The Well of Remembrance: Rediscovering the Earth Wisdom Myths of Northern Europe 9780834829312, 0834829312

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M A R IJ A

G IM B U T A S

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“The Well of Remembrance is Roots for Euro-Americans, A lon^overdue exploration of ancient Germanic-Celtic myths that may help us recover our forgotten ecological wisdom." —S\\l Keen, author of Tire in the Helix and llvmns to an l nknoicn God “This significant arrd timely work lets us hear the ancestral voices of ancient'j|urope, offering celebration of life and guidance in the afts'of reconciliation. ■—Jo.AX-YA VIaCY, author of World as borer. It arid as Self “Ralph Metzner’s intimate knowledge of nonordirtary states of conscious­ ness, impeccable scholarship, and creative vision provide a fascinating journey through north European mythology.’" ,f ^ — S t a m s i . aa Ö R O F , author of Beyond the Brain ■

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“Stunning—a sourcebook with immediate application to the most urgent

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R Al l’ll Mevzx Klý: Pll.D .. is á psychotherapist and a professor of psy­ chology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. One of the ' pioneers fjfi the study of nonordinary states.of consciousness, he has ; written several hooks: -including Maps o f Consciousness and Opening ~ to innfr Light.

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Cover art: Detail from the Sanda Stone, fifth-seventh eeptnrv CE, Sanda church remefcry, Cotlands fornsal. Vishy, Sweden. . . | ©1994 ShamBháía Publications, Inc. Profited* in L.S.A.

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issues'of our contemporary world. Metzner’s exploration of the roots of the Western psyche is in the tradition of Campbell, Eliade, and Jung, but in his penetrating understanding of the industrial impasse, as well as in his focus on the pirerChristian Germanic mythology andIts relevande for us todgv,! he goes beyond what anyone before him has yet offered, i

T h e W e l l of Rem em brance R e d is c o v e rin g the E a rth W isd o m M y th s o f N o r th e r n E u ro p e

RALPH

M ETZNER

with contributions by B arbel K reidt N

orbert

M ayer

Ch ristian R atsch

Foreword by M arija G im b u t a s

Shambhala

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Boston & London

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1994

CEL as 3

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To Our ancestors, who kept and toldfor us the ancient stones

Shambhala Publications, Inc. Horticultural Hall 300'Massachusetts Avenue Boston, Massachusetts 02115 © 1994 by Ralph Metzner

Our brothers and sisters, who love the Earth with all her beings

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, w ithout permission in writing from the publisher. 9

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Our descendants, who will inherit the Earth and hear and tell again the ancient stories.

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First Edition Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper © Distributed in the United States by Random House, In c., and in Canada by Random House of Canada Ltd Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Metzner, Ralph. The well of remembrance: rediscovering the earth wisdom myths of northern Europe/Ralph Metzner; with contributions by Barbel Kreidt, Norbert Mayer, Christian Ratsch; foreword by Marija Gimbutas.— 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-57062-028-8 (alk. paper) 1. Mythology, Germanic. 2. Germanic peoples— Religion. 3. Spiritual life. I. Title. BL863.M48 1994 94-14443 293'. 13— dc20 CIP

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C O N TE N TS

Illustrations Foreword Acknowledgments

x xi xiii

Introduction Prologue: The Nazi Curse on Germanic Mythology

1 17

PART ONE

T H E IN D O -E U R O P E A N AND N O R D IC -G E R M A N IC PEOPLES

1. Migrations and I nvasions of the I ndo -Europeans Origins of the Indo-Europeans The Descendants of the Kurgan Invaders in Europe The Indo-European Legacy

31 31 37 43

2. T he R eligion and W orldview of the I ndo -Europeans Animism, Shamanism, and Paganism Changing Conceptions of Death and the Afterlife The Destruction of the Old Religion

46 48 51 55

3. Ancient G ermanic Society Patriarchy The Family, the Clan, and the Tribe From Endogamy to Exogamy

61 63 65 68

CONTENTS I ix

viii I CONTENTS

4. W odan ’s W arriors and the H eroic Mystique Berserker Fury and the Rituals of Battle Women in War and the Valkyrie Battle Maidens The Transformed Berserkers

73 75 79 81

5. Sacred R unes and Mythic P oetry Runes and Divination The Edda: Songs and Visions of the Elder Mothers

85 85 91

Chronology

98

PART TWO

N O R D IC -G E R M A N IC M YTHS A N D T H E IR M E A N IN G FOR OUR T IM E

6. O din and the A esir Sky G ods Odin the Wandering Truth-Seeker Other Aesir Gods: Tyr, Thor, Balder, and Loki

111 112 122

7. T he N ew Berserkers • Norbert Mayer

133

8. Freyja and the Vanir Earth D eities Freyja: Goddess of Earth, Sexuality, and Magic Other Vanir Deities: Njörd and Freyr Gullveig and the Origins of War

150 152 161 165

9. V isions of the Fourfold G oddess ■ Barbel Kreidt

173

10. O d in ’s Self -Sacrifice and the T ree of W orlds Odin’s Self-Sacrifice The Tree of Nine Worlds Dwarves, Elves, Giants, and Gods in the Twentieth Century

191 192 199 211

11. T he W ell of R emembrance and the K nowledge of the Ancestors The Three Norns Mimir’s Well and the One-Eyed God The Revenge of the Vanir and Mimir’s Head

215 215 219 224

12. R ituals of R econciliation and the Q uest for the M ead of I nspiration The Reconciliation Ritual and Kvasir’s Blood Twentieth-Century Rituals of Reconciliation Loss and Recovery of the Mead of Inspiration

229 230 234 238

13. T he T wilight of the Sky G ods and N ew D awn of the Earth G oddess The Völva’s Vision of the Ragnarök Cataclysmic Earth Changes The Loosened Monsters and the Final Battle Defeat and Return of the Pagan Deities

244 246 250 255 259

Epilogue Appendix: The Mead of Inspiration and Magical Plants of the Ancient Germans • Christian Ratsch Notes Index

267 279 297 325

FO R E W O R D

IL L U S T R A T IO N S

F igures 1. Kurgan Wave I (4300-3500 bce)

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2. Kurgan Wave III (3000-2500 bce)

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3. The Indo-European Language Family

45

4. Synthetic Rune Table

86

5. Yggdrasil, the Tree of Worlds

201

P lates (following page 142) 1. Odin, the one-eyed, hanged god. 2. Tyr, binding Fenrir, the wolf monster. 3. Thor-Donar with his magical hammer, Mjöllnir. 4. Odin on his horse, Sleipnir. 5. The murder of Baldur by the blind Hödur. 6. Paleolithic mammoth ivory figurine. 7. Neolithic clay pig mask. 8. Freyja, Vanir goddess of love, prosperity, and magic. 9. Freyja as a pagan witch riding on a broomstick. 10. Freyr, Vanir god of fertility and abundance. 11. Odin as eagle-shaman. 12. Odin in combat with Fenrir at the ragnarok.

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The Well of Remembrance succinctly describes this timely work’s essence. Myths run deep with ancient, spiri­ tual wisdom, which can guide us through these troubled modern times. Ralph Metzner demonstrates that many Germanic myths remain extremely vital and meaningful today. This book addresses not only mythologists but all those interested in the return of ancient spirituality to our mechanistic and cold world. Truly, the time has come to drink again from the well of remembrance. The author acknowledges that Odin, the main god of the Germanic pantheon, the questioner and knowledge seeker, in­ spired his research and writing direction. Ancient storytellers bequeathed three great Odin myths to us, and each one holds as much relevance today as it did thousands of years ago. In the first story, Odin hangs himself from the great World Tree in voluntary self-sacrifice, until he sees runes that give him insight into nature’s secret spiritual energies. Another myth describes warring gods, the Vanir and the Aesir, who make peace and then hold a ritual of reconciliation. A third story recounts how Odin, the wandering truth-seeker, drinks from Mimir’s well at the foot of the great World Tree. This is the great Well of Remembrance, which bestows knowledge of ancestral origins. In addition to Odin’s stories, Ralph Metzner carefully selected other meaningful myths. He pays considerable attention to the goddess Freya and her way of earthly love and fruitfulness. Freyja, her priestesses, and her seercsses provide insight into the purpose h e title

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o f clairvoyance ami divinat Inn, Idtm eiiy women's special gifts, now largely atrophied in Western society,

Finally, the author examines the myth of the ragnurök, which recounts the twilight of the shy gods and dawn of the earth goddess. This amazing prophetic vision describes the assault on the ancient nature religions and the near total destruction of Earth. Following the fall of the warrior gods, a seeress prophesied the birth of a new generation of earth gods and the revival of humanity. Ralph Metzner must be congratulated on the broad foundation for modern interpretation he provides in Part One. He weaves together a fine knowledge of history, archaeology, and comparative mythology, marked by an exceptional understanding of the stra­ tigraphy of Norse gods. He gives an excellent overview of IndoEuropean diffusion from central Europe into northern Europe and of the ensuing clash of cultures and ideologies. Many earlier studies described the two groups of gods, the Vanir and Aesir, but neglected to explain that they represent totally disparate cultures and religions— one matristic, peaceful, and earthbound; the other patriarchal, warlike, and dominated by male sky gods. Once we realize that the Vanir and Aesir represent two very different ideologies, it becomes engrossingly clear why they do battle. The author considers their final reconciliation, one of the most significant myths. Instead of continuous battle, they achieve peace and create a ritual of reconciliation—a wonderful paradigm for our times. The author observes that Christianity, especially, could learn a lesson in peace and tolerance from the pagan religions they demonized and destroyed. How wonderful it would be if Christian churches could express their deepest apologies for fostering an oppressive attitude toward women, which resulted in the Inquisition and the eventual extermination of millions of so-called witches. So it remains for each one of us to become like Odin, truthseeker and sacred wanderer. We must personally journey to the Well of Remembrance, imbibe its ancient Earth wisdom, and make that wisdom visible in our world. Ralph Metzner’s impor­ tant work provides a stepping stone on our path. Marija Gimbutas

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

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of gratitude is to the late Marija Gimbutas. Her profound work in the archaeomythology of the cultures of Old Europe provided the impetus and the context for this fresh look at Nordic-Germanic mythology, and her concept of hybrid mythologies was the key interpretive lens that helped me understand many obscurities and puzzles. In addition, she generously answered many questions in our private talks and, despite her illness, agreed to write the book’s foreword. I am also grateful to Joan Marler, her friend and editor. I would next like to acknowledge the friendship and support of my co-authors— Barbel Kreidt, Norbert Mayer, and Christian Rátsch— who share my passionate interest in these ancient myths. By agreeing to contribute to the work, they have helped me to feel less isolated in writing about important themes that are often misunderstood. Other German friends with whom I have discussed the ideas and stories expressed in this book include Martin Kremer, Helga Kremer, Dieter Schmidt, Claudia MiillerEbeling, Hildegard Henke-Mayer, Christian Rode, Gunther Seipel, and Wolfgang Schellhorn. l am profoundly grateful to the participants in vision quests and Earth circle rituals, including rituals of reconciliation, that I have been involved in, both in Germany and the United States, over the past seven years. They have heard and discussed the ancient myths, and they have shared with me their visions, rememberings, and insights, allowing their voices to speak for the goddesses and gods of our ancestors. I honor their courage and y d eepest debt

xiv I ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

their commitment to drinking deeply from the well of remem­ brance. Several friends read or heard me discuss early versions of the material in this book and gave me valuable feedback. They include Joanna Macy, Dolores LaChapelle, Michael Flanagin, Terence McKenna, Rupert Sheldrake, Thomas Manning, Malcolm Groome, Patricia and Jeff Winters, Angeles Arrien, Steven Foster, Meredith Little, Christopher Castle, Paul Devereux, Andrew and Sabine Weil, Tom Pinkson, Rowena Pattee, and Otter and Morn­ ing Glory Zell of the Church of All Worlds. I am indebted to several individuals for their help in bringing the manuscript to completion. Craig Comstock provided ex­ tremely helpful counsel at the beginning of the project, particu­ larly concerning the difficult issues involved in presenting the appropriate historical and political context for a book on Germanic mythology. Annelie Ziirn-Eyermann, a specialist in Germanic languages, gave me valuable references to new translations of the Edda, corrected inaccuracies in the manuscript, and guided me through some of the intricacies of Norse literature and language— even as she disagreed with some of my interpretive speculations. Gunther Seipel provided a tremendous service by translating the manuscript into German for the edition published by Aurum Verlag. Going over the translation helped me clarify the language in both versions. I am thankful to John Baker for translating the three German-language chapters into English. Ami Ronneberg, curator of the Jung Institute ARAS archives in New York, and Michael Flanagin, her counterpart in the San Francisco Jung Institute ARAS, have been most helpful in providing illustrations and getting permission to use them. I am grateful to Michael Antares for his help in producing the diagrams of the IndoEuropean language family and of the world tree Yggdrasill on the Macintosh. Finally, I wish to express my gratitude and appreciation to my family— my wife, Cathy Coleman, my stepson, Elias Coleman Jacobson, and our daughter, Sophia Marija Metzner— for the warmhearted and high-spirited companionship and love they offer.

The Well

of

Remembrance

I ntroduction Thus man forgot that all deities reside in the human breast. — W I L L I A M B l a k e , The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

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explores some of the mythic roots of the Western worldview, the worldview of the culture that, for better and for worse, has come to dominate most of the rest of the world’s peoples. This domination has involved not only economic and political systems but also values, basic attitudes, religious beliefs, language, scientific understanding, and technological ap­ plications. Many individuals, tribes, and nations are struggling to free themselves from the residues of the ideological oppression practiced by what they see as Eurocentric culture. They seek to define their own ethnic or national identities by referring to ancestral traditions and mythic patterns of knowledge. At this time, it seems appropriate for Europeans and Euro-Americans likewise to probe their own ancestral mythology for insight and self-understanding. Many people are aware that the technological-industrial civili­ zation built upon this Euro-American worldview is destroying the life-sustaining environment that has been our home since humans first evolved. While conservationists are trying to replicate the sustainable land-management practices of indigenous societies, ecophilosophers have pointed to the ecological wisdom inherent in the nature-reverencing spirituality of Native American and other traditional societies. Those of us descended from European ancestors are naturally moved to ask whether anything in our own his book

2 I INTRODUCTION

tradition is relevant to surviving the ecological crisis. This book explores the animistic-shamanistic worldview of the aboriginal inhabitants of Europe. In that worldview, as reflected in mythol­ ogy, all of nature is animated by spiritual intelligences, and one can communicate with these through shamanic practices. Thus, we can hope to find traces of the Earth-respecting wisdom that we have long forgotten. Remembering the vital truths encoded in ancient stories can help us find our way out of our Earthdestroying patterns. In particular, I am focusing on the mythology and worldview of the pre-Christian Germanic tribes of northern Europe, because this strand of our collective consciousness is relatively neglected and unknown. Histories of Western civilization usually trace the lineage of our culture back through the scientific revolution in the sixteenth century, the dominance of Christianity during the Mid­ dle Ages, and the classical world of Rome and Greece. Yet the majority of Euro-Americans are descended from the Germanic (including Anglo-Saxon) and Celtic peoples of Northern Europe. During the early centuries of the Christian era, the religion and mythology of these Nordic people was totally suppressed by the Church of Rome. O f course, the animistic polytheism of the Greeks and Romans was also suppressed, but in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the mythology of antiquity was reborn in the philosophic and aesthetic images of Renaissance humanism. No such revival took place for the primarily oral traditions of the Nordic Europeans, which had only a sparse body of literature, fragments of art, and no surviving architecture. In the first century of the Christian era, a legend arose that sailors on a ship in the eastern Mediterranean heard a ghostly voice proclaim, “Great Pan is dead!” Pan was the Lord of Animals, the ruling nature deity of the Greeks. His “death,” like the deaths of the numerous other deities of Mediterranean and northern European cultures, signaled the end of the era of animistic polytheism and the withdrawal of spirituality from the natural world. But what does it mean for a god or goddess to “die”? Immortals cannot die, by definition. We must remember that religion and mythology are systems of

