Souls Belong to Lakes

Written by Dyami Millarson

The Gothic term sáiwala, which is a cognate of the synonymous English term soul, may be related to the Gothic term sáiws, which is a cognate of the English term sea. Sáiws (pl. sáiweis) has a couple of meanings, namely lake, sea and marshland. Tacitus, Adam von Bremen and other sources of evidence point to the Germanic peoples as making offerings to sáiweis (pl.). If we may assume that the Germanic peoples sacrificed to sáiweis (lakes, seas, marshlands), then what does that mean for the relationship with the concept of sáiwala? It means that the soul itself is tied or connected to sacred sáiweis; the Urðarbrunnr Well of Urth, which is located at one of the three holy roots of the World Tree, may be interpreted as a sacred sáiws as well, or may at the very least be likened to it for insight’s sake.

After all, the sáiwala soul is connected with urðr fate from birth to death, and since urðr fate is connected with the Urðarbrunnr, it is not strange to suppose that the sáiwala soul shares a connection with the latter as well. We may suppose that the Urðarbrunnr is the beginning and end of the soul; it is whence the soul came and it is whither the soul will go. I recall watching a movie about knights in my youth where the corpse of a king was laid to rest on a raft and was then pushed to drift into the lake or sea (I am unsure of what kind of body of water it really was), and finally it was shot with a burning arrow so the raft would catch fire and would finally sink to the bottom of the sáiws (lake, sea). This scene might, coincidentally or not, been linked to a medieval Germanic ritual, as one can easily understand the burning of the king’s corpse as a way of sending the king’s soul into the sáiws.

This reminds me also of the bog mummies or bog bodies, and these finds have always made me consider the possibility that these were sacrifices according to the pre-Germanic tradition, which would be continued in Germanic times. Whether these were just sacrifices of ordinary humans or criminals is a moot point, because the Germanic peoples did not make such distinctions either in their time; any such execution, i.e. taking of a life, would have been accompanied by rituals as religion was an integral part of life (remember the social structure was more identical to that of a theocratic society as seen in the Middle Ages than anything we have in modern times where religious and secular affairs are separated, which would have appeared artificial and unfathomable to the ancients), and so what might now be regarded as the death penalty would then have been considered a sacrifice to the Gods, who could provide guidance of the sacrificial victim’s soul and with the proper rituals of dedication to the Gods, a vengeful spirit’s wrath could be averted.

It has been said that the Germanic peoples sacrificed their “worst men” to placate the Gods (see p. 59 of The Religion of Ancient Scandinavia), and this further supports the notion that the Germanic peoples may as well have sacrificed their criminals, although not all instances of human sacrifice necessarily need to have been executions of criminals; it is known that kings, who could not ensure good harvest, have been sacrificed. Additionally, Hangaguð God of the Hanged is another name for Othin and this appears to be connected with those who were killed by strangling. Killing living beings by binding with ropes to trees (i.e., strangling) seems to have been a consistent theme in ancient Germanic religion. The whole process must have been a magical rite similar to dancing around the maypole (cf. the German folk religious concept of Tanzbaum dance tree). Others have apparently had similar thoughts about the potential connection between bog mummies and sacrificial religion, it is definitely worth reading one such paper.

Why Were Germanic Sacrifices Usually Communal?

Written by Dyami Millarson

The reason why the blood sacrifices of Germanic religion tended to be communal instead of communal is practical: it was no easy task to slaughter large animals such as cows and horses (see more examples here and here). An individual could slaughter a cock or pig on his own, but a cow or horse is a whole different story.

Naturally, small animals would have been more closely associated with small feasts, large animals with large feasts. The latter would have been a lot less frequent than the former. After all, one does not need to slaughter large animals that frequent as their meat can feed human beings for a longer period of time if preserved properly.

Another reason for why the Germanic peoples tended to perform blood sacrifices together is cultural: people in the Middle and Classical Ages had a strong sense of community and they tended to do everything together. One might get a sense of this in tight-knit traditional village communities around the world.

People living in the medieval and classical times were a whole lot more communal than people are today, and so it is to be expected that it was only natural for them to perform slaughtering rituals together.

