seen that El Cid film?!? Was Sophia Loren in it?

As for Brighid, I had a feeling the Celtic was going to come up here somewhere; remember the meaning of the name: "exalted one". There is a lifting up here that still points to the sky, goddess or not.
Brigantia has been applied as a name to many great big lumps of earth in many far flung locations and times. Look up Braganca or Briancon to get an idea of the very corporeal and earth-rooted features of the landscape associated with her.

My criticism is limited to dirt-worship and the "earth mother".
'Dirt'... You need to do some gardening and get your hands down in the loam. The earth isn't 'dirty', save when we make it so. As a Russian friend jokes when food falls on the floor while camping; 'Nature is sterile!' (in the hygienic sense, not the 'infertile')
Heh, it wasn't too long ago that earth was actually eaten on bread! Stop being so dainty!

Sometimes the venom of my pen flows a little too thickly onto the page, perhaps, but that often happens when one writes polemically.
Maybe you should stop writing 'polemically' and actually try to communicate with people?

Any monkey can throw two stones on top of one another; the artisanal skill necessary to put big rocks on top of each other does not speak to spiritual superiority, only mathematical skill.
As though Newton was lacking in a sense of spirituality! :rolleyes2:
And clearly immensely powerful spiritual ideas prompted these men, our ancestors, to perform these feats of engineering and design. How CAN a thorough study of the heavenly bodies NOT prompt such stirrings in one's breast?

In reality the builders of Stonehenge, Newgrange, and the rest were little more than glorified masons.
Again, you need to get out of your reading rooms and do some real physical work. It looks oh-so-easy to stick a bannister and balustrades to a staircase, until you actually try it. You want to do something like fit a few windows or repair a barn roof like I did recently. You'll learn to respect those who do it day in day out then. :....

If you want a contemporary picture of the people who put together massive structures, visit a construction site and try to have a conversation about religion and spirituality. They're peasants, however pleasant their company might be.
The men who built Salisbury Cathedral, and those who are working on your new local Walmart are exactly the same breed, are they? In any case, you do the working man a disgusting disservice, dismissing him like that. I've spent my life around tradesmen, and though they are unable to couch their thoughts in high faluting language from the halls of academia, you can find insight and profundity there. Perhaps the lack of scholarly sophistication gives their words all the more force, indeed. The best proponants of scholarly language are the biggest bullshitters going, as a flip through the post-modernists will soon reveal.

I actually would argue far from being a mythologification of history, it represents a historical happening growing from the primordial myths themselves. The conquest of sky over soil is an archetypal form that defines our culture as Indo-Europeans.
'Sky gods', 'Solar deities', 'Forces of Nature'.... This all seems very old-fashioned to me. Not that that is always a bad thing, but here it comes from a period when progressivism permeated the sciences, and all had to be made to fit tidy schemata and evolutionary sequences... :ohwell: The Jungian archetype notion might be more interesting to apply, given that we are talking about a very human phenomenon when dealing with religion.

So you would say impurity, baseness, and filth are good things?
No, I would say that, as used by yourself, they are shrill misnomers for things that do not necessarily have negative value.

You see 'dirt', I see rich nourishing matter, from which we derive our sustenance. Every clump of earth contains the atoms of our countless ancestors, and to such must we go ourselves one day. I will not recoil from this. I embrace it. 'In godes faethme' indeed; to embrace is exactly the right attitude.

At any rate, nowhere do I call for the eradication of these things, merely their proper place below the pure ideal of the aethereal sky-god.
A notion quite peculiar to yourself.

I don't think that 30-40 years qualifies as "forever ago". And yes, her goals were indeed undesirable, but her research can hardly be called "pseudo-historical", and if she is right, then the flaw resides in her rebellion against a righteous and holy rule of the masculine tendency in law and society and the feminine tendency in hearth and home. Her work has great value as a tool to recognise the positive nature of our ancestral social structure in opposition to Christian and atheistic egalitarianism.
Again you show your great need to learn from the builder. You cannot build on foundations of sand.

And, I maintain, she is still current; the Kurgan hypothesis especially, as well as the characterisation of the Indo-Europeans as charioteers and worshippers of sky-gods. You can't simply throw out all of her work because you don't like the fact that some of it has feminist leanings, however strong they may be.
I have an archaeological education, but even while at university became disenchanted by the limitations of the discipline versus the linguistic discipline, which I have since worked in for several years in one form or other. I'm all too used to seeing archaeologists embarrass themselves horrendously when they stray from their discipline and interfere in philological matters. The PIEans are a linguistic concept, and are to be located by philological means. Those blustering in from other spheres without any serious comprehension of the linguistics behind it all are doomed to fail.

Interesting. Evidence?
Eeeee... The chthonic aspect of him is clear in his association with earthquakes and epithet of 'earth shaker', as well as the joint invocations to him and Demeter and Proserpine. His name has also been cited as demonstrating his marriage to the earth. The connection with horses is curious too, and might lead again to the idea of underworld generation of boons for mankind (see the Spoils of Annwn for a western parallel), while Sumerian parallels lead us to the ancient notion of the Subterranean Waters. Hmmm, see wiki and make your own conclusions;

One theory breaks it down into an element meaning "husband" or "lord" (Greek πόσις (posis), from PIE *pótis) and another element meaning "earth" (δᾶ (da), Doric for γῆ (gē)), producing something like lord or spouse of Da,i.e of the earth; this would link him with Demeter, "Earth-mother."[citation needed] Another theory interprets the second element as related to the word dawon, "water" in some Indo-European languages (e.g., Sanskrit df'nu:dew); this would make Posei-dawōn into the master of waters.[5] There is also the possibility that the word has Pre-Greek origin.[6]

Bronze Age Greece
If surviving Linear B clay tablets can be trusted, the name po-se-da-wo-ne ("Poseidon") occurs with greater frequency than does di-u-ja ("Zeus"). A feminine variant, po-se-de-ia, is also found, indicating a lost consort goddess, in effect a precursor of Amphitrite. Tablets from Pylos record sacrificial goods destined for "the Two Queens and Poseidon" and to "the Two Queens and the King". The most obvious identification for the "Two Queens" is with Demeter and Persephone, or their precursors, goddesses who were not associated with Poseidon in later periods.[7] In Mycenaean Knossos, Poseidon is already identified as "Earth-Shaker" (e-ne-si-da-o-ne),[8] a powerful attribute (earthquakes had accompanied the collapse of the Minoan palace-culture). In the heavily sea-dependent Mycenaean culture, no connection between Poseidon and the sea has yet surfaced; among the Olympians it was determined by lot that he should rule over the sea:[9] the god preceded his realm.

Demeter and Poseidon's names are linked in one Pylos tablet, where they appear as po-se-da-wo-ne and da, referred to by the epithets Enosichthon, Seischthon and Ennosigaios, all meaning "earth-shaker" and referring to his role in causing earthquakes.[citation needed]
... and review the discussions here;
http://tech.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/7816


Are you implying I'm not sane because of our disagreement? That's rather Bolshevik of you... (see I can play the name-calling game too).
I'm highlighting areas for concern and self examination... :wink

:confused: I'm not sure what you're getting at here. I'm denouncing the worship of an earth-goddess; if you'd read a little more you'd see I'm quite open to the worship of Frigg.
Just questioning your categorisations of female deities.

Absolutely. Good luck finding Ostara in the lore. She appears once in all writing on the subject, and that is in Bede, who gives her passing mention as what the Christian Easter celebrations replaced.
I find the nature of the ritual survivals of more relevance here. Look at what takes place at that time of year and re-evaluate the age, significance and origins thereof.

The elevation of the feminine is inextricably linked to a denunciation and the fall of the masculine;
I simply don't see how that necessarily follows. It's not all black/white, off/on. It's far more complex. You seem to reduce it all to simple mathematical equations. :shrug:

The positive nature of masculinity is ingrained in our very language. It was not until several centuries into the Christian Era that English even developed a word for the feminine pronoun.
What on EARTH (:p) are you on about!?

Ahem;
she mid-12c., probably evolved from O.E. seo, sio (acc. sie), fem. of demonstrative pronoun se "the." The O.E. word for "she" was heo, hio, however by 13c. the pronunciation of this had converged by phonetic evolution with he "he," so the fem. demonstrative pronoun probably was used in its place (cf. similar development in Du. zij, Ger. sie, Gk. he, etc.). The original h- survives in her. A relic of the O.E. pronoun is in Manchester-area dial. oo "she."
- I myself am a Mancunian. (I would have spelt it 'hoo', though)

That 'he' and 'hoo' are close relatives doesn't make the latter a mere derivative of the former. (Slavonic on/ona, Romance el/la follow the same pattern)


First of all, Brigantia was very brief hiccup in Roman Gallic culture, not equitable to the much older Celtic goddess Brighid.
LoL what? Brigid is simply a modern reflex of the original name Brigantia. You can even see the name in Celtiberian inscriptions before Roman influence in the peninsula! And what was 'Gallic' about a goddess seen from Iberian Galicia to Leinster, from the Bodensee to the Yorkshire Moors!?

That aside, I imagine they would be well-disposed; she shared many qualities with their own Freyja and the Græco-Roman Minerva, but we're not talking about an earth-mother here, either, we're talking about a powerful sky-Goddess.
I see little to justify this simplistic 'sky goddess' label.

My dogmatic opposition is to the "earth-mother" concept which belongs to inferior people dominated by our ancestors.
What the fuck is this 'inferior' talk?! :eek:

Don't you decry the Nazis for their love of the Untermensch term? If the ancient Britons were here today, would you describe them as 'inferior' and enact discriminatory policies against them? How do you differ from the Nazis in this regard at all?

Error? No, I believe Bede whole-heartedly that Eostre existed, but she's a minor deity at best, and her festival has been blown out of proportion by contemporary heathenry. I never once denied her existence..
That the equinox and the onset of Spring should only have reached importance with the shift to Christianity seems unlikely. That such a wealth of customs are associated with the one holiday is also indicative of great significance. That the customs are nothing to do with Christian themes, and are seen as well in Russian folk culture stress this all the more.

[Magister Eckhart]

Don't take me the wrong way, I think it's fascinating and will surely provide much space for debate since our hierologies seem to differ so vastly. As I've said elsewhere (http://www.amazon.com/Journal-Contemporary-Heathen-Thought/dp/1452883718/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1290378296&sr=8-1), "variety truly is the spice of life, and Heathenry would be awfully boring if our philosophy were to be as dogmatically ridig as Christianity's." If everyone in Heathenry were process oriented, there would be no impetus for folks like me to grow and sharpen our ideas, just as if everyone were a theistic idealist, there would be no similar need for you guys to do the same. Friendly competition and strife make for the most fertile philosophical soil.

Fairly put and kindly taken.


But that's not how Kālī is perceived by Hindus at all. The whole thrust of Tantric theodicy is that these things which are perceived as destruction are not evil, but are both necessary and divine—that the holy is as much revealed and made manifest by death and destruction as it is by life and creation.

The unfettered energy of the feminine Shakti is a completely different than the destruction-creation concept in Tantric theodicy: without her male counterpart, the Shakti threatens existence itself. Without his female counterpart, the Deity is impotent, but the connexion, the channelling, and therefore the control of the divine feminine by the divine masculine is absolutely necessary for the continued existence of the universe.


But you've already done, as Augustine, and made a hard and fast association between the earthly and the base, so a questioning of one necessarily becomes a questioning of the other.

The criticism offered against me, now compounded, is that I'm some kind of world-hating gnostic; I was unaware that the elevation of the aethereal over the earthen was world-hating or gnostic. It seems to me, and it is reflected in our lore, that it is a perfectly acceptable (and firmly rooted) order and hierarchy recognised by our ancestors, who elevate the pure, clean, clear-eyed Jarl far above the dirt-covered, swarthy, stooped Thrall.

There is a distinct difference, apparently unrecognised by my opponents in this debate, between desire for eradication and desire for subjugation.


Surely you can understand my apprehension in dealing with something that seems to so closely mirror the spirit/flesh divide in the City of God. While the polemic is indeed particular to Earth and her cult, I must ask upon what general principles this critique is based. Since the femininity of Earth's cultists seems to be a particular point in your critique, it only makes sense to extrapolate some underlying tension towards the holiness of femininity itself.

Surely you can recognise on this same note that the love of the aethereal and disdain for the base and sexual present in Augustine may converse well with Christian doctrine, but in fact pre-dates Christianity by several centuries. Even the pre-Socratics had already developed a metaphysical view of this sort, and the existence of a firm hierarchy among our Germanic ancestors confirms that there is a strong sense of separation between the bottom and the top, the inferior and superior, the peasant and the lord. The difference? Their closeness to the earth. Kings worship sky-gods, peasants worship dirt-gods. This is closely linked to the actions of demoting native "Europeans" below the pre-established hierarchy extant amongst the Indo-Europeans in both the case of the Aryans in India and our own progenitors.


Might we simply be dealing with regionalism? The Alpine Germanics have holiday traditions which are undoubtedly native Heathen ones, yet are not found at all among the Scandinavians.

If this is the case, where is she? Evidence of her existence is so scant there is no firm ground upon which to stand in elevating her as some kind of major festival-deity; no, indeed, this is a practical rather than theological phenomenon - the Christians have Christmas, we have Yule, the Christians have Easter, we need... something! Someone reached into literature, found Eostre and suddenly she gets a huge springtime festival associated with her that our ancestors would probably find absurd.


Explained away? How would that jibe with those who have encountered them or that they are defined as subjects, not forces, in the lore?

At any point in which the existence of the myriad norns arises, what we see is vague disír rather than the defined three Thurs at the base of the world tree. I usually make the distinction in this case between "Norn" and "norn"-- the latter seems a much more personal force that the former, but not necessarily a gendered personal force.


Is this an exegetical or hermeneutic opinion? Because I really don't think exegesis of the texts would bear this out at all, since Winterbourne (http://www.amazon.com/Well-Tree-World-Germanic-Culture/dp/0870233521/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1290379717&sr=8-1) and Bauschatz (http://www.amazon.com/Well-Tree-World-Germanic-Culture/dp/0870233521/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1290379707&sr=8-1) have provided exegeses which disagree and are, as of yet, the only such exegeses. It the opinion is hermeneutic, I'm curious what kind of (to steal a phrase from Bohm) controlling unknown you think the Norns might be subject to.

I will concede that it is largely hermeneutical; the "controlling unknown", to keep your borrowed phrase, is clearly the World Tree itself, the very support of the entirety of existence, reaching upward to the highest nothingness of aether and digging its roots to the deepest and most definite material existence of the soil. The upward-piercing tree is no mistake; you make reference yourself to the great pillars of Germanic Cathedrals imitating the ancient sacred groves of our heathen ancestors-- this upward, outward-reaching Drang is no mere force of habit; it is utterly fundamental to the whole of our ancestors deep-rooted culture. The force of outward-reaching embodied in the World Tree as the ultimate reality provides the Norns with a task which they fulfil; the highest task, but a task nevertheless.


***And Aemma's eyes come to a screeching halt!***

Is Audumla not worthy of your respect as our primeval cow whose milk fed Ymir while she licked the progenitor of the gods, Buri?

Is Mani not worthy of fairer consideration given that our Germanic heathen way is to compute using the moon and not the sun to number the years, and "days" as nights even?

Are Njordr (or Nerthus for that matter), or Freyr and Freyja, and the rest of our holy Vanir, only seen as submissives to you and not worthy of their own sanctity? :(

Sanctity in Earth-gods is found in the chaos they represent and in the fact that such chaos does not reign, but is controlled by the forces of order, law, and the sky-gods. The word Æsir itself comes from the word for "Gods", "Divine Beings". The Vanir, on the other hand, represent a specific kind of this higher, purer linguistic (and therefore cultural) phenomenon. The highest Gods, the Gods most worthy to be honoured by the highest of our own species, are the Sky-Gods, while it is the place of the lower castes to concentrate their worship toward these lower deities. "Our holy Vanir" is not a phrase in my lexicon: "holy"? Yes. "Vanir"? Indeed. a combination of those two? Surely. But "our"? It depends so much on who "we" are. There is no necessary quality to the worship of the earth-gods.


No The Wagnerian. This is not so. You cut off our nose to spite our face by giving the impression that Germanic heathenry is solely based on the warrior cult. This is not so. This mud, as you call it, is born of elements much more primordial, elemental if you will, than what you care to acknowledge. The most primary legacy passed down to us from our forebears is one of soil--the meeting of fire and ice, and the Yawning Gap and everything else that spawned from that great primordial goop.

You don't offer balance with your conceptualisation of our pantheon but instead suggest that there is a primacy of one class of deities over another. This is false. Pure and simple.

The primordial stuff of creation is nothing without the power of the sky-Gods and their own superiors which cause the creation itself. The birth of the Thurs Ymir is of the chaos in which there were no Gods; for Thurs to become anything living or capable of sustaining life, he had to be fragmented, torn apart, and re-assembled by the Gods themselves--the Sky-Gods I might add, not their earthen counterparts.

There is primacy; there is no egalitarianism amongst the Germanic or Indo-European peoples. It is a phenomenon of purely Abrahamic origin, born out of the broad equal submission of all persons to the One, Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnipresent YHWH/El/Allah/Iehova. The hierarchy of the ancient Germanics, of their predecessors the Indo-Europeans, is reflected in all aspects of their culture, from their faith in the Gods to their own leadership structure; the King, the Warrior, the Peasant - the Guardian, the Auxiliary, the Producer - the Konung, the Jarl, the Churl, the Thrall - the Brahmin, the Kshatriya, the Vaishyas, the Shudra. Hierarchy is all-enveloping and all-encompassing; order is the language of our ancestors, not chaos: this is why there is no cult of Thurs before half-educated neo-pagans decided under influence of the liberal age that worship of chaos was acceptable.


:ohwell: And why shouldn't we love our home and landscape? The soil that feeds us?
Consider also the 'territorial imperative' (Robert Ardrey wrote an interesting book of the same name) - what will man OR beast fight over more than land? Is the notion of the inviolability of the sacred earth of the Motherland not among the more visceral and powerful instincts in our history?

Inviolability was derived from a Divine Intervention, not the soil alone. Ref. Eyrbyggja Saga.


An interesting way to wriggle out of it, but I would say that the use of set phrasing in the parts referring to Earth (fira modur) in that charm indicate their greater age. Earth is addressed with an obscure and presumably archaic 'erce erce erce'. The less readily understandable phrases are usually those inherited from an ancient past, and that this part involves a direct hailing indicates its primacy over the references to a god. That the god part ever existed before the conversion to Christianity is very much up for debate.

You speak as if the very concept of personified divinity is a Christian invention; the relationship of the divine being to the earth is made fully explicit in the text. The dedication of the prayer to the Earth still only indicates intervention not worship, and there is a great chasm that separates the two- hardly "wriggling out". Also, charm? You throw out things that are after "the conversion" but maintain the Christian notions that our prayers are all spells and charms and witchcraft?


You must at least have seen that El Cid film?!? Was Sophia Loren in it?

Sophia Loren? I've read the El Cid epic but it was a long time ago, in High School. I barely remember it except that I found it uninspiring.


Brigantia has been applied as a name to many great big lumps of earth in many far flung locations and times. Look up Braganca or Briancon to get an idea of the very corporeal and earth-rooted features of the landscape associated with her.

Brigantia is a Latin name! It applies to a single incarnation of the Brighid goddess in Latin Gaul. It was a hiccup, it was hardly a defining representation of the Brighid cult.


