Thomas A. DuBois, The Nordic Religions in the Viking Age, c. 2, Pagan Views of Religious Diversity:

"It is possible to imagine the pagan religions of the Nordic region as somehow inherently more pluralistic and respectful of neighboring faiths than was Christianity. [...] But such a view mistakes the nature of Nordic ethnic religions and the dynamics at work within and between them. The bulk of our evidence points to the notion that these smaller religious communities, like the localized Christian enclaves around them, were markedly exclusive and apparently highly ethnocentric as well. [...] given the small size of individual cults and the economic and cultural ties of populations in the Viking Age, it was inevitable that such groups would engage in intimate contact with peoples of other faiths. The very exclusivity of native religions could spawn interest in comparing (and deprecating) neighboring cults. [...] it remains a fact that by their very nature the ethnic religions of the Nordic pagans were brought into contact with each other in substantive and prolonged fashion. Ancestral cults necessarily entailed intercult contact, as marriage partners were recruited or acquired across clan lines. Long-distance trading partnerships, fosterage, and migration all led to further contacts between peoples of different religious identity. [...] Intercult contact was an inevitable aspect of life, finding manifestation both between and even within clans or communities. [...] it becomes clear that Nordic paganism was subject to extensive local variation and a fair degree of intercult rivalry. The use of pagan cults as a means of promulgating collective unity [...] did find counterparts in Nordic pagan practices, however."

We have discussed above that Weden [Óðinn] is the supreme God of the Germanic people in the Eddic sources, and that all the Gods are Gods by virtue of sharing His divine essence. What many people do not know, however, is that this idea is attested in our earliest literary sources, namely Tacitus' Germania. In c. 9:

"Among the gods Mercury is the one they principally worship. They regard it as a religious duty to offer to him, on fixed days, human as well as other sacrificial victims."

There's little doubt about the identity of Mercury being in reality the same God as Weden. This identification of foreign Gods using the lens of Roman religion is called Interpretatio Romana, and we have discussed the Interpretatio methods at length in our previous posts. Nevertheless, we can be sure that Tacitus here uses this method because he tells us about it elsewhere, in c. 43:

"Among the Naharvali [...] they say that their deities, according to the Roman interpretation, are Castor and Pollux: that is the character of their godhead, of which the name is ‘the Alci’."

We get more interesting information about the ancient Germanic understanding of Weden, however, when Tacitus discusses the Suebi, and in particular the Suebian Semnones, who are said to be the most ancient and the noblest of the Suebian tribes. He says, that they performed human sacrifices to a God, who can be identified with Weden based on the fact that earlier Tacitus confirms that it is to Him that the Germanic people give human sacrifices. And he gives the following description in c. 39:

"This whole superstition is based on the belief that from this wood the people derives its origin and that the god who reigns over all dwells there, the rest of the world being his obedient subjects."

The Latin expression that is used is 'regnator omnium deus', the God who Rules All, and thus, Tacitus couldn't be more clear in confirming that the ancient Germanic view of Weden was that of a Most High God.

Attention ⚠ Do you want to prevent future archeologists from tampering with your remains in your barrow? Do you want to avoid them proclaiming your bones belonged to a "non-binary person" or a "brave intersex individual" and such? Here are some staves you can write on your runestone which will make the pervert go away:

ᚦᚢᚾᛖᛁᚾᚨᛚᚦᛁᚾᛁᚹᛁᛒᚨᚹᛁᚱᚦᛁᛉᛁ

This reads: Þū ne in alþīni wībą wirþizi.

Which can be loosely translated as: You will never be a woman.

As always

1 like = 1 blót

Share this image for many blessings this Easter Moon! We wish you a happy Summer!

Doesn’t the emphasis on an Unmoving Imperishableness and the One-Ness of the Gods’ Might, in this line from among the earliest hymns, completely undermine the idea that “ancient pagans” only believed in a flux without unity?

The Imperishable “Syllable” more specifically, mentioned in this hymn, calls to mind the primordial syllable Om, which is also the Brahman. According to Aurobindo, The Cow here, in whose track is found the Imperishable syllable, is the Vedic goddess Aditi, whose name means The Boundless. This of course fits the overt theme of Imperishableness and One-Ness in the verse.

We thus have:
“In the track of the Boundless is Found the Unmoving Imperishable: great is the Lordship/Might of the Gods, the One and Only.”

Agni’s Mystical Treatment

Lastly, what should also be mentioned is the way the Fire God Agni is treated throughout the earliest layer of the Rig Veda, a treatment consistent through all Vedic scripture.

Agni “becomes” All the Gods, suggesting that he must be a vector of unity between them. It is even said that “in” Agni are all the gods. It’s hard to read this other than as the gods being unified in “One lordship,” as in the previous hymn.
From RV V.3, which is again in the earliest layer of the Rig Veda:

"Thou O Agni, art Varuna when thou art born, thou becomest Mitra when thou art perfectly kindled, in thee are all the Gods, O Son of Force, thou art Indra to the mortal who gives the sacrifice. Thou becomest Aryaman when thou bearest the secret name of the Virgins… For the glory of thee, O Rudra, the Maruts brighten by their pressure that which is the brilliant and varied birth of thee…By thy glory, O Deva, the gods attain to right vision and holding in themselves all the multiplicity (of the vast manifestation) taste Immortality. Men set Agni in them as the priest of the sacrifice when desiring (the Immortality) they distribute (to the Gods) the self-expression of the being."

