Norse Totemism

The most common totems in the Norse world, at least among warriors, were the bear, wolf, and raven.

We don’t know much about the various totems, but bears were prestigious and aristocratic, while wolves came to be associated with outlaws.

Totems are likely connected to ideas of a fylgia, the form the soul takes as shaped by a person’s life. For example, someone who was crafty would have a fylgia in the form of a fox.

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Revised Oct. 29, 1019 to add links.

Norse gods

Tuisto’s name means “twin” or “twice” (perhaps from the Proto-Germanic *twis). Was he the same as Ymir? Or Ymir’s twin? There’s no agreement but Grim suggests they were twins.

Ymir is the father of Bolthorn, who is father of Mimir and Bestla.

Tuisto aka Buri is the father of Mannus aka Bor who married Bestla. Their children are Odin aka Ingo, Vilje aka Istro, and Ve aka Irmin. Mannus is the eponymous ancestor of MAN-kind. His three sons are the ancestors respectively of the Ingvaeones, Istaevones, and Irminones, the three main divisions of the Gemanic people.

Thus far from Grimm. Then moving on to later structural analysis:

Odin kills Ymir aka Hymir. From his flesh the Earth (Jord), from his blood the sea (Njord), and from his brains the Sky (Tyr). These three can be said to be children of Odin who created them or of Ymir from whom they were made.

So. A tri-partite division of the world, as in most Indo-European religions.

Njord (Sea) marries his sister Jord aka Nerthus (Earth). They have Frey and Freyja. Jord is also married to her brother Tyr (Sky).

Tyr (cognate with Zeus and Jupiter) is the ruler of the gods until he loses his hand, and being imperfect now can no longer rule. War. Odin has learned sorcery from his maternal uncle MImir. Odin becomes king.

Odin takes Tyr’s wife Jord. They are the parents of Thor. Now we have the “Hero Twins” Frey and Thor who are maternal half-brothers like the Dioscuri (Castor and Pollux).

But Odin also marries Jord’s daughter Freyja aka Frigg. This is why Odin learns sorcery from Freyja, as well as from Mimir. Also why Freyja takes half the dead. Partly because she is Odin’s wife and partly because sorcery and half the dead are her inheritance as heir of Ymir. (Alternatively, Frigg and Freya are confused in a different way. It could be Frigg who takes half the dead and knows sorcery.)

Speculation from Jackson Crawford: he thinks Heimdall might be same as Ull.

Then one of the comments on that video he says:

Jumping off the Ullr/Heimdall connection I have always thought that there is some kind of connection between Heimdallr and the figure mentioned in Tacitus’ Germania known as Mannus. The reason I came to this conclusion is because of the similarity in how Mannus is said to have fathered the ancestral Gods of the three primary Germanic tribes; Irminones, Ingvaeones and Istvaeones with how Heimdallr is said to have fathered the three races of men in the Rigsmal.

What’s curious there is there’s a clear etymological progression with the Ingvaeones and the Old English Ing/Old Norse Freyr, and as for the Irminones Irmin is given as one of Odin’s many names which, in my estimation, makes Mannus the father of Odin and Frey at least if you’re going by the earlier Proto-Germanic versions of the mythos. Of course this contradicts Snorri’s recounting of Odin’s origins and the Norse creation myth but I’ve always been of the belief that, that was a much later mythological creation and arguably not indicative of Norse or early Germanic belief.

All that aside I think there’s a connection between Heimdall, Ullr and Mannus that we’re missing context on, perhaps all three are the same figure.

Racism on the Edge

I don’t know why so many heathens equate their religion with white supremacy, but they do. I think that’s an ideological mistake.

“During the 19th century, Vikings were praised as prototypes and ancestor figures for European colonists. The idea took root of a Germanic master race, fed by crude scientific theories and nurtured by Nazi ideology in the 1930s. These theories have long been debunked, although the notion of the ethnic purity of the Vikings still seems to have popular appeal – and it is embraced by white supremacists.” (Downham)

It’s far easier to paint the ancient Norse as open, mobile, and eclectic. In modern terms their sin would be their elitism and patriarchalism, not racism.

