Author Archives: Operation X

Written by Dyami Millarson

The world’s largest religions fit nicely into two categories:

• Indian religions
• Semitic or Abrahamic religions

Based on the latter categorisation, we may also speak of ‘religions belonging to the Abrahamic tradition,’ which is a more verbose way to put it.

Buddhism and Hinduism belong to the Indian tradition, i.e., they are Indian religions, whilst Christianity and Islam belong to the Abrahamic tradition, i.e., they are Semitic/Abrahamic religions.

All of the strains of Germanic folk religion do not fit into any of these categories, but belong to their own separate category.

The Indian tradition is a category that is related to the Germanic tradition, because both traditions may be regarded as sub-categories of the Indo-European tradition. However, the Indian sub-category ranks among the largest religions of the world, whereas the other Indo-European traditions do not, so it is fair to count them separately.

Written by Dyami Millarson

Performing blood sacrifices or being a witness to them for research may be impractical under many circumstances, although one should definitely try to perforn or witnessed it being perforned at some point in one’s career, because closely observing actual rite is, of course, the best way to conduct a proper investigation into it.

While it may be especially true that observation in this manner is a valid way to explore the nature of blood sacrifice in a polytheistic context, I would argue that we should not dismiss fantasy as a powerful tool in exploring the nature of blood sacrifice. The human imagination is an incredible faculty of the human mind, and this tool bestowed upon us by evolution should definitely not lie dormant as it is often ignored during the research process.

In fact, dreams or fantasies may be useful for formulating scientific hypotheses. Therefore, the creativity of the human imagination may play a vital role in Germanic blood sacrifice research. The human mind in its entirety offers opportunities that ought to be seized, we should definitely make full use of everything that we have got.

Just as the Icelanders still dreamed of pagan dances for many years after the conversion and included the theme of dancing in their fantastic folk stories and Snorri even used a dream setting to treat the Nordic folk religious narrative, one may consider that if one cannot perform blood sacrifices for whatever reason, one may still dream of blood sacrifices at night or fantasise about it during daytime.

Blood sacrifice, while an integral part of ancient Germanic cultural heritage, occupied the pagan psyche, and the ancient polytheists of Germanic Europe would therefore have dreamed of blood sacrifice at night as well. Among animistic-polytheistic peoples, dreams are regarded as valid forms of observation, and this notion may be philisophically interesting for research purposes as well, as we ought to remember that dreams/fantasies are valid ways to explore the pagan forest world, where blood sacrifice was practised, and consequently to develop scientific hypotheses based on these.

Plato’s cave allegory is well-known as well as his discussion of an ideal city. Polytheism researchers or philosophers may develop a forest allegory and the notion of an ideal sacrificial forest (perhaps with nearby human habitation in the form of a village?) to aid blood sacrifice research and draw on artistic inventions in order to further explore the world of the ancient past where there were sacrificial forests also known as sacred forests. The theme of the magical forest has persisted into pre-modern times in Germanic fairytales, as the forests remained a mysterious place essential to the folk psyche and from which he people drew artistic – or perhaps mythological, although I prefer not to use that word – inspiration.

Written by Dyami Millarson

While Latin, the Roman imperial language, has played a significant role in the decline of Northwest European polytheism in the past, English, planet Earth’s global language, is playing a significant role in the rise of Germanic polytheism.

The reasons why English is aiding the Germanic polytheist revival are threefold:

1. English is a Germanic language and therefore native to Northwestern Europe
2. English is the language of the world wide web (internet)
3. English is the first true global language in the history of mankind

The fact that English is originally a Germanic language plays a significant role in garnering sympathy from its speakers for Germanic lore. Being a speaker of English creates a sense of familiarity when one learns about Thor and Othin, for instance.

Therefore, the language that one speaks does matter for the revival of polytheism. The fact that a Germanic language became the world language is a boon to Germanic polytheism, which has, at least in its purest form, been a “dormant religion” for a long time. Of course, elements of the religion, which had become syncretised with the dominant Judaeo-Christian religion, lived on in folklore.

The natural consequence of English being the global language is that English is the language of scientific research and hence there is a wealth of scientific literature on Germanic religion published in the English language.

It is, after all, no wonder that there has been a particular interest in Germanic polytheism in the English-speaking world since that is the pristine religion of the Anglo-Saxon forebears, whose language would evolve into Modern English.