INTRODUCTION | 3

symbols and metaphors. The ancients believed that gods and goddesses often walked on Earth, conversed and interacted with humans, and even at times became the lovers of humans. If a belief system changes in such a way that its deities are no longer recognized or invoked and communication and interaction with them ceases, then, within that metaphor system, the gods have “died.” A different metaphorical way of describing the same transition would be to say that the gods have withdrawn or retreated into their own realm and no longer appear among humans. In the terms of the metaphor system known as Jungian psychol­ ogy, it is said that gods are archetypes, basic ideational patterns that have a life of their own in the collective unconscious of the human species. Such primordial images appear in the dreams and visions of individuals and are manifest in the mythology and art of a culture. When they do appear in dreams or visionary states, they emerge out of the unconscious and into conscious awareness. When they no longer appear and we no longer feel inspired or moved by them, the patterns of knowledge embodied in mythic images can be said to have sunk down into the collective uncon­ scious and become dormant. The gods, we might say, are “sleeping.” Several years ago, I had a dream in which I was gazing at one of the gigantic stone-carved heads of the ancient Mexicans. At that time, I had no knowledge of ancient Meso-American cultures, mythology, or art, nor did I have any feeling of resonance with them. As I looked at the massive stone head, I realized, to my amazement, that the head was alive. I saw that it was breathing, and I sensed some flickering behind the closed eyelids. Very distinctly, the thought appeared in my mind, the old gods are awakening again. That dream began a series of unexpected synchronistic events, which led me to a deep interest in the culture of the Maya, their language, their mythology, and their art. Over the next few years, I continued to receive various pieces of information, from both ordinary and nonordinary realities, that were like clues leading me to a deeper appreciation of the Maya. W hat was particularly intriguing for me was that I had absolutely

4 I INTRODUCTION

no prior connection to the Mayans, nor do I have any Mexican ancestry. The dream catalyzed a deepening desire to explore the mythic traditions of my Nordic-Germanic ancestors. When I was a child, growing up in Berlin during the Second World War with a German lather and Scots mother, I never heard anything about the gods and goddesses of the Germanic or Celtic traditions. My father would read to my brothers and me the myths and legends of the Greeks and Romans and some of the sagas of the Middle Ages, but I heard nothing of Odin or Wotan or Freyja or Thor. As far as I could tell civilization began with the Greeks. Although high school and college extended my view of history back to ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, the religious beliefs and mythic images of the Nordic-Germanic tradition remained a closed book, unintelligible as runes. Because I was aware of the massive taboo against Germanic mythology, I approached its study with considerable anxiety. This taboo arose because the Nazis appeared to have been involved in an attempted revival of ancient Germanic religion and practices. Like most people, I had an almost visceral revulsion against any belief system even remotely associated with the Nazis’ genocidal ideology. Yet in my study of Germanic myth I did not find in it any resemblance to the paranoid racism that was central to the Nazi worldview. Basically, it appears that, for their own ideologi­ cal, propagandistic purposes, the Nazis appropriated certain themes that they claimed to have found in Germanic myth and combined them with illusory assumptions about Aryan racial supremacy. One could say that the Nazis laid a curse on Ger­ manic mythology. Nevertheless, in order to separate the distortion from the reality, I found that I needed to delve into the psychological origins of the Nazi ideology and try to undo the curse that they had laid on ancient Germanic religion and mythology. I describe the results of this inquiry in the Prologue, “The Nazi Curse on Germanic Mythology,” and I invite readers who wish to untangle this convoluted thicket of perverted reasoning to read this pro­ logue before proceeding with the mythological material. For me, the confrontation with Nazism was a continuation of a

INTRODUCTION | 5

lifelong, almost obsessive, struggle to come to terms with this most horrendous manifestation of twentieth-century totalitarian­ ism. Since I was born of half-German descent and spent the first ten years of my childhood in Hitler’s Germany, I have felt haunted by a strangely powerful sense of collective guilt, shame, and responsibility. The difficulty of dealing with twentieth-century German ancestry was a massive barrier to my attempt to get back in touch with ancient Germanic ancestors. This barrier exists as a wall of silence and denial between Germans of my mostly postwar generation and their elders who survived the Nazi holocaust. I worked in Germany with friends and students to create group processes that could help break down this barrier of denial, and in doing so, we developed something we called a “ritual of reconciliation.” Going through that experience helped me to understand the significance of the ritual of reconciliation between families of gods in conflict that is described in Germanic mythol­ ogy. In a later chapter, I shall describe both ancient mythic reconciliation rituals and some contemporary psychological ones. For some years, I have been gradually coming to a deeper realization of the importance of connecting with one’s ancestors. My own inner work and the experiences of my students and my clients in psychotherapy have long convinced me that, while the origins of many disturbances can be found in patterns of relation­ ship with one’s parents (who are, after all, our ancestors too), one often needs to go beyond biographical factors to perinatal and prenatal conditions, to multigenerational family patterns, and to ethnic, cultural, racial, or national influences. Some family thera­ pists now work regularly with family relationship patterns one or two generations back from the family of origin. A few independent-minded psychologists and psychiatrists have occasionally ventured to suggest the existence of an ancestral complex, or something like a family curse, that could.be affecting the inner psychic life of individuals and, hence, their relationships and general attitude toward life. When considering ancestral, hereditary influences, modern Western psychiatry, based as it is on a medical disease model, focuses always on the negative, pathological patterns and their

6 I INTRODUCTION

possible genetic causation— whether a hereditary disease or schizo­ phrenia or alcoholism. This is in marked contrast to the beliefs of traditional, shamanistic cultures, in which positive, healthful patterns, strengths as well as weaknesses, may be traced to the ancestors. In the first communication I ever consciously received from my ancestors, I was reminded that their basic lesson is one of survival. We are the descendants of survivors, women and men who thrived and prospered enough to bear children and raise them to maturity. Those of our predecessors who succumbed early to illness or misfortune would be much less likely to bear and raise children. I found this to be a useful lesson to reflect on when struggling with basic anxieties about security or survival. Unconscious assumptions prevent most people from communi­ cating with ancestors or ancestor spirits, since the commonly held belief is that communication with the dead is not possible. Even those who believe in the continuity of some form of consciousness after death rarely take the further step of attempting to establish communication. O f course, practitioners in various culturally marginal traditions, such as spiritualists, spiritists, mediums, psychics, or channels, do claim such communication. Actually, in most societies the world over where the Euro-American worldview is not exclusively dominant, communication with deceased ances­ tors is an accepted and normal part of social reality. No metaphysi­ cal bias prevents such people from looking to their ancestors for both the origins and the solutions to many of their problems. This practice is sometimes mistakenly referred to as “ancestor worship,” though it is nothing of the kind. The deceased ancestors are not worshiped; they are respected, just as they were when alive. Whenever possible, one maintains communication with them for the purpose of receiving guidance. In shamanistic societies, shaman-healers consciously form alli­ ances with their own and their patients’ ancestors for purposes of healing. In the 1970s, I had a lengthy discussion with the wellknown Hawaiian kahuna and healer Morna Semeone, who told one story after another of exorcisms that she had performed on malevolent ancestors whose continuing activities were exerting destructive influences on their descendants’ lives and family rela­

INTRODUCTION | 7

tionships. A major part of shamanic work consists in entering into a heightened state of consciousness to contact either an ancestor spirit or an animal spirit for the purpose of receiving assistance and guidance in healing. I remember sitting in sweatlodge cere­ monies with a Paiute medicine man as he prayed for his ancestral healing guides to come in and exhorted the participants in the ceremony to call in their ancestor helpers, those they knew consciously and those they didn’t know, “all the way back to the beginning of time.” My interest in shamanic practices grew originally out of my work in the 1960s with hallucinogenic (or psychedelic) drugs, which induce expanded states of consciousness that can be applied in healing, psychotherapy, creativity, or spiritual explorations. Subsequently, I studied Eastern forms of yoga and meditation, as well as a Western esoteric system of “light-fire energy work” that could bring about profound but controlled states of heightened consciousness. I also immersed myself in various newly invented forms of experiential psychotherapy, involving bodywork, breathwork, rebirthing, and the like, which can also facilitate access to deeper layers of previously unconscious material. In the early 1980s I began to study the approach to “core shamanism” taught by anthropologist Michael Harner, which utilizes the technique of rhythmic drumming to induce an altered state referred to as a “shamanic journey.” I also participated in numerous sweatlodge ceremonies and ceremonies involving hallucinogenic or visionary plants (not drugs), which were conducted by both Native Ameri­ can and other teachers thoroughly familiar with those practices. I went on several vision quests, involving four days of solo fasting in the wilderness. These various experiences and explorations led to congruent perceptions from which I gradually gained an empirically and experientially based understanding of some of the basic features of the shamanic worldview. This shamanistic worldview, which overlaps with the belief system referred to as animism, appears to show a worldwide consistency, in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Australia. Since it is a tradition that goes back to the Paleolithic cultures of the hunter-gatherers, there is every reason to suppose that the shaman­

8 I INTRODUCTION

ism of the aboriginal Europeans would also be consistent in its main features with the surviving shamanic traditions. Since my ancestors were Germanic and Celtic, I began to study these traditions in order to find what remains I could of the old European shamanic traditions and in order to learn from them teachings that would be relevant to our situation today. Unlike Native American shamanism, which has been subject to suppres­ sion by Christianity for five hundred years at the most, native European shamanism has been suppressed for close to two thou­ sand years and has all but disappeared as a living tradition. The only exceptions are some practitioners among the Sami people in Lapland, in the far north of Scandinavia, and some traditional elders among the Basques, in the Pyrenees. Residual fragments of shamanic, initiatory teachings can be found in disguised form in folklore, legends, fairy tales, and folk songs. But our main source of information about the spiritual beliefs and shamanic practices of the Germanic tribes prior to Christianity must be their my­ thology. I have long been passionately inspired by the study of mythol­ ogy and have come to see mythology, like shamanism, as one of the main avenues for the task of remembering our spiritual connection to the Earth. Following the insights of C. G. Jung, I have been deeply impressed by the relevance of myth to our understanding of interior processes and the developmental pat­ terns of our lives. I like Jung’s statement that myths are collective dreams and that dreams are our private myths. Images from the personal and the collective unconscious are woven together as fragments or episodes in the evolving story of our lives. Following the insights of Joseph Campbell, I have also come to appreciate how the myths of any culture are the spiritual teaching stories passed down the generations by the ancestors. When I first read it in my thirties, Campbell’s delineation of the hero myth as the life-path story of the individual’s journey of self-transforma­ tion evoked in me deep resonances. In their mythic poems and stories, the ancestors tell us of their life journeys, their wilderness journeys, their shamanic initiations and explorations, their vision quests. They tell of their battles and wars, their triumphs and

INTRODUCTION | 9

tragedies, their discoveries and their failures, and their values and their passions. During my various explorations with altered states of consciousness, whether through hallucinogens, meditation, yoga, breathwork, shamanic practices, or dreams, again and again I would find experiences that I could relate to one or another mythic figure or story. I came to understand many myths as metaphorical descriptions of inner transformation experiences that I was having, and that others were having as well. I wrote about my exploration of metaphoric patterns of transfor­ mation in the book Opening to Inner Light, in which I described ten basic metaphors of self-transformation that occur repeatedly in the world’s spiritual and mythic literature. They occur likewise in the experiential accounts of contemporary individuals undergoing a transformative experience. One example of a widespread mythic transformation metaphor is “death and rebirth," in which the dying of the old self is followed by an intermediate period and then the rebirth of a new identity. Another transformation metaphor-story is the “journey to the place of vision and power,” or the “journey to the other world(s)”— this being a frequent theme of shamanic mythology. I wrote that myths “often contain metaphoric accounts of transformative experiences. They are like the stories told by explorers to the future, would-be voyagers, describing in symbolic form major features of the interior land­ scapes. . . . They allude metaphorically to the interior conflicts to be resolved, hardships to be endured, obstacles to be overcome, rewards to be won, tools to be used, allies to be found, visions to be seen.” Gradually, my knowledge and awareness of the ancestral my­ thology of the Europeans expanded to include not only the GrecoRoman mythology I had been brought up with as a child but also the Egyptian, the Mesopotamian, the Semitic, the Germanic, and the Celtic. An unimaginably rich and varied tapestry of meaning was gradually revealed. I began to experience a powerful resonance with Odin, the Germanic god of ecstatic trance, of shamans, poets, warriors, and seers. Odin was known as the truth-seeking wanderer, the vision-quester or questioner, who wandered through many worlds seeking knowledge and wisdom. The myth

BIJSOE CENTER LIBRARY MOUNT MERCY COLLEGE

10 I INTRODUCTION

of Odin struck me as a core myth of the Germanic psyche. Indeed, the entire trajectory of European culture, with its relentless pursuit of knowledge in its many forms, seems in some way related to the figure of this truth-seeking wandering god, his Greek counterpart Hermes, and such legendary wizard figures as Faust and Merlin. Strangely, the Odin myt;h seemed to describe many aspects of my own life-path: my continuing interest in exploring nonordi­ nary realms of consciousness, triggered by my first psychedelic experience in 1961, as well as my continuing fascination with cross-cultural studies of religion, mythology, and shamanism. The old legends say that the followers of Odin were “seized” by the god, and often I felt as though I was seized, or inspired. I would think of Odin and get insights or answers to my questions, including questions about the meaning of certain myths. Or I would suddenly find pertinent myths that I had not known before. Strange though it may sound, I would have to say that much of what I am relating in this book has been directly given to me by Odin. There are three great myths that were told about Odin as the wandering truth-seeker. Each of these myths, which I shall discuss in detail in this book, relates a way of knowledge, a path to self­ understanding that is as relevant today as it was thousands of years ago. In one story, Odin hangs himself from the great Tree of Worlds, in voluntary self-sacrifice, until he sees the runes, which give him insight into the secret spiritual energies of nature. We, too, must learn to read the inner spiritual meaning of natural phenomena in order to heal the dissociation from nature produced by mechanistic scientism. Another story, already referred to, is the one in which the warring Aesir and Vanir gods make peace and hold a ritual of reconciliation, from which is born the wisest being in all the worlds. This myth tells of the path to knowledge through the coincidentia oppositorum, through love, through the reconciliation of previously conflicting opposites. A third myth tells of Odin drinking from Mimir’s well at the foot of the great Tree of Worlds. This is the Well of Remembrance, which affords

INTRODUCTION | 11

knowledge of ancestral and evolutionary origins, knowledge for which the god had to pay the price of one of his eyes. The focus of my attention became the pre-Christian mythology and shamanism of the Indo-European tribes of northern Europe. The worldview and religious conceptions of these Celtic and Germanic people were animistic and nature-reverencing, as re­ flected in their shrines and sacred places in groves of trees, by wells, or on mountaintops. This was in strong contrast to the transcendental theistic conception of Christianity, which, as has often been pointed out, paved the way for the exploitative, dominating attitude toward nature characteristic of the modern world. Christianity suppressed these animistic religions, branding them as pagan and heretical. The natural world was desacralized, and the old gods and goddesses were demonized. Odin, like Pan of the Greeks, was equated to the devil. Freyja, the Nordic goddess of love, beauty, and fruitfulness, was branded as a demonic sorceress. An even deeper, much earlier layer of prehistoric tradition was opened up by the new discoveries of the archaeologist Marija Gimbutas. Her discovery of the Earth Goddess-worshiping cul­ tures of the aboriginal inhabitants of Europe before the invasions of the Indo-Europeans, and her decoding of their symbolic lan­ guage have revolutionized our understanding about these highly interesting cultures. These mother-centered, Earth-reverencing cultures, who lived primarily by gardening and farming, flour­ ished for thousands of years prior to the invasions of the patriar­ chal, Sky God-worshiping Indo-European nomadic warrior tribes from central Asia. Marija Gimbutas’s conclusions— which, although not uncontroversial, have been echoed by many other scholars, including Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, Riane Eisler, and Elinor Gadon— were that the pre-Indo-European aboriginal inhabitants of Old Europe (the modern Balkan regions) and of Anatolia (modern Turkey) did not have warfare and did not have a patriarchal social structure in which men dominated women. No weapons have been found in these sites, some of which date back to the seventh and eighth millennium BCE, no hilltop forts or defensive walls,

12 I INTRODUCTION

nor any signs of unequal status of men and women. This is in marked contrast to the grave sites of the later Bronze Age and Iron Age settlements, in which male kings are often found buried with massive amounts of metal weaponry, as well as food stuffs, treasures, and the remains of women, children, and animals that were killed and buried with the king as his possessions. It was the warlike and dominating Indo-Europeans who, as relative newcomers to the continent of Europe, first introduced the weap­ ons and practices of war around six thousand years ago. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, while going through graduate school in the Harvard University Department of Social Relations, I had come to accept the conventional conception— that human beings have practiced warfare and domination from the earliest times. This belief was reinforced by the writings of such paleontologists as Raymond Dart, who claimed that our prehominid ancestors were “killer apes” and that therefore territo­ rial warfare is indelibly imprinted in our human genetic makeup. This view of our predatory and violent origins was promoted by Dart’s disciple Robert Ardrey in his widely read book African Genesis, and it was burned into the consciousness of millions of people in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, with its image of the apeman with a huge uplifted club, about to smash it down on the skull of some hapless being. It was a revelation when I heard Marija Gimbutas describe, in her Lithuanian accent and calm, deliberate voice, the peaceful, matricentric (not matriarchal), egalitarian, artistic, aboriginal Eu­ ropeans and saw her slides of the almost overwhelming profusion of Goddess figurines that remain from these cultures. Some days later, while meditating on what she had related, I received this image: a wise, friendly, scholarly woman walks into my house and calmly informs me that underneath the basement of my house is another house, one much larger, much older, and much better furnished and appointed than the one in which I lived. This image profoundly altered my sense of my ancestral heritage. These peaceloving, artistic people, not just the warlike Indo-Europeans, are also our ancestors. Although the ancient Goddess religions were suppressed, there would have to have been much intermarriage,

INTRODUCTION | 13

trade, and other processes of cultural blending that continued for centuries, even millennia. I realized that to find a nondominating, nonwarring social system is not then a hopeless task of developing something entirely new, against the grain of our evolutionary and historical heritage; rather, it is a task of remembering something we once knew and practiced. Indeed, if the beginnings of patriarchy, warfare, and the sup­ pression of the Goddess religion coincided with the invasions into eastern Europe of the Aryan warrior-herders around 4000 BCE, and the Old European cultures flourished around the seventh and eighth millennia bce and back into the Paleolithic, then our ancestral roots in these ancient cultures are actually much deeper and the morphogenic fields of these cultures stronger than those of the Indo-Europeans who supplanted them. Perhaps then the rediscovery of the civilization of the Goddess by a large and growing number of women and men in our time may signal the ending of a six thousand-year-long cycle of domination by the patriarchal Indo-Europeans. Perhaps this is the reason Ashley Montagu called the publication of Marija Gimbutas’s book The Language of the Goddess “a benchmark in the history of civili­ zation.” The Well of Remembrance is an exercise in ancestral remem­ brance— the kind of re-membering that is the healing antidote to dis-membering. In German, to remember is erinnern, which literally means “interiorize,” to know with inner knowing. We have become painfully disconnected from the conscious knowing and perception of our participation mystique in the living processes of Earth. Our animistic, shamanistic ancestors had this awareness of symbiotic relatedness with the natural world. Through listen­ ing and reflecting on their ancient stories, we may be able to reawaken the nature goddesses and gods slumbering in the inner recesses of the collective unconscious. Following the guidance of the one-eyed god, we may drink from the W’ell of Remembrance in order to know once again our primordial origin, our present becoming, and our ultimate destiny.

