Germanic Religion

>>1494440
Germanic religion is as vague as saying Abrahamic religion or Dharmic religion

The utter lack of written records means all we have are christian fanfiction and folklore to work with

well we know some things, more than most of us know, so i think it would be great to discuss them. their world creation for instance. their major deities.

your post also lends to believe there was more than one Germanic religion, is their more than just the Wodanist version?

There's very little known about West Germanic paganism and almost nothing about East Germanic

Between West and North the basic pantheon seems to be mostly the same. The fertility god Freyr was called Ingwine in West Germanic, and possibly East Germanic, according to some interpretations of an inscription on a torc.

The Romans recorded an Earth goddess Nerthus, which would reflect Proto-Germanic *Nerþuz. The name is etymologically identical to the masculine Norse sea-god Njǫrðr.

The mythical races dwarves, giants, and elves are attested in both Anglo-Saxon and Norse, as well as some mythical heroes, like the Elven smith Wēland/Vǫlundr/Wiolant.

The worlds midgard, and hell are attested in Old English, Old Norse, and Old High German, and Muspell in both Norse and German. The Anglo-Saxon nine herb charm mentions seven worlds, so their cosmology wasn't exactly the same as Norse.

The world for temple in Proto-Germanic was *wīhą becoming weoh in Old English, and vé in Old Norse. The word was from an adjective *wīhaz, meaning 'holy', reflected in Gothic as 'weihs'. It is also related to the Latin word 'victima' (of a sacrifice)

A sacrifice was called *blōtą, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰlād-, which is also the first element in the name of the Latin flamen priests.

In the Hervarar saga there's a description of a horse sacrifice at the inauguration of a king where they slaughtered it and ate the meat and sprinkled its blood on a sacred tree. The word English word 'bless' is related to 'blood', and orginally meant to sprinkle with blood.

>>1494628
Do you know anywhere i might be able to read more original material? This is the sort of stuff im looking for.

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>>1494480
>The utter lack of written records means all we have are christian fanfiction and folklore to work with
:^)

>>1494796

written by Christian monks.

>>1494803
>Snorri
>a monk

The anthropology described by Tacitus seems to be way different than the one found in the Eddas.

According to Tacitus the Germans are descended from the god Tuisto (who is compared to Vedic Tvastar), who had a son Mannus (compared to Vedic Manu), the progenitor of the race.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuisto

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>>1494823

AY YO

HOL UP

SO YOU BE SAYIN

LEMME GIT THIS STRAIT

*smacks lips profusely*

WE WUZ ARYANS N SHIET?

>>1494823
which leads me to ask how accurate tacitus really was? we know that there was some bias in his work, but to what extent?

>>1494851
Yes, we wuz, also compare Ymir, another primordial being and progenitor of race to Yama.

>>1494851
That's suggested, yes.
>>1494853
Why would Tacitus be "biased" about this?

>>1494858
Romans weren't the most friendly to Germanics

>>1494796
Christian fanfiction

>>1494864
But Tacitus was is the thing, people think he was an assimilated Celt which is why he sympathized with barbarians.

>>1494796
Oh come on, the eddas were written centuries after the original Germanic beliefs had ceased to exist or were warped by contact with christianity.

They offer few insights into the old Germanic/Norse religions. We might know the names of the major gods, we might know isolated rituals and burial practices, but how the entire thing fits together is still largely a mystery, as no written records were kept.

>>1494796
>I have never read the edda

It's clearly and openly written by a christian from a christian perspective.

>>1495270
How so?

>>1495525
He explains how they came to worship mortal men of old. He theorizes that after the Trojan war some survivors went north and founded new civilizations with the inhabitants they found there, like Aeneas in Italy. The name Thor probably came from Hector, and the stories of the war and the lives of these great Trojans changed over time and became myths of gods. This is how they became godless, just like so many other pagan civilizations.

He did what many scholars did then, try to come up with a scientific reason for their godlessness. Those scholars didn't write from a perspective of BEING a pagan, but studying pagan traditions. His mission was as an antiquarian of the old skaldic traditions, not a preacher.

>>1495553
That's the Prose Edda, not the Poetic Edda.

>>1495556
The picture was of the prose Edda so I was talking about that one.

>>1495567
Well then it doesn't apply to most of the myths

>>1495553
>>1494480
And then there's the problem with christians thinking the religion was like the Greco-Roman paganism but only with different gods because that was the only pagan religion they knew of that left written records.

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>>1494628
>Freyr
>Njǫrðr
>Vǫlundr
Stop this. That -r at the end of the word is nominative grammatical addition, and not actually part of the word unless spoken in Old Norse. You don't say "víkingr", now do you? So why retain the -r ending on everything else? You don't speak Old Norse, you speak English, and therefore you follow English grammar rules, no?

>>1497653
Does it matter? Will people die unless he stops add the r?