When it came to slaughtering large animals, obviously more knowledge and skill was required than with slaughtering a small animal. Here is where trained professionals might have come into play; people who served as priests must have possessed more intimate knowledge how to perform the slaughter than others. Priests are religious leaders and as such, usually distinguished or prominent men such as (petty) kings and earls took the role of priest in Germanic society.

So, to some extent, the slaughter of large animals may have been outsourced to experts as we do today in the modern world. Smaller animals could, of course, be slaughtered by anyone with some basic skills, but large animals obviously required more skills and so it was convenient to let skilled priests take care of it.

Priests combined the slaughtering ritual with fate-reading and other religious elements, so the slaughtering itself had higher significance than merely just slaughtering an animal for food and absorbing the power of its spirit. The priests could discern fateful messages during the slaughtering process and they would have looked for signs that the Gods accepted their bloody offering.

Blood sacrifice is nothing more than the highly ritualised form of slaughtering animals for meat; it has a close relationship with food and eating. The knowledge for blood sacrifice was essential for life and it was inherited. The knowledge for slaughtering small animals would have been common among all folks, but that of large animals would in all likelihood have been reserved to the most knowledgeable. So, priests would have had the function to transmit knowledge of how to slaughter animals properly, and this knowledge, as was all knowledge in the Germanic pagan world, was closely linked with the traditional religion.

Eating Strong Animals Made Germanic Polytheists Strong

Written by Dyami Millarson

We know the modern adage, you are what you eat. The ancient polytheists of the Germanic world had this folk wisdom as well, and it was so profound a wisdom to them that it was a basic principle of religion to them: having sacrificed a strong animal according to the ancient tradition, the strong animal’s spirit is transferred to the human sacrifiers who consume the animal’s meat, blood and bones. So, the Germanic polytheists believed that eating strong animals made them strong.

On Monday 20 December 2021, I was having a soup made of a cock (male chicken, called rooster in US) which we slaughtered on Sunday 19 December 2021 during full moon. It was my first time slaughtering chickens. Before, during and after the experience, it made me think about the philosophy of existence. It helped me gain more insight into the ancient Germanic traditions of communal blood sacrifice, as it allowed me to understand better, from a spiritual perspective, why blood sacrifice was a communal rather than individual affair; doing this together helps with the bereavement process (verwerkingsproces in Dutch).

I believe that everyone should actually experience what it is like to take another being’s life before you consume the meat, because it is a spiritual experience that makes you ponder about existence in the human world (which may also be called Mithgarth). I am thankful I could experience this because when we buy chicken in the supermarket, we miss this spiritual aspect of the acceptance of the transition between life and death as well as the transition from death to feeding other life. When I was having the chicken soup on Monday, I was thinking especially about the latter transition and as the meat of the cock was really strong, it made me ponder the notion that eating strong animals makes us strong.

Taking the life of an animal with your own hands for the consumption of all of its meat is not just a spiritual or philosophical experience, but it is also an ethical matter of taking responsibility. Modern people like deferring the responsibility of slaughtering animals to others or even machines, this seemingly dissolves us of guilt and responsibility so we do not think much about it when we buy meat in the supermarket and consume it on a regular basis. However, when we do take responsibility, it makes us much more mindful of the meat and where it came from.

If one were to live according to the ways of the ancestors in the modern day and age, I believe it is relevant to incorporate the notion of taking responsibility for the meat that one consumes; where possible, it is best to slaughter animals yourself so that you feel the full responsibility of your actions and know the value of the meat. To me, it seems logical that the traditional polytheist ancestors would have fully agreed with such a philosophical notion of taking responsibility; we have to do this with our own hands and we should experience the entire spiritual process.

Slaughtering an animal for meat was a part of growing up among the ancients, and since we still consume meat in the modern day and age, I do not see why we should shun the entire spiritual process, we are missing the spiritual part where we take matters into our own hands and my heart tells me we should reclaim this spiritual aspect of existence that we are currently missing when it comes to consuming meat; meat is not just about consumption, but also taking a life and we ought to be part of the process of helping the animal spirit pass on to the afterlife. It is a very intimate process when you take an animals life, and this ought to be done properly.