'Dirt'... You need to do some gardening and get your hands down in the loam. The earth isn't 'dirty', save when we make it so. As a Russian friend jokes when food falls on the floor while camping; 'Nature is sterile!' (in the hygienic sense, not the 'infertile')
Heh, it wasn't too long ago that earth was actually eaten on bread! Stop being so dainty!

Peasants farm, good sir. Thralls: their name is born of this fact. I didn't realise we were in the habit of wanting to experience all that the spiritual thrall experiences and expresses.

I would ask your Russian friend to tell that to all the people who have died of Cholera, Beri-beri, dysentery, Polio, and various kinds of poisoning.


Maybe you should stop writing 'polemically' and actually try to communicate with people?

"Polemic" - n. - fr. Greek, πολεμικός,"hostile" - a type of argument, controversy, or dispute made against a doctrine, person, opinion, or idea.

I am not here for discussion on matters that should be clear, I am here to very specifically argue against the nature cult as worthy of repute.


As though Newton was lacking in a sense of spirituality! :rolleyes2:

I fail to see how his contributions to physics has any bearing on his spiritual and theological writings or on religion in general. Newton was a theologian and an astronomer, to be sure, but how does that make the two equitable? Saying that a brilliant mathematician can also be a deeply spiritual man (which Newton was not - he was a scientist, not a mystic, as you would know had you read his theological writings) is not synonymous to saying math=religion.


And clearly immensely powerful spiritual ideas prompted these men, our ancestors, to perform these feats of engineering and design. How CAN a thorough study of the heavenly bodies NOT prompt such stirrings in one's breast?

Clearly immensely powerful spiritual ideas prompted leaders of these men, who were subjugated by our ancestors to organise the erection of these monuments which were built by, once again, little more than craftsmen.


Again, you need to get out of your reading rooms and do some real physical work. It looks oh-so-easy to stick a bannister and balustrades to a staircase, until you actually try it. You want to do something like fit a few windows or repair a barn roof like I did recently. You'll learn to respect those who do it day in day out then. :....

I do physical labour; I have done carpentry and craft-- it requires a skilled hand, but not a skilled mind. Artisan labour is not the mark of brilliance or of any sort of higher tendency in the mind; it is what it is - perfection of artisanal skill, which is gained not through insight, not through spiritual depth, but through simple training, experience, and a pre-existent tendency toward such thinking.

Understanding Kant takes depth and understanding: any street urchin or drunken clod, if you clean him up and give him the training, can nail two boards together and build a sturdy house.


The men who built Salisbury Cathedral, and those who are working on your new local Walmart are exactly the same breed, are they? In any case, you do the working man a disgusting disservice, dismissing him like that. I've spent my life around tradesmen, and though they are unable to couch their thoughts in high faluting language from the halls of academia, you can find insight and profundity there. Perhaps the lack of scholarly sophistication gives their words all the more force, indeed. The best proponants of scholarly language are the biggest bullshitters going, as a flip through the post-modernists will soon reveal.

They make for good company, to be sure, and I do not deny I have these so-called "blue-collar workers" in my own family, but to think that the core of intellectual and scholarly pursuit is mere semantics? You have either let your mind be clouded by your love of the thrall or were born one yourself. Pseudo-profundity from a steel worker who surprises you with an idea that should be native to any of our species or culture doesn't make a philosopher-in-rags, it makes a thrall who has good instinct. The thrall has his place, and I do not disdain him - I disdain the tendency to convince people that he is in any way equal to the jarl and spiritual priest-king.


'Sky gods', 'Solar deities', 'Forces of Nature'.... This all seems very old-fashioned to me. Not that that is always a bad thing, but here it comes from a period when progressivism permeated the sciences, and all had to be made to fit tidy schemata and evolutionary sequences... :ohwell: The Jungian archetype notion might be more interesting to apply, given that we are talking about a very human phenomenon when dealing with religion.

Progressivism? Evolutionary sequences? You speak of the traditions of our ancestors as if they were Darwinistic inventions. I assure you it was not Darwin or Spencer who composed the Rígsþula.


No, I would say that, as used by yourself, they are shrill misnomers for things that do not necessarily have negative value.

Just because dumping faecal matter on my lawn makes it grow faster isn't a reason to turn an outhouse into a shrine.


You see 'dirt', I see rich nourishing matter, from which we derive our sustenance. Every clump of earth contains the atoms of our countless ancestors, and to such must we go ourselves one day. I will not recoil from this. I embrace it. 'In godes faethme' indeed; to embrace is exactly the right attitude.

Rich nourishing nothing: it is dry waste that deprives us of life without the life-giving intervention of the Sky-Gods who give us rain and sunlight. Without them, dirt is exactly that: dirt - it is the stuff of death, famine, and starvation. Yes, even peasants are dependent on the generosity of these Highest Gods.

Our ancestors corpses are borne in the soil, but their spirit is not found in something so base - indeed, if you think that ancestor-worship equates to corpse-worship, you are quite lost. It is the spirit of our ancestors which lives on not in the dirt but in us. Our great warriors do not descend into the ignominious earth, they are carried forth the aetheral nowhere that is Valhalla. To descend to Hel, while not damnation, is nevertheless without glory, the highest ideal of our warrior ancestors. Likewise for the Greek Elysium. We do not go to the Earth, or at least such descent should not be our goal: rather, fulfilment of ourselves, the achievement of great glory, to die in some active purpose - all moving decidedly upward: this was the ideal of our ancestors, this is the "right attitude".


A notion quite peculiar to yourself.

Our cousins in India would disagree with you firmly on this point, where the Caste system was established in 1500 BC and has been around long enough to have been abolished twice, debased, and rebuilt. Plato might also feel somewhat insulted at your flattery to think me so original. Indeed, our own Scripture bears the mark of this hierarchy, this structure of lower and higher of which I speak. You delude yourself to think that I am somehow alone in my loyalty to the hierarchy. This sort of Heathen "High Toryism" (if I may use such an anachronism) is the oldest and highest of all socio-political or socio-religious Weltanschauungen.


Again you show your great need to learn from the builder. You cannot build on foundations of sand.

Yes I read that (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%207:24%E2%80%9327&version=KJV) parable (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%206:46%E2%80%9349&version=KJV) in school too. I was unaware that it was a Heathen habit to worship carpenters (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mk%206:3&version=KJV). Funny I always attributed that spiritual tendency to this fellow:

http://heavenawaits.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/jesus-carpenter.jpg?w=347&h=284



I have an archaeological education, but even while at university became disenchanted by the limitations of the discipline versus the linguistic discipline, which I have since worked in for several years in one form or other. I'm all too used to seeing archaeologists embarrass themselves horrendously when they stray from their discipline and interfere in philological matters. The PIEans are a linguistic concept, and are to be located by philological means. Those blustering in from other spheres without any serious comprehension of the linguistics behind it all are doomed to fail.

Even the linguistics point in this direction though! Look at Dumezil and Levi-Strauss!


Eeeee... The chthonic aspect of him is clear in his association with earthquakes and epithet of 'earth shaker', as well as the joint invocations to him and Demeter and Proserpine. His name has also been cited as demonstrating his marriage to the earth. The connection with horses is curious too, and might lead again to the idea of underworld generation of boons for mankind (see the Spoils of Annwn for a western parallel), while Sumerian parallels lead us to the ancient notion of the Subterranean Waters. Hmmm, see wiki and make your own conclusions;

... and review the discussions here;
http://tech.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/7816

All I'm seeing here is a pre-Doric Poseidon who was an earth-God like most pre-Doric Gods. The survival of Hades doesn't make the Indo-Europeans who saw Olympus earth-worshippers. In fact, the collapse of these chthonic cults in the face of Apollo especially makes your argument somewhat weaker, to say the least.



I'm highlighting areas for concern and self examination... :wink

The only thing you're doing is making thinly-veiled ad hominems. I do not hold enemies in high regard who are dependent on glancing blows for victory. Unless you can explain the psychiatrist comment without some non-committal vaguery of a phrase like the above, I suggest you cease to employ the tactic.


Just questioning your categorisations of female deities.

See above.


I find the nature of the ritual survivals of more relevance here. Look at what takes place at that time of year and re-evaluate the age, significance and origins thereof.

What ritual survivals? Attestation in literature is direct evidence of ritual survival. If you're referring to the Christian holiday, I would suggest it's harder to make a festival of rebirth out of even a major war-god than it is to make one out of even a minor fertility goddess.


I simply don't see how that necessarily follows. It's not all black/white, off/on. It's far more complex. You seem to reduce it all to simple mathematical equations. :shrug:

No, not all things do exist in duality, in this regard you are correct. One tactic, however, I've found in arguments like yours is to say "it's not all black/white" actually translates as "nothing is black/white" which is unadulterated fallacy.

The reality of Goddess-cults is the elevation of the divine feminine, which, despite whatever claims to the contrary, does have consequences for the divine masculine. This should especially be borne in mind when you consider who the chief deities always were, and what the nature of the contemporary neo-pagan and Wiccan cults and clubs are. The praise feminine without a re-assertion of specific cultural norms and roles will always lead to its mis-use for the cause of cultural usurpation, as will the upset of any enduring cultural norm. The descent into extremity of masculine domination which reached its zenith in the last century will only be reversed by an equally gradual process of rebalance, not a sudden and violent usurpation. Here Plato is correct: the excess of freedom is giving way to an excess of slavery.


What on EARTH are you on about!?

Ahem;
she mid-12c., probably evolved from O.E. seo, sio (acc. sie), fem. of demonstrative pronoun se "the." The O.E. word for "she" was heo, hio, however by 13c. the pronunciation of this had converged by phonetic evolution with he "he," so the fem. demonstrative pronoun probably was used in its place (cf. similar development in Du. zij, Ger. sie, Gk. he, etc.). The original h- survives in her. A relic of the O.E. pronoun is in Manchester-area dial. oo "she."
- I myself am a Mancunian. (I would have spelt it 'hoo', though)

That 'he' and 'hoo' are close relatives doesn't make the latter a mere derivative of the former. (Slavonic on/ona, Romance el/la follow the same pattern)

You point out yourself that its arrival is mid Twelfth century. The Nazarene was born 1200 (twelve THOUSAND) years before that. How is that not several centuries into the Christian Era?

Do you think that the linguistic and phonetic similarities of the two words is some kind of mistake? Our language reflects-- no, it is our reality. No stronger evidence to support my own position has been given even by myself in the course of this argument.



LoL what? Brigid is simply a modern reflex of the original name Brigantia. You can even see the name in Celtiberian inscriptions before Roman influence in the peninsula! And what was 'Gallic' about a goddess seen from Iberian Galicia to Leinster, from the Bodensee to the Yorkshire Moors!?

Original name? "Brigantia" is Latin. How in heaven is that original to the Gauls?


I see little to justify this simplistic 'sky goddess' label.

Look at the traits of the goddess.


What the fuck is this 'inferior' talk?! :eek:

Don't you decry the Nazis for their love of the Untermensch term? If the ancient Britons were here today, would you describe them as 'inferior' and enact discriminatory policies against them? How do you differ from the Nazis in this regard at all?

We're talking about peoples who died out and were assimilated millennia ago. Hardly equitable to contemporary racialism - especially biological racialism. These conquered peoples became the lowest castes for our ancestors - the Dravidians, in fact, were so demoted that many became untouchables. Do you think that the enslavement of conquered peoples originates amongst the Vikings? No, it is an ancient remembered phenomenon that has its roots in the very conquest of Europe itself.

Do not insult my intelligence by throwing me into the same camp as the social Darwinists of the last century; anyone who doesn't recognise spiritual inferiors is blind or at the bottom of the hierarchy themselves.

Where have I used Untermensch? Where, I ask you! You have made the equation of "inferior" to "subhuman"; to be expected, I admit, from one so thoroughly marinated in the sort of egalitarian folly that I see coursing through your entire argument.

Also, "ancient Britons"? The Britons and Celts are Indo-European. The pre-IE peoples are hardly equitable to them in the least. "Discriminatory policies?" Save the neo-pagan liberalism for the quasi-atheists and Wiccans. If you think our ancestors didn't have a defined social and cultural hierarchy, then your understanding of your own history is more deluded than I would ever have thought possible for one who has written so agreeably in the past on our faith. If heathenry has anything worthy of the term "heresy", egalitarianism and the belief that "discrimination" is evil are the very epitome of it.


That the equinox and the onset of Spring should only have reached importance with the shift to Christianity seems unlikely. That such a wealth of customs are associated with the one holiday is also indicative of great significance. That the customs are nothing to do with Christian themes, and are seen as well in Russian folk culture stress this all the more.

That the Christians could have seized upon a holiday and incorporated so much of it that it survived while others fell into disuse is not inconceivable. Furthermore, if you want to argue survivalism, why is Midsummer not more widely embraced than "Eostre"?

[Psychonaut]

Fairly put and kindly taken.

:tea:


The unfettered energy of the feminine Shakti is a completely different than the destruction-creation concept in Tantric theodicy: without her male counterpart, the Shakti threatens existence itself. Without his female counterpart, the Deity is impotent, but the connexion, the channelling, and therefore the control of the divine feminine by the divine masculine is absolutely necessary for the continued existence of the universe.

Yeah, both are absolutely necessary since they're the ontological building blocks of the Tantric world. The point though is that the Tantric cultism even though it will generally tend towards Shaivism or Shaktism is inclusive of the whole, not rejecting the worship of one in favor of the other. Rather, it appears that the favoring of one over the other is more a reflection of their religious practice, which is entirely geared towards kenosis and apotheosis.


I was unaware that the elevation of the aethereal over the earthen was world-hating or gnostic.

Actually, I'd go so far as to say that the very acceptance of the existence of the ethereal as ontologically separate from the earthly is already on the Platonic/Neoplatonic/Gnostic side of the fence. The doctrine of two worlds as opposed to one is one of the fundamental points that defines these schools of thought. Pardon me if I unconsciously unpack the logical conclusions of Neoplatonism from what I see as its fundamentals firmly entrenched. ;)


Surely you can recognise on this same note that the love of the aethereal and disdain for the base and sexual present in Augustine may converse well with Christian doctrine, but in fact pre-dates Christianity by several centuries.

Of course. By relating your thought to Augustine, I'm not meaning to imply that your thinking is Christian in nature, but rather that it is within the same stream of thought that Augustine came to exemplify.


Even the pre-Socratics had already developed a metaphysical view of this sort, and the existence of a firm hierarchy among our Germanic ancestors confirms that there is a strong sense of separation between the bottom and the top, the inferior and superior, the peasant and the lord.

Why does differentiation necessitate hierarchy? Much of ancient cosmology does this because of an inherently flawed view of the cosmos in which there were absolute ups and absolute downs. That which was up was badass, that which was down was lame. However, we know now that these absolutes are fundamentally relative to our individual frames of reference. Does not this fundamental shift in our understanding of physical cosmology not call for a corresponding transvaluation of our spiritual cosmology?


I will concede that it is largely hermeneutical; the "controlling unknown", to keep your borrowed phrase, is clearly the [I]World Tree itself, the very support of the entirety of existence, reaching upward to the highest nothingness of aether and digging its roots to the deepest and most definite material existence of the soil. The upward-piercing tree is no mistake; you make reference yourself to the great pillars of Germanic Cathedrals imitating the ancient sacred groves of our heathen ancestors-- this upward, outward-reaching Drang is no mere force of habit; it is utterly fundamental to the whole of our ancestors deep-rooted culture. The force of outward-reaching embodied in the World Tree as the ultimate reality provides the Norns with a task which they fulfil; the highest task, but a task nevertheless.

I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. If the Norns are fate or causality, what exactly is the Tree's role? And, if the Tree is, somehow, ontologically primary, jibe with the fact that it does seem, from our mythos, to be subject to change? For, if the Tree has ontological primacy over process, then it is necessarily metatemporal and unchangeable; that would mean that its roots could not be watered by the Norns, its roots could not be eaten by the Wyrms, its leaves could not be eaten by the harts, etc. All of those things imply change and process which, if the tree changes relegates it to a position of being ontologically secondary in relation to change itself.

[Murphy]

You pagans keeping pissing me off. Every time I plant you all firmly in the "rebellious teenager" group, you come out with a discussion like this. Damn you all!

[Psychonaut]

You pagans keeping pissing me off. Every time I plant you all firmly in the "rebellious teenager" group, you come out with a discussion like this. Damn you all!

http://images.icanhascheezburger.com/completestore/2009/3/17/128817890846024440.jpg

[Murphy]

http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/3951/donotwantazn2.jpg

[The Lawspeaker]

http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/3951/donotwantazn2.jpg

LOL ! That guy is either an idiot or gay. Any decent teen wants that to happen.

[Groenewolf]

LOL ! That guy is either an idiot or gay. Any decent teen wants that to happen.

Or his name is Harry Kim.;)

[Osweo]

The unfettered energy of the feminine Shakti is a completely different than the destruction-creation concept in Tantric theodicy: without her male counterpart, the Shakti threatens existence itself. Without his female counterpart, the Deity is impotent, but the connexion, the channelling, and therefore the control of the divine feminine by the divine masculine is absolutely necessary for the continued existence of the universe.
Where the devil do you start reading up on all this Indian stuff? It's a gap in my knowledge, which I obviously need to fill. I'll say this, though; those who have absorbed the Hindu ideas fully get kind of changed by it, and a great imprint is made on them. You said elsewhere that you'd tried to get accepted as a Hindu in your more immature years, and I can still feel it in you. My ignorance of all but the basics of Hindu thought might at least have saved me from reading their more specific ideas into our lore, when it might not really have been there in the first place. You might at least be emphasising PIE traits that had been seriously diluted and distorted by the time the Germanic soul really 'woke up'.

All this about the 'destructive feminine', for example. All very interesting, but still seems quite foreign to me. I know that the past is 'a foreign country' too, but this just seems like something worked out by Dravidianised and Mundicised men firmly established in the Indian Subcontinent.

The criticism offered against me, now compounded, is that I'm some kind of world-hating gnostic; I was unaware that the elevation of the aethereal over the earthen was world-hating or gnostic. It seems to me, and it is reflected in our lore, that it is a perfectly acceptable (and firmly rooted) order and hierarchy recognised by our ancestors, who elevate the pure, clean, clear-eyed Jarl far above the dirt-covered, swarthy, stooped Thrall.
There's a danger in taking what remains of Norse lore as having been undisputed dogma in its day. Who wrote the Rigsthula and why? Does this myth represent any innovation in the time since the ancestors of Angles and Danes diverged in language, location and historical fate? A poem created by and for the Jarl and Kingly segment of society, or perhaps even just a local expression of it, little known to Norse society as a whole? I haven't looked into this, I'm just floating ideas.

Anyroad, I will be predominantly a descendant of thralls, as will you. You can discuss the division of society without appearing to pour scorn on those outside the elite.

Jarls, karls and thralls... Possibly the greatest Germanic ruler of history was named Karl, don't forget, not Jarl. To be a karl was not to be of a disrespectable type at all. Ceorl only gained a pejorative meaning when a conquering francophone elite reduced the status of all native ranks. I'm proud to be churlish, of the stock that formed the brunt of the fyrd and shieldwall, and reject Norman connotations of the term.

