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How to Be a Heathen:

A Methodology for the Awakening of Traditional Systems

By

Stephen E. Flowers

The following paper was generated from a talk delivered to the Pagan Student Alliance of the University of Texas at Austin, November 22, 1991 and is dedicated to the memory of Edwin Wade, Óðinsgoði, who died on this date in 1989.

I have come to you to speak about how exactly one might go about being a heathen, or pagan, in today’s world.  What I will say will be of use on two fronts.  First, it will provide a model for the rationally intuitive “reconstruction” or revival of heathen religions – or better said – cultural value systems.  But second, it can also act as a sort of manual of “consumer guidance” for such systems.  Since we are swamped with the “marketing” of such systems on a constant basis, I think the time has surely come for some discussion on how we should approach them. 

The whole issue of culture is often glossed over, especially by American writers.  This is because there is usually only tenuous understanding of what all is meant by this term.  When we speak of culture, we may meaningfully break it down into four types of culture – all of which blended together give us a true picture of any given historical society, ancient of modern.  There is:  1) ethnic culture, 2) ethical culture, 3) material culture, and 4) linguistic culture.  These may be conveniently illustrated as in Figure 1.

 

Culture
Ethnic	Ethical
Material	Linguistic

Figure 1:  The Culture Grid

All kinds of culture have to do with contact of some kind between real people.  Humans are cultural animals.  To survive we need to absorb, intellectually and consciously, tremendous amounts of cultural data.  The faculty to generate culture and to absorb its contents is one of the things that separate us from the “other” animals (Which is another way of saying what makes us something other than animals). 

Ethnic culture is a purely physical reality.  It has to do with the reproduction of the carnal human reality – physical bodies – through sexual contact.  It is, if you prefer the term, the “racial culture” of a people.  In any holistic understanding of culture this must, of course, be accounted for and discussed.  When we look around the world today, we see cultures like Japan which has an almost entirely homogeneous ethnic culture.  This is also reflected in other aspects of their over all cultural model, which is to be expected.  They constitute a true nation, in the original meaning of that word, i.e., a people sharing a common birth (from Latin natio, I am born).  The United States of America on the other end of the spectrum, is not a true nation but rather a multi-national state.

Ethical culture is the most complex kind of culture.  It touches all the other types, and is usually what most people think of when they think of culture at all.  It has to do with everything that is contained in, and generated from, the minds of humans (in that given culture).  It contains the categories of everything from religions to political ideologies, to literary traditions, to economic systems.  Ethical culture is the collective ideology – or spiritual systems – of a society. 

Material culture comprises, on the other hand, all the physical objects created by art (i.e., craft).  These are the artificial projections onto the physical world of the contents of the mind – of ethical culture.  Often we know of a given historical culture only by means of the artifacts (objects of material culture) left behind in the archeological record.  This is, for example, the case with the “Old Europeans,” the pre-Indo-European folk of the far western part of the Eurasian land mass.

Finally, linguistic culture is the language spoken and understood by a people.  This is most intimately connected with ethical culture, for especially in the case of cultures of the past it is virtually only through linguistic records that we can determine what the content of their minds – their ethical culture – was.  Factors from the material culture also become extremely important here because it is usually only through tangible (i.e., material) records of the linguistic data that we can know the thoughts of the people of the past as directly as possible – through actual scrolls, papyri, inscriptions, books, etc.  This is how they can speak to us most directly and most clearly over time, and we must hear them in this way to be sure of the voice of the past. 

What most heathens, or pagans, seem to be interested in is the revival of ancient cultures.  They like to go back in their minds and imaginations to a time when the cultural grid was a holistic one – where one could speak of (just to name one example) the Germanic culture as a whole:  Germanic folk, Germanic religion, Germanic art, Germanic language were one organic whole.  If a sense of this wholeness can be regained, it can again make a positive impact on the individual and the culture to which that individual belongs by healing the sense of alienation the loss of that wholeness causes.

This is a noble endeavor.  But it is a difficult one to do well and reliably and with a minimum of subjective wish fulfillment.  The establishment of a method of doing all this is what I hope to contribute to with this paper. 

The “neo-pagan movement” is rife with subjectivism.  People reconstruct the “past” in the vision of their own private needs and prejudices.  Neo-paganism is often less a religious path and more a system for the validation or justification of subjective biases.  Sometimes these subjectives result in effective and sometimes beautiful systems of thought and practice:  take for example the original form of Gardnerian Witchcraft.  But their bases are nevertheless in the subjective needs and prejudices of the creators.  What I propose is the development of an objective, rational basis for a system from which reliable and more profoundly useful systems can be developed.

A little less than two thousand years ago, when someone mentioned “pagan science” or “pagan thought” (as distinguished from “Christian”) it implied that there was a rational basis to it – not a “revealed,” irrational one.  How much that has changed over the ensuing years!  I would like to see the pagan birthright of rationality restored to us.  So that when the word “pagan” is heard it will not necessarily call up images of whacked out misfits, but will on the contrary be synonymous with clear-headed, yet inspired thought. 

One of the great pagan thinkers was a Greek named Plato.  His system was almost entirely from his indigenous philosophical tradition (although for the sake of prestige he often invented myths about more exotic sources for his thought).  Greek idealism, like Indian idealism, is really derived from the same Indo-European ideology.  Idealism is, in this context, the supposition that there is a more real, more permanent, world beyond this one, and of which this world is a shadow or reflection.  To the traditionalist this is the world of the gods and the world of laws beyond them to which they are also subject.  For Plato and the Indian philosophers of the Brahmanas and Upanishads the world beyond is filled with impersonal first principles, or forms (Greek eidos), or archetypes, if you will.

If this world is a reflection or shadow of the ideal world, and if we can learn the laws and principles of how such reflections or shadows are made, we have the possibility of discovering the truth about the hidden world beyond our senses.  The way to discover these truths is, furthermore, shown to be a process of rationally intuiting the objects of knowledge beyond the grasp of our senses.  We begin with what we may know rationally, significantly improve on that knowledge, and then jump intuitively (using objective knowledge as our spring-board) into the world beyond the rational.  The main problem with pagan thought as usually practiced today is that there is a good deal of jumping – but the spring-board is made of balsa wood. 

Plato identified four levels, or types, of knowledge, as shown in figure 2.

 

Type of Knowledge	Object of Knowledge
4. Rational Intuition	Forms
3. Logic	Mathematical Objects
2. Belief	Things
1. Conjecture/Guess-Work	Shadows

Figure 2:  Platonic Scale of Knowledge

Conjecture, or guess-work (Greek eikasia) hardly qualifies as “knowledge” at all.  No one should “think” like this.  Although all of us do at least occasionally – and most people do most of the time.  This is the kind of thought that is based on nothing but totally subjective “evidence,” or worse yet, on the subjective evidence provided by others.  Two-dimensional characters, such as Archie Bunker, provide perfect examples of such people.  Such people know nothing but the shadows of real things. 

Belief (Greek pistis) is a faith in the validity of things which have been received from authoritative sources.  In a traditional society these authoritative sources are easy to identify.  The priests and priestesses of the national divinities, tribal elders, etc.  In our postmodern world these authorities are more difficult to identify reliably.  If nothing else, this paper should be of some use in that process.  At this stage the person knows real things, but can only follow certain directions with regard to practice when dealing with things beyond the world of the senses.  To this realm belong what we usually think of as “religion” – the correct performance of rituals, etc.  This is the level at which the vast majority of people are comfortable.  As far as a healthy society is concerned, this is also the level at which most people should be satisfied.  Beyond it is a realm of spiritual toil and anguish.

There is a gulf which separates belief from logic.  The tension across this gulf was quite palpable in the modern age. 