14 I INTRODUCTION

A few words about the structure of this book. This is not by any means a complete survey of Germanic mythology. Rather, its focus is the meaning of this mythology for our critical times. Very selectively, I will discuss the myths of Odin and his shamanic ways of knowledge and of Freyja and her way of earthly love and fruitfulness, and I will discuss the lessons these mythic deities offer for our present Euro-American consciousness. We will also discuss the highly provocative myths of the warfare between the Aesir and Vanir families of deities and their several attempts at peacemaking, myths with obvious applications in our conflictridden world. Studying the stories of Odin, the truth-seeking wanderer, can bring to light long-forgotten sources of inspiration and understanding. Studying the stories of Freyja and her volvas., the cult of female seeresses, can provide insight into the functions of clairvoyance and divination, formerly the special gift of women but now largely atrophied in Western society. Finally, we shall examine the myth of the ragnarök, an amazing prophetic vision from a thousand years ago, which describes the assault on the ancient nature religion and the near-total destruction of Earth. Following this devastating “twilight of the gods,” the old Ger­ manic seers prophesied the dawning of a new generation of both gods and humans. Before discussing these myths in Part Two of the book, Part One will provide context and background about the Indo-Europe­ ans in general; the ancestors of the Indian, Persian, Mediterra­ nean, and European civilizations; and about the Nordic-Germanic people in particular. In chapter 1, we explore who these people were, where they came from, and why they were able to impose their culture on such a vast collection of indigenous societies. In chapter 2 I shall describe the animistic-shamanistic worldview of the pre-Christian Europeans, their conceptions of deity and spirituality, their views of death and the afterlife, and how this worldview was then almost totally destroyed by Christianity. Chapter 3 discusses the transition in Germanic society from matricentrism to patriarchy and patrilineal inheritance, as well as changes in land ownership and marriage customs that have had consequences to our time. In chapter 4, we shall examine the role

INTRODUCTION | 15

of warrior cults among the Indo-Germanic people and their relevance for understanding the dominance of militarism in our contemporary culture. In chapter 5, I discuss the important role that divination by means of altered states of consciousness played in Germanic society, and its expression in the language of mythic poetry. Chapter 5 also includes a discussion of our main source for Germanic mythology, the songs and poems of the Icelandic Edda, which were first written down in the thirteenth century. Edda means “great-grandmother” in the Old Norse language. So the amazing stories of the ancient gods and goddesses, and of their interactions with humans, are the stories told by the elder moth­ ers. We have here another hidden acknowledgment of the pro­ found and lasting influence of the feminine principle and the Great Goddess of All Life.

P rologue The Nazi Curse on Germanic Mythology We must understand there can be no reconciliation without remembrance.— German President R ichard von W eiszacker

HEN I began to look into the mythology of my Ger­ manic ancestors, I encountered a wall of anxiety and T ▼ resistance, both in myself and in others with whom I shared my interest. The resistance centers around the assumed association between Nordic-Germanic mythology and the ideol­ ogy of the German National Socialists. I observed that this perception was held by Germans and non-Germans alike, and that my own uneasiness about this association was not in the least mitigated by my awareness of being only half German. It was as if to engage this mythology was to open a gate onto a slippery downward slope of ideas that ended in the genocidal “final solution.” For many, similar disquiet applies to the music of Richard Wagner, a known ant-Semite who was admired by Hitler and who wrote operas based on Germanic myths, and to the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, whose concept of the Úbermensch (“superhuman”) seems uncomfortably close to Nazi ideas about Aryan racial superiority.1 In view of these associations, a mythology that interested Nietzsche, Wagner, and the Nazis is understandably suspect. I felt compelled to try to understand the nature of this association, and would like now to share with the reader the process of this disturbing but unavoidable inquiry.

18 I PROLOGUE

I concluded fairly soon that close, unbiased examination does not support the view that Germanic myth, supplemented by Nietzsche’s philosophy and Wagner's operas, was the mass-psy­ chological motivational impulse for the genocidal holocaust perpe­ trated by the Nazis. In searching for writings that would document the supposed psychological affinity of Nazi ideas with Germanic myth, I found nothing beyond assertions, with little or no evidence to support them, that such an affinity exists. In discussions with friends in Germany who expressed uneasiness about engaging with Germanic myth, I argued that we should not let the Nazis’ perverse misappropriation of this mythic com­ plex alienate us from the rich and beautiful mythology of our ancestors. It became clear that the discomfort with Germanic myth was only part of a much larger complex of difficult and highly charged feelings about Germany’s recent past, and that these feelings needed to be confronted. Swiss writer Margaret Burri has written a study of Germanic mythology in which she attempted to disentangle the mythology from the distortions that derive from the associations with Nietz­ sche, Wagner, and the Nazis.2 The assumption that Nietzsche’s philosophy, supposedly based on Germanic myth, is aligned with the Nazi ideology is a distortion both of Nietzsche and of Germanic myth. Nietzsche was trained as a classical philologist, who based his ideas about “master morality” and “slave morality” on Greek and Roman literature. It has been proven that he had only minimal acquaintance with Nordic literature, mythology, or sagas. Nietzsche’s concept of the “superhuman” had nothing to do with assumed superiority or dominance over others. Rather, it was the statement of a psychological ideal of self-mastery. In scattered passages, Nietzsche uses characteristically inflated and dramatic language to describe the Germanic warriors who over­ came the Roman legions during the period of the great migra­ tions, speaking of them as “magnificent blond beasts,” aggressively lusting after plunder and destruction and taking pleasure in killing and cruelty. There is nothing uniquely Ger­ manic about the cruelty and destructiveness of men in war, however, and the Nazi ideologues who appropriated such passages

PROLOGUE I 19

took pains to screen out Nietzsche’s scathing attacks on German nationalism and his condemnation of anti-Semitism. The situation with Wagner is a bit more complex. Wagner was a fervent promoter of German nationalism and anti-Semitism, he wrote an extraordinary series of four long operas— the Ring Cycle—explicitly derived from Germanic myth, and he was greatly admired by Hitler and his followers. Even though it seems probable that Hitler’s admiration was as much a result of Wagner’s racist politics as his art, for some, Wagner’s known anti-Semitism is sufficient to close off any attraction to or interest in his music. However, recent scholarship argues against reading the later emergence of Nazism back into Wagner’s life and work, conclud­ ing that “there is, in fact, very little in Wagner’s art that, without forced speculation, can be related to his racist views.”3 For whatever reason, attitudes towards Wagner’s “total artworks,” as he called them, tend toward extremes— people either admire or dislike them intensely. The rhapsodic intensity of his music seems to provoke a kind of total immersion in a stream of passionate emotions, which makes a more reflective attitude toward the underlying symbolism almost impossible. From the point of view of aesthetic appreciation of the operas, it makes no difference that Wagner altered and adapted Nordic myths, creating a story with mythic undertones that has its own integrity. From the point of view of appreciating the original and enduring significance of Nordic-Germanic myths, it is important to remember that Wagner was a product of his time, the German Late Romantic period, and that his art was an expression of the Zeitgeist, the spirit of that time. Although he studied the Eddas and the sagas, in some respects Wagner’s myth departs signifi­ cantly from those sources. One of these departures is the central conflict in the Ring between the desire for love and the desire for power and wealth. This is a modern, European, romantic theme quite foreign to the animistic-shamanistic worldview of the an­ cient Germans. A second major departure is Wagner’s transforma­ tion of the ragnarök, originally a prophetic vision of the ending and renewal of the world, into the “twilight of the gods” (Götterdiimmerung), in which the old gods are defeated and the world is

20 I PROLOGUE

destroyed, a vision that has much more in common with Christian eschatological ideas than it does with Nordic-Germanic religion. It is known that C. G. Jung, although also primarily a classicist, had a profound interest in Germanic mythology, as he did in all the great mythological traditions. In 1936, Jung published a paper, “On W otan,” in which he postulated a psychological affinity between the mythic figure of the Germanic storm god and the Nazis’ growing popularity.4 Jung referred to a “roaring storm in the primordial forest of the unconscious” that was associated with an awakening of the archetypal force of “Wotan, the restless wandering mischief-maker, sowing dissent and practicing sorcery.” Jung is referring here to only one aspect of the Wotan/Odin complex, namely, the late medieval legend of “the wild hunt.” According to this legend, the howling storms of the midwinter season were imagined to be Wotan and his ghostly band of hunter-warriors, riding with storm winds through the nocturnal woods. Jung connected this image of the wandering storm-god with three twentieth-century wandering phenomena: the youthful groups of wandering nature enthusiasts, the thou­ sands of unemployed workers wandering the roads of Germany during the 1920s, and the tens of thousands of marchers organized by the Nazis during the 1930s. Leaving aside the selectivity involved in picking only this one aspect of the multifaceted character of Odin/Wotan, I would have to concur with Margaret Burri that these passages are not only unconvincing as collective psychology, but they also show a surprising lack of compassion and a kind of bourgeois condescension toward people not of his class. By focusing only on the terrible, frenzied storm-god aspect of Wotan, Jung seems to have bought into the Christian demonization of this versatile deity: “Wotan . . . is a fundamental attribute of the German psyche, a psychic factor of irrationality, a kind of cyclone which blows off the pressure of civilization.” He argued that the kind of “seizing” and “being seized” associated with Wotan inspiration, traditionally also called “frenzy” (German Wut), could be seen again in the “seizing” by Hitler of the German masses: “I venture the heretical suggestion that old

PROLOGUE I 21

Wotan, with his irrational and unfathomable character, explains more of National Socialism than all three rational factors [the economic, the political and the psychological} put together.” It is true that Hitler was able to exert a quasi-hypnotic spell on his listeners, as can be seen in documentary footage of his speeches, and his inflated dominance delusions had a strong appeal to the legions suffering economic depression and the political humilia­ tion caused by the treaty of Versailles. However, I fail to see the supposed irrational “ecstatic frenzy” of the Nazi phenomenon. On the contrary, what has impressed most holocaust students is the cold, methodical rationality of the genocide program they carried out, what Hannah Arendt called the “banality of evil” in the minds of bureaucrats who were “just following orders.” Jung’s theory that archetypal Wotan energy or frenzy was stirring again in Nazism has been repeated and cited by a number of authors, but Jung did not again refer to it in his postwar analysis of the Third Reich. In that essay, titled “After the Catastrophe,” Jung concentrated on the theme of individual and collective responsibility and guilt, and he described Hitler’s pathology in purely psychological terms, as a kind of hysterical neurosis. He drew no parallels to Wotan energy, and his prior assertions had perhaps come to embarrass him. Most recently, the historian Morris Berman, in his search for the psychohistorical roots of Nazism, wrote that he found Jung’s theory “overwhelm­ ingly convincing,” in that “it speaks to the hidden, somatic sources of Nazism.”5 In Berman’s view, Nazism combined bureau­ cratic and romantic/demonic elements to produce what was “a secular variety of religious apocalyptic,” akin to other heretical movements involving “ascent experiences,” such as Gnosticism and Catharism. Not that Germans were “in a state of Wotanic frenzy most of the time; Wotan was rather an undercurrent and an inspiration that the Nazis occasionally tapped, for example, at the Nuremberg rallies.” There is no evidence whatsoever of any element of “Wotan inspiration” in the accounts of the party rallies, not even in Berman’s own description. These rallies involved thousands of uninformed soldiers and party members marching in lockstep

22 I PROLOGUE

formations, with flags and standards, at night carrying flaming torches as searchlights illuminated the stadium, and a crowd responding to the fiihrer’s hypnotic oratory with repeated shouts of Sieg Heil. As we shall see when we come to study the myths of Odin in more detail, there is really nothing in the character of Odin/Wotan, the god of highly individualistic warrior-shamans, inspired poets, wandering seers and truth-seeking sorcerers that even remotely resembles this kind of mass demonstration. We are dealing here with an unprecedented mass-psychological phenome­ non of the twentieth century, in which the submersion of individ­ ual identities in that of the Volk and the Fiihrer was orchestrated with all the theatrical techniques of modern propaganda. To say that the mind-changing experience of a convert to Nazism is an ascent experience akin to gnostic revelation or an ecstatic frenzy akin to those of ancient Wotan cults is to indulge in pure speculation that can never be verified or disproven. Another apparent justification for Berman’s and others’ at­ tempts to connect Nazism with Germanic paganism is the crucial role in Hitler’s worldview of anti-Christian attitudes, which were somewhat disguised from the public for reasons of expediency. Hitler told Hermann Rauschning that “one is either a Christian or a German . . . but one cannot be both.” His deranged plan, after the military conquest of Europe and the extermination of Jewry, was to abolish the Christian churches and substitute the religion of National Socialism, with Hitler himself as its god. Strangely enough, both Jung (in his prewar thinking) and Berman seem to accept Hitler’s assertion of an incompatibility of the German soul with the Christian religion— an assertion at variance with the 1500-year-long history of Christianity among German­ speaking people. Furthermore, to conclude, as the Nazis did (with Jung and Berman in apparent agreement), from this false opposition that therefore the true non-Christian German religion is old Germanic paganism is to turn the facts of historical development upside down. Germanic paganism was not opposed to Christianity; it preceded Christianity by several thousand years. European pagans attempted to practice their religion— whether Celtic, Germanic,

PROLOGUE I 23

or any other— outside of, not opposed to, the structure of orga­ nized Christianity. Neither was the church opposed to Germans per se; rather, it was opposed to pagans of whatever ethnic identity. It was the Catholic church that in the fourteenth century declared pagans to be heretics (i.e., anti-Christian), thereby pro­ viding the ecclesiastical justification for the campaign of inquisi­ tion and extermination against the pagan witches, a holocaust that extended over three and a half centuries. The religion of Hitler and the Nazis was nationalism, or rather the dictatorial, belligerent form of nationalism known as fascism, in which one’s own nation is not only supported and idealized, as in patriotism, but its claimed superiority to other nations is considered sufficient justification to wage wars of territorial acqui­ sition and conquest against nations deemed inferior. There is something quasi-religious about yielding one’s identity and auton­ omy to the nation, the party, or the leader, which then become the unquestioned source of moral authority, and prior moral and human standards can be superceded or dissociated. Nationalism as a phenomenon of collective political psychology did not and could not have arisen prior to the creation of nation-states in the late eighteenth century. As Isaiah Berlin has shown in his brilliant study; of the historical origins of fascism, The Crooked Timber of Humanity, none of the social theorists of the eighteenth or nine­ teenth century predicted or anticipated anything like the emer­ gence of fascism.6 Hitler’s distinctive twist on nationalism-fascism was his spurious attempt to give it a racial foundation— possibly because he calculated that a religion based on a 150-year-old nation didn’t have much historical tradition to go on. It is an undoubted fact that Hitler and his followers were interested in what knowledge was available about the customs and religious rituals of the pre-Christian Germanic tribes, and they promoted the concept of a Nordic Aryan race. From identifying a difference between “us” and “them,” to claiming superiority and the right to dominate is apparently only a small and easily taken step, as the histories of racism and nationalism show, as does the much older and longer history of sexism and male domination. The blond, blue-eyed Aryans were asserted to be superior to other