There is a distinct difference, apparently unrecognised by my opponents in this debate, between desire for eradication and desire for subjugation.
Done much subjugating lately? :confused:

the existence of a firm hierarchy among our Germanic ancestors confirms that there is a strong sense of separation between the bottom and the top, the inferior and superior, the peasant and the lord.
But can we even demonstrate that relations of authority were conceived in terms of verticality among our ancestors? Is a King 'over' his men, or is he rather 'foremost' among them? It would be just as possible to conceptualise him as 'central among' them, indeed. You will have to scour the sources to defend this point! Maybe 'up and down' is just a frame of mind that is as habitual to you and yet as foreign to our heathen ancestors as the spirit of egalitarianism that you see in me? :chin:

Off the top of my head, I can think of verticality expressed in the Celtic and Latin tongues when dealing with authority (e.g. VORtigern and subregulus) but I can think of no parallel compounds from the Germanosphere... Best I can come up with is the element Heah in personal names. But there's no a priori reason to link height with distinction from the Earth. The idea might as well convey the sense of being erect and not stooped. This is something that belongs to a body itself, not necessarily referring to any relationship with earth or sky.

The difference? Their closeness to the earth. Kings worship sky-gods, peasants worship dirt-gods. This is closely linked to the actions of demoting native "Europeans" below the pre-established hierarchy extant amongst the Indo-Europeans in both the case of the Aryans in India and our own progenitors.
Again with the Indians... What those Arya encountered there is a world away from what Celts and Germanics found here in Britain. The physical difference was far less marked, as were the means of subsistence. Continued reverence of megalithic sites indicates that they weren't utterly 'allergic' to the cultic practices met with, either.

I will concede that it is largely hermeneutical; the "controlling unknown", to keep your borrowed phrase, is clearly the World Tree itself, the very support of the entirety of existence, reaching upward to the highest nothingness of aether and digging its roots to the deepest and most definite material existence of the soil.
Exactly, union, not divorce.

Sanctity in Earth-gods is found in the chaos they represent
Can you 'prove' this to me?

The hierarchy of the ancient Germanics, of their predecessors the Indo-Europeans, is reflected in all aspects of their culture, from their faith in the Gods to their own leadership structure; the King, the Warrior, the Peasant - the Guardian, the Auxiliary, the Producer - the Konung, the Jarl, the Churl, the Thrall - the Brahmin, the Kshatriya, the Vaishyas, the Shudra. Hierarchy is all-enveloping and all-encompassing; order is the language of our ancestors, not chaos:
Colouring everything with the Hindu experience again!

Let's look at Rigsthula. Here's a 1936 intro to it;

The Rigsthula is found in neither of the principal codices. The only manuscript containing it is the so-called Codex Wormanius, a manuscript of Snorri's Prose Edda. The poem appears on the last sheet of this manuscript, which unluckily is incomplete, and thus the end of the poem is lacking. In the Codex Wormanius itself the poem has no title, but a fragmentary parchment included with it calls the poem the Rigsthula. Some late paper manuscripts give it the title of Rigsmol.
Seems not quite fully within the 'canon' to use a Christian term, or 'apocryphal' to use another...

The Rigsthula is essentially unlike anything else which editors have agreed to include in the so-called Edda. It is a definitely cultural poem, explaining, on a mythological basis, the origin of the different castes of early society: the thralls, the peasants, and the warriors. From the warriors, finally, springs one who is destined to become a king, and thus the whole poem is a song in praise of the royal estate. This fact in itself would suffice to indicate that the Rigsthula was not composed in Iceland, where for centuries kings were regarded with profound disapproval.
i.e. it's not universally applicable across Germandom.

Not only does the Rigsthula praise royalty, but it has many of the earmarks of a poem composed in praise of a particular king. The manuscript breaks off at a most exasperating point, just as the connection between the mythical "Young Kon" (Konr ungr, konungr, "king"; but cf. stanza 44, note) and the monarch in question is about to be established.
Might we have here a bit of artisitic license with various folkloric resources, as a means to the end of simple flattery?

... The poet, however, was certainly not a Dane, but probably a wandering Norse singer, who may have had a dozen homes, and who clearly had spent much time in some part of the western island world chiefly inhabited by Celts.
Contamination? :sherlock:

... the weight of authoritative opinion, ... clearly recognizing the marks of Celtic influence in the poems, ... In the case of the Rigsthula the poet unquestionably had not only picked up bits of the Celtic speech (the name Rig itself is almost certainly of Celtic origin, and there are various other Celtic words employed), but also had caught something of the Celtic literary spirit. This explains the cultural nature of the poem, quite foreign to Norse poetry in general.
Hmm...

I might even characterise the Rigsthula as a politically motivated document, rather than any insight into widely held (even amongst kings) beliefs of the time. Can you demonstrate otherwise?

Inviolability was derived from a Divine Intervention, not the soil alone. Ref. Eyrbyggja Saga.
I don't follow. What does the saga say?

You speak as if the very concept of personified divinity is a Christian invention; the relationship of the divine being to the earth is made fully explicit in the text. The dedication of the prayer to the Earth still only indicates intervention not worship, and there is a great chasm that separates the two- hardly "wriggling out".
The charm has been altered by Christian influence. You see it in one part, I see it in another.

Also, charm? You throw out things that are after "the conversion" but maintain the Christian notions that our prayers are all spells and charms and witchcraft?
Charm doesn't have an automatically negative association in my mind. It's always referred to as such in the books. Tres charmant. How Christians would view it is immaterial to me; I know very few in real life. Their religion is on its last legs here, not something to get angry about.


Sophia Loren? I've read the El Cid epic but it was a long time ago, in High School. I barely remember it except that I found it uninspiring.
La fameuse comedie de M. Corneille? Hoho! It was a good film, though. The opera's middling, save for "Pleurez, pleurez, mes yeux!" Callas did it best.

Brigantia is a Latin name!
Only in so far as Johannes is, or Thomas. It's a Latin transliteration of a nearly identical Celtic original.

It applies to a single incarnation of the Brighid goddess in Latin Gaul. It was a hiccup, it was hardly a defining representation of the Brighid cult.
What are you on about now? Brigantia was written on altars in southern Scotland. That's just outside Latin Britannia. Why call her only Brighid when she goes equally under Brent, Bridget, Bride or Bregenz?
"Garret Olmstead (1994) noted numismatic legends in Iberian script, BRIGANT_N (or PRIKANT_N, as Iberic script does not distinguish voiced and unvoiced consonants) inscribed on a Celtiberian coin, suggesting a cognate Celtiberian goddess." - see thread here;
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?t=15076

Peasants farm, good sir. Thralls: their name is born of this fact. I didn't realise we were in the habit of wanting to experience all that the spiritual thrall experiences and expresses.
You don't seem half as in a hurry to find your 'spiritual thralls' among our educated upper and middle classes, for some baffling reason. And yet you will find them there, just as you will find Konungs and Jarls of the soul among the working class.

I would ask your Russian friend to tell that to all the people who have died of Cholera, Beri-beri, dysentery, Polio, and various kinds of poisoning.
That's about the dirt that we carelessly put on the earth, not the earth itself. Nobody ever died of cholera from eating a bit of chocolate that had fallen onto the forest floor.

Clearly immensely powerful spiritual ideas prompted leaders of these men, who were subjugated by our ancestors to organise the erection of these monuments which were built by, once again, little more than craftsmen.
How do you KNOW that it was 'subjugation'? You don't, you just seem to like the idea. There could have been all sorts of relationships entered into that led to the IEanisation of the natives, with different situations in different areas and times. (Again, the Irish parallels could be illustrative. Different relations between Gaels and Fir Bolg are seen in different provinces. Munster saw much peaceful fusion, while the North saw more outright dominance by force.)

I do physical labour; I have done carpentry and craft--
We look forward to your contributions here;
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6299

Understanding Kant takes depth and understanding: any street urchin or drunken clod, if you clean him up and give him the training, can nail two boards together and build a sturdy house.
A damn sight more useful than understanding Kant, I'm sure.

You have either let your mind be clouded by your love of the thrall or were born one yourself. Pseudo-profundity from a steel worker who surprises you with an idea that should be native to any of our species or culture doesn't make a philosopher-in-rags, it makes a thrall who has good instinct. The thrall has his place, and I do not disdain him - I disdain the tendency to convince people that he is in any way equal to the jarl and spiritual priest-king.

Here's something: No doubt I am of considerable Churlish stock, with a few thralls thrown in too. Why are you trying to portray heathenry as something only for the elite? Why are you not applying yourself to reasoning out a means of satisfying the spiritual desires of the ordinary man? I don't see you leading us in physical battle, so if you are so intent on leading and ruling, this is your only way to do so. How does it aid your superiority to mock the working man's aspirations and dignity? You need to drop the disdain and scorn and work out a way of tapping into mind and soul of the common man to get him on board, so that we cease to be an eccentric oddity and make our folk's spiritual inheritance belong to the folk at large once more. Faced with the tone of your writings, Everyman is just going to be driven away.


Our ancestors corpses are borne in the soil, but their spirit is not found in something so base - indeed, if you think that ancestor-worship equates to corpse-worship, you are quite lost. It is the spirit of our ancestors which lives on not in the dirt but in us. Our great warriors do not descend into the ignominious earth, they are carried forth the aetheral nowhere that is Valhalla. To descend to Hel, while not damnation, is nevertheless without glory, the highest ideal of our warrior ancestors. Likewise for the Greek Elysium. We do not go to the Earth, or at least such descent should not be our goal: rather, fulfilment of ourselves, the achievement of great glory, to die in some active purpose - all moving decidedly upward: this was the ideal of our ancestors, this is the "right attitude".
Or indeed; cucum dom tic tissaid uili iarbar n-écaib. ;-)

Warriors, warriors, warriors... Our surviving sources were recorded due to their interest to the kingly and warrior class. But society was bigger than that, and society was heathen too.

Our cousins in India would disagree with you firmly on this point, where the Caste system was established in 1500 BC and has been around long enough to have been abolished twice, debased, and rebuilt. Plato might also feel somewhat insulted at your flattery to think me so original. Indeed, our own Scripture bears the mark of this hierarchy, this structure of lower and higher of which I speak.
The authority of the Rigsthula remains to be demonstrated.

You delude yourself to think that I am somehow alone in my loyalty to the hierarchy. This sort of Heathen "High Toryism" (if I may use such an anachronism) is the oldest and highest of all socio-political or socio-religious Weltanschauungen.
Eeee, what's this hierarchy about, and how are you so certain you belong on the upper rung? Haughty arrogance killed High Toryism too, so watch yourself with this aristocracy idea.

Yes I read that (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%207:24%E2%80%9327&version=KJV) parable (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%206:46%E2%80%9349&version=KJV) in school too. I was unaware that it was a Heathen habit to worship carpenters (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mk%206:3&version=KJV). Funny I always attributed that spiritual tendency to this fellow:

http://heavenawaits.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/jesus-carpenter.jpg?w=347&h=284

Oh my! Another lowly artisan who neglected to 'know his place'! Had a strange hold on people's minds for a few millennia, though...

But as though Jesus was the first to come up with the proverb! I bet it's found in China and Peru, indeed!

Even the linguistics point in this direction though! Look at Dumezil and Levi-Strauss!
Look at Ivanov and Gamkrelidze. Look at Greenberg. The matter is not at consensus stage. Dumezil and L-S just chuck ideas around and don't conclusively solve the problem at all.

No, not all things do exist in duality, in this regard you are correct. One tactic, however, I've found in arguments like yours is to say "it's not all black/white" actually translates as "nothing is black/white" which is unadulterated fallacy.
Let me know when I DO do that.

Do you think that the linguistic and phonetic similarities of the two words is some kind of mistake? Our language reflects-- no, it is our reality. No stronger evidence to support my own position has been given even by myself in the course of this argument.
He and Hoo. Similar words, but no reason to state that there was no female pronoun, as you did, and made some weird cultural inferences from. The female pronoun was hoo.

Original name? "Brigantia" is Latin. How in heaven is that original to the Gauls?
Dearie me... You think that the Gauls spoke anything like modern Welsh or Irish!??! Latin and the Celtic of the Roman period were pretty similar. She wasn't called Brigantia, but the actual word would have differed from that only in the slight colourings of the vowels and the declination.

We're talking about peoples who died out and were assimilated millennia ago. Hardly equitable to contemporary racialism - especially biological racialism. These conquered peoples became the lowest castes for our ancestors - the Dravidians, in fact, were so demoted that many became untouchables. Do you think that the enslavement of conquered peoples originates amongst the Vikings? No, it is an ancient remembered phenomenon that has its roots in the very conquest of Europe itself.
No ancestor of mine ever enslaved a Dravidian. Stop trying to squeeze our prehistory into an Indian model (itself far from completely known).

Do not insult my intelligence by throwing me into the same camp as the social Darwinists of the last century; anyone who doesn't recognise spiritual inferiors is blind or at the bottom of the hierarchy themselves.
Those social Darwinists were as intelligent in their way as you are in yours. If they missed a few essential points in arriving at a more comprehensive understanding of the world, what makes you think that you yourself are so immune to doing likewise?

Where have I used Untermensch? Where, I ask you! You have made the equation of "inferior" to "subhuman"; to be expected, I admit, from one so thoroughly marinated in the sort of egalitarian folly that I see coursing through your entire argument.
Infra, sub and unter are synonyms. Bandying around words like inferior is always going to get you in bother.

Also, "ancient Britons"? The Britons and Celts are Indo-European. The pre-IE peoples are hardly equitable to them in the least. "Discriminatory policies?"
People who lived in Britain in Ancient times - what else are you gunnae call em? People disrespecting their own ancestors just pisses me off, though.

[Baron Samedi]

Different strokes for different folks? :shrug:

The Männerbund (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3200&highlight=wolfbund) I once belonged to was as much of a lunar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A1ni) cult as it was a cult of the Wolf God (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odin).

Heill, Heill!

MHET!

[Magister Eckhart]

I can't write a full reply to Osweo right now because I'm a little strapped for time, but I think he does have a very good point about how much Hinduism Psychonaut and I have been reading into some things here. Especially our argument over the nature of Shakti seems to have little bearing on the more specific cultural milieu of Germanic heathenry, so perhaps we ought to drop that subject and bring our focus more on the nature of the feminine as it exists among our own Folk.

I want to answer one point, however, explicitly: the notion of a hierarchical structure of priest-king/warrior/merchant/slave was not meant to be a reading of Hinduism in the lore but rather an example of where our scripture offers one of many, many examples of this exact same structure throughout the Indo-European world. You can see Hinduism being read in there, but in order to do so you need to neglect Plato's mention of it as well as its presence in language, and the very clearly Germanic hierarchy that was crystallised into a structure of material wealth after the conversion (i.e. feudalism).

Furthermore, I find casting out the Rígsþula simply because you don't like the political implications of honouring a spiritual hierarchy to be extremely irresponsible. I am making an effort here to bring the scripture together as a unit that can inform and inspire us, not pick it apart like some cadaver on a dissecting table. There is nothing included in the Elder Edda that should be discarded; it is the very core of the faith. The authority of the Rígsþula comes from its very clear place as scripture of our Heathen ancestors; what "clear demonstration" would you have? For the Gods themselves to descend and speak to you on the subject? The fact that you seem so eager to dispose of it makes it appear to me that you are simply too steeped in the egalitarian folly to be comfortable with the hierarchical culture that our ancestors experienced and inhabited. I do not say that this is the case, but it certainly does seem that way. If it is the case, it is bad theology plain and simple. If it is not, perhaps you could tell me exactly how we can incorporate this book of scripture while maintaining your egalitarianism, for I hold such a project to be impossible without simply ignoring the text.


Oh my! Another lowly artisan who neglected to 'know his place'! Had a strange hold on people's minds for a few millennia, though... So has Lenin; popularity of an idea does not indicate value of an idea. Again, you betray your egalitarian and democratic prejudices.

-------

So a good twenty minutes just passed since I started writing this, and I came back and re-read some things written by myself an others. I have decided to let what I wrote above stand, but I encourage you to re-read it after having read the following meditations on my re-reading of this thread:

1. The argument taking place here actually has less to do with what is "heathen" and what is not than it does with the different levels of heathens and therefore the different levels of heathenry. There is a very strong element in what I have written so far that seems to lean toward making heathenry the exclusive province of the highest castes, which it cannot be: the thralls cannot simply be atheists, and their immature, lowly understanding of the Gods is an absolute necessity to the survival of the religion as a unified structure.

2. In light of the above especially, it seems to me that what really needs to be argued in Heathen theology is not whether the thrallish religion has its place, which it most certainly must, but where. I have come to realise that the theology I write is purely for the higher castes, and therefore I must concede that my efforts to make it a generally applicable rule betrays a creeping egalitarian and universalistic tendency in my own thought that must be purged.

3. All further argument on the points of the place of Goddesses must be related to the above. Clearly, if Goddess worship is acceptable to thralls then it should be viewed as a virtue of the thrall to pursue his religion in the way that is natural to his caste, rather than worthy of condemnation. The worship of the earth must likewise be treated as such for the thralls and churls who share a closeness to the earth in their own being. The elevated worship of the aethereal gods belongs only to the highest castes, and to force it upon the lower is the same universalism which I myself have condemned throughout my own writings - one cannot at once believe in fated hierarchies and also desire to elevate the born slave above his station, which I fear I have tried to do by speaking of the doctrines I propose for the Jarl as dogma for all Heathenry.

4. There has been a lack of clarity throughout this entire discussion regarding whether we are talking about Indo-European religion or Germanic religion, and they are not the same thing at all. I fear I have been guilty of this ambiguity most of all.

[Óttar]

Also, Kali is like the other Shakti incarnations in that she is controlled by her male counterpart, and when her male counterpart is absent she is a force of pure energy, i.e. pure destruction.
I would hardly call Shiva turning into a baby, or lying down on the ground beneath Kali's feet in order to excite Her maternal and uxorial instincts controlling.

In Shakta Dharma, the gods, finding that they cannot defeat the demon Mahisasura, submit all their weapons to the goddess. She wields the combined power of the gods. The legs of Her throne are held aloft upon the backs of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva.

I'm reading Isis in the Ancient World by R.E. Witt. In the Hellenistic period, Isis' cult absorbed various divinities and eclipsed that of Her husband Sarapis. A Hellenistic inscription of Isis' words reads: "I am the mistress of all things, forever." The cult of Isis, while originally Egyptian, was thoroughly Hellenised and Romanised. Devotion to Her was so great, for many it was to the virtual exclusion of all other deities. It seriously rivaled Christianity and gave the early Christians headaches. Her cult titles and attributes (including amazingly, Dea dearum, "Goddess of goddesses" compiled into a huge Marian litany-book in Germany in 1710) had to be absorbed by the Virgin Mary. This was pretty late in the history of religion and so goddess worship per se cannot be relegated merely to the beliefs of savages or primitives. Of all the archetypes, the Mother archetype is the strongest, most universal and paramount. The Hero comes only in distant second.

[Aemma]

3. All further argument on the points of the place of Goddesses must be related to the above. Clearly, if Goddess worship is acceptable to thralls then it should be viewed as a virtue of the thrall to pursue his religion in the way that is natural to his caste, rather than worthy of condemnation. The worship of the earth must likewise be treated as such for the thralls and churls who share a closeness to the earth in their own being. The elevated worship of the aethereal gods belongs only to the highest castes, and to force it upon the lower is the same universalism which I myself have condemned throughout my own writings - one cannot at once believe in fated hierarchies and also desire to elevate the born slave above his station, which I fear I have tried to do by speaking of the doctrines I propose for the Jarl as dogma for all Heathenry.

Come again? In my opinion there is something askew with viewing the whole of heathendom within the narrow scope of a caste system. But then this is *my* interpretation of heathenry and how I choose to view heathendom as well. Additionally, you basically obliterate the female element in all of this. It will be a sad day when heathenry becomes yet another patriarchal belief system as you so wish to paint it now.