To me emotionally, it makes sense to believe that the animal spirit transfers its power to the human who consumes its meat. When we are present during the process of the animal’s death, we share a very intimate moment with it and we are also going to be the ones who will absorb its powerful spirit. When I ate the chicken soup on Monday, I felt much more intimate with the meat because I had slaughtered this cock myself, and I felt deeply thankful to the cock’s spirit. I noticed that the cock’s meat was very strong in texture and very tasty as well; this feeling made an image of a strong spirit entering my body appear before my mind’s eye.

Waarom at men vroeger vaak gevogelte?

Geschreven door Dyami Millarson

Gemak dient de mens. Men at vroeger vaak gevogelte omdat het makkelijk is. Vogels zijn overal en het vlees is zacht waardoor het makkelijk te verteren is. Men moet aan de kust leven of in de buurt van wateren om te kunnen vissen. Groot wild is niet bepaald makkelijk te vangen, het is juist een hele uitdaging. Vogels vangen en braden is een relatief makkelijke bron van vlees/voedsel.

Vandaar zullen de Germanen ook dikwijls gevogelte gegeten hebben. Zij zullen waarschijnlijk ganzen gehouden hebben om te slachten en zij zullen zeker ook wilde vogels gevangen en opgegeten hebben. Dit geeft ons een beeld van het eetpatroon van de Germanen en dit is zeker belangrijk voor ons begrip van hun geloofsopvattingen:

Voor de Germaan was het moeilijk om aan groot wild te komen, waardoor hij dit een waardig offer achtte voor de Goden. Het vereiste moed van hem om zulk een dier te vangen en slachten. Heldhaftigheid werd dus beschouwd als een wijze om de Goden eer te doen oftewel de Goden te (ver)eren.

Het slachten van een vogels was meer alledaags, waardoor het algauw beschouwd zou zijn als een klein offer voor de minder grote Goden. Ik zou mij goed kunnen voorstellen dat men een vogel juist aan de Álfar geofferd zou hebben.

De bronmaterialen lijken er namelijk op te duiden dat de grootheid van de godheid in verband stond met de grootheid van het offer. Er was waarschijnlijk sprake vand it grondbeginsel in de Germaanse religie: hoe groter de God, hoe groter het offer.

A Brief Introduction to Nenets Folk Religion

Written by Dyami Millarson

Nenets folk religion or polytheism has also been called Nenets shamanism and Nenets animism (*1, *2, *3, *4, *5, *6, *7, *8, *9, *10). Not unlike Northwestern European polytheism, a characteristic feature of Nenets polytheism is blood sacrifice, particularly in their case the sacrifice of reindeer to the Gods (*6, *8, *10, *11, *12). According to a 1948 Russian-Nenets dictionary, the Nenets translation for the Russian terms бог (deity) and небо (sky) is нум’, which may be transliterated to the Roman alphabet as num’ (*13). The Nenets word for heavenly (Russian небесный) is numgy (нумгы), which is derived from the aforementioned num’ (нум’). The Sky God and Creator God of the Nenets people, whom they believe to be an old man like Othin, is simply called Num, which means God or Heaven (*1, *14, *15, *16). Similarly, Týr or *Tīwaz, the name of the Germanic God of the Sky, is originally derived from an Indo-European term for heaven and is related to the Latin words diēs (day) and deus (god); the semantic pair heaven-god is particularly noteworthy as they occur both in both Germanic and Nenets etymologies of terms for the divine. The elder semantic usage of týr persisted in Old Norse poetry where it could mean “deity” and the suffix -týr also occurs in Old Norse names where it has the same meaning as Latin deus; additionally, the plural tívar, which highlights a semantic connection with daylight and heaven, was occasionally used in Old Norse to refer to the Gods. There is another interesting etymological-semantic similarity: like the Germanic adjective *þiudiskaz, which the Germanic peoples used to describe themselves and thus express their unique group identity, meant “of the people, belonging to the people,” the endonym Nenets means “people” (*8, *9). The Nenets fashion wooden or stone dolls that they consider sacred (*3, *5, *6, *12). Similarly, the Germanic peoples had a traditional craft of fashioning spiritual men from clay or dough; and, in this spiritual context, it ought to be recalled how Othin fashioned the dwarfs. The idiosyncratic housing of the Nenets is a conical tent or teepee that is called chum or mya (*17, *18). The Nenets believe in other or parallel worlds like the Germanic peoples (*14, *16). Tadebya (тадебя) is the native Nenets name for a shaman or magico-religious leader who may connect with or travel to the otherworld as a mediator/messenger (*2). The leadership function of the tadebya may be compared to that of the seeress or vala in ancient Germanic religion; the Romans reported that the ancient Germans revered such seeresses as Veleda, Ganna, Waluburg and Albruna, and it should be noted that the Queen of the Gods, namely Frigg, is a seeress as well. In addition, it should not be forgotten that the King of the Gods, namely Othin, also fulfils a shamanic function by travelling to the otherworld for wisdom. So the ruling divine couple was shamanic in Germanic folk religion. The bear has significant religious or totemic meaning for the Nenets (*16, cp. *19, *20), and for the Germanic peoples as well, who identified the bear with Othin’s strong son Thor. While the bear was a symbol for strength, the Germanic peoples even had a class of warrior that was called “bear-shirt” (berserkr); by wearing a bear-shirt, he spiritually embodied the strength of a bear. The Nenets have a lunar calendar (*8, cp. *21), whilst the indigenous calendar of the Germanic peoples is lunisolar. The Nenets have a folk religious parallel or counterpart to the Germanic Álfar, the clan of excellent smiths: the Sihirtya (сихиртя), a spiritual family or race of light-eyed skilled craftsmen (*9).