24 I PROLOGUE

races in various ways and to have been responsible for the origin of real culture in the peoples they conquered. This assumed racial superiority was used to rationalize the “Aryan” Germans’ plundering, removing, and even exterminating people of other “races,” particularly Jews. The simplistic theories of race that underlie these fantasies of racial superiority conveniently over­ looked the fact if the concept of an Aryan people meant anything then many of them also had dark hair, brown eyes, and dark complexions, and that so-called Aryans had been intermarrying with neighboring ethnic groups, as well as with Jews, for centu­ ries. In addition, the fact that people of nations opposed in war, including French, Russians, and Poles, who may or may not have been of the same “race” as the Germans, were also included in the extermination programs and that the first concentration camps, such as the one at Dachau, were in fact used to imprison German political opponents of the Nazi regime only shows how elastic and opportunistic this racial criterion really was. Contemporary anthropologists and historians more or less reject the concept of race as a unit of social analysis, presumably because the amount of intermarriage over centuries, perhaps millennia, especially in the countries of Europe, has made any notion of a “pure” race indefensible. In systems of racist ideology, such as Nazism, this spurious notion of race is used, usually for political purposes or in reaction to economic hardship, as the criterion to focus and amplify the enemy-making, hate-mongering, and scapegoating tendencies latent in any population. Anti-Semitism and related forms of racism were the foundation of the policies Hitler pursued. It was a regime openly and officially based on hatred and exclusion. The fact that Himmler’s SS established an office of “ancestral heritage” (Ahnenerbe), the purpose of which was to promote knowledge of and pride in Germany’s preChristian ancestors, while at the same time trying to establish the “purity” of Aryan bloodlines, only served to obscure and disguise the underlying racism.7 It is beyond my qualifications and beyond the scope of this book to trace the historical origins of H itler’s racist worldview and all its ramifications. Morris Berman has presented a detailed

PROLOGUE I 25

review of the numerous theories advanced to explain the formation of the Nazi ideology and its influence on the German masses, including those that postulate an inner circle of high-ranking Nazis involved in occult practices of black magic. Considerable research has been done on various obscure nineteenth century writers, whose pseudohistorical theories, heavily laced with racist and fascist themes, influenced the formation of the Nazi world­ view. Since there was very little archaeological and linguistic information available about these supposed ancestors of the Ger­ mans, the field was rife with speculations and fantasies. As Berman writes, “Völkisch thought, mysticism, and occultism, in and of themselves, do not lead to National Socialism. . . . But in Germany, for reasons that may partly be social and economic in nature, racism got tied into a whole dualist cosmology, with the Jews being targeted for a special role.” O f course, the much older cultures of Old Europe, preceding the Indo-Europeans by several millennia, were not known to these nineteenth century writers. The discovery of these cultures, and the several-millennia-long interaction that presumably involved extensive and continuous exogamy and intermarriage between Aryans, or Kurgan, invaders and the indigenous inhabitants of Old Europe makes any concept of racial homogeneity even more absurd. The discoveries of the nineteenth century linguists who established the linguistic family relationships between the IndoEuropean languages had at first been interpreted as indicating a kind of racial coherence among these Aryans, or Indo-Aryans, as they were also called. But as J. P. Mallory states, “The myth of Aryan supremacy was neither a direct nor necessary consequence of the philological discoveries of the nineteenth century, but rather the misappropriation of a linguistic concept and its subse­ quent grafting onto an already existing framework of prejudices, speculations and political aspirations.”8 The conclusion that emerged for me from my reading on the origins of Nazism was that Hitler and his followers basically appropriated certain themes and symbols they claimed to have found in Germanic prehistory and myth for their own ideological, propagandistic purposes. Although they claimed that these cul­

26 I PROLOGUE

tural themes were part of the ancestral genetic heritage of Nordic Aryans, in actuality this claim was based on a fantastic mishmash of racial and occult speculation that has no basis either in the facts of genetic biology or in the religion and worldview of the ancient Germanic people. As far as mythology itself is concerned, one will search in vain among the poems of the Eddas and the medieval sagas for any traces of such concepts as racial purity, master race, blood and soil, or even superman. Rather, these slogans, products of a twisted and insecure mentality, were given a kind of pseudoreligious veneer by the Nazis, as part of their program of mass indoctrination. The consequences of the Nazi regime’s racist policies have led to the continuing demonization of the Germanic gods and goddesses in many people’s minds. It is almost as if Germanic religion and mythology were cursed through the Nazis’ misrepresentations and misappropriations. Thus, it appears as if the myths and the Germanic ancestors themselves are somehow the source of the evil that was done in their name. Because of my background, my search for the meaning of the Nazi curse on Germanic mythology turned into a kind of confrontation with personal and collective shadows that had haunted me since childhood. Many Germans of my generation, who were born during and immediately after the Second World War and who experienced the Third Reich only as children or indirectly, very commonly reported a massive failure of communi­ cation between themselves and the generation of their parents. In schools, at least through the 1940s and 1950s, explicit discussion of Hitler and the Third Reich was rare. Parents and teachers typically responded to their children’s questions about those times with silence or rejection, saying, “Why keep bringing up the past?” I remember as an adolescent being tormented by my fear and ignorance of what my parents might have done, or failed to do, and what they might have known. The psychoanalyst Alice Miller has made the point that the trauma of silence, of not speaking and not knowing the truth, can often be greater than the pain inflicted by the abuse or abandonment that is being denied. An entire generation of German youth grew up with the

PROLOGUE I 27

knowledge that their elders had participated or acquiesced in one of humanity’s most monstrous collective crimes, yet they experienced almost total denial and silence on the part of their elders toward this crime. It is perhaps too obvious to state that if we cannot communicate with our parents we cannot connect with our ancestors further back. The image we hold of our parents seems to function as a kind of psychic doorway to ancestral remembrance. However, there exists in Germany a kind of barrier, a peculiarly exacerbated form of the generation gap, between those born during or after the war and their parents who survived as adults the Nazi era and the holocaust that was inflicted on Germany and all of Europe. The postwar generation is outraged at what their parents and elders countenanced, and they are traumatized by their parents’ silence and evasiveness about their role in or knowledge of this genocidal catastrophe. In the words of a sixty-year-old German army veteran who attended one of my talks in Munich, the older generation is reluctant to talk about their experiences with the younger one, because they “feel already judged by you, before we say anything.” When I became aware that the widespread resistance among people of German descent to their ancestral mythology was only a part and a consequence of the larger complex of repression in relation to Germany’s recent history, I organized, with the help of German friends, a series of talks and workshops in which we attempted to tackle this problem in a direct manner. In these workshops, I asked my German friends and students if they would agree to attempt a confrontation with the unspeakable collective shadow image in the German psyche, knowing that it would be very painful. The purpose was to break down the wall of denial between the generations so that the doorway to ancestral remem­ brance could be opened. W hat emerged was an extremely moving and healing story-telling ritual, in which participants sat in a circle and took turns speaking the truth of their experience. We experienced this as a ritual of reconciliation, and we realized that similar processes could be held in any situation of intractable

28 I PROLOGUE

hatred and conflict, whether generational, ethnic, tribal, racial, national, or religious. I then discovered, in one of those curious Odinist synchronicities that have marked my engagement with that mythic archetype, that there is in fact a very significant story of a reconciliation ritual in Nordic-Germanic mythology. This is the story of the peacemaking between the Aesir and the Vanir gods. The Aesir are the sky gods of the Kurgan-Aryan invaders, and the Vanir are the nature deities of the autochthonous Old Europeans. The mythic stories of warfare and peacemaking among gods are metaphoric expressions and reflections of the warfare and peacemaking among the tribes and peoples. In fact, we are told of two peacemaking rituals between the Aesir and Vanir, one that failed and one that succeeded. Other Indo-European mythologies also have stories of such rituals of reconciliation. In ancient Greece, the myths and mysteries of Eleusis celebrated the reconciliation between the older Minoan Earth-goddess cult of Demeter and Persephone and the invading Hellenes, with their Olympian brothers Zeus and Hades. It was clear to me that reconciling with Germany’s recent Nazi past was essential to connecting with the wisdom of the ancestors and their mythology. Even though the Nazis misunderstood and misused Germanic ancestral traditions, what they passed on to us had to be confronted and understood. In 1985, in a speech before Parliament, West German President Richard von Weizsácker stated, “When the unspeakable truth about the holocaust became known at the end of the war, too many of us claimed they had known nothing about it. Precisely for this reason, we must understand that there can be no reconciliation without remem­ brance.”

PART ONE

T he I n d o -E uropean and N o r d ic -G er m a n ic Peoples

1 M igrations of the

and

I nvasions

I ndo -E uropeans

The hidden truth of history is that the more we know, the stranger it all becomes.—P aul Sh e p a r d , A Post-HistoricPrimitivism

O r ig in s

of t h e

I n d o -E u r o p e a n s

the original homeland of the proto-IndoEuropeans is still controversial, but Marija Gimbutas and many other scholars believe it lay in the forests and steppes north of the Caspian Sea, in what is now southern Russia and Ukraine. From here, the theory goes, these seminomadic pastoralists, who lived primarily by hunting and herding goats, sheep, and cattle, started a series of migrations into eastern Europe, the Balkan lands, and the Mediterranean basin, through the Caucasus mountains into Anatolia and the Middle East, and south-eastward toward Persia and India. Gimbutas calls the pastoralists who moved westward toward Europe during the fourth and third millennia BCE Kurgans, after the Russian word for the earthen burial mounds these people used. Those who moved south and eastward into Persia and India during the third and second millennia BCE called themselves Aryan's,, after a Sanskrit word meaning “nobles.” They are the ancestors of the people also called Indo-Germanic.1 h e l o c a t io n o f

T

32 I THE INDO-EUROPEANS

'll"' 'X

is. Reproduced by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.)

The relatedness of these possibly quite diverse nomadic people, who built no cities, can only be inferred from the linguistic affinities among the Indo-European languages and from archaeo­ logical excavations of grave sites. Triggered perhaps by climate changes, the first Kurgan intrusion into southeastern Europe occurred around 4300 BCE and is documented in the archaeologi­ cal record by the appearance of hilltop forts and by the destruction of earlier agricultural settlements and the painted ceramics associ­ ated with them.2 A second wave of these Kurgan intruders came about eight hundred years later, bringing with them wheeled chariots, horses, and bronze weapons. Subsequent waves of Kur­ gan invaders pushed their predecessors farther and farther west, triggering fierce warfare in the process. Stone stelae appear in the Alpine regions, depicting horses, chariots, sunbursts, axes, spears, arrows, and daggers. The Kurgan tribes brought with them their religion of male warrior gods, personifying the forces of sky, sun, fire, storm, and thunder and the male warrior virtues of force of arms, power, boldness, and self-assertion. These invasions reflected ancient tensions, as well as mutuality and interdependence, between the seminomadic herders and the settled villages of farmers and gardeners. During the millennia of the domestication process, around 9000 to 7000 BCE, the begin­ nings of the Neolithic era, the hunting way of life gradually gave way to herding. Instead of following and hunting the wild animals on which they depended for food, people discovered ways to herd and breed goats, sheep, and cattle, using tamed dogs, enclosures, and castration of male animals. This development reduced the uncertainty associated with hunting, fostered the accumulation of large herds of animals, and increased the ability to move herds and families over large distances in seasonal migrations. The traits of strength, endurance, agility, and bravery trans­ ferred from the hunting to the herding of large animals, including cattle and horses, and to the migrating movement of groups of people and herds. Furthermore, the keepers of animals discovered that the skills needed for herding and protecting one’s own herd could readily be usedxto raid and steak those of others. Like the horse, the cow was, revered among Indo-Europeans, and cattle

34 I THE INDO-EUROPEANS

were a man’s measure of wealth. The Kurgans and the Aryans indulged in cattle stealing as a way of augmenting their herds and wealth, and this activity became so central to them that religious myths grew up to justify and rationalize it. During the Neolithic revolution, while the hunters turned to herding, the gatherers became planters. In the great river valleys of Europe, the Near East, northern India, northern Africa, the Americas, and China, the Paleolithic bands who had previously lived primarily by gathering roots, fruits, and plants discovered the seeds of such grasses as barley, rye, millet, wheat, and rice could be sown, cultivated, and harvested, thereby greatly increasing food supplies. Settled villages were established, grain surpluses accumulated, basketry, pottery and clothing crafts de­ veloped, and temples were built for ritual purposes. Warrior skills were needed to protect the accumulated wealth from envious, plundering neighbor tribes. By and large, however, the more peaceful, settled farming and gardening communities were no match for highly mobile predatory pastoralists. Several factors contributed to the success of the invading herderwarriors in their conquest of the agricultural settlements. First and foremost, although the Old Europeans also tended cattle, only the Kurgans in Asia had succeeded in domesticating the horse. This gave them greatly increased mobility and military prowess. The horse became in many ways the primary animal in Indo-European religious mythology and ritual. This can be seen in the importance of the horse sacrifice in the early Vedic culture of India and in Bronze Age and Iron Age European cultures. The Kurgan/Aryan invaders were tough horse-warriors, who looked down upon the less warlike people they encountered with a superior, “cavalier” attitude, forcing them to work the land for them, and abducting their women for childbearing and sexual services. Capturing people of other tribes and keeping them as slaves seemed like a natural extension of capturing animals and keeping them in herds. Animal husbandry and bride-capture went hand in hand. Second, the invention of the wheel and wheeled chariots in­ creased phenomenally the speed and range of their migrations.

MIGRATIONS AND INVASIONS | 35

Warriors on horseback would forge ahead and conquer, while their families and supplies would be brought along in chariots. The nomadic lifestyle, with its seasonal migrations, itself encour­ aged the development of mobility-enhancing forms of discipline, in which animals, women and children, the elderly, and posses­ sions would all come under the protection and therefore the control of the male warriors. The same characteristics that fostered the nomadic pastoral lifestyle also facilitated the organized migra­ tions of conquest and invasion.3 Third, and perhaps most crucially, they had weapons. The earliest weapons, found in Kurgan burial sites from the fifth millennium bce were axes made from elk antlers and stone, bone knives, obsidian daggers, and copper axes. Weapons perhaps originally invented for hunting could also be used for killing and capturing other people. In the farming villages of Old Europe, stone, bone, and copper were also worked, but they were made into jewelry, statuettes, ritual objects, woodcutting axes, fish­ hooks, awls and needles, in short ceremonial objects and tools. As Riane Eisler has persuasively argued in her book The Chalice and the Blade, the difference between the culture of Old Europe and that of the Indo-European invaders was not in the invention of metallurgy but in the uses to which it was put. The Kurgans revered the blade, the sword, and the axe as symbols of divine and royal power. This can be seen from the elaborately ornamented dagger handles, inlaid with precious stones, and the ceremonial scepters found in the graves of male chieftains as emblems of their power and wealth. As the Kurgan and Aryan tribes spread out over Europe, Anatolia, Persia, and India, they consolidated their control over the societies they invaded and conquered. Pastoral, gardening, and farming economies were combined in various ways, as walled towns were built and city-states arose, ruled by warrior kings. Temples dedicated to the Earth Goddess, which also functioned as granaries, were maintained by women priestesses. The male warrior bands took on the task of defense, as well as continuing territorial expansion and plundering raids on neighboring commu­ nities. As Robert Graves described the situation in Greece, the

T he D esc e n d a n ts

of t h e

K u r g a n In v a d e r s

in

Eu r o p e

The archaeological record is confirmed in many ways by mythol­ ogy, a combination method pioneered by Gimbutas, and by studies of comparative linguistics. Through these methods, we can recognize that every one of the major historical cultures of Europe was preceded by the same basic millennia-long pattern of cultural conflict: patriarchal warrior bands first invade and then,

^ ** ^

^ ^ * MMia Gimbuta, O ,99. By Marija Gimbuta,

^ ?!**’ Globular Amphora !nd S d r f W í^ o r ^ ^ ,A Í t,^ , IT >Ple cultures migrate into Yugoslavia and central Germany™ £

resulting societies were a combination of “a male military aristoc­ racy and a female theocracy.”4 Cattle herding, horse-and-chariot mobility, and military con­ quest with superior force of arms were three features of the Indo-European take-over that continued to play significant roles throughout the Bronze and Iron ages and into the historical era. For between three and four millennia, Europe was the battle­ ground of competing empires, monarchies, feudal nobilities, and finally nation-states. Starting in the fifteenth century CE, the same age-old rivalries and wars of territorial expansion were transported to the misnamed “New World.” In the ideology of the Wild West, one of the dominant mythic stories of Euro-Americans^ we find the themes of “opening up the frontier” (invasion), “civilizing the Indians” (conquest), and finding grazing land for enormous herds of cattle, which proceeded to destroy the fragile grasslands of the Great Prairie to which they were not native. Both cattle and horses were introduced to the Americas by the Europeans. With their superior force of firearms, in combination with im­ ported diseases and theft of land, the European immigrants all but exterminated the native American populations. Today the immense cattle complex in North America is a major factor in soil deterioration, deforestation, water pollution, and greenhouse warming, and in Central America and South America, subsistence farmers suffer exploitation and violent oppression at the hands of the large cattle ranchers, who force them into conditions of involuntary servitude, using state-supported terror campaigns of torture and killing.