That you choose to see me ( a woman who gardens and appreciates the Vanir as well as the Aesir) as nothing but a born slave relegated to a low caste for the rest of her life is now only too clear. Sad indeed when I have enjoyed a certain equality, if you will, among my fellow male heathen counterparts here and elsewhere. It is all too sad that Brynhild and I are the only two active female heathens here. But let not the paltry numbers here be a reflection of the female intelligence that does abound in the greater community.

I think you fail to see the richness that is heathenry in all of its manifestations. You fail to admit that we are people "born of the soil" as well, yet have evolved but still recognise our roots. You fail to admit that there is something to be learned from the corpus of our lore (and it is NOT called Scripture btw!). You fail to admit that a goddess such as Frigga is as worthy of our respect as are Odin, Thor or Tyr. You fail to admit that we live in the 21st century and that heathenry has so far been seen as a great equalizer among the sexes in most heathen circles. You fail to admit that that upon which we all base our belief, our Weltanschauung if you like, is fabricated from pieces of a greater picture, one we will never truly know due to its loss over time.

So then let me ask you this question: According to you, is there room in heathenry for women? And if so, what is their role?

[Óttar]

I have a copy of Germania downstairs, but as I am busy, a few sentences from a website will have to suffice. The site fails to mention how women held the keys to the house, indicative of their clear domestic authority. Tacitus has this to say about the importance of women in Germanic society in chapter 8 of Germania:

says that armies already wavering and giving way have been rallied by women who, with earnest entreaties and bosoms laid bare, have vividly represented the horrors of captivity, which the Germans fear with such extreme dread on behalf of their women, that the strongest tie by which a state can be bound is the being required to give, among the number of hostages, maidens of noble birth. They even believe that the sex has a certain sanctity and prescience, and they do not despise their counsels, or make light of their answers. In Vespasian's days we saw Veleda, long regarded by many as a divinity. In former times, too, they venerated Aurinia, and many other women, but not with servile flatteries, or with sham deification.

Tacitus in his Histories mentions this:


[...] by ancient usage the Germans attributed to many of their women prophetic powers and, as the superstition grew in strength, even actual divinity.

He says this about Isis in ch. 9, whether actually imported or a matter of interpretatio romana is not to be argued here, merely that the Germans knew of the worship of the feminine. It is clear that they held goddesses, like their women, in high esteem.

Some of the Suevi also sacrifice to Isis. Of the occasion and origin of this foreign rite I have discovered nothing, but that the image, which is fashioned like a light galley, indicates an imported worship.

http://www.unrv.com/tacitus/tacitus-germania-2.php

As for Scandinavia, were not the Volva (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B6lva) held in high esteem?

[Aemma]

Sanctity in Earth-gods is found in the chaos they represent and in the fact that such chaos does not reign, but is controlled by the forces of order, law, and the sky-gods. The word Æsir itself comes from the word for "Gods", "Divine Beings". The Vanir, on the other hand, represent a specific kind of this higher, purer linguistic (and therefore cultural) phenomenon. The highest Gods, the Gods most worthy to be honoured by the highest of our own species, are the Sky-Gods, while it is the place of the lower castes to concentrate their worship toward these lower deities. "Our holy Vanir" is not a phrase in my lexicon: "holy"? Yes. "Vanir"? Indeed. a combination of those two? Surely. But "our"? It depends so much on who "we" are. There is no necessary quality to the worship of the earth-gods.

Inasmuch as you and I make up the opposite poles of the spectrum of Folkish Heathendom (and have no doubt, I am as Folkish--not universalist--as you are) I would say yes "our". The Vanir and their myths, as part of our corpus of Germanic mythology, are as much yours as they are mine. That you choose to not acknowledge them is entirely within your right to practise heathenry as you wish but by no means does this mean that your fashion is supreme to another's. Our approaches are just different and I think recognition and a certain collegial respect of this difference is more befitting this type of forum than not.


The primordial stuff of creation is nothing without the power of the sky-Gods and their own superiors which cause the creation itself. The birth of the Thurs Ymir is of the chaos in which there were no Gods; for Thurs to become anything living or capable of sustaining life, he had to be fragmented, torn apart, and re-assembled by the Gods themselves--the Sky-Gods I might add, not their earthen counterparts.

I suspect that you're not a fan of Alain de Benoist. In his On Being a Pagan, de Benoist makes a good argument for the primacy of cosmic man in heathenry, as a counter to the prevailing Abrahamic notion of placing Sky-Gods, as are found in the Abrahamic traditions, above any and all:


What is most striking when studying the Indo-European cosmogonic myths is the solemn affirmation, found everywhere, of man's primacy. The gods, who gave form and organization to the world, were visualised on the model of men, who made them their mythical ancestors and ideal models....Among the Celts and Germans, men and gods both originated from the same source. Indo-European cosmogony places a cosmic "man" at the "beginning" of the current cycle of the world. In the Indian world, the Rig Veda gives him the name of Purusha; his name is Ymir in the Edda. For the Vedic Indians, Purusha is the One by whom the universe begins (again). He is "naught but this universe, what has passed and what is yet to come." In the same fashion, Ymir is the undivided One and it is by him that the world is first organized. His own birth is a result of the metting of fire and ice: "The burning current encountered by frost, causing it to melt into drops, and life sprang from these drops of cold water because of the force prompted by the burning heat, and this became human figure, and he was called Ymir." Before Ymir there was naught but a "gaping bottomless abyss" (Ginnungagap), which, contrary to the "abyss" mentioned at the beginning of Genesis 1:1 which was already a result of Yahweh's labor, had existed for all time. Ymir gave birth to the world by his own dismemberment. "from the flesh of Ymir the earth was made, the sea from his sweat, from his bones were made the mountains, the trees were his hairs, and the heavens were made from his skull." (p 58)

You mention above:


The birth of the Thurs Ymir is of the chaos in which there were no Gods;

And this is precisely the point in heathenry. There is no Abrahamic equivalent to the "I am that I am," and the notion of an extra-terrestrial Godhood if you will, and much less the blatant notion of the superiority of especially Sky-Gods, as you like to call them.

I like de Benoist's notion here, quoting Yves Leduire:


The invention of an absolute superiority will tend to justify a relative inferiority. "Everything the believer places under the idea of God is in fact pilfered from man himself, as if through a series of communicating vessels...Everything then takes place as if God's greatness was only the repression of neurotic man."

One has only to replace the above "God" with your nomenclature "Sky-Gods" and we have come full circle.

I imagine my Nietzschean bent is very far removed from your Wagnerian one in the end. Funny how history repeats itself in this manner.



There is primacy; there is no egalitarianism amongst the Germanic or Indo-European peoples. It is a phenomenon of purely Abrahamic origin, born out of the broad equal submission of all persons to the One, Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnipresent YHWH/El/Allah/Iehova. The hierarchy of the ancient Germanics, of their predecessors the Indo-Europeans, is reflected in all aspects of their culture, from their faith in the Gods to their own leadership structure; the King, the Warrior, the Peasant - the Guardian, the Auxiliary, the Producer - the Konung, the Jarl, the Churl, the Thrall - the Brahmin, the Kshatriya, the Vaishyas, the Shudra. Hierarchy is all-enveloping and all-encompassing; order is the language of our ancestors, not chaos: this is why there is no cult of Thurs before half-educated neo-pagans decided under influence of the liberal age that worship of chaos was acceptable.

Hmm point of fact: I am no half-educated neo-pagan and I'll remind you to exercise some collegial good faith in matters of debate here please.

No indeed, hierarchy seemed to be a component of our history but I would venture this too was fluid over the epochs. Your approach seems quite tribal and dare I say, theodish. It's not one I have ever fancied but it suits some. Just not me.

As for your above comment regarding egalitarianism, please, you make assumptions where none need be made. I know there is a hierarchy in our (his)stories. Have you never thought that perhaps these in and of themselves do not better serve modern heathens as a meta-communication with respect to the development of Self: peasant-warrior-king. Ponder this irony if you will: is it not true of most intellectuals that the more one learns, the more one realises how much they do not know? Is it no less so than the road to Becoming? In terms of knowledge and Truth-Seeking (if you will), do we not all start off as peasants, then work our way to becoming knowledge-warriors, if you will, only to attain a certain enlightenment, be that as King? But then, do we not return to the source, knowing that our knowledge is incomplete and return as peasants, only to restart the cycle? Heathenry offers us this paradigm for a reason: to avoid stagnation, smugness and the ways of absolutism.

[Magister Eckhart]

Thus does the argument devolve into simple attacks of misogyny, all for my criticism of the elevated Earth-Goddess-Cult. This is becoming somewhat less intellectually stimulating and more frustrating to deal with.


Come again? In my opinion there is something askew with viewing the whole of heathendom within the narrow scope of a caste system. But then this is *my* interpretation of heathenry and how I choose to view heathendom as well. Additionally, you basically obliterate the female element in all of this. It will be a sad day when heathenry becomes yet another patriarchal belief system as you so wish to paint it now.

The Caste system is the spiritual structure of Heathenry, it cannot be denied.


That you choose to see me ( a woman who gardens and appreciates the Vanir as well as the Aesir) as nothing but a born slave relegated to a low caste for the rest of her life is now only too clear. Sad indeed when I have enjoyed a certain equality, if you will, among my fellow male heathen counterparts here and elsewhere. It is all too sad that Brynhild and I are the only two active female heathens here. But let not the paltry numbers here be a reflection of the female intelligence that does abound in the greater community.

It depends on how you treat gardening. Having a hobby or passing fancy planting flowers doesn't seem to me to be very analogous to peasant-mindedness. I think we're speaking in somewhat disparate categories if you think I'm that extreme. Not even a literal interpretation of the text could make the bourgeois fascination with gardening into some form of peasantry (thought admittedly much of the contemporary bourgeois are peasants).


I think you fail to see the richness that is heathenry in all of its manifestations. You fail to admit that we are people "born of the soil" as well, yet have evolved but still recognise our roots.

There is no evolution. Man is as he was and ever will be. Spiritually there is personal realisation of potential; there is no evolution - i.e. no change from one thing into another. Spiritually we are of fixed potential - some of greater potential than others, and those of greatest potential are the born scholars and priests, and those of lowest potential are born rabble. Far from a mere social structure, this is a divine order joined inextricably to the Folk as a whole.


You fail to admit that there is something to be learned from the corpus of our lore (and it is NOT called Scripture btw!).

It is scripture. They are holy texts, and even if they are not holy texts they are texts central to our faith, which makes them, by definition scripture. Wanting to dump an accurately descriptive term in favour of some playfully mystic and folksy word is just another example of the childishness that dominates the heathen community today, a community infected end-to-end with egalitarian thought and devoid of any sense of order or place. Folksy occult mysticism is not synonymous with Folkish heathenry; in order to avoid the confusion we ought to go back to the root of the latter and start using the proper term: völkisch.


You fail to admit that a goddess such as Frigga is as worthy of our respect as are Odin, Thor or Tyr.

Actually if you read through previous posts in their entirety instead of nitpicking bits out (I'll get to your other post in a moment), you'll find I do afford due consideration to Sky-Goddesses like Frigg and Freyja.


You fail to admit that we live in the 21st century and that heathenry has so far been seen as a great equalizer among the sexes in most heathen circles.

How heathenry has been perceived by its early revivalists is not my concern. I'm here to elevate this little pet-project into a real religion. I have received my charge and I plan to fulfil it. The 21st century is a temporal reality, and it is one plagued with inadequacies that only a return to an ancient order and recognition of the fallacy of secularism, Christian egalitarianism, and the morality of the elevated self will redress. To claim that heathenry needs to fit itself to some kind of contemporary secular demand of what is "right" and "good" means that we do nothing more than abandon our own inborn morality for a foreign morality - a betrayal of our ancestral ethos.

Religion is not a majority decision. You democrats and egalitarians disgust me, I will not hide this fact - most of all because you refuse to admit your own egalitarianism upon reflection and purge it from your thought. Religion is derived from contact between the human and divine - it comes from top down, not bottom up. If the majority is practising something that is wrong, it remains wrong, it does not become right just because everyone decides it's "ok now".


You fail to admit that that upon which we all base our belief, our Weltanschauung if you like, is fabricated from pieces of a greater picture, one we will never truly know due to its loss over time.

I am not so agnostic, you are right. The order, laws, and religion of our ancestors is eternal, and therefore beyond time. However much we have lost, it is unchanging, and from tradition and scriptural law combined with direct divine intervention it is absolutely possible to know the morality and spiritual law of our ancestors, even from fragmentary remains, for in each fragment of their spiritual life and law is the entirety of their faith.


So then let me ask you this question: According to you, is there room in heathenry for women? And if so, what is their role?

I'm tempted to make a joke about sandwiches, but I'll keep this serious. See Ottar's post and my commentary for further answer to this question. They do have great mystical powers for some mysterious reason that gives them the gift of foresight, if the tradition and the scripture is to be trusted at all. I would imagine this relates to their connexion to the divine feminine, which as has been illustrated, aside from relations to the soil that certain deities have amongst lower castes, most goddesses also have a very distinctly prophetic aspect for interpretation by the higher castes of priest-kings and scholars. Women of the court (high-caste females) should be expected to be shield-maidens or good counsel.

Most of all, however, a man should consider the safety of the women of his family and (by extension) his tribe before his own, for in them resides the future of his tribe and family. This, I think, can probably be applied as a general rule because there is no spiritual caste to whom the protection of tribe and family does not apply.

On the same token, women should mind their house and avoid delusions of grandeur. Queens in the sagas and elsewhere are not like shield-maidens; they are on the contrary universally portrayed as untrustworthy and evil. A good woman keeps her home and thinks first of her husband, granting him rule; a good man keeps his house and thinks first of his wife, granting her place of highest counsel. If all remember their place, and do not seek "equality" through usurping the other's apportioned role, then order is maintained and the justice of our ancestral faith reigns.


I have a copy of Germania downstairs, but as I am busy, a few sentences from a website will have to suffice. The site fails to mention how women held the keys to the house, indicative of their clear domestic authority. Tacitus has this to say about the importance of women in Germanic society in chapter 8 of Germania:

Tacitus in his Histories mentions this:

He says this about Isis in ch. 9, whether actually imported or a matter of interpretatio romana is not to be argued here, merely that the Germans knew of the worship of the feminine. It is clear that they held goddesses, like their women, in high esteem.

http://www.unrv.com/tacitus/tacitus-germania-2.php

As for Scandinavia, were not the Volva (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B6lva) held in high esteem?

I do want to add a caveat to the first passage, namely that to use the term "rally" is a tremendous interpretive burden placed on the original - it makes the women almost seem like they are leading the men, which they are not. However, yes, the women did have a very important role of reminding the men of their duty to tribe and house.

The attribution of prophetic powers to the female exists elsewhere as well (Oracle of Delphi). But it is men who interpret the unadulterated prophecy. Women in the role of prophetess, because of connexion to the divine, exist outside of both the social and the spiritual norm, becoming exceptions to the prescribed order, but as all exceptions, they prove the rule, for the priest-king must interpret the message sent through the seeress from the Gods.

I never denied the worship of the goddess, either, which seems to be a consistent point brought to bear against me in this argument. If you read through my posts you will find at no point to I deny the divinity of the divine feminine; I restrict my attacks--even before my most recent post which has been largely ignored-- to the Earth-goddess and worship of the soil.

The application of interpretatio romana to the Nerthus-cult has more to do with this Earth-goddess thing than with the divine feminine as such.

Now then, another counter-attack:



Sanctity in Earth-gods is found in the chaos they represent and in the fact that such chaos does not reign, but is controlled by the forces of order, law, and the sky-gods. The word Æsir itself comes from the word for "Gods", "Divine Beings". The Vanir, on the other hand, represent a specific kind of this higher, purer linguistic (and therefore cultural) phenomenon. The highest Gods, the Gods most worthy to be honoured by the highest of our own species, are the Sky-Gods, while it is the place of the lower castes to concentrate their worship toward these lower deities. "Our holy Vanir" is not a phrase in my lexicon: "holy"? Yes. "Vanir"? Indeed. a combination of those two? Surely. But "our"? It depends so much on who "we" are. There is no necessary quality to the worship of the earth-gods.

Inasmuch as you and I make up the opposite poles of the spectrum of Folkish Heathendom (and have no doubt, I am as Folkish--not universalist--as you are) I would say yes "our". The Vanir and their myths, as part of our corpus of Germanic mythology, are as much yours as they are mine. That you choose to not acknowledge them is entirely within your right to practise heathenry as you wish but by no means does this mean that your fashion is supreme to another's. Our approaches are just different and I think recognition and a certain collegial respect of this difference is more befitting this type of forum than not.

First point: the majority of the post you quote from me has been superseded by the following:


I have come to realise that the theology I write is purely for the higher castes, and therefore I must concede that my efforts to make it a generally applicable rule betrays a creeping egalitarian and universalistic tendency in my own thought that must be purged.

Now, to the point of the Vanir, I recognise them as within the broader scope of Germanic Heathenry, certainly. The fact is not a lack of recognition on my part, but rather on yours (I can play this game too): you fail to recognise the divinely established order which is reflected in all levels of the faith, and which gives different place and importance to different deities and men.

I maintain that there is no necessary worship of earth-gods, as you insist; that much is explicitly stated in my post. How "no necessary worship" can become "no worship" (as it seems to have) I do not know, except that the reader(s) have simply ignored the adjective.

I do recognise difference of approach, but I will not pretend that your egalitarianism and 21st century thinking ranks equally to mine. If I did that, I might as well not hold my beliefs at all and go back to being a Christian. Egalitarianism has no place in our faith; this is not subject to debate or "live and let live". It has no place and must be purged, by any means necessary, from our ranks, as a cancer is cut from the body.


I suspect that you're not a fan of Alain de Benoist. In his On Being a Pagan, de Benoist makes a good argument for the primacy of cosmic man in heathenry, as a counter to the prevailing Abrahamic notion of placing Sky-Gods, as are found in the Abrahamic traditions, above any and all:

I used to respect Benoist a great deal but the more I read him the more I find him a thinly-veiled Islamophile and anti-Semite. His goal seems less the elevation of our ancestral faith as it is simply a typically French attack against Christianity and Judaism (he spares Islam most of his venom, however-- a striking fact). His writing seems therefore coloured - tainted, even - by his own immersion in contemporary French popular thinking.


You mention above:


The birth of the Thurs Ymir is of the chaos in which there were no Gods; And this is precisely the point in heathenry. There is no Abrahamic equivalent to the "I am that I am," and the notion of an extra-terrestrial Godhood if you will, and much less the blatant notion of the superiority of especially Sky-Gods, as you like to call them.

I fail to see where my refusal to worship Thursar somehow equates to worship of YHWH.


I like de Benoist's notion here, quoting Yves Leduire:


The invention of an absolute superiority will tend to justify a relative inferiority. "Everything the believer places under the idea of God is in fact pilfered from man himself, as if through a series of communicating vessels...Everything then takes place as if God's greatness was only the repression of neurotic man." One has only to replace the above "God" with your nomenclature "Sky-Gods" and we have come full circle.

So I'm crazy. I like your solution to the problem, and the "certain collegial respect" you seem so willing to afford me.

Leduire and Benoist are wrong. A God does not come from man. Gods are and Man is subject to them through his own inferiority to their divinity and power. The question is ever one of subject or slave; we Heathens are freemen and subjects, while the Semitic religions place man as a slave to the will of the Godhead.

This poison of Enlightenment secularism is the same as the egalitarianism which afflicts our faith with equally fatal consequences.


