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24 Dec 2022 17:14

In 360, Julian the divine was proclaimed Augustus by his soldiers at Lutetia (Paris). Most of his soldiers were Gauls and Germans and so they crowned him with a torque and lifted him up on their shields in the Celtic tradition. He was destined to be the defender of all the native pagan faiths of the Empire, not only in his role as Pontifex Maximus, head of the main Roman religion but also of all other regional cults. As a theurgist he believed that the common folk, through their devotional offerings, facilitated divine favour. Nor did he consider that all the plebs and subjects of Rome had to be Platonists like him. It was thanks to these Germanic and Celtic soldiers that Rome nearly restored it's native religion which was by then already unpopular among the urban elites who were frequently of near Eastern ancestry.

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24 Dec 2022 11:14

THE SPIRIT OF YULE!
Guided by The Green Knight, travel through the centuries to see the pagan roots of Yuletide from the Dickensian, to the Arthurian and back to the Anglo-Saxons and Norse. Dig into the origins and history of the Christmas season.
Written by Thomas Rowsell of Survive the Jive and with art by Christopher Steininger.

BUY THE BOOK

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23 Dec 2022 22:55

How gay were the Greeks? Not very. And no Plato was not gay ffs. This guy smashes some pink idols of pop history.
https://youtu.be/BNAT4ybsz_E

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23 Dec 2022 12:47

Slavic, Germanic, Scythian and Celtic idols all make this pose

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22 Dec 2022 19:52

The Runestone of Ullr, the Norse god of archery, built upon the crest of a precarious cliff.

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22 Dec 2022 11:56

The Northman review I uploaded only 13 days ago has already accrued more views than any other upload this year. The second most popular this year was the one about knotwork which got 70k views

https://youtu.be/9Ro2RAKLFVc

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22 Dec 2022 10:41

Alternative history where Turks practice syncretic Tengrist-Hellenic paganism, with throat singing shamans in temples of Apollo

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21 Dec 2022 21:13

Here's a ghostly story for the winter solstice. Look out for the wild hunt!
https://youtu.be/luyXW_kXlGs

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20 Dec 2022 21:19

This is an atmospheric black metal song by Æthelruna about Modraniht. This version is from 2018 but I was permitted to use an earlier version in 2016 as well as other compositions by Matthew Kay.
https://youtu.be/jfgFgzBFlRI

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20 Dec 2022 15:21

A very happy Mother's Night to you all. A night to honour your maternal tribal ancestors and Frige, may they bring us all peace, health and plenty in the coming year.
Hail the disir!

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20 Dec 2022 10:16

Anders Kvåle Rue - A moonlit reconstruction of the Oseberg ship burial, Vestfold, Norway, AD 834

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20 Dec 2022 09:31

Just finished watching Dan Davis' brand new documentary on the Nuragic civilisation of Bronze Age Sardinia. Three takeaways I found particularly enjoyable and interesting were:

•From ~4000 BC Neolithic Sardinian chamber tombs resembled simple caves where the deceased were placed in, but by ~3400 BC these tombs had evolved into sophisticated chambers that resembled the houses of the living.
•The complex changes that occurred over the years of Bell Beaker and Sardinian competition for the island led to the formation of the Nuragic civilisation, and the Nuraghe towers appeared after 1800 BC in an era when villages had perimeter defenses.
•The Nuragic warrior figurines were deposited into Nuraghe as well as springs and date to the 11th and 10th centuries BC. Additionally, the bronze figurines depicting these warriors that were left as votive offerings in Nuragic temples were also left there with other bronze figures of things that were important in their lives such as animals, furniture, ships, chariots and even models of the Nuraghe themselves.

Overall, another fantastic video by Dan. It has piqued my interest in ancient Sardinian culture and civilisation, and I have learned many new things today. Watch 'The Nuragic Civilisation of Bronze Age Sardinia' here: https://youtu.be/AfdDPl7iLu8

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19 Dec 2022 21:00

Now that shamanism is "the fastest growing religion in England and Wales" (with a total of 8000) I decided to go to Cornwall to meet up with a Danish shaman who told me all about his beliefs

https://youtu.be/Ay6o_1qXklU

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19 Dec 2022 10:41

Gnome...or Scythian??

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18 Dec 2022 10:22

This tree describes the relationship between Yamnaya, Corded Ware, Bell beaker R1b lineages.

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24 Dec 2022 16:45

I have been interviewed by Thor of Norse Magic and Beliefs and Garret Pray for the Skaldic archive podcast. We discussed the underworld and the way to it.
https://youtu.be/Ba_bLRiKuTs

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24 Dec 2022 11:13

Dickens' Xmas Carol, The BBC ghost story for Xmas series, The Nightmare before Xmas and my Spirit of Yule story 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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23 Dec 2022 18:13

Behold!

