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September's dawn breach
Cracking the sky this morning
Seventh month's the ninth

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September 1, 2026

Phantom Time Hypothesis Theory

This is a theory proposed in 1991 by German historian & publisher Heribert Illig. The hypothesis claims a huge chunk of the Early Middle Ages never happened. According to Illig, we’re not living in the year 2026, but rather around 1729.

It hypothesizes a conspiracy by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III & Pope Sylvester II to fabricate the Anno Domini dating system retroactively, to place them at the special year 1000, & to rewrite history to legitimize Otto’s claim to the Holy Roman Empire.

Illig believed that this was achieved through the alteration, misrepresentation & forgery of documentary & physical evidence. According to this scenario, the entire Carolingian period, including the figure of Charlemagne, is a hoax with a “phantom time” of 297 years (614-911 AD) added to the Early Middle Ages.

Illig’s claims include:

• Holy Roman Emperor Otto III desperately wanted to reign during the monumental year of 1,000 AD, believing it would solidify his divine right & align with Christian eschatological milestones.
• Pope Sylvester II had the theological authority & administrative reach to help alter the calendar.
• Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII & the Eastern Roman Empire allegedly assisted in fabricating backstories, genealogies, & documents to legitimize the new timeline & secure political alliances.
• There’s a scarcity of archaeological evidence that can be reliably dated to 614-911 AD.
• Radiometry (measuring electromagnetic radiation) & dendrochronology (tree ring dating) are inaccurate dating methods.
• Medieval historians rely too much on (older) written sources.
• The Romanesque architecture in the 10th century Western Europe suggests that the Roman era wasn’t as long as conventionally thought.
• At the time of the intro of the Gregorian Calendar in 1582 AD, there should’ve been a discrepancy of 13 days between the Julian Calendar & the real (or tropical) calendar. When the astronomers & mathematicians needed to be adjusted by only 10 days.

By inventing nearly 3 centuries of history, these rulers could fabricate a glorious, heroic past to legitimize Otto III’s own imperial ambitions. Creating the myth of Charlemagne as the ultimate Christian King. From this, Illig concludes that the AD era had counted roughly 3 centuries that never existed.

Illig based his hypothesis on a few distinct anomalies in the archaeological & textual record:

• The Gregorian Calendar Mathematical Glitch
  • Illig’s primary argument stems from the calendar reform of 1582. When Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian Calendar to replace the Julian Calendar, the calendar had drifted out of sync with the solar year. The Julian year was slightly too long, drifting by about 1 full day every 128 years. By 1582, the calendar should have drifted by approximately 13 days. However, Pope Gregory’s astronomers only shifted the calendar by 10 days. Illig argued that this 3-day discrepancy mathematically proves that roughly 300 years never actually passed to cause that extra drift.
• The Scarcity of Archaeological Evidence
  • The Early Middle Ages have long been colloquially known as a period of archaeological scarcity, because the period simply didn’t happen. He claimed that the Romanesque architecture of the High Middle Ages seemed to pop up too suddenly. Suggesting it directly followed late Roman architecture without a 300-year gap.
• Forged Documents
  • It’s a well-known fact among medieval historians that the Middle Ages were rife with forged documents, like the famous Donation of Constantine. Illig weaponized this fact, arguing that if so many medieval charters, land grants, & Chronicles were proven fakes. Then the entirety of the era’s documentation could be a coordinated forgery.

Here’s the opposition’s evidence:

• Astronomy Doesn’t Lie
  • Pliny the Elder recorded a solar eclipse in 59 AD.
  • Byzantine emperor/astronomer Heraclius recorded a solar eclipse in 610 AD, right before the “phantom” era.
  • Independent observations from Tang Dynasty China, Islamic astronomers, & Mayan astronomers record celestial events that perfectly match the traditional European timeline. If 300 years were missing, every single eclipse recorded before the 10th century would be misaligned by 3 centuries when calculated backward using modern orbital mechanics. They’re not.
• Dendrochronology (Tree-Ring Dating)
  • Dendrochronology allows scientists to date wooden artifacts & structures with absolute precision by matching the patterns of annual tree growth rings. Organizations like the Hohenheim University in Germany have constructed a continuous, unbroken tree-ring chronology for Central Europe that stretches back over 10,000 years. There’s no “gap” or missing 300 years in the oak trees of Europe. The rings form a continuous timeline straight through the Early Middle Ages.
• Global Interconnectedness
  • For Illig’s theory to work, the conspiracy would have to extend far beyond the Holy Roman Empire & the Papacy. You would have to believe that the Islamic Umayyad & Abbasid Caliphates, the Tang Dynasty in China, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in Britain, & the Maya civilization in Mesoamerica all colluded to invent 3 centuries of fake leaders, wars, literature, & internal history at the exact time, matching Otto’s fabrications perfectly.

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Our Lady Joan Mastodon smiled. Oh Sir Gregory, look at yourself, all New-Agey in your handwoven cloak and with the Gandalf stick. Sorry, my friend, there ain't no summer solstice today. Your excursion to Stonehenge is a little premature.

You've been reading Pepys again, haven't you, Greggsy. I agree, there's no better reading than Sam's diary. No better reading, Greggsy. But Sam counted differently. Everyone has since switched to the newfangled Gregorian calendar, don't you know. You of all people should be pleased about that, Sir Gregory!

Be that as it may, you do look great in that cloak of yours, Greggsy. Release your inner Gandalf, my friend, solstice or not.

And so they bantered through the rainy pre-solstice night. How we miss our Lady Joan.

#Pepys #SummerSolstice #JulianCalendar #JoanMastodon

@samuelpepys

I agree with Sam: "the longest day" is just a polite way of saying "the days are shrinking again, get ready for winter!" Gloom! :-)

The date (11 June) feels wrong for the summer solstice, but Sam is right.

In England, the Gregorian calendar was only adopted in 1752. France and Spain already used it since 1582, the year when Pope Gregor XIII had made it official.

In Pepys's time, England still used the older Julian calendar, which in 1663 was 10 days behind, so the 11 June 1663 in Pepys's London was the 21 June 1663 in Moliere's Paris or Bernini's Rome. The sun apparently didn't care much either way.

When the switch in England finally happened in 1752, the gap between the two conventions had grown to 11 days. And thus in Samuel Johnson's England in 1752, you went to bed on the evening of 2 September and woke up on the morning of 14 September. The dates in between got swallowed up.

https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/researchguidance/datingdocuments/juliangregorian.aspx

#Pepys #JulianCalendar #SummerSolstice

Archangel Gabriel

In Judaism, Christianity, & other Abrahamic religions, Gabriel (or even Cebrail (Djebrail) in some cultures) is an archangel with the power to announce God’s will to mankind as the messenger of God. He’s like the Abrahamic Apollo. He’s mentioned in the Hebrew Bible/Christian Old Testament, the New Testament, & the Quran.

In the Book of Daniel, Gabriel appears to the prophet Daniel to interpret his vision. Gabriel also shows up in the Jewish apocryphal 1st Book of Enoch & other Hebrew writings.

Along with the archangel Michael, Gabriel is described as the guardian angel of the Israelites, defending them against the angels of the other peoples. Many sects of Christianity revere Gabriel as a saint.

In the New Testament’s Gospel of Luke, Gabriel appears to Zachariah, predicting the birth of John the Baptist. Gabriel later appears to Mary, mother of Jesus, to announce that she would conceive & bear a son via a virgin birth.

Islam regards Gabriel as an archangel sent by Allah/God to different prophets, including Muhammad (PBUH). The first 5 verses of the Al-Alaq (96th chapter of the Quran) are believed by Muslims to have been the 1st verses of revelations given by Gabriel to Muhammad (PBUH).

The only book in the Hebrew Bible that explicitly mentions Gabriel is the Book of Daniel, & Gabriel appears to the prophet Daniel to explain his visions (Daniel 8:15-26, 9:21-27). In Daniel’s final vision, an unnamed angel appears to him & speaks of receiving help from the archangel Michael in battle against the Prince of Persia (not the video game) & also Michael’s role in times to come. This unnamed angel is thought to be Gabriel.

Though not named specifically, the “man clothed with linen” mentioned in the Book of Ezekiel chapters 9 & 10 is interpreted as Gabriel in Yoma 77a of the Babylonian Talmud.

There are many references to Gabriel in the Book of Enoch. According to this book, Michael, Uriel, Raphael, & Gabriel complain to God about the many wrongs perpetuated by Azazel & Samyaza. Especially the fact that they revealed “eternal secrets” & sins to mankind & defiled themselves with human women who later gave birth to giant offspring. Or, 1 of our fav subjects to circle back to, the Nephilim. (We will be doing the Nephilim in a future post. It’s currently being researched right now. Along with the Watchers, the Nephilim’s dads.)

As a result, God decides to destroy the Earth (which has been corrupted by those pesky fallen angels; these fallen angels were led by Azazel & Samyaza) & all of its inhabitants except for Noah. God sends Gabriel & the other archangels to go after the fallen angels & cast them into the darkness until the day of their judgment.

In Chapter 20, Gabriel is listed as 1 of 7 holy angels who watch. In Chapter 40, Gabriel is listed as 1 of 4 presences who stand on the 4 sides of God. These 4 archangels will be the ones to cast the fallen angels into the abyss of condemnation on Judgment Day.

According to Rabbinic Judaism, Gabriel (along with Michael, Uriel, & Raphael) is 1 of the 4 angels that stand at the 4 sides of God’s throne & serve as guardian angels of the 4 parts of the Earth. Michael stands on/at the right hand of God. While Gabriel (who ranks beneath Michael) stands at the left. Michael & Gabriel often work together. But Michael is mainly occupied in Heaven, while Gabriel (as the messenger of God) typically executes God’s will on earth.

Gabriel is also associated with the metal gold (the color of fire). Alongside Michael, Gabriel is described as the guardian angel of Israel, defending the Israelites against the angels of the other nations.

Gabriel is 1 of God’s archangels in Kabbalah literature. He’s pictured working in concert with Michael as part of God’s court. He’s identified with the sefira (or the Counting of the Omar. It’s a period of 49 days known as sefira(h).) of Yesod (this is a node in the kabbalistic Tree of Life.). Gabriel isn’t to be prayed to because only God can answer & sends Gabriel as his agent/messenger/courier.

According to Jewish mythology, in the Garden of Eden there’s a tree of life or the “tree of souls” that blossoms & produces new souls, which fall into the Guf, the Treasury of souls. This is located in the 7th Heaven. Gabriel reaches into the Treasury & takes out the 1st soul that comes into his hand.

Gabriel’s 1st appearance in the New Testament is found in the 1st part of Chapter 1 of Luke. This is where the annunciation of the birth of John the Baptist is. John’s dad, Zachariah, was childless because John’s mom, Elizabeth, was barren. An angel shows up to Zechariah to announce the birth of his son. When Zechariah questions the angel, the angel names himself as Gabriel (Luke 1:5-25).

Gabriel’s next appearance is in the 2nd part of Luke, chapter 1. This time, to announce the birth of Jesus to Mary (Luke 1:26-38). In the 1st part of the passage, the angel identifies itself as Gabriel; in the 2nd part of the passage, the angel doesn’t. It’s the author of Luke who calls this angel Gabriel.

Gabriel is more frequently referenced in early Christian pseudepigraphic texts (these are texts whose authorship isn’t by who it’s claimed to be or a real author attributed to some bigger name of the past) than in Amy of the canonical Biblical texts.

