Roots of Proto-Celtic/Germanic mythos, folk faith in prehistoric Swabia? (Part 1)
by Sean Jobst
10 February 2020
Several archaeological findings throughout Swabia (Schwaben) illuminate our understanding of how the traditions and worldview of the tribes later known as Germanic and Celtic peoples first developed. Its my contention that there has been a distinct continuity within the region, so that the people known as the Swabians, Bavarians, Swiss and Austrians are descended not only from the Germanic tribes that migrated down into the Alpine regions, but also from the previous Danubian Celts of the Hallstatt culture.
Other Celtic cultures simultaneously arose in Gaul and Celtiberia, from whence they spread into Britannia and Ireland - where the same intermarriage with the previous prehistoric peoples (not as "backward" as establishment historiography assumes) and the great megalith builders occurred as on the Continent. So its not that Hallstatt culture gave rise to all the Celtic peoples, but specifically those within the Alpine regions with such great sites as Heuneburg.
Continuous history shows that we are indigenous to our region, with later additions of Celtic and Germanic blood shaping our current identity(1) - they came not as invading horsemen, but as settlers who harmonized their traditions with those of the pre-Celtic peoples in what can be identified as our specific expression of Paganism. In turn, this Paganism can be recovered not only in archaeological findings but also in folklore which survived however in thinly-veiled Christianized form(2).
What the oldest figurine art reveals
Dated to between 35,000-40,000 years ago, figures carved from mammoth bones uncovered at the site of Vogelherdhöhle represent the oldest figurine art found anywhere in the world to date! One of the figurines showed a horse, a motif that was to be found throughout all Indo-European traditions - but their discovery in pre-historic Swabia point to deeper roots than an ancestral Steppe memory. Its my contention the horse has deeper shamanic connotations beyond just a literal representation of a domesticated animal.
The god the Suebi-Alemanni knew as Wuodan(3) was seen throughout continental imagery riding a horse, which connect to his abilities to travel across worlds. Wuodan is a Wanderer steeped in esoteric connotations. His associations included the underworld and death; the "breath" of inspiration, whether it be the ecstatic fury of the warrior or the inspiration of the poet and writer; and with the wind itself(4). All these associations conjure up images of the esoteric - an unseen force present in all directions, just as his wandering extends across different worlds as truly a journey of self-discovery. He is more shadowy and mysterious than other gods such as Ziu the Sky Father, or Donar the Thunderer - but all aspects are within and without us, part of both ourselves and our landscape.
In ancient times the horse was a motif representing not just travel by land but also by sea and the sky - all conveying images of the three Shamanic realms: As Above, So Below(5). The Celtiberians linked the god Lugus with horses and the Earth Mother goddess(6), much like Wuodan in Germanic lore was associated with Mutter Erde. Inscriptions similarly connected Lugus with arable lands and soils fertilized by the rain - hence, the sky. However, the god Lugus seems most similar to in the Germanic pantheon is Ziu; although the rain fertilizing the soil would also be similar to Donar's interplay with Sibba(7).
Within he Greek Mythos, the god Poseidon was associated not only with the sea but also with horses and earthquakes. He was said to have first created the horse from a stone. The thundering hooves of a horse conveyed images of an earth shaking, just like the associations of Wuodan with "ecstasy" or "breath". Poseidon shapeshifting into a stallion to mount the agricultural goddess Demeter, is an allegory for fertilization of the soil - the same two-fold exchange of cosmic and earth energies.
These same energies in their various forms, were the interplay of Ziu, Wuodan and Donar within the Germanic pantheon with aspect of the Earth Goddess. (See my examination of the Suebi goddess Zisa). Poseidon was honored with horse sacrifices and chariot races, just as Indo-European cultures generally portrayed the Sun being pulled by a horse-drawn chariot across the sky, and the various traditions of the Wild Hunt. To the Irish, the god Mannanan mac Lir was associated with both the sea and horses....So in prehistoric symbolism, the horse could symbolize a shamanic journey across different realms so we can truly know ourselves - the different aspects of ourselves being a reflection of the interplay of land, sea and sky.
