Reverence for the Gods Revisited

This article should be read in conjunction with Reverence for the Gods . I would also recommend that my readers watch the extremely interesting and informative video on the subject by Survive the Jive: Indo-European Prayer and Ritual


As I have stated in my earlier article there is a tendency among some Germanic heathens to regard our ancient deities as little more than supernatural 'kinsmen' who are basically of the same essence but just more powerful than we are. I have meditated long and hard on this issue for it is of great importance to those of us who are trying our best to revive the pre-Christian religion of our ancestors and we must get this right!


Before I address this matter of how we approach the Gods we need to consider the issue of prayer. It is only in very recent years that I have started to speak to the Gods in prayer. For many years I viewed prayer as being associated too much with Christianity along with Judaism and Islam. This is a typical attitude amongst many Germanic heathen, especially Odinists. It I also felt by some heathens that to engage in prayer is tantamount to 'grovelling' and goes against their sense of 'manliness'. It is only for the first reason that I did not engage in prayer. I gradually came to the realisation that this was faulty and as I wanted to deepen my relationship with the Gods prayer is something that I had to engage in. So my desire to get closer in my daily walk with the Gods encouraged me once again to take up prayer; something I had not done since abandoning Christianity in the 1990s.


Having taken that first step I had to decide what form my prayers should take. To a major extent this is determined by the deities who you follow and even in the Woden's Folk Religion there is a great deal of difference and variety amongst heathens. The deities that I feel more drawn to are Thunor and Woden. They have many similarities but many differences too. In matters of protection and blessing I invoke the aid of Thunor. Indeed in a vision given to someone many years ago Thunor has revealed Himself to be my protector and guardian. I will not go into this now but save this for a future article. For matters of seeking knowledge, wisdom and understanding I invoke Woden. In the past I have also invoked Freyja during periods of sickness and I have found Her aid both powerful and speedy.


After reading Wulf Ingesunnu's recent book, At-Al-Land. Aryan Mysteries of the Northern Seas (2018, Black Front Press) I developed for the very first time a real interest in Yngvi-Freyr, the divine ancestral God of the Anglo-Saxons and Swedes and I intend to develop my relationship with Him also. As I mentioned earlier, how we approach the Gods to a large extent depends upon the nature of the deity and the realms of responsibility of that particular God or Goddess. I usually pray standing up, facing one of my indoor shrines which faces north. However sometimes I pray in other places, even sometimes whilst walking down the street. Whenever possible I try to ascertain the cardinal direction of north but this is not essential. It is a pattern which I have got into. I begin by focusing on the deity, meditating on an aspect of their power and begin to directly address the God, honouring Him or Her by pointing out the positive aspects of their behaviour and personality.


If it is a request that I am making of the God then I make the request known and draw a connection between what I am asking and the ability of the God to fulfil the request. We know from our ancestral law that gifts demand a gift and often I find it useful when making a request to accompany this with a promise to the God in return. However I have also found from my own experience that the Gods will expect us to honour our promises or they in turn will cause a negative effect to occur so we must not be rash with our promises. Prayer of course often involves making requests of a deity but can also involve worship as well. I am glad to see that others (including Survive the Jive) also use incense when engaging in ritual activity or prayer. By offering incense we are making a gift to the God and this is a visual sign that we desire to please them-not through fear of the Gods but through love of the Gods. I am not aware of anyone who embraces the Germanic Gods out of fear but that they are drawn to them: they hear the Call of the Gods but we must still treat them with respect. The use of incense also helps to create a sacred space and to prepare ourselves mentally and spiritually. Some may argue that this has all the hallmarks of High Church Christianity but how do we know that incense wasn't used by the priests of the Gods? Are our Gods worthy of less respect than the Christian god?


I mentioned earlier in this article that I usually pray standing up, normally facing north and when I do so I adopt the Elhaz/Algiz rune posture. This in no doubt is due to the influence of Edred Thorsson for he writes on page 51 of Futhark. A Handbook of Rune Magic that the adoption of this runic posture aids "Communication with other worlds, especially Asgardhr and the cosmic wells of Urdhr, Mimir, and Hvergelmir." However as Survive the Jive has pointed out there appears to be evidence that our ancestors bowed the knee when invoking the Gods in prayer. There is evidence to support this theory. We have for instance the remarkable bronze statue of a Suebian warrior kneeling in prayer to the Gods but with arms outstretched. An image of this statue is attached to this article.