“Developments in archaeology in recent decades have highlighted how people and goods could move over wider distances in the early Middle Ages than we have tended to think. In the eighth century, (before the main period of Viking raiding began), the Baltic was a place where Scandinavians, Frisians, Slavs and Arabic merchants were in frequent contact. It is too simplistic to think of early Viking raids, too, as hit-and-run affairs with ships coming directly from Scandinavia and immediately rushing home again.“

I was an early member of Stephen McNallen’s Asatru Free Assembly. Must have been somewhere around 1977 to 1979. I was quite taken with them, because it was the first time I had encountered modern pagan reconstruction. I wandered away, not for any ideological reasons, but because there was more social support locally for other interesting things to do and be.

Although McNallen is notorious now for his views I don’t remember any racism back then. If there was, it wasn’t obvious. But to me, the problem of racism lies exactly here. It’s a short step from identifying with Norse reconstruction because those are your own ancestors to becoming tribal and exclusive.

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Edited Oct. 28, 2019; Nov. 2, 2019 to add links.

Romans From Everywhere

I don’t know why this is so hard for some people. The Romans were a diverse, multicultural society. Rome cared about getting rich from exporting government, not about racial silliness.

“The Roman empire encompassed large tracts of north Africa, and even though it did not extend to sub-Saharan Africa, its borders were porous and its sphere of influence vast. “Being Roman”, it should be remembered, was not about tracing your origins to one city in Italy: as the empire grew, citizenship was extended across conquered territories. “Romans” could be from anywhere from Carlisle to Cairo, and beyond.

“In Britain, there is plenty of evidence of the presence of soldiers, traders and administrators from all parts of this enormous empire, including from Africa. Some of them would have been passing through; some made a life here. What is more difficult to do is to say with certainty whether such-and-such a person was “black” or “white” in our terms: these were not categories of interest to the Romans, and in the case of elite families from north Africa, say, it’s also unclear whether they were originally Italian settlers.“

The explanations are everywhere around us but it seems they all bury the lead– these were not categories of interest to the Romans. No one cared.

Understanding Julius Evola

I’m finding it very difficult to understand Julius Evola. A lot of people are talking about him right now because of Steve Bannon and American politics. It seems clear enough Evola was anti-democratic and pro-tradition. I’ve read dozens of articles online, watched dozens of YouTube videos, and brought home two books from the store — and still I don’t quite get it.

It seems he thinks the modern world is shallow, a common enough judgment, but then in some perverted way he believes all the peasants around him should just shut up and be content with their lowly status as servants to him and his kind.

The clearest explanation I’ve found is an essay by Tom X Hart on Medium:

“These are Traditional fellows. But all that is Traditional has been wiped away by capitalism, revolution, secularism, liberalism, communism, socialism, industrialisation, democracy, the middle class, the working class, bureaucrats, feminism, two global mechanised wars, science, and the Enlightenment — by every movement that seeks to level down human experience to the mundane, the democratic, and the materialistic as opposed to the vital, elitist, and spiritual.“

It sounds like some of the nobiliary fakers I know. Fake ancestry, fake titles. What I don’t understand is why anyone would fall for what is surely one of the oldest cons in the book. Destroy the existing order and surely you’ll become one of the aristocrats in the new order. Bosh.

  • Tom X Hart, “Julius Evola – or, tiger riding for dummies”, at Medium.com (May 19, 2017), visited July 10, 2017. deleted by the author; musta had some qualms about it

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  • Julius Evola, Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex (1958).
  • Julius Evola, Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul (1961).

Updated Nov. 4, 2020 to remove broken link.

