Cowbells

One of the few remaining European cowbell masters from Romania, who still makes them by hand.

@bobb11_oficial on Instagram

Antiochus the king banished all the philosophers out of his kingdom, writing thus—“King Antiochus to Phanias: ‘We have written to you before, that no philosopher is to remain in the city, nor in the country…As soon, therefore, as you receive this letter, order a proclamation to be made, that all the philosophers do at once depart from those places, and that as many young men as are detected in going to them, shall be fastened to a pillar and flogged, and their fathers shall be held in great blame.

Athenaeus of Naucratis

It is, therefore, with good reason that many cities…will not admit either rhetoric or philosophy, on account of the jealousy, and strife, and profitless discussions to which they give rise; And it is owing to this, too, that Theodorus the Atheist was put to death, and that Diagoras was banished; and this latter, sailing away when he was banished, was wrecked.

Athenaeus of Naucratis

Have a merry Kupala!

Slavic Pagan Midsummer:

Kupala Night

Mimicry, unlike regular camouflage, makes an organism bled into a crowd as opposed to just the background.
Agressive mimicry is using this in-group camouflage to infiltrate to either steal food or to hunt undetected.

Humans too have this, where one group will look and act like another to blend into the host population. Psychopaths for example are known to mimic emotions because they dont have any.

Aggressive mimicry also affects ancestral faith as well. What we call "fake pagans" are just those who wish to infiltrate ancestral faith revival for a myriad of reasons. Their strategy only works when one plays fast-and-loose with in-group qualifications. The danger is "purity spiraling," which is real, but without having boundaries, fake pagans slip in and act as "my fellow pagans."

In Germanic ancestral faith, a Jotun disguised himself to infiltrate into Asgard to build the walls around the devine city. It's a cautionary tale that's timeless and a lesson we should keep in mind now and into the future.

Traditional Kupala song

The rise of ancestral faiths and ways is happening now because there is no hero without a great adversary. A heroic age is always the beginning of something grand. You have been chosen to be reborn in this time, to overcome the evils of our age, because you have within yourself the strength to persevere. You are the trailblazer for the rest of your ancestors to be reborn into a new Pagan Golden Age, and they shall sing of your victory everlasting!

This is a time of heroes and heroines, great and small to say our past is worth preserving, show that we have a present worth persuing and revealing that we indeed have a future worth forging!

Pagan Revivalism is inevitable, and it starts with you!

Danish referendum poster featuring Heimdallr from 1920 concerning the future of north Schleswig. Source: The Royal Library, Copenhagen

Let’s talk calendars. We have as a community developed research and concepts that help us to reconstruct a fully heathen calendar. Some camps choose to follow a lunisolar system, while others focus on the Misseri calendar that is based on the earlier weekly system. Both of these are perfectly valid, and both have been described by scholars as having ancient origins. These calendars are useful in helping us to understand precisely when we are to perform the holy Veizlas or festivals. With them we can calculate the correlation between our months, the celestial bodies, and our sacred events.

But what about the years? Did our ancestors have a way of calculating the years as they passed? Indeed they did, but this method has been overlooked because they have been making comparisons to the Gregorian Calendar and looking for fixed points by which such a calculation can be made. However, not all yearly systems are built upon fixed points. Others are calculated by cycles, and given the polytheist view on cyclical time it would only seem fitting that our ancestors maintained this.

The Chinese calendar is built upon a 60-year cycle, combining the following elements:

• Ten Heavenly Stems (e.g., Jia, Yi, Bing, etc.).
• Twelve Earthly Branches (associated with the Chinese zodiac animals, e.g., Rat, Ox, Tiger).
• Each year is named by pairing a stem and branch (e.g., 2025 is Yisi, the Year of the Snake). The cycle repeats every 60 years.

The ancient Germanic calendar was cyclical as well, based on what is called The Metonic Cycle. The Runic calendar, as exemplified by the Nyköping staff from the 13th century, is a perpetual calendar based on the 19-year Metonic cycle, which correlates lunar and solar cycles. Each year in this cycle is associated with one of 19 “Golden Numbers,” represented by runes or symbols. The first 16 years typically use the runes of the Younger Futhark, while the remaining three years (17–19) are assigned special runes created for the calendar. To determine the rune for the current year, the following equation is utilized:

Golden number= [(year/mod 19+1)]

Where \(\mod\) is the modulo operation (remainder after division).


2025 \div 19 = 106 \text{ remainder } 11 \quad \text{(since } 19 \times 106 = 2014, \text{ and } 2025 - 2014 = 11\text{)}

2025 divided by 19= 106/ remainder 11
Since 19x106‎ = 2,014 + 11= 2025

Golden Number= 11+1=12.