In the Faereyinga Saga or as it is also known, The Saga of Thrond of Gate we have an Earl or Jarl Hacon who casts himself down before the feet of an image of a Goddess:

"They set forth along a certain path to the wood, and thence by a little bypath into the wood, till they came where a ride lay before them, and a house standing in it with a stake fence round it. Right fair was that house, and gold and silver was run into the carvings thereof. They went into the house, Hacon and Sigmund, and a few men with them. Therein were a great many gods. There were many glass roof-lights in the house, so that there was no shadow anywhere. There was a woman in the house over against the door, right fairly decked she was. The Earl cast him down at her feet, and there he lay long, and when he rose up he told Sigmund that they should bring her some offering and lay the silver thereof on the stool before her." (chapter 23, translation by F. York Powell)

It is clear from the rest of the chapter that this was not a human woman but the image of a Goddess. This story is repeated in the Saga of Olaf Trggvason and the deity is identified as Thorgerd, the Maid of Helgi. The Goddess and Her relationship with Haakon is also referred to in the Jomsvikinga Saga where Haakon prayed north and knelt down, calling upon his protector Thorgerd Holgabrudr to whom he offered his 7 year old son as a human sacrifice. There is much more to explore regarding this fairly obscure deity and I intend to do this in a future article on this blog. The points which I wish to make was the awe in which the Gods were held and how they were approached. We have a much older example of this from continental Germania from Tacitus:

"The Semnones give themselves out to be the most ancient and renowned branch of the Suevi. Their antiquity is strongly attested by their religion. At a stated period, all the tribes of the same race assemble by their representatives in a grove consecrated by the auguries of their forefathers, and by immemorial associations of terror. Here, having publicly slaughtered a human victim, they celebrate the horrible beginning of their barbarous rite. Reverence also in other ways is paid to the grove. No one enters it except bound with a chain, as an inferior acknowledging the might of the local divinity. If he chance to fall, it is not lawful for him to be lifted up, or to rise to his feet; he must crawl out along the ground. All this superstition implies the belief that from this spot the nation took its origin, that here dwells the supreme and all-ruling deity, to whom all else is subject and obedient. The fortunate lot of the Semnones strengthens this belief; a hundred cantons are in their occupation, and the vastness of their community makes them regard themselves as the head of the Suevic race." (Germania 39, translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb) 

There is no notion at all in any of the above excerpts from either Tacitus or the sagas that our ancestors viewed themselves as being 'equal' in some way to the Gods. They did not consider themselves as 'lesser' men by praying to them or approaching them with awe and reverence. I would therefore ask my readers to give due consideration to how our ancestors approached the Gods for they viewed them as real autonomous deities, not just psychic emanations from the 'Collective Unconscious'!

*Image: By Author unknown - Brown, Gerard Baldwin (1910). The arts and crafts of our Teutonic forefathers. London & Edinburgh: T. N. Foulis, plate III. Digitized by the Internet Archive, available from https://archive.org/details/artscraftsofourt00brow. (Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Jalo using CommonsHelper.), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4648562

Reverence for the Gods

Whilst listening to an interesting BBC radio programme some time ago on the revival of Asatru in Iceland I was struck by certain comments made by a female practitioner who seems to regards the Gods as being 'equal' to man. This is not the first time that I have encountered this particular perspective and in my opinion it is an inappropriate way to think of our deities.

Many years ago when I was still a Christian I encountered many types of Christians from various denominations and churches and I found that there were two ways in which Christians encountered their god. There was the High Church approach in the Church of England which focussed on ritual and reverence for the Christian god and then at the other end of the spectrum there was the Low Church element which is largely free of ritual and which is also to be found in Non-Conformist denominations. One thing that struck me as rather odd was the practice of some churchgoers, especially the younger ones to actually dress down when going to the 'house of god'; something which I have never understood and at the time considered to be a lack of respect, a lack of awe, a lack of reverence.

