Norse Pantheon Madness

The NATTY religion of the Aryan is ancestor worship. You can only come to this realization after reading Coulanges’ The Ancient City. It’s not that our ancestors believed in a great deal of Gods, but these Gods were the first men. The Hyperboreans, if you like. In The Ancient City, you learn that when a relative died, he became a God and all the proper rites had to be undertaken for his burial. He was to begin the next life in the underworld and his body had to be fed or the spirit would become angry. An angry spirit would haunt his descendants. This is the origin of ghost stories.

You saw the rise of pantheons as clans came together to form a people. It was the means of cementing alliances and maintaining social harmony. This is why there are many similarities between the different Pagan religions. Now, it may be impossible to bring back the religious feeling of the Pagans, but you can get close to it by understanding this truth: The Gods were real, all of them, and they are our ancestors. They were great men and heroes, men of power, who got their people and bloodlines through the hard times. They were responsible for bringing plunder, women, and land to their descendants. Their acts in life made them worshipped like Gods in death.

A way of mediating conflicts between the clans and tribes was the concept of the first Father. The creator of mankind. We came from somewhere. The Gods of specific clans and tribes were said to have been born from the Father. This is where the concept of the SKY FATHER comes from. All the Pagan religions have this King of The Gods. Perhaps, he was figure made by the elite of the time to cement alliances, perhaps he was a real man. Seen graph showing the Aryan tribes, R1A and R1B all descend from one man of power who existed some 4,800 years ago.

You can say this knowledge of The Gods as ancestors, which we glean from Coulanges’ Great Work sort of puts a nail in the coffin of Paganism — at least in the eyes of believing Christians. But Christianity itself BEGAN as this ancestor worship as well. This knowledge does nothing to disprove God as we understand Him today. There is still a creator of mankind. Rather, this knowledge should be empowering. The men of power who got their bloodlines and tribes through the hard times. Who brought their people women, land, and plunder were deified by their descendants.

This world of ours has made it seem like GLORY is beyond our reach, but each of us has an ancestor who achieved glory in life. You must realize that Zeus is real. Hercules is real. They existed and you may very well be of their RACE. You have it in you, in the blood, to do what they did. To get your bloodline and people through the hard times. What we must talk about today isn’t the worship of the ancestors, however, it’s the question of the Norse pantheon which I’ve been avoiding for some time now.

The biggest problem with Norse Paganism is what we know of it, survives only because of Christians. What were the motivations of these Christians that preserved Norse Paganism? We know how far they went to convert Pagans to Christianity. In England for example, they made Jesus a great warlord and said that Woden was descended from Noah. They were not beyond lying to get what they wanted. For this reason, I don’t talk about Norse Paganism on RESAVAGER much anymore even though it is the closest Paganism to our American ancestry.

The Norse Question

Beyond the reality that what we know of the Norse Gods, our powerfuk ancestors, come from Christians, there’s great confusion in the pantheon itself. It’s commonly accepted that Odin is the All-Father, but his name doesn’t match up linguistically with other Sky Father Gods like Zeus. Through comparative mythology, we can formulate how the Aryan language evolved over time. Odin marches up with Gods like Hermes while Tyr is actually similar to Zeus. We don’t, however, have a lot of information on Tyr. In some interpretations, he has a similar role as Odin. In others, he is a War God. Still others, he’s a God of law and order. The only major myth we have of Tyr is how he sacrificed his hand to bind Fenrir.

To add to the confusion, I’ve seen Norse Pagans make the argument that Thor was the Sky Father figure. The Romans believed Thor to be the equivalent of Hercules and Odin to be Hermes. There have apparently been Norse temples where Thor was at the head of the pantheon. Now many Neopagans are attached to this pantheon as they see it as the religion of their ancestors and this is powerful reason to believe. Unfortunately, the Thread of Continuity was severed well beyond the other Pagan faiths and the adherents did not write down their beliefs. How would a man who knows at some point, his ancestors worshipped Odin go about repairing this thread? Should he at all? He also had ancestors who were Christian.

How do we settle the Norse pantheon? Pagans, in general, had more understanding view of The Gods. They didn’t look at their Gods as Christians see the Almighty God(also a Sky Father). The Greks for example, had their Sky Father, Zeus, as a womanizer who was fucking women every chance he could get. White-armed Hera, the shamed wife was always trying to stop this, as well as, curse his offspring like Herakles. The Norse shared a similar quirk with their pantheon. Their Gods weren’t all-powerful. Many of them were actually scarred.

Tyr gave up his sword hand to the dread wolf, an act that gets him killed at Ragnarok. Odin sacrifices his eye to learn the secrets of the runes. He’s also portrayed as a fragile old man trying to change his fate of being swallowed by Fenrir at Ragnarok. Thor while a powerfuk champion of The Gods is sort of a dimwit, though at least he’s given epic death at Ragnarok. Speaking of Ragnarok, the Norse had a vision of the end. Not the end of the world as you can find in the Bible, but the end of one cycle and the beginning of another. The Deathless Ones could be injured and the prophecy of the end times was always looming on the horizon.

When you look at the peoples who believed in these Gods, you have barbarians who saw their tribes and clans annihilated by the Romans in some cases. In others, they ended up taking the place of the Romans. Others still, lived hard lives in the bitter cold of the North. Some perhaps narrowly escaped by migrating to England. These peoples warred with each other. Combine their experiences with what we know of the natty Aryan religion of ancestor worship and how our ancestors forged alliances by bringing pantheons together. Something gleaned from James Russell’s The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity was that the Germanic tribes were not easily converted to Christianity.

When the early medieval German tribes saw the Christian God and Jesus not deliver on a harvest or victory in battle, they went back to worshipping their prior Gods.

The Germanic tribes cared about who brought them land, women, plunder, and harvest. They were practical. They wanted victory in war. A good harvest to feed their people. They wanted glory. Christian priests tried to convince them that Jesus was a Great War God. That he was stronger than their Pagan Gods. The Germanics, in turn, said “Let’s see.” If Jesus didn’t deliver, they went back to Wotan.

You can imagine that at some point, the God Tyr failed to deliver, so they stopped worshipping him. Maybe he wasn’t an ancestor of the tribes that survived and the tribes that survived considered themselves descendants of Odin, Thor, or Freyr. Most of these surviving peoples were probably descended from Odin which is why he is so prevalent. This could be explanation for why Odin appears as All-Father for the Germanics while other Aryan peoples like the Greks and Romans saw Zeus in such a role. Others saw Thor as their ancestor and put him in that Sky Father role. That said, the Thread of Continuity is severed. Twice severed, if you’re American. We may never know what truly happened. Maybe all these explanations are true to an extent.

If the natty religion of Aryans is ancestor worship, you must do this. Most peoples have had the Thread of Continuity severed, so this won’t be the same for everyone. You can look back to the Hyperboreans and worship a Sky Father. It may not matter much whether you call him Zeus, Dyeus Phaeter, or just Father. If you’re American for example, you should honor and worship the founding Americans, not necessarily the founding fathers, but your ancestors who helped to give us the warlike frontier spirit. Maybe you also recognize that you are descended from the Sky Father. By extension, you are also related to the champion archetype of Herakles or Thor.

In this way, you can worship in the spirit of your ancestors. You will never know their full rites and traditions, but the power of ancestor worship cannot be denied. You will be judged by them upon your death. Will they accept you into your ranks or will they cast you out in shame? You must also think about what mark on the world you will leave behind. How will your descendants remember you? Do not allow your descendants to remember you as a weak man.