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06 Dec 2022 18:11

NEW Mesolithic European reconstruction - Téviec Woman 1

Reconstructed from one of the two female skulls found from a Mesolithic Western Hunter-Gatherer burial in France, Téviec Woman 1 met her end at the hands of other Western Hunter-Gatherers or newly arriving Anatolian Neolithic Farmers.

She was buried with a shell necklace, which we have used to depict her how she may have worn it in life. You can read more on the Téviec Burial grave goods here, and more on the overall burial here.

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06 Dec 2022 11:13

In Iceland after Christianisation the álfar gradually went from being associated with barrows to association with landmarks like rocks. In this way they assumed the role that had, during pagan times, been assigned not to elves but to landvættir.

In England too, elves were originally associated with barrows and the gods, but after Christianisation they were reduced in peasant folklore to an association with natural features and with diseases (although the disease association may have existed in pagan times too). Later the French word 'fairy' was adopted to refer to elves, and then this word was also applied to Celtic concepts of the Sidhe - resulting in beliefs concerning both elves and Sidhe becoming conflated as 'fairylore'. The beings of fairylore do not resemble those of either Celtic or Germanic paganism - being simply diminutive house spirits or small creatures inhabiting the woods and hills.

In Scandinavia the term nisse refers to a small creature associated with Yule - sometimes appeased with porridge. The little fellow is seen as a spirit of a farm or house. The term nisse may be derived from Old Norse niðsi, meaning "dear little relative" and this would confirm that this belief derives from a pagan one pertaining to ancestor worship.

The problem for pagans is that while we celebrate the folklore of our peoples, especially when it derives from pagan beliefs, the fact is that these folk beliefs of the last 1000 years are not at all like pagan beliefs. The very conception of elves as diminutive, mischievous but potentially friendly little people, did not exist for pagans. This transformation was necessary because of the way that paganism was marginalised - thus the threatening beliefs were neutralised into this now familiar form which is benign to Christian hegemony.
Tolkien's elves were closer to the pagan conception but still distinct. I do think that for pagans to perpetuate the folkloric conception of the 'little people' or nature spirits as elves is potentially blasphemy or at least offensive to them. It is important to recognise the clear distinction between a nature spirit and ancestral beings such as álfar

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05 Dec 2022 12:13

Dickens' Xmas Carol, The BBC ghost story for Xmas series, The Nightmare before Xmas and my Spirit of Yule series are all reaching back to the original Yule aesthetic - a time of the dead, a time of ghosts. This is the same reason that the Wild Hunt of Odin and his host of ghosts were seen at Christmas time. The same reason one can see processions of ghoulish figures in Alpine towns in the festive season.

The Yule One is a Lord of the dead. This liminal period in the middle of the darkest time is a season of the dead, which is also explicitly connected to honouring the king - that is the figurehead of the kin both living and dead. Therefore, whether honouring the dead or the king, at Yule we are honouring kinship and this is also why we gather with our families.

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05 Dec 2022 12:08

Don't forget to tell ghost stories at Yule!

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05 Dec 2022 11:36

Black Israelites
British Israelites
Christian Identity

The tradition of a Middle-Eastern people, arising outside of both Africa and Europe, gained such traction globally that various peoples came to covet it. Rather than celebrate their native, ancestral ways, thousands if not millions of Africans and Europeans schizophrenically pretend to be something they're not - all because of the inordinate success and spread of the Old Testament. It's sad to witness.

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04 Dec 2022 18:24

The famous 'Equinox Stone' at the rear of the chamber of Cairn T (the Hag's Cairn) at Slieve na Calliagh, Loughcrew, Co. Meath. This stone is spectacularly illuminated by the rising sun on both spring and autumn equinoxes. Sadly, the chamber is now inaccessible due to risk of subsidence.

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04 Dec 2022 00:45

The Pagan Future is here. The cities will burn beneath the battle swine stampede

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03 Dec 2022 12:37

"The country we live in and the blood in our veins constitute close and permanent ties of kinship between ourselves and the primitive Teutons. This applies without reservation to the German, Dutch, English, and Scandinavian peoples, in part also to the French, and, so far as descent is concerned, to the Americans of the United States as well. Though our religion [sic: that is, Christianity] is derived from the Jews, and our culture from the classical nations of antiquity, our natural origins are to be found among the ancient Teutons. If we are not their offspring in a spiritual sense, they are yet our ancestors after the flesh, from whom we have inherited, in large measure, our way of looking at things, as well as numerous ideas and customs."
—Chantepie de la Saussaye, Pierre Daniël. "The Religion of the Teutons" (1902)

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02 Dec 2022 20:42

"...poets have the spiritual fire within them; they are of the aetherial force, perhaps of the after-life. Who knows?"