One sees this casual approach amongst some heathens today and each time I hear that man is the 'equal to the Gods' I feel rather uneasy about such a statement. If we are the 'equal' of the Gods then why do we worship or honour them? Some would say that the Gods should be viewed in the same way as we view human parents and to a certain extent I understand and in part agree with this sentiment and statement. However the way in which children relate to their parents today in the 'western' world is not a traditional one and is often lacking in respect. Many former Christians, particularly the younger ones take this attitude into heathenism and are quite casual in how they approach the Gods. If we are to expect a great heathen revival then we must examine how we view the Gods that we say that we honour or worship. By the way there is nothing at all wrong with worshipping the Gods. Prayer and worship are not confined to or restricted to the alien Abrahamic religions.


A genuine heathen perspective of the Gods must be rooted in how our ancestors related to them. We may have changed but the Gods have not! One particular clue is to be found in Tacitus' Germania.

"Mercury is the deity whom they chiefly worship, and on certain days they deem it right to sacrifice to him even with human victims. Hercules and Mars they appease with more lawful offerings. (Germania 9, translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb) 

So as my readers can see the worship of the Gods was not a casual affair but something which was taken seriously and in great earnest. There was a desire to please the Gods and sacrifice was seen as a way of doing this. I would like to point out that I am not advocating this practice today although it may be something which is taken up again once the decaying 'New World Order' is finally brought to its knees. What else can we learn from the above passage? Well Mercury who the Romans equated with Woden/Wodan/Wotan "is the one they worship most". This is as it should be for He is THE High Lord of the Teutons. Hercules (Thunor/Thunar/Donar) and Mars (Tiw) were also worshipped but in this case with animals rather than humans. One may speculate here how men were offered to Woden but it seems clear to me that this was by hanging and often this was done at a crossroads. Odin was known as Hangatyr and Hangagud, the God of the hanged. Woden would come and commune with the dead and dying. He like Mercury is the great psychopomp, the conveyor of human souls to the afterlife.


Some may balk at the concept of human sacrifice but I think this is more to do with the lingering effects of the Christian religion which created the concept of 'sin' and its bedmate 'guilt'. We see this today with the modern religion of the 'holocaust' and the very profitable industry centred around it. The Germanic tribe which Germania 9 is discussing are the Suebi. This tribe is referred to later on in Germania 39.

The Semnones give themselves out to be the most ancient and renowned branch of the Suevi. Their antiquity is strongly attested by their religion. At a stated period, all the tribes of the same race assemble by their representatives in a grove consecrated by the auguries of their forefathers, and by immemorial associations of terror. Here, having publicly slaughtered a human victim, they celebrate the horrible beginning of their barbarous rite. Reverence also in other ways is paid to the grove. No one enters it except bound with a chain, as an inferior acknowledging the might of the local divinity. If he chance to fall, it is not lawful for him to be lifted up, or to rise to his feet; he must crawl out along the ground. All this superstition implies the belief that from this spot the nation took its origin, that here dwells the supreme and all-ruling deity, to whom all else is subject and obedient. The fortunate lot of the Semnones strengthens this belief; a hundred cantons are in their occupation, and the vastness of their community makes them regard themselves as the head of the Suevic race. (Church and Brodribb)

The above passage is quite illuminating. Once again we encounter the reference to human sacrifice but notice here the emotions that are engendered by the Semnones: "terror" and "reverence". The Gods are not to be approached lightly and certainly not as 'equals' for they embody great elemental forces, particularly Woden and Thunor and thus this in itself must demand a certain respect.


There is a great deal of speculation as to who the main deity of the Semnones alluded to in Germania is:

"Reverence also in other ways is paid to the grove. No one enters it except bound with a chain, as an inferior acknowledging the might of the local divinity. If he chance to fall, it is not lawful for him to be lifted up, or to rise to his feet; he must crawl out along the ground. All this superstition implies the belief that from this spot the nation took its origin, that here dwells the supreme and all-ruling deity, to whom all else is subject and obedient." (Church and Brodribb) 

"Bound with a chain" or as some translation translate it a "shackle" or "cord". That sounds to me like the noose of the hanged, the torc worn by the Woden initiates! "Reverence......paid to the  grove". This is the right frame of mind in which we must approach the Gods. Indeed unlike the woman speaking in the BBC documentary our ancestors did not believe themselves to be 'equal' to the Gods: quite the contrary! "as an inferior acknowledging the might of the local divinity." We may be children of All Father; we may even trace our lineage back to Him but we are not Gods. The most that we can aim to become is a God-Man but we are still separate from the Gods and owe our existence to them along with all that we have and are. The adjectives that are relevant in the above passage are "inferior, subject, obedient". These are not popular words in 21st century England which is plagued by the concepts of equality and torments itself over racial equality, gender equality and rights for homosexuals. Our ancestors did not focus on 'rights' but duty, honour and loyalty without which a folk cannot exist.