The "Venus of Hohlefels" as a Primordial Earth Mother Goddess
Another figurine found at Vogelherdhöhle represents a mammoth, illustrating not only the prehistory of these findings but likewise - as we will see especially in part 2 - significance that so many of these most ancient objects were carved from mammoth bones. Could it not be that this animal whose meat yielded food, whose fur was used to give both warmth and shelter, also represented the bounties of the Earth? Its my strong opinion that this approach gave rise also to what the great mythologist Joseph Campbell termed "Our Lady of the Mammoths", whom I understand as prototype of the Mother Goddess who our Celtic and Germanic ancestors alike saw as associated with the hunt, the forests and wilderness.
Campbell based his terminology on findings in the Dnieper Valley of Ukraine, where mammoth skulls were found arranged around a female figurine: "Who, reading of the figure amid the mammoth skulls, does not think of Artemis as the lady of the wild things?"(8) To the ancient Greeks, "Artemis" was the goddess of the hunt - as with most other academics, Campbell used Greco-Roman terms but the same Archetype existed under different names among our Ancestors as well. The mammoth later gave rise to other animals such as the bear - indeed, the Hellenic Artemis' name is linked to arktos "bear" and later gave rise to "arctic" and associated with the "North Star"(9) - and the deer, which was specifically the animal associated with her Roman equivalent, Diana. More on the shamanism behind these animal representations when I discuss the "Löwenmensch" in Part 2.
Aside from Vogelherdhöhle, many paleolithic-era findings were also uncovered at Hohle Fels ("hollow rock"), whose very shape - when seen without the present coverage of tree growth - closely resembles the "mouth" of the mountain.(10) This astonishing fact relates to similacrum which exist within the psyche whilst manifesting throughout Nature, including spirals and various solar symbols. One of the findings at this important site near Schelklingen is the 35,000-40,000-year-old female figurine that has been dubbed "Venus of Hohle Fels". This creation of the Aurignacian culture that extended throughout Central and Southern Europe, predated the "Venus" figurines of the Gravettian culture - further extending back the prehistory of our region.
Much like later Celtic findings from Heuneburg and other Hallstatt sites, whose art was geometric, the "Venus" figurines were abstract, without concrete human features. Like the "Venus of Laussel" figure found in the Aquitaine region of southwest France, the Hohle Fels figure contains massive breasts and hips, but neither face nor feet. As a head or face is what gives individuation, the abstract headless figure with large breasts and hips personified the female principle of fertility - just as the two phalluses found at the same site corresponded to the male principle of fertility. Both the "Venus" and the phalluses were carved from mammoth ivory, representing life cycles and the Earth's bounties born out of a symbolic interaction of the two principles.
Academics often have an obsession of giving Greco-Roman names (similar to the Mideastern obsession of their more religious counterparts) to other European cultures, but our Celtic and Germanic ancestors had their own names for the Mother Goddess than the Roman "Venus". Conveying the multiplicity of Nature, her various aspects are personified under different goddess names within our Swabian regions: Frau Holle, Perchta, or Zisa. Frau Holle/Holda/Perchta was associated with the "wind", underworld and hunting - thus her dual role to Wuodan, a "wind" god often linked alongside her to the Wild Hunt, and her regional names ("Gode/Wode") elsewhere linked her to his "wife" Frija.(11)
Both hunting and wind motifs carry deeper shamanic allegories, perhaps why Frau Holle/Perchta was linked by medieval Christian authorities with the folk-healing women they persecuted as "witches". Generally the Christians linked her alongside her fellow huntress Diana as "queen of witchcraft". As documented by French medievalist Claude Lecouteux, traditions about the "Wild Hunt" show the remarkable survival of Paganism long after Europe's Christianization.(12) Holle seems to have her roots in the Neolithic era as theorized by Marija Gimbutas(13), lending credence to my hypothesis that this ancient "Lady of the Mammoth" whose personifications were found at such sites as Hohle Fels represents a prototypal Mother Goddess that later gave rise to Celtic and Germanic Goddesses.
