Das Gott of the Ancient Teutons

Recently I had been lectured to by a supposed German on a website (which I will not name as this will give them the oxygen of publicity) which likes to publish some of my articles to then take the proverbial piss out of them. This particular lecture involved the use and choice of the definite article for the German word for god-Gott. I have on several occasions on this blog mentioned the Armanen practise of referring to the God of the Germans (who Hitler often referred to) as Das Gott[neuter gender] as opposed to Der Gott (masculine gender). This was done to differentiate the Aryan God of the Germans from the semitic god of the Jews, Muslims and Christians. Our Gods and Godesses should be perceived as rays or emanations of the all-pervading force, intellect, the first cause who the ancient Aryans considered to be beyond gender. The Indo-Aryans called this deity Brahma. The ancient Germans acknowledged Tiw/Tyr/Teiws/Zio as their supreme being, later to be eclipsed by Thunor and then Woden as the ancient Teutons by necessity needed to become more war-like in their struggle for existence.


Tiw may be traced back to the reconstructed primary deity of the undivided Aryans, *Dyeus. He is also the Dyaus Pitar of the Indo-Aryans, the Jupiter of the Latins and the Zeus of the Greeks. Amongst the Teutons and the Indo-Aryans He became a very abstract figure. In the Eddas He is relegated to being a son of Woden just as Thunor had been. He performs a useful function in the mythology but tends to be in the background, a sign of His eclipse by the more prominent Woden and Thunor.

Significantly Tyr is also used as a general term for `god` in the Eddas, an indication that at one time to talk about Tyr/Tiw was to talk about `God`. Even Woden who had many by-names was called Hangatyr-`god of the hanged`. It is interesting that Tiw was called Zio in Old High German and was worshiped by the Suebi in southern Germany. His consort was Zisa. Nigel Pennick in his The Complete Illustrated Guide to the Runes (which I highly recommend) states that the Rune Teiwaz is representative of the Pole Star and more over that this Rune is sacred to the Goddess Zisa.

Because of the close similarity of their names I conjecture that originally Zio and Zisa were in fact the same deity as some speculate that Njord and Nerthus were. This does not mean that Tiw was a hermaphrodite but that the original supreme God of the Germans was beyond and above gender, transcendental, untouched by human definition. It is possibly this is the God who should be referred to as the Das Gott of the Germans.

It is interesting that a debate has been initiated recently over the choice of definite article for  referring to Gott, no doubt sparked by political correctness and feminism. However this debate has acknowledged that in National Socialist Germany there were also attempts to refer to God as Das Gott but no doubt from a different motivation. See Friedrich Murawski: Das Gott. Umriß einer Weltanschauung aus germanischer Wurzel. Fritsch, Berlin 1940.