My readers will note something else very important that Tacitus writes in Germania 39:

"At a stated period, all the tribes of the same race assemble by their representatives in a grove consecrated by the auguries of their forefathers, and by immemorial associations of terror." (Church and Brodribb)

Our religion was NEVER universalist. It was always a religion of Blut und Boden or blood and soil and the universalists would do well to ponder that historical fact! One may ask what is the difference in this attitude and that of the Abrahamic religions which focus on submission to their god? The difference is not so much in attitude but how we come to the Gods to begin with. All forms of Germanic heathenism stress that we do not seek to 'convert' others and certainly never by force unlike the desert religions. THIS is the key difference but I see no reason why we should accord less honour to the deities of our folk and race than the monotheists grant to their alien and universalist god. The Gods should not be viewed just as archetypes but as very real spiritual entities by which we are bound by our very existence. As a folk we cannot survive without them for they are our life source but they too need us for we are reminded of the expression "every race has its soul and every soul its race".

Irmin, the God of the Irminsul and the Herminones

Some scholars such as Rudolf Simek (Dictionary of Northern Mythology) doubt the existence of the Saxon God Irmin. Their argument is that apart from the Irminsul which presupposes a God Irmin there is no independent evidence to support the theory of there being a God called by this name. They interpret Irmin to mean `great, tall` and thus the Irminsul to be nothing other than a tall column or pillar. This argument is shallow and does not stand up to indepth critical analysis.

My first question is why our Saxon ancestors would erect great pillars to worship if they did not symbolise an actual God? Of course one could equate the Irminsul of the Saxons with the Yggdrasil of the Scandinavians and I believe that this on one level is a valid thing to do. However there is only very limited evidence that the Scandinavians used such great pillars as part of their rites. The Irminsul is a thing that seems to be peculiar to the Saxons and the tradition lives on today in Saxon areas of Germany and in England in the form of the Maypole.

Again there are some who say that "there is no evidence" to link the Maypole with the Irminsul but they are otherwise at a loss to explain the Maypole`s origin! Some in typical Freudian style view the Maypole as a phallic symbol despite there being no evidence to support this. A more likely comparison between Maypole dancing would be the dancing sunwise around certain megaliths which continues up to the present day. Often the people who carry out these customs do not understand the true purpose of the activity or that they are indeed carrying out a prextian sacred rite in honour of the Sun and/or Irmin. It is significant that this is both an English, Scandinavian and a continental Germanic custom. The spread of this customer may have started in Saxon Germany and spread northwards and into England with the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. Of course with the growth of the English empire this custom spread to other parts of Britain and modern English speaking countries.


The customs that the Church could not suppress or plagiarise continue today in our folklore. A useful guide to such customs is to be found in In Search of Lost Gods. A Guide to British Folklore by Ralph Whitlock.

In addition to the Irminsul the name of Irmin is to be found in one of the three tribal designations referred to in Tacitus` Germania:

In their ancient songs, their only way of remembering or recording the past, they celebrate an earth-born god, Tuisco, and his son Mannus, as the origin of their race, as their founders. To Mannus they assign three sons, from whose names, they say, the coast tribes are called Ingaevones; those of the interior, Herminones; all the rest, Istaevones. Some, with the freedom of conjecture permitted by antiquity, assert that the god had several descendants, and the nation several appellations, as Marsi, Gambrivii, Suevi, Vandilii, and that these are genuine old names. (Germania 2:2, translated by Church and Brodribb) 

 The Frankish Table of Nations from around 520CE states:

"there were three brothers, first Erminus, second Inguo, third Istio; from them developed thirteen peoples."