Logic, or rational thought (Greek dianoia) is knowledge of the kind we would today call “scientific.”  It is essentially based on data, which are, as often as not, rooted in mathematics.  As we have come to learn in the modern world, if you “have the numbers” concerning something it is likely that you will be able to manipulate or reshape that thing.  You can control it because you have quantified it.  To this realm of knowledge we would today ascribe all of the arts and sciences taught and researched at our universities.  Universities are temples to Dianoia – or thought.  Today credible knowledge seems to end here.  Beyond it lies only mumbo-jumbo and ufo-ria.  But such was not the case in pagan times.

Rational intuition (Greek noesis) is the highest kind of knowledge.  But one can non leap from belief into rational intuition – one must pass through dianoia.  Long training in objective science (in whatever field) is necessary to cause the mind to function in a reliable manner.  Then when it is prefocused on more “spiritual” objects the knowledge it gains will be maximally reliable – or real.  We no longer have traditional schools for training in this kind of knowledge.  All the schools which exist at present in cultures derived from European roots are new schools.  So the question becomes one of quality, not age or legitimacy of authority. 

This scale of knowledge, and this whole discussion of pagan bases of knowledge in general, has been offered to give some sort of context for the body of this presentation.  The point will be that the “reconstruction” of whole cultural systems must (at least according to the best kind of pagan knowledge) be based on objective criteria and data, but additionally they must just as much be matters of actual doing – not merely ivory tower theorizing.  It is only through enactment of theory that knowledge becomes real.  We can only learn the most important things through action and experience.

How is it that we know how to put men on the moon, or how to build bombs that can destroy the world (proving that we are indeed gods of the planet) today – but we – as a species – in fact know nothing more about the most profound human problems of Love, Truth, Justice, etc. than did good old Plato?  “Progress” can be seen clearly in technological fields because this kind of knowledge (technical knowledge) can be passed on easily in a system of belief from one person to another, from one generation to another.  Each person, each generation, does not have to “reinvent the wheel.”  But when it comes to those other things, those things which cannot be passed on by authority from one person to the next, every person does indeed have to reinvent his or her own wheel.  But not just any wheel will do.  It has to be the right wheel.  This is what initiation is all about.  This further points to the methods used by philosophers which really can only put the student in a place where knowledge can be gained directly from the source.  The teacher cannot impart the knowledge, only create the conditions in which knowledge can flow into the student’s conscious mind. 

Can a Dead Cultural System be Revived?

Before beginning our quest, we must refine our goals.  To the basic question of whether a truly dead cultural system – such as the Egyptian, Sumerian, or Indus Valley – can be revived, I think the honest answer must be:  “No.”  That is, human creativity can (re-)create something of an artificial likeness of such a cultural system to vivify it with action and devotion.  But the thing itself is not actually brought back to life.  This is in part also due to the fact that in the cases mentioned above the lines of continuity of ethnic, ethical and linguistic culture have been irreparably broken. 

But to a slightly different question of whether a sleeping cultural system can be awakened, the answer may be more confidently be given:  “Yes.”  If there is some continuity between the past and the present in all four cultural areas – but if a cultural system has nevertheless become disestablished – then it is said to be not dead but merely sleeping.  Such is the case with the Germanic tradition.  We form a continuously identifiably ethnic unit, we hold many of the old ethical traditions (see everything from concepts of “English Common Law” to the “Christmas” tree), we still create art based on Germanic concepts of abstraction, and we certainly still speak a language derived directly from that of our pre-historic ancestors.  None of these categories is completely dead – all are just sleeping under a blanket of Christian/Middle Eastern overlay.  The same could be said for the Celtic, Italic, Hellenic, Slavic, and a dozen other traditions.

In many ways what I will present in the sections that follow is the method I used in the awakening of the Germanic tradition in a score or so books I have written on the subject, and the methods used for awakening slumbering practices and beliefs in the Asatru movement as a whole.  This methodology is essential for students of any such cultural system.
 
The Process of Awakening

The process of awakening comes in three phases.  These do not follow in the linear pattern 1-2-3, however.  That is, you do not start in Process I, finish it, and then move on to Process II, etc.  Really we are involved on all three levels throughout our lives as long as we are dedicated to the long process of reawakening the hidden reality within.  But, with all this being said, wisdom must be applied at all times to discipline one’s self so that in the early part of one’s quest most of one’s time is spent on Process I, while relatively less time is spent on the latter two.  As the years do on the balance will begin to shift, and relatively less time will be spent on the objective tasks and more time will be spent in the activation of what one has learned.  It is in this latter stage that true understanding arises.

Process I is one of rational discovery or objective analysis – where the traditional record is examined in a scientific manner. 

Process II is one of subjective synthesis – where the data gathered and analyzed in the first process are allowed to sink into the subjective universe, or soul, or the individual.  Here it is allowed to become whole with your mind.

Process III is one of enactment – where the inner synthesis is activated, made to become effective in the objective universe. 

Process I
Rational Discovery or Objective Analysis

To begin the first process we have to ask ourselves one basic question:  What do we have to work with objectively?  Now at this stage we must remind ourselves that we are sticking to things that are part of the objective record.  What so-and-so might have “channeled” concerning the true nature of the old Germanic, Celtic, or Egyptian system is, whatever else it might be, not objective.  To accept such material or ideas is simply to believe in the power of that individual to “channel” such things.  You are dealing with “revelations” not traditions.

So what are the kinds of things that can tell us about the objective tradition?  These are mainly written sources for reasons outlined above.  Does that mean that everything that was ever written by or about a culture is to be used without discrimination?  Certainly not.  Discrimination is of the highest importance.  The sources must be used in the following order or precedence: 

1. Internal Contemporary Texts
2. External Contemporary Texts
3. Archeological Evidence
4. Internal Surviving “Texts” (e.g., folklore)
5. Secondary Texts
   1. Autochthonous
   2. Comparative

Internal contemporary texts are ones such as the Eddas or runic inscriptions which give us some sort of direct insight into the minds of heathen Germanic peoples.  External contemporary texts are things such as the Roman and Greek historians’ and ethnographers’ accounts of the people indigenous to the north.  Although their views may be skewed for one reason or another (and these reasons must be examined) they did have more direct sources of raw information perhaps than we can today, and so remain tremendously valuable.  (For a collection of these see James Chisholm’s Grove and Gallows [Rûna-Raven, 2001].) 

Archeological evidence is mute.  It can not “talk,” that is, convey verbal information, without corroboration from textual sources.  If a statue of an otherwise unknown god or goddess is dug up somewhere, and it cannot be identified with some figure in the local mythology as recorded in texts, what are we left with?  All that remains to us is some pretty wild speculation based on nothing but an image.  But if that same artifact is to some extent “explained” by a textual source, then it becomes a great window into the spiritual life of the people.

Again, this bears reiterating, all we can objectively know about a bygone culture must be found in an objective record – written or archeological – and all interpretations of that record must be held to judgments based on the objective record.  To proceed otherwise is simply to be a believer in modern prejudices and prophets.  To illustrate this with a concrete example, of the many rune books that came out in the 1980s (with one exception) only my works were based on the actual tradition of runology well-known from the runestones, rune-poems, and modern scientific runology itself.  All the others freely altered or dispensed with (or more accurately, were simply ignorant of) the traditional knowledge available in any good reference book on the subject – if you couldn’t be bothered to visit a runestone.  But books were written on the bases of these wild speculations, prejudices, and wishful thoughts.  How to decide “which” runic system to use?  In a way, I was faced with this same problem when I started my own esoteric studies.  But I realized that all foundations had to go back to some objective piece of evidence – to some runic inscription, to some Eddic or runic poem, to some saga passage, and perhaps to some comparative evidence – all else was interpretation.  But as I came to see it, it had to be interpretation based on the whole of the tradition, not just one select part of it. 