Gabriel is mentioned in some of the infancy Gospels, like the Nativity Gospel of Mary, Protevangelium of James, & First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ. Gabriel is also mentioned in some of the early Christian apocalyptic texts, like the Greek Apocalypse of Ezra & Second Book of Enoch.

In Gnosticism, angels are portrayed as belonging to a pantheon of spiritual beings involved in the creation of the world. According to 1 ancient Gnostic manuscript, the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit. (Which we have posted!) Gabriel is a divine being & inhabitant of the pleroma (This refers to the total of divine powers.) that existed before the demiurge (This is an figure who is responsible for fashioning & maintaining the physical universe). There’s also a reference to Gabriel in Chapter 17 of the Gospel of Judas.

In the theology of the Mormon Church, Gabriel is believed to have lived a mortal life as the prophet Noah. The 2 are regarded as the same individual. Noah was his mortal name & Gabriel being his heavenly name.

Gabriel’s fast day was exclusively celebrated on March 18 between 1588 & 1921. The feast of St. Gabriel was included by Pope Benedict XV in the General Roman Calender in 1921 for celebration on March 24.

In 1969, the day was officially transferred to September 29 for celebration in combination with the feasts of Michael & Raphael. Today, the September 29 date (known as Michaelmas) has been adopted by the Catholic Church, Church of England, Lutheran faith, Anglican Communion, & Western Orthodox churches.

The Eastern Orthodox Church & those Eastern Catholic Churches that follow the Byzantine Rite (a.k.a. the Rite of Constantinople is a liturgical rite developed in the Eastern Christian church of Constantinople.) celebrated the Feast of the Archangels (or Synaxis of the Archangel Michael & the Other Bodiless Powers) on November 8.

For the churches that follow the Julian Calendar, November 9 currently falls on November 21 of the modern Gregorian Calendar (a 13-day difference).

The Eastern Orthodox commemorate Gabriel not only at the Feast of the Archangels, but also on 2 other days: March 26 the “Synaxis of the Archangel Gabriel” & celebrates his role in the Annunciation. July 13, a.k.a. the “Synaxis of the Archangel Gabriel.”

The Coptic Orthodox Church celebrates Gabriel’s feast of 13 Paoni, 22 Koiak, & 26 Paoni. The medieval Coptic work Investiture of the Archangel Gabriel, attributes the feast day of 22 Koiak to the day Gabriel was given the rank of archangel in Heaven.

The Ethiopian Church celebrates Gabriel’s feast of December 18 (in the Ethiopian calendar). A sizable number of its believers making a pilgrimage to a church dedicated to “St. Gabriel” in Kulubi & Wonkshet on that day.

Gabriel is in many places in the Quran. He’s revered as 1 of the primary archangels & as the Angel of Revelation in Islam. He’s primarily mentioned in the verses 2:97, 2:98, 66:4 of the Quran. However, the Quranic text doesn’t refer to him as an angel. In the Quran, the archangel Gabriel appears named in 2:97 & 66:4, as well as in 2:98, where he’s mentioned along with the archangel Michael.

Tafsir (this is like the Jewish Midrash) narrates that Muhammad saw the archangel Gabriel in his full angelic splendor only 2x. The 1st time was when he received his 1st revelation. Islamic tradition holds that Gabriel was sent to numerous pre-Islamic Biblical prophets with revelation & divine injunctions, including Adam, whom Muslims believe was consoled by Gabriel sometime after Fall, too. He’s known by many names in Islam, such as “keeper of holiness.” In Hadith traditions, Jibril is said to have 600 wings.

In Islam, the tree of souls is referred to as the Sidrat al-Muntaha. This is identified as a Ziziphus spina-christi. This is also known as Christ’s thorn jujube.

Muslims believe that Gabriel was tasked with transmitting the scriptures from God to the prophets & messengers as Asbab al-Nuzul or revelation. Asbab al-Nuzul is occasions or circumstances of revelation names the historical context in which Quranic verses were revealed from the perspective of traditional Islam. When Muhammad was questioned which angel is revealing the holy scriptures, he told the Jews they’re revealed by Gabriel.

Muslims also Revere Gabriel for several events that predate what they regard as the 1st revelation narrated in the Quran. Muslims believe that Gabriel was the angel who informed Zechariah of the Nativity of John the Baptist. As well as Mary about the future nativity of Jesus.

Gabriel was 1 of 3 angels who had earlier informed Abraham of the birth of Isaac. Gabriel also makes a famous appearance in the Hadith of Gabriel, in which he questions Muhammad on the core tenets of Islam.

Gabriel is also believed to have delivered punishment from God to the Sodomites by leveling the entire city of Sodom with the tip of his wing. According to a Hadith, Gabriel has the ability to regulate feelings or perception in humans. Particularly happiness or sadness.

Gabriel is believed to have helped Muhammad overcome adversaries significantly against an ifrit during the Night Journey. An ifrit is a powerful type of demon in Islamic culture. Gabriel is also believed to have helped Muhammad overcome his adversaries during the Battle of Badr.

The Yazidis worship 7 Archangels, including Gabriel (Jabra’il), Michael (Mikha’il), Raphael (Rapha’il), Dedra’il, Azra’il, Shamka’il, & Azazil. They’re emanations from God with which God entrusted the world. Yazidis associate Gabriel with Tawusi Melek (the “Peacock Angel”).

Mandaeans venerate Ptahil as the “4th Life.” Ptahil is an uthra (a divine messenger of the light), identified with Gabriel, who creates the poorly made material world with the help of Ruha, a sinful & fallen female ruler who inhabits the World of Darkness.

The creation of the material world occurs by God’s command. But is delegated to Ptahil (a subservient emanation or uthra) with the assistance of Gabriel & others.

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Getting a second run at Good Friday. #Orthodox #JulianCalendar

Archangel Uriel

Uriel means “God is my flame.” His name could be spelled Auriel or Oriel. He’s one of the archangels who’s mentioned in Rabbinic tradition & in certain Christian traditions.

He’s well known in the Russian Orthodox tradition & in folk Catholicism (in both he’s considered to be 1 of the 7 major archangels). In Anglicanism, he’s also well known in European esoteric medieval literature.

Uriel is also known as a master of knowledge & archangel of wisdom. He’s associated with the truth.

In apocryphal, kabbalistic, & occult works, Uriel has been equated (or confused) with Urial, Nuriel, Uryan, Jeremiel, Vretil, Sariel, Puruel, Phanuel, Azrael, & Raphael.

In the Secret Book of John (an early Gnostic work), Uriel is placed in control of the demons who help Yaldabaoth create Adam.

Of the 7 Archangels in the angelology of Judaism, only 2 of them (Gabriel & Michael) are mentioned by name in the canonized Jewish scripture. Where a 4th archangel is added to the named 3 (to represent the 4 cardinal points), Uriel is generally the 4th. Uriel is listed as the 4th angel by Christian Gnostics, under the name of Phanuel.

Uriel appears in the 2nd Book of Esdras, which is found in the Biblical apocrypha (called Esdras IV in the Vulgate). In this, the prophet Ezra asks God a series of questions, & God sends Uriel to instruct him. According to the Revelation of Esdras, the angels who will rule at the end of the world are Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael, Gabuthelon, Beburos, Zebuleion, Aker, & Arphugitonos. The final 5 listed appear only in the book & nowhere else in apocryphal or apocalyptics works.

In Christian apocryphal Gospels, Uriel plays a role (differing between the sources) in the rescue of Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist, from the Massacre of the Innocents ordered by King Herod. He carries John & his mom, St. Elizabeth, to join the Holy Family after their flight into Egypt. Their reunion is pictured in da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks (a.k.a. Madonna of the Rocks).

Uriel is often identified as a cherub & the angel of repentance. He stood at the Garden of Eden with a fiery sword, or as the angel who’s over the world & over Tartarus. In the Apocalypse of Peter, he appears as the angel of repentance, who is graphically represented as being as pitiless as any demon.

In the Life of Adam & Eve, Uriel is regarded as the spirit (1 of the cherubs) of the 3rd chapter of Genesis. He’s also identified as 1 of the angels who helped bury Adam & Abel in Eden. He checked the doors of Egypt for lamb’s blood during the plague. He held the key to the pit during the end times, & led Abraham to the west.

In modern angelology, Uriel is identified variously as a seraph, cherub, regent of the sun, flame of God, angel of the divine presence, presider over Tartarus/Hell, archangel of salvation, & in later scriptures, identified with Phanuel (“God has turned”). He’s often pictured carrying a book or a papyrus scroll representing wisdom. Uriel is a patron of the arts.

In the Eastern Orthodox churches, Uriel is commemorated together with the other archangels & angels with a feast day of the “Synaxis of the Archangel Michael & the Other Bodiless Powers” on November 8 of the liturgical calendar. For those churches which follow the Julian calendar, November 8 & falls on November 21 on the modern Gregorian calendar.

He’s regarded as the patron saint of the arts & sciences. In addition, every Monday throughout the year is dedicated to the angels.

The Anglicans & Coptic Christians of Ethiopia & Eritrea venerate archangel Uriel. According to the latter, July 11 is his feast day. In the Ethiopian Homily on the Archangel Uriel, he’s pictured as 1 of the great archangels & as the angelus interpres who has interpreted prophecies to Enoch & Ezra, & the helper of both of them.

According to the Homily, at the time of the crucifixion of Jesus, Uriel dipped his wing in the blood & water flowing from Christ’s flank & Filled a cup with it. Carrying the cup, he & the archangel Michael rushed into the world & sprinkled it all over Ethiopia.

In every place where a drop of blood fell, a church was built. Thus, Uriel is often pictured carrying a chalice filled with the blood of Christ in Ethiopian Orthodox iconography. Uriel is honored in the Lutheran Churches as well, with churches including statuary of the archangels Gabriel, Uriel, Michael, & Raphael.

At the Council of Rome of 745, Pope Zachary (intending to clarify the church’s teaching on angels & curbs a tendency toward angel worship) condemned obsession with angelic intervention & angelology. But reaffirmed the approval of the practice of the reverence of angels.

This Synod struck many angels’ names from the list of those eligible for veneration in the church of Rome, including Uriel. Only the reverence of the archangels is mentioned in the recognized Catholic canon of scriptures, namely, Michael, Gabriel, & Raphael, remained acceptable.

In the 16th century, Archangel Uriel appeared before the Sicilian friar Antonio Lo Duca & told him to build a church in the Termini area. Lo Duca told Pope Pius IV about the apparition, and the pope then asked Michelangelo to design the church, which became the Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels & of the Martyrs located at the Esedra Plaza.

In the 1st half of the 11th century, Bulgarian followers of the duelist heresy called Bogomilism, who lived in the dukedom of Ahtum in present-day Banat, invoked Uriel in rituals. This was witnessed by Gerard of Csanad, the Catholic bishop of the area after 1028. Uriel was also named in a small exorcism in the 15th century.

The Book of Enoch (which presents itself as written by Enoch) mentions Uriel in many of its component books. In chapter IX, part of “The Book of the Watchers” (2nd century BC), only 4 angels are named. Those angels are Michael, Uriel, Raphael, & Gabriel. Though some versions have a 5th angel: Suryal or Suriel.

However, chapter XX later lists 7 angels’ names & functions. Those angels are “Uriel, 1 of the holy angels, who’s over the world & over Tartarus,” Raphael, Raguel, Michael, Saraqael, Gabriel, & Remiel.