'I know that I hung on that windy tree,
Hung there for nights full nine;
With the spear I was wounded, and offered I was
To Odin, myself to myself,
On the tree that none may ever know
What root beneath it runs.

Neither horn they upheld nor handed me bread;
And there below I looked;
I took up the runes, screaming I took them,
And forthwith back I fell.'

– Hávamál

Some stanzas in the Poetic Edda (Hávamál 138, 139) hit so hard. I have meditated upon (and drawn inspiration from) these two stanzas as of late.

Beautiful and epic!

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23 Dec 2022 12:46

This keeps me up at night

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22 Dec 2022 12:33

This year's 3 million views down 14% from last year

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22 Dec 2022 11:43

My own vid on syncretic Roman British religion in which I visit the sacred hot spring of Sullis. Hot water is such a sacred thing, especially in cold countries!
https://youtu.be/UchgjnMY5lI

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21 Dec 2022 22:05

Ronald Hutton on Roman British religion
https://youtu.be/eT9ijbQiB2w

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21 Dec 2022 09:17

Reconstruction of a female headdress from the Novo-Yabalaklinsky-1 burial ground associated with the Srubnaya culture. A successor of the Yamnaya/IE culture.

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20 Dec 2022 15:39

A relatively rare ‘Fog Bow’ appears above ruined Neolithic passage tombs, just as the fog began to clear on the Loughcrew Hills, County Meath.
Fog Bows are sometimes called ‘white rainbows’, the white colour is due to the much smaller size of the water droplets in fog, as opposed to the larger droplets in rain.
The larger drops of rain refract light on the curved surface of the back of droplet, which helps break the light into its constituent colours. In fog, the colours are often too weak to be seen clearly.
From Shadows and Stone Photography by Ken Williams.

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20 Dec 2022 10:53

10th century spearhead from Svenskens, Gotland. The runes translate as "Hrani owns this spear. Bótfúss coloured."
I expect that "coloured" refers to redenning the runes with blood.

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20 Dec 2022 10:09

The Christmas/Yule tradition of telling ghost stories was once one of the most popular customs in this country, but has sadly fallen out of fashion. Yet, it still persists within our culture in small ways. But how far back does this tradition go? Did the Victorians invent it or does it stretch back further?

NEW VIDEO: The History of Telling Ghost Stories at Christmas

https://youtu.be/-_MWXeIsGF4

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20 Dec 2022 09:21

This weekend I had the pleasure of celebrating midwinter with the wonderful people from Swesaz. It was very cozy and blessed. Sacred ritual performed with a sibbe has a truly indescribable healing and refreshing power. Hail and a blessed midwinter to all!

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19 Dec 2022 14:04

I am wearing the Sigurd design from bracteate DR-BR55 on a Premium cotton shirt. The design is also available on lower quality "classic tee" as well as hoodies, stickers, and vests etc.
https://www.survive-the-jive.com/listing/sigurd-thumb-sucker-range

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18 Dec 2022 13:00

Art: The dísablót by August Malmström, 1829-1901; Swedish painter.

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18 Dec 2022 09:39

Also, as some people have previously asked me about the word Wassail;

Old English had two verbs for 'to be', these were wesan (Dutch wezen, Frisian wêze, Icelandic/Faroese/Swedish vera, Danish/Norwegian være) and of course bēon (German still uses its cognate forms bin and bist). Much like the word 'to go', OE gān, which has taken the past tense 'went' from 'wend', OE wendan, modern English 'be' is a suppletive verb. Thus it has merged the infinitive of bēon (along with the past participle been from OE gebēon) with the regular forms from wesan; am, art, is and are (from Old Norse eru > earon, replacing the earlier sind), was, wert and were.

The imperative form is wes, equivalent to 'be!', so it seems that the phrase 'wassail' comes from Anglo-Saxon wes hǣl, 'be healthy!' One can also add pronouns; wes þū hāl 'be thou hale' or plural wesað gē hāle, 'be ye hale' (both of which are attested in Old English). However there is a problem...

Most spellings of hǣl were hāl, which became northern English 'hale' and southern 'whole' (with an excrescent W for disambiguation with 'hole'), but all are related to words like 'health', 'heal' and even 'holy' and 'hallow'. While it is possible that the phrase descends from dialects using wes hǣl, it is equally likely that the same phrase in Old Norse, using the more familiar vowel sounds in ves heill (attested 1275), replaced earlier Old English forms.