A tantalizing link can possibly be seen in the word höhle "cave", which we could link with Holle, who within her aspect as the goddess Hel was specifically linked to the underworld - a realm not of "punishment" as per the Abrahamic religions, but of re-evaluation and reflection over future incarnations as life was always and everywhere before those religions conceived as an endless cycle. Holle's name also relates to "hole", symbolic of her coming from a "hole" from within the earth via burial mounds(14), to take deceased souls into the underworld. Yet she was also related like earth mothers(15) to the surface and some aspects of weather - a female counterpart to the god Wuodan who also linked the different shamanic realms:
"The character of Frau Holle is so interesting because she unites both a light and dark divine aspect. Observing the Greek or Egyptian pantheon gods of light and gods of darkness stick out, gods of the upperworld and underworld, Olympian and chthonic gods. Frau Holle unites both aspects; she lingers and acts as well in her underworld as in the light; not for nothing is she also named 'the White Woman'. She rewards and punishes the living but also wanders around with a host of dead. This makes Frau Holle a unique character. In the Germanic pantheon, the frontier between the world of the living and the dead is generally not as clear as in other pantheons. The realm of the goddess Hel (Helheim, which is even lower than the cold realm of Niflheim), where most of the dead linger, is in Germanic mythology an underworld, but Valhalla, a realm for the deceased (heroes) too, is located in an upper-world (Asgard). Thus is united in a personified form an important concept of Germanic religion in the divine character of Frau Holle."(16)
In her manifestations as Hel and Perchta, the goddess was portrayed as having two "faces" - one young and beautiful, while the other was old and "deformed". Related to Hel being the realm of self-reflection, this refers to you "choosing" your own experience - will you use your time wisely to grow, or willingly choose to remain within the lower self, the "punishment" is only of your own making while the way she appears to you is based on your own reflection. The Christianized portrayals of Perchta - despite her name relating to "bright" - as a "hag" nevertheless betray a deeper connection with protection as in the Hagalaz Rune. While Germanic warriors inscribed the Tiwaz Rune of the god Ziu upon their sword (Ziu's name among the Saxon tribe directly relates to "sword"), they often inscribed the Hagalaz Rune upon their protective shields.
A similar relation to the Runes is with *Berkanan, meaning "birch" and "rebirth". In the same way, Perchta could be associated with brooms which were often made from birch bark; its no accident that Holle/Perchta was associated with those female folk-healers labeled as "witches" whose own symbol became the broomstick. Her dual nature was similar to the Runes, with dual meanings based on whether upright or inverted. The same "cleansing" nature can be seen in the bells which her "perchten" wear to ward off negative spirits - the vibrations given off by those bells having shamanic allegories of warding off negative energy in the same way Hagalaz is protective. As she was found with a perforated protrusion, archaeologists have suggested the Hohle Fels figurine was worn as an amulet. The "motherly" energy is certainly one that is nurturing and protective, as encoded throughout the lore.
That Perchta emerged from an amalgamation of Germanic and Celtic traditions within the Alpine regions has already been accepted by academics(17), but her various qualities indicate a Shamanism which is the primordial origin of both Celtic and Germanic folk faith. As for the fertility aspect of the "Venus"' large breasts, this corresponds to the place-name Cisenberg near Augsburg related to the goddess Zisa could relate to "mountain in the form of a breast (zitze)"(18). As consort of the sky father Ziu, the goddess Zisa naturally represents fertility and earth - while the consort of Wuodan in her various forms as Erde, Holle, Holda personifies other aspects.
The very fact that Neolithic cultures did not give the "Venus" figures a face illustrates the multiplicity inherent within Nature: its various aspects cannot be personified as only one deity. We are similarly multifaceted as individuals; our psyche has different aspects; and the deities on some level are Archetypal representations of our psyche while being Divine in their own right as much as there is a Divine Energy manifesting Nature and the Cosmos. Archaeological evidence, the prehistoric origins of fairy tales(19), and various folk traditions illustrate a remarkable antiquity to and survival of our most ancient ancestral faith which has adapted itself alongside our own growth.
FOOTNOTES:
(1) Among good sources about the Celtic element in Swabian heritage are Dr. Wolf-Dieter Storl, the cultural anthropologist and ethno-botanist who was born in Saxony but has lived in Bavarian Swabia for quite some time and brilliantly highlights our ancestral shamanism; and the Ann Arbor, Michigan writer George Weiland, on the "Celtic German" website.
