I want to learn more about Norse/Germanic/Anglo-Saxon paganism, /his/. Can you rec me some good books on the subject?
>>897932
Snorri Sturlusson Poetic Edda, something like that.
>>897932
Georges Dumézil - Gods of the Ancient Northmen
>>897953
Snorri was inspired by more ancient words:
HWAET!
A dream came to me
at deep midnight
when humankind kept their beds
– the dream of dreams!
I shall declare it.
It seemed I saw the Tree itself
borne on the air, light wound about it,
– a beam of brightest wood, a beacon clad
in overlapping gold, glancing gems
fair at its foot, and five stones
set in a crux flashed from the crosstree.
Around angels of God
all gazed upon it,
since first fashioning fair.
It was not a felon's gallows,
for holy ghosts beheld it there,
and men on mould, and the whole Making shone for it
- Signum Victoria!
Stained and marred,
stricken with shame, I saw the glory-tree
shine out gaily, sheathed in yellow
decorous gold; and gemstones made
for their Maker's Tree a right mail-coat.
Yet through the masking gold I might perceive
what terrible sufferings were once sustained thereon:
it bled from the right side.
Ruth in the heart.
Afraid I saw that unstill brightness
change raiment and colour
– again clad in gold
or again slicked with sweat,
spangled with spilling blood.
You couldn't just say Germanic?
>>897978
Yet lying there a long while
I beheld, sorrowing, the Healer's Tree
till it seemed that I heard how it broke silence,
best of wood, and began to speak:
'Over that long remove my mind ranges
back to the holt where I was hewn down; from my own stem I was struck away,
dragged off by strong enemies,
wrought into a roadside scaffold.
They made me a hoist for wrongdoers.
The soldiers on their shoulders bore me,
until on a hill-top they set me up;
many enemies made me fast there.
Then I saw, marching toward me,
mankind's brave King;
He came to climb upon me.
I dared not break or bend aside
against God's will, though the ground itself
shook at my feet. Fast I stood,
who falling could have felled them all.
Almighty God ungirded Him,
eager to mount the gallows,
unafraid in the sight of many;
He would set free mankind.
I shook when His arms embraced me
but I durst not bow to ground,
stoop to Earth's surface.
Stand fast I must.
I was reared up, a rood.
I raised the great King,
liege lord of the heavens,
dared not lean from the true.
They drove me through with dark nails:
on me are the deep wounds manifest,
wide-mouthed hate-dents.
I durst not harm any of them.
How they mocked at us both!
I was all moist with blood
sprung from the Man's side
after He sent forth His soul.
>>897985
Wry wierds a-many I underwent
up on that hill-top; saw the Lord of Hosts
stretched out stark. Darkness shrouded
the King's corse. Clouds wrapped
its clear shining. A shade went out
wan under cloud-pall. All creation wept,
keened the King's death. Christ was on the Cross.
But there quickly came from far
earls to the One there. All that I beheld;
had grown weak with grief,
yet with glad will bent then
meek to those men's hands,
yielded Almighty God.
They lifted Him down from the leaden pain,
left me, the commanders,
standing in a sweat of blood.
I was all wounded with shafts.
They straightened out His strained limbs,
stood at His body's head,
looked down on the Lord of Heaven
– for a while He lay there resting –
set to contrive Him a tomb
in the sight of the Tree of Death,
carved it of bright stone,
laid in it the Bringer of Victory,
spent from the great struggle.
They began to speak the grief-song,
sad in the sinking light,
then thought to set out homeward;
their hearts were sick to death,
their most high Prince
they left to rest there with scant retinue.
Yet we three, weeping, a good while
stood in that place after the song had gone up
from the captains' throats. Cold grew the corse,
fair soul-house.
They felled us all
We crashed to ground, cruel Wierd,
and they delved for us a deep pit.
The Lord's men learnt of it,
His friends found me. . .
it was they who girt me with gold and silver. . .
>>897991
Some poster said the other day that the monk that compiled the Eddas interpreted the Ragnarok as happening before biblical Genesis and Adam and Eve being the last two humans. Do you know anything about it?
>>898134
I know that it's false.
>>898161
No shit. I meant in the sense of whether it is true or not that he used that as an evangelization tactic.
>>898166
It's false.
Snorri said so before the Gylfaginning.
Varg Vikernes did some good books
Also Stephe McNallen of course
>>898166
Lies don't forward the Kingdom of God; the devil is the author of lies, and all lies work to the devil's benefit.
It is true there is something off about Day Two. It was not pronounced good. The bible is unclear on what happened that day. It is possible the devil fell to earth that day, in which case that day would not be good.
But to speculate about civilizations prior to Adam and Eve contradicts so many things in the bible that it's not even worth trying to bend it into some sort of evangelical tool. It will fall apart. For instance, if death entered creation after the fall of Adam and Eve, how did this civilization die before there was death?