The Book of the Watchers tells us that Uriel, Raphael, & Gabriel were present before God to testify on behalf of humankind. They ask for divine intervention during the reign of the fallen Grigori (fallen watchers). These fallen ones took human wives & had half-“angel,” half-human offspring called the Nephilim.

Uriel was responsible for warning our boy Noah about the upcoming deluge. After judgment has been brought up on the Nephilim & the Fallen Ones, including the 2 main leaders, Samyaza & Azazel. Uriel then acts as a guide for Enoch for the rest of the Book of Watchers.

In the traditions & hagiography of the Episcopal & other Anglican churches, Uriel is mentioned as an archangel. He’s recognized as the patron saint of the sacrament of confirmation. In some Episcopal churches, Uriel is also regarded as the keeper of beauty & light, & regent of the sun & constellations.

In iconography, he’s shown holding in his right hand a Greek Ionic column, which symbolizes perfection in aesthetics & man-made beauty, and in his left hand is a staff topped with the sun. He is celebrated in the Anglican liturgical calendars of the Feast of the Archangels. The Church of St. Uriel the Archangel at Sea Girt, New Jersey, is a testimony to Anglicans’ devotion to Uriel.

In Hermetic Kabbalah, Uriel’s name is commonly spelled Auriel. He’s regarded as the archangel of the North, & of the element of Earth. According to the teaching of the modern Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Uriel is the archangel of North & East, & is associated with the vegetation of the Earth. In iconography, he’s depicted holding stems of ripened wheat & wearing robes of citrine (a medium deep shade of golden yellow), russet (dark brown with a reddish-orange tinge), olive (like green olives), & black.

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Scheduling issues

https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/1822386/scheduling-issues

A #leapYear starting on #Wednesday is any year with 366 days (i.e. it includes #29February) that begins on Wednesday 1 #January and ends on #Thursday 31 #December. Its #dominicalLetters hence are ED. The most recent year of such kind was 2020, and the next one will be 2048 in the #GregorianCalendar, or likewise, 2004 and 2032 in the obsolete #JulianCalendar, see below for more. Any leap year that starts on Wednesday has two #FridayThe13ths: those two in this leap year #occurInMarch.

The Assumption of the Virgin Mary

This is 1 of the 4 Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church. Pope Pius XII gave its definition on November 1, 1950 with his apostolic constitution named Munificentissimus Deus as the Assumption of Mary, body & soul, into Heaven. It’s celebrated on August 15th.

Munificentissimus Deus mentions several Holy Fathers, theologians, & Doctor of the Church who held to the Assumption of Mary are: Adrian I, Sergius I, Leo IV, John of Damascus, Amadeus of Lausanne, Modestus of Jerusalem, Anthony of Padua, Albertus Magnus, Thomas of Aquinas, Bonaventure, Bernardino of Siena, Robert Bellarmine, Francis de Sales, Peter Canisius, Francisco Suarez, etc.

It’s debated between theologians, clergy, & laypeople whether Mary actually died or whether she was raised up to eternal life without bodily death.

In Eastern Christianity, they have an equal belief called the Dormition of the Mother of God, or the “Falling Asleep of the Mother of God.” In Lutheran churches, August 15 is celebrated as the Feast of St. Mary. Some Anglican denominations observe August 15 under a variety of names, including the Feast of St. Mary the Virgin or the Falling Asleep of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

In the Passing of the Blessed Virgin Mary, this is credited to Joseph of Arimathea, 1 of the apostles (often pictured as Thomas the Apostle, of Doubting Thomas fame), wasn’t there at the time of Mary’s death. But he gets there late. This brought about a reopening of Mary’s tomb. Only Mary’s grave clothes were found in the empty tomb. Just like her son, Jesus. Subsequently, Mary drops her girdle down to the apostles, from Heaven, as proof of the event happening.

The feast was commanded for Constantinople on August 15 by Emperor Maurice in 600. About 50 years later, it was introduced in Rome & is mentioned in a papal decree of Sergius (687-701), who started a procession for the feast.

Pope Leo IV gave the feast a vigil & an octave to solemnise it above all others. An octave is the 8th day after a church festival, including the day of the festival. Pope Nicholas I placed it on a par with Christmas & Easter. On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII declared the Assumption of the Virgin Mary as a dogma of faith.

In the 12th century, a German nun Elisabeth of Schonau was allegedly granted visions of Mary & Jesus. This had a far-reaching influence on the Western Church’s tradition. In her work Visio de resurrectione beaten Virginia Mariae, she tells how Mary was assumed in body & soul into Heaven.

On May 1, 1950, Gilles Bouhours, who was a Marian seer, reported to Pope Pius XII a supposed message that the Virgin Mary would have ordered him to tell the Pope on the dogma of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin Mary.

It’s said that Pius XII asked God for a sign that could reassure him that the dogma of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary was ACTUALLY wanted by God. This just happened to be during the Holy Year of 1950.

When Gilles communicated the message to Pius XII, the Pope considered this message the hoped for granted to Gilles by the Pope. Pius XII himself said the dogma of the Assumption of the body & soul of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven.

Some Catholics believe that Mary passed away before being assumed. But they believe that she was miraculously resurrected before being assumed. This is a moralistic interpretation. Others believe she was assumed bodily into Heaven without dying first. This is an immoralistic interpretation. Either interpretation can be held legitimately by Catholics, with Eastern Catholics observing the Feast as the Dormition.

The Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church on August 15th. The Eastern Orthodox & Eastern Catholics celebrated the Dormition of the Mother of God on this date. This is also called the Dormition of the Theotokos, the “falling asleep of the Mother of God. It’s preceded by a 14-day period of fasting.

Eastern Christians believe Mary died a natural death, that he soul was received by Christ upon death, that her body was resurrected after her death, & that she was taken up into a Heaven bodily in anticipation of the general resurrection.

Views differ within Protestantism. They are those with a theology closer to Catholicism sometimes believing in a bodily assumption. Most Protestants don’t believe this.

The Lutheran Church kept the Feast of the Assumption of Mary after the Reformation. They designated August 15th as a lesser festival named “Mary, Mother of Our Lord” or “St. Mary, Mother of our Lord.”

While in Anglicanism, the Assumption of Mary is accepted by some & rejected by others. It disappeared from Anglican worship in 1549. It partially returned to Anglo-Catholic tradition during the 20th century under different names.

A Marian feast on August 15th is celebrated by the Church of England as a non-specific feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This feast is called by the Scottish Episcopal Church it’s a feast called “St. Mary the Virgin.” Other Anglican provinces have a feast of the Dormition. The Anglican Church of Canada’s Book of Common Prayer (1962) marks the day as the “Falling Asleep of the Blessed Virgin Mary.”

Assumption Day on August 15th is a nationwide public holiday in Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chile, Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Croatia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, East Timor, France, Gabon, Greece, Georgia (the country), Republic of Guinea, Haiti, Italy, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Republic of North Macedonia, Madagascar, Malta, Mauritius, Monaco, Montenegro (Albanian Catholics), Paraguay, Philippines (Maragondon, Cavite), Portugal, Romania, Rwanda, Senegal, To go, Seychelles, Slovenia, Spain, Syria, Tahiti, & Vanuatu. It was also in Hungary until 1948.

It’s also a public holiday in parts of Germany (parts of Bavaria & Saarland), Switzerland (in 14 of 26 countries), & Bosnia & Herzegovina. In Guatemala, it is observed in Guatemala City & the town of Santa Maria Nebaj. Both cities claim her as their patron saint. In Costa Rica & parts of Belgium, the day is combined with Mother’s Day.

Prominent Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, & Oriental Orthodox countries in which Assumption Day is an important feast day but isn’t a public holiday recognized by the state include the Czech Republic, Ireland, Mexico, the Philippines, & Russia. In Bulgaria, the Feast of the Assumption is the biggest Eastern Orthodox celebration of the Holy Virgin. In Eastern Orthodox churches following the Julian Calendar, the feast day falls on August 28th.

In the Maronite church, the Assumption of Mary is known as the “Assumption of the Holy Mother of God.” It’s celebrated on August 15th.

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#1May1950 #1November1950 #12thCentury #1549 #1948 #1950 #1962 #20thCentury #600 #687 #701 #AdrianI #AlbanianCatholics #AlbertusMagnus #AmadeusOfLausanne #Andorra #AnglicanChurch #AnglicanCommonPrayer #Anglicanism #AngloCatholic #AnthonyOfPadua #ApostolicConstitution #AssumptionOfMary #August15 #August28 #Austria #Bavaria #Belgium #BernardinoOfSiena #BlessedVirginMary #Bonaventure #BosniaHerzegonvina #Bulgaria #Cameroon #Cantons #CatholicChurch #Catholicism #Catholics #Cavite #CentralAfricanRepublic #Chile #Christmas #ChurchOfEngland #Constantinople #CostaRica #CoteDIvoire #Croatia #CzechRepublic #DoctorOfTheChurch #Dormition #DormitionOfTheMotherOfGod #DormitionOfTheTheotokos #DoubtingThomas #Easter #EasternCatholics #EasternChristianity #EasternOrthodoxChurch #EmperorMaurice #FallingAsleepOfTheBlessedVirginMary #FallingAsleepOfTheMotherOfGod #fasting #FeastOfStMary #FeastOfStMaryTheVirgin #FeastOfTheAssumption #FeastOfTheAssumptionOfTheBlessedVirginMary #FrancisDeSales #FranciscoSuarez #Gabon #Georgia #Germany #GillesBouhours #Greece #Guatemala #GuatemalaCity #Haiti #HolyVirgin #HolyVirginMary #HolyYearOf1950 #Hungary #Ireland #Italy #Jesus #JohnOfDamascus #JosephOfArimathea #JulianCalendar #Lebanon #LeoIV #Liechtenstein #Lithuania #LutheranChurch #Luxembourg #Madagascar #MarianDogmas #MaroniteChurch #MaryMotherOfOurLord #Mauritius #Mexico #ModestusOfJerusalem #Monaco #Montenegro #MotherSDay #MunificentissimusDeus #Paraguay #PassingOfTheBlessedVirginMary #PeterCanisius #Philippines #Poland #PolishArmyDay #PopeLeoIV #PopeNicholasI #PopePiusXII #Portugal #Protestantism #Protestants #Reformation #RepublicOfCongo #RepublicOfGuinea #RepublicOfNorthMacedonia #RobertBellarmine #RomanCatholicChurch #Romania #Rome #Russia #Rwanda #Saarland #SantaMariaNebaj #ScottishEpiscopalChurch #Senegal #Sergius #SergiusI #Seychelles #Slovenia #Spain #StMaryMotherOfOurLord #StMaryTheVirgin #StMaryTheVirginMotherOfOurLordJesusChrist #Switzerland #Syria #Tahit #Tahiti #ThomasOfAquinas #ThomasTheApostle #Togo #Vanuatu #VirginMary #VisioDeResurrectioneBeatenVirginiaMariae #WesternChurch

Why is everyone pulling their #AprilFools pranks so soon? It’s only the 19th day of March. What did we miss?

#OldStyle #JulianCalendar

Today is the birthday of #IsaacNetwon, according to the the #JulianCalendar, which is a documented fact, unlike some mythical characters I could mention. It’s a good day to celebrate a major contributor to #Mechanics and I do it by riding my #Bicycle. He also did a lot for field of #Optics but the visibility was poor today with a lot of #mist and #fog meaning using my #Bike's lights throughout and it’s not really a good day for photos and so I left my camera at home.