Blood Sacrifice Is the Distinguishing Feature of Ancient Chinese Religion

Written by Dyami Millarson

Taoism prohibits blood sacrifice (see Chinese source here), and Buddhism is against this as well. This means that blood sacrifice is, at least originally speaking, the distinguishing feature of Chinese folk religion, because Chinese religion originally has no prescriptions against this, though influences from Taoism and Buddhism may be present in modern times.

The study of the features of Chinese folk religion is relevant because Germanic and Chinese religion may both be considered folk religions, ancient polytheist belief systems that endorse ritual sacrifice as a method of interaction with the spiritual. While the most striking feature of Germanic folk religion is blood sacrifice, it is interesting to know that this applies to Chinese folk religion as well. For our studies, we ought to take a good look at the role of blood sacrifice in Chinese beliefs. I do recall an instance where Confucius partook in a blood sacrifice; his pupil questioned him about this in a hostile manner, but he defended blood sacrifice saying that his pupil loved the sheep and he loved the tradition (you may read a fuller explanation of this saying by Confucius on this English external site).

Particularly in ancient times, Chinese people offered cattle, sheep and pigs to the spiritual realm. This custom declined, however, with the advent of Buddhism and Taoism, which prohibited this as aforementioned. We should, therefore, focus particularly on the ancient times when we study the Chinese sacrificial custom that used to be prevalent among the Chinese and that simultaneously used to be the distinguishing feature of Chinese folk religion in ancient times (i.e., ancient Chinese religion), yet this distinction eroded over time under the influence of Buddhism and Taoism which interacted with Chinese folk religion.

Germanic Cultural Religion

Written by Dyami Millarson

The Germanic peoples practised a cultural religion, where culture and religion were blended. While we have established this, we should immediately ask: what were their priorities from the perspective of their cultural-religious worldview?

Food was way more prominent in the Germanic cultural-religious worldview than many in the modern world may realise. Food was way up the list of priorities in the ancient Germanic world. Famines were a common occurrence back then.

Although a historic explanation may be offered for the prominence of food in the Germanic worldview, it would be incorrect to overlook the fact that there is also a timeless aspect to this perception, because food is still essential today.

We live in a world of abundance, but we are still biological beings that need food in order to sustain their biological bodies. In this biological regard, we are no different from our Germanic forebears who dwelled in these Northwest European lands.

As food was an all-important topic that pervaded the Germanic worldview, the Germanic ritual of blood sacrifice should be seen in this light. No doubt, the Germanic peoples of yore practised blood sacrifice on a regular basis.