Anglo-Saxon Gods

“Bede observed that it was necessary to change only a small aspect of a festival, for heathen practices to become Christian worship. For example, the charming of the plough became the blessing of the plough (Plough Sunday – first Sunday after Epiphany) while Lughnasadh is now Lammas, the harvest festival. Lammas was the day in which loaves of bread were consecrated, the name deriving from the Old English hláfmæsse (The name is derived from the words for loaf and mass, but even this was amended to lamb and mass, to underscore the Christian connotations). The later festival of celebrating the harvest is also appropriated from the Saxon word: hær[ƀ]fest. However hard the Christian missionaries tried to displace (and then eradicate completely) the Saxon ceremonies, there are some that remain untouched. I don’t propose to look at all the seasons here; just a couple of celebrations that are still prominent in our modern calendar.“

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A Desert Tree Alphabet

From my chum Anne Brannen.

Translating Robert Graves’ Celtic Tree Alphabet into a localized form for the New Mexico high desert. Here’s her explanation:

“My own little project has been to translate, as far as I’m able, the trees and plants native to New Mexico into the Celtic Tree pantheon.  I don’t think I’m really done with this project, but it’s far enough along I’ll share it with you here.  I’m focusing not so much on the trees’ place in the eco system, but the trees’ place in the human imagination.  I don’t see how you can have both; I picked one.“

  • Anne Brannen, “A Proposed Sacred Desert Tree Alphabet,” AnneBrannen.com, (Aug. 6, 2014): http://annebrannen.com/2014/08/proposed-sacred-desert-tree-alphabet/

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  • Emma Kathryn, “Folklore & Superstitions – Connecting With the Land Where You Live,” A Beautiful Resistance (Apr. 5, 2019) : https://abeautifulresistance.org/site/2019/4/5/folklore-amp-superstitions-connecting-with-the-land-where-you-live

Revised Oct. 28, 2019

War Between the Gods of East and West

There is an odd feature in “Indo-European” cultures, a divide between east and west.

In the ancient Indo-Iranian system there are two categories of gods:

  • Asuras / Ahuras
  • Devas

In India, the Asuras are the old gods displaced by the devas

In Iran, under the influence of Zoroastrianism, Ahura Mazda is the good guy, and the daevas are the demons.

We see in Rome and Greece that Dyaus-Pitar is Zeus and Jupiter, the king of the gods. He is a deva. We have the words Deo, Deus, divinity. In other words, the fringes of Europe follow the Indian system, not the Iranian.

  • Sanskrit Dyaus and Deva
  • Baltic Dievas
  • Old Germanic Tiwaz or Ziu
  • Greek Zeus
  • Latin Deus

In the Gathas, the oldest hymns of Zoroastrianism and thought to have been composed by Zoroaster himself, the poet exhorts his followers to pay reverence to only the ahuras, and to rebuff the daevas and others who act “at Lie’s command”. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahura>, accessed Sept. 20, 2013.

In the Younger Avesta, three divinities of the Zoroastrian pantheon are repeatedly identified as ahuric. These three are Ahura Mazda, Mithra and Apam Napat, and hence known as the “Ahuric triad”. Other divinities with whom the term “Ahuric” is associated include the six Amesha Spentas and (notable among the lesser yazatas) Aredvi Sura of The Waters and Ashi of Reward and Recompense.<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahura>, accessed Sept. 20, 2013.

In early Vedic texts, both the asura and the devas were deities who constantly competed with each other, some bearing both designations at the same time. In late-Vedic and post-Vedic literature the Vedic asuras became lesser beings; whilst in Avesta, the Persian counterpart of the Vedas, the devas began to be considered as lesser beings. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asura>, accessed Sept. 20, 2013.

While it is likely that the daevas were once the “national” gods of pre-Zoroastrian Iran,[1] “no known Iranian dialect attests clearly and certainly the survival of a positive sense for [Old Iranian] *daiva-.”[2] This “fundamental fact of Iranian linguistics” is “impossible” to reconcile with the testimony of the Gathas, where the daevas, though rejected, were still evidently gods that continued to have a following.[2]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daeva>, accessed Sept. 20, 2013.