While English is a natural language that has been turned into a global language and it is not like Esperanto which is not associated with any particular cultural history, English is associated with a cultural history that has its roots in Germanic paganism.

The world wide world, where English is undoubtedly the most dominant language, allows everyone to host their own website and this enables anyone who is interested sharing information on Germanic polytheism to do so.

Furthermore, the internet allows its users to find information on any topic they are interested in, and so information about Germanic polytheism has become more easily accessible than ever and now the taboo surrounding the topic is dissipating.

Germanic polytheism has been demonised by the Church, but the sudden renewed interest in this topic during the 19th century has slowly started to create an environment that is favourable or conducive to the return of Germanic polytheism.

Last but not least: while the English language is linked to its pagan past in one way or another, it is quite inevitable that people’s curiosity will be sparked and read about this topic at some point on the internet. Germanic paganism is ubiquitous.

Speakers of English are more and more interested in their cultural and linguistic roots, and this is also making them interested in seeking out their religious roots. The natural result of this search for roots is that they will arrive at polytheism.

We are seeing the return of Germanic polytheism as a dominant player on the world stage and this is the result of English being the vehicle of international communication. The trend of the rise of Northwestern European folk religion will continue into the foreseeable future.

Written by Dyami Millarson

The role of Latin in the Christianisation of Northwestern Europe was threefold:

1. it allowed the clergy to cross linguistic barriers
2. it allowed the clergy to read old Church documents
3. it allowed the Church to learn from the Roman Empire

Latin is the sine qua non which made the Christianisation of Northwestern Europe possible. Without the language of the Roman Empire, Christianity would likely not have spread so far and wide. Latin boosted the missionary efforts of the Church.

The Church could stay connected with all its missionaries and give them proper directives as they shared a common language. Not only did they all manage to speak a common language, but they also wrote a common language.

While the Church had a common written and spoken language, communication with all its missionaries on the ground was made possible. These missionaries might be able to speak local languages, but they also mastered Latin.

The communication infrastructure of the Church was simply very efficient. They could easily cross linguistic barriers without second thought. It didn’t matter where their missionaries came from in Europe as long as they knew Latin.

The Church possessed all the knowledge of the Roman Empire. This gave them a huge strategic advantage. They had an absolute monopoly over written history and thus they possessed man’s most powerful tool of propaganda.

The Germanic peoples didn’t have the written knowledge of the Roman Empire at their disposal. If they had, after defeating the Roman Empire on the battlefield, properly dispersed all of the written imperial knowledge over Germania prior to the conversion efforts of the Church, one can only wonder about how the course of history could have been changed in its entirety.

Writing is a powerful weapon, and that is what we ought to learn in hindsight from what happened during the Christianisation of Northwestern Europe.

Perhaps if clergy members had defected en masse to Germanic paganism and made the “secret written documents” of the Church publicly accessible for their pagan brethren, the pagan Northwestern Europeans could have developed a consistent strategy that matched that of the Church, which possessed the knowledge of the Roman Empire, and thus reversed the trend.

The Germanic peoples were dealing with a massive form of information asymmetry, which meant that all the odds were stacked against them. Furthermore, the communications of the Church were by far the most superior.

While we have explored two dimensions of the Latin language just now, there is also the dimension of being able to read centuries-old documents in Latin. This allowed the Church to easily communicate (its mission) across the centuries.

Up to this day, one can easily read the earliest Church documents as long as one knows Latin. The Church had access to ancient history, it had access to the future and it had access to all its most dedicated members at any time.

The Church did not only possess knowledge of the Roman Empire, but by commanding its language, they possessed the ability to expand the religious borders of the old Roman Empire with the written and spoken word alone.

The Church had modelled itself after the Roman Empire and so they possessed its communication infrastructures completely. The most important is that they were able to learn from how the Roman Empire functioned as a bureaucracy.

So this sums up why linguistic knowledge can be such a game-changer. Since the Germanic peoples hadn’t put tremendous efforts into learning the spoken and written Latin language and dispersing the Roman imperial documents over their native lands for study by its elites who also functioned as priests, they had essentially lost the chance to prevent the conversion efforts of later ages.

The military successes of the Germanic peoples initially caught the Church off-guard, and had the Germanic peoples been more linguistically interested after their conquests, they could have consolidated the power of their cultural religion.