#Bicycle #Cycling #Biking

September puzzler
Ninth month - Latinate seventh
Julian victim

#Haiku #OneHaikuADay #WritersCollective #writingcommunity #BackToHaiku #September #Septem #Roman #Calendar #Julian #JuliusCaesar #JulianCalendar #MensisSeptember #Romans

September 25, 2024

Julius Caesar
This month named in his honor
44 BC

#Haiku #OneHaikuADay #WritersCollective #writingcommunity #BackToHaiku #Weather #Heat #Sun #Summer #JuliusCaesar #Caesar #JulianCalendar #EtTuBrute #Climate #July #Akron #Ohio #USA

July 1, 2024

I watched Christmas Eve on Sesame Street (1987) from my executive loo tonight. 🎄❤️ -Skye #OrthodoxChristmas #JulianCalendar

Oh noes, it’s Christmas Eve again? I better get out shopping before the stores close! 👛 🛍️ -Skye #OrthodoxChristmas #JulianCalendar

Is there some #genealogy software that does dates correctly?

E.g. user enters dates as recorded by authorities, but lets assume that a person moved from #Norway / #Denmark to Sweden in 1730. The records in #Norway / #Denmark would be in #GregorianCalendar, and the Swedish dates would be in #JulianCalendar. Assume that there are dates from the first decade of 1700s, when the #SwedishTransitionalCalendar was in operation and subsequently paused and abandoned, resulting in that February 30, 1712 is a valid date in #Sweden(!), and the other days being one day off from the Julian calendar.

Basically, all software seems to flag the date of 1712-02-30 as invalid, because it is impossible to specify the correct calendar.

And lets not get started about age calculations before new-year was moved to first of January (in many places this was well before the #Gregorian calendar introduction).

@offenesMA @robertcasties ich habe da eine XSLT Implementation für die Umrechnung on gregorianischen, altem und neuem julianischen, hijri, osmanischem Finanzkalender und koptischem Kalender für TEI Editionen geschrieben. Die Konverter sind allerdings unabhängig von TEI: https://github.com/tillgrallert/xslt-calendar-conversion

#Calendar #XML #TEI #JulianCalendar #GregorianCalendar #Hijri #CopticCalendar #OttomanFiscalCalendar

#MizrachiChristians = Eastern Orthodox Christians, who follow the #JulianCalendar (a calendar developed under Julius Caesar); the #GregorianCalendar modified it very slightly to correct for solar drift (the Julian has 1 too many leap days every 400 years or so), but as an innovation of the Roman Catholic Church the Orthodox denominations did not adopt it.

6/

Addendum: The #Amazigh (AKA #Berber) people use a variant of the #JulianCalendar to date traditional festivals; in this calendar, #LeapDay is added to the last month rather than the second one. Amazigh in #Morocco and #Libya celebrate traditional New Year the day after those in #Algeria, where it is a national holiday.

In 1900, Maksim Trpković revised the #JulianCalendar. Under his system, an year that yields a remainder of 0 or 400 when divided by 900 is a #LeapYear.

Milutin Milanković slightly altered this in 1923, changing the rule to years that give a remainder of 200 or 600. A mean year in this calendar is just 2 seconds off the #TropicalYear. It is used by some, but not all, #EasternOrthodox churches.

The #EasternOrthodox Churches never adopted the Gregorian calendar (except in #Finland). While Orthodox-majority countries use the Gregorian calendar for civil purposes, many still use the #JulianCalendar for religious purposes. You have probably heard about #UkrainianRefugees celebrating #Easter and #Christmas on different dates to those of #Catholics and #Protestants; this is because the Ukrainian Orthodox Church still uses the Julian Calendar (for now).

In the 17th century, #IsaacNewton recognised that the #julianCalendar was deficient but the #GregorianCalendar was too #Catholic for him. He worked on a new calendar whose mean year was just a few seconds shorter than the #TropicalYear (the mean Gregorian year is about 29 seconds longer). Newton viewed this as a feature rather than a bug, because under his system, the dates of the solstices and equinoxes would gradually drift back to those when #Jesus was alive.

A variant of the #julianCalendar was used in #Ottoman #Türkiye, in which the year began on 1 March. The newly-formed Republic of Türkiye officially adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1926 as part of #Atatürk's policy of modernisation and westernisation.

While #Britain was still using the #julianCalendar, #Catholics in #Ireland had to seek permission from the #pope to celebrate festivals on the wrong days because Catholicism was, to all intents and purposes, illegal at the time.

#PenalLaws

The #GregorianCalendar is the one used in most of the world today. It was designed by #ChristopherClavius and #AloysiusLilius, but like the #JulianCalendar, it was named after the bloke who commissioned it.

The main difference is that in the Gregorian calendar, years that are integer multiples of 400 are not leap years.

But, as we now know, the #JulianCalendar's mean year is about 11 minutes 15 seconds longer than the #TropicalYear, and by the 4th century AD, the dates of the #solstices and #equinoxes had drifted from their official dates by several days.

In the 16th century, #Pope Gregory XIII used his authority as #PontifexMaximus to reform the calendar again, because that is something #popes can do.

The new calendar was named the #JulianCalendar after its commissioner, #JuliusCaesar, even though #Sosigenes is the one who invented it. It was one of the better algorithmic calendars at the time, and spread throughout the ancient world.

Understanding the Sources of the Northern Tradition

So you want to learn about the Northern Tradition*, but don’t want to read scholarly analysis, or any ruminations from modern practitioners. You just want one source from the culture to learn everything that’s historically authentic to the culture but tells you about the cosmology, and the details of all the rituals? Well sorry to burst your bubble, but that doesn’t exist.  

There is an old joke, that ours is the religion with homework (and really, all religion has homework). There’s a lot you need to understand in the big picture before you can really start to tease out the details of pre-Christianity.

Before I go down the very nuanced rabbit hole, I want to make one thing abundantly clear: the history, the stories, the folk customs, the archaeology are all useful and important. But a faith is a living thing, and you have to live a religion, which means finding ways to practice it. How do you conduct rituals? What offerings do you give? What prayers do you say? What are your devotions? How do you live a religion? You can find helpful resources and inspiration from the past but at some point you have to venture out and find your own way of living the religion.

I also want to stress that you do not need to be a scholar to follow this religious path. The only thing standing between you developing a relationship with our Gods, the ancestors, and the vaettir is simply you. Some enjoy delving into the history, to immerse themselves and tease out nuances. Others don’t, and merely want a framework of understanding so they can then move onto living the religion through the customs that come with a living and ever evolving practice. But for those of you who want to delve into the vast knowledge from antiquity, the following should help define a helpful framework to have in mind before you start your own explorations of the sources. This is useful as well to read, even if you only ever plan to do a little bit of exploration into the ancient sources on your own.

We can find a lot of information if you’re patient by going through the old literary and archaeological sources, but it’s not easy. For those of us in the Northern Tradition we have the misfortune that so little has survived to us from ancient believers. Unlike some other major polytheisms, like the unbroken tradition of Hinduism, or other major polytheistic traditions that have a large corpus of work by believers from antiquity about their own religious culture that survives into the present day: Kemetic, Hellenic, and Cultus Deorum, etc.

First you have to understand the history, the various sources (and how they connect to the historical context). Then comes the harder element, the fact even when rituals are mentioned it’s usually in passing, or only in vague context. In order to obtain our creation story you have to look at five different sources: Völuspá, Grímnismál, Vafþrúðnismál, Gylfaginning, and Alvissmal.  So it’s very common that we have to take little puzzle pieces from a range of material to try to piece together specific details. This means to fill in the gaps many look at the entirety of the Northern Tradition umbrella from the lore (various literary sources including (but not limited to) the sagas, eddas, & skaldic poetry, various Anglo-Saxon sources, as well as Byzantium, Roman & Arab accounts, late appearing folk customs & tales, and even archaeological finds.

Approaching this material with an understanding of how this culture viewed the seasons, and drafted their calendar can help you tease apart the timing of some of the rituals too. While we can find commonalities in the over-arching shared worship to Odin/Woden, there were also unique traditions tied to specific settlements or tribal groups that to our knowledge did not appear elsewhere too. This has led in the modern movement to a range of different approaches, some are strictly reconstructionist from a specific area, and others may be more universal across the entirety of the umbrella, plus a range of other denominations in between.

Understanding Time and the Seasons

Across the Northern Tradition umbrella we see that they didn’t have a concept of four seasons, but only two: summer and winter. So the start of Summer is spring, and the start of Winter is fall. Failing to understand this can confuse you on the timing of certain celebrations. But to confuse matters further, unique regions would have their own timing based in part on local cues.

Also, we know the Germanic tribes viewed the day as beginning at sunset, we see this remain in the word fortnight, but also within the name of some of our holy tides: Mother’s Night, Winter Nights, Walpurgis Night, Gyro Night. Roman sources relate that the Germanic tribes held special relevance to nights of the new or full moon to gather for either ritual, or business. We know they used various versions of a lunisolar calendar. This meant they first and foremost followed the lunar phases, but also did something to try to align the year with the solar cycle as well. Prior to the adoption of the Julian Calendar, year keeping was super complicated, with extra intercalary weeks, days and even months added (as needed). What we know comes from either Tacitus’ Germania (which looked at customs on mainland Europe) and later Bede’s De Temporum Rationae (which looked at customs in what we think of as England today). In Bede we know that we have two months back to back one called Ærra Gēola (before yule) the other Æfterra Gēola (after yule), and another dual combination of Ærra Līþa (before litha) and Æftera Līþa (after litha)–plus a sometimes third month of litha, the intercalary Þrilīþa, which was sometimes shoehorned between the two other months of midsummer when needed. Giving us a sense today as we sift through these sources, that the solstices were definitely used as key factors in the solar portion of the calendar (but whether or not rites were timed specifically to the astronomical solstices across the umbrella of related Northern Tradition, we don’t know for certain, and there are clues that point to at least some observances happening at the full moon following the key astronomical markers.

Eventually in antiquity the Germanic tribes would in some areas start to adopt the Julian calendar (due to the influence of the Roman Empire in the region). The Julian Calendar recognized the length of a solar year (365.25 days) which added a leap day every 4 years. However the Julian Calendar wasn’t 100% accurate, because the true solar orbit is 365.2422 days. Over the years we began to have a drift of time happening so we were out of astronomical sync, which is what leads to the adoption of the calendar we use today: the Gregorian Calendar.

Some regions also adjusted their calendar because of local needs. In Iceland due to local meteorological and astronomical patterns related to weather and their latitude, lunar time keeping wasn’t really a good solution for them. The 930 Icelandic althing agreed to a defined misseri calendar (in part a sort of hybrid of lunisolar timekeeping with the inspiration of the Julian calendar): 52 week year, composed of 30 days a month, divided in half for summer (starting in spring) and winter (starting in autumn), but each month always starts on the same weekday (so the fourth month started on a Friday, always). But this still doesn’t fully account for all the time needed for a rotation around the earth, so they introduced a concept of extra leap days (however many necessary) added to the summer solstice every so often. This corresponds somewhat to the intercalary extra days (in the form of the month) being added post Summer Solstice as we see in Bede. After conversion we see in Norway and Sweden that the start of Summer was associated with April 14, and the start of winter was October 14 (Winter Nights). Eventually we see a runic calendar emerge with earliest surviving records from the 13th century (about two centuries after Christian conversion and well out of the Viking Age), which was a lunisolar calendar of key (by this time Christian) celebrations. But it points to what may have been some of the tradition of how time was kept in parts of Sweden from pre-Christian times.

In Sweden the celebration of Lussi’s Night was meant to be culturally connected with the winter solstice, and that is what we see with the older Julian calendar. We can tell this from the clue we have of the celebration’s name from parts of Norway, where it was called ‘Lussia Langnatte’ (or Lussi’s Long Night). In Sweden it’s usually referred to more simply as Lussinatta (Lussi’s Night). When a new calendar methodology was adopted, the Gregorian Calendar, we ended up with her celebration moving to December 13, and the astronomical solstice falling about a week later. So sometimes when we have surviving folk traditions carrying into the modern day things shifted because of the transition from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. Knowing this is important when trying to tease apart dates.

When we look at surviving traditions and celebrations today in Europe as we decipher ritual timing and surviving folk customs, we need to understand that we have several layers of syncretization to sift through. (1) Christian celebrations were in many cases originally syncretized to polytheistic holidays common in the Roman Empire, then (2) syncretized again to the local Northern Tradition holidays all while (3) calendars kept changing. So it’s very, very rare when we can definitively point to a certain rite occurring on a very specific date, usually at best we have an approximate period of the year we can identify.

Understanding the History of the Northern Tradition

What we talk of as the Northern Tradition (cultures with a common worship to Odin) spans over a millennia and quite a geographical reach, from Ancient Germania, into Viking Age Scandinavia and what we think of as Anglo-Saxon England, plus bits in-between. There is so much significant history happening in this period of time I could write an entire multi-volume historical reference series on it, but for now a very generalized overview shall suffice for our purposes. It should go without saying that during this entire time range that goes beyond a thousand years, that these tribes had high contact through trade, migration, and war (and with it slavery) with a range of other tribes and cultures. Human contact of that nature also meant various levels of blending, including the most personal form of all: DNA, as people left groups and joined others. All of this meant there wasn’t a ‘pure’ culture but layers of influence causing differences even as we examine them under their united worship of gods like Odin. We also have an array of syncretization happening where cultural blending was occurring.

We have communities that were Romano-Germanic and even had syncretized gods like Hercules Magusanus, Mercurius Cimbrianus, Mercurius Hranno, Mars Thingso. As an aside we also have other syncretizations like Germano-Celtic (see the Nemetes tribe) communities especially in areas of the Rhineland, Germano-Slavic (in select communities where Polabian Slavs settled, or like the Baltic Vikings: Curonians, and the Oesilians), Germano-Celtic-Iranian (see the Bastarnae people). 

Before we start with our look at Germania, we should understand that there would have been some influence from the earlier Nordic Bronze Age (1750 BCE – 500 BCE), and even influence from the other adjacent Iron Age cultures such as Jastorf Culture (6th C BCE – 1st C BCE) and La Tene Culture (450 BCE – 1 BCE). The Nordic Bronze Age was characterized by a significant sun cultus, many see in the Trundholm Sun Chariot archaeological find an echo to similar stories within the Indo-European umbrella, but what is more recognizable for Heathens is what appears to be an earlier iteration we later recognize as the story of Sunna and her chariot within Norse cosmological myths. So you can look even further back to try to trace certain threads of belief and praxis (such as examining the wagon processionals).

Germania included areas of Europe where various Germanic tribes existed during the Roman Iron Age (a few Celtic settlements too). The earliest written accounts will come from the Romans, including some in the 2nd Century BCE. Rome attempts to annex all of Germania, and while they do get some brief gains, they have a hard time holding onto them for long. Leading to a variety of military interactions between the Roman Empire and various Germanic tribes. Rome defines Germania into districts based on their military and political interactions in the region: what they control, what they don’t and how that evolves over time. This leads to several divisions of Germania–some defined by the Romans and others by more contemporary historians for the region–whose borders might be changing based on any given point in the historical timeline, such as: Magna Germania/Germania Barbaricum/Germania Libera, Roman Germania, Germania Inferior/Germania Secunda, Germania Superior, Germania Antiqua, etc. There were many Germanic troops serving as Auxiliaries (troops) throughout the Roman Empire.

When Rome starts to fall around the 4th Century CE with the collapse of their western empire we see high movement from some Germanic tribes as they ransack and raid areas of the empire starting the Germanic Iron Age and the era of Germanic migration throughout mainland Europe, and into what we think of as England and Scandinavia (to be clear, we already had Germanic tribes on the move, and in parts of Scandinavia). The Angles and Saxons begin invading what we think of today as England in the 5th Century CE. We see the Goths, then the Franks come to power in mainland Europe, eventually leading to Charlemagne and with it a big push for Christian conversion through warfare. Meanwhile we also see in mainland Europe the birth of the Byzantium Empire (out of what had been the Eastern segment of the Roman Empire).

While this is happening in mainland Europe, we also enter into a period known in Sweden as the Vendel Period. This is part of the big picture, but shows to my mind how the upheaval in the mainland of Europe, has caused a sort of unique regional development. The Vendel Period is characterized by very little precious metals among the items found, and instead a lot of works in copper alloys (perhaps due to interruptions in trade routes due to the turmoil on mainland Europe, but also there were a number of wars between the various tribes in the Scandinavian region too with assimilation happening through alliance or conquest). We also see the Elder Futhark runic alphabet abandoned, and the Younger Futhark adopted throughout Scandinavia. This appears to correlate to the time period of Beowulf, and seems to (at least in the burials) showcase elite warriors. The Odinic helmet found at Sutton Hoo comes from the Vendel armor tradition we see elsewhere. Eventually the northern Germanic tribes in Scandinavia start to spread out throughout Northwestern Europe. With that migration you also have Viking raids start, and with it we move into the Viking Age.

The Viking Age is characterized by the raids of the various Viking groups, starting with the attack at Lindisfarne in 793 CE until the Norman conquest of England in 1066 CE (some scholars will boost the range out until 1300 CE, but by 1066 most of the Northern Tradition cultures had officially converted to Christianity). At the peak of the Viking Age that meant a range of Scandinavian migration and new settlements from as far West as North America (L’anse aux Meadows in the Newfoundland area of modern day Canada), into Asia (portions of Russia), as well as settlements as far south as Northern Africa, and connections into the Byzantine Empire. There’s even known interactions in the Middle East (Palestine, Iran) too.

We have to be mindful and remember that Vikings were Pirates, composed of a multiplicity of religious cultures and ethnicities in their make-up. Some confuse Vikings with other geo-specific tribes (like some of the northern Germanic tribes like the Swedes), and it’s important to understand that difference as well when parsing through the sources. Many in modern vernacular conflate that term erroneously. Vikings were composed of a range of peoples from Northern Germanic tribes (and later converted Christians of those tribes), Gaelics, Christian Irish and British, plus other groups in between (most likely some members originally from a Caliphate too).

There were more connections too thanks to the vast Viking trade routes, including deep connections with the Abbasid Caliphate, as their silver dirham coins were highly sought after (and have been found in the thousands in the archaeological record across Northern Europe). Books like Dubois’ Nordic Religions in the Viking Age, Campbell’s The Viking World, Noonan’s Supply-Side Sustainability go into more depth of some of the cultural interactions. We’ve even found in grave goods ‘allah’ embroidered/woven into funerary clothes, plus a ring with the inscription as well across discoveries in both Birka and Gamma Uppsala in Sweden.

By the end of the Viking Age most of the leadership of these areas had converted to Christianity, and forced the people under their control (many times) to convert or die. We see this talked about in Heimskringla, especially in the heathen persecutions of King Olaf II (and in the martyr story of Olvir of Egg). So by the time that the Viking Age has come to an end, we’re very much in a time period of Christianity as we go into the later half of the Middle Ages. We can actually track some of the recorded additions/revisions to the legal codes (by year), and see how pre-Christian custom is being outlawed. There’s definitely some lingering pagan custom happening if they’re bothering to outlaw it. But one of the Church’s tactics of the period was to take pagan custom and rebrand it.  It was King Hakon of Norway, who as a Christian passed a law that the Christian Christmas Day (which was already a weird bastardization of the Christian story of the Nativity with some of the traditions tied to Saturnalia/Mithraic customs) AND the heathen yuletide celebrations were to henceforth be celebrated at the same time.

While this only specifically impacted Norway (and its territories), it illustrates an intentional combining of the holy-days into one celebration. We know as a rule the Church had a tendency to turn some pagan deities into saints (ex: Saint Brigid), and turn others into demons. They appropriated certain concepts: Hell was simply the place where the dead reside, the underworld of Germanic belief, embodied as the Goddess Hel, but they rebranded it and vilified it as the opposite of their Christian afterlife. They took the name of the heathen holy tide that would have been Easter/Eostre/Ostara and rebranded it as a Christian observance instead. We see in their Churches remnants of our deities: Norway’s Heddel Stave Church has Odin on one of the pillars, and various churches throughout Bavaria still have some of Walpurga‘s symbols and are dedicated to her. We see this rebranding reflected in the sources of ‘lore’ as an euherimistic process, where the old Gods are downplayed into somehow merely being political mortal figures (usually tied to royalty) in certain sagas (like some of the Danish sources).

Someone put together some histomap resources that provide a visual aid to some of the information I touched on above, illustrating that there was no pure culture, but rather one of contact and interaction with a variety of peoples (from allies, to enemies, and everything in between). This histomap traces Germanic languages from 500 BCE until the present day, this one traces a video map with timeline of the Germanic/Scandinavian tribes from 350 CE until 1066 CE in Northern Europe. Someone else did a similar overview of how the territory changed for different kingdoms, peoples and empires throughout Europe from 400 BCE until 2017 CE.

Understanding the Sources

Most of the sources were written by outside cultures and religions. We only have two instances of Germanic pagan belief preserved in the Germanic language (the Merseburg Charms, or die Merseburger Zaubersprüche which comes to us from the 9th century). While we have a variety of Anglo-Saxon sources, and continental sources (from scholars and chroniclers such as Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus, Jordanes, Nestor*, etc.) most also come to us after Christianity. In the modern era, many pagans and polytheists focus on the Eddas and Sagas, most especially the sources from Iceland in particular (the Eddas, etc). and yet they were written by Christians, usually quite late or after the period of conversion. (Sometimes they do quote what we believe is older content that has not survived on its own). Yet despite this, the Eddas are one of our best repositories for cosmology, and the mythological stories of our Gods. So you can’t just ignore these sources. Respected scholar Gabriel Turville-Petre reminds us in writing about Njal’s Saga, to take the story with a grain of salt, “It was not the author’s purpose to write a work of history, but rather to use a historical subject for an epic in prose” and truly this can be understood as good words to keep in mind when approaching ANY of the sagas and eddas.

One of the famous scholars penning the tales was the very Christian Snorri Sturrlusson, who was known for writing whatever would gain him political favor. He was quite a political maneuver, to the point he’d eventually cross the wrong person, and be assassinated. While he is the skald behind Heimskringla it is his Edda (the Prose Edda, aka the Younger Edda) which remains one of the touchstones for many looking at this culture today. Snorri in part wrote his Edda because the old literature was heavy with poetic devices like kennings, and the knowledge of what those kennings meant were slipping out of the population.

Sagic accounts, like many literary accounts of oral traditions, combine fragments of historical fact with the author’s skill in fiction in crafting works that are representative rather than literal. So ingrained was the oral tradition amongst the Norse, that warriors were often judged on their ability to compose poetry extempore, as much as by their skill in battle. The great Sagic hero, Egil Skallagrimson even saved his life by the composition of a heroic poem honoring King Eirik. This reverence for poetic and rhetorical skill was ingrained in the saga tradition, where warriors celebrate their kills with finely crafted verses replete with masterful kennings.