Norse

War between Aesir and Vanir.

In the religious mythology of the Nordic-Germanic people, there is fascinating evidence for the interaction between the Indo-European Kurgan invaders and the Old European cultures.<http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vida_alien/alien_humanitymanipulationalien04.htm>, accessed Sept. 10, 2013.

We find this in the myths of the prolonged warfare and eventual peacemaking between two families of deities, the Aesir and the Vanir. The clashing and hybridizing of religions and worldviews between Indo-Europeans and Old Europeans is clearly discernible here, even although the later Indo-European layer is obviously dominant. In that sense Nordic-Germanic mythology serves as an example of a pattern of cultural transformation that occurred all over Europe, and the Near East, over the course of many centuries. For a detailed reexamination and interpretation of the Nordic-Germanic myths, including the conflicts between the Aesir and Vanir deities, in the light of Marija Gimbutas’s concept of hybrid mythologies, see John Lash, The Well of Remembrance – Rediscovering the Earth Wisdom Mythology of Northern Europe (Shambhala, 1994).<http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vida_alien/alien_humanitymanipulationalien04.htm>, accessed Sept. 10, 2013.

The Aesir are primarily sky- and warrior-gods, including Odin, Tiwaz or Tyr, and Thor the Thunderer. On the other hand, the Vanir, including Nerthus, Njörd and the brother-sister pair Freyr and Freyja, are primarily earth- and nature-deities. Archaeological evidence in the form of carved inscriptions and images on stelae or ornaments, indicates that both the Aesir and Vanir deities were worshipped at particular sites. They are portrayed in the myths as two different families or clans of divinities who are often at odds and even at war. <http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vida_alien/alien_humanitymanipulationalien04.htm>, accessed Sept. 10, 2013.

Presumably this reflects the conflict, drawn out over many centuries, between the invading Indo-Germanic tribes from the East and the aboriginal populations of Old Europe who resisted the attempted assimilation. It seems probable that after the Indo-Germanic people had settled in Central Europe, the Vanir continued to be the gods of the farmers and fishermen, while the Aesir were worshipped by the military aristocracy, who had appropriated the land and established their domination.<http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vida_alien/alien_humanitymanipulationalien04.htm>, accessed Sept. 10, 2013.

Several earlier scholars had proposed that the myth of the war between Aesir and Vanir reflects the actual historical conflict, in the 2nd millennium BCE, between the indigenous “Megalith culture” of Southern Scandinavia and Western Europe, whose gods were the Vanir, and the invading Indo-Aryan “Battleax culture”, whose gods were the Aesir. Snorri Sturluson, the Icelandic author who in the 13th century compiled the Prose Edda (also called Younger Edda), one of our main sources for Germanic myth, himself stated in his introduction, that the Aesir were the (human) leaders of warrior bands who came from Asia. The etymological connection he made between “Aesir” and “Asia” is however regarded as spurious by contemporary scholars. See Rudolf Simek, Lexikon der Germanischen Mythologie, (Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag, 1984), pp 460-461. See also The Well of Remembrance, op. cit. pp. 165 – 172.<http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vida_alien/alien_humanitymanipulationalien04.htm>, accessed Sept. 10, 2013.

Celtic

War between Formorians and De Danaan.

Egyptian

War between Horus and Set (Tryphon).

**Haéus(ōs)*, is usually a Sun Goddess (p. 409, 410, 432, Oxford Introduction) with forms in Hittite, aššu ‘lord, God’; Sanskrit, Ushās, Goddess of Dawn, but later the Ashuras are demonized; Avestan, Ahura Mazda, the good god of the Zoroastrians, and ahura, a good spirit; Greek, Éōs, a Dawn Goddess; and Latin, Aurōra, a Dawn Goddess. Gallic Esus is a God of Hearths; and Old Norse, Aesir (pl.), and Old English Ôs (m.sg.) and Ose (f.sg.), are general words for ‘a god, any god or goddess.’ Slavic, Jarilo or Iaro, is a God of Summer; and Lithuanian Aušra is ‘dawn’; while both Latvian Auseklis, and Lithuanian Aušrinė are Goddesses of the Morning Star, i.e. the planet Venus. The form Arap Ushas appears in Albanian folklore, but there it is a name of the Moon.