Another slightly different class of primary evidence is provided by folklore.  By folklore I mean customs, stories and all kinds of traditions that have been handed down in a continuous fashion from early times.  Examples of this kind of evidence would be folk-tales collected by the Brothers Grimm or the various country customs collected by folklorists throughout northern Europe.  It is probably true that a great deal of this goes back to pre-Christian, heathen, times.  The problem is we can never know exactly how much of it has been innovated or imported in the Christian era.  Therefore folklore evidence must be considered as being secondary to the more archaic material.  It can be used to fill in gaps in our knowledge, but on the evidence of folklore alone no reliable objective system can be created, nor can folklore evidence be used to overthrow the evidence from more archaic sources.

Finally actual secondary, scholarly, literature about the traditions must be considered.  The huge body of scholarly work that has been done on the ancient Germanic religion, for example, is too rich and thought-provoking to ignore.  The present-day heathen should approach this literature as a record of contemporary men and women trying to make some rational sense out of the primary evidence according to certain intellectual rules by which their science is supposed to be governed.  “Inspiration,” so important to the practicing heathen, is of much less importance to the scholar.  But often inspiration can be drawn from their sometimes limited conclusions.  When making use of secondary scholarly literature you should try to find the most recent works possible.  If the scientific aspect is being developed as it should be, the older literature will be accounted for in newer, and the older will been superseded by the more comprehensive findings of the newer as well.  The only caveat here is when some ideological fashion (e.g., “political correctness,” “feminism,” etc.) comes to dominate scholarship in certain sectors.  Learn to recognize and avoid such intellectual fashions.  In general secondary material can be divided into two classes:  one which treats a given tradition from within itself and another which tries to compare one system to another thereby illuminating further the more obscure of the two.  Of course, this latter method must account for the ways in which one system or tradition might be connected to the other.  It is in this area that the work of Georges Dumézil is so important. 

Now that we have reviewed the types of sources to which we will attempt to gain access, the problem arises as to what exact questions will we attempt to answer with this data.  The essentials of understanding any person individually, or any group of people collectively, lie in knowledge of their view of the world, of themselves, of any gods or goddesses they might have, and in understanding the practices they use to act and interact within these various contexts, e.g., what rituals, spiritual technologies they use.

In technical terms we must discover the traditional cosmology used by the folk-group in question.  That is, what is their view of the order of the world.  Also essential to this is the origin of the world, their cosmogony.  Once you understand how people view the world, you have gone a long way toward understanding the very soul of the people. 

The soul must also come under direct examination.  Here we must try to reconstruct the traditional psychology of the group.  The investigator should try to determine what the folk-group thinks a human being is in essence and how the individual relates to the whole (society and world).  This in turn opens the door to the sociology of the traditional group under investigation.

Usually a special category is enjoyed by the gods and goddesses of a people.  The divinities are special exemplary models for human behavior and spirituality.  By knowing the pattern inherent in the god-forms as well as understanding how the various god-forms relate to each other inside the system we will have a deep-level map of the ideas of the people in question. 

Also essential to the whole process is an understanding of the “spiritual technologies” used by a people to communicate with their gods, to interact with them and/or with the world directly.  Peoples usually have rituals and customs to affect this part of life.  Such customs and behaviors are usually at the center of revivalist efforts.  The problem is often that the rituals are lost or only survive in sketchy outlines.  At this stage we are primarily concerned with finding out what these outlines are.  The only way to restore the soul to these outlines, and to flesh them out again in a robust fashion, is to discover the soul of the people through the understanding of the cosmology, psychology, sociology and theology – and then enacting the ritual elements regularly and physically.  When modern heathens make the same sounds, gestures or motions that their ancestors did in worshipping the gods or carrying out some other spiritual or magical practice, their actions physically and actually resonate with those of the past.  The more this is done, the stronger the resonance becomes.  This is why in the True movement, or in Ásatrú, it is so often emphasized that actually troth is a matter of doing, not believing.  From action comes faith in the results of action.

Two other important ways to recover the soul of the ancestors, and ways theoretically very much akin to the rediscovery of their spiritual practices, is the learning of the archaic languages they spoke, e.g., Old Norse (Icelandic), Old English, and/or learning their methods of crafting things in the physical universe, e.g., metal-working, weaving, wood-working.  At first these seem to be merely technical undertakings, but as time goes on the soul of the activity will manifest itself as the acts of today begin to resonate with the actions of the past and a sort of inter-epochal harmony begins to arise in the soul of the modern heathen. 

Process II
Subjective Synthesis

Once suitable progress has been made in all phases of the first process, all the data collected in that learning process is to be constantly and thoroughly submitted to a threefold model of subjective or internal inquiry.  Each piece of data is to be considered as it relates to the individual self of the subject (you), how it relates to the tradition (as you have come to understand it), and how it relates to the environment (social and natural).  The question of tradition handles the problem through time (diachronically), while the question of the environment handles it as it relates to the here-and-now (synchronically).  This process is actually a description of how the individual soul makes sense of the tradition.

As an example of this, let us take the traditional fact that the cosmos is made up of “nine worlds.”  How does this relate to my individual self?  How does this relate to tradition?  How does this relate to the world around me?  Now let it be said that what exact answers you come up with are perhaps less important in the beginning than the fact that you have posed the questions to yourself and set the wheels of inquiry into motion.  In time the questions will be answered – not because you read them in a book by Edred Thorsson or Georges Dumézil – but because you have come to know the answers yourself.  You will have experienced the answers.  Often the best efforts at objective and subjective inquiry come to an impasse.  Knotty problems sometimes remain.  At times, but especially when such thorny problems arise, a threefold tool of inquiry can be brought to bear.  Ask these three questions: 

1)      Is it factual? (i.e., fits the findings in Process I)

2)      Is it aesthetic? (i.e., pleasing to the sensibilities)

3)      Is it useful? (i.e., fills a basic contemporary need)

Again, let’s take a concrete example to illustrate how this is supposed to work.  Let’s say Uncle Einar, who resentful of his Christian upbringing, objects to having a “Yule-Tree” in the hall during Yuletide because he thinks it is a “Christian thing.”  You want to do the right thing, so you apply the threefold question to it:  Is it factual that the tree is pagan?  Yes, that can be proven from many sources.  Many Christian denominations realize this and therefore try to discourage their followers from having “Christmas trees.”  “But just because heathens did it doesn’t mean we have to do it, right?” persists Uncle Einar.  This is true, O avuncular one.  But the fact that the whole culture finds the tree an important and meaningful part of the Yuletide festivities (despite the attempts of the early Christians to suppress it) shows that it is generally pleasing to the sensibilities of most folks.  Because of its popularity its usefulness as a symbol and as a religious practice is assured.  It helps us focus on the immortality of the folk so long as its identifiable organic existence continues.  Gifts given to the children, and to the ancestors, focus our attention both on the roots and to the leaves of the tree.  This also points the way to the preferability of using living Yule-Trees.  The roots were cut off when the crypto-heathens had to remove their Yule-Trees indoors to worship in secret ways that had formerly expressed in public and in the woods.  Let us restore the roots to the Yule-Tree! 

So the problem of the Yule-Tree seems to be a personal one for Uncle Einar.  He is, of course, free to dispense with it in his own home, but it can certainly be proven to meet all three criteria for continuance, maintenance and redevelopment as a true custom.

 Process III
Enactment

Once a set of practices, beliefs, and so on, have been established through the application of Process II, it increasingly becomes the responsibility of the individual to prove the results of the second process through enactment, through actually and physically acting out the practices.  This first comes on a personal level.  Only through enactment in the physical world can the final judgment be made on the viability of the system you have arrived at.  Things that looked good on paper, or sounded good in your head, may be unworkable in actual practice.  This can only be shown through practice.  On one level this is the end of the whole process, but on another level it is just the beginning.