However, what many fail to understand is the context of blood sacrifice. We may define blood sacrifice, particularly animal sacrifice, as a ritualised act of slaughter. In the ancient times, there were no slaughterhouses which would do the work for us.

The way for the Germanic peoples to get meat was to slaughter the animals themselves and they did so in a ritualised manner. They called in the help of the Gods to assist them in pacifying the angry soul of the sacrificial animal.

Killing an animal was not an act that humans ever took lightly. As intelligent beings, humans have always been acutely aware that they took a life. In the past, they didn’t have mechanised systems to make the slaughter a distant affair.

In fact, the slaughter of an animal for obtaining its meat was a very intense affair in the Germanic past, and that made it all the more harrowing when a hungry community had to resort to slaughtering an animal to feed its members.

While the Germanic peoples needed the meat, the sacrificial rite was a magical affair where the Gods were invoked to assist in dealing with the animal’s soul. The entire local community was involved in this affair as it was crucial to their well-being.

Blood sacrifice was thought of as a way to bring good luck to the community. This is quite understandable because if the rite were not performed properly, the Gods would not be pleased or the angry soul of the animal would come to haunt them.

To the Germanic peoples, sacrificial blood was holy. After all, blood was and still is the substance of life; to the Germanic peoples, it had magical and spiritual properties, because when a creature was bleeding to death, its spirit was leaving.

The sanctity of blood is related to the correct observation that it is linked to life. This is why blood plays such an important role in blood sacrifice. After the animal had been slaughtered, Germanic priests caught the blood in a sacrificial bowl.

The blood was not wasted. In fact, this holy substance was smeared on the tree sanctuaries or the idols of the Gods that were carved into the wood of trees. The holy blood was also sprinkled on the witnesses of the blood sacrifice.

This is the manner in which the God idols and the witnesses were sanctified. The power of the spirit of the animal was conferred to them and would protect them. The blood had protective magical properties, warded off disease, and so on.

So, while slaughter was not a mechanised process in the Germanic times, the Germanic peoples had to get intimate with their sacrificial victim. They ascribed a spirit to their victim and they treated their victim with due respect.

This cannot be said of modern slaughterhouses where the spiritual aspect of slaughter is sorely neglected, the souls of animals are not tended to. The Gods of the Germanic peoples had the role of guiding the animal souls in the afterlife.

While the Germanic Gods, also called höpt (fetters) and bönd (bonds) in Old Norse, are not invoked in the slaughterhouses nor are the animals brought before sacrifice trees before meeting their end, the animal souls receive no proper guidance.

The spiritual guidance that is offered to the animal spirits is inherent in the sacrificial rite of the Germanic peoples and required no second thought. It was an obvious aspect of the rite that they performed, it required no elaboration.

We have now come to grasp how the Germanic cultural religion is properly associated with blood sacrifice, which is contextually related to food. We may ask: did blood sacrifices occur with any regularity and so when may we expect it?

Blood sacrifices occurred in cycles every year. It is not like Germanic peoples would slaughter animals every single day. A community could live off the meat of a slaughter animal for a long time and so there was no need for excessive slaughter.

Sacrifice was done in moderation. This is highly understandable because the Germanic peoples had to be careful with their scarce resources. It is even recommended in the Poetic Edda that one should not sacrifice too much.

The sacrificial cycles that occurred in the Germanic religion were entirely related to the cycles of food and slaughter. Major cycles of slaughter occurred in midsummer and midwinter, which fall on the summer and winter solstices respectively.

The Germanic peoples sacrificed for peace, victory, longevity and good harvest. Such were their general concerns in life. One ought to understand that personal concerns were linked to those of the community; everything was communal.

Similarly as in folk religions in East Asia, the Germanic folk religious prayers were simple and they were focused on the common good (of the tribe or clan). The topics of the prayers were highly stylised and would be pretty much the same every time.

The content of the prayers may thus be regarded as quite fossilised throughout the ages, for the concerns expressed therein would be timeless. The Germanic peoples desired peace, victory, longevity and good harvest in all ages.