Woden worship wandered onward til the 1750s, and likely later

A True Open Forum; Share/Discuss whatever you like
User avatar
Luigi
Posts: 4234
Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2013 11:01 pm
Reputation: 2931

Re: Woden worship wandered onward til the 1750s, and likely later

Postby Luigi » Fri Jan 08, 2021 10:50 pm

Luigi wrote:Another highly significant piece of evidence: The Charm of the Wreestin Threed(wresting thread)

This was a charm found in Orkney folk magic which was used to heal strains and accompanied the tieing of 9 knots in a thread(9 is the most sacred number in Germanic Paganism, the number 3 and its multiples are the holy numbers of all Indo-European faiths). It goes as follows:

Oor Savior rade,
His fore-foot slade;
Our Savior lichtit down.
Sinew to sinew, vein to vein,
Joint to joint, and bane to bane,
Mend thoo in Geud's name!

As you can see the charm has been Christianized, but this charm will be quite familiar to Germanic pagan folk, as one of very few pieces of evidence for Germanic paganism from Germany is the Madgeburg Incantations, in which Wotan uses a charm to heal the injured horse of Baldur:

Phol and Wodan rode into the woods,
There Balder's foal sprained its foot.
It was charmed by Sinthgunt, her sister Sunna;
It was charmed by Frija, her sister Volla;
It was charmed by Wodan, as he well knew how:
Bone-sprain, like blood-sprain,
Like limb-sprain:
Bone to bone; blood to blood;
Limb to limb -- like they were glued.

I got the information on the charm of the wreestin threed from the same Orkney site, here is the link: http://www.orkneyjar.com/tradition/wreestin.htm

However one thing the author did not note, but will be well known to scholars of Indo-European comparative studies, is that this charm is also found in the Sanskrit Vedas and is likely the only instance of full sentences which can be traced all the way back to Proto-Indo European sentences(as opposed to the individual words). If I remeber correctly in the Vedas it is also used to cure a wounded horse. All credit to J.P. Mallory for noting this co-occurance and realizing its significance.

Here is a comprehensive and very well presented video on this spell. It mentions an instance from Sweden as late as 1860 which evokes Odin, and an Irish Christianized version from 1938.

Image

User avatar
Luigi
Posts: 4234
Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2013 11:01 pm
Reputation: 2931

Postby Luigi » Mon Jul 12, 2021 11:38 am

Image

User avatar
Luigi
Posts: 4234
Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2013 11:01 pm
Reputation: 2931

Postby Luigi » Tue Jul 13, 2021 5:21 am

I've been looking into the Scandinavian folklore survival of the 19th century, I had previously read one book on it from about 1910 and assumed it was comprehensive but it seems rather it was cursory. I have found what seem to be the two best sources on the matter, written in old fashioned Norwegian and old fashioned Swedish respectively. Neither have English translations, so probably I will have to learn these languages to read them. Dont really have time for that at the moment so for now I will just post them here for future use:

Studier over de nordiske gude- og heltesagns oprindelse - 1881 by Sophus Bugge - contains the source for the Swedish wresting charm mentioned earlier. Bugge saw all Norse myth as derived from Roman myth, a position that never gained any scholarly acceptance, so take any interpretations he provides with a grain of salt.

https://archive.org/details/studierover ... 6/mode/2up

https://books.google.ca/books?id=dpEvAQ ... &q&f=false

Wärend och Wirdarne. Ett försök i Svensk Ethnologi - by Gunnar Olof Hyltén-Cavallius. Volume 1 in 1863, volume 2 in 1868. Claims to demonstrate surviving Heathen practices in a remote part of Smaland, Sweden.

https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%A4rend_och_wirdarne

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunnar_Ol ... -Cavallius
Image


Return to “Anarchy Zone”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 125 guests