>>1494440
people seem to focus too much on the Aesir and not enough on the Vanir
the Vanir were just as important and played a major role, not to mention the fact that Freyja (head of the Vanir and counterpart to Odin) recived half of all the dead who would then rest in Fólkvangr which was a giant meadow similar to Elysium

also>>1494480 is correct, just saying "germanic" is very vauge, we know the most about the Norse but other areas were different.

>>1497653
Comer downr, faggotr

>>1495270
there are multiple eddas you know, the Icelandic Eddas were likely written by pagans or at least while pagans were still around in droves.

beyond that the eddas are reliable, you're thinking of the monk accounts by people like Bede who wrote about the Northmen.

the eddas were written by Northmen (christian or not)

aside from this we also have grave goods and writings on stones which are all over Scandinavia.

>>1494823>>1494628

So Anglo-Frisian people, which include West-Flemings for example, are also called Ingvaeones, which implies they are the children of the fertility god Freyr or Ingwine?

A bit like the Celtic Belgae coastal tribe Menapii were the children of Celtic sea god Manannan mac Lir (who also gave his name to the Isle of Man)

>>1497653
What do you call Socrates? Socrate? Augustus, Augustu? Julius, Juliu?

>>1494440
>How much
much. they didn't have any theocratic authority or written holy texts and the rituals and beliefs varied even within different families from the same village.

>>1494440
>nobody seems to know it all.
Probably because it's made up

>>1497768
>they didn't have any theocratic authority
only partially true
people have a grave misunderstanding of what pagan society was like, they were not free loving hippies living without rules in the woods telling metaphorical stories about bushes

to get a look at what pagan European society was like look at Hindu society, priests had significant power and authority over the community, and things like human sacrifice and other religious events were facts of life.

rituals varied a lot, but there was a big difference between personal faith, family faith, community faith, and "national" faith (no real nation obviously, but across the wider collection of communities.)

religions like Christianity are different because they seek unity between all those aspects so the personal faith is the same as the wider one for the rest of society.

there are also "power levels" for spirits, with the gods just being the biggest most powerful spirits of them all, but still similar beings to lesser spirits like elves or faeries or trolls.

>>1497826
in polytheisitic paganism there is one fundamental difference to abrahamic religions that is often hard to understand to a westerner: it isn't absolute. there is no such thing than "germanic pagan" or "celtic pagan" or "roman pagan", there are just people who worship different gods. they don't deny other people's god's existence or power so it's not near as conservative as, let's say, christianity even if there are priests who're in charge of local rituals and such.

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>>1497664
>Does it matter?
Yes.

>>1497870
this is true
especially since pagans were often more willing to accept other Gods as having power, Hinduism is a big example where modern Hinduism is basically an eclectic collection of Indian faiths based on the same vedic ideas.

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>ITT: People overanalyzing and misunderstanding literally everything

>>1497911
Elaborate.

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>>1497884
no

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Odin/Wodan was the god of wisdom, magick and occult knowledge, runes, poetry and war. His name means “the inspired one”. Like a shaman he could travel in other worlds to gather more insight while his two black ravens Huginn (Thought) and Muninn (Memory) kept him informed about the news in the world.

He rode the skies and the seas on his fast white horse Sleipnir with his 8 (the number of transformation) legs, while carrying his never missing spear Gungnir (clear and focused intent) in his hand. He had one eye, for he had offered the other eye in exchange for gathering wisdom at the well of the head Mimir (Norse representation of the Source) and with that he became a shapeshifter, able of seeing in the outward world with his normal eye and understanding the inward worlds with his black, removed, eye. He was very beloved among his friends and followers who felt happy and energized in his surroundings (an enlightened being?). His enemies however he could paralyze or kill with his sight (insight, the truth). Odin trained many men and women as warriors for the final battle against the forces of destruction in the underworld at Ragnarok (the Norse judgement day). His fearless warriors often painted their bodies black and fought in the middle of the night.

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>>1494440
>God of X

>>1497706
>A bit like the Celtic Belgae coastal tribe Menapii were the children of Celtic sea god Manannan mac Lir (who also gave his name to the Isle of Man)
[citation needed]

>>1497753
Sokrat, Avgust, Julij

t. slav

>>1500700
Yes.
How am I supposed to take anything one says seriously if they do not take themselves seriously? Misuse of lingual differences is very unserious.

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>>1502150
You know the nominative singular is also the dictionary form of the word, right? And as with Latin and Greek names the use of the stem form vs nominative is arbitrary, e.g. Augustus vs Livy. All of the characters you complained about are usually in the nominative form in English literature about Norse mythology.

>>1502192
It's inconsistensy. If you're hellbent on using a grammatical from from a language you do not speak, then be consistent in you usage for fucks sake.

>>1494628
>In the Hervarar saga there's a description of a horse sacrifice at the inauguration of a king where they slaughtered it and ate the meat and sprinkled its blood on a sacred tree.

that's Indo-European as fuck