But you also have to understand what those sources are. Sources don’t always agree on details when coming from different regions. Or sometimes we have accounts that point to a history, that other information we have from elsewhere completely contradicts. The account of King Domalde of Sweden is one such account that historians don’t believe actually happened. The story of Baldr’s demise varies depending on the source (more on that below).

You even have to take care with the sources, because sometimes what is presented as one collection to modern readers comes from a variety of different manuscripts. The Poetic Edda as we know it today, was comprised by scholars primarily from two different manuscripts. The first manuscript is the Codex Regius (GKS 2365 4to). This manuscript does NOT contain Baldrs draumar. This manuscript clearly shows that the eddic poems were placed into an intentional, narrative order. Placing events into mortal or linear time. In other words that there’s a past, present and future. However, this is usually not the case in many ancient religions and cultures. Time moves on a cosmic, mythical & immortal level, and isn’t necessarily linear. SO human time is a vast line, but in cosmic time the line of time can bend and fall back on itself and loop and skip around, like the theoretical warp ability featured so prominently in science-fiction.

The other manuscript is known as AM 748. This manuscript is not ordered in any way at all, and this is the one and only Eddic origin of Baldrs draumar. Interestingly enough AM 748 has absolutely no mention of the Lokasenna or Loki’s role in Ragnarok. But because it does have some overlap with poems in the Codex Regius (Grimnismal, Hymiskvida, etc.) scholars, centuries after these separate manuscripts were written, chose to combine the two together to form the Poetic Edda as we know it today. They decided that Baldrs draumar should go before the Lokasenna thus forcing it to a timeline of their choosing.

There are other versions of Baldrs demise, preserved in various Danish manuscripts such as Gesta Danorum, and in those Danish versions Loki isn’t mentioned at all. (And allow me to say that this version is actually older than Snorri’s Edda).

For quick reference:

• Gesta Danorum – (with the tale about Baldrs death where Loki isn’t even mentioned) is believed to have been written in the late 12th Century
• AM 748 where we get Baldrs draumar from (and Loki’s involved), was believed to be written in the late 14th Century

This is a gap of approximately 200 years between these sources, and the 14th Century firmly puts us into Christian Europe, whereas in the 12th Century while Christianity was the prevailing religion and the one in political power, the old religion and its adherents were still around though in increasing fringe marginalization.

The Lokasenna doesn’t appear to be derived from a pre-Christian tale, but rather appears to be an example of contemporary Christian Medieval Literature that mimics the ancient Greek satirist Lucian’s Assembly of the Gods, in much the way that Snorri uses other elements common of Christian Europe’s Medieval Literature by alluding to other great works (those Western “classics’ from Greece and Rome, or Biblical allusions), this is after all why he attests that the God Thor is descended from the Greek Agamemnon featured in Homer’s Iliad & Odyssey, and later mentioned in Virgil’s The Aeneid. It appears that the Lokasenna followed the formula set by Lucian, and just dropped in Norse Gods instead. So one has to be very aware of this cultural milieu of Christian Medieval Scholars and how that can muck up the waters too.

The reason I point this out is because many people assume when they read the Poetic Edda as we know it today, that Loki’s punishment is because of his role in Baldr’s demise because that is how the tales have been ordered for them. But to understand where the Poetic Edda comes from, and the questionable veracity of the Lokasenna as being authentic to a Germanic pre-Christian origin, let alone the understanding that our Eddic lore was written post-conversion by Christian scholars can dramatically alter someone’s opinion. Similarly, there’s variations among the manuscripts that survive of the Prose Edda, especially between Codex Upsaliensis (DG 11) and Codex Regius (GKS 2367 4°).

We have very few contemporary eye-witness accounts, they come to us primarily from (1) the Romans and occasionally Byzantium Scholars (2) Arab travelers (from the Abbasid Caliphate, Cordoba Caliphate, etc.) (3) the rare skald who was heathen in their lifetime or converted in their lifetime and 4) the archaeological record. (Yet, most people in modern Northern Tradition polytheism rarely reference these, and focus almost entirely on the Eddas and Sagas which are written some period removed from Heathen praxis and yet we have thousands of votive inscriptions in Latin erected by individual Germans or Germanic tribes to not only Germanic deities, but worship to other deities (such as Coventina) as well throughout the Roman Empire.

In the case of the Roman texts, at least they are written by fellow polytheists, but you have to be able to tease apart the sources. Because they talked of the Northern Tradition Gods by likening them to their familiar Roman pantheon. Sometimes only referring to the Norse Gods and Goddesses by the name of the Roman equivalent. This is known as Interpretatio Romana. An example of this can be seen in Tacitus’ Germania, where he informs us that the chief god for the Germanic peoples is Mercury. What is really being said here, is their chief most god is Odin/Woden. We see this understanding embodied in the days of the week.

As a polytheistic culture, the Romans did not always view other pantheons as being distinctly unique. Pliny the Elder referred to this as nomina alia aliis gentibus (different names to different peoples). The syncretized Romano-Germanic deity Mercurius Cimbrianus (Mercury of the Germanic Cimbri tribe) is understood to likely be the earlier Germanic equivalent of Odin.

While Tacitus’ Germania is a huge touchstone, we also have other sources like Julius Caesar, Sidonius, Ptolemy, Jordanes, Polybius, Procopius, Pliny the Elder, Pomponius Mela, Strabo, Titus Livy, Zosimus, etc. Some of the Byzantium sources can also be good (Agathias, Ionnes Scylitzes, Ammianus Marcellinus, Michael Psellos, Photius), but they tend to relate most specifically to war and battle, and less so with religious custom with typical focus on the Rus, or Varangian Guard. Most of those sources also come after the Empire had converted to Christianity, so we’re now dealing with Christian scholars writing about the ‘barbarian heathen’. 

In the case of the Arab accounts, these pose their own problems. There’s an obvious bias that their monotheism and culture is better. “They are the filthiest of God’s creatures… they are like wild asses.” (Ibn Fadlan, when referring to his travels among the Rus and Volga). Ibn Fadlan’s account is often overlooked because it deals with uncomfortable subject matter: the fact that a great male leader has died, and a slave supposedly has agreed to be ritually sacrificed for him. Before they send her to her death she has sex with various other male leaders, and we see a ritual description of how she is sacrificed as part of a ship burial. Some will hold up the prayer she says there, and use a version of that in our religion today, but we simply don’t know if that represents the beliefs of the tribe, or perhaps her own beliefs from whatever culture she came from.

(The prayer: “Behold, I see my father and mother. I see all my dead relatives seated. I see my master seated in Paradise, and Paradise is beautiful and green.” This historical poem was later used as inspiration for Michael Crichton’s own draft of a similar prayer in his fictional novel: Eaters of the Dead. The book would lead to an adaption with more creative liberties taken to the prayer in the film 13th Warrior (I mean that film is so farcical as it pertains to anything historical or authentic, for instance it combines Elizabethan Era Viking Warriors who come across Spanish Conquistadors and Roman Gladiators). Since then that later inspiration from the film entered into modern heathenry: “Lo, there do I see my father. Lo, there do I see my mother, my sisters and my brothers. Lo, there do I see the line of my people back to the beginning. Lo, they do call to me. They bid me take my place on Asgard in the halls of Valhalla, Where the brave may live forever.” This reference to Valhalla was never part of the original prayer from the Viking Age. This is why many will only acknowledge Sigdrifa’s Prayer as the sole remaining complete prayer we have from antiquity.)

One of the interesting accounts from the Arab travelers is from Al-Tartuschi (aka Ibrahim ibn Yaqub). There is some debate about whether he was a Jewish born Muslim, or perhaps a practicing Jew. He hailed from the Al-Andalus area, under control of the Cordoba Caliphate (which geographically relates to sections of modern Spain & Portugal) . The entirety of his work is lost, we only have excerpts of his work quoted in other documents. But he records seeing worship connected to the Sirius star in what is today Hedeby, Denmark. We don’t know who was being worshipped, but that star is known as Lokabrenna, (Loki’s Torch) so this may be evidence of Loki worship.

In the case of both of these accounts, while both were travelers with a travel journal, there are only a few pages of content related to Northern Tradition areas. So it’s a very small pool of information to draw from. Since this is an area far too often overlooked, I’m going to take the time to list many of the other accounts too: al-Ghazal, Al-Mas’udi, Al-Muqaddasi, Muhammad al-Idrisi, Ibn Battuta, Ibn Hauqual/Ibn Hawqal, Ibn Isfandiyar, Ibn Khurradadhbih/Ibn Khordadbeh, Ibn Rustah, Miskawayh, Ahmad al-Ya’qubi, Ibn Qutiya, Yaqut al-Rumi, Yahya Ibn Hakam al-Bakri, al-Maqqari, Ibn al-Athir, etc. According to The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Volume 8, Parts 139-140 by Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb (et al), many writers from the Islamic world referred to the “fair-haired, ruddy-complexioned population of Central, Eastern and North-Eastern Europe” as saqalibah, beginning as early as the 10th Century. So using that as a search term may help broaden your research too.

As mentioned previously, the Sagas and Eddas were penned primarily by Christian scholars usually centuries after conversion, which sadly the majority of what we know about the religion comes from these sources. It is only among the skaldic poetry that we occasionally find eye-witness accounts by individual skaldic authors who either were heathen or had converted from heathenism in their lifetime. The problem is the skaldic poetry rarely has the religious customs we crave. But here’s a list of those skalds who qualify: Auðunn illskælda, Bragi Boddason (Ragnarsdrápa), Egill Skalla-Grímsson  (Arinbjarnarkviða,  Höfuðlausn,  Sonatorrek), Eilífr Guðrúnarson (Þórsdrápa), Einarr skálaglamm, Erpr lútandi, Eyjólfr dáðaskáld, Eysteinn Valdason, Eyvindr skáldaspillir (Hákonarmál, Háleygjatal), Gamli gnævaðarskáld, Glúmr Geirason, Gunnlaugr ormstunga, Guthormr sindri (Hákonardrápa), Hallar-Steinn, Halldórr ókristni, Hallfreðr vandræðaskáld, Hrafn Önundarson, Jórunn skáldmær, Kormákr Ögmundarson, Skafti Þóroddsson, Skúli Þórsteinsson, Steinn Herdísarson, Steinunn Refsdóttir, Þjóðólfr of Hvinir (Haustlöng, Ynglingatal), Tindr Hallkelsson, Úlfr Sebbason, Úlfr Uggason (Húsdrápa), Vetrliði Sumarliðason, and Vigfúss Víga-Glúmsson.

The most direct touchstones we tend to have from antiquity are in what we have discovered in the archaeological record. Yet despite this, the information isn’t always easy to learn about for modern believers. A lot of the research and discoveries are blocked behind paywalls, in obscure and very expensive academic publications, and then scattered across years and resources making it hard to easily search for patterns. In some ways Europeans are fortunate with easy access to a number of Museums and exhibitions because it’s part of their regional history. We know that in antiquity there was a thriving matron cultus, with over a thousand found votive stones in the Germanic Rhineland, yet they are so rarely referenced by modern believers merely because most don’t know about them. The tapestry that comes to us from the Oseburg Ship burial find gives this amazing picture of a religious processional. The tapestry matches depictions from Tacitus, as well as other archaeological finds like the Kivik’s King Grave and the Garde Bote Stone. The problem is the significance is lost on most Heathens because frankly they don’t have a deep knowledge of known relevant archeology. The Danish National Museum has some amazing bog finds of found items that had been sacrificed from horse necked gold bowls, to even women’s braids. But you won’t find a description of that anywhere in historical written accounts. Plus navigating the archaeological record has it’s own things we must be mindful of, and that includes bias as we try to interpret what we find.

