U-boat mission to Scotland
The Maier Files Series contain many levels, secrets and mysterious riddles … Let’s dig into a backstory about the Isle of Arran. In past times Arran was called Emain Ablach, which translates literally as “the place of apples”! Arran also means “the sleeping lord”. Some of you will recognize references to the enchanted Isle of Avalon (Isle of Apples) and the Arthurian legends … Interestingly, the ownership of Arran resided with the ducal Hamilton family...
Righteous Judges Rechtvaardige Rechters
The iconography of The Ghent Altarpiece has since a long time fascinated  researchers. When it was finished in 1432, the work of art became instantly the most famous in Europe. It was the first real oil painting. Oil had been utilized to tie shades to artistic creations since the Middle Ages, however Jan van Eyck was the first to exhibit the genuine capability of oils, which permit far greater subtlety and detail than largely-opaque egg-based...
laurin rosengarten
Laurin ‘s marvels. Are you worthy to enter the Rosengarten? King Laurin ’s greatest marvel is his understanding of day and night, which is also that of life and death. Oh, how we would like to possess that knowledge! It is in these terms that men lament, but they need not. As one can always ascend to Laurin ’s marvellous kingdom. In spite of the silk threads which protect it. Still, one must be a knight… or a child… or […]...
Hexen kommando
It’s almost Walpurgisnacht, no better moment to have a closer look at our witches or Hexen. Where did this cruel hatred against women and the ancient pre-christian sanctuaries start? When Pope Innocent VIII (1484–92) professed his belief in witchcraft, he condemned it, and dispatched inquisitors to Germany to try its supposed practitioners and punish them unimpeded. Singling out Mainz, Cologne, Trier, Salzburg, and Bremen, the papal bull declared that “some parts of Northern Germany” were...
Walpurgisnacht engraving
In the last days of paganism in Germany, the druids’ sacrifices were subject to punishment by death at the hands of the literalist Christians. Nevertheless, at the beginning of springtime the “druids” and the populace sought to regain the peaks of the mountains so that they could make their sacrifices or experience their celebrations at these remote locations, intimidating and chasing off the Christians (usually through the latter’s fear of the devil). The legend of...
Albruna Gudrun Maier files
The name Kudrun, and hence the title of a German epic, is rendered as “Gudrun” in most older English translations. But today the form “Kudrun” is preferred because Gudrun is also the name of an unrelated character in Norse mythology. Gudrun is a major figure in early Germanic literature that is centred on the hero Sigurd, son of Sigmund. She appears as Kriemhild in the Nibelungenlied and as Gutrune in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. Das Gudrunlied Kudrun or “Das […]...
Rosengarten group
There exists several variations on the tale and many poems about Rose garden legends. King Laurin and the love of the month of May are the most famous ones. The Southern Tyrol saga of King Laurin (German term: König Laurin) belongs to a well known tradition in the Dolomites. It really is a widespread interpretation or explanation of the optical phenomenon of Alpenglow, where the peak of the mountains alter their color to tones of...
Holle - Teich - Meissner
Tidbits on the tale of  Frau Holle’s kitzen. There is a mountain in Hessen, Germany called the Meissner where one still can find traces of the central German goddess Holle, Holda or Helja. It’s a place where her cult seems to have survived for a long time. There are roads going to the mountaintop and there are many hiking paths. Close to the top is the Frau Holle Teich, a small lake fed by mountain...
Fensalir
We already mentioned goddess Saga (https://www.maier-files.com/what-you-didnt-know-about-saga/), now let’s meet Frigg.  Frigg was one of the more widely worshipped Germanic goddesses, appearing in Scandinavia, Britain, and on the Continent. Snorri names her the foremost of the Asynjur, a group of goddesses described as being equal in holiness and authority to the male Aesir (Gylfaginning, ch. 20). Nevertheless, very little is known about her worship, and until recently she has often been overshadowed by the better-known figure of Freyja. Frigg is the […]...
Mythical Ireland
For those of you who are reading the Maier files series probably already recognized the Hyperborean thread or layer and the Grail’s link with Ireland and Scotland throughout the story. Now, the legendary history of Ireland draws on the events of races that later on invaded it and also dominated it, originating from a puzzling Northern-Atlantic center, to which they occasionally returned. The Historia Britorum frequently gives to this center the name Hiberia, however in reality this...
Athena
Legend tells us that one day Ilias, founder of the city of Troy, was asleep and had an extraordinary dream that the gods were communicating with him. When he woke up he found nearby a statue of a woman holding a shield and carrying a spear. It was the sacred statue of Pallas Athena, the Palladium. We know from Plutarch that in antiquity Isis was identified with Athena, the Greek goddess of Wisdom. Athena got...
melusine illustration
Melusine; or, The Noble History of Lusignan has much to delight and fascinate anyone interested in the Middle Ages. No medieval history would be complete without an account of the illustrious Lusignan dynasty that lent its name to a fair city in the Poitou region of southwestern France, and played leading roles in the Crusades and in shaping the political landscape of western Europe during the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries.  Likewise, no history of the great literary milestones of the Middle […]...
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