This process of enactment itself comes in two main phases.  The first involves individual enactment.  Begin to enact the subjectively synthesized patterns on an individual basis – both internally and externally.  Internal “action” is just as important as external action.  Internal action is tantamount to faith or belief – a firm conviction of the truth of something.  A thought profoundly held and conceived is a powerful deed.  Most forceful and sustainable external action is motivated by the emotional engine of the soul, which is perceived as faith or belief.  The Norse term for this is trú.  This moves the subject to act.  The external actions may range from undertaking traditional handicrafts with spiritual intent, to the enactment of the religious rites rooted in ancient Germanic patterns, to the carving of runes.  Again the important thing is to act, and to act in full awareness of the meaning of one’s actions.  The resonance built up between one’s actions and the original paradigms upon which these actions are based is rooted on the trueness, or accuracy, of their forms. 

Using these methods you can create your own personal religion, of course.  But heathendom is in essence a folk religion, it involves a community of people.  Individual development is important and essential, but if it is isolated and detached from others, it will not have permanence, and hence will not be as holy as it might have been.  Therefore, the next arena of enactment is on the group level.  Unless you can make what you arrived at up until now valid for a group of people, all you have done is create a highly personalized system.  It is for this reason that organizations are necessary in the applications of these methods.  Once the system becomes successful for a whole group of people it can be said to have gained, or regained, a transpersonal validity.  This is the end-goal of all reawakened heathen systems.  When group-level validity is achieved and maintained it becomes clear that the system is not the clever invention of a single individual, but rather the resonant and true reawakening of something that had been slumbering in the souls of all it touches.  It can be said to ring true.

Weltschmerz: Schellingian Reflections of C.D. Frederick’s The Wanderer Above the Sea of Mists (1818)^[1].

by P.A.Q.

 

Solitude in reflection upon an absolute landscape; the traveller encounters nature so as to encounter himself, for in the loneliness of his vantage point there are but two objects, the finitude of embodied existence and the infinite expanse of nature. We understand the figure to be a traveller, a wanderer who has made his way from the streets and towns somewhere below, his origin is the busy world of everyday life but he has risen up, up through the landscape, he has pierced through the veiling mists and now surveys the world. His travels have purified his horizons, they have removed the clutter of a life that is absorbed in the mundane but necessary tasks which sustain his finitude and brought him to a point where he might survey and reflect upon the site of that existence. Embodied finitude and sublime infinity reflect into one another and in that reflection the two extremes are subsumed, their interplay ceases to be that of two opposed forces and becomes a total vista.

Much is obscured from our view. The traveller is only partially revealed to us, we see him only from behind, no hint of his expression, his pose the only indication of his mood. The art historian assures us that the figure before us is the artist himself projected into the landscape^[2]. Of course this may be so, yet all we see is the figure of a man absorbed in a meditative encounter with nature. We could project an image of the figure, we could posit an identity, yet this would go beyond what is present to us, it would go beyond what our perspective allows. We accept the finitude of our perspective but we allow our thoughts to explore the possibilities.

The landscape itself is only partly revealed; the wanderer’s journey has indeed provided a broader horizon then he could have found below but total clarity has not been achieved. The rocks and peaks jutting through the sea of mist at first appear as isolated and independent moments, a series of natural objects, the mist concealing the underlying unity. From our perceptive this fundamental unity cannot be known, for we cannot see what lies behind the fog, we could project from what we see towards that unity and indeed we know it even though we cant see it. But with what right do we do so, what is before us seems to be a fragmentary landscape, obscured by mist and so once more we have to accept that truth lies in excess of our perspective.

From his transcendent vantagepoint the traveller has a view whereby he can infer, yet not hold, the ultimate unity of the landscape he surveys, if he moved back down from the hights the immediacy of the things of the world would suddenly crowed around him, he would become embedded in the world, unconsciously embedded in the nature he now encounters, consumed in the infinite. Natures immediacy would prevent him from viewing it, it would prevent his reflection upon it, it is only in moving out of the realm of the everyday world that he can reach a point where he can adequately reflect upon nature. His journey has not only been a movement through space and time but also a movement in thought and perspective. So the nature he encounters is the same nature as he encounters in his everyday life, only his mode of reflection has changed.

He is still embedded in nature he is still part of what he surveys, but now nature opens up to him in an auratic sense, it returns his gaze and engages him in such a way as to… His vista is Revelation, it offers a pantheistic insight into ultimate truth, for from this rich precipice he can gaze into the infinite and see the truth of his being - wave after wave of cloud, rolling hills and swirling mists, steady earth, defiant rock and open sky an interplay of being and becoming a sea of constant change stabilised by a unity he knows but cannot see. He can look into nature and see himself, his highs and lows, his fluxing moods, the movement of his life juxtaposed against the unity of his being, a unity he knows but cannot hold. The excess which he detects in nature, that indeterminable and auratic presence evidences the truth of his finitude and also affirms his unity with the infinite; evidences the paradox of his being.

We no longer need to worry about the identity of the traveller for the traveller has become identical with his object. Now the cosmic pain^[3] that is expressed by the landscape reflects to us the mood of its interlocutor just as the rich green of his costume reflects the verdural richness of the valleys which the mists conceal. The landscape is no longer fragmentary but a unified vision, an interplay of land and mist, being and becoming. The human subject coming to know itself through reflections on nature.

2. With reference to Schelling

The image is indeed a pantheist vision, it is a vision of the unity of human being and natural being, it shows the human subject, a pinnacle of natural complexity surveying nature. It is an encounter with the self; the subjects encounter with nature is an encounter with itself, it is an aspect of an infinite and self-developing substance looking back on itself, looking back at the nature from which it has emerged. As a finite aspect of an infinite nature there will always be an excess in this encounter. Knowledged can never know itself completely there is always mist, there is always limit. Religious thinkers thought that the intellectual revolutions of their day threatened to separate human existence from ultimate realities - yet this could only be the case for those whose deity is projected out beyond the frame of nature into some transcendent realm beyond space and time. Yet if nature is itself the ultimate reality then human being is always and primarily embedded within ultimate reality.

In the System of Transcendental Idealism Schelling claimed that art is the only way of communicating philosophy’s highest^[4] a clear display of his pessimism about the capacity to discursively articulate ultimate insights about the nature of reality. Ultimately Schelling is seeking some relation to ultimate realities, even from his earliest essay’s at Tübingen this seems to be his goal yet he also carries a pessimistic despair at ever being able to articulate his intuitions about that reality. An early essay on Plato’s Timeaus bares the following quote from Plato as a refrain “It is difficult to find the author and father of the universe, and impossible, after one has found him to proclaim him to all”^[5]. Art thus becomes the vehicle whereby these ultimate realities can be brought to presence, yet Schelling does seem to have moved away from metaphysics, it is not the a transcendent god or any supernatural reality that his philosophy seeks rather nature itself which becomes that ultimate reality. In bringing forth the notion of a self-developing realm of nature, an immanent naturalist teleology he reintroduces a notion of ’spiritualised’ nature. Human life becomes part of a natural movement and the hope that we might share a common purpose with nature once again becomes a possibility. For as part of the natural realm our encounter with nature is an encounter with ourselves.

---

^[1] My completely amateur excursion into the realm of Romantic Art is supported by a philosophical understanding of the work of Schelling rather than a thorough understanding of art history and theory. Given, however, that Frederick and Schelling where not only almost exact contemporaries but actually met in Dresden I feel that my Schellingian reflections on this piece are not entirely unusal.
^[2] Craske, Mathew. Art In Europe 1700-1830: A History of the Visual Arts in an Era of Unprecedented Urban Economic Growth. Oxford University Press. Oxford. (1997). p 67-8
^[3] Toman, Rolf. Neoclassicism and Romanticism: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting and Drawings 1750-1848. Könemann. Cologne. 2000. p 441.
^[4] Op cit. Schelling (1800). p 14.
^[5] Op cit. Baum. P 201

Myth, Poetry and Norse Religion

by P.A.Q.