(2) Contrary to those who think we have to "reclaim" something which was "lost", our ancestral Pagan traditions - and this applies to other peoples - survived in a remarkable continuity, despite over a thousand of years of forced conversion. Especially we who descend from Catholic regions, the Church simply co-opted our traditions which can be decoded as remnants of our indigenous beliefs by understanding the inherent allegories and patterns beyond the outer "Christian" terms and concepts. We do not need later Scandinavian texts which were collected by monks who saturated them with Christianized concepts.
(3) The "d" was later rendered as "t" in Old High German, hence his later continental name of Wuotan ->Wotan.
(4) The Vedic god Vayu is also associated with the Wind and his name associated with "breath", so there may be a common Proto-Indo-European etymological root.
(5) As with other occult principles stemming from Natural Law, this "Law of Correspondence" is contained throughout our ancestral lore. It was instinctively understood by Pagans who saw all the realms as reflections of each other, governed by the same natural/cosmic laws. We will see it in Part 2 with "The Adorant" figure and Celtic-Germanic practices of "sun gazing".
(6) A simultaneous interest of mine is Celtiberian Paganism, as a homage to the Spanish aspect of my heritage. Expanding archaeological evidence and academic studies in Spanish universities has uncovered much about the traditions, spiritual practices and worldview of the Celtiberians. Future articles will highlight some of these aspects and hopefully fill in some of the void of this neglected subject.
(7) The "wife" of Donar, her name being the etymological root of modern German sippe "family; kin" illustrates the allegories of us being collectively "born" and nourished by the soil. As with Ziu, Wuodan and Donar, I use the name attested to in Continental sources and not the more-famous Scandinavian names, simply because my heritage is Continental not Norse - while we recognize that close parallels and common patterns exist.
(8) Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, London: Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd., 1960, p. 328.
(9) See Paul Shepard and Barry Sanders, The Sacred Paw: The Bear in Nature, Myth, and Literature, New York: Viking, 1985, pp. 112-118; and Christopher McIntosh, Beyond the North Wind: The Fall and Rise of the Mystic North, Newburyport, MA: Weiser Books, 2019, pp. 32-33.
(10) See the article at <http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/germanyhohlefels.htm> which links to several other informative articles.
(11) For an excellent and comprehensive discussion of the rich folklore concerning Frau Holle/Holda/Perchta, see: GardenStone, Goddess Holle: In search of a Germanic goddess, Norderstadt, Schleswig-Holstein: BoD - Books on Demand GmbH, 2011.
(12) See Claude Lecouteux, Phantom Armies of the Night: The Wild Hunt and the Ghostly Processions of the Undead, Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2011.
(13) See Marija Gimbutas, The Living Goddesses, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
(14) As in other regions throughout the world, mounds are scattered throughout Schwaben. See my article from 15 October 2018, when I was still discovering only a fraction of what I now have come to know on my journey: <https://swabian-pride.blogspot.com/2018/10/cairns-megalithic-mounds-and-mithraeums.html>.
(15) Its not a stretch to suggest that Erde, the term for the personified Earth, could have related to an earlier word with a dropped "h" -> (h)erde, holle, holda....In similar linguistic transition as the "g" and "w" in medieval Old High German; or the Alemannic "c" and "z" transition I uncovered when researching about Zisa and Ziu.
(16) GardenStone, op. cit., p. 9.
(17) Erika Timm and Gustav Adolf Beckmann, Frau Holle, Frau Percht und verwandte Gestalten: 160 Jahre nach Jacob Grimm aus germanistischer Sicht betrachtet, Stuttgart: Hirzel S. Verlag, 2003.
(18) R. Kohl, "Die Augsburger Cisa - eine germanische Göttin?," Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, Leipzig, Vol. 33, 1936, pp. 21-39.
(19) A 2016 joint study by two academics, a Durham anthropologist and Lisbon folklorist, established the prehistoric origins of Indo-European fairy tales: <https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsos.150645>. The story was even picked up by the mainstream media: <https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-35358487>.
