This is our most recent interview doing a deep-dive into Germanic Cosmology!

This is a sequel and companion interview to the Who are the Gods of Germania returning with author & researcher William P. Reaves and the scholars at The Norrœna Society, Mark Puryear and Kyle Davis.

Sometimes the most profound findings of Theology are found by asking basic questions. Previously we discussed the 'Who' of Germanic Faith and in this interview we discuss the 'Where.'

I want to thank our guests for sharing their research, thoughts and theories. Stay tuned to www.group-telegram.com/Pagan_Revivalism for more shows and interviews going deep into ancient faiths and ways!

Gods Love You!

Chapter 1
0:00:00 - 0:07:38
Introductions and origins of Germanic Cosmology

Chapter 2
0:07:39 - 1:47:35
Elements of Germanic Cosmology

Chapter 3
1:47:36 - 1:55:27
Putting it all Together

Chapter 4
1:55:28 - 2:10:00
Final Statments

Peasant is superstitious, but apathetic towards religion…To clear his conscience he follows all the rituals with superficial precision; he goes to the church on Sundays just to not think about it for the next six days. He despises priests and considers them greedy loafers who live off him. The heroes of all obscene folklore and songs, the butts of all jokes and objects of scorn are always a priests and his wife.

Alexander Herzen XIXth century writer

Art by N.Popov

If you are messaged by the channel keep in mind that it’s a bot shilling some bitcoin or whatever. I only message people from my personal account.

Plutarch notes in his Life of Agesilaus that the Spartans customarily brought their dead kings’ bodies back to Sparta, preserved in wax or honey, and that this was the treatment given to Agesilaus upon his death. The Spartans sought to bring back the body of the king in good shape, at which point the lavish burial ceremonies would take place. Presumably the king’s body would need to be preserved for the purpose of being carried out on a couch with fair coverings.

Nicholas R. Granitz

Even when the Spartans could not immediately regain the body, they still went to great lengths to obtain the remains, as shown by the return of Leonidas’ body forty years after the battle of Thermopylae, recounted by Pausanias.

Nicholas R. Granitz

Zbruch idol’s warrior God by Brother Bjorn

https://x.com/bjorn_brother

There’s a theory that Zbruch idol is a modern fake made by a 19th c. Polish poet who supposedly based its iconography on Romantic imagery of medieval Europe. The idol’s surprisingly well-preserved condition is another argument. This theory, as interesting as it is, doesn’t take into account what we know about ancient Slavic idols. Yes, Zbruch idol is relatively unique because it’s one of the last Pagan idols created. In fact, it wasn’t even finished by the time the conversion happened and the idol was hidden to keep it safe. This is part of the reason why it was preserved so well. The other is the fact that it wasn’t submerged underwater for that long which counters the second argument.

On the topic of iconography of the idol we can see that it sharer plenty of elements with other, much less-known ones found throughout Eastern, Central and even part of the Western Europe where Slavic tribes (used to) live. The hat, the position of the arms, the cornucopia and the ring of the Goddesses and the sword of one of the male ones are widespread too.

Regarding the above-mentioned sword, the supporters of the hoax theory have claimed that the saber copies the coronation saber of the holy Roman empire called the Sabre of charlemagne. But Zbruch idol’s blade is straight, while charlemagne’s is bent. Their cross-guards are also visibly different.

Another thing to consider is the fact that a 19th century poet would have commissioned a drastically different depiction of Slavic Gods considering how artists interpreted the descriptions e.g. dressing them in anachronistic late medieval clothes and making the statues look anatomically realistic just like Greek and Roman ones which was most likely not the case with real ancient Slavic idols.

Art by Olena Kulchytska

The gods were, in a sense, literally present in their sanctuaries. Greeks constantly, in documents and contexts of very different kinds, referred to what we would call a statue of a particular god simply by that god’s name; in representations on vases of scenes set in temples, it is often unclear whether we are looking at a statue or at an actual god. To be sure, they knew that statues were made by craftsmen from physical materials; and plain statements that statues are gods, or that gods are statues, are not to be found.

R.Parker

Nonetheless, they constantly behaved and spoke as if their statues were gods: when a statue of Dionysus was brought in procession to the theater at the start of the Athenian Dionysia, this was not a “representation of the bringing in of Dionysus” but quite simply “the bringing in of Dionysus”; and so on in numerous other cases.

R.Parker

In ordinary speech accordingly one normally spoke of ‘the divine’ or ‘the gods’ or an unspecified ‘god/the god/some god’, not of named Olympians.

But the distinction between these vaguely described powers and the plastic figures familiar from art and myth is not a simple distinction between real religion and an artificial variant confected by artists and poets; for in cult too gods have names and shapes and histories. Myth was integral to Greek religion because it was through myth that the gods of cult were revealed.

R.Parker