Myth is a means of apprehending and communicating value in the world in an internally consistent way, using narrative as a vehicle^[1]. Myth and myth making are emotional and creative interactions which, in a sense, might seem non rational. Rational discourse on myth seeks to de-mythologise, to ‘explain’ the non-rational, a process which severs myth from its emotional basis^[2]. Myths should first and foremost be read and enjoyed. In each reading, as in each telling, the myth is transformed by its interaction with the individual, an individual who is caught in and cannot be divorced from matters contemporaneous. This essay will firstly analyse some important mythological theory, with a view to establishing the limitation of such theory, before the focus is narrowed to analyse the nature of Norse mythical poetry. Icelandic literature, especially poetry, has been seen as a literary phenomenon, a cultural pinnacle, standing in sharp contrast to the image of the ‘bloodthirsty’ viking raider. However, the two are not mutually exclusive. Egil Skala-Grimsson, the famous Norse poet, led an illustrious viking life, raiding and killing his way from Norway to England. Poetry was very important to the Scandinavian religion, whose sovereign god was the god of poetic inspiration. The many myths which deal with the origins of poetry also attest to this importance. This essay will conclude by an examination of the nature and relation of Odinn, poetry and Norse religion.

Myth and theory.
Late nineteen century theories of myth, such as those presented by J.G.Frazer^[3], rely on a connection between myth and ritual, where mythology represents the theoretical component of the more practical ritual. In terms of the relationship between myth and ritual in an ancient context, it is recognised that the limited evidence would render such relationships speculative. It is also important to consider that this theory does not fit with many contemporary ethnographic accounts of myth and ritual^[4]. From these accounts it can be seen that mythology, although associated with some aspects of ritual, is not necessarily the basis of all ritual. Ritual, like myth, is dynamic and communicative, ritual can use myth as the basis for symbolism but this is not necessarily always the case. Despite its frequent association with ritual, myth must be regarded as essentially a self contained cognitive system, one which is internally consistent, a logical paradigm, rational yet metaphoric^[5].

Many believe that myth is closely associated with establishing social mores. This functionalist view is however limited and fails to recognise that myth also articulates modes of behaviour beyond that which is socially acceptable, and in some cases seems to promote them^[6]. In this, any effective study of myth must consider the mythic relationship to society, but despite this important social element it must also be recognised that myth has important communicative and intellectual elements for the individual. Myth is both socially and intellectually engaged^[7] and so one must not only consider the material and social world expressed by myth but also the intellectual world. Other students of myth show an historicist approach to myth, attempting to recover an ‘original’ version of myth and reclaim it as some primal verity. Myth however is not a monolithic entity, it exists in various forms at various times and shows regional variation, depending on the needs of the community^[8]. Every variant narrative, every fragmentary detail is valuable, there is no original or correct version of any myth.

Norse Literature.
Close to the year 1220 an Icelandic scholar, Snorri Sturluson, produced his famous work entitled Edda. This work of prose was to provide a guide for the writing of traditional poetry, an art which Snorri felt was in decline. Snorri’s material was structured using the vehicle of Scandinavian myth, and in this work many myths are either told or alluded to. Although Christian, many believe that Snorri did in fact preserve many of the values of old Norse society especially since Iceland had only adopted Christianity in 1000 C.E^[9]. Snorri was a native of Iceland, he had travelled the Scandinavian lands widely, and may have been exposed to some pagan practices which survived in Sweden until the end of the Twelfth century. Despite this there is undoubtable evidence of strong Christian theoretical premises to his work, the prologue which euhemerises the gods and claims that the religion of the north is a natural religion which developed after the great flood^[10].

Snorri’s Edda remained one of the main sources of information on the old Scandinavian religion, until in 1642 a Bishop Brynjolfur Sveinsson obtained a codex of poetics, believed to have been compiled by Saemundr Sigfusson ‘the Wise’ (1056-1133). The codex found by Bishop Brynjolfur was presented to King Frederick the III of Denmark and since has become known as the Codex Regius^[11]. Among the few mythological lays in the Codex Regius are Havamal and Voluspa^[12], which were the first of the collection to reach print in 1665. The codex, dated c.1270, is believed to have been copied from one or more older texts, the oldest literary recordings being those cited in Snorri’s Edda (c.1220)^[13].

Essentially there are two poetic forms which emerge from the Nordic culture, Eddic poetry (mostly contained in the Codex Regius) is rhythmic and alliterative and resembles much Old English poetry, and is either mythical or related to heroic legend. The mythic poetry of the Edda are of two main kinds: narratives, usually illustrative or pedagogic in nature, and didactic poems^[14]. Many poems such as Havamal reflect both elements. The codex is important to the study of Norse heathenism as it contains several purely mythical lays and also heroic lays with mythical allusions to the gods and other inhabitants of the Norse mythic world. It has been said that it is impossible to understand Norse religion, literature or history without some knowledge of this type of poetry^[15]. A later poetic development was that of skaldic poetry, an art highly patronised by nobility, usually dealing with the events of contemporary history, and unlike Eddic poetry, usually attributed to a specific poet. This form of poetry is marked firstly by its formalism, every syllable is counted and also by the use of periphrases (kennings) which developed the use of metaphor beyond that of the earlier Eddic poetry^[16]. Kennings are given to many aspects of the Norse world, from the gods to the sea, from poetry to ships. Among the most numerous kennings are names for Odinn (eg. HangaTyr- Tyr of the hanged, or hrafenass-raven deity^[17].) also plentiful are kennings for poetry such as Kvasir’s blood^[18]. The Skaldic poets honed their use of language against an ever evolving interpretation of the myths, they explored the meaning of their myths. Skaldic poetry opened up a vast hermeneutical well for Norse poetry and myth and brought with it some of the most artistic use of language during the middle ages^[19]. There is also literature which would seem to be transitional between these two poetic forms such as Eiriksmal a skaldic poem written in Eddic form^[20]. Then there are the poems of the legendary Egill Skalla-Grimsson, which are skaldic yet contain much mythical material usually contained in Eddic poetry^[21].

The fact that poetry is so important to Norse mythic literature is evidenced in the narratives of Odinn’s winning of the mead of poetic inspiration. Odinn is the first to bring the art of Poetry to Asgard, the home of the gods. This narrative is also given in prose form in Snorri’s Edda, however the most important poetic references to this narrative are contained in the Eddic poem Havamal. The theft is alluded to in three variant forms in Havamal which would indicate that this narrative existed in different forms^[22]. Snorri could not have obtained the detailed version in his Edda^[23] (p. 61-64) purely from Havamal, which is not a detailed account, but merely a series of allusions to the winning of the mead. Possibly Snorri had more then one source for his version and one not contained in Havamal. The myths of Odinn winning the mead of poetry are reflected in other Indo-European myths which relate to the gaining of wisdom, particularly the story of the salmon of wisdom, also Indra and his drink soma. Other poems in the Edda also reflect this story particularly Fafnismal (31-32) which tells how Sigurd gained wisdom from drinking the blood of a dragon’s heart and also echoes the story of Finn and the salmon of wisdom^[24].

Poetry and Germanic Religion.
Evidence for an ancient Germanic religion is primarily based on external commentaries such as those of Caesar ^[25] and Tacitus^[26]. These are valuable sources, though not entirely reliable, since they reflect the agendas of their authors. The earliest source material in the vernacular is from medieval Iceland, an historical and geographic context distinct from that of “The Gallic Wars” or “Germania”. Yet within the corpus of Eddic poetry there exists evidence that such poetry does hark back to very ancient sources, albeit much distorted by transmission. The earliest datable event in Norse literature is the death of Ermanaric the Goth (375 C.E.), some eight hundred years before the poems reached a written form^[27]. This would indicate that the stories contained in the Edda do represent the continuation of an oral tradition which would seem to be at least eight hundred years old. If one considers that many of the tales of the Edda reflect broad elements of stories which appear to have been common to the Indo-European peoples^[28], then one is faced with the possibility that this oral tradition is older still. The Edda’s and Saga’s only allude to or recall aspects of myth and ritual, making interpretation difficult. Ultimately this religion cannot be reconstructed in any real sense, the gulf of time is too great, the evidence too “ill-assorted” ^[29] and it is impossible to have full empathy for a people so removed from our own lives. We can only hope to tease out motifs and themes which were important to these people and through reading their literature attempt to share in their perceptions.