I imagine my Nietzschean bent is very far removed from your Wagnerian one in the end. Funny how history repeats itself in this manner.

Hmm point of fact: I am no half-educated neo-pagan and I'll remind you to exercise some collegial good faith in matters of debate here please.

I never assumed you were. Do not take my attack on Thurs worship as an attack yourself, unless you worship Thursar, in which case I will dispute exactly how influenced you are by the "half-educated neo-pagans".


No indeed, hierarchy seemed to be a component of our history but I would venture this too was fluid over the epochs. Your approach seems quite tribal and dare I say, theodish. It's not one I have ever fancied but it suits some. Just not me.

As for your above comment regarding egalitarianism, please, you make assumptions where none need be made. I know there is a hierarchy in our (his)stories. Have you never thought that perhaps these in and of themselves do not better serve modern heathens as a meta-communication with respect to the development of Self: peasant-warrior-king.

There are no modern heathens there are heathens and there are moderns. The two cannot be combined because they are fundamentally divorced. There is no evolution, there is achievement of predetermined potential, and that is all. We are born slaves, born freemen, born lords; the extent of interpretation ends with whether we read this literally or see these as spiritual categories. If you have to invent a concept like "meta-communication" to describe it, you have already stepped into the realm of pseudo-religion and outside the realm of theology.


Ponder this irony if you will: is it not true of most intellectuals that the more one learns, the more one realises how much they do not know?

Cite this passage. Scripture does not challenge itself.


Is it no less so than the road to Becoming? In terms of knowledge and Truth-Seeking (if you will), do we not all start off as peasants, then work our way to becoming knowledge-warriors, if you will, only to attain a certain enlightenment, be that as King?

Where is the progression? There is none! Thrall can never become Jarl. Jarl is gifted by his father a Kingship because of his superiority and purity, but that only shows that the ultimately rulership is divinely given because of the inherent potentiality which is realised: of all the children of Jarl, Kon Ungr is the only to achieve his full potential and for this he is gifted the name of "Jarl" and elevated by the God. He who is a true ruler and true leader is not given his position by fellow men, but by the Gods themselves.

Yes, that means that is was our ancestors, not the Christians, who devised the concept of Divine Right. It is part of our religion that cannot be denied despite all of the egalitarianism and "Enlightened" corruption of modernity.


But then, do we not return to the source, knowing that our knowledge is incomplete and return as peasants, only to restart the cycle? Heathenry offers us this paradigm for a reason: to avoid stagnation, smugness and the ways of absolutism.

If you don sackcloth and ashes you follow the teachings of one who condemned our ancestral practises, not elevated them. Your appeals to "returning to the source" and "returning as peasants" reeks of Christian humility and self-degredation. This is to be expected, as your whole argument, along with the others here, is shot-through with egalitarianism, which, though now secularised, is a thoroughly Christianidea. I encourage you to abandon this modern fallacy and embrace the religion unadulterated, for this is the nature of faith: to accept the laws, order, and religion of our ancestors in their whole and discard the foreign mores imposed by modernity.

Progress is Falsehood. Humility is Weakness. Righteousness is Absolute.

[Megrez]

I would like to ask The Wagnerian what scriptures does he talk about here.

[Liffrea]

‘Mothers’

As male gods are in certain cases called Father, so are goddesses called Mother.
In the Graeco-Aryan area, however, this is quite rare. The river Sarasvatı¯ in
RV 2. 41. 16 is addressed as ámbitame, nádı¯tame, dévitame, ‘most motherly,
most torrently, most goddessly’, and in the next line as amba, ‘mother’. In
post-Vedic popular religion a Mother (Ma¯ta¯ or Amba¯) appears as the protecting
goddess of a village. In Greece there is a Mother or Great Mother, but
she is the Mother of the Gods, a deity of Near Eastern provenance,71 though
she suffered syncretism with the Indo-European figure of Mother Earth.
Demeter, whose name incorporates ‘mother’, was perhaps originally a form
of Mother Earth (see p. 176), but in classical times she is a separate
goddess, and her motherhood is understood in relation to her daughter
Persephone, not to her human worshippers.
In the greater part of Europe, especially the west and north, Mothers
are much commoner. It seems likely that this reflects the influence of a pre-
Indo-European substrate population for whom female deities had a far
greater importance than in Indo-European religion. The archaeologist Marija
Gimbutas saw the Indo-Europeans as bringing a male-oriented religion into
a goddess-worshipping ‘Old Europe’, and this reconstruction, based largely
on iconic evidence, seems essentially sound.

We must conclude that there was a scarcity of divine Mothers in the Indo-
European pantheon. Perhaps Mother Earth was the only one.

Whilst West supports Gimbutas it should be noted others (Grigsby in particular I am aware of and an Iranian scholar Dr Farrokh) have posited several waves of IE migration, one of agricultural bearers from the Near East entering Europe c.8,000BC and, later, steppe nomads (if someone could break Osweo’s fingers before I have a several page post of why this is BS I would be obliged….I’m merely stating a point that has been made!:D:p). The rise of militaristic cults in Germanic societies due to increased centralisation and militarization in the face of Rome is also a probable factor.

But it is true that the developed IE root word for the Gods collectively is diw/dyu meaning “bright sky” or “light of day” indicating a celestial nature. It also seems the case that Goddesses played less of a role than Gods and West goes further to state that the only probable autochthonous roles were as terrestrial deities or feminised natural phenomenon.

West on the Earth Mother:

In his account of the development of religion in the Prologue to the Prose
Edda, Snorri writes that from the properties of the earth men reasoned that
she was alive, ‘and they realized that she was extremely old in years and
mighty in nature. She fed all living things, and took to herself everything that
died. For this reason they gave her a name, and traced their lineages to her.’

Which accords well with Grigsby (2005) and Griffiths (1996) who both see ancestral cults based upon the belief of the Earth as a mother and chthonic figure a womb that gives birth and also rebirth to the dead as deified ancestors (the possible roots of the Elves of Anglo-Norse myth). North (2007) whilst admitting the evidence for earth worship in Old English texts is rare states that several OE words point to a belief in the earth as alive, whether this belief is Germanic or Latin in origin is unclear.

[Magister Eckhart]

I would like to ask The Wagnerian what scriptures does he talk about here.



The Words of Gods
An Attempt at Compiling a Heathen Canon


The Role of Scripture in Ásatrú
It is no mistake that Martin Luther saw sola fide and sola scriptura as fundamentally linked—for him, all of the solas flowed ultimately from sola scriptura. His theology, he declared, was derived “from the Bible and Augustine”.[1] (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/#_ftn1) Luther had a distinct benefit we do not have: he had almost 1,400 years of Christian theology to work with. Our religion, young as it was at the time of its interruption, has hibernated and remained young, not blessed by the Gods with minds with an appetite for theological inquiry. It is only now, almost one hundred fifty years since the first use of the word “Ásatrú” and just over half a century after the Germanic Revival began in earnest that consideration is even being given to a Heathen theology. This has been the subject of much complaint from leaders of the Ásatrú movement, not the least of which is Stephen McNallen of the Ásatrú Folk Assembly. Goði McNallen wrote in the radical traditionalist journal TYR that “the Christian interregnum must be addressed using the intellectual tools that have been developed in the intervening time—and this means examining our beliefs and expressing them in intellectually compelling ways.”[2] (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/#_ftn2)

This work has not been about adopting Luther’s solas, but rather looking to them as guides for what demands attention in our religion—faith must certainly come first of all other things, though it need not be an absolute or an only. Scripture, likewise, is the supreme source of knowledge about our ancestors and our ancestors’ ways, and therefore becomes the first informer of our theology. In this way, what we shall fashion “Truistic” (from trú, “faith”) theology speaks in theology of solas in regard to faith and scripture, but a theology of primas—prima fide, prima scriptura. The solas of Trustic thought revolve around those eternal things—sola deis, sola gente, sola vertitate—the Gods, the Folk, the Truth.[3] (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/#_ftn3) Just as faith must be supreme and come first, but ritual is nevertheless necessary, so too scripture must be supreme and come first, but not without theology to comment, expand, and interpret, for this is the nature of a strong religion.

The problem of elevating Faith is an easy one: it need only be declared and followed. The task of Scripture is somewhat more involved. There is no catalogue of Heathen Scripture—there are rough collections and different opinions as to what belongs in the catalogue and what does not. Most do not have the courage to make declarations of canon, preferring an approach of jedem das seine. This will not stand; a religion that lacks canon and dogma is in chaos—the Truistic approach is loath to allow our spiritual Ásgarðr to be inhabited by such destructive Þursar—to preach a faith of “do what thou wilt” or “to each his own” is to accomplish no more, to contribute no more, and to be no better than the Thelema or Wicca—chief architects of religious pretence to excuse excess and licentiousness. We are not hedonists; we are Heathens—sons of the proud, disciplined people of the North.

The Canon
In this spirit, the Truistic approach is assertive, dogmatic, and canonical. In order to know what scripture to study from, it is absolutely necessary to establish some canon of texts, some list or catalogue. There are two basic categories into which all scripture falls: the oral tradition of the Folk, and the written tradition of the Folk. The oral tradition has been recorded in the form of poetry—skaldic and Eddic. The written tradition of the Folk is found in the historical and epic texts, universally called “sagas”. Belonging also to the written tradition, but not historical, are the works of Snorri Sturlusson; these deserve special treatment and shall be so discussed later. First, however, a canon of core texts should be ventured, then a discussion of possible addenda and deuterocanonical books, a category into which Sturlusson’s works fall. The books listed shall be listed with their original Norse names, and the divisions of scripture are also given Norse names; this is meant to be a beginning, an initiation. The efforts of translators to bring the works into the several tongues of our Folk, or to choose the best existing translation, should follow but will not occur here, owing both to the defined scale of this work and to the limits on the abilities of the author.

The List of Scripture accepted as cannon, listing first the source, then the divisions, then the books themselves, shall be:

I. The Poetic, or Elder Edda, containing
1. The Four Books of Óðinn (Hávabóka), which detail the Óðinnic Quest for wisdom and knowledge and assert Óðinn as the Highest God.
i. Völspulá
ii. Hávamál
iii. Vafþrúðnismál
iv. Grímnismál
2. The Nine Books of the Gods (Ásabóka), which detail all the dealings the Gods have with one another, with humans, and with the Giants, displaying the character of the Gods.
i. Skírnismál
ii. Hárbarðsljód
iii. Hymiskvída
iv. Lokasenna
v. Þrymskvída
vi. Alvísmál
vii. Baldrs draumar
viii. Rígsþula
ix. Hyndluljóð
3. The Three Books of Magic (Galdrabóka), detailing the actions of great magicians and sorcerers such as the demi-god Volund the necromancer Svipdag, and the seeresses Fenja and Menja.
i. Svipdagsmál
ii. Vólundarkvída
iii. Gróttasöngr
4. The Twenty Books of the Niflungs (Niflungabóka), including the Helgi Cycle, the Sigurð Cycle, the Guðrún Cycle which detail the deeds and life of the great hero Sigurð, his family, his companions, his encounters, his battles, his wisdom, and his fate.
i. Helgakvída Hundingsbani I
ii. Helgakvída Hundingsbani II
iii. Helgakvida Hiorvardssonar
iv. Grípispá
v. Reginsmál
vi. Fáfnismál
vii. Sigrdrífumál
viii. Brot af Sigurðarkviðu
ix. Sigurðarkvída hin skamma
x. Sigurðarkvída
xi. Helreið Brynhildar
xii. Guðrúnarkvída I
xiii. Guðrúnarkvída II
xiv. Guðrúnarkvída III
xv. Guðrúnarhvót
xvi. Oddrúnargrátr
xvii. Átlakvída
xviii. Atlamál
xix. Hámdismál
xx. Dráp Niflunga

II. The Völsungasaga, the Saga of the Volsungs the prose counterpart to the Niflungabóka, should be considered unique amongst the so-called “legendary sagas” because of its role of augmentation to the Books of the Niflungs. It therefore would therefore come immediately after the Niflungabóka in the canon, and serve as an augmentation thereto. A new classification as the Völsungabók, or Book of the Volsungs, may be appropriate to emphasise its direct relation to the Niflungabóka.

III. The Ancient Sagas (Fornaldarsogur)including:
1. The Sagas of Ketil Hæng of Hrafnista (Hrafnistumannasögur), containing the tales of the family of Ketil Hæng the Elder. These include
i. Ketils saga hœngs (Ketil Trout’s Saga, of the man himself)
ii. Gríms saga loðinkinna (Grim Shaggy-cheek’s Saga, of the son of Ketil)
iii. Örvar-Odds saga (Arrow Odd’s Saga, of the grandson of Ketil)
iv. Áns saga bogsveigis (An Bow-bender’s Saga, of the feud between An and Ingjald, ancestor of Harald Fairhair)
2. The Asmund Sagas (Ásmundar sögur) telling of the deeds and family of Asmund the Champion-Slayer. They include
i. Illuga saga Gríðarfóstra (Illugi Grid-foster’s Saga, the tale of Illugi, who saves the troll/giantess Grid and her daughter from a curse after having been driven from his father’s court through the machinations of Björn, a cowardly and sly man, and a male master of seiðr. Illugi is foster-father to Asmund.)
ii. Ásmundar saga kappabana (The Asmund the Champion-Slayer’s Saga, the tale of Hildebrand, King of the Huns, who also appears in the Old High German Hildebrandslied, the only extant pre-Christian text written in Old High German.)
iii. Egils saga einhenda ok Ásmundar berserkjabana (Egill One-Hand and Asmund the Berserk-Slayer’s Saga, the tale of Asmund’s battles in “Russia”, corresponding roughly to contemporary Belarus, and his battles with the Slavs and Hun Berserks.)
3. The Víking Sagas (Víkingarsögur), the stories of the the family of King Víking of Sweden, specifically his son Þorstein and grandson Friðþjóf the Bold. It is arranged in the form of a prequel and a primary saga.
i. Þorsteins saga Víkingssonar (The Saga of Þorstein Víkingsson, about the travels of Þorstein, son of Víking, across the known world)
ii. Friðþjófs saga hins frœkna (The Saga of Fridthjof the Bold, about the dealings of Friðþjóf, son of Þorstein and the family of King Beli of Sogn)
4. The Gautreck Sagas (Gautreckarsögur), the stories of Gautreck, King of the Geats, noted for his strange ways, and the adventures of his sons Ketill and Hrólfr. Like the Víkingsögur it includes a prequel and a primary saga.
i. Gautrecks saga (The Saga of Gautreck, an incomplete saga about Gautreck and the earliest deeds of the hero Starkad)
ii. Hrólfs saga Gautrekssonar (The Saga of Hrólf Gautrecksson, the tale of the son of the above and his brother Ketill, and the former’s quest to win the hand of Þornbjörg, shield-maiden of Uppsala and daughter of Eirík King of Sweden.)
5. The Halfdan Sagas (Hálfdanarsögur), the stories of the son of legendary King of the Danes Hringr, another prequel-sequel set.
i. Hálfdanar saga Brönufóstra (Saga of Hálfdan Bronze-nuturer, detailing the battles of Hálfdan with trolls throughout Britain and Russia)
ii. Sörla saga sterka (Saga of Sörli the Strong, the tale of the son of one of Hálfdan’s rivals, who eventually slays the hero on behalf of the King of Oppland)
6. The Story of Fjornot and His Kin (Frá Fornjóti ok hans ættmönnum), the tale of the foundation of Norway in three books:
i. Hversu Noregr byggðist ("How Norway was inhabited")
ii. Fundinn Noregr ("Foundation of Norway")
iii. Af Upplendinga konungum ("Of the Kings of the Uplands")
7. The Saga of Hervor (Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks), the tale of the line of Angantyr, including the most famous of these, his grandson Heiðrek and the shield-maiden Hervor Heiðreksdóttir, and the story of the family’s experience with the magical sword Tyrfing. The Saga itself contains two lays of the Eddic style, the Hervararkviða, in which Hervor Angantyrsdóttir summons her father from the dead, and the Hlöðskviða, detailing the battle between the Goths under king Angantyr Heiðreksson and the Huns under his disinherited brother Hlöð Heiðreksson.
8. The Saga of Eirík the Far-Travelled (Eireks saga víðförla), the tale of the travels of a Norwegian warrior named Erik to Byzantium and then to India in search of the deathless realm of Údáinsakr. There is strong evidence of some Christian tampering with the story to corrupt the concept of the Deathless realm.
9. The Saga of Bósi and Herrauðr (Bósa saga ok Herrauðs), the tale of two comrade-warriors Bósi and Herrauðr and their adventures, including a quest of reclamation which brings the heroes into armed conflict with the Slavs and their various other feats in battles.
10. The Saga of Hálfdan Eysteinsson (Hálfdanar saga Eysteinssonar), the story of the family of Hálfdan Eysteinssonar, whose grandfather was Þránd King of Trondheim (whence the name—Þrándheimr). It follows the adventures of Eystein and his son Hálfdan.
11. The Saga of Hálf and his Heroes (Hálfs saga ok Hálfsrekka), the story of the sea-king Hálf and his band of highly disciplined warriors who accompany him in free-booting before being betrayed by his step-father King Asmund of Hordaland.
12. The Saga of Hrólf Kraki, (Hrólfs saga kraka), the tale of the great hero Hrólf Kraki and the Skjöldunga, and the happenings of the poems Beowulf and Wydsith, in which Hrólf is known as Hroðulf.
13. The Saga of Ragnarr Loðbrók (Ragnars saga loðbrókar), the saga of one of the most famous Viking leaders in the history of the Folk, who was known to be a scourge on the Christian kingdoms of France and England before being betrayed and murdered by the King of Northumbria, who killed him by throwing him into a viper pit.