We’re discovering that grave sites attributed to males based solely on what was in the grave with them have been proven to be wrong on multiple occasions. The archaeologists saw something that equated to their preconceived notions of masculinity and gender roles and without examining the bones in detail (or when skeletal remains had long dissolved) labeled them as male. A study in England reexamined 14 graves and found six of them were really female remains. One of the sites in question was from the Repton Woods burial site, “(d)espite the remains of three swords being recovered from the site, all three burials that could be sexed osteologically were thought to be female, including one with a sword and shield,” says the study. Just recently one of the most famous warrior finds, the Birka Warrior from the Birka find in Sweden, has been re-identified as female. There’s also been other graves recently re-identified as female too. And there have been other known burials of women that have weapons with them as well: the Kaupang Burial in Norway, Gerdrup in Denmark, Nennesmo in Sweden, Klinta in Sweden, Bogovej in Denmark, Marem in Norway, Heslerton graves, North Yorkshire in England. For further reading, volume 8 of the Analecta Archaeologica Ressoviensia details many other such burials.

Now some scholars like Judith Jesch argue against these being representative of a female warrior presence. (As an aside, in Judith’s case with female warrior presence I think when we see the prevalence of fighting women from the numinous beings (Freyja, valkyries, etc.), archaeological artwork, burial graves, and textual accounts from a wide range of sources make me strongly suspect the warrior connection was very intentional in the grave. It makes me wonder if we have enough of the bones left to see if we can see very physical wear markers on the skeletal remains that do point to regular sword use). Jesch does bring up a valid point that yes we should not assume that a blade equates warrior status, and I will take it further and state we need to be mindful of automatic assumptions and our own biases when examining any archaeological item. We don’t know if the presence of something in a grave had a direct correlation to a domestic or warrior function. Could the item have been a gift, an offering to the Gods or ancestors, did it import a sign of rank or status. Were they killed by someone and that sword was really the blade of the one who killed them as an offering that justice was done so they can now rest easy. Were the scissors placed with a man there because he used them, or because they’d been a gift to his wife and she gave it as a token of their time together? We always have to look at a range of possible interpretations, the context of a given find in conjunction with the context of other finds and what we know from written accounts.

Among the archaeological record we also have major symbols that appear multiple times, like the valknut (which is a modern name for an ancient symbol). Despite the fact it has been found many times, we still aren’t precisely certain what it really means or indicates. It seems primarily in antiquity to be used in connection with the dead, and there’s a lot of scholarship connecting it with Odin. Today it is being used as a symbol of both Odin and a symbol of the modern Northern Tradition polytheisms. One of the most prevalent symbols from antiquity has been the mjolnir (Thor’s Hammers), found across rune stones and a number of jewelry pieces from a wide span of areas. We’ve been finding jewelry in the archaeological record for many, many years which we long suspected and theorized were Thor’s hammers, and for decades modern Heathens have been wearing their hammers in honor of Thor as such. A more than 1000 year old pendant was found in 2014 from Købelev in modern Denmark, which proved that this long held supposition was in fact accurate. The pendant bears an inscription that when translated states “this is a hammer”. Perhaps it’s unpoetic, but it is at least clear. The mjolnir remains the only symbol (ie. non figural) found in the archaeological record we know was worn as a representation to the religious faith in antiquity.

Then we have the most problematic sources of all, those that come from recorded folk custom. These are so much harder for us to pen down, as these customs traveled with human diaspora and migration, filtered through syncretization and time. We try to find the earliest references, but often times these come from traditions that existed for centuries before that first recorded appearance of the custom. One of the key resources is Jacob Grimm (yes one of the Brothers Grimm), who recorded a great deal of evidence of folk custom in his multi volume Teutonic Mythology. E.L. Rochholz’s 1870 folklore study, Drei Gaugtinen gives us a lot of information on Walpurga, as well as two other Germanic Goddesses. We can look to many modern customs in certain regions historic to the Northern Tradition culture, and we can start to peel back the years chasing those old customs. Simek in his Dictionary of Northern Mythology tells us that in Norway there’s a custom of feeding leftovers into the hearth/kitchen fire and the crackling of the hearth is associated with Loki, just as Thunder is associated with Thor. Traditions that survive of Krampus fetching naughty children on the night of December 5th is just one of many such examples that abound.

We also have a number of grimoires full of spells and magical staves. These manuscripts (normally Icelandic in origin) date to a period of a few centuries after the Viking Age. They were a collection of recorded magical customs and symbols influenced by continental European customs during the Renaissance, and perhaps some of the customs arising from the English Monastaries of the 14th century. The grimoires were penned down (depending on the manuscript) between 1600 and the late 19th Century. Found within these manuscripts are the symbol sources for the Ægishjálmur (of which there’s 14 variations), and the Vegvísir (with 10 known variants). While these two symbols are popular today by modern polytheists, to my knowledge we have no record of them from the archaeological record. We can see some influence by Christianity among the other magical staves (one of the symbols’ has a name rooted in the Biblical Solomon), so we cannot make any statements that they are authentic to what was used prior to the spread of Christianity.

Throughout the lore there are instances of magical charms used to affect the sight. In Eyrbyggja saga, Katla (a skilled seidhkonna) casts a form of magic upon her son Odd to hide him from his pursuers. Each time the men search the house, instead of seeing him they see some other object instead. Believing a trick is at play, or that ‘they have had a goatskin waved round our heads’ they bring in another magic worker, who puts a sealskin over Katla’s head to negate her magic making Odd visible. We see this again in Reykdoela saga as well as Njals saga as well, of goatskins being wrapped around the head for magical purposes.

By the time we begin to see the helm of awe mentioned as a physical helmet in the lore and history of this evolving culture, we see it most predominantly used in Medieval European manuscripts that can be as much as 300 years later than earlier manuscripts that only speak of types of magic used to trick the sight. It is for this reason that I personally believe that contemporary writers of the time in conjunction with milieu common in other types of Medieval Literature like various stories in the Arthurian mythos (Chretien’s stories were written in the 12th Century), were focusing on knightly warfare and were elaborating upon older occurrences and adjusting the meaning to suit their poetic license.

In the Völsunga saga (13th Century), Fafnir taunts Sigurd that he has used the Ægishjálmur. After Sigurd later kills both Fafnir and Reginn, he takes up the helm as a looted prize (to the victor goes the spoils). The Sorla þáttr (14th century) also speaks of the Ægishjálmur, Hogni is wearing the helm of awe, so Ivar should not look at him. The best we can say about these symbols, (specifically the Ægishjálmur in this case) is some of them may be coming from a very old concept, but have been reimagined through the years.

The most well known grimoires are the Galdrablod, Galdrakver (Lbs 764-8vo), Galdrakver (Lbs 143-8vo), Galdrastafir, Galdrabok, Huld Manuscript, Hvíta Galdrakver, Lækningakver, Leifar (volumes 1, 2, 3 & 4), Rún Galdrabok, and there’s still many more.

We also see in early medieval church writings other clues if you’re willing to wade through the writing of various early church leaders, church chronicles, hagiographies, homilies, and more.

The various geo-specific law codes also sometimes encapsulate aspects of religious tradition, and in some cases we see how that code changes through the years allowing one to thoughtfully interpret how culture has changed from heathen times to Christian.

You really have to immerse yourself for probably years of dedicated research in the area to make reasonable connections accurately. And a lot of what is there is very piece mail: a clue there, a clue here. Name of a blot in passing, but for the most part no significant details relating to religion.  

You also have to be very mindful with the sources and translations. Some translations try to preserve a sense of the original poetic meter, and therefore you lose a lot of the substance of meaning in the translation. Some translations simply run into words or concepts that have no cultural or language equivalent, or will be fueled by the biases of the translator. Most translations also come from a different cultural and historical perspective, and this is true as well for much of the academic scholarship that exists. You need to understand that academic analysis has been an ongoing conversation for centuries. Previous theories may later be disproved by later evidence. There was a period of time where there were many scholars who erroneously believed that the Vinland Saga was nothing more than fanciful poppycock, until a Viking settlement was discovered in Newfoundland, Canada proving portions of it at the very least are real. There was a time where scholars doubted some of the descriptions in Beowulf, until they began to find archaeological remains and burials that proved some of the details. Plus as previously discussed with the sources, religious views of the author can change analytical perspective too.

Having an awareness of the country of origin of a source can also give us further thoughts for rumination. Not just in consideration of human history, but by taking it a step further and thinking of what we know about it’s geography, weather, and other natural phenomenon. Then trying to extrapolate from all the resources we have at hand a deeper and more nuanced understanding. For instance, the Eddas which record stories relating to both the creation myth and Ragnarök survive to us from Icelandic sources. We see themes of a conflict between fire and ice in the Eddas, and this was most likely a reflection of Iceland’s very geography as it sits on the plate tectonics of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the island having both volcanoes and glaciers. One of the most important sites in all of Iceland, Thingvellir was the site of the old national assembly that started during the Viking Age where rituals to the Gods were performed. This site is quite directly divided by the Mid-Atlantic ridge. The island’s vulcanism has had other impacts as well. Shortly after the first settlers arrived to the island there was a major volcanic eruption around 900 CE, so major it was the most significant eruption in Northern Europe for a period of over 12,000 years. This is a religion that sees and deals with the powers and ties to them forces of nature. We’ve recently discovered a cultic site in a lavatube in Iceland, the place has long been known as Surtshellir, named in specific reference to the fire giant Surt. We see this connection further teased at in the ancient sources where the Landnámabók records that Thorvald ‘Hollow Throat’ Thordarson traveled to the cave to recite a special laudatory poem (in a ritual act) known as a drapa to the giant who lived there. [This also proves that even dangerous forces seen as enemies of human kind in Ragnarök were in fact given offerings in the heathen past, something many converts from monotheism struggle with in modern heathenry.]

Understanding the Magicoreligious Traditions

The magical practices are described in the sagas, and lore of ancient Heathenry, including seiðr, spá, galðr, runemal, and leechcraft. Within the modern Heathen communities, such practices arouse controversy: in part because some are more open to the experiential and ecstatic gnosis with the numinous, and others find it an uncertain and less tangible practice that makes them uncomfortable to accept. While these magicoreligious traditions can be used for sacred means, they can also be used for secular purposes too, and the practice of them is not something everyone is expected to incorporate as part of their living religious practice. Although each of these traditions may be practiced individually and exclusive of the others, they may also be united with any combination of the other practices and there are many places where these practices overlap. These are best understood as tools to be used as a situation might warrant it.

Unlike the basic religious rites of blöt, husel, and symbel there is a dearth of recorded work written by actual shamanic practitioners. (Please note, I’m using this term as a generalized gloss with a magic practitioner/spiritual specialist under a more general mainstream understanding, technically shamans originated as the spiritual/magical specialists from the neighboring Sami tribe. Norse specialists would be volvas, vitkis, seidhkonas, etc. but as those terms are less well known and this is intended as a rough introduction I opted to use what mainstream folks would be more familiar with.) The secretive and oral nature of shamanic practice means that very little definable evidence exists. In modern Heathenry, as in the past, however, the onus still lies upon the practitioner in uncovering the rites and symbols, charms, and incantations so necessary to his or her craft. Modern practitioners are charged with a unique task, unknown and unnecessary to shamans of the past: they must look to history, scholarly analysis, literary analysis, anthropology, comparative religious studies, and archaeological finds to augment their work which remains in the field of the experiential. Some may incorporate some or all of these practices, and others may instead opt to shun them in their own religious practice.