The presence of Odinn dominates Icelandic mythic poetry and prose, yet there is little cultic or place name evidence in Iceland which would relate to Odinn or an Odinnic cult^[30]. Why should a God who has had such a great impact on Icelandic literature leave so slight a mark on its landscape? This might be due to the fact that Odinn is the god of the most literate section of the Icelandic community, the God of poets, and hence celebrated by them. It is possible that the myths do not in fact accurately represent the nature of religious practice in Norse lands. It is possible that we only have access to a privileged, literate, male discourse. The preservation of poetics dedicated to Odinn is not surprising when one considers his role as God of poetic inspiration, and his role in the winning of the mead of poetry. There are many scaldic kennings for poetry which refer to the narrative of the theft, Odinn himself is said to speak only in poetry^[31].

That the poets’ love for this God is probably related to him being patron of poetic inspiration is corroborated by the first stanza of Egil Skala-Grimsson’s poem Sonnatorrek (lament for my sons).

“My mouth strains- To move my tongue,
To weigh and wing- The choice word:
Not easy to breathe- Odinn’s Inspiration
In my hearts hinterland,- little hope there.”^[32].

This poem was written by Egill who, after the death of his sons, is angry with Odinn and blames him for the death. At first he finds it almost impossible to compose the poem but as he does, Odinns inspiration wells up inside him, he composes the poem and overcomes his grief^[33]. The position of the poet in relation to the narratives in Havamal is also interesting and reflects later developments in prose works which feature the poet as protagonist. The best example of this is Egil’s saga in which the story is developed through an interplay of verse and prose. Here verse adds emotional depth to an otherwise action based narrative. The verse highlights the personal intellectual life of the protagonist and thus intensifies the prose narrative by demonstrating how the poet is emotionally interacting with the events of the narrative. This is a unique development in the northern literary tradition^[34]. However, the poets were set a divine precedent in their God Odinn, a God who plays the role of chief protagonist in Snorri’s Edda, a god who speaks only in poetry.^[35]

* * *

Evidence concerning religion and religious practice in Viking age Scandinavia is uncertain, but it does appear that poetry played an important role. However, Literary evidence which points to the importance of poetry in that religion might be misleading. To claim that the Edda’s are representative of wider Norse religion is like claiming that Hesiod’s Cosmogony is indicative of the religious attitudes of Greek society. Literary ‘evidence’ for Norse myth, much like mythological theory, is essentially the product of a literate male elite. What we have contained in the Edda’s is not a mythology which represents ‘Icelandic religion’ or myth, it is merely representative of the way Norse poets perceived myth and especially their own god, Odinn.

Bibliography.

Caesar. The Gallic Wars.(C. Hammond. Trans.) Oxford University Press. Oxford. (1996).

Clunies-Ross, M. Skaldskaparmal: Snorri Sturluson’s ars poetica and medieval theories of language. Odense University Press. Odense. (1987).

Clunies-Ross, M. Prolonged Echoes: Old Norse Myths in Medieval Northern Society. Odense University Press. Canberra. (1994).

Dronke, U. Myth and Fiction in early Norse Lands. Variorum. Vermont. (1996).

Frazer, James G.. The Golden Bough: A study in Magic and Religion. (abriged edition). Papermac. London. 1995.

Greenway, J.L. The Golden Horns: Mythic Imagination and the Nordic past. The University of Georgia Press. Athens. 1977

Hollander, Lee. M. (ed. and trans.) The Poetic Edda. (Second Edition) The University of Texas Press, Austin. 1996.

Kristjansson, J. Foote, P (ed). Eddas and Sagas: Iceland’s Medieval literature. Hid islenska bokmenntafelag. Reykjavik. (1988).

Lincoln, Bruce. Myth Cosmos and Society: Indo-European Themes of Creation and Destruction. Harvard University Press. London (1986).

Meulengracht-Sorensen, P. The Unmanly man. Odense University Press. Canberra. (1992)

Palsson, H. Edwards, P. (eds.) Egil’s Saga. Penguin Books. Ringwood Victoria. (1976.).

Sturluson, S. Heimskringla: History of the Kings of Norway. (Hollander L. trans.) University of Texas Press, Austin. (1991).

Tacitus. The Agricola and The Germania. (H. Mattingly & S.A. Handford. Trans). Penguin Books (1970).

Talley, J.E. Runes mandrake and the Gallows. University of California. Los Angles. Germanic Religion. Course Book. Sydney University. (1997)

Turville-Petre, E.O.G. Myth and religion in the North: The Religion of Ancient Scandinavia. University of Oxford Press. London. (1964).

Turville-Petre, E.O.G. The Cult of Odinn in Iceland. Nine Norse Studies. Course Book. Germanic Religion. Sydney University. (1997).

Turville-Petre, E.O.G. Origins of Icelandic Literature. The Clarendon Press. Oxford. (1953).

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^[1] John L, Greenway. The Golden Horns: Mythic Imagination and the Nordic past. The University of Georgia Press. Athens. 1977. p. 2-6.
^[2] Ibid.
^[3] James George Frazer. The Golden Bough: A study in Magic and Religion. (abriged edition). Papermac. London. 1995.
^[4] Margaret Clunies-Ross. Prolonged Echoes: Old Norse Myths and medieval Northern society. Odense University Press. Odense. (1994). p. 11-12.
^[5] Ibid. p. 13-17.
^[6] Odinn, the most prominent Norse god, is often portrayed in a very negative light, often associated with oath breaking and theft he is also associated with individualism and personal quest for knowledge, none of which would be seen as conducive to social harmony.
^[7] Op cit. Margaret Clunies Ross. (1994). p 15.
^[8] Brit- Mari Nasstrom. Freyja- the Great Goddess of the North. University of Lund. Sweden. (1995). p 30-31.
^[9] Jonas Kristjansson,. Foote, P (ed). Eddas and Sagas: Iceland’s Medieval literature. Hid islenska bokmenntafelag. Reykjavik. (1988). p. 20-5.
^[10] Margaret Clunies-Ross. Skaldskaparmal: Snorri Sturluson’s ars poetica and medieval theories of language. Odense University Press. Odense. (1987). p. 14-15.
^[11] Op cit. Jonas Kristjansson. (1988). p. 20-5.
^[12] Hollander, Lee. M. (ed. and trans.) The Poetic Edda. (Second Edition) The University of Texas Press, Austin. 1996.
^[13] E.O.G. Turvile Petre. Myth and religion of the North.p 8-9.
^[14] Ibid.
^[15] E.O.G. Turville-Petre. Origins of Icelandic Literature. The Clarendon Press. Oxford. (1953). p16.
^[16] Turville-Petre, E.O.G. Myth and religion in the North: The Religion of Ancient Scandinavia. University of Oxford Press. London. (1964). p. 14-15.
^[17] Op cit Margaret Clunies-Ross. (1987). p. 100-101.
^[18] Snorri Sturluson. (A Falks. trans) Edda. Everyman. London. (1995). p. 70-72.
^[19] Op cit. E.O.G. Turvile Petre. (1964). p15.
^[20] Ibid.
^[21] H. Palsson. P. Edwards. (eds.) Egil’s Saga. Penguin Books. Ringwood Victoria. (1976.).
^[22] Op cit. E.O.G. Turvile Petre. (1964). p. 35-7.
^[23] Op cit. Snorri Sturluson. (1995).
^[24] Ibid. p. 40-1.
^[25] Caesar. The Gallic Wars.(C. Hammond. Trans.) Oxford University Press. Oxford. (1996).
^[26] Tacitus. The Agricola and The Germania. (H. Mattingly & S.A. Handford. Trans). Penguin Books (1970).
^[27] Op cit. E.O.G. Turville Petre. (1964). p. 196.
^[28] Particularly the story of creation as alluded to in Voluspa and as told by Snorri in Gylfaginning, for a more detailed examination see. Bruce Lincoln. Myth Cosmos and Society: Indo-European Themes of Creation and Destruction. Harvard University Press. London (1986).