^ V° lga stePPesn° “ heast Vucedo1 and Baden

36 I THE INDO-EUHOPEANS

38 I THE INDO-EUROPEANS

in time, come to dominate the aboriginal, matricentric societies, with their Earth-goddess theocracies. The Greeks, it is now generally believed, were the product of Indo-European intruders who superimposed themselves on the indigenous Bronze Age population, referred to in Greek myth as Pelasgians. Around 1450 b c e , Europe’s last remaining high culture devoted to the Goddess, the magnificent artistic islandcenters of Minoan Crete and Thera were destroyed. Their fall was caused by a combination of devastating volcanic eruption and, in the Mycenean period, invasions of first Achaeans and then Dorians from the North and the East. In Cretan frescoes one can see the marked contrast between the lithe, graceful figures of the Minoans, surrounded by flowers, fish, and birds, vaulting over the heads of bulls, and the much less spontaneous art of the Mycenean period, showing rigid, marching phalanxes of spear-carrying war­ riors. The volcanic eruption on Thera, believed to have been a main religious center of the Minoans, caused the caving in of the entire middle part of the island, the submergence of all its structures into the sea, and sent gigantic tidal waves in all directions. It is believed by some archaeologists that this volcanic destruction of the island of Thera and the Minoan culture is the historical event behind the legend of the destruction of Atlantis.5 Turning to the Romans, that other fountainhead of Western culture, the evidence, according to Malory, suggests that they were intrusive and superimposed on a non-Indo-European sub­ strate,” invading probably from the North across the Alps and from the East across the Adriatic Sea. The Romans’ own legend of their origin, the voyage of Aeneas from Troy and his settling in Rome, suggests their Indo-European roots in Anatolia. In Italy the invaders found the mysterious and highly cultured Etruscans, who spoke a non-Indo-European language and traded throughout the Mediterranean. Greek and Roman writers expressed surprise and shock at the high status, freedom, and power of women in matrilineal Etruscan society. The legend of the abduction and rape of the Sabine women is a story that was surely repeated numerous times as Indo-European warrior-pastoralist tribes conquered the Old European village cultures, enslaving local populations and

MIGRATIONS AND INVASIONS | 39

establishing their patrimonies. The Latin language spread throughout the territories dominated by the Roman empire, later giving rise to the Romance languages now spoken by 550 million speakers throughout the world. The Indo-European Celtic people dominated central Europe during the one thousand years prior to the Christian era, roughly corresponding to the Iron Age. Most scholars say the ancestors of the Celts were the people of the La Téne culture, which flourished in the Rhineland, from where they pushed westward to the British Isles, southward into France, Iberia, and Italy, and southeast into the Balkan lands, Greece, and as far as Anatolia. Celtic mercenar­ ies fought in the armies of Egypt. Celtic sun-oriented earthworks dating from 500 BCE have been discovered in Bavaria and along the Danube River valley. The Gaulish-speaking inhabitants of France were also Celts and they, in turn, were absorbed by the Roman empire. Around the middle of the first millennium bc e , the Celts (their name means either “high people” or “hill people”) had a period of extensive migration, comparable to the Germanic migrations of about one thousand years later. Celts who invaded the Iberian peninsula around 600 bce encountered non-Indo-European Iberi­ ans along the eastern coast of Spain, and in the northern regions they encountered the Basques. The Basque language, spoken today by three million Basques in the Pyrenees between France and Spain, is one of the few surviving non-Indo-European lan­ guages of Europe; Basque culture and folklore has retained many elements of the ancient matrifocal Old Europe civilization 6 In their mountain strongholds, the Basque preserved their ancient culture from Celtic and Roman domination. They probably also provided the final defeat to the crusading army of the Frankish emperor Charlemagne and his nephew Roland, slain at Ronceval in 778 c e . Other' branches of Celtic people migrated westward to the British Isles, which they named Albion, and to Ireland, which they named Ierne. In Britain, the Celts encountered the indige­ nous builders of megaliths, circles of stones surrounded by banked tlevotional ritual enclosures (henges), which functioned as commu-

40 I THE INDO-EUHO l’EANS

nity burial places and solar-astronomical observatories. The ab­ original inhabitants of the British Isles, including the Piets, as well as Gaelic-speaking descendants of the early Celts, were driven by later conquerors to the westernmost areas of the Scottish highlands and islands, as well as to Wales, Cornwall, Ireland, and Bretagne in northern France. In these isolated areas, remnants of both the pre-Celtic language and of the old matricentric culture survive to the twentieth century. After the Celts, the British Isles were invaded by the Romans, starting with Julius Caesar’s legions, and in later centuries by various waves of Nordic and Germanic tribes from the continent, including the Angles from Denmark, the Saxons from Germany, and the Normans (“Norsemen”) from France. Around the fifth and sixth centuries, a British king named Artus, or Arthur, unified the feuding tribes in order to fight off further invasions by the Saxons. A few hundred years later, Arthur’s struggle to unify and bring peace to the warring English chieftains became a main theme of the songs of the troubadours and of the histories of the court poets. This theme was transformed into the story of a mystic brotherhood of Christian knights and a chivalric code of pure romantic love, which inspired European literature and the arts for a thousand years. The Germanic group of languages includes English, Dutch, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, and the extinct Gothic. Today, native speakers of these Germanic languages number over 600 million, making it the most widely dispersed language group in the world. Early cultural forms are attested to in what is now northern Germany and southern Scandinavia from the middle of the first millennium BCE onward. It is generally agreed that the Iron Age Jastorf culture, in north-central Europe, was proto-Germanic. Some archaeologists regard the Corded Ware or Battle Axe cultures, which settled in central Europe in the third millennium BCE, as direct ancestors and refer to them also as Indo-Germanic. According to Marija Gimbutas, these people, as well as those referred to as the Globular Amphora culture, constituted the second Kurgan wave, which migrated from the

MIGRATIONS AND INVASIONS | 41

Pontic Steppes north of the Black Sea, westward and northward, around 3500 BCE. The Roman historian Tacitus, writing in about 100 CE, de­ scribed dozens of Germanic tribes, including the Chatti, the Gothones, the Teutones, the Helvetii, the Langobardi, and the Semnones, inhabiting the areas between the Rhine and the Oder and northward. The Romans called Germani (meaning either “spear men” or “loud men”) the tribes east of the Rhine, who effectively prevented them from ever expanding their empire beyond that river. In the third century c e , the invasion of Europe by the Huns, horse-mounted nomadic warriors of Mongolian origin, triggered the period of the Great Migrations. During this time, Germanic tribes spread out all over southern and western Europe. The Goths moved into Spain and Italy (where they sacked Rome in the year 410); the Vandals moved as far south as North Africa; the Burgundians, Alemans, and Franks spread throughout present southern Germany and France; the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes from northern Germany and Denmark settled in Britain, where they fought with their predecessors, the Celtic Britons, as well as with the pre-Indo-European Scots and Piets. Other intrusions of Indo-European peoples into Europe contin­ ued the pattern in which a period of migration was followed by a cultural combination of the more aggressive and patriarchal invad­ ers with the pre-existing, more settled matristic people. There is evidence of people speaking Baltic languages, including Lithua­ nian, Latvian, and Prussian, along the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea during classical times. Throughout history, the Balts have been subjected to migratory pressures from the Slavs to the East, and the Germans from the West. They have long maintained in their mythology and folklore traces of the Old European Goddess religion and nature reverence, as well as the classic Indo-European patterns. For example, snakes and amphibians are revered and honored among rural Baltic people to this day. The Balts did not convert to Christianity till quite late—the thirteenth or fourteenth century, and then only under considerable duress. Probably the latest group of Indo-Europeans to expand out from the presumed proto-Indo-European homeland in the steppe-

42 I THE INDO-EUROPEANS

forest lands of southcentral Asia are the Slavs. According to Malory, linguistic evidence positions the Slavs to the east or southeast of the Germans, south of the Balts and west of the Iranians. Expansions to the east and northeast carried Slavic speakers into territories previously occupied by Balts and Finns. Modern Slavic languages, which include Russian, Belorussian, Polish, Ukrainian, Czech, Slovak, Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, Bulgarian, and Macedonian, are spoken by over 400 million people, and their expansion is the most recent of the IndoEuropean language groups. ' Wherever the Indo-Europeans migrated they established their characteristic “dominator system,” as Riane Eisler calls it, with a ruling military caste, patrilineal inheritance, and patriarchal prop­ erty rights, as seen in burial practices that included wives, children, slaves, animals, artifacts, and weapons with the bodies of deceased male rulers. This was true of the Greeks, Romans, Celts, Norsemen, Germans, Anglo-Saxons, Balts, and Slavs in Europe, as well as the Hittites, Luwians, Iranians, and IndoAryans in Asia. These are the patterns of social organization that appear in our earliest written records and thereafter in the histori­ cal era. Our records of the prehistoric Old European cultures that the Indo-European invaders supplanted, which Eisler calls “partnership societies,” are primarily symbolic and ritual art. But as Marija Gimbutas has shown, there is strong indication of the survival of elements of the Old European culture “in the historic continuity of matrilineal succession in the non-Indo-European societies of Europe and Asia Minor such as the Minoan, Etruscan, Pelasgian, Lydian, Lykian, Carian in Western Turkey, Basque in Northern Spain and southwest France, and the Piets in Britain before the Celts. This influence is also found in Indo-Europeanspeaking societies—Celts, Teutons, Slavs and Balts—who ab­ sorbed matricentric and matrilineal traditions from the rich sub­ stratum of Old European populations. Militarism and patriarchy were not the unique inventions of the Indo-European people. Precisely parallel patterns of aggressive territorial expansion, forced imposition of patriarchy, subordina­ tion of women, and violent destruction of the old Earth Goddess

MIGRATIONS AND INVASIONS | 43

religions are found in the Semitic civilizations of the Middle East as well.8 In all parts of Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East, the male priest castes did their best to destroy all vestiges of the old religion, in which women had enjoyed high status as priestesses and in which sexuality was celebrated as a sacred honoring of the life processes of fertility and growth. Sky, sun, mountain, and storm gods, who laid down laws and rules, came increasingly to prevail over the ancient earth, water, moon and animal goddesses, who fostered procreation and creativity. Yahweh, the tribal god of the Hebrews, and Zeus, the tribal god of the Greeks, were originally storm and mountain gods, associ­ ated with Mount Sinai and Mount Olympus respectively. In Nordic-Germanic mythology, we are told that the Aesir sky gods and war gods of the Indo-Germanic tribes who had invaded from Asia, assaulted and waged war against the Vanir, goddesses and gods of the land, fertility, and peace, who were probably the nature deities of Old Europe. T h e I n d o -E u r o p e a n Legacy

After the Christianization of Europe, another great wave of Euro­ pean conquest and imperialism started in the fifteenth century CE, when sea-going bands of Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, and English soldiers, pirates, and priests began to invade the Americas. Colonies were established, designed as an organized form of plundering of distant lands, supported and financed by monarchies, church, and states. As their Kurgan ancestors had done, the Europeans brought with them cattle, horses, livestock breeding, wheeled chariots, patrilineality, patriarchy, slavery, new diseases, and a passion for fighting and killing augmented by new and powerful weapons. They also brought the later European accomplishments of literacy, rationalism, materialism, capitalism, and eventually industrialization to the native people of these vast continents. This socio-political pattern of domination and exploitation, with accompanying destruction of the indigenous hunting-gather­ ing and farming-gardening societies, continued with the European

colonizations during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Africa and vast parts of the Middle East, central, South and Southeast Asia, and the Far East. Many aspects of the age-old clash of cultures and ideologies are played out to this day in the parasitic, exploitative relationship between the industrialized, highly consumptive, fossil-fuel addicted nations of the Northern Hemisphere, with their monstrous techno-industrial military es­ tablishments, and the resource-rich yet “underdeveloped” nations of the third world, who are being increasingly driven to ecological exhaustion and economic collapse, even while they desperately try to hang on to their traditional subsistence ways of life.9 The Indo-European people bequeathed to the world the most widely spoken languages on this planet, perhaps the one that will one day be the common world language. They also bequeathed a passion for warfare and the technologies of destruction. And they bequeathed the industrial-growth society, with its enormous social inequities and ecological destructiveness. Perhaps now, six thou­ sand years after the first wave of Kurgan incursions into Old Europe, the time has come when this patriarchal dominator system can finally be dismantled. The challenging of Eurocentric hegemony in all parts of the third world points in that direction, and so do the worldwide feminist and environmental movements. Perhaps now is the time to recollect and remember the scattered and fragmented cultural knowledge of our ancestors, which was preserved in the animistic mythologies and religious views of the pre-Christian Europeans. Although firmly established in patriar­ chal ideology, they were themselves heirs to even more ancient and egalitarian traditions, found in the nature-reverencing and Goddess-worshipping cultures of Old Europe.

T h e I n d o - E u r o p e a n La n g u a g e Fa m il y

44 I THE INDO-EUROPEANS

RELIGION AND WORLDVIEW I 47

T he Re lig io n W o rldview

and

of the

I ndo -E uropeans The ancient poets animated all sensible objects with gods or geniuses.— W illiam B l a k e , The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

E CAN distinguish three phases in the transformation of

the religion and the worldview of the inhabitants of Europe. The earliest phase is the Neolithic civilization of Old Europe, which flourished in eastern and central Europe in the seventh, sixth and fifth millennia BCE, and which lasted in western Europe with the megalith builders until the third millen­ nium. The second phase began around 4300 BCE with the first wave of Kurgans from the steppes north of the Black Sea and lasted through the Bronze Age (3500 onward) and Iron Age (1500 onward). During the latter parts of this phase, the Celts settled in western Europe, the Germanic tribes in central and northern Europe, the Greeks and Romans in the Mediterranean, the Balts and Slavs in eastern Europe. The cultures whose remains have been found in Europe dating from this phase form an almost inseparable blend of features from the indigenous culture of Old Europe and the superimposed belief systems of the Indo-Aryans

from Asia, with the latter predominating. Following a threemillennia-long process of interaction, assimilation, and accommo­ dation, these hybrid cultures and religions were then destroyed in the third phase, the period of Christianization. This phase began in the first centuries of the Christian era and lasted in some remote areas until the late Middle Ages. What was from the viewpoint of the church the “conversion of the pagans” was experienced by the adherents of the old religion as the death or demonization of the old gods .Pagan originally simply meant “country dweller,” and it was the country dwellers who were most likely to preserve the remnants of both the archaic Goddess cults and the Indo-Aryan shamanistic beliefs in their mythologies, languages, and folklore. During these phases of cultural transformation, profound changes occurred in the conceptions of the forms and nature of deity, in the perceptions of time and the cosmos, in architecture and the arts, and in beliefs about death and the afterlife. The religious imagery of the Neolithic cultures of Old Europe was deeply interwoven with the plant and animal worlds. The Goddess was portrayed on pottery or temple walls in images of humanoid female forms, with swelling breasts and buttocks, pregnant abdo­ mens, and sometimes blended with features of birds, snakes, bears, serpents, fishes, frogs, butterflies, bulls, hedgehogs, leafy trees, flowers, and bees. Images of goddesses outnumber gods in these cultures by a ratio of ten to one. Deity is woman-shaped (gynomorphic) and animal-shaped (zoomorphic), suggestive of a reverence for the feminine power of procreation and a deep connectedness with the natural world, in which humans were not regarded as superior to other animal life forms. In the Bronze Age and Iron Age cultures, when the IndoAryans had established their domination, the god and goddess images of Germanic mythology (like those of Greek, Babylonian, and Indian myth) are humanoid, sometimes males with a female consort, all of them ruled by a father god or a trinity of gods. The deities are often associated with animals as their vehicle or mount, so the power and knowledge of the animals is still respected. (Only the Egyptians seem to have preserved the earlier reverence for animals as embodiments of divine energies, in their images of