The solar lord Savitar in similar fashion “becomes” both Pushan and Mitra in succession:
To Savitar it is said: “thou, O God, art Mitra through thy righteous laws.”
“Pūṣan art thou, O God, in all thy goings-forth.” V.81.4-5

It is impossible to explain how one god can “become another” without accepting that they do not have rigid boundaries in a simple sense. The only way to explain this away is by rationalizing what is explicitly being stated in mystical terms, which is what secular scholars often do. The other common tactic is to simply ignore these lines entirely, which should discredit the historian.

This is a mystical description of gods becoming one another in an endless cycle. Agni, the Fire that forms each god, is one primary vector of the unity between them. They are within Agni and Agni is Them, and fundamentally they are together as One Lordship, the familiar theme of Unity in Diversity.

As such the Axial Age theory can do nothing except ignore the very earliest theological literature of the Indo-Europeans and its insistently mystical framing:
The Skambha of Heaven, The Unmoving Imperishable, the One And Only Lordship of the Gods, the gods becoming one another and being all within Agni the cosmic Fire, who himself is often a symbol of the Absolute in other layers of the Veda.

One would have to be illiterate to miss the mysticism of the Rig Veda from start to finish.

⁃ O’Gravy, The Sun Riders
@solarcult

**The Devil is in the Details

The Axial Age theory Can Only Ignore the Rig Veda**

In addition to the 2 instances that I mentioned in my (above) post and video where the precise title and symbol of the Brahman, “The Skambha (Pillar) of Heaven”, is used mystically in the earliest layer of the Rig Veda (circa 1500 B.C.) (RV 4.14.4-5 and RV 4.13.5):

“With what autonomous power does he [the Sun] journey? Who has seen it? As skambha [pillar] of heaven, utterly fixed, he protects the vault.”

and the one instance in the middle layer (RV 9.86.46),

there is another hymn from the earliest layer (and certainly others) that also strongly points to a well-established ideology of an Imperishable Unity underlying the Gods.
Jamison and Brereton, the translators of the most recent scholarly Rig Veda (2014) and the most prominent Vedic scholars you are likely to know, even emphasize this fact, stating that this hymn typifies the “Vedic mystery of simultaneous unity and diversity”. And again this is the earliest layer of the Rig Veda, which is the earliest-composed complete Indo-European religious text we have, the very beginning of the Indo-European theological record.

So what basis do sociologists and historians have for stating that the Rig Veda and thus the Indo-European tradition affirmatively does NOT refer to any mystical unity or Absolute in its earliest layer, if Rig Veda scholars themselves actually say otherwise?

There isn’t one. Or, often, this is a misrepresentation of those historians. As usual this claim is entirely based on perceived gaps in the theological record and an assumption that anything that doesn’t explicitly label itself as an Absolute, up to our standard of clarity, cannot be referring to one. But this is plainly fallacious.

As Jamison and Brereton state of this hymn, RV 3.55.1:

“The most obvious feature of this hymn is the refrain found in every verse: “great is the one and only lordship of the gods,” notable for its emphasis on unity (ékam “one and only” is the final word of each verse) and for the juxtaposition and implied identity of asura(tvám) “lord(ship)” and devā́nām “gods,” given that in later Vedic the Asuras and the Devas are locked in eternal enmity.

This familiar Vedic mystery of simultaneous unity and diversity is further exemplified by the references to numerous gods (generally unnamed, but usually recognizable), especially in the second part of the hymn, in the manner of many All God hymns.”

Here is the hymn in their translation:

RV 3.55.1: “Then when the ancient dawns dawned forth, in the track of the cow a great imperishable (syllable) was born [/ was discerned],
which tends to the commandments of the gods: great is the one and only lordship of the gods.”

Aurobindo translates the final phrase as: “the vast, the mightiness of the Gods, the One (Ekam)" (III.55.1), which is validated by the fact that Ekam, One, is indeed the final word of each line on which the thematic emphasis lands.

The repeated use of “Ekam” (that is “one and only”) is also significant because the Absolute which appears in the final mandala of the Rig Veda is called “Tad Ekam,” “That One,” whereas of course the Absolute was known to the Greek philosophers as “The One,” “To Hen.”

Aurobindo also notes that words such as “The Timeless” or “Imperishable” are common descriptors of this eternal Absolute in Vedic scripture. Griffith translates the word for Imperishable in this hymn as “Eternal” and Aurobindo as “Unmoving.”
This indeed matches the special quality of the Brahman as found in other texts where it is characterized as the Eternal, having Unmoving Fixedness, and for specifically these reasons being the Foundation of all. Note that the Skambha of Heaven mentioned in the previous hymn is likewise said to be “utterly fixed”, which again is this special characteristic of nothing but the Absolute alone throughout the entire Vedic corpus.

What else indeed can have such a quality of Unmoving Imperishableness but an Eternal Absolute? Is there a response?

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Germanic Animism - A personal channel of our friend, focused on the Germanic Religion, shares many translations of important folkloric accounts
https://t.me/germanic_religion

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https://t.me/survivethejive
https://www.youtube.com/@Survivethejive
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O'Gravy from the Sun Riders has debunked that monism is a later addition to the Indo-European religions in his new splendid video where he compares the Irish creation myth with the Vedic creation myth.

"What does all of this tell us? It tells us that the Proto-Indo-Europeans [...] had a concept of an Absolute, and that it was not a late developing idea that can be conveniently boxed into an "Axial Age" in the mid to late centuries of the first millenium BC in order to dispense with it. It was in existence and known by the seers long before and was the core of the ancient pagan religion from archaic times."