Deva or Deos, ‘god’ (masculine) is reconstructed as **deiwós-*, (p. 408, Oxford Introduction and G&I, Vol. I, p. 196, but from *dhy-, according to Jaan Puhvel) from Hittite sius ‘God’; and Sanskrit Devá ‘God; His/Your Majesty.’ In Avestan, the daēvas ‘demons’, (later Persian divs, who are seen also in Armenian folklore) were demonized by Zarathustra, but Armenian also has tir, tiwr ‘God, idol’ (p. 150, Mann in An Indo-European Comparative Dictionary). Greek, dios ‘god’ (but usually theós); Oscan, Diovis; Latin, Jove, a particular God, also with forms deus, dives, ‘a god, a rich man.’ Other forms are Welsh dewi; Irish dia, a God; Old Norse Týr; Old High German Ziu; Old English Tīw, a particular God; Old Polish Żywie; Lithuanian Dievas; and Latvian Dievs, a God who causes the rye fields to ripen.

Deus Pater or *dyēus pHatēr is believed by Christians to have been the “original name of the god of the daylit sky and the chief god of the Indo-European pantheon.” This was based (p. 409, 431, Oxford Introduction) on Sanskrit Dyáus Pitā; Greek Zeus with a vocative form Zeu patēr; Illyrian Dei-pátrous; and Etruscan Jūpiter, borrowed into Latin alongside the native form Dispater, cf. also deus pater in the Vulgate, e.g. Jude 1:1. However this appears to be merely a descriptive appositive in the form of a kenning: “Kennings drawn from family relationships are extremely common” p. 34, Olson and Sens in Archestratos of Gela. An additional problem is that these deities lack corresponding features in the various languages. For example Dyáus Pitā is mentioned in the Rig Veda mainly as the husband of Prthivi (the Euphrates River) and that is almost all that is known about him. The Illyrian form is actually a mountain.

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Draft; updated Oct. 29, 2019; Nov. 3, 2019 to add link.

Life After Death

The Romans had many different ideas about life after death. The traditional view was that the soul separated from the body, then traveled to the realm of the dead, the world ruled by Pluto (Hades in Greek). The various philosophical schools had other ideas.

“The Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, offered three possibilities, ‘extinction, dispersal, or survival (Med. 11.3).’ The first possibility is that the Mind, cut off from the brain that produced it, is extinguished forever. The second possibility offers some consolation but amounts to the same thing. The body dissolves and its component parts are recycled by Nature to create new life. . . . The third possibility is that the mind and other component parts of the human form survive death.“

The Stoics were vague about life after death. They emphasize the Good Life here and now, and that’s been my default position as well. I fell in love with Marcus Aurelius in high school, and never quite got over him. For most of my adult life I’ve had a copy of Meditations on my bedside table.

Even so, for all practical purposes I’m a Neoplatonist. Although it’s not obvious, Neoplatonism is the philosophy behind astrology, and other traditional occult sciences. So, the soul survives death and continues its journey toward ascent and eventual reunification with the One.

It’s well worth exploring the different philosophical schools, here. There’s a lot more nuance than just Heaven / Hell / Reincarnation.

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Viking Sunstone

“For centuries, it has been a crystal of legend locked in the verses of Norse myth with little or no evidence that it was ever real. Now it seems scientists at last have grounds for believing that the Viking ‘sunstone’ used to navigate the seas did indeed exist.“

I need to do some more reading here. I’ve been under the impression we understood exactly what the sunstone was; no mystery here.