RELIGION AND WORLDVIEW | 49 48 I THE INDO-EUROPEANS

animal-headed deities, such as the lion-headed Sekhmet or falcon headed Horus.) Humans make gods in their image, an ere we have the anthropomorphic polytheism of classical civilizations. In the third phase, Christianity adopted the Hebrew monothe­ ism of a single father god. Although Hebrew scripture or a e the making of carved images of Yahweh, the texts make it abundantly clear that God is a humanoid male (andromorphic). “Let us make man in our image.” In Christian iconograp y, t is special covenant between the human male and the creator eity is epitomized in Michelangelo’s painting of the creation o am, via a touching of the fingers, on the Sistine Chapel. us> 1 sequence o f transformations of images of divinity has een. rst, zoomorphic and gynomorphic polytheism, then anthropomorp ic polytheism, and finally the andromorphic monotheism of God the Father. The gods and goddesses of the pre-Christian European pantheon were conceived as great spiritual and powerful beings, associate with the primordial forces of nature, including earth, sky, sea, mountains, sun, moon, winds, and thunder, with whom uman beings could and did communicate and interact throug prayer, ritual, and sacrifice. In addition to the major deities, the wor o the Indo-Europeans was animated by a host of other ívine o supernatural beings: giants, titans, dwarves, elves, trolls, gnomes, nymphs, nature spirits, sprites, sylphs, undines, leprec ^uns, fairies, which lived in and guarded the forests, rivers, e s> rocks, springs, clouds. Many of these survived into the Christian era in folklore and fairy tales. A n i m i s m , S h a m a n is m ,

and

P a g a n ism

One could characterize this worldview as animistic, pantheisti and shamanistic. Animism is the term used by anthropo ogists to describe a view in which all forms of life and all natural phenom­ ena are seen as animated by vital force and sentience. The numera s and plants, as well as animals and humans, all have indwelling souls (anima is Latin for “soul”) or spirits. In such a wor view, the distinction we now make between animate an inanimate

matter is meaningless. Everything is alive and sentient, and human beings occupy no privileged or uniquely superior position. Pantheism is a formulation of this same belief in religious terms, everything is sacred, imbued not only with sentience but with divinity. Later theology refines this concept to panentheism: the divine is immanent within everything. In the archaic and ancient cultures, as in Native American and other indigenous traditions in all parts of the world, all of nature is approached with an attitude of respect and reverence. For such people there is no dichotomy between the sacred and the profane at all, particularly not such a dichotomy as was later propounded by the Church, in which only the divine, transcendent realm of “heaven,” the civitas dei, was sacred, and nature was mostly considered profane or even demonic. So the religion of the Germanic tribes, as of all the Indo-Europeans and of aboriginal peoples in all parts of the world, was a religion that venerated the spirits of nature: their gods and goddesses lived in rivers, sky and wind, mountains, trees, and animals. Their holy places, their places of healing and power, were groves, moors, springs, caves, outstanding trees or rock formations, hilltops, and mountain peaks.1 The worldview of the Germanic people contained strong sha­ manistic elements, as we know them now from anthropological research. The word shaman is of Asiatic origin, but it is now used to refer to healing practitioners in a worldwide tradition that dates back to the Paleolithic era of hunters and gatherers. As Mircea Eliade has observed, many features characteristic of Asiatic sha­ manism can be found in Germanic, Celtic, and other strands of Indo-European mythology.2 This provides mythological support for the notion that the Indo-Germanic people originally migrated to Europe from Asia. The central world-image of the Germanic religion is the World Tree, Yggdrasill, around which are arrayed the nine worlds of being. Such a world tree, or axis mundi, is found in several Asiatic traditions, and the shaman is said to ascend the tree, in order to find diagnostic knowledge or healing power. Odin, the god of shamans, hangs himself from the tree Yggdrasill and by doing so, obtains the secret knowledge of the runes.

50 I THE INDO-EUROPEANS

It is interesting that the two most widespread world-images that the archaic animistic imagination conceived are the Mother Goddess and the World Tree. In observing the world around them, our Stone Age ancestors found it natural to wonder at the procreative and generative power of mammal mothers, bringing life out of their bodies in seeming miraculous fashion. This was especially so before the role of males in conception was under­ stood. Similarly, the axial unity of a great tree, holding together all the multiplicity and diversity of branches, leaves, fruits, and flowers in a single great living presence also impressed them as a worthy model of the greater world.3 Thus, the two most common symbolic world-images were derived from the awareness of the two great realms of nature: the realms of animals and of plants. During the period of Indo-European hegemony, the predominant world-image became dualistic, with sky-father gods and earthmother goddesses, with the latter gradually suppressed. In the Christian period, this dualism was maintained and exacerbated: only the heaven of God the Father was sacred, and the Earth was profane or mundane. The central experiential practice in shamanism is entering into an altered state of consciousness, referred to as a “shamanic journey,” ecstasy, or trance. The methods for inducing this state, which Mircea Eliade calls “techniques of ecstasy,” include the ingestion of hallucinogenic plants, chanting, drumming, special postures or dance movements, fasting, isolation, or various kinds of ordeals. As the shaman enters into what anthropologist Michael Hamer calls the “shamanic state of consciousness,” he or she seeks to contact spirits in other worlds, in order to gain knowledge or X power to diagnose and to heal.4 In Germanic mythology, Odin/ Wodan, the knowledge-seeking god of shamans, poets, and war­ riors, was said to travel between the different worlds in order to have conversations with gods (both Aesir and Vanir), giants, dwarves, elves, and humans. In one myth, in order to retrieve the mead of creative inspiration that had been stolen by giants, Odin transforms into a serpent, enters into a mountain, turns into an eagle, and flies through the air—all varieties of classic shamanic shape-shifting and journeying experiences. Parallel myths and

RELIGION AND WORLDVIEW | 51

legends exist in the Celtic tradition, telling of the poet’s or seer’s initiatory journey into the worlds of faerie for magical transformation and inspiration. Under the proselytizing onslaught of Christianity, the shaman’s role became degraded and demonized. Shamanism was equated with sorcery, which has decidedly sinister connotations, and the “traveler between worlds” was someone who consorted with demons. The traditions of secret knowledge, including the techni­ cal knowledge of hallucinogens and other visionary tools and methods, became even more secret and was largely forgotten. The shaman/witches, country-dwelling healer-midwives with knowl­ edge of herbal medicine and out-of-body flight,5 were condemned as “evil-doers” whose power supposedly derived from a pact with the devil—a uniquely Christian deity. In the animistic-pantheistic-shamanistic religion of the ancient Germanic tribes, as well as other Europeans, in which the nonhu­ man world of nature was revered and respected, and in which a conscious connection and communion with nature was maintained through shamanic practices and rituals in places of great natural power, we can see the ecological relevance of connecting with our pre-Christian ancestors. In this worldview, there was an awareness of the interconnectedness and sacredness of all life and an accep­ tance of the possibilities of communication with the numerous spiritual intelligences inhabiting nature. C h a n g in g Co n c e p t io n s

of

D eath

a n d the

A f t e r l if e

During the two-thousand-year transition from the agrarian God­ dess cultures of Old Europe to the establishment of the dominant Germanic warrior tribes in central Europe, there was a subtle but profound shift in the conceptions of death and the afterlife. The communal, egalitarian burial chambers of the Neolithic Goddess civilization have no signs of status differences between men and women, of accompanying collections of weapons, or of sacrificed animals, children, slaves, or wives that are found in the tombs of the Bronze Age and Iron Age warrior chieftains and kings. Accompanying the change in burial practices were changes in the

52 I THE INDO-EUROPEANS

religious meaning of death and its mythic representation. Our most ancient ancestors were impressed by the endless cycles of death and regeneration seen in the vegetative world. Their great Earth Goddess gave death as well as birth to all living forms. The Indo-Aryan patriarchal warrior societies seemed to be much more preoccupied with assuring the individual’s, especially the chief­ tain’s, comfort and honor in the afterlife, and the death gods became more fearsome and ominous. In the historical period, as alienation from the natural world increases, so does the fear of death and the creation of elaborate eschatologies in the monotheis- ^ tic religions. This is followed in the modem era, under the sway of the materialistic worldview, by a more or less complete denial of any kind of afterlife. The burial chambers of Neolithic Old Europe often have shapes associated with the female body of the Goddess. Frequently the chamber was an egg-shaped pit, in which the dead were placed in fetal position, sometimes surmounted with a carved or etched vulva triangle. Or the tomb might have the shape of legs spread open. Graves are mostly familial in the earlier period, with women and children buried beneath the floors of houses. The sprinkling of red ochre powder in graves was extremely widespread, red being the color associated with blood, life, and rebirth. In her life-giving aspect, the Goddess is portrayed with ample breasts, abdomen, and buttocks, sometimes pregnant or even birthing, with a prominent vulva triangle, and accompanied by symbolic animals, plants, images of water, whirls, swirls and meanders. In her death-dealing aspect, she is carved in white bone or stone, her posture stiff, her arms crossed in front. As Dr. Gimbutas writes, “She holds dominion over death, the cold darkness of winter, caves, graves, and tombs in the earth . . . but also receives the fertile seed, the light of midwinter, the fertilized egg, which transforms the tomb into a womb for the gestation of new life.”6 The death goddess survived, though gradually becoming more dreadful, in Germanic-Nordic mythology as Hel, the ruler of the underworld, parallel to the Greek Hecate and the Sumerian Ereshkigal. Hel’s realm is below the Earth, but here, at the roots of the World Tree, is also where the norns, the three goddesses of

RELIGION AND WORLDVIEW | 53

fate, live and the gods meet in council. The earlier association of the Earth-mother with abundance, based on soil fertility and mineral wealth, is preserved in German folklore in the figure of Frau Holla, or Holda, who is nourishing and benevolent. Hades/ Pluto, the Greek underworld god, also has connotations of wealth, as in the word plutocrat. In the Christian era, there is the complete demonization of the death goddess in the image of the malevolent old hag or witch. Hell becomes a place of damnation, not merely the underworld realm of the recently deceased. We find that the Indo-Germanic attitude toward the death goddess, like that of the Greeks and Celts, occupies an intermediate stage between the worldview of Old Europe and that of Christianity. She is feared but respected, and her powers over life and death, healing and killing, are acknowledged. A striking reversal of symbolic value occurs in the meanings associated with the colors white and black. In the Goddess­ worshipping farming communities of Old Europe and the Medi­ terranean, black is the color of the richly fertile earth, which brings forth new vegetative growth and nourishment. Residues of the black Earth-goddess appear in the imagery of the Black Madonna, or Black Virgin, of which over five hundred examples can be found in Christian churches all over Europe, testifying to her persistence.7 For the Indo-Europeans, black was the color of death and the underworld, ruled by the Black God of Slavic and Baltic mythol­ ogy. To this day, black is the color for funerals and for the robes worn by ascetic, celibate priests. The life-negating symbolism of blackness and darkness in Christianity are further seen in their association with evil and the devil, the so-called “Dark Lord”. An interesting exception to this demonization of blackness is in the esoteric tradition of medieval alchemy. Here, blackness ( nigredo) symbolizes the unformed chaos at the beginning of the psycho­ spiritual transmutation process, which is pregnant with spiritual potential. In the cultures of Old Europe, white was associated with death. It was the color of bones, after they had been de-fleshed and bleached by sun and wind, when they were gathered into the

54 I THE INDO-EUROPEANS

tombs and mounds to be with the ancestors. Bone and other white materials, such as marble and alabaster, were used in carvings of the Goddess in her death-dealing form, the “stiff nude” with arms rigidly folded across the chest, who was respected, feared, and revered for her awesome and unavoidable power. For the nomadic Indo-Aryans, white, yellow, and the radiant colors of gold, bronze, and amber were the colors of the life-giving sun, the “lord of the shining sky.” In Christian iconography, white is the color of the lamb of innocence, the dove of peace, and the robe of purity and virginity, worn by brides at weddings to this day. In medieval alchemy, whiteness (albedo) symbolized a phase of the transforma­ tion process in which the dross and various impurities have been burned off by the fires of purification and concentration has reached white-hot intensity. The whiteness of ghosts in the popular imagination perhaps preserves the symbolism of the archaic death goddess. During the later Neolithic period, a two-stage communal burial practice developed in many areas of Europe, as well as in Anatolia. The bodies of the dead were first exposed to decay and to scavengers such as vultures, a process known as excarnation, and then the disarticulated skeletons and skulls were buried separately in subterranean communal chambers. With the coming of the Indo-Europeans, the mythology of death changed and so did the burial practices. The Kurgan tribes buried their dead in mortuary chambers accompanied by personal belongings, including tools, ornaments, and weapons, suggesting a belief in some kind of individual continuity after death. Massive amounts of such ob­ jects, including chariots, are found in the graves of presumed chieftains or rulers. In addition, one finds the skulls of horses and the skeletons of wives, consorts, children, and adults who presumably were slaves. The more ancient practice of separate burial of skulls and skeletons in communal tombs suggests an emphasis on rejoining the ancestors of the clan after death, and it perhaps points to forgotten rituals of remembering and connecting with ancestral spirits. Such attitudes and ritual practices seem to have been preserved in the shamanic traditions. In Asiatic shamanism, it is

RELIGION AND WORLDVIEW | 55

common for the shaman to keep a revered ancestor’s skull for use in ceremonies and for divination. Shamans worldwide communi­ cate not only with the spirits of animals and special places of power but also with the spirits of deceased ancestors. Being familiar with crossing the boundaries of the spirit world, they are also able to function as guides for the dying. Odin was said to sit by gallows in order to obtain knowledge from the spirits of those departing to the other world, a sorcery practice known as necromancy. The use of an ancestral skull for divination is de­ scribed in the Celtic myth of Bran the Blessed and in the story of Odin preserving the skull of the wise giant Mimir for oracular div­ ination. Thus we see profound shifts in religious conceptions of the afterlife and the spirit world. In the most ancient layers of culture in Old Europe, the cyclic processes of plant and animal life— birth, death, growth, and decay—are the sacred female realm of the Great Goddess: we are born from her earth-womb and return to her earth-tomb. We commune with our ancestors in dreams and visions, and we rejoin them when we die. By the end of the gradual, centuries-long transition to the patriarchal societies of the ancient Germanic and Nordic peoples, the underworld was a death realm ruled by the goddess Hel, and there is a whole pantheon of gods and goddesses who are above and apart from human life. These great supernatural rulers of our lives must be accommodated and propitiated with offerings and sacrifice.

T h e D e s t r u c t io n

of t h e

O ld R e l ig io n

In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, the visionary poet and painter William Blake gave a succinct and powerful statement of the changes in religious worldview that occurred in the ancient world. The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged and numerous senses could perceive. And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country, placing

56 I THE INDO-EUROPEANS

it under its mental deity. Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of & enslaved the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began Priesthood. Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales. And at length they pronounced that the Gods had ordered such things. Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast.8

The poet is talking about á loss of perception: “whatever their enlarged and numerous senses could perceive.” This loss resulted from the gradually increasing emphasis, started by the Greeks and continued with Christianity, on abstract conceptions of deity rather than on the direct, sensory perception of and communica­ tion with spirits that was the norm in polytheistic animism. The exceptions are the gnostics, and mystics and clairsentient poets, who cultivated and celebrated direct perception and sensuous awareness of the sacred aliveness of creation. The philosopher Rudolf Steiner wrote a great deal about this loss of clairvoyance in Western culture. The contemporary historian Morris Berman addressed the same theme in his book Coming to Our Senses, which discusses the split between philosophy and bodily experience in the Judeo-Christian West.9 With the rise of monotheism came the devaluation and demonization of the gods and goddesses of nature: “Great Pan is dead.” In order to affirm the unique divinity of their chosen god, the priestly classes denied the divinity of the numerous nature gods and goddesses of the pagans and denounced as ineffectual or demonic the shamanic practices of divination and communication with ancestors. We see this pattern in the harangues of the Old Testament prophets against the people who were “whoring” after the cult of Asherah and Baal. We see it in Augustine’s sermons prohibiting prayers to the “intermediate spirits.” And we see it in the gradual devaluation of the meaning of daimon (Latin, genius') from “guiding spirit” (as when Socrates would communicate with his daimon) to evil demons under the direction of Satan, “Lord of this World,” which were believed to tempt humans away from God. Traditional religious and philosophical thought assumes with

RELIGION AND WORLDVIEW | 57

unquestioning unanimity that the transition from polytheistic animism to transcendental monotheism represents a major advance in the capacity for abstract theological symbolization. The possi­ bility that this shift might have been largely motivated by political impulses—to increase the power and wealth of the priesthood— is rarely considered. All of which is not to devalue the undeniable development of profound ethical, mystical, and theological teachings in Judaism and Christianity. But, if we are to advance, the shadow sides of our ancestral traditions need to be confronted and the complete story understood. In Europe, the animistic-shamanistic religion of the Germans, Celts, Greeks, Balts, Slavs, and other Indo-European peoples did not survive the onslaught of Christianity, although the conversion process took longer in areas far from Rome, such as the Baltic countries, northern Scandinavia, and Iceland, where the mythic poetry of the Eddas originated. The old gods and goddesses were desacralized and demonized. Like Pan, Odin was equated with Satan. Freyja, the goddess of love, beauty, and fertility, was turned into the chief witch. Other deities were replaced by Christian saints with similar names, as happened when the Celtic Brigit became Saint Brigid. The Christian calendar was superim­ posed on the old calendar that was attuned to the cycles of sun and moon—for example, the winter solstice Yule festival became Christmas. Songs, prayers, and rituals of the old religion were forbidden. Sacred groves and natural shrines were desecrated and Christian churches were put in their place. The symbolic climax of this brutal forced conversion of an entire people occurred in the year 772 CE, when the Frankish emperor Charlemagne massacred thirty thousand Saxons who had refused to convert and ordered the cutting down of the Irminsul, the sacred pillar representing the world-tree Yggdrasill, the holy axis of the Germanic-Nordic religion. One can appreciate the magnitude of this desecration by comparing it to the impact on ancient Judaism of the destruction of the Jerusalem temple or by imagining the effect that the destruction of Saint Peter would have on Christianity. ” in: Christian Rátsch (ed.), Nat urverehrung und Heilkunst (Siidergellersen: Verlag Bruno Martin, 1993), pp. 6 5 -8 3 . 32. Cf. Rudolf Simek, Lexikon der germanischen Mythologie (Stuttgart: Kroner, 1984), pp. 48ff.; Germanische Götterlehre {Cologne: Diederichs, 1984), p. 212. 33. Ibid., p. 49.