Henry Williamson

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02 Dec 2022 12:28

Buy a copy here! https://www.smiletitans.com/shop/p/the-spirit-of-yule

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01 Dec 2022 11:46

This picture of a druid was taken at the first pagan ritual I attended in 2009. Britain has changed a lot since then - the main focus of new ONS data is white replacement, but the rise of paganism is a contrasting white pill.

The fastest growing religion in England and Wales is "Shamanism" rising from 650 in 2011 to 8,000 in 2021.

"Pagans" are up to 74,000 from 57,000 in 2011, while Wiccans are just 13,000. The heartland for paganism is the West Country of England from Somerset to Cornwall. Ceredigion in Wales is also a pagan hot spot.

The number of self reported "asatru" "heathen" and "Odinist" was not disclosed by ONS which indicates each was less than 8000 since "shamanism" was. However their combined number may have been higher.

It is my opinion that all European polytheists should have put "pagan" as this boosts our ability to demand representation.

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01 Dec 2022 10:53

The above is a tldr for those who don't have time to watch any of the dozens of interviews I have done on the subject of pagan influence on Christmas. If you want to know more then watch one.

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01 Dec 2022 10:39

Article about the complex interactions between Early European Farmers and the Western Hunter Gatherers, using archeology and archeogenetics to tell the narrative.

And it looks at the mysterious "Late Hunter Gatherer Resurgence".

Also includes an interesting comparison with the relationship between Bantu farmers and Pygmy hunter gatherers in southern Africa.

A good read, recommended:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-the-first-farmers-arrived-in-europe-inequality-evolved/

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30 Nov 2022 11:56

The EHG+CHG genetic profile emerges in the Mesolithic steppe of Europe. Over millenia there were slight genetic shifts, with less EHG, and more EEF as well as a second pulse of CHG in the South. However there remained a recognisable physical type which still exists in Europe today.

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30 Nov 2022 10:41

A boy emerges from the cavernous mouth of a chambered cairn, Bushmills, Wee Folks Cove, Northern Ireland, County Antrim, c.1900

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06 Dec 2022 12:23

What if you mixed Latvian bagpipe folk music with Mongolian throat singing and got a Mongolian guy to pose on the steppes with the latvian pipers for the video? It would look like this.
https://youtu.be/vztRqe_CHC0

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05 Dec 2022 17:53

Although self reported Christians declined steeply and pagans increased, the total number of self identified "Pagans" in the last census still only constitute less than 1% of the number of Christians (approx 0.26%)

This is why I have advised people not to put obscure terms like Wodenist, Odinist, Theodish, Heathen, Asatru on the census as it only makes us seem less significant. Like it or not, "Pagan" is the established and leading term for a native polytheist in Britain.

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05 Dec 2022 12:08

I have recently been using Henry Bourne’s 1725 Antiquites Vulgares as a source to gather information on rural beliefs and practices on 1700s England.

Here is an interesting segment where he talks about the telling of ghost stories at winter time as being the most common practice among rural people. Note though that he dismisses such beliefs as “fear” and stemming from the “weak brains of men”.

I read the preface to Bourne’s work and noted how he views the rural population as superstitious and foolish. As a city-dweller and devout Protestant, Bourne had a less than favourable view on what he found. He writes:

As to the opinions they hold, they are almost all superstitious, being the produce of heathenism.

They are really sinful, not withstanding in outward appearance they seem harmless.

Being a scandal to religion and an encouraging of wickedness, therefore to aim at abolishing them will I hope be no crime.

Just a reminder that there’s been a war on our traditions and culture for centuries.

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05 Dec 2022 11:42

If you want to learn more about the phenomenon Dan "Fyrgen" mentions in the previous post, then watch this talk I delivered in USA back in 2018 on the very subject. Only available in podcast format via most platforms including Spotify, Spreaker and soundcloud...