^[29] Mircea Eliade. Patterns in Comparative Religion. University of Nebraska Press. Lincoln. (1996). p. 5.
^[30] E.O.G. Turvile-Petre. The Cult of Odinn in Iceland. Nine Norse Studies. Course Book. Germanic Religion. Sydney University. (1997).
^[31] Sturluson, S. Heimskringla: History of the Kings of Norway. (Hollander L. trans.) University of Texas Press, Austin. (1991).

^[32] Op cit. H. Palsson. P. Edwards. (1976). p. 204.
^[33] Dronke, U. Myth and Fiction in early Norse Lands. Variorum. Vermont. (1996).
^[34] Ibid p25
^[35] Ibid.

Odhinn and Tyr – Two modes of Sovereignty

by P.A.Q.

War and peace, the two concepts seem worlds apart, in fact they are often thought of as exact opposites, they seem to be two extremes that are irreconcilable with each other. Yet they are two intimately linked social potentialities. Crisis and stability, again we are presented with two opposed concepts, concepts that seem antithetical - but once again these are two potentialities that often confront societies. This latter pair of concepts has some resonance with the former pair, crisis seems to resonate with the concept of war, war represents a social modality through which a society seeks to overcome a crisis. Such an overcoming brings that society towards stability and peace. Yet times of war and crisis are very different to times of peace and stability, and so in facing times of crisis societies are forced into patterns of behavior that are very different from those that they display in times of peace. The social mode is, by necessity, altered by the conditions that the society has to face and hence the form of leadership that is required will also have to adapt to the conditions that the society has to face. A society that is inflexible in the face of changed conditions is not likely to be a long lived one - society must have the capacity to move between different modalities.

Think now of two more abstract concepts - magic and law, there seems again to be some tension between these two concepts even though the tension is not quite as distinct as in our first two examples. Yet for our ancestors these two concepts also resonate with the notions of war and peace, crisis and stability, albeit in quite an abstract way. These two notions, magic and law, are linked to two modes of leadership or sovereignty, they serve as abstract yet pragmatic modes or principles of action for a society which is realistic about the potentiality for war as well as the possibility of peace. Such a claim is difficult for many moderns to accept, we are often unable to see beyond our legalistic notion of sovereignty and so we fail to understand, worst still we fail to accept the possibility, of a form of sovereignty which some commentators refer to as magical. One of the main aims of this essay is to highlight the sophistication of our ancestral notions of sovereignty through demonstrating that these two social modes were not only social realities but also mythical and sacral realities. In so doing I hope to be able to open up new ways of considering the nature of two of the most well known deities in the Teutonic world - Odhinn and Tyr.

In order to achieve this I have broken the article into two sections. The first section aims to provide a broad background for the ideas presented in part two. It covers a consideration of the types of evidence for Teutonic religion and the limitations of that evidence. It also considers the Indo-European background to studies in Teutonic myth and religion - this is important as much of the argument presented in part two is based on Indo-European studies. This will involve a very brief consideration of two key players in the field of Indo-European studies, the infamous Georges Dumezil and a more contemporary scholar - Bruce Lincoln. Both of these theorists have argued that Indo-European society is marked by a dualistic, or bi-functional notion of sovereignty. With this background information laid Part Two takes up the issue of bi-functional sovereignty in regard to the Gods and myths of the Teutonic people. Part two will demonstrate that this bi-functional model is applicable to the Teutonic people; it will demonstrate that this bi-functionality in sovereignty is connected to two forms of command - direct verbal command and indirect magical command; it will demonstrate that this bi-functionality of sovereignty is also linked to a bi-functionality in the notion of the holy - that there are two modes of holiness in Teutonic religion; further it will show that this bi-functionality of sovereignty is reflected in the pantheon of the Teutonic people through the gods Odhinn and Tyr. The article will end by considering the exact relationship that these gods have to the two notions of sovereignty that this article proposes.

Part One:
Teutonic and Indo-European society - evidence and models.

Evidence For Teutonic Religion

A good deal of the evidence for Teutonic religion is drawn from external commentaries, these are two fold: Firstly those written by non-Christian contemporaries such as those of Gaius Julius Caesar (C.100 - 44 BCE) and Cornelius Tacitus (C.56 - C.120 BCE); Secondly those written at a later date based on the reportage of Christian missionaries such as Anskar (801-865 BCE). These are undoubtedly quite valuable sources, yet it must be emphasised that they are not entirely reliable as they tend to reflect the agendas of their authors. In the first case Caesar is a Roman General eager to win tribute and hence there is a tendency for self aggrandizement in his work - this in turn leads Caesar to focus on the militaristic nature of the Teutonic tribes and to emphasise their ferocity. Tacitus is a writer who seems to have a critical agenda and tends to portray the Germans as ‘Noble Savages’ and almost models of virtue in contrast to what he sees as the decadence of his own people - hence his work carries its own particular bias. In the case of Christian missions to the North there are a number of factors which must be considered as possibly skewing reportage, most importantly the need to portray Christianity as the superior faith by highlighting the barbarism of the Heathen, the savagery of their religion and the impotence of their gods (a pattern that missionaries continued well into the modern period). So while these external accounts of Teutonic religious practice are important one must approach them with caution, we must approach them critically, holding off from the immediate acceptance of these reports and trying to understand the motivations of the particular authors.

Due to the difficulties presented by these external sources one feels the pressure to turn to internal sources, archaeological artifacts and particularly texts written by Teutonic folk in their vernacular language. It is these sources which are felt to provide the most intimate contact with the life world of our Teutonic ancestors and so these become an important tool for accessing our old ways. This is not, however, a path that is completely problem free and these internal sources present problems of their own. Most important is the fact that our textual record is not complete, there are gaps in our knowledge that will prove difficult to fill from internal textual sources alone. Where source material in the vernacular exists it is primarily from medieval Scandinavia and more specifically from Iceland, a historical and geographic context distinct from that of Caesar’s “The Gallic Wars” ^[1] or Tacitus’ “Germania”^[2]. This geographical and temporal distance makes it difficult to directly confirm or deny any of the details provided by our early external sources. Nonetheless if one proceeds cautiously some fruitful comparisons between these texts can be made, these two sources of information can inform each other to provide better access to the traditions of our ancestors.

The Icelandic vernacular literature is essentially comprised of two sorts: The Eddas, which are poetic accounts of Northern myth and legend and the Sagas which are prose accounts of life in the Scandinavian society of the Viking age. To these two main categories can be added the writings of Snorri Sturluson, prose writings which form important sources for both Myth and History. The Eddas and Sagas provide us with a reasonably good route of access to the mythology, folklore and customs of our ancestors but only allude to aspects of ritual. The scarcity of evidence for the ritual practice of our ancestors has made the reconstruction of our ancestral ways extremely difficult. It must, however, be recognised that, at present, this religion cannot be reconstructed with perfect precision, the gulf of time is too great, the evidence too ill-assorted - reconstruction must proceed carefully through close study of evidence and careful analysis of language. Yet non-specialists can hope to benefit from the work of scholars and tease out motifs and themes which were important to our ancestors, most importantly the non-specialist can, through reading our ancestral literature, attempt to share in the perceptions of their long dead kin. Ultimately this is just as important as accuracy in reconstruction - through coming to understand our ancestors and their values we reactivate the primordial understanding of the world which lies buried within us - we reactive the primordial wisdom of our folk. Our factual knowledge of their tradition grows constantly, this kindles the fires of reconstruction. But our inner understanding of those facts - an understanding based on the reactivation of our ancestral relation to the world - kindles an altogether different fire, it kindles the fires of wisdom. Indeed it is wisdom which is the source of all meaningful reconstruction. Our task as modern folk is not to merely act on knowledge and describe what ‘was’, but to take our knowledge of what ‘was’ and use it with wisdom to revitalise our culture in the present - our aim is to turn knowledge of what ‘was’ into wisdom in what ‘is’.