IV. The Sagas of the Icelanders (Íslendingasögur), including:
1. The Saga of Egill Skalla-Grímsson (Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar), the tale of the great skald and rune-master Egill Skallagrimsson, one of the greatest of the historical heroes and founders of Iceland. As with some other of the historical sagas, there is need to purge the work of praise of Christianity.
2. The Saga of the Ere-Dwellers (Eyrbyggja saga), which contains the only detailed description of our ancestral temples, and should be taken as a basis for such structures; chapters after the conversion should be heavily annotated to prevent mis-readings, and those passages actively detailing or praising Christian behaviour should be considered corrupted and discarded.
3. The Saga of the Confederates (Bandamanna saga), which contains legal dealings between Odd Ófeigsson and Óspak Glúmsson, the former of which suspects the latter of theft but loses his case on a legal technicality; his father then attempts the case and wins. In addition to being an important look at law, it is a completely heathen saga.
4. The Saga of Bárður ofSnæfellsnes(Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss), which details the just anger of a “half-ogre” (“ogre”, “troll”, and “giant” usually being ambiguous and generally meaning the same thing) after his mischievous nephew pushed his daughter onto an Iceberg and she floated to Greenland.
5. The Saga of Finnbogi the Strong (Finnboga saga ramma), which details the life of Finnbogi the Strong. It contains many proverbs spoken by Finnbogi, and most importantly it takes place before the coming of Christianity to Iceland.
6. The Saga of Sworn Brothers (Fóstbrœðra saga), which tells of two sworn blood-brothers Þorgeirr and Þormóðr, great warriors and, in the case of the latter, poets. The value of the work resides in the men’s loyalty to each other, rather than in the wild adventures, bloodthirst, and lusting—all of which are shown, both within this saga and in others, to lead to exile and pain.
7. The Saga of Gísli Súrsson (Gísla saga Súrssonar), which tells of Gísli, one of the first settlers of Iceland, his wife, his brother, and his sister-in-law, specifically the gossiping of the two women and their involvements with other men before their marriage and the men’s reaction to this gossip that they overhear. It contains wisdom about both the dangers of gossiping and the loyalty of a wife to her husband, as when Auðr refuses to reveal her husband to bounty hunters who seek after him.
8. The Saga of Hranfkell, Goði of Freyr (Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða), which details the life of Hrafnkell, a dedicated goði of Freyr. It contains a detailed description of the building and sacrificial rites at his temple of Freyr, which can be compared to the temple present in the Eyrbyggja saga. Hrafnkell is murderous, however, and of weak faith, abandoning Freyr when he is attacked and his temple burned (because he refused to ever pay a wergild for those he killed) and therefore also represents an example of the consequences of weak belief and refusal to abide the laws and customs of one’s people.
9. The Saga of Chicken Þórir (Hænsa-Þóris saga), which tells the story of Hænsa-Þórir, who has much wealth but refuses to share it. When those in need come and take what he refuses to share, he burns them alive in their homes (an extremely dishonourable act), and is later attacked in vendetta and beheaded for it. It contains a powerful lesson about hospitality, generosity, and participating in the Folk-community.
10. The Saga of Ref the Sly (Króka-Refs saga), which details the life of Ref the Sly, whose un-noteworthy beginnings give way to great honour and reputation through his own merit. Ref serves as an example of self-reliance and shrewdness as well as the importance of showing one’s own merit in order to prove worth to the wider community.
11. The Sagas of Courtship (Tilhugalífssögur), three tales of skalds who seek to win the hearts of ladies, and preserve their poetry. The poetry is a valuable testament to the softer feelings of love and affection felt by our ancestors for the women they sought to win as well as exemplary of what was expected of men to win the hands and hearts of women.
i. Kormáks saga (The Saga of Kormák), which tells of the skald Kormák’s life and wooing of the object of his love, Steingerðr. It also contains important information on our ancestors’ attitudes towards homosexual men and the expectations of how men are to act toward their wives.
ii. Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu (The Saga of Gunnlaug Worm-Tongue), which tells of the wooing of Helga in Fagra, granddaughter of Egill Skalla-Grímsson, and the competition between Gunnlaug and the skald Hrafn Önundarsson, in both verse and in a duel for the hand of Helga. It shows the importance of both strength of mind and strength of body in wooing a woman.

V. The Old English Poems, the oldest versions of many of the tales told in the Sagas, preserving much of the tradition of the continental half of the Germanic Folk. N.B. Christianity came first to the continental Germanics, so Christian influence needs to be identified in these and rooted out.
1. Beowulf, of the feats of the hero Beowulf Grendelsbane
2. Widsith, of the feats of the Widsith and the Kings of the Germanic tribes
3. Waldere, a fragment, of the hero Walter of Aquitaine, which mentions the smith Weland (Völund)
4. Deor, a lament which compares the sufferings of the narrator with those of the demi-gods and heroes of the Folk
5. Finnsburh, a fragment of a longer poem detailing the Battle of Finn’s Fort, which makes mention of Beowulf Grendelsbane, who is brother-in-law to the commander of the fortress, and the heroic defence of the fort against Danish attackers.

VI. The Skaldic Poems[4] (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/#_ftn4),which include:
1. Austrfararvísur, which depict a skald shut out of a household because he is Christian and the inhabitants are devotees of Óðinn and are planning on honouring the ancient Gods.
2. Bandadrápa, a fragmentary poem praising the Norwegian King Eirík, and explicitly mentioning that he conquered “in accordance with the will of the gods”.
3. Bjarkamál, another fragment, mentioned in the Fóstbrœðra saga as being used by King Olaf to rally his out-numbered troops before the Battle of Stiklestad; it is dedicated to one of Hrólf Kraki’s band of warriors, Böðvar Bjarki.
4. Darraðarljóð, which tells of twelve Valkyries gathering the slain after the battle of Cluain Tarbh, which was fought between the Irish High-King Brian Bóruma mac Cennétig and the rebellious King of Leinster Máel Mórda mac Murchada, both of whom contended with mostly Norwegian and Danish mercenaries, and the latter of which was assisted by the Norse King of Dublin, Sigtryggr Silkiskeggi.
5. Lausavísir Hallfreðrs, which is a collection of personal one-stanza poems of the poet Hallfreðr Óttarsson lamenting his conversion to Christianity and subtly honouring Óðinn, Njörd, Freyr, and Freyja.
6. Haustlöng, which tells the tale of the kidnapping and recapture of Íðunn and the slaying of Hrungnir by Þórr.
7. Hrafnsmál, which is a conversation between a Valkyrie and a Raven about the deeds of Harald Hárfagri.
8. Húsdrápa, which tells of Þórr’s fishing of Jörmungand, the funeral of Baldr, and Heimdallr’s retrieval of the Brísingamen from Loki.
9. Kálfsvísa, which is a dedication to the horses (a sacred animal to our ancestors) ridden by the greatest heroes of legend and history in the estimation of the author.
10. Karlevimál, which is found on the Karlevi Runestone, raised by relatives or followers of the goði Sibbi Fuldarsson, who fell at the Battle of the Fýrisvellir, and gives one of the names of Óðinn, and tells of Þrúðr, one of the daughters of Þórr.
11. Krákumál, which is the dying words of Ragnarr Loðbrók, reflecting on his deeds and life and containing the sense of fulfilment he is said to have had at his death.
12. Óðins nöfn, which lists all the names of Óðinn.
13. Ragnarsdrápa, which is dedicated to Ragnarr Loðbrók and tells of the attack of Hamdir and Sorli against King Jörmunrekkr, the never-ending battle between Hedin and Högni, Þórr’s fishing for Jörmungandr, and Gefjun's ploughing of Zealand from the soil of Sweden.
14. Þórsdrápa, which is dedicated to Þórr and tells of how he came to possess Mjölnir.
15. Vellekla, which tells of Hákon Sigurðsson’s heroic defiance of Harald Blátönn’s attempt to force Christianity on Norway at the Battle of Hjörungavágr and his later campaign against Harald in the latter’s Kingdom of Denmark.

VII. Other Germanic works with no unifying category:
1. The Lay of Hildebrand (Hildebrandslied), the only extant pagan text written in Old High German, which tells of a Zweikampf between father and son. It is incomplete, but in every text which mentions Hildebrand, he defeats or kills his son, showing the triumph of the elder spirit over the younger, and the superiority of old traditions over new inventions.[5] (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/#_ftn5)
2. The Saga of the Geats (Gutasaga), not one of the Ancient or Historical Sagas, is a Saga written on Old Gutnish rather than Old Norse proper, and tells of the local creation myth of the Geatish people and of the history of Gotland before the coming of Christianity.
3. The Merseburg Incantations (die Merseburger Zaubersprüche), originally written in Old High German, are two examples of continental galdr for the liberation of prisoners and the healing of horses.

The actual arrangement of the texts—i.e. how they should actually be printed—must be decided based on how they can be definitively translated and by whom. It is assumed that no one person can do translation of every single one of the texts, which means that the work will require a team, and that team’s version of the collected texts would be a singular work, perhaps divided into volumes. Otherwise, individual definitive translations would be required. Regardless, the texts will have to be grouped and arraigned. A tentative proposal in this regard shall be for the works from source I and VI be united into a single text to be simply called Edda, such that all poetry is united in a single versified volume. The versification should follow a standardised Book-Stanza-Line format, such that the first four lines of Hávamál 138 would become Edda 2:138:1-4. Such versification should be easy for poetic works, and it may be that, in fact, all Skaldic poetry presently extant in Sagas should be copied and included in Edda as well, to ensure easy reference and citation.

In the case of non-poetic sources, such as II, III, & IV, these should be arranged in a second volume, titled Sogur, meaning “Sagas”. This will likely be a multi-volume work, considering the large size of many of the sagas. The arrangement of books in Sogur could likely be Volume-Book-Chapter-Paragraph-Clause; however, this is burdensome. A far simpler approach would be a Book Title-Chapter-Sentence, such that each sentence is numbered for easy navigation. In this way, a random passage from Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks Chapter 3 might be styled Hrv. 3:13-21. Those sagas belonging to categories, such as the Ásmundar sögur, would be merged into a single series, such that a random selection from Ásmundar saga kappabana would become Asm. II 5:1-6. Into the collection of the Sogur should also be the Gutasaga, fitting best with the Ancient Sagas.

This leaves only the Anglo-Saxon works and the two German works. Since all of these belong to the Saxon tongue, either OE or OHG, it makes sense to derive the name from there. Just as Edda would be all poetic scripture and Sogur would be all prose scripture, this last category would need a name for the unifying characteristic it shares; all of it is in the form of poems, or lays. The OE for this is leoð, the plural of which would be leoðes. The OHG, meanwhile, uses the similar liod. Like the umlauts have been dropped from Sogur to make it easier to cite and give it multilingual compatibility, so too perhaps an adaptation of the Saxon dialects might be attempted with Leods. This would include much annotation for the correction of Christian inaccuracies in the Anglo-Saxon texts, but would nevertheless be able to fit all continental scripture into one workable volume. The division of Edda, Sogur, and Leods gives the canon three principle divisions: an important symbolic gesture as much as it is practical. Unlike the Christians, there is no dualism to our scripture, and the number three has great significance to our ancestors, as does every third multiple of three: 3, 9, 18, 27, 36, 45, &c.

Omissions
There are, of course, significant omissions from the above canon, and there is purpose in that: many of the Sagas and poems and other works were composed by Christians and heavily Christianised. The most extreme examples are, of course, Anglo-Saxon literature, which is so heavily Christianised that the most pagan works in the corpus are already mentioned above. The literature written in OE is not alone, however; many skaldic poems written in praise of Norse chieftains, jarls, and kings, were written about Christians in praise of their missionary efforts. Saxo Grammaticus, for example, took the Aeneid as his inspiration and composed the Gesta Danorum at the orders of the Archbishop of Lund. To consider this work as scriptural in its entirety would require the same treatment be given Beda Venerabilis’ Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum. Like the HEGA, the Gesta Danorum does include some valuable information, and even directly quotes original skaldic poems from pre-Christian times, but when it translates these into Latin it exaggerates them so much that it is difficult to believe they are the same thing. Take, for example, GD 2.7.4, the opening of the translation of the above listed Bjarkamal. The Latin reads thus:

Non ego virgineos iubeo cognoscere ludos
nec teneras tractare genas aut dulcia nuptis
oscula conferre et tenues astringere mammas,
non liquidum captare merum tenerumve fricare
femen et in niveos oculum iactare lacertos.
Evoco vos ad amara magis certamina Martis.
Bello opus est nec amore levi, nihil hic quoque facti
mollities enervis habet; res proelia poscit.[6] (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/#_ftn6)

Meanwhile, the Old Norse original of the poem for this section reads:

vekka yðr at víni
né at vífs rúnum,
heldr vekk yðr at hörðum
Hildar leiki.[7] (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/#_ftn7)

The difference is so pronounced that to translate the passages seems superfluous; the author of the Gesta Danorum, indeed, hasn’t done translation himself so much as he’s written a new poem taking the old for inspiration.

Likewise, there are many works which aside from heavily paraphrased corruption, speak of Christian deeds or criticise the deeds of Kings as “pagan”. There are further some Sagas which are explicitly Christian in message and nature; one will notice that the Brennu-Njáls saga is conspicuously absent from the canon. Not because it is not useful—indeed, one will find it cited frequently—but because the message it contains has no significance to Heathenry except as a heavily interpreted text, and a text which must be interpreted in the negative since the central characters and main plotline justify Christianity. Other sagas featuring Christians or Christian themes, such as the Eyrbyggja saga, do need editing to make them appropriate for scriptural use. The coming of Christianity to Iceland in this saga is marked explicitly, and a noticeable change exists in the saga between pre-Christian and Christian times. When such a clear and explicit divide exists, it invites us to sever the Christian infection from the healthy text, as one cuts a gangrenous limb from a healthy body. In addition to these two categories, those texts which are pre-Christian but nevertheless have no religious significance have also been omitted. In this spirit, significant texts such as the Grœnlendinga saga and Eiríks saga rauða have been left to the realm of historical or deuterocanonical information, since not only do they describe Heathenry in the negative way and Christianity in a positive way, but their insights into Heathen mores, ritual practises, and otherwise religious knowledge are non-extant.

Of course the greatest omission has not yet been discussed. The greatest issue facing the compiler of a canon is what to do with Snorri Sturlusson: he is, without a doubt, one of the most invaluable contributors to Folkish tradition, and is probably more responsible than anyone else for creating the ability to assemble a canon. Why, then, has he been left out of it? The reason for this resides in the fact that the Snorra Edda, as it is called, is simply not scriptural. It contains important excerpts and quotes from lost or fragmentary scripture, and is a helpful tool for interpretation, but the text itself does not treat the Gods or religious tradition. Rather, it speaks of historical persons and ancient Anatolian kings who came to be revered by the primitive Germanic barbarians and eventually deified. Primitive etymology joins Christian disgust with idolatry to create one of the most detailed Euhemeristic departures northern literature has ever seen—admirable, but not heathen.

The book’s purpose also has significant problems; far from an effort to preserve culture for its own sake, this didactic text was written out of concern for lack of knowledge amongst poets. Poesy in Sturlusson’s day was failing because the skalds no longer knew or understood whence their kennings came, largely owing to some very dedicated missionaries who were happy to see knowledge in the old Gods disappear completely. Sturlusson, however, felt that unless skalds knew a kenning’s origin, there was no way they could use it meaningfully—it would become nothing more than a cliché, whose meaning would be blurred and change significantly over time. In this spirit, he gathered together absolutely everything he could find on the old ways, spoke to surviving relatives of the men written of in the sagas, and gathered up all the old skaldic poems and myths and folklore he could, and wrote down the origins of the poetry. His goal was to construct a genealogy for his poets of the words and phrases they used from the knowledge he could gather of the old faith and practises. In other words, he was a philologist and an antiquarian—useful, indeed, but not holy. In regards to his other major works, the Ynglinge Saga, the Heimskringla, he is, again, a historian. In fact, his contributions in many ways are greater to the realm of history and mythography than to heathenry in any way—to include his works, in other words, would be precedent enough to include those of Georges Dumézil, Max Müller, Sir James Frazer, or even J.R.R. Tolkien—all equally useful to our faith in their studies, interpretations, compilations and, in the latter’s case especially, adaptations, but not worthy of being called prophets.

The Deuterocanonical Books
Significant excerpts from the Snorra Edda and Heimskringla are included in the canon; the skaldic poetry he cites and includes is simply too significant to omit, and, since it is quoted and not of his own pen, it qualifies as scriptural: written by our ancestors for Heathen times, certain that their descendants in one thousand years, two thousand years, three thousand years would still believe in the Gods and offer Them obeisance. Likewise, any skaldic poetry that appears in the omitted sagas that is worth including has also been included. It is, due to the interim nature of our ancestral scripture, necessary sometimes to sift through the papers and take hold of and revere only the jewels one finds. It is for this very reason that only one rune-stone has in fact been included in main scripture, because it contains a complete work of skaldic poetry, and is remarkable in that. The rune-stones are our ancestors’ earliest form of writing, the earliest recordings of our mythos in the form of logos; but as such they are even more fragmentary than most manuscripts. In the case of picture stones, it is difficult even to consider them texts. Therefore, it seemed most appropriate to allow the rune-stone tradition augment the written scripture preserved in manuscripts, to allow it a special, elevated place amongst the deuterocanonical texts.

What, then, is meant by “deuterocanonical”? Simply put, it is the opposite of protocanonical—i.e. texts that have always been considered scriptural. It is also opposed to the notion of “canonical”—i.e. texts that are presently considered canonical. The word itself comes from the Greek δευτερο meaning “second” and the Latin canon, canonis, meaning “rule, standard”, itself derived from Ancient Greek κανών, meaning “measuring rod”. Therefore, one might construe the meaning to be “a second measurement”, or, the standard, Christian definition “a second rule”. The term originally described those books of the Christian Bible not accepted by all Christians; what is known more popularly as the Apocrypha, from the Greek ἀπόκρυφος, meaning “hidden, obscure”. The meaning of the word in English is far more telling of its meaning as it was originally intended to describe the excepted books—“something of doubtful authorship”. The notion was that the state of divine inspiration, which makes a book scripture by the Christian standard, was unsure or undecided, and therefore the books could not be accepted into the canon of revealed scripture. Our meaning is slightly different; the books are not omitted for doubtful presence of divine authorship—since the only books that are divinely inspired or divinely composed in Ásatrú are those contained in the Elder Edda—but rather because they lack a religious impetus; they have no moral lesson to impart, they do not speak of the Gods, they offer nothing to the community of believers of real, fundamental importance.

In this way, the deuterocanonical books are contrasted with religiously alive texts like the Völsungasaga or the Elder Edda. They do, however, serve a distinct and indispensible function that makes them far more than mere scholarly commentaries, and elevates them to the level of a “second measurement”. The first measurement of our faith comes from the words of the Gods Themselves and the religious knowledge and moral wisdom one can gain only from Scripture. The second is an interpretation itself, and aids us in our understanding of the first measurement—like the magnifying glass needed to read the extremely small print that can sometimes befuddle us and leave gaps in our understanding of the Scripture if we take it by itself. The deuterocanonical books are there to focus the canon by educating us about mundane things, or serving as examples which we can use to contrast with the canon (as in the case of Brennu-Njáls saga). They further serve as a buffer to contemporary or Christian interpretations of our ancestral faith, because, despite lacking the spirit of canonical scripture, they nevertheless were written by our ancestors in a time that in some cases was contemporaneous with the portion of our Folk yet unconverted. They remain, in a historical sense, primary sources of information, and therefore are too special to be counted among other works which help us with interpretation such as the works of Dumézil, Grimm, and Müller.

This, then, is the beginning; the work of compiling this scripture, organizing it, and establishing a standard translation is the work of many, many more years of hard work; indeed, it took Jerome twenty-three years to translate the disparate forms of the Bible into the singular, authoritative form it would take as the Vulgate, and Luther worked for twelve years with several other men to complete his German translation of the already-compiled text. The beginning, nevertheless, has been made; a beginning which will, without a doubt, set off a fiery debate over the acceptability and accuracy of this canon, as well as the logic behind the deuterocanonical texts. It is the hope of this author that this debate will be swiftly executed and terminated; the Christian canon, first proposed by Marcion of Sinope in 140 CE, was not decided until the Synod of Hippo in 393 CE, and was not officially declared until the Synod of Carthage in 397 CE. The immediate organisation of a Synod—perhaps better styled “Althing”—or some other conciliar gathering is absolutely necessary for a decision to be made on this matter that would finally organise our religious texts and form a definitive starting point for new converts to our ancient faith.

[1] (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/#_ftnref1) Alister E. McGrath, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea (New York: Harper One, 2002), 42.

[2] (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/#_ftnref2) Stephen A. McNallen, “Three Decades of the Ásatrú Revival in America,” TYR: Myth – Culture – Tradition, 2 (2003-2004), 218.

[3] (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/#_ftnref3) The use of Latin, of course, is purely for the sake of comparison.

[4] (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/#_ftnref4) Those poems that are included in Sagas are not listed here, since they are considered an intrinsic part of the Sagas in which they are featured, which are listed above.

[5] (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/#_ftnref5) The sole exception is the Gesta Danorum, which has Hildebrand killed by his son. The work, however, must be regarded as untrustworthy in this regard, especially considering its corruption, exaggeration, and very loose translations of older poems and stories when the author translated them into Latin.

