Holle the goddesses and Yule. Frau Holle is connected to springs, wells and lakes, where she lives in a land on the bottom of the water. She is also connected with the fog. Holle can be seen as a bright shape drifting in the fog, and her fog maidens are “die Hollen”, who move over the land to come to...
The Druids gathered and important questions were to be answered via divination. The means of determining the future? A human victim who was to be back-stabbed. From the movements of his death throes, the future was revealed to the forest magicians. As it is the practice of modern armies to attempt to destroy the intelligence-gathering capabilities of their enemies, so...
This book should be seen as a nuanced representation of the relationship between folklore studies and a socialist-totalitarian state, based on some of the significant issues in the history of folklore studies in the three countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, often referred to as “the Baltic countries.” This is not a complete and comprehensive history of folkloristics in the Baltic countries, nor is it an even representation of all. The central concern of this book is the international history […]...
The 8 ancient festivities for each sign an essential point in nature’s yearly cycles. They are generally portrayed as 8 equally spaced spokes on a wheel symbolizing the year in total; the days on which they fall are approximately equally spaced on the calendar, as well. The wheel of the year consists of two sets of four holidays for each....
The anima as a friend or soror mystica (mystical sister) has always played a great role in history. In the “cours d’amour” (courts of love) of RenĂ© d’Anjou she even takes precedence over the wife. The term maĂ®tresse actually means mistress or master. In the Middle Ages, for example, the worship of the anima led to courtly love, in which...
The French historian Raimonde Reznikov’s book ‘Cathares et Templiers’ can be something of a scholar’s antidote to the wilder extremes of conspiracy mongering. As reported by Reznikov, besides the evident link that Templars and Cathars were suppressed by shared conspiracy between state and church, the solely genuine sympathetic link originated from the imaginations of eighteenth-century Freemasons. She writes: The Templar mythology, fabricated in the 18th century in the bosom of German lodges by the vanity of Freemasons, desirous to join […]...
Man rune or Algiz and its traditional link with the Grail mysteries. In its origine a rune is a puzzle and a mystery above all else. Only in a later epoch Runes became also letters or writing symbols. In antiquated times only a certain codified group rune staves became writing signs or an alphabet. In the later obscure German custom of the...
Hagal is the rune of a goal and confrontation with past patterns.
An enigmatic depiction of the golden fleece quest: an Athenian Red-figure cup discovered in 1834 and attributed to the Athenian painter Douris (c. 480 BC) shows in its interior the goddess Athena who watches as a huge serpent disgorges a man, alive. Behind them is a tree with a ram’s skin in its branches. These clues assure us that the hero is Jason. The artist has also taken care to label him (the name is inscribed between his arms and […]...
The change of the Roman ethnic make-up contributed to the empire’s ruin. Tenney Frank earned his A.B. at the University of Kansas in 1898 and A.M. the following year. Frank went on to receive his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1903. Frank taught at Bryn Mawr College as Professor of Latin from 1904 until 1919, when he moved...
Who’s Odin? To find Odin’s origins, how far back must we go? Although the most likely explanation for Snorri’s attempts to connect the Æsir with Troy is medieval literary fashion, it is tempting to see a possible source in folk memories of the migration of the Yamnaya culture from the steppes of the Caucasus and Urals into northern Europe four...
Grimm writes that the Hörselberg of Thuringia was still considered in the 10th through 14th centuries to be the residence of the German goddess Holda and her host. He cited legends of night-women in the service of dame Holda. Those women rove through the air on appointed nights, mounted on beasts. He asserted that they were originally dæmonic elvish beings, who appeared in woman’s shape and did men kindnesses. Grimm asserted that the identity of Venus with the German goddess […]...