The Indo-European connection: Broadening the Context

Modern Ásatrúar acknowledge the fact that it is difficult for us to exactly determine the nature of our ancestral tradition directly from internal sources and for many this raises another problem, that of context. Is the field of study to be narrowed to exclude anything beyond that which is specifically Teutonic or does one look to Indo-European cultures for correspondences which might illuminate the evidence available through purely Teutonic material? The first approach, due to limited evidence and the delicate nature of the sources, might seem to leave one at a bit of a dead end in relation to many aspects of the tradition. The second approach risks abstraction into theoretical comparisons and speculations which are potentially far removed from the social reality of life in Teutonic society. Yet with the limitations of each of these approaches in mind one can seek to overcome these difficulties - one can use comparative Indo-European material as a means of accessing aspects of the Teutonic tradition which are opaque or concealed. More importantly one can use this material to fill out and deepen our understanding of those aspects of the tradition which are more familiar to us. This is an especially powerful tool for those who have a sound foundation in the specifically Teutonic tradition, those who have a sound understanding of the specifically Teutonic approach to the world. Such a person can take the disparate Indo-European material and interrogate it from the ‘perspective of the Teuton’ to try and discern how earlier Indo-European ideas apply within our own tradition.

The use of Indo-European comparative material as a means of coming to understand Teutonic religion is an approach which has been promoted by scholars such as Georges Dumezil and recently Bruce Lincoln. Their work is based on two premises, firstly that myth expresses social values that strengthen social coherence and secondly that linguistic unity represents a considerable ideological unity^[3]. The first point emphasises the idea that the key avenue to understanding the life world of a people is through their mythology and legends. Myth and legend codify the most important values and beliefs of a people, they reflect the relation of that people to the world - physically, emotionally and intellectually. Understanding this relationship to the world is the key to understanding the folk, the society and the religion. Hence Myth is not mere religious discourse but is a vehicle for the aesthetic expression of culture and deep cultural values.

The second point emphasises the importance of language as a vehicle of culture and deep cultural values - language is the primary vehicle of culture and one will have a hard time understanding a culture without first having some understanding of that cultures language. The point that linguistic unity represents a considerable ideological unity is vital for our tradition - this notion implies that the linguistic unity of the Teutonic languages, of which modern English is a part, provides a broad ideological unity for those who share that language. The closer the languages the closer the ideological unity. Our own understanding of the Modern English language can be seen as a primary link to the ideology and values of our ancestors, this is also the case for all the other modern Teutonic languages such as; German, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Dutch and all the dialects of these languages.

Georges Dumezil: The Tripartite division of Indo-European Society

Georges Dumezil, one of the most famous Indo-Eurpoean scholars of our time, has proposed a controversial theory about the structure of Indo-European society which claims that that society was subject to a tripartite division which is broadly reflected in the notion that society is comprised of three estates; firstly the peasantry or sometimes slaves, secondly the warrior class and thirdly the sovereign, noble or ruling class. This is both a controversial theory and one that on first glance does not appear to be of great significance - as Dumezil’s tripartite functional division of society is evident in many societies and hence it does not seem to say much about the specific nature of Indo-European society. However, in Indo-European society this structure is intimately connected to religion and receives expression in myth, pantheon and ritual - hence the social structure of the Indo-European people is seen as a reflection of mythical structure of the cosmos, this is in line with the thesis that myth expresses and strengthens deep social values. This reinforces the notion that Dumezil’s theory is not purely sociological but a theory about broad cultural paradigms, paradigms which are thought to reflect something of the cognitive structures of the Indo-European people. A tripartite social structure which is reflected in a tripartite mythic and ritual structure reflects a tripartite mode of understanding the world. Hence Dumezil’s theory is a theory about the way the Indo-European mind structures its world.

In order to understand the relation between this tripartite division and Indo-European culture it is important to understand the way Dumezil characterises the social structure of the Indo-European world. The foremost layer of the social structure, the realm of sovereignty, is the most complex and is itself subject to its own internal division. Sovereignty is considered a bipartite system based on the opposition of two modalities of sovereignty - magical sovereignty based on rule by magical power (or might) and juridical sovereignty based on the rule of law. Both forms of sovereignty are seen as legitimate modes of rule in different contexts, different circumstances require different modalities of rule. The second layer of the social structure is the warrior function, this is a layer which represents physical force which can be directed outward towards hostile forces or at times inwards in policing actions. The third layer of the social structure is that of the rural peasantry, this is the function of fecundity and prosperity, this class can be associated with the class of slaves - although this class is very different to the slave class of the early modern era and is probably best thought of as an underclass.

This social structure is reflected to a significant degree in Indo-European mythology where the gods were marked by this three fold division - the mythical society reflects the nature of the society experienced in the life world of the Indo-European people. This can be seen in the Nordic context where Odinn and Tyr represent the dual aspects of magical and juridical sovereignty (see Table 5). The Gods Thorr and Heimdallr represent the warrior function and the Gods Freyr and Freyja represent the function of fecundity and fertility so important to the rural peasantry. The relation of this last group of deities to the social structure is quite complex and it seems that certain Teutonic peoples found an important role for the gods of fertility and fecundity in their noble cults. This is an interesting point but will not be pursued here as it is beyond the scope of this article.

There is also important mythical support for Dumezil’s thesis that Indo-European society was based around a tripartite social structure, here the myths are used to support a sociological thesis. Most important in this regard is the Eddic Rigsthula ^[4], a myth reinforcing the threefold division of society into that of Thrall (slaves), Karl (freemen) and Jarl (nobles) ^[5]. Some commentators have treated this narrative with critical caution claiming that it is merely a justification for aristocratic rule. This criticism has some force, and indeed the poem could not be seen as a discourse free of value judgements about the merits of the various estates. But we are not here interested in the value judgements that the poem contains, rather we are interested in the social structure it reflects - which is indeed tri-partite. This poem itself seems to be a reflex of an older narrative and may be connected to the earlier continental narrative of the three sons of Mannus, as described by Tacitus, who Dumezil associates with the Indic Manu^[6] (See Table 6)^[7]. The social stratification has also been preserved in the colour symbolism of Indo-European societies, where Indian, Iranian, Latin and Celtic cultures all associated the priestly or sovereign group with the colour white, warriors with the colour red and peasants with dark colours^[8]. Such a schema finds its expression in Teutonic culture where in the Rigsthula the poet mentions the hair colour of Rigr’s three sons, the first Thral has “dark” hair (strophe 7), the second Karl was “ruddy” (strophe 21) and Jarl whose hair was “flaxen” (Strophe 35) ^[9].

Lincoln’s Hegelian Revision of Dumezil: An alternate Model for Indo-European social structure.

Bruce Lincoln using similar methods to Dumezil and working largely with Indo-Iranian material has proposed a model of Proto-Indo-European society based on a four tiered social system. In essence this system is broadly in harmony with the tripartite model of Dumezil yet this system is also one that allows for a greater degree of complexity in the power relations between the various groupings of people in the system. Lincoln