Leechcraft refers to the ancient art of healing, Anglo-Saxon sources such as rune poems, early charms, and the invaluable Old English texts: Bald’s Third Leechbook, the Old English Herbarium, and Lacnunga, are the primary sources for Heathen leechcraft (although at this point, the Anglo-Saxons were Christian, many Heathen concepts and beliefs survived within the now nominally Christian framework). Modern scholar Stephen Pollington’s Leechcraft examines these sources and his work can be a more accessible touchstone for modern readers when trying to understand those Old English texts. The liminal roles of words—whether spoken and/or written—and the usage of carriers in medicinal treatments, was essential to leechcraft, as was the ability of the healer to traverse the worlds as shaman and undo metaphysical wounds as well, such as elfshot. The early English certainly never seemed to make the distinction between what was magic, and what was medicine. So long as any cure is effective it was fully rational. According to modern scholar Stephen Glosecki, in his book Shamanism and Old English Poetry: “This is the therapeutic purpose implicit in Wid Faerstice 7-9: ecstatically the doctor travels to the source of the shot so he will know exactly whom to target in his counterattack.” Additionally, the Germanic Second Merseburg Charm gives to us a story of Baldr’s Horse that while lacking in specifics, ties to a tradition of healing as well. We also have a large number of Holy Powers connected to healing as found scattered across the lore and even in the archaeological record.

Practices of protection, and to an extent healing are associated with seiðr, which is an altering of the consciousness. The very term seiðr causes quite a bit of discourse within academic and Heathen sources. Oftentimes the term is used to encompass both seiðr and spá because they are so closely entwined. Spá, or oracular seiðr, is a speaking or a foretelling and is generally viewed to be more passive in nature because the oracular spá worker is reading the answers (usually by looking at the orlog). We see The best surviving reference to the shamanistic practice of spá can be found in the Saga of Eirik the Red. Seiðr, on the other hand, is considered to be more active and reflecting a wide range of forms. seiðr workers not only were associated with prophecy but with the casting and manipulation of the human mind and soul, as well as the metaphysical wounding cause by onflyge or elfshot which could manifest physically.

Some scholars have speculated about the distinction made between spá and seiðr in the lore because of the often dualistic polar opposition ascribed to them, where spá is benevolent and seiðr is construed as malevolent and attributed to the realm of evil witches. References elsewhere in the lore to seiðr put a far different spin on those who use such techniques, usually equating such practitioners as evil or in the case of men as being effeminate and labeled as ergi. Maligning the practice even if we have stories of Odin as practitioner. Icelandic lawspeakers—such as Þorgeirr—performed spá when they were described in lore as going under the cloak. (Þorgeirr’s account comes to us at a critical time, when Iceland was on the verge of civil war based on the religious divide between Christians and Heathens.) Yet these men who underwent the cloak were not considered to be performing seiðr, nor were those who participated in the “mound sitting” of kings. I suspect that as Christianity spread that what was probably once a cohesive practice was split into what was still tolerated and what wasn’t under the new mores and religious values.

We see intonations as a part of some of these aforementioned practices: the metrical healing charms of the Anglo-Saxons were chanted incantations to effect healing, the seiðrkona in Eirik the Red’s Saga cannot portend the future unless someone is willing to chant the necessary vardlokkur. This lends itself to the practice of galðr, which means “to croak” or “to crow” and originates from the old Norse verb ‘gala’. It can be understood as the singing, chanting, and/or incantation of spells and possibly runes with a range of notes towards a specific goal. It wasn’t necessarily meant to be musical, or pleasing to the ear.

The Roman General Tacitus refers to the women of the Germanic peoples standing about at the edge of a battlefield and fiercely wailing. This was most likely an example of women practicing galðr as a vocal charm to either strike fear in the enemy or to vocally intone magical workings for victory. We know from Julius Caesar’s war against the Germanic Suebi at the Battle of Vosges (58 BCE), or the earlier battles against the Germanic tribes of the Tencteri and Usipetes (in 55 BCE), and also from later battles between the Teutones and Ambrones at the Battle of Aquae Sextiae (102 BCE), as well as what Tacitus tells us that Germanic women went to war, and the children did too. The women might kill their own men if they ran, or if all was lost might murder-suicide their own family and self to avoid becoming slaves to Rome. In the First Merseburg Charm, we are told the women (Idis, a word coterminous to Disir or Matronae) helped to free the captured men. I suspect part of their screaming mentioned by Tacitus, was galdr magic to help their side, and foil the enemy. It may have been a function of the idis/disir/matronae. The Goddess Sigyn has a heiti meaning incantation fetter hinting possibly to some magic aspect combined with battle too. Galðr, may have also potentially had some influence on the singing used in seiðr/spá rituals as evidenced in the Saga of Eirik the Red, though this conclusion is highly speculative.

Whereas galðr is a purely oral working (possibly of the runes), runemal is the physical usage of the runes in magic, where runes are inscribed onto wood, stone, metal, other objects, or combined. Throughout Egil’s saga we have descriptions of runes being carved and blooded, and runic writings destroyed to help heal a sick woman. Although the tradition of runemal is primarily attributed to men in the surviving lore, there is a reference to the Norn Goddess Skuld in the Voluspa as the “scorer of runes.” (As Norns are tied to wyrd, this might be a suggestive hint of ties to divinatory use). Surviving references suggest runic charms and runic inscriptions may have been how runemal was used for protective magics such as amulets (such as the Ribe Skull Amulet), and may have been used in conjunction with healing such as recorded in the Canterbury Charm (preserved in the marginalia of the Anglo-Saxon manuscript Cotton Caligula A XV written in 1073 CE).

Runes were first and foremost letters in an alphabet with unique phonetic sounds for the language they represent.  The earliest extant writing of runes (elder futhark) was found on the Kylver Stone (in Sweden), dated to around 400 CE. While we have over a thousand votive altars to the Matronae in the Rhineland, they were rendered in the Roman style with Latin inscriptions. Our understanding of the runes comes heavily from the various Rune Poems: Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem, the Norwegian Rune Poem, and the Icelandic Rune Poem. Additionally, we have in the Runatal section of the Havamal the story of Odin hanging on the world tree Yggdrasil in order to learn the runes in a blood sacrifice and ordeal. Divinatory actions were known and attested in period texts, some using horses (as attested in Tacitus’ Germania where they were yoked to a special sort of chariot and how they behaved and moved was how the divination was interpreted.

There are some vague, unclear historical references that might be runes being used for divination. We see something like lots (possibly runes) being used in Ynglinga saga that portended a bad omen for Granmar. In Egils saga, specifically in chapters 7 & 48, we have mention of something like lots being cast for divination. They may (or may not) be a reference to runes being used in this manner. In Tacitus’ Germania, we learn in addition to divination by horse, there was also some sort of symbols, carved in groups of three in wood used for divination. This might be runes being used in this way, or some other symbology.

Yet the use of the runes for divinatory purpose is so ubiquitous in the religious community today it is accepted as always being the case from the heathen past. We also have a tradition of bindrunes (a runic symbol, usually composed of 3 runes laid upon one another for a specific purpose). (As an aside, there’s no such thing as a blank rune, so anytime you see reference to that in modern books, that’s a key way to know it’s a deeply flawed source. The blank or 25th rune was invented because it was cheaper to produce 25 runes, than 24 in molds a few decades ago in the 20th Century and so some publishers had their authors write to make a blank rune part of the practice, that then informed other modern books that came later, whose texts had been influenced by that earlier work.)

In Conclusion

I realize that all of this information can seem particularly overwhelming. There’s a reason why many modern believers will find some sort of introductory tome penned by a modern believer that takes them through the base structure of our beliefs: the fact we worship and give offerings to the numinous: our Gods & Goddesses, our ancestors, and the vaettir (spirits of land and water), and will also introduce them to the known holy tides and religious celebrations.


Large sections of the modern community will never read anything beyond perhaps the Eddas. But there’s so very much more out there too. So if you want to start doing a deeper dive on your own, specifically looking for texts that have any reference (even in passing) of religious custom you might try exploring the following historic sources: Bede’s De Temporum ratione, Tacitus’ Germania, Indiculus Superstitionum et paganiarum, Gylfaginning, Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum, Mologium (we see Christianized rites), Svarfdaela Saga, Hervarar Saga, Viga-glums saga, Egils Saga, Austrfararvísur, Völsa þáttr, Heimskringla (multiple sections but especially Saga of Hakon the Good, Olafs Saga Helga, Ynglinga Saga, etc.), Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta, Sigrdrífumál, Þrymskvida, Sturlunga Saga, Vita Karoli Magni, Landnamabok, Kjalnesinga Saga, Flateyjarbok, Orkneyinga saga, Legal Codes (Grágás, Guta Lag, Frostathing, Gulathing, etc.), and the Æcerbot (from Lacnunga)– while Christianized, this is one of the most intact descriptions we have of a specific type of land related ritual. And of course there’s more sources too, but these are some of the more key ones.

Despite the fact we do have information available to us from antiquity I want to caution you not to fall into the trap of becoming a lore thumper (something I see a lot of with people converting to this belief path after years in Protestantism). Because our Gods are not fictional characters, they don’t exist merely within the confines of a book trapped between the front and back covers. You either believe they are real and still active forces with agency, or you don’t. If you don’t then this is not the religious pathway for you.

Question everything.

• Who wrote this? What were their religious beliefs? How reliable are they as a source?
• When was it written? How does that relate to the history at that moment when it was written (political, religious, etc.), and how far removed is it from the details it reports?
• What biased attitudes or cultural milieu exist in the work? This can apply to everything from archaeological interpretation, translations, to even the original author’s own biases.
• What manuscripts comprise this document? If multiple manuscripts, how do they differ? How are they the same? Where does the manuscript(s) originate?
• How does this connect to other things in the Northern Tradition? From archaeology to lore to folk customs. Is there some similarity? Or does this appear to be geo-specifically unique to one specific tribe?
• Are there possible similar themes elsewhere in the Indo-European tradition? I caution with this not to jump to conclusions especially in trying to smoosh into an amalgam of sameness between cultures, but it can sometimes help to tease out some nuances because Germanic Lnaguage and culture is classified by scholars as emerging out of Indo-European culture.
• Can the etymology of this word, or name, or place help uncover more information? Sometimes the names are all we have left of some of the known Gods and Goddesses. Keep in mind with this you’ll eventually start running into theoretical languages proposed to show common roots from known offshoot languages, meant to follow human migration and diaspora backwards over time.
• How does this connect to what came before, and what came after?
• And the most important question of them all: How can I take the information I discover and learn about and use it as inspiration to develop my living faith and religious practice?

*Northern Tradition: this term was used by some academics, including the influential and well respected Hilda Roderick Ellis Davidson to refer to the cultures with a common worship to Odin. Among modern worshippers, the organization known as The Troth also used the term on their quarterly member publication, Idunna: A Journal of Northern Tradition. The Troth says of the journal that it “publishes material on all aspects of pre-Christian Germanic religion and culture. We cover both the ancient religions of the the Norse, Anglo-Saxons, Goths, and continental Germans, and the various modern revivals of these old ways, collectively known as Heathenry.”