Other classical writers such as Mela and Pliny also mention the Hermiones. The use of the `h` at the beginning of Hermiones or Herminones is purely a Latin aspirate and was not used by the Germanic peoples. Our ancestors would have referred to themselves as Irmiones/Ermiones or Irminones/Erminones or something cognate with this term. It is interesting that all three Germanic tribal divisions are said to alliterate, ie they each start with the same letter: Ingvaeones, Irminones and Istvaeones.

"The aspirate given by the Romans to Herminones, as to Hermunduri, is strictly no part of the German word, but is also very commonly retained by Latin writers of the Mid. Ages in proper names compounded with Irmin."[Teutonic Mythology, Volume 1, Jacob Grimm]

Interestingly the Hermunduri occupied the region of Saxony and Thunringia and undoubtedly were in part the ancestors of the Saxons and belonged to the tribal division of Herminones.

We know that there is evidence to support the argument that the Ingvaeones were named after their ancestral deity Ing. It is conjectured also that the Istvaeones were named after the first Germanic man, Askr (see Teutonic Mythology, Volume 1). It is logical therefore that the Irmin of Irminones must be a divine ancestor.

Irmin can be found as part of many ancient Germanic names,eg:

Hermanaric, Hermann, Ermintrudis, Irminfrith (King of the neighbouring Thuringi), Irmansuint, Irmingart, Irminolt, Irmandrut, Irmanperalit, Irmandegan, Irmandeo, Eormenric, Eormenred, Iiurminburg, etc.

Of course the great prince of the Cherusci who thrashed the Romans in the 1st century CE was named Arminius or Hermann. He was of course an historical figure but one can see how such figures can become embroiled in myth when comparisons with the legendary Siegfried are made.  

Scholars are tempted to equate Irmin with other deities such as Saxnot who is purely a Saxon God like Krodo but also He has been compared with Tiw and even Woden. I think it best that we consider Him on His own merits until further research of a conclusive nature is carried out.

In an earlier article titled Aryaman/Airyaman/Ariomanus/Eremon/Irmin-the Divine Concept of Aryanness  I demonstrated that Irmin has His origins in an original Aryan deity even though over time amongst the Germanic peoples His worship appears to have been confined mainly to the Saxons. This deity reconstructed name is *Aryomn. We are thus genetically and spiritually Ar-manen or Ir-minen, Arya. There should now be no doubt about the validity of our use of this term as a self-descriptor.

A Possible Explanation for the Lack of Runic Inscriptions from Germania

For a long time now I have pondered the reasons for the smaller quantity of surviving runic artefacts from Germany and the German-speaking lands and the Netherlands compared to Scandinavia and even England and I believe that I have stumbled upon one possible explanation for this. As I was leafing through Friedrich Bernhard Marby's Marby-Runen-Bücherei I encountered the following interesting passage:

"Thus into the hands of Karl the Teuton Murderer came over 4,000 volumes of Germanic writings. After the death of Karl, on the recommendation of the Roman priests of 'Ludwig the Pious', a successor of Karl, entire writings were burned in an open marketplace and with that destroyed for ever." (My translation)

 
Thus we have Karl the Butcher who was not only responsible for the murder of millions of Saxons but the destruction of our sacred groves, temples, God images and runic writings. The wars against the Saxons in the 8th century was truly a war of semitic Christianity against the Wotanist and Irminist religious paths of our ancestors.


This widespread devastation of ancient Germanic spirituality was specific to Germania; Scandinavia having largely escaped this holocaust. The sacred writings which were not burned were buried away in the Vatican and the crypts of local churches.

"The Roman church did not stop in the 'collection' of old Germanic writings. Untranslated writings on Rune stones lie still today in the underground passageways and cellars of many churches and cloisters and especially in the Vatican. The act of collecting was continued later by the Jews, who for this reason were gladly 'Antiquarians'. Even some of the important written materials of the Initiates (the Cabbala etc) had to be transliterated into the Hebrew script and language, in order to save this valuable material from Rome. The Hebrew script and language was indeed not forbidden!-Thus came the Germanic Cabbala into the underground library of the Jewish synagogue in Cologne and emerged again later as the 'Jewish Cabbala' in Spain and North Africa." (Compare the writings of Guido von List). (My translation)

The subject of the Cabbala and links to Armanist teaching deserves an article in its own right and this is something which I hope to address in a future article.