While the Empire was crumbling and the very existence of the Church was threatened by the invading non-Christian hordes from all sides, the Germanic peoples soon lost the initiative due to lack of linguistic foresight.

Had the Germanic peoples taken note of all the communications of the Roman Empire and made this knowledge their own, they could have significantly strengthened their tribal homelands and prepared them for the future.

This was essentially a problem of knowledge transfer and the Church filled in the void that had followed after the Germanic conquests. In fact, by not seizing the opportunity to gain control over all Roman knowledge, the Germanic peoples enabled the Church to uproot the Germanic victories and eventually figure out how to turn the tables on the Germanic victors.

Language plays a much more important role in history than people realise, and particularly the Latin language has played a very important role.

Proto-Germanic or something akin to Proto-Germanic could have served a very similar function as Latin if the Germanic peoples had properly studied Latin and its inextricable relationship with the Roman Empire.

Latin is a gateway to classical history, and all of this knowledge could have been translated into a common Germanic language at the time. If this knowledge had been committed to writing in this common Germanic language, it could have inspired many generations to come under the premise that they should keep learning the Germanic language originally used for translation and analysis.

In essence, the Germanic peoples could have easily replicated the success of the Roman Empire because all of the resources of the Roman Empire were at their disposal upon their military successes over the crumbling Empire.

While this is a story of missed linguistic opportunities, it also highlights how important it is to study foreign languages and cultures properly. The Latin language was the vehicle of the Roman Empire and there was certainly a lot to learn.

Even if the Germanic peoples possessed very valuable knowledge of their own, they had nothing to lose from studying Latin and they only had everything to gain; it could not be overstated that they ought to have made more of an effort to study the language of the Roman Empire and send materials back to their Germanic brethren up north in order to study the language and its culture properly.

Of course, we have the benefit of hindsight and they didn’t have that at the time, but that means that we should be so wise as to learn from the past and draw lessons that we may use for shaping the destiny of polytheism, for which nothing is more important than ensuring its own intergenerational continuity. The instinct of any religion is to survive, for the survival instinct of humans is linked to it.

Written by Dyami Millarson

The polytheists living in the Viking Age and early Germanic times saw omens everywhere. They were firmly convinced that the Gods attempted to communicate with them in mysterious ways, and that they Gods were trying to warn them about their destiny; in fact, they believe that virtuous and heroic humans, who were well-liked by the Gods, were worthy of being spoken to by the Gods.

They held no doubt that the Gods spoke to them, and that this meant they were virtuous in the eyes of the Gods; while these beliefs were so firmly held – the degree of conviction was definitely strong – by all of the Germanic peoples practising folk religion, they believed without any shred of doubt that they were liked by the Gods and that for this reason, the Gods were doing them many favours.

Germanic people saw divine messages in the sky in the form of birds, clouds and other celestial objects and phenomena; they closely watched the motion of everything in the skies, hoping that this might tell them something about their fate. Everything that moved in the sky was believed to have a spirit, and therefore flying birds, moving celestial bodies and phenomena in the night sky were regarded as manifestations of the spiritual world, to which the Ansiwiz (major deities, big spirits) and Albīz (numinous beings, elves, lesser spirits) belonged.

They saw divine message on earth in the form of wild animals and domesticated animals; they closely watched the movements of horses and the intestines of slaughtered cattle. They not only paid attention to the motions that they observed on earth and in the sky, but they also paid close attention to sound; they listened to the songs of birds and they listened to the breezing of horses.

Germanic folk religion definitely included an emphasis on careful observation of one’s local natural environment. After all, being familiar with one’s surroundings was vital for the survival of the Germanic peoples. If a foreign army encroached upon their territory, they could perhaps have heard it in the songs of the birds in the forest as they might fall silent or show other unusual behaviours.

The songs of birds and other sounds of the forest may be a way to tell whether there are intruders in the local environment. The forest communicates and the Germanic peoples were paying attention to this natural communication that was occurring around them. They were in touch with nature and they possess knowledge about their local ecology: they knew the normal sounds and motions that occurred in nature, and they knew how to recognise deviations from the norm.

Those deviations could provide them with a lot of information about what was to come, and so this allowed them to react properly to any impending disaster. The forest might warn them about an invading army or a natural disaster. The forest was their friend who protected them from harm and so they listened to the forest. The Germanic peoples were not just forest-dwelling peoples, but they were one with the forest in which they lived and they had successfully adapted to the forest.