NOTES I 321

42. Friedrich Tobler, Deutsche Faserpflanzen und Pflanzenfasern (Munich, Berlin: Lehmanns, 1938). 43. Hasenfratz, pp. 11; 80; 100; 134, note 7. 44. Ritter von Perger, pp. 188ff. 45. Ibid., p. 197. 46. Jane Renfrew, Paleoethnohotany: The Prehistoric Food Plants of the Near East and Europe (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), p. 163. 47. Marija Gimbutas, The Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe (San Francisco: Harper, 1991), pp. 147, 396. 48. W. R. Einiger, “Hanfreste aus vorgeschichtlicher Zeit Nordeuropas,” Ciba Zeitschrift, vol. 7, no. 80 (1941), 279149. Cf. Christian Ratsch, Hanf als Heilmittel: Eine ethnomedizinische Bestandsaufnahme (Löhrbach: Werner Pieper’s Medienexperimente/ Solothurn: Nachtschatten Verlag, 1992), p. 154.

34. Gisela Graichen, Das Kultplatzbucb, second edition (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1988), p. 69.

50. Cf. Ed Rosenthal, Marijuana Beer (Berkeley: And/Or Press, 1984).

35. Cited in Hasenfratz, p. 87. In Romania, a similar ritual using mandrake {Mandragora) instead of henbane has been preserved into the twentieth century. Cf. the section “Der Kult der Alraune in Rumánien,” in: Mircea Eliade, Von Zalmoxis zu Dschingis-Khan (Cologne-Lövenich: Hohenheim, 1982), pp. 215-234.

52. Johannes Hoops, “Mohn,” in Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde 1973, vol. 3, pp. 233-234.

36. Claudia Miiller-Ebeling, “W olf und Bilsenkraut, Himmel und Hölle: Ein Beitrag zur Dámonisierung der Natur,” in: Susanne G. Seiler, ed., Gaia: Das Erwachen der Göttin (Braunschweig: Aurum), pp. 163-182.

54. Ibid., p. 94.

37. K. Ritter von Perger, Deutsche Pflanzensagen (Stuttgart and Oehringen: Schaber, 1864), p. 181.

51. Gimbutas, p. 184.

53- Max Höfler, Volksmedizinische Botanik der Germanen (Vienna, 1908; reprint Berlin: VW B, 1990), pp. 92f.

55. Ludwig Bechstein, Der Sagenschatz des Frankenlandes (Wurzburg, 1842), 25/26; cited in Hasenfratz, p. 109f. 56

Hans Fink, Siidtiroler Ktiche, Tisch und Keller (Bozen; Athesia, 1980), p. 15.

57. A similar iconographic recipe can be seen on an image of Demeter.

38. Ernest Schoen, Nomina popularia plantarum medicinalium (Zurich: Galenica, 1963), p. 36.

58. W. Sandermann, “Berserkerwut Brauwelt, 120(50), (1980): 1870.

39. A. Maurizio, Geschichte der gegorenen Getrdnke (Berlin: Paul Parey, 1933).

59- Ritter von Perger, p. 184. 60.

40. H. Fiihner, “Solanazeen als Berauschungsmittel,” Archiv fur experimentelle Pathologie undPharmakologie 111 (1925), pp. 281-294. 41. Schoen, p. 336.

durch

Sumpfporst-Bier,”

Marija Gimbutas, Die Balten: Volk im Ostseeraum (Munich, Berlin: Herbig, 1983), p. 203, cites the Chronicon Prussiae of Peter Dusberg (1326): “Since they [the Pruss] knew nothing of our [Christian] god, it happened that instead of god they worshiped the entire

322 I NOTES

created world: sun, moon, and stars, the thunder, birds, even such four-legged animals as toads. They had sacred groves, fields, and bodies of water. ” 61. According to Sigrid Lichtenberger, “Ziige des Schamanentums in der germanischen Úberlieferung,” in: Heino Gehrts and Gabriele Lademann-Priemer, eds., Schamanentum und Zaubermdrchen (Kassel: Roth, 1986), pp. 2 8 -4 1 , and especially pp. 3 If. 62. Höfler, p. 95. 63. Hans Sebald, Hexen: Damals: und HeuteP (Frankfurt, Berlin: Ullstein, 1990), p. 206. 64. Harold A. Hansen, Der Hexengarten (Munich: Trikont-Dianus, 1981). 65. According to Hasenfratz; cf. also Wolfgang Krause, Runen (de Gruyter, 1970), Sammlung Göschen, pp. 34ff.; and R. I. Page, Runes: Reading the Past (University of California Press/British Mu­ seum, 1989). 66. Cf. Adolf Taylor Starck, Der Alraun: Ein Beitrag zur Pflanzensagenkunde. Berlin: Express, 1986 (reprint from 1917). 67. Cf. Christian Rátsch, “Einleitung” to the reprint of Alfred Schlosser, Die Sage vom Galgenmannlein (Berlin: Express Edition, 1987), p. xi. x-"7 68. Alfons Rosenberg, Die Frau als Seherin und Prophetin (Munich: Kösel, 1988), p. 51. 69. See my introduction and argument in Rátsch, “Afrodisiaka: Die Mysterien der Aphrodite,” in Christian Rátsch, ed ., Naturverehrung und Heilkunst (Siigergellersen: Verlag Bruno Martin, 1993), pp. 202f. 70. Magnus Hirschfeld and Richard Linsert, Liebesmittel (Berlin: Man, 1930), p. 162. 71. Eliade, p. 226. 72. Cf. Höfler, p. 90. 73. Ritter von Perger, pp. 182f. 74. Eliade, p. 215. 75. Cf. Adolf Dittrich, Atiologie-unabhangige Strukturen veranderter Wachbewusstseinszustande (Stuttgart: Enke, 1985).

NOTES I 323

76. Cf. Rudolf Gelpke, Vom Rausch im Orient und Okzident (Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1982). 77. Cf. Alethea Hayter, Opium and the Romantic Imagination (Welling­ borough: Crucible, 1988). 78. Reiner Dieckhoff, “Rausch und Realitát: Literarische Avantgarde und Drogenkonsum von der Romantik bis zum Surrealismus,” in Gisela Vögler, ed., Rausch und Realitdt, vol. 1, pp. 4 0 4 -4 2 5 (Cologne: Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum fiir Völkerkunde, 1981).

IN D E X

Achaeans, 38 Achilles, 128 Acts of Reconciliation Project, 235 Aesir sky gods, 122-130, 150-152, 153, 154, 182, 233, 248, 256; and Christianity, 160; and divination, 88; and giants, 204; and Kvasir’s Blood, 284; in the Ragnarök, 259, 265; realm of, 200, 206; and Vanir, 28, 43, 71, 122, 151, 166, 169, 172, 179, 224, 230 A f r ic a n G en esis (Ardrey), 12 Afterlife, 51-55 Albion, 39 Albruna, 183, 295 Alchemy, 53, 54, 113-114, 233; source of, 207-208 Alfheim, 152, 164 Altered states of consciousness, 50, 76, 81, 90, 96, 117, 119, 159, 221-222 A lv ís s m á l, 208, 282-283, 284 Alwis, 282-283 Anatolia, 38, 39, 54 Angels, 205, 216 Angles, 40, 41, 42 Animals, 116 Animism, 11, 48-51, 56, 57, 129 Anthroposophy, 114-115 Anti-Semitism, 19, 24, 59 Aphrodite, 152, 160, 161, 295

Archetypes, 3, 58, 121, 269 Ardrey, Robert, 12 Artemis, 161 Arthur, King, 40, 121 Aryans, 23-24, 25, 31, 35, 42, 166, 203 Asgard, 124, 126, 152, 163, 206, 284 Askr, 199, 225 Astrology, 91, 113 Asuras, 130 Athena, 81, 223 Atlantis, 38 Augury, 89, 90 Augustine of Hippo, 261 Australian aboriginal cultures; practices of, 191 A x i s M u n d i, 49-50, 96, 192 Bacchus, 283 Bacon, Sir Francis, 121 Balder, 90, 112, 119, 127-129, 154, 263; death of, 115, 280; funeral of, 163; murder of, 256; in the Ragnarök, 245, 249,258 “Balder’s Dream” (Baldrs Draumar), 90, 96, 157 Balts, 41, 42, 57; settling of, 46 Basques, 39, 65, 67 Battle Axe culture, 40, 171 Baugi, 240

i

INDEX I 327

326 I INDEX

Beer, 281-284, 287, 293, 295; and mushrooms, 286 Belladonna, 296 Bemmann, Klaus, 66 B e o w u lf i 93, 155, 163 Berlin, Isaiah, 23 Berman, Morris, 21-22, 24, 56 Berserkers, 75-79, 116; and hallucino­ gens, 286, 293; transformed, 81—84 Beverages, 281-290 Bifröst, 206 Bil, 288 Bilröst, 288 Black, 53-54 Blake, William, 55 Blindness, 129, 223, 263 Blood, 231. See a lso Kvasir’s Blood Boadicea, 79 Boars, 164 Bodn, 231, 232, 240, 284 Bragi, 112 Bran the Blessed, 55, 90, 226 Brisingamen, 155, 167, 180, 181—182, 208 Britains: mythology of, 94; social struc­ ture of, 61—72; written histories of, 93 British Isles, 39, 40 Bronze Age cultures: burial practices of, 52; marriage customs in, 70; mythol­ ogy of, 47 Brynhilda, 80 Buddhism, 276 Burial practices,42,51-5 5, 66, 71; with ships, 163 Burial sites, 31, 35, 40 Burri, Margaret, 18, 20 Cadmus, 240 Campbell, Joseph, 8, 11 Castaneda, Carlos, 232-233 Cataclysmic earth changes, 250-255 Cathars, 59 Cattle stealing, 32-34

Celtic mythology, 55, 90 Celts, 39-40, 41, 42, 57, 203, 234; and agression, 74; and hallucinogens, 288; mythology of, 62; origins of, 151; social structure of, 61; and warfare, 77,79 C h a lic e a n d th e B la d e , T h e (Eisler), 35 Charlemagne, 39, 57, 199-200 Christianity, 48, 56, 57; and angels, 205; conversion to, 41, 51, 57, 58, 63, 92, 158, 244-245, 261; and the E d d a s , 248; eschatology of, 20, 251, 261; and genocide, 236; and Germans, 22; and Nordic mythology, 2; and Odin, 122; and paganism, 47, 192; and polytheism, 11; sacrifice in, 269; symbolism of, 54; and witches, 168; and women, 159, 275—276; worldview of, 50, 60 Church of Rome, 2, 23, 63 Clairvoyance, 56, 91,96-97, 117, 129, 156,159 Clan, 66-68; lineage within, 68-69 C ode o f th e W a r r io r , T h e (Fields), 74 Colonization, 43-44 C om in g to O u r Senses (Berman), 56 Commons, 65, 68 Coniunctio, 241, 243 Conservationism, 1 Contemporary world, 211—214. See a lso Twentieth century Council of All Beings, 237 Coyote, 129 Crete, 38 C rooked T im b e r o f H u m a n ity , T h e (Berlin), 23 Cross, 194 Cu Chulainn, 75, 80, 81, 82 Cybele, 162 Dark elves, 216 Dart, Raymond, 12 Davidson, H. R. Ellis, 74, 90, 221, 265 \

Death, 51-55; colors of, 53-54 Death goddess, 52-53, 210 Deep ecology, 237 Demeter, 28, 234 Devil, 51, 122, 129 de Vries, Jan, 245 Dionysus, 233, 283 Divination, 85-91, 90, 156, 159, 220221, 226 Donar, 62 Dorians, 38 Draupnir, 115, 128, 208 Dreams, 90 Druids, 62, 63, 121, 128 Dualism, 121-122 Duerr, Hans Peter, 194, 199 Durckheim, Count, 145 Dwarves, 156, 192, 205, 207-208, 243; contemporary cosmologies of, 212; and Kvasir, 231; and necklace, 182. See a lso Brisingamen Earth changes, 250-255 Earth Goddess, 11, 38, 60, 62; destruc­ tion of cult of, 42-43; temples to, 35 Earthkeepers, 82 Ecofeminism, 266 Ecology, 36, 237; and eschatology, 263; and the Ragnarök, 250, 258 Economics, 83 Ecophilosophy, 1 E d d a s , 80, 91-97, 172, 179, 200, 206, 237; Christian imagery in, 244-245; and Nazism, 26; necromancy in, 90; origin of, 57, 91; prophecies of, 248; and the Ragnarök, 244, 253, 261, 264. See a lso B a ld e r ’s D r e a m ; E ld e r E d d a ; P o etic E d d a ; P rose E d d a s

Egyptian mythology, 153 Eisler, Riane, 11, 35, 42 E ld e r E d d a , 88, 93-94, 96, 153, 156— 157, 199, 203, 219, 230, 238, 280; and Christianity, 245-246; poems of,

91, 164, 205; and the Ragnarök, 246; and well ofUrd, 215. See a lso Grimnismal; Hávámal; Lokasenna; Vafthrudnismal; Voluspa Eleusinian Mystery cult, 234 Eleusis, 28 Eliade, Mircea, 11, 49, 194, 226 Elves, 151, 153, 192, 216; contemporary cosmologies of, 212-214; home of, 205-206 Embla, 199, 225 Enclosure, 68 Endogamy, 68-72, 153 Environmentalism, 60, 68, 82-83. See a lso Ecology Ereshkigal, 53, 194, 210 Eschatology, 20, 96, 244-267; and the last battle, 255-259; and the Ragnarök, 251-252. See a lso Ragnarök Eskimo, 236 Etins, 204-205 Etruscans, 38 Excarnation, 54 Exogamy, 68-72 Eyes, 223 Families, 63, 66-68 Farming, 73-74, 126 Fascism, 23 Faust, 120, 121, 241, 243 Fenriswolf (Fenrir), 125, 129, 208, 210, 256; in the Ragnarök, 257-258, 264 Fertility, 43, 161, 188 Fetch, 77, 80 Fields, Rick, 74 Fimbulvetr, 250-251 Finns, 42 Flax, 290-291 Fly agaric mushroom, 76, 286, 297 Folklore, 48, 64, 151 Foreman, Dave, 83 Franklin, Benjamin, 254 Freyja, 11, 14, 57, 62, 71-72, 88, 122,

INDEX I 329

328 I INDEX

126, 150, 152-161, 156, 179, ISO189, 206, 209, 290; as black goddess, 183-186; as goddess of battle, 186188; as goddess of healing, 188-189; as goddess of love, 180-183; in the Ragnarök, 260 Freyr, 71-72, 122, 150, 152, 161-162, 162-165, 169, 179, 206, 208, 224, 231, 248, 292; and giants, 204; and the horse, 290; in the Ragnarök, 257, 260 Friday, 154 Frigg, 127-128, 128, 154 Fuller, Buckminster, 213, 279 Fylgja, 77, 80 Gadon, Elinor, 11 Gaia, 225 Gandalf, 121, 205 Ganna, 183 Genocide, 17, 21 Gerdr, 72, 90, 152, 164, 204, 206 Germania, 93, 161 Germanic mythology, 43, 47, 62, 93— 94; and divination, 89-90; and Na­ zism, 26; worldview of, 60. See also E ddas

Germans, 40, 41, 42, 57, 203; and agression, 74; and divination, 88—89; and hallucinogens, 289; marriage cus­ toms of, 68-72; and militarism, 79; and mushroom use, 285; origins of, 151; and reconciliation, 235; settling of, 46; social structure of, 61-72; and warfare, 77; written histories of, 93 Gersimi, 161 Giants, 123, 152, 199, 243, 284; con­ temporary cosmologies of, 213; home of, 203-205; in the Ragnarök, 260 Gilling, 238 Gimbutas, Marija, 11, 12—13, 31, 36, 40, 42, 69, 88, 92, 123, 154, 210, 266