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7BUwEt7zsj1uld1ULngFvf?si=48A3Bs1QTkuTEdEhKMUrTA

https://soundcloud.com/survivejive/national-origin-myths-and-narratives-of-identity?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

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04 Dec 2022 18:32

A depiction of a medieval clifftop Slavic temple

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04 Dec 2022 10:57

"why are academics and researchers taking to anonymous online spaces to practice their craft? In part because we have an inflation of young people, educated to around the postgraduate level, who no longer see a future in the academy, where jobs are almost non-existent, and acutely aware of the damage a single remark or online comment can do to a career. But also because we have a university research system that has drifted towards a political position that defies a common sense understanding of human nature and history"
Stone age Herbalist's new article sees hope for archaeology and anthropology in the anonymous online sphere.
https://unherd.com/2022/12/the-rise-of-archaeologists-anonymous/

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03 Dec 2022 12:38

"It is a deplorable fact that the religion of our forefathers seems to be but little cared for in this country. The mythologies of other nations every student manifests an interest for. He reads with the greatest zeal all the legends of Rome and Greece, of India and China. He is familiar with every room in the labyrinth of Crete, while when he is introduced to the shining halls of Valhal and Gladsheim he gropes his way like a blind man. He does not know that Idun, with her beautiful apples, might, if applied to, render even 29greater services than Ariadne with her wonderful thread. When we inquire whom Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday are named after, and press questions in reference to Tyr, Odin, Thor and Freyja, we get at best but a wise and knowing look. Are we, then, as a nation, like the ancient Jews, and do we bend the knee before the gods of foreign nations and forsake the altars of our own gods? What if we then should suffer the fate of that unhappy people—be scattered over all the world and lose our fatherland? In these Eddas our fathers have bequeathed unto us all their profoundest, all their sublimest, all their best thought. They are the concentrated result of their greatest intellectual and spiritual effort, and it behooves us to cherish this treasure and make it the fountain at which the whole American branch of the Yggdrasil ash may imbibe a united national sentiment. It is not enough to brush the dust off these gods and goddesses of our ancestors and put them up on pedestals as ornaments in our museums and libraries. These coins of the past are not to be laid away in numismatic collections. The grandson must use what he has inherited from his grandfather. If the coin is not intelligible, then it will have to be sent to the mint and stamped anew, in order that it may circulate freely. Our ancestral deities want a place in our hearts and in our songs."

Prof. Rasmus B Anderson - A Danish-American in 1879

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03 Dec 2022 10:12

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11484769/Egyptians-call-British-Museum-return-Rosetta-Stone.html

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02 Dec 2022 17:31

The genetics of Icelanders more Anglo than expected!

-Roughly equal numbers of Scandinavian and British/Irish people were among the founding settlers of Iceland.
-The British portion was not just Scottish /Irish. 35% of the immigrants had English ancestry while only 10-31% had Scottish/Irish ancestry.
-Therefore the English contribution to Icelandic genepool is equal to Scottish and Irish combined.
-FEMALES: 44% Scandinavian, 33% English, 18% Scottish/Irish
-MALES: 37% Scandinavia, 30% English, and 29% Scottish/Irish

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7870008/

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01 Dec 2022 22:29

For those who haven’t heard, this is a single from my upcoming EP named “yule”. This track is called Kinsman’s Lament.

I’ll also let this post serve as a reveal for the album artwork.

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01 Dec 2022 10:58

Any possible pagan aspects of father Xmas (above) are gone now and weren't certain to begin with. They included the wassail bowl - traditionally carved from wood and filled with a mulled cider called wassail, named after the Anglo-Saxon drinking toast and this reliably dates it to something that preceded the Norman conquest. The other aspect is the goat he rides which may be related to the Julbok of Scandinavia and the Krampus of the Alps in which case they all derive from some earlier goat of Yule but this is highly speculative.

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01 Dec 2022 10:50

The STJ "is this Xmas thing pagan" TLDR

Reindeer ❌
Santa ❌
Xmas tree ❌
Mistletoe ❌
Black Pete ❓
Yule log ❓
Wassailing ✅
Julbok❓
Mari Lwyd ❓
Krampus ❓
Hog roast ✅
Getting drunk ✅
Electing a lord of misrule ✅
Horse sacrifice ✅

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30 Nov 2022 12:02

British Iron-Age lads liked their beer! This 2000 year old oak tankard can hold four pints. It is made from oak staves sheathed in bronze. It was found in the Thames near Kew. Now in the Museum of London.

Could you polish off four pints in one go?

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30 Nov 2022 11:48

Intimidating fashion statement from this man of the Khvalynsk related Ekaterinovka site. These people were like Yamnaya but with higher levels of EHG.

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29 Nov 2022 23:47

Reconstruction of a late Eneolithic man from the, Khvalynsk culture - Saratov Russia. These people preceded later Yamnaya and Corded ware fólk of the region