10 February 2020
Several archaeological findings throughout Swabia (Schwaben) illuminate our understanding of how the traditions and worldview of the tribes later known as Germanic and Celtic peoples first developed. Its my contention that there has been a distinct continuity within the region, so that the people known as the Swabians, Bavarians, Swiss and Austrians are descended not only from the Germanic tribes that migrated down into the Alpine regions, but also from the previous Danubian Celts of the Hallstatt culture.
Other Celtic cultures simultaneously arose in Gaul and Celtiberia, from whence they spread into Britannia and Ireland - where the same intermarriage with the previous prehistoric peoples (not as "backward" as establishment historiography assumes) and the great megalith builders occurred as on the Continent. So its not that Hallstatt culture gave rise to all the Celtic peoples, but specifically those within the Alpine regions with such great sites as Heuneburg.
Continuous history shows that we are indigenous to our region, with later additions of Celtic and Germanic blood shaping our current identity(1) - they came not as invading horsemen, but as settlers who harmonized their traditions with those of the pre-Celtic peoples in what can be identified as our specific expression of Paganism. In turn, this Paganism can be recovered not only in archaeological findings but also in folklore which survived however in thinly-veiled Christianized form(2).
 |
| 35,000-40,000 year old Vogelherdhöhle horse figure |
What the oldest figurine art reveals
Dated to between 35,000-40,000 years ago, figures carved from mammoth bones uncovered at the site of Vogelherdhöhle represent the oldest figurine art found anywhere in the world to date! One of the figurines showed a horse, a motif that was to be found throughout all Indo-European traditions - but their discovery in pre-historic Swabia point to deeper roots than an ancestral Steppe memory. Its my contention the horse has deeper shamanic connotations beyond just a literal representation of a domesticated animal.
The god the Suebi-Alemanni knew as Wuodan(3) was seen throughout continental imagery riding a horse, which connect to his abilities to travel across worlds. Wuodan is a Wanderer steeped in esoteric connotations. His associations included the underworld and death; the "breath" of inspiration, whether it be the ecstatic fury of the warrior or the inspiration of the poet and writer; and with the wind itself(4). All these associations conjure up images of the esoteric - an unseen force present in all directions, just as his wandering extends across different worlds as truly a journey of self-discovery. He is more shadowy and mysterious than other gods such as Ziu the Sky Father, or Donar the Thunderer - but all aspects are within and without us, part of both ourselves and our landscape.
 |
| Based on the Merseburg Incantation, the painting "Wodan Heals Balder's Horse" (1905) by the Bavarian artist Emil Doepler |
In ancient times the horse was a motif representing not just travel by land but also by sea and the sky - all conveying images of the three Shamanic realms: As Above, So Below(5). The Celtiberians linked the god Lugus with horses and the Earth Mother goddess(6), much like Wuodan in Germanic lore was associated with Mutter Erde. Inscriptions similarly connected Lugus with arable lands and soils fertilized by the rain - hence, the sky. However, the god Lugus seems most similar to in the Germanic pantheon is Ziu; although the rain fertilizing the soil would also be similar to Donar's interplay with Sibba(7).
Within he Greek Mythos, the god Poseidon was associated not only with the sea but also with horses and earthquakes. He was said to have first created the horse from a stone. The thundering hooves of a horse conveyed images of an earth shaking, just like the associations of Wuodan with "ecstasy" or "breath". Poseidon shapeshifting into a stallion to mount the agricultural goddess Demeter, is an allegory for fertilization of the soil - the same two-fold exchange of cosmic and earth energies.
These same energies in their various forms, were the interplay of Ziu, Wuodan and Donar within the Germanic pantheon with aspect of the Earth Goddess. (See my examination of the Suebi goddess Zisa). Poseidon was honored with horse sacrifices and chariot races, just as Indo-European cultures generally portrayed the Sun being pulled by a horse-drawn chariot across the sky, and the various traditions of the Wild Hunt. To the Irish, the god Mannanan mac Lir was associated with both the sea and horses....So in prehistoric symbolism, the horse could symbolize a shamanic journey across different realms so we can truly know ourselves - the different aspects of ourselves being a reflection of the interplay of land, sea and sky.
 |
| Mammoth figurine from Vogelherdhöhle |
The "Venus of Hohlefels" as a Primordial Earth Mother Goddess
Another figurine found at Vogelherdhöhle represents a mammoth, illustrating not only the prehistory of these findings but likewise - as we will see especially in part 2 - significance that so many of these most ancient objects were carved from mammoth bones. Could it not be that this animal whose meat yielded food, whose fur was used to give both warmth and shelter, also represented the bounties of the Earth? Its my strong opinion that this approach gave rise also to what the great mythologist Joseph Campbell termed "Our Lady of the Mammoths", whom I understand as prototype of the Mother Goddess who our Celtic and Germanic ancestors alike saw as associated with the hunt, the forests and wilderness.
Campbell based his terminology on findings in the Dnieper Valley of Ukraine, where mammoth skulls were found arranged around a female figurine: "Who, reading of the figure amid the mammoth skulls, does not think of Artemis as the lady of the wild things?"(8) To the ancient Greeks, "Artemis" was the goddess of the hunt - as with most other academics, Campbell used Greco-Roman terms but the same Archetype existed under different names among our Ancestors as well. The mammoth later gave rise to other animals such as the bear - indeed, the Hellenic Artemis' name is linked to arktos "bear" and later gave rise to "arctic" and associated with the "North Star"(9) - and the deer, which was specifically the animal associated with her Roman equivalent, Diana. More on the shamanism behind these animal representations when I discuss the "Löwenmensch" in Part 2.
 |
| 40,000-year-old "Venus of Hohle Fels" found near Schelklingen |
Aside from Vogelherdhöhle, many paleolithic-era findings were also uncovered at Hohle Fels ("hollow rock"), whose very shape - when seen without the present coverage of tree growth - closely resembles the "mouth" of the mountain.(10) This astonishing fact relates to similacrum which exist within the psyche whilst manifesting throughout Nature, including spirals and various solar symbols. One of the findings at this important site near Schelklingen is the 35,000-40,000-year-old female figurine that has been dubbed "Venus of Hohle Fels". This creation of the Aurignacian culture that extended throughout Central and Southern Europe, predated the "Venus" figurines of the Gravettian culture - further extending back the prehistory of our region.
Much like later Celtic findings from Heuneburg and other Hallstatt sites, whose art was geometric, the "Venus" figurines were abstract, without concrete human features. Like the "Venus of Laussel" figure found in the Aquitaine region of southwest France, the Hohle Fels figure contains massive breasts and hips, but neither face nor feet. As a head or face is what gives individuation, the abstract headless figure with large breasts and hips personified the female principle of fertility - just as the two phalluses found at the same site corresponded to the male principle of fertility. Both the "Venus" and the phalluses were carved from mammoth ivory, representing life cycles and the Earth's bounties born out of a symbolic interaction of the two principles.
Academics often have an obsession of giving Greco-Roman names (similar to the Mideastern obsession of their more religious counterparts) to other European cultures, but our Celtic and Germanic ancestors had their own names for the Mother Goddess than the Roman "Venus". Conveying the multiplicity of Nature, her various aspects are personified under different goddess names within our Swabian regions: Frau Holle, Perchta, or Zisa. Frau Holle/Holda/Perchta was associated with the "wind", underworld and hunting - thus her dual role to Wuodan, a "wind" god often linked alongside her to the Wild Hunt, and her regional names ("Gode/Wode") elsewhere linked her to his "wife" Frija.(11)
 |
| "Mistress of the Wild Hunt" (1860) by the Prussian painter Ludwig Pietsch |
Both hunting and wind motifs carry deeper shamanic allegories, perhaps why Frau Holle/Perchta was linked by medieval Christian authorities with the folk-healing women they persecuted as "witches". Generally the Christians linked her alongside her fellow huntress Diana as "queen of witchcraft". As documented by French medievalist Claude Lecouteux, traditions about the "Wild Hunt" show the remarkable survival of Paganism long after Europe's Christianization.(12) Holle seems to have her roots in the Neolithic era as theorized by Marija Gimbutas(13), lending credence to my hypothesis that this ancient "Lady of the Mammoth" whose personifications were found at such sites as Hohle Fels represents a prototypal Mother Goddess that later gave rise to Celtic and Germanic Goddesses.
A tantalizing link can possibly be seen in the word höhle "cave", which we could link with Holle, who within her aspect as the goddess Hel was specifically linked to the underworld - a realm not of "punishment" as per the Abrahamic religions, but of re-evaluation and reflection over future incarnations as life was always and everywhere before those religions conceived as an endless cycle. Holle's name also relates to "hole", symbolic of her coming from a "hole" from within the earth via burial mounds(14), to take deceased souls into the underworld. Yet she was also related like earth mothers(15) to the surface and some aspects of weather - a female counterpart to the god Wuodan who also linked the different shamanic realms:
"The character of Frau Holle is so interesting because she unites both a light and dark divine aspect. Observing the Greek or Egyptian pantheon gods of light and gods of darkness stick out, gods of the upperworld and underworld, Olympian and chthonic gods. Frau Holle unites both aspects; she lingers and acts as well in her underworld as in the light; not for nothing is she also named 'the White Woman'. She rewards and punishes the living but also wanders around with a host of dead. This makes Frau Holle a unique character. In the Germanic pantheon, the frontier between the world of the living and the dead is generally not as clear as in other pantheons. The realm of the goddess Hel (Helheim, which is even lower than the cold realm of Niflheim), where most of the dead linger, is in Germanic mythology an underworld, but Valhalla, a realm for the deceased (heroes) too, is located in an upper-world (Asgard). Thus is united in a personified form an important concept of Germanic religion in the divine character of Frau Holle."(16)
In her manifestations as Hel and Perchta, the goddess was portrayed as having two "faces" - one young and beautiful, while the other was old and "deformed". Related to Hel being the realm of self-reflection, this refers to you "choosing" your own experience - will you use your time wisely to grow, or willingly choose to remain within the lower self, the "punishment" is only of your own making while the way she appears to you is based on your own reflection. The Christianized portrayals of Perchta - despite her name relating to "bright" - as a "hag" nevertheless betray a deeper connection with protection as in the Hagalaz Rune. While Germanic warriors inscribed the Tiwaz Rune of the god Ziu upon their sword (Ziu's name among the Saxon tribe directly relates to "sword"), they often inscribed the Hagalaz Rune upon their protective shields.
A similar relation to the Runes is with *Berkanan, meaning "birch" and "rebirth". In the same way, Perchta could be associated with brooms which were often made from birch bark; its no accident that Holle/Perchta was associated with those female folk-healers labeled as "witches" whose own symbol became the broomstick. Her dual nature was similar to the Runes, with dual meanings based on whether upright or inverted. The same "cleansing" nature can be seen in the bells which her "perchten" wear to ward off negative spirits - the vibrations given off by those bells having shamanic allegories of warding off negative energy in the same way Hagalaz is protective. As she was found with a perforated protrusion, archaeologists have suggested the Hohle Fels figurine was worn as an amulet. The "motherly" energy is certainly one that is nurturing and protective, as encoded throughout the lore.
 |
| Hagalaz Rune |
 |
| *Berkanan Rune |
That Perchta emerged from an amalgamation of Germanic and Celtic traditions within the Alpine regions has already been accepted by academics(17), but her various qualities indicate a Shamanism which is the primordial origin of both Celtic and Germanic folk faith. As for the fertility aspect of the "Venus"' large breasts, this corresponds to the place-name Cisenberg near Augsburg related to the goddess Zisa could relate to "mountain in the form of a breast (zitze)"(18). As consort of the sky father Ziu, the goddess Zisa naturally represents fertility and earth - while the consort of Wuodan in her various forms as Erde, Holle, Holda personifies other aspects.
The very fact that Neolithic cultures did not give the "Venus" figures a face illustrates the multiplicity inherent within Nature: its various aspects cannot be personified as only one deity. We are similarly multifaceted as individuals; our psyche has different aspects; and the deities on some level are Archetypal representations of our psyche while being Divine in their own right as much as there is a Divine Energy manifesting Nature and the Cosmos. Archaeological evidence, the prehistoric origins of fairy tales(19), and various folk traditions illustrate a remarkable antiquity to and survival of our most ancient ancestral faith which has adapted itself alongside our own growth.
FOOTNOTES:
(1) Among good sources about the Celtic element in Swabian heritage are Dr. Wolf-Dieter Storl, the cultural anthropologist and ethno-botanist who was born in Saxony but has lived in Bavarian Swabia for quite some time and brilliantly highlights our ancestral shamanism; and the Ann Arbor, Michigan writer George Weiland, on the "Celtic German" website.
(2) Contrary to those who think we have to "reclaim" something which was "lost", our ancestral Pagan traditions - and this applies to other peoples - survived in a remarkable continuity, despite over a thousand of years of forced conversion. Especially we who descend from Catholic regions, the Church simply co-opted our traditions which can be decoded as remnants of our indigenous beliefs by understanding the inherent allegories and patterns beyond the outer "Christian" terms and concepts. We do not need later Scandinavian texts which were collected by monks who saturated them with Christianized concepts.
(3) The "d" was later rendered as "t" in Old High German, hence his later continental name of Wuotan ->Wotan.
(4) The Vedic god Vayu is also associated with the Wind and his name associated with "breath", so there may be a common Proto-Indo-European etymological root.
(5) As with other occult principles stemming from Natural Law, this "Law of Correspondence" is contained throughout our ancestral lore. It was instinctively understood by Pagans who saw all the realms as reflections of each other, governed by the same natural/cosmic laws. We will see it in Part 2 with "The Adorant" figure and Celtic-Germanic practices of "sun gazing".
(6) A simultaneous interest of mine is Celtiberian Paganism, as a homage to the Spanish aspect of my heritage. Expanding archaeological evidence and academic studies in Spanish universities has uncovered much about the traditions, spiritual practices and worldview of the Celtiberians. Future articles will highlight some of these aspects and hopefully fill in some of the void of this neglected subject.
(7) The "wife" of Donar, her name being the etymological root of modern German sippe "family; kin" illustrates the allegories of us being collectively "born" and nourished by the soil. As with Ziu, Wuodan and Donar, I use the name attested to in Continental sources and not the more-famous Scandinavian names, simply because my heritage is Continental not Norse - while we recognize that close parallels and common patterns exist.
(8) Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, London: Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd., 1960, p. 328.
(9) See Paul Shepard and Barry Sanders, The Sacred Paw: The Bear in Nature, Myth, and Literature, New York: Viking, 1985, pp. 112-118; and Christopher McIntosh, Beyond the North Wind: The Fall and Rise of the Mystic North, Newburyport, MA: Weiser Books, 2019, pp. 32-33.
(10) See the article at <http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/germanyhohlefels.htm> which links to several other informative articles.
(11) For an excellent and comprehensive discussion of the rich folklore concerning Frau Holle/Holda/Perchta, see: GardenStone, Goddess Holle: In search of a Germanic goddess, Norderstadt, Schleswig-Holstein: BoD - Books on Demand GmbH, 2011.
(12) See Claude Lecouteux, Phantom Armies of the Night: The Wild Hunt and the Ghostly Processions of the Undead, Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2011.
(13) See Marija Gimbutas, The Living Goddesses, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
(14) As in other regions throughout the world, mounds are scattered throughout Schwaben. See my article from 15 October 2018, when I was still discovering only a fraction of what I now have come to know on my journey: <https://swabian-pride.blogspot.com/2018/10/cairns-megalithic-mounds-and-mithraeums.html>.
(15) Its not a stretch to suggest that Erde, the term for the personified Earth, could have related to an earlier word with a dropped "h" -> (h)erde, holle, holda....In similar linguistic transition as the "g" and "w" in medieval Old High German; or the Alemannic "c" and "z" transition I uncovered when researching about Zisa and Ziu.
(16) GardenStone, op. cit., p. 9.
(17) Erika Timm and Gustav Adolf Beckmann, Frau Holle, Frau Percht und verwandte Gestalten: 160 Jahre nach Jacob Grimm aus germanistischer Sicht betrachtet, Stuttgart: Hirzel S. Verlag, 2003.
(18) R. Kohl, "Die Augsburger Cisa - eine germanische Göttin?," Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, Leipzig, Vol. 33, 1936, pp. 21-39.
(19) A 2016 joint study by two academics, a Durham anthropologist and Lisbon folklorist, established the prehistoric origins of Indo-European fairy tales: <https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsos.150645>. The story was even picked up by the mainstream media: <https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-35358487>.
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