[6] (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/#_ftnref6)Saxonis Grammatici Gesta Danorum, ed. Alfred Holder (Straßburg: Karl J. Trübner Verlag, 1886), 59. Trans: “I do not now bid ye learn the sports of maidens, nor stroke soft cheeks, nor give sweet kisses to the bride and press the lender breasts, nor desire the flowing wine and chafe the soft thigh and cast eyes upon snowy arms. I call you out to the sterner fray of War. We need the battle, and not light love; nerveless languor has no business here : our need calls for battles.” Saxo Grammaticus, The First Nine Books of the Danish History, trans. Oliver Elton (London: David Nutt, 1894), 72.

[7] (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/#_ftnref7) Snorri Sturlusson, Heimskringla: Nóregs Konunga Sǫgur, ed. Finnur Jónsson (Copenhagen: Mollers & Thompsen, 1893), 463. Trans.:“I wake you not to wine// nor to women’s converse,// but rather to the hard// game of Hild.” Lee M. Hollander, Old Norse Poems (New York: Columbia University, 1932), 5f.

[Megrez]

As I expected, no text written by actual pre-christian heathens for pre-christian heathens to read and study (with the exception of some runestones perhaps). As there was no scripture among ancient heathens. Seriously, this idea of applying Heathen lore into canonical scripture seems more the approach of the so despised modern heathens, influenced by the canonical laws of Christianity. I'm going with Aemma in this: lore, not scripture.


Our religion, young as it was at the time of its interruption, has hibernated and remained young, not blessed by the Gods with minds with an appetite for theological inquiry.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Solvogn.jpg

From wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trundholm_sun_chariot):



The Trundholm sun chariot (Danish: Solvognen), is a late Nordic Bronze Age artifact discovered in Denmark, that has been interpreted as a depiction of the sun being pulled by a mare that may have relation to later Norse mythology attested in 13th century sources.

The sculpture has been dated to the 18th to the 16th century BC. A model of a horse-drawn vehicle on spoked wheels in Northern Europe at such an early time is astonishing; they would not be expected to appear until the end of the Late Bronze Age, which ranges from 1100 BC to 550 BC.

Considering this religious artifact is from the 18th century BC, and the final conversion of Sweden to Christianity took place in the 11th century AD, we have (at least) some 29 (twenty-nine) centuries of uninterrupted Germanic Heathendom in Scandinavia. Please define young.

The earliest runes date from ~150 AD. I think the Scandinavians had enough time to write more about their religion, they could do it carving runes on the stone walls of a temple, having them as canonical scripture, for example (afaik Adam von Bremem doesn't attest scriptures of any sort even in the temple at Uppsala, correct me if I'm wrong). Why the Scandinavians didn't write down all their lore in runes is open to debate. Perhaps because they didn't feel it necessary. Indeed, I think they had other, even higher interests than studying & applying religious canon.
Just the opinion of a rather pragmatic one.

[Liffrea]

Originally Posted by Megrez
Why the Scandinavians didn't write down all their lore in runes is open to debate.

Probably because it would have been astoundingly difficult for one, runes aren’t suited for recording that kind of information, used as a written medium they are only for basic uses, and much of that symbolic.

Second, mind set, there was no tradition of writing in northern Europe, society was pre-literate (not illiterate a very different thing), information was oral.

Yet we do have sources, the Gosforth Cross in Cumbria is a fascinating piece of stone work not uncommon in the British Isles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gosforth_Cross


Indeed, I think they had other, even higher interests than studying & applying religious canon.

There is merit in de-Christianising the sources we have available (where we can be sure) and, indeed, that process has already begun:

http://www.norroena.org/bookstore/asatru_edda.html#edda

I haven’t yet bought the above so I can’t say if the exercise has been successful, I have a lot of time for the Puryear's but I'm not a big fan of the trend to see in the Hindu's and Veddas "lost Heathenism", I find the Indian lore rather more alien than a detailed study of Germanised Christianity would reveal.

A dogmatic approach to Heathenism isn’t one I’m likely to subscribe to, though, I follow Odin’s example, you go where the knowledge is, not where others decide.

[Megrez]

Probably because it would have been astoundingly difficult for one, runes aren’t suited for recording that kind of information, used as a written medium they are only for basic uses, and much of that symbolic.

Second, mind set, there was no tradition of writing in northern Europe, society was pre-literate (not illiterate a very different thing), information was oral.
This has crossed my mind, and I agree this explains a lot, but not everything yet.


http://www.norroena.org/bookstore/asatru_edda.html#edda


The purpose here is not to create an Asatru ?Bible? in the sense of a dogmatic doctrine, but rather to revive our holy storytelling traditions without Christian taint or academic bias.

I hope the potential buyers keep this in mind. Interesting book.

[Megrez]

By the way, after his clear statements, this is material for The Wagnerian to rant a lot on :p : http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9380

Indeed a lot of BS written in the website exposed.

[Brynhild]

To be honest, this intellectual mumb-jumbo just sees me treating it all with the utmost of contempt. Throw out the philosophy books, stop cluttering the mind with rubbish and get back to the grass roots of what Heathenism may actually stand for. Our dearly departed ancestors would turn over in their graves.

Reading the Havamal and practising the Nine Noble Virtues would be an excellent place to start.

[Magister Eckhart]

If I had known I was going to kick up such thick clouds of anti-intellectualism and wilful ignorance when I dropped that essay on this board, I would have kept it tucked away.

Is there no one with the wit or will to undertake heathen theology? No wonder so many intelligent, educated people with serious questions look at our religion, shake their heads and walk away. We remain spiritual and intellectual midgets who have more in common with pseudo-religions like Wicca and Thelema than with real religions like Christianity and Hinduism.

[Psychonaut]

1. The argument taking place here actually has less to do with what is "heathen" and what is not than it does with the different levels of heathens and therefore the different levels of heathenry. There is a very strong element in what I have written so far that seems to lean toward making heathenry the exclusive province of the highest castes, which it cannot be: the thralls cannot simply be atheists, and their immature, lowly understanding of the Gods is an absolute necessity to the survival of the religion as a unified structure.

The obvious, and perhaps unsolvable, question that is just dying to be asked whenever people start talking about hierarchical Heathenry is: who gets to decide the hierarchy? Who gets to be on top and who is forced to the bottom? I'm well aware of the theoretical grounding through which this kind of thing is possible and favor a meritocratic solution, but in practical terms can we honestly look at any Heathen organization that is operating today and truly say that the leadership is better, in a qualitative sense, than those who are led? These failings have been particularly apparent in those very Theodish groups who have attempted to most rigidly enact these hierarchies, complete with "sacral" kings and thralls. So, theory aside, is this kind of retro look at Heathen sociology a live option nowadays? If not, or if not currently, what ought to be the backup plan, in your opinion?


2. In light of the above especially, it seems to me that what really needs to be argued in Heathen theology is not whether the thrallish religion has its place, which it most certainly must, but where. I have come to realise that the theology I write is purely for the higher castes, and therefore I must concede that my efforts to make it a generally applicable rule betrays a creeping egalitarian and universalistic tendency in my own thought that must be purged.

Given that the two branches of the IE tree which developed religious philosophies outside of the influences of Christianity did not do so in a unified manner, but rather, from the very beginning, presented us with a radical plurality of competing philosophies, why should we suppose that this one, single philosophy you present would be the philosophy for the Jarls. In India, for example, even while the caste system was fully functioning, immediately after the Vedic phase passed and philosophical inquiry began, there was an immediate divergence between different schools. There never was one single philosophy of the Brahmins, but always a plurality.


There is no evolution. Man is as he was and ever will be. Spiritually there is personal realisation of potential; there is no evolution - i.e. no change from one thing into another. Spiritually we are of fixed potential - some of greater potential than others, and those of greatest potential are the born scholars and priests, and those of lowest potential are born rabble. Far from a mere social structure, this is a divine order joined inextricably to the Folk as a whole.

;)

There is naught but evolution. Man is ever changing and is never what he was. Spiritually there is a personal actualization of potential; there is evolution—i.e. change from one mode of becoming into another.


Folksy occult mysticism is not synonymous with Folkish heathenry; in order to avoid the confusion we ought to go back to the root of the latter and start using the proper term: völkisch.

IMO, the term völkisch has WAY more kooky occult garbage attached to it than anything termed folkish today. None of the folks writing books today are anywhere near as kooky as von Liebenfels and Wiligut.


Actually if you read through previous posts in their entirety instead of nitpicking bits out (I'll get to your other post in a moment), you'll find I do afford due consideration to Sky-Goddesses like Frigg and Freyja.

Freyja as a sky Goddess!? You gotta back that up, bro.


The order, laws, and religion of our ancestors is eternal, and therefore beyond time. However much we have lost, it is unchanging, and from tradition and scriptural law combined with direct divine intervention it is absolutely possible to know the morality and spiritual law of our ancestors, even from fragmentary remains, for in each fragment of their spiritual life and law is the entirety of their faith.

Neither the archeology nor the texts support the idea that Heathenry remained unchanged for any length of time. I have to ask what specific period on the timeline you would then say is the real Heathenry from which the degeneration began? Or are you, like Evola, speaking of a Platonic Form of Heathenry that was never fully actualized?


Leduire and Benoist are wrong. A God does not come from man. Gods are and Man is subject to them through his own inferiority to their divinity and power. The question is ever one of subject or slave; we Heathens are freemen and subjects, while the Semitic religions place man as a slave to the will of the Godhead.

If theogenesis is not tied to the Folk, then whence comes the differentiation between pantheons of different peoples? How, if the Gods don't, in some way, come from us as a people does Folkish religion exist at all? Also, since Folkish theology necessitates a link between peoples and pantheons, how do you account for the temporal eternality of the Gods that you mention previously with the fact that there is a clear anthropogenesis for all peoples?


Where is the progression? There is none! Thrall can never become Jarl. Jarl is gifted by his father a Kingship because of his superiority and purity, but that only shows that the ultimately rulership is divinely given because of the inherent potentiality which is realised...

Question: since you adhere to the particular caste system espoused in Rígsþula, I'm curious who precisely, in contemporary terms, you think our leaders should be. For the leaders of our ancestors were not scholars, nor politicians, nor priests—they were warriors. The myths may present Woden as a manifold Sorcerer/Warrior/King, but the Heathen kings of old seemed to've only been the warrior type. So then, do you think that our leadership should come from the military elite?


To be honest, this intellectual mumb-jumbo just sees me treating it all with the utmost of contempt. Throw out the philosophy books, stop cluttering the mind with rubbish and get back to the grass roots of what Heathenism may actually stands for. Our dearly departed ancestors would turn over in their graves.

Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater!


Reading the Havamal and practising the Nine Noble Virtues would be an excellent place to start.

Even a statement as seemingly simple as that is pregnant with philosophical tangles just begging to be sorted out. The NNV, for example, quite plainly tell us what to do (or more properly what we ought aspire to become (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_ethics)), but mention nothing nor provide arguments as to why this is the best course of behavior. Surely you cannot expect that there will be those among us who will not question a list of behavioral expectations without venturing to ask why he should behave this way. And that is the very essence of philosophical inquiry. It's ubiquitous; the only difference between most people and those of us who do formal philosophy is the depth to which this questioning is taken and the degree of rigor with which it is done.

[Liffrea]

Originally Posted by Brynhild
Throw out the philosophy books, stop cluttering the mind with rubbish and get back to the grass roots of what Heathenism may actually stands for.

:eek:Bugger my tea has gone all over the keyboard.

Philosophy (and theology) have their place, several hours a day I spend with my books and writing (I’m honoured to contribute to Psy’s journal). Heathenism does need an intellectual base, and you will have people of a certain type of mind who will pick at obscure texts, long dead thinkers and the meaning of words in what literature we have, and it isn’t for everyone. I know for fact I’ve suffered mental and physical problems due to things I have read and thought, the way to the divine is usually painful (I won’t quote Odin’s warnings in Havamal, you know them).

But you’re right you do need to live outside of the desk as well as in it.

[Brynhild]

Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater!

That would answer my views succintly. Philosophy has its place, but there are some who are too ignorant to realise that it is based on their interpretation only, and attempt to make it more complicated than it needs be for the rest of us who seek out more practical applcations. This applies to all religious faiths.


Even a statement as seemingly simple as that is pregnant with philosophical tangles just begging to be sorted out. The NNV, for example, quite plainly tell us what to do (or more properly what we ought aspire to become (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_ethics)), but mention nothing nor provide arguments as to why this is the best course of behavior. Surely you cannot expect that there will be those among us who will not question a list of behavioral expectations without venturing to ask why he should behave this way. And that is the very essence of philosophical inquiry. It's ubiquitous; the only difference between most people and those of us who do formal philosophy is the depth to which this questioning is taken and the degree of rigor with which it is done.

Good luck sorting that out, as it will still only be your view. To be frank, I'm done with expecting anything in this regard, since it seems to be the view that the intellectual course is the only one that will win out.

[Osweo]

I want to answer one point, however, explicitly: the notion of a hierarchical structure of priest-king/warrior/merchant/slave was not meant to be a reading of Hinduism in the lore but rather an example of where our scripture offers one of many, many examples of this exact same structure throughout the Indo-European world.
There are as many parts of the IE world where it is absent too. And where 'it' is present, you will find no such 'exact' matches, either. Each case represents a local response, with little to indicate a common origin.

You can see Hinduism being read in there, but in order to do so you need to neglect Plato's mention of it as well as its presence in language, and the very clearly Germanic hierarchy that was crystallised into a structure of material wealth after the conversion (i.e. feudalism).
Feudalism as a Germanic inheritance?! Surely not? I'd pin it down as a local response to the assumption of the position of the former Roman landowner, in ex-Imperial territories. In other words, this is something the Goths, Langobards and Franks hashed out in situ, relying on Roman precedent and on military contingencies of the day. There's nowt older to derive it from.

Furthermore, I find casting out the Rígsþula simply because you don't like the political implications of honouring a spiritual hierarchy to be extremely irresponsible.
You have made no attempt to counter my worries at the way the Rigsthula is absent from the major codices, the way it's just 'tagged onto' the arse end of the collection it is included with, and the way it displays certain potential Irishisms. There are some pretty shitty folk-etymologies in it too, which makes it look a bit more like a Brer Rabbit story than much else in the lore. Or does it make you uncomfortable to think of it like this, and jeopardise your own ideological edifice's foundations?

I am making an effort here to bring the scripture together as a unit that can inform and inspire us, not pick it apart like some cadaver on a dissecting table.
There is no complete unity to the lore. We have a little bit from here, a bit from there, all has survived thanks to chance circumstance. To force it all into a unity is artificial, and will require many subjective decisions, the result of which will render your product as easily discernable as that of an early 21st Century American.

So has Lenin; popularity of an idea does not indicate value of an idea. Again, you betray your egalitarian and democratic prejudices.
Lenin, through force of personality and good sense, elbowed his way to the top, and established a new kind of state governed by a select holy order of his own personal interpretation of his selected 'scripture'. I would have thought an aristocratist like yourself would have been more appreciative of his achievement, in so far as your own victory would have to follow the path blazed by him and his comrades. ;)

2. In light of the above especially, it seems to me that what really needs to be argued in Heathen theology is not whether the thrallish religion has its place, which it most certainly must, but where. I have come to realise that the theology I write is purely for the higher castes, and therefore I must concede that my efforts to make it a generally applicable rule betrays a creeping egalitarian and universalistic tendency in my own thought that must be purged.
I thanked this post for this above bit. You're beginning to see the matter for what it is. You're a bloody long way off yet, but you might get somewhere worthwhile one day...

Clearly, if Goddess worship is acceptable to thralls
AND to some aristocrats of the soul. I don't personally care to be numbered among Jarls, but I know some who could.

And stop going on about 'thralls'!
Have you just got the word stuck in your head from having sung this too many times?; Ni fhagfar fe'n tioran na fe'n trail... :rolleyes:

If we have to apply 'thrall' to anyone in our present society, it better fits the immigrant menial worker than the vast bulk of our working class countrymen. Thralls in Scandinavia when the Rigsthula was penned down were probably very often of Irish stock. The unluckier part of mine and thine's many-times-great uncles and aunts! Concentrate on provision for the KARL'S theology, if you must couch it all in these terms!


The Caste system is the spiritual structure of Heathenry, it cannot be denied.
Can too. Most of us start with the Havamal as the most clear statement of what behoves us in this life. And that text is addressed to the Everyman. I see NO caste distinction there. If it WAS so essential, it would be in there. Where do you see it except in Rigsthula?

It depends on how you treat gardening. Having a hobby or passing fancy planting flowers doesn't seem to me to be very analogous to peasant-mindedness. I think we're speaking in somewhat disparate categories if you think I'm that extreme. Not even a literal interpretation of the text could make the bourgeois fascination with gardening into some form of peasantry (thought admittedly much of the contemporary bourgeois are peasants).
You're sounding awfully like Vladimir Ilych again, tha knows... :eek:


There is no evolution. Man is as he was and ever will be.
...
Eppur si muove.

Spiritually we are of fixed potential - some of greater potential than others, and those of greatest potential are the born scholars and priests,
When were we priest-ridden? Where were the scholars except among the skalds? - a class rather more subservient to the warrior elite than you might like to remember.

It is scripture. They are holy texts, and even if they are not holy texts they are texts central to our faith, which makes them, by definition scripture.
Scripture is Latin. Lore is proper English. I choose the latter name ONLY for that, if it comes to it! And scripture has all sorts of associations that don't ring true to me up in my northwest European natural habitat.

I don't want us to a parody of the 'Peoples of the Book'.

Wanting to dump an accurately descriptive term in favour of some playfully mystic and folksy word is just another example of the childishness that dominates the heathen community today, a community infected end-to-end with egalitarian thought and devoid of any sense of order or place.
Our words that are most deeply part of us ONLY sound silly and 'folksy' because we have ALLOWED Roman manners of thought to triumph. In England it's about the Normans. Through them it comes via the Franks from the snootiest arrogant sort of Roman attitude to Northern Barbarians. LORE can sound as childish or as profound as we make it sound. We have lost ENOUGH of our most intimate mental and linguistic property and I will not support further UNNECESSARY encroachments from that quarter.

Folksy occult mysticism is not synonymous with Folkish heathenry; in order to avoid the confusion we ought to go back to the root of the latter and start using the proper term: völkisch.
I'm not German. Why do I have to use Umlauten in order to seem 'clever' or 'serious'? In all likelihood I only have common linguistic ancestors with Hochdeutschers as far back as 100 AD!

How heathenry has been perceived by its early revivalists is not my concern. I'm here to elevate this little pet-project into a real religion. I have received my charge and I plan to fulfil it.
I, I, I! Who died and made you Hitler? There are no gods but the AEsir, and Wagnerian is their prophet, Odinu Akbar!


I am not so agnostic, you are right. The order, laws, and religion of our ancestors is eternal, and therefore beyond time. However much we have lost, it is unchanging, and from tradition and scriptural law combined with direct divine intervention it is absolutely possible to know the morality and spiritual law of our ancestors, even from fragmentary remains, for in each fragment of their spiritual life and law is the entirety of their faith.
Um... why?

"Because the converse would not have been allowed!"?!

That kind of reminds me of this sort of thing;
In the De Praescriptione Tertullian develops as its fundamental idea that, in a dispute between the Church and a separating party, the whole burden of proof lies with the latter, as the Church, in possession of the unbroken tradition, is by its very existence a guarantee of its truth.