For Golden Number 12, the corresponding rune is ᛏ (týr). Thus, 2025 corresponds to Golden Number 12 in the Metonic cycle and is the Year of Týr.

The Runic calendar uses the 16 runes of the Younger Futhark for Golden Numbers 1–16, and three additional special runes for Golden Numbers 17–19.
• The Younger Futhark runes, in standard order, are:
1. ᚠ (fé)
2. ᚢ (úr)
3. ᚦ (þurs)
4. ᚬ (óss)
5. ᚱ (reið)
6. ᚴ (kaun)
7. ᚼ (hagl)
8. ᚾ (nauð)
9. ᛁ (íss)
10. ᛅ (ár)
11. ᛋ (sól)
12. ᛏ (týr)
13. ᛒ (bjarkan)
14. ᛘ (maðr)
15. ᛚ (lögr)
16. ᛦ (ýr)
The additional runes are (17-19), and were made specifically for the calendar. These were Árlaug (combining the runes Ár and Lögr), Tvímaðr (Two-men), and Belgþor (Bellows-Þórr?). These special runes were documented by Ole Worm in 1636 in his work Runir seu Danica literatura antiquissima, though their use dates back to at least the 13th century with the Nyköping staff. Later calendars (e.g., 1498 Breviarium Scarense) replaced runes with Latin letters and Arabic numerals for weekdays and Golden Numbers, respectively.

The Nyköping staff, believed to date from the 13th century, is the oldest known Runic calendar and uses this system. It marks days with runes from the Younger Futhark and additional symbols for the Golden Numbers to track the lunar cycle within the 19-year Metonic cycle. Therefore, we can use these staffs to mark the years and reconstruct the Metonic Cycle in our yearly calendars. Not based upon fixed dates, but upon the cycles of nature and the movement of celestial bodies.

The calendar staffs are very late and are believed to contain a mix of heathen and Christian elements.

For instance, several markers are made for Jól and Disting, which predate Christianity in Northern Europe, and runes are obviously adapted from our ancestral faith. So, while we take the origins of this with a grain of salt, we can adapt it to our tradition, as it is the best information we have available in rebuilding our yearly markings.

We plan on publishing this calendar in the year to come.

Several runestones around Scandinavia have a repeated phrase:

ᚦᚢᚱ᛫ᚢᛁᚴᛁ
Thur Uiki
Thor Hallow (Bless)

In Denmark (DR 110, DR 209 & DR 220)

Västergötland, Sweden (VG 150)

Södermanland, Sweden (Sö 140), though this particular one is contested

A phase we should use more often in our grand revival for sure!

Thor bless!

May Thor bless you, this day and every day!

Just to make it clear. Individuals that push the narrative that Indians/Hindus are part of our collective faith and share religious ritual belongingness to our germanic folk, are heretics to our faith, culture and ancestry. Their claims should be shunned as syncretism and ignored.

Roman goddess Diana- Goddess of the hunt, wilderness and wild animals

There is nothing more ancestral and timeless than forming a family.

According to this article our folk have been exclusively monogamous for at least 7,000 years. We know now, as an undisputed fact, that monogamous marriages lead to the healthiest and most successful families.

Our Gods formed the first marriages and gave this institution to our ancient ancestors. Where men and women come together to form new life and rebirth.

It is a historical fact that Paganism was the founder of the family-unit and established the institution of marriage.

Is forgiveness a thing in heathenry?

No. Forgiveness was not a concept that our ancestors considered as a theological aspect of their spirituality. Instead of forgiveness, our native inclination revolved around the concept of redemption.

Redemption in our faith is not like the xtian idea of a savior redeeming our souls; but rather an act or series of acts to redeem one's honor when a dishonorable act was committed.

The act/s one does to "Redeem" their honor is called atonement. When one is atoning for their wrongs and crimes, they are specifically doing so to regain their honor in the eyes of their folk and the gods.

Our culture was/is an honor based culture. Losing the honor that your kith and kin held of you was one of the worst possible punishments one could face, next to full outlawry.

When dishonorable acts were committed, public shaming was a horrible punishment upon the individual. If the individual did not redeem their honor in the eyes of their folk and the gods, they risked dying in shame. To die in shame risked your family soul or fylgja, abandoning you in the life after this. If this were to occur, your ancestors may not recognize you and may not welcome you to the kin well where all the souls of your ancestors dwell. In such a state, ones soul may be lost or stolen by ill beings who may drag your soul to realms where ones essence is devoured and torn apart.

This is why the honor and shaming system of our culture, which was the law of the tribe created uniformity and cohesiveness of the tribe.

Shaming would motivate people to atone for their ill actions, which brought dishonor upon their family.

Shaming was/is a powerful instrument of punishment that corrects ill behavior and preserves the honor of ones family and tribe.

Queen Boudica