Ginnungagap, 202 Goddess, 41, 55, 56, 64, 152, 210, 225; and burial practices, 52; culture of, 234; dark aspect of, 183-184; forms of, 160, 166; priestesses of, 97; return of, 264-265; suppression of, 13; wor­ ship of, 88. See a lso Earth Goddess; Great Goddess Gotland, 242 G o tterd a m m e ru n g , 249 Grail, 90 Graves, Robert, 35—36, 226 Great Goddess, 64, 153, 154 Greeks, 42, 46; mythology of, 18, 56, 57, 62, 114, 123, 205; origins of, 38; settling of, 46 Greenhouse effect, 254 Green party, 83 G r im n is m a l, 117, 199 Gullveig, 122, 165-172, 179 Gunnlod, 239, 240, 242, 243 G y lfa g in n in g , 200, 216, 250 Hades, 28, 53, 234 Hallucinogens, 76, 89, 197, 232, 234; sources of, 199; and well of remem­ brance, 220-221 Hanged Man, 194 Hansen, Walter, 95 Hamer, Michael, 7 Hashish, 290, 297 Hávamál, 192, 238, 239, 241 Hebrews, 48 Hecate, 52-53 Heidr, 167 Heimdall, 112, 206, 208, 251 Hel, 52-53, 55, 78, 119, 128, 129, 199, 209, 210; in the Ragnarök, 258 Hemlock, 293-294 Hemp, 290-291, 296 Henbane, 287-290, 294, 296, 297 Hera, 154, 160, 223 Herding, 32-34, 36

Hermes, 62, 113, 114, 120, 122, 200 Hildiswini, 180, 186 Hirmin, 200 Hitler, Adolph, 17, 20-22, 111 Hittites, 42 Hnoss, 161 Hödur, 128-129, 263; in the Ragnarök, 245 Hoenir, 163, 169, 224-225 Holla, 53 Hollander, Lee, 170 Holle, 152, 210 Holocaust: comparison to the Ragnarök, 249; and reconciliation, 235 Honey, 231, 281 Honir, 264 Horse, 34-35, 36, 119, 164, 198, 290; and augury, 89 Horus, 280 Hugin, 117, 225 Ibn Fadlan, 287 Iceland: and Christianity, 92; and escha­ tology, 251; mythology of, 93-94; and the Ragnarök, 252-54, 255. See a lso E d d a s

Idun, 295 Imperialism, 43 Inanna, 179 Incest, 70 Indian mythology, 205 Indo-Aryans, 42 Indo-Europeans: and divination, 89; and eschatology, 251; mythology of, 256; origins of, 31-36; religion of, 46-59; worldview of, 60 Indonesian volcanos, 254 Indo-Tibetan mythology, 81 Industrial-growth society, 44. See a lso • Contemporary world; Twentieth century Innana, 194 Innocent VIII, 59

Inquisition, 59, 159-160, 276 Iranians, 42 Ireland, 39 Irish tradition, 80, 81, 234 Irmisul, 57, 125, 199-200 Iron Age cultures: burial practices of, 52; marriage customs in, 70; mythology of, 47 Isis, 153 Jason, 240 Jastorf culture, 40 Jesus, 194 Jews, 24 Jord, 217 Jötunheim, 203 Judaism, 57 Jung, C. G., 8, 20, 21-22, 111, 120, 249 Jungian psychology, 3 Jupiter, 62, 113, 289 Jutes, 41 Kali, 122 Katla volcano, 252-253 K en n in g s, 94, 96, 119 Kreidt, Barbel, 161, 173 K reu terb u ch , 292 Kurgans, 25, 73, 119, 152, 166, 171, 203; and the Aesir sky gods, 124, 206; descendants of, 36-43; invasion of, 31—36, 46; social structure of, 69-71 Kvasir, 208, 224, 230-234 Kvasir's Blood, 231, 232, 238, 242, 284 Lakshmi, 167, 169 Land ownership, 67-68 (Gimbutas), 13, 266 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 70 Linguistics, 32, 36, 44; Baltic group, 41; Germanic, 40; Latin group, 39 Ljosalfheim, 205 L a n g u a g e o f the G o d d ess, T h e

330

Loddfafnir, 193 Lodur, 224, 225 L o k a sen n a , 153, 181 Loki, 119, 120, 129-130, 153, 154, 156, 207, 256; and the death of Bal­ der, 127; and Freyja, 167, 181, 182; offspring of, 210; in the Ragnarök, 258; and Satan, 122 Loll, 292 L o r d o f th e R in g (Tolkein), 116, 121, 200, 279 Luwians, 42 217 McKenna, Terence, 233 Macy, Joanna, 237 Magical plants, 284-297 M a h a b h a r a ta , 249 M a lle u s M a le fica ru m , 59, 160, 181 Mami, 167 Mandrake, 294, 295-296 Marijuana, 290, 291 Marriage, 68-72, 153, 154, 160 M a r r ia g e o f H ea ven a n d H e ll, T h e (Blake), 55 Mars, 124 Matricentricism, 12, 38, 40, 42,66-67, 92, 179, 266 Matrifocal society, 153, 155 Matrilineal succession, 42, 67 Mayer, Norbert J., 83, 133 Mead, 281 Mead of inspiration, 230, 232, 238242,284 Mechanistic worldview, 60 Memory, 225—226 Mephistopheles, 120, 130 Mercury, 62, 112, 113, 120, 122 Merlin, 121 Midgard, 124, 126, 129, 152, 200, 205; in the Ragnarök, 257 Midgard Serpent, 210 Midwifery, 51, 275-276

M a c b eth ,

INDEX

Migrations, 73-74 Militarism, 42, 64, 79 Military, 74; and hallucinogens, 76 Millennialism, 246 Miller, Alice, 26 Mimir, 169, 219, 220, 231; in the Ragnarök, 252, 264; well of, 10, 200, 205,215-221, 229 Mimir’s head, 55, 90, 120, 224—226, 228 Minoans, 38 Mistletoe, 128 Mjollnir, 126, 204, 208 Monotheism, 48, 56-57, 62 Monsters: in the Ragnarök, 256-259, 263 Montagu, Ashley, 13 Mother Earth, 161 Mother Goddess, 50 Munnin, 117, 225 Mushrooms, 76, 285-287, 297 Muspellsheim, 202 Mythology: and archaeology, 36; hybrid­ ization of, 71; theories of, 123. See a lso E d d a s \ Germanic mythology; Indo-Eu­ ropeans: mythology of; Native Ameri­ can Indians; Nordic-Germanic mythology Native American Indians, 36, 119, 261; genocide of, 236; and hallucinogens, 286; mythology of, 49, 239-240; practices of, 191, 195; and shaman­ ism, 116; and trickster, 243 Nazis, 4-5, 17-28, 111, 227, 235 Near-death experiences, 120 Necklace, 155-156, 180 Necromancy, 6, 55, 89-90, 117, 119— 120,127, 198 Neolithic cultures, 46; burial practices of, 51-52, 54; imagery of, 47 Neptune, 162 Nerthus, 161, 164

INDEX j 331

Nietzsche, Friedrich, 17-19 Niflheim, 202 Niflhel, 200, 210 Nine worlds, 192, 199—211 Njördr, 150, 153, 161-163,224,231; in the Ragnarök, 260, 264 Noatun, 162 Nordal, Sigurdur, 247, 253 Nordic-Germanic mythology, 2, 18, 43, 81, 114, 202, 218, 223; and eschatol­ ogy, 244-250, 256, 261 Nordic tribes, 40; marriage customs of, 68-72 Nords, 40 Normans, 40 Norsemen, 42 Od, 181 Odin, 9-10, 14, 111-122, 123, 153, 191— 199, 202, 225; animal associa­ tion of, 50-51, 116—119; and blind­ ness, 223; compared to Satan, 57; as god of war, 73-79, 115, 122, 124, 156, 166, 198, 206; and Greek and Roman mythology, 62, 113; and hal­ lucinogens, 286; and magic, 294; and mead of inspiration, 123, 232, 238, 240—243; modern relevance of, 227; and necromancy, 55, 89-90, 198, 226; parallels to Merlin, 121; in the Ragnarök, 247, 249, 258, 260, 264; ring of, 208; and runes, 88, 114, 191, 192- 193, 195, 295; self-sacrifice of, 192—199, 270; as shaman, 49, 50; sons of, 112, 122, 127, 128, 280; and well of remembrance, 114, 215, 218219, 220; and wine, 283—284; wives of, 217; and World Tree, 96, 114, 191, 209, 211. See a lso Wotan Odr, 72, 153, 161 Odroerir, 231, 232, 238, 240, 284 Odysseus, 81 O pening to In n er L ig h t (Metznet), 9

Opium, 291-293, 296, 297 Opposites, 233 Orpheus, 226 Osiris, 153, 194, 233, 280 Paganism, 48—51, 58; and Christianity, 47, 92; demonization of, 275; oppres­ sion of, 261 Pantheism, 49 Patriarchy, 13, 36, 42, 63, 67, 69; ori­ gin of, 64 Patrilocality, 71 Pelasgians, 38 Persephone, 28, 210, 234, 240 Piets, 40, 41, 67, 69 Pig, 154-155, 186 Pluto, 53, 210 P o etic E d d a , 91, 92, 114 Polytheism, 48, 56; return of, 248 Poppy, 291-293 Poseidon, 162 Priestesses, 35, 64; and warfare, 80 Prometheus, 129, 194 Prophecy, 90-91 P rose E d d a s , 72, 123, 160, 161, 180, 206,219, 230, 238, 256, 284; and Christian eschatology, 210; and the Ragnarök, 246 Psychoactive plants, 282, 284-297 Ragnarök, 14, 78, 96, 125, 127, 128, 183, 218, 244-247; last battle of, 255-259; and the V ö lu sp á , 246-250; Wagner's depiction of, 19; and World Tree, 199 Rainbow bridge, 206, 288 Ratsch, Christian, 145 Ravens, 116-117 Reconciliation, 224, 230, 233; modern rituals of, 234-238; ritual of, 28, 230-234 Remembering, 13, 117, 227, 229 Retribution, 66

332 I INDEX R e v e la tio n ,

244, 249, 251, 262, 263

Rhine, 61 Ring, 115-116 R i n g C y cle, 19, 81, 93, 154, 249 R in g o f th e N ib elu n g en , T h e (Wagner), 115, 122 Romans, 40, 42, 46; mythology of, 18, 62, 113-114; origins of, 38; settling of, 46 Root, 294 Rosemary, 293 Runes, 85-91, 114, 198, 216, 294-295; interpretation of, 65; Odin’s discovery of, 191, 192-193, 195; origin of, 85

238 Skalds, 119, 221 Skidbladnir, 208 S k ír n is m á l, 164 Skuld, 217, 271 Slavery, 63, 64 Slavs, 41, 42, 46, 57; settling of, 46 Sleipnir, 207 Snyder, Gary, 258 Social organization, 42, 61-72 Son, 231, 232, 240, 284 Sow, 154-155, 164, 186 Stabreim, 93 Steiner, Rudolf, 56, 114-115, 129, 263 Sturluson, Snorri, 97, 123, 202; on Kvasir, 230-232; on the Ragnarök, 246, 263. See a lso E d d a s ; E ld e r E d d a ;

S k á ld a s p a r m á l,

Sabina, Maria, 232 Sacrifice, 194, 195, 269-270; and Odin, 198; of self, 78 Sami, 89, 157 Satan, 56, 57, 122, 261 Saxons, 40, 41, 42, 112 S a x o ’s H is to r y o f th e D a n es, 157 Scandanavian mythology. See E d d a s Scots, 41 Seed, John, 237 Seeresses, 80, 159 Seidr, 65, 179, 197 Semeone, Morna, 6 Semitic civilizations, 43 Sexuality, 43 Shamanism, 6-8, 48-51, 89, 117-118, 145, 158, 191, 240; and altered states of consciousness, 159; and Christian­ ity, 51, 261; and drugs, 286; and hallucinogens, 197; and necromancy, 55; and the World Tree, 194 Ship burial, 163 Sibylla, 65 Siegfried, 128 Sif, 208 . Sigmund, 122 S ig rd r lfu r h á l, 219 Sigurd, 80

P oetic E d d a ; P rose E d d a s ; Y n g lin g a S a g a

Sumerians, 88 Sun goddess, 264 Surt, 257, 258 Surtsey, 255, 263 Suttung, 238-239, 241-242, 284 Svartalfheim, 207 Tabernaemontanus, 292 Tacitus, 41, 65, 70-71, 74, 86, 93, 155, 160, 161, 183 Taliesin, 121 Tammuz, 128 Tantra, 145 Tarot, 91, 194 Teachings o f D o n J u a n , T h e (Castaneda), 233 Technology, 1 Teiresias, 223 Telepathy, 117 Thera, 38 Things, 124, 200, 237 Thor, 62, 112, 122, 124, 125-127, 129, 204; in the Ragnarök, 257; sons of, 280

INDEX I 333

Thor’s hammer, 126-127, 154, 182183,208 Thorsson, Edred, 200, 202 Thrym, 126, 182 Thursday, 125 Titans, 123, 205 Tolkien, J. R. R., 115-116, 121, 200, 205,279 Totemism, 66 Toynbee, Arnold, 60 Tree, 222, 249. See a lso World Tree Tribe, 66-68 Trickster, 119, 243 Triple Goddess, 210, 216 Tuesday, 124 Twentieth century: cosmology of, 211214; and the Goddess, 266; and the Ragnarök, 250 Twilight of the Gods, 14, 244. See a lso Ragnarök 2 0 0 1 - A Space Odyssey, 12 Tyr, 112, 124-125, 256 Underworld, 210 Uranus, 225 Urbanization, 63 Urd, 199, 200, 215-221, 271; well of, 206 Vafthrudnir, 208 V a fth rú d n ism á l, 205, 250, 260, 263, 264-265,280 Valhalla, 78, 206, 283, 284 Valkyrie Battle Maidens, 78, 80-81, 120, 186, 216, 284 Vanaheim, 124, 152, 203 Vanir, 122-130, 150-152, 154, 156, 164, 210, 233, 248; and Aesir, 28, 43, 71, 122, 151, 166, 169, 172, 179, 224, 230; and brother and sister marriage, 153; and Christianity, 160; and divination, 88; and giants, 204; and hemp, 290; and Kvasir’s blood,

284; and Odin, 90; in the Ragnarök, 260, 264; realm of, 203 Vegetation gods, 154, 226, 233, 269 Veleda, 65, 183, 295 Venus, 62, 152 Verdandi, 217, 271 Vidar, 125; in the Ragnarök, 258, 264 Vikings, 122 Volcanic eruptions, 252-255 Volkas, Armand, 235 V ö lu sp á , 9 6 , 1 5 6 - 1 5 7 , 1 7 0 , 1 7 2 , 1 9 9 , 204, 205, 216, 217, 219, 224, 230; a n d th e R a g n a r ö k , 1 2 8 , 1 8 3 , 2 4 4 , 2 4 6 -2 5 0 , 2 5 0 -2 5 1 , 256, 259, 265, 2 7 9 ; scope of, 2 1 8

Völvas, 80, 96, 186, 197; and divina­ tion, 88, 89, 157-158, 183; prophesy of, 90, 247; in the Ragnarök, 257, 279; and warfare, 65 Von Bingen, Hildegard, 291 Von Bremen, Adam, 112, 163-164 Von Franz, Marie-Louise, 76-77 Wagner, Richard, 17-19, 81, 93, 115, 122, 206 Wallace, David Rains, 222 Waluburg, 295 War, 165-172; god of, 124; in the Ragnarök, 250 Warfare, 78; women in, 79-84 Warriors, 63-64, 73-79; in modern so­ ciety, 82; transformation of, 81-84 Wasson, R. Gordon, 76 Water, 222-223 Wax myrtle, 293 Weapons, 35; and magical powers, 77 Wednesday, 112 Well, 205 Well of Remembrance, 10-11, 114, 145,215-221 Well of Urd, 215-221, 226, 229 Werewolves, 75 Western industrialization, 227

iO U N T

M E R C Y C O LLE G E

M OUNT M ERCY C D L U K li

C E D A ll R A E lÐ tS , iii& E ^ 2 4 0 2

3 7014 O o i P l l l l

World Tree, 49-50, 194; cosmology of, 96, 152, 192, 199-211; and Odin, 88, 114-115, 191, 198; and the Ragnarök, 252; and well of remembrance, 215-218 Wotan, 20-21, 111-122, 119, 283; and hallucinogens, 286; and magical plants, 294. See a lso O A itx Yahweh, 43, 115 Yggdrasill. See World Tree Ymir, 112, 202, 204, 207 Y n g lin g a S a g a , 75, 116, 169, 224 Zagreus, 240

DATE DUE

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