:p

The application of interpretatio romana to the Nerthus-cult has more to do with this Earth-goddess thing than with the divine feminine as such.
That cannot be substantiated. I trust to greater minds to determine this, and Grimm seems to have it well enough.

I do recognise difference of approach, but I will not pretend that your egalitarianism and 21st century thinking ranks equally to mine. If I did that, I might as well not hold my beliefs at all and go back to being a Christian.
So you're in this only for the reactionary elitism?

If you have to invent a concept like "meta-communication" to describe it, you have already stepped into the realm of pseudo-religion and outside the realm of theology.
So you see no value in readings in the spirit of Joseph Campbell, then?

Cite this passage. Scripture does not challenge itself.
Course it does! It cannot help but do! Your favourite model, the Bible, is especially good at this.

I encourage you to abandon this modern fallacy and embrace the religion unadulterated, for this is the nature of faith: to accept the laws, order, and religion of our ancestors in their whole and discard the foreign mores imposed by modernity.
I am a POST-Christian, not a Pre-Christian. To pretend we can become the latter is self delusion.

Progress is Falsehood. Humility is Weakness. Righteousness is Absolute.
War is Peace. Kosovo is Serbia. Ding dong, the Witch is dead!

‘Mothers’
...
In the greater part of Europe, especially the west and north, Mothers
are much commoner.
Excellent interjection! VERY significant;

THE MATRES...

It seems likely that this reflects the influence of a pre-
Indo-European substrate population for whom female deities had a far
greater importance than in Indo-European religion.
No no no! (Liffrea was waiting for this!)
They're from the Celto-Germani contact zone. There's no clear substrate involved at all. Indeed, could you find a MORE pure area for IE ideas to realise themselves?!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matres

The Matres (Latin "mothers"[1]) and Matrones (Latin "matrons"[1]) were female deities venerated in North-West Europe from the 1st to the 5th century AD. They are depicted on votive objects and altars that bear images of goddesses, depicted almost entirely in groups of three, that feature inscriptions (about half of which feature Celtic names, and half of which feature Germanic names), that were venerated in regions of Germania, Eastern Gaul, and upper Italy (with a small distribution elsewhere) that were occupied by the Roman army from the first to the fifth century AD.[2]

I see nothing to indicate substrata at work. The only reason to suppose their influence is if you start out assuming they are there, because you have a preconceived programme in mind, because you have a tidy little scheme that you are anxious to _demonstrate_. Tut tut!

The archaeologist Marija Gimbutas
... * Osweo begins to foam....

We must conclude that there was a scarcity of divine Mothers in the Indo-
European pantheon. Perhaps Mother Earth was the only one.
An unfounded conclusion.

steppe nomads (if someone could break Osweo’s fingers before I have a several page post of why this is BS I would be obliged….I’m merely stating a point that has been made!:D:p).
;)

The rise of militaristic cults in Germanic societies due to increased centralisation and militarization in the face of Rome is also a probable factor.
Definitely. And that the Matres were to bloom best in the extreme patriarchy of the Roman Army says it all.

But it is true that the developed IE root word for the Gods collectively is diw/dyu meaning “bright sky” or “light of day” indicating a celestial nature.
The day. Is it 'above' per se? Or does it 'fly around' the Earth?! The Sun spends as much time 'under' us as 'above' after all. I'm minded of the subterranean sun on the bottoms of ceramics from Cucuteni-Tripolye...

It also seems the case that Goddesses played less of a role than Gods and West goes further to state that the only probable autochthonous roles were as terrestrial deities or feminised natural phenomenon.
The role of the Goddess of Sovereignty in Ireland is greater than this. Before we talk of pre-Celts, it's worth looking into how she was known on the Continent too, even into the Halstatt heartland... and Pannonia!

West on the Earth Mother:

In his account of the development of religion in the Prologue to the Prose
Edda, Snorri writes that from the properties of the earth men reasoned that
she was alive, ‘and they realized that she was extremely old in years and
mighty in nature. She fed all living things, and took to herself everything that
died. For this reason they gave her a name, and traced their lineages to her.’
Good quote.




The Words of Gods
An Attempt at Compiling a Heathen Canon

Oh My....

It's telling that you begin this with Luther. WHY do we need to ape everything the Christians did? Theirs is not the only route to victory. Muhammad wasn't impressed with this route, for instance, and did just as well.

We are not hedonists; we are Heathens—sons of the proud, disciplined people of the North.

The Canon
From the North straight to Latium and the Agora! Enough of these 'learned' terms! As though it were impossible to do anything without relying on them!

In this spirit, the Truistic approach is assertive, dogmatic, and canonical.
Dogma, Canon... You can't express anything without recourse to the non-Germanic. You even take Tru and stick an -ist and then an -ic on it! Almost blasphemy! Like that Frankenstein of a term 'Odinic Rite'....

possible addenda and deuterocanonical books,
Hell's Bells, Cockleshells.....

2. The Nine Books of the Gods (Ásabóka),
Heh, go the whole hog and call it the 'novateuch', to their 'pentateuch'! You know you want to...

III. The Ancient Sagas (Fornaldarsogur),,,,,,,
Eeek... Perhaps not of such immediate concern to non-Nordic Germanics? Certainly not to have them as part of any 'canon' in which their own history is ignored.

13. The Saga of Ragnarr Loðbrók (Ragnars saga loðbrókar), the saga of one of the most famous Viking leaders in the history of the Folk, who was known to be a scourge on the Christian kingdoms of France and England before being betrayed and murdered by the King of Northumbria, who killed him by throwing him into a viper pit.
Ah!!!!! Finally something relevant to an Englishman! I wonder if Ragnar deserved it for terrorising the countryside?...

V. The Old English Poems, the oldest versions of many of the tales told in the Sagas, preserving much of the tradition of the continental half of the Germanic Folk. N.B. Christianity came first to the continental Germanics, so Christian influence needs to be identified in these and rooted out.
An impossible and deeply misguided endeavour. What enthusiasts now think to be Christian in them, might be debated a century from now. We've heard a lot of babies and bathwaters in this thread, but this is time for another.



13. Ragnarsdrápa, which is dedicated to Ragnarr Loðbrók and tells of the attack of Hamdir and Sorli against King Jörmunrekkr, the never-ending battle between Hedin and Högni, Þórr’s fishing for Jörmungandr, and Gefjun's ploughing of Zealand from the soil of Sweden.
I think you messed up the copy and paste there, somehow.

The versification should follow a standardised Book-Stanza-Line format, such that the first four lines of Hávamál 138 would become Edda 2:138:1-4. ...
. A far simpler approach would be a Book Title-Chapter-Sentence, such that each sentence is numbered for easy navigation. In this way, a random passage from Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks Chapter 3 might be styled Hrv. 3:13-21.
This is over the top. Are you joking? What next? A Heathen Book of Common Prayer?

This leaves only the Anglo-Saxon works and the two German works. Since all of these belong to the Saxon tongue, either OE or OHG, it makes sense to derive the name from there.
Minor lynguistic point; Saxon is Saxon is Low German. Old HIGH German is obviously not Low, and English with Frisian is different again.

Omissions
There are, of course, significant omissions from the above canon, and there is purpose in that: many of the Sagas and poems and other works were composed by Christians and heavily Christianised. The most extreme examples are, of course, Anglo-Saxon literature, which is so heavily Christianised that the most pagan works in the corpus are already mentioned above. ,,,,,
To consider this work as scriptural in its entirety would require the same treatment be given Beda Venerabilis’ Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum.
So you're proposing a set text for English Heathens in which their own history is only touched on glancingly, while they'll learn the family history of every cotter in Iceland?!

There are further some Sagas which are explicitly Christian in message and nature; one will notice that the [I]Brennu-Njáls saga is conspicuously absent from the canon. Not because it is not useful—indeed, one will find it cited frequently—but because the message it contains has no significance to Heathenry except as a heavily interpreted text, and a text which must be interpreted in the negative since the central characters and main plotline justify Christianity. Other sagas featuring Christians or Christian themes, such as the Eyrbyggja saga, do need editing to make them appropriate for scriptural use.
....scriptural use.... You want vicars to mumble over them in Heathen Church!?

The coming of Christianity to Iceland in this saga is marked explicitly, and a noticeable change exists in the saga between pre-Christian and Christian times. When such a clear and explicit divide exists, it invites us to sever the Christian infection from the healthy text, as one cuts a gangrenous limb from a healthy body.
Madness.... By all means, take extracts of the relevant materials for a sourcebook, but to provide 'definitive' texts that have been brutally doctored, AND present this as HOLY WRIT?!

Your detailed plan might be a great thing if you simply thought of it as a Khrestomatia or collection of texts and extracts of relevance to the Heathen scholar and interested layman. But to make a Bible out of it is crazy.



Given that the two branches of the IE tree which developed religious philosophies outside of the influences of Christianity did not do so in a unified manner, but rather, from the very beginning, presented us with a radical plurality of competing philosophies, why should we suppose that this one, single philosophy you present would be the philosophy for the Jarls. In India, for example, even while the caste system was fully functioning, immediately after the Vedic phase passed and philosophical inquiry began, there was an immediate divergence between different schools. There never was one single philosophy of the Brahmins, but always a plurality.
Aye


IMO, the term völkisch has WAY more kooky occult garbage attached to it than anything termed folkish today. None of the folks writing books today are anywhere near as kooky as von Liebenfels and Wiligut.
Hast richtig.

Freyja as a [i]sky Goddess!? You gotta back that up, bro.
Menglad. One of her most striking physical attributes is the necklace, created by chthonic beings deep in the earth...

If theogenesis is not tied to the Folk, then whence comes the differentiation between pantheons of different peoples? How, if the Gods don't, in some way, come from us as a people does Folkish religion exist at all? Also, since Folkish theology necessitates a link between peoples and pantheons, how do you account for the temporal eternality of the Gods that you mention previously with the fact that there is a clear anthropogenesis for all peoples?
Well put!

[Magister Eckhart]

Life is rather hectic this week so a full response unfortunately isn't possible so I just want to hit a few things:

In response to Psy:
The hierarchy is inherent and the spiritually worthy will reveal themselves in the way the Gods speak through them.

There is no evolution.

Point of clarification: I was accusing the Heathen "Folk" being confused with the word in popular parlance. Perhaps "ought" should be replaced with "might as well", which would better communicate my sentiment.

Re: theogenesis - the Folk becomes the interpretive means by which we recognise the eternal. Our Gods are ours and no others because of the way they reveal themselves to us and the incarnations they take to our specific people. Any form of religion where Gods come from men is pure relativism and further, hasn't a strong leg to stand on in regards to why there even is a divine.

Yes, I do incorporate a strong Platonic view.

In response to Osweo:

Re: criticism of omissions - it is a preliminary canon; I encourage you to expand upon it. This is why it is suggested very strongly at the end a sort of Thing or Synod to discuss this sort of thing. However, omissions from a canon formed by only one man are not the basis for criticism of the canon itself; this text is the first to actually have the daring to stand up and give a list of scripture, which is more than any of the non-committal play-Vikings are willing to do.

Yes, I'm serious about Chapter: Verse notation, as is present in Christian as well as Hindu scripture. We would do well to put aside this idiotic notion that all methods that appear Christian are fundamentally evil, and focus on what is inherently Christian - methods cannot be inherently anything, only goals can.

Further, A Heathen Book of Common Prayer might be more useful than you are willing to admit. All religions have some form of guide for ritual, to merely criticise this method as "Christian" or even as "Abrahamic" betrays an ignorant prejudice against effective methods for the solidification of Germanic Heathenry as a serious religion that can contend with Christian theology.

We must remember that the Christians are better at theology than we are, in much the same way that the pre-Christian pagans were better at rhetoric and writing than the Christians. To cast out everything "Christian" even if it can be useful to us is pure foolhardiness and speaks the very same childishness that dominates the Heathen community that I mentioned above. I sometimes wonder how Augustine ever made any progress when I myself am surrounded by so many determined Tertullians on this matter.


In the De Praescriptione Tertullian develops as its fundamental idea that, in a dispute between the Church and a separating party, the whole burden of proof lies with the latter, as the Church, in possession of the unbroken tradition, is by its very existence a guarantee of its truth.And Augustine does not dispute (nor does the Church today dispute) that the burden of proof remains on the heretic, not on the Church, because of the eternity of tradition. But if you think that tradition or eternal truth is somehow a Christian concept or invention, then you are indeed lost.

The weakness of Tertullian resides in his inability to see where pagan methods like rhetoric and history can strengthen the tradition of the Church, in much the same way that the present failure of primitive-minded heathens fail to see where Christian methods of canonics and theology can strengthen the eternal tradition of our own faith, and give to it a power and appeal that it at present can never possess except among play-act Vikings and a very, very small percentage of the Folk actually gifted for religious thought.

We can never hope to be a serious religion if we do not develop some system of theological inquiry, canonics, and dogma. There must be some solidified order.



Who died and made you Hitler?I find it extremely disturbing that your image of a prophet is Adolf Hitler. Yes, I do feel driven by personal contact with the Gods to complete this task. If you think I'm neurotic or otherwise insane because of this, I encourage you to re-examine your own evaluation of religion. You are probably more atheist than you are willing to admit, and certainly tainted by the modern rejection of religious mystery or spiritual experience.

There is a great difference between childish mysticism and serious religious spiritualism, to throw the latter out because of the former is absurdity incarnate.

Anyway I'll get more written next week after the Winter Break starts but until then I simply have too much on my plate.

[Liffrea]

Originally Posted by Osweo
No no no! (Liffrea was waiting for this!)

Groan.:D


They're from the Celto-Germani contact zone. There's no clear substrate involved at all. Indeed, could you find a MORE pure area for IE ideas to realise themselves?!

Hmmm, I’m not sure your argument is entirely watertight, should we not expect to see IE ideas at their weakest towards the edges of their expansion zone? Which, surely, north-west Europe is regardless of which ever model of IE expansion you choose to follow.

Not that I’m saying the mothers are pre-IE, female elements are an integral part of the War God cults of the Germanic people’s, read Davidson for the origins of Valkyries, Disir and Norns in primal agents of bloodletting and psychopomps.


Definitely. And that the Matres were to bloom best in the extreme patriarchy of the Roman Army says it all.

I wonder how far we suffer from an overly modern interpretation of feminine aspects? Consider that the winged bosomed beauties of Wagnerian opera were undoubtedly not the way Heathen people’s understood the female entities that accompanied the war gods and who spewed blood over the field of battle and spread discord amongst men. These women wove together men’s guts into pretty patterns. It would be natural for warriors to fear and honour such beings.


The day. Is it 'above' per se? Or does it 'fly around' the Earth?! The Sun spends as much time 'under' us as 'above' after all. I'm minded of the subterranean sun on the bottoms of ceramics from Cucuteni-Tripolye..

The subterranean element is one interpretation of Beowulf as well, I’m not certain how ingrained the belief is in IE lore in general.


The role of the Goddess of Sovereignty in Ireland is greater than this. Before we talk of pre-Celts, it's worth looking into how she was known on the Continent too, even into the Halstatt heartland... and Pannonia!

We don’t really have to look much further than the Old English, both North in his excellent Heathen Gods in Old English Literature and Grigsby in his Beowulf and Grendel explore the earth mother fully. But, as above, the dual aspect of the female is often overlooked, her chthonic role and role in conflict are just as relevant as any being tied to vegetation cults.

[Psychonaut]

Life is rather hectic this week so a full response unfortunately isn't possible so I just want to hit a few things:

Reply at your leisure, my good sir. :)


The hierarchy is inherent and the spiritually worthy will reveal themselves in the way the Gods speak through them.

On what metric are you proposing the hierarchy be based?


Re: theogenesis - the Folk becomes the interpretive means by which we recognise the eternal.

What do you mean by "the eternal"? Is it singular or plural?


Our Gods are ours and no others because of the way they reveal themselves to us and the incarnations they take to our specific people. Any form of religion where Gods come from men is pure relativism and further, hasn't a strong leg to stand on in regards to why there even is a divine.

LOL, I hate to break it to you bud, but conceiving of divine identity as being contingent on the dative of revelation is a particular species of relativism. Absolutist theology would say that "the eternal" reveals one and only one identity, that this is not contingent in any way.


Further, A Heathen Book of Common Prayer might be more useful than you are willing to admit.

Before starting from scratch, have you examined the two that already exist?
The Book of Blotar of the Odinic Rite (http://www.odinic-rite.org/main/or-merchandise/products-page/or-books/)
The AFA Book of Blotar and Ritual (http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?fSearchFamily=0&fSearch=book+of+blotar+and+ritual&fSubmitSearch=Go&fSearchSource=a&showingSubPanels=)


We must remember that the Christians are better at theology than we are

Yes, but I think the point that's rubbing so many the wrong way is that you're using Christian theology that most Christian theologians don't take seriously anymore. Tillich (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tillich), Pannenberg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfhart_Pannenberg), and Moltmann (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Moltmann) are much better theologians to look at than guys like Augustine and Aquinas.


But if you think that tradition or eternal truth is somehow a Christian concept or invention, then you are indeed lost.

Aye, that's a common misconception among Heathens. Put the blame where blame is due: Plato :D


We can never hope to be a serious religion if we do not develop some system of theological inquiry, canonics, and dogma. There must be some solidified order.

:nod:

[Boudica]

people; they are not like Christianity and Mohammedanism which are by their very nature divorced from a soil-rooted culture

Christianity has a great role to play in the history of Europe, I would not deny this, but it is a fundamentally foreign religion

the whole notion of the heroic Christ and the "lord of Hosts" comes directly from Germanic heathenry; "lord of Hosts" is one of the names of Odin.



:mmmm: is that so?

[Ghost Knight]

Christian heroism has more of a purpose. Pagan tales and stories of heroism are great and should be treasured, but they lack the fundamental Truth that Christianity provides.

[el22]

Only pagan heroism exists.

There isn't such a thing as religion heroism (christian or whatever), almost by definition.

If you do something "heroic" because you think you're following the will of God, you're not brave, because you are thinking that you're gona end in paradise in case you die.

Brave are those who do something highly risky, knowing that if they die, there is nothing left to console them other than the effect that their action will have among those who will continue to live.

[Siegfried]

Only pagan heroism exists.

There isn't such a thing as religion heroism (christian or whatever), almost by definition.

If you do something "heroic" because you think you're following the will of God, you're not brave, because you are thinking that you're gona end in paradise in case you die.

Brave are those who do something highly risky, knowing that if they die, there is nothing left to console them other than the effect that their action will have among those who will continue to live.

How about the concept of Valhalla amongst the Germanic pagans. Those heroes were to be rewarded for their actions after death, and so they believed, though they were pagans.

[Xenomorph]

Heroes can be found anywhere, and be of any faith.

[Ghost Knight]

Only pagan heroism exists.


bs. Look at the crusades

[simple_guy]

Only pagan heroism exists.

There isn't such a thing as religion heroism (christian or whatever), almost by definition.

If you do something "heroic" because you think you're following the will of God, you're not brave, because you are thinking that you're gona end in paradise in case you die.

Brave are those who do something highly risky, knowing that if they die, there is nothing left to console them other than the effect that their action will have among those who will continue to live.
http://gabrielfarago.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Templar-15.jpg

[Weedman]

You realise Western Christendom is called "Latin Christendom" yes? You grossly overestimate the influence Germans and Celts had on Western Christendom. The Germans did not Germanise Christianity, Christianity Latinised Germany.

And to your assertion that Christianity is foreign.. you realise Indo-European religions are also "foreign" to western Europe, right ? Why is it okay for our pre-Indo-European ancestors to adopt a new religion but not our Indo-European ancestors?:lame: