Tag Archives: Odin

A Yuletide Rant

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So, Yuletide. Yuletide means the time of the Yule. It’s the celebration of the winter solstice, usually lasting about twelve days, with the Solstice in the middle of it, although it was as long as two months, going from late November and ending in early January, with some peoples. Yule is largely a Germanic holiday.

The word Yule is the modern English version of an old Germanic word, géol. That’s “g with a dot over it, “e” with a slanty apostrophe over it, “o” and “l”, géol. Old Germanic, as an etymological term, includes all the Nordic languages, as well as the Anglo-Saxon Ones.

So, Yuletide. Last time I explained how the Christians slipped old Saint Nick in on us, while slipping a mickey to Odin. I also explained why December 25th became the date the winter solstice was typically associated with. Now, why would they want to distract us from a pagan god? Any hardcore Christians out there may want to plug your ears and sing “O Holy Night”, or something else Christmassy, about now. You may not like what’s next.

It turns out that there are pagan sons of gods, that were also born on the winter solstice, all of them before Jesus, most of them virgin births, as well.

The reason we use the 25th to celebrate the winter solstice now, is because it was the official Roman birth date of Solis Invictus, the conquering sun. The emperor Marcus Aurelius made the Persian version of Solis Invictus, Mithras, an official part of the pantheon. The day was called “Dies Natalis Solis Invicti”, “Day of the Birth of the Conquering Sun”. Now that has a ring to it. Dies Natalis Solis Invicti! So much for Christmas.

Let’s us list some of the other virgin birth sun gods with the same birthday.

First is the Egyptian Horus, of course. Son of Isis, the eternal virgin, whose father was Osiris. He may be the oldest version; version, not virgin. Osiris had the same birthday as Horus, oddly enough.

Then there’s Attis, Serapis, Heracles, a.k.a Hercules, Tammuz, Adonis, Apollo, Perseus, Jupiter, which is to say Zeus Pater, Father Zeus, Helios, and my favorite, Bacchus-Dionysos, Dionysius in Latin. There’s lots more, but I shan’t go on.

Most of these guys also have a worship ritual involving bread and wine: a ritual of communion, wherein the bread and wine symbolized the blood and body of the god. One communed with the god by consuming the sanctified fruit of the vine and wheat of the field, the which fact may be worthy of a Quasi of it’s own.

Most of these buggers also died at the spring equinox. Jesus probably originally did, too. Easter Sunday, is after all, always on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the first day of spring. Easter, the name of which derives from the old Germanic Oestre, the spring goddess of fertility. Oestre, Ishtar, Isis, always virginal, always giving virgin birth to the sons of god at Yuletide. You Christians may now unplug your ears and stop with the singing.

First shared on the Squatcher’s Lounge Podcast:

An audio version of this quasi theory may be found here:

Santa is the King of the Gods

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Santa Claus, a.k.a. Saint Nicholas, is a fraud foisted on us pagans during the Christianization of Germanic and Nordic Europe. There, I said it.

Saint Nicholas, who lived in the late 3rd and early 4th century, belonged to a wealthy family, and is most famous for saving three poor, young sisters from a probable life of probable prostitution, by giving them money for their dowries, and thereby getting them married off. Why a man getting paid off to marry a women doesn’t make the man a hooker beats the hell out of me. But that is neither here nor there. The main point is that Nicholas gave away presents. His birthday is celebrated on January 6th. He was a skinny bugger, apparently, may or may not have had a beard, and certainly didn’t have much hair. His daddy, another priest (This was before the whole priests couldn’t get married, couldn’t have sex, silliness came about), gave him a tonsure when he ordained his little Nicky into the priesthood. A tonsure is the weird, partly shaved head sort of haircut they were into back then.

Old Saint Nick didn’t have diddly to do with December 25th, which was when the old pagan world celebrated the winter solstice. Why they did so on the 25th is a bit of a mystery, since they jolly well knew the solstice oscillates between the 20th and the 23rd. It was probably because the latest sunrise of the year is a couple of days after the actual solstice and, in the winter, you really want that sun to start coming up earlier and earlier. Making it a fixed date made it easier to know when you had to get all your solstice shopping done by, too.

Now, what happened on the solstice, and who did what that most closely resembles what our Santa Claus, taking into consideration that Santa first started showing up in Germanic and Nordic Europe?

The solstice is when Odin, the king of the gods, rode the midwinter sky on his eight footed horse, Sleipnir, distributing gifts to all his people. Odin, Woden, Wotan, also known as Julnir, he who is lord of the yuletide. Odin, with long white hair and long white beard, stout of figure. Odin, the leader of the Wild Hunt, the hunt that most often occurred at midwinter, hunting the souls of the departed, accompanied by his Valkyries.

The good children of Odin got presents, the bad got the Wild Hunt.

Odin was also the lord of Alfheim, the home of the elves, and those elves were not little guys who want to be dentists. They were fierce warriors, they were.

The pieces fall into place. This is what Christianity has left us with. No more Roman Saturnalia at the winter solstice, with its orgies and feasts. No more Wild Hunts with Valkyries. No king of the gods. Just a jolly fat man in a silly red suit.

First shared on the Squatcher’s Lounge Podcast:

An audio version of this quasi theory may be found here:

The Wild Hunt

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Back in 1987, or maybe 1988, between Christmas and New Year’s day, my wife and I were driving back from her sister’s house in DeKalb, Illinois. It was around midnight and near blizzard conditions. No snow had been predicted, but hell, it’s the Midwest near Chicago, and around here we say, “If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.”

The roads were nearly empty except for us, and a few other fools, and it was all farmland with few houses. The housing development boom hadn’t gotten west of the Fox river yet, and being Illinois, the terrain was mainly flat, so the wind could pick up some speed. We were heading east with the wind behind us, gusting from a few miles an hour to a sudden thirty or forty miles an hour and then to nothing, just as fast.

As we neared a road we had to go north on, the wind picked up and the snow went blasting heavily past the car. I asked the wife,”Anything feel weird to you?” She said it felt really eerie out, as though something was riding in the wind. That was exactly what I sensed. As I made the left turn onto the northbound road, a huge gust nearly shoved the car into the ditch. I drove a few hundred feet north and pulled off to the side, wanting to wait a bit to see if things would lighten up a bit, weirdness-wise.

The wind increased to a steady gale. We both saw what looked like human forms, forming and disappearing in the blasting snow overhead.

Sounds like hunter’s horns and dogs baying seemed to issue from the wind. Tingling sensations ran up and down our spines, probably our hairs trying to stand on end.

A few minutes passed. The whole shebang, wind, snow, and all, headed off to the east. I pulled back onto the road and drove us home.

What was all this shenanigans? I think it was the Wild Hunt.

The Wild Hunt is a European folk myth. Versions of it are found from the British Isles through the whole of Europe into the Slavic countries.

Jacob Grimm thought the myth was a remnant of pre-Christian Europe. The hunt, led by a god and a goddess, either visited “the land at some holy tide, bringing welfare and blessing, accepting gifts and offerings of the people” or they float “unseen through the air, perceptible in cloudy shapes, in the roar and howl of the winds, carrying on war, hunting or the game of ninepins, the chief employments of ancient heroes…”

The leader of the hunt varies from country to country. In Wales it is Gwynn ap Nudd, king of the Tylwyth Teg, the Fair Folk, the Fairies. In the Germanic and Nordic countries it is Odin, under his various names. The point of the hunt is usually variations on a theme. That theme is death. They have come to hunt the souls of the dead and bring them to judgement.

What were they doing there that night back in the late 80’s? Were they hunting my wife and me, or someone else? My wife and I survived, obviously, and there were no new wars, calamities, or even news of anybody dying in the storm.

I think the answer is quite simple. It was late night, the Holiday season, and these buggers were just out for a joyride.

First shared on the Squatcher’s Lounge Podcast: