Grim Goddess

Poul Anderson shows ancient Paganism in its period and also presents fantasies in which the Gods are real. He makes at least one disparaging comment on modern neopaganism. After we have been told that the slaves who wash the idol of a goddess are then drowned:

"'A pretty grim sort,' Everard said. The neopagans of his home milieu did not include her in their fairy tales of a prehistoric matriarchy when everybody was nice."
-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006), pp. 467-640 AT p. 565.

Sir Nigel Loring reflects:

"He'd known Witches before...two dozen had hidden out in the New Forest..."
-SM Stirling, The Protector's War (New York, 2006), Chapter Eighteen, p. 507.

I think that Stirling is ironically referencing Gerald Gardner's claimed initiation:

According to Gardner's later account, one night in September 1939 they took him to a large house owned by "Old Dorothy" Clutterbuck, a wealthy local woman, where he was made to strip naked and taken through an initiation ceremony. Halfway through the ceremony, he heard the word "Wica", and he recognised it as an Old English word for "witch". He was already acquainted with Margaret Murray's theory of the Witch-cult, and that "I then knew then that which I had thought burnt out hundreds of years ago still survived."^[96] This group, he claimed, were the New Forest coven, and he believed them to be one of the few surviving covens of the ancient, pre-Christian Witch-Cult religion. Subsequent research by the likes of Hutton and Heselton has shown that in fact the New Forest coven was probably only formed in the mid-1930s, based upon such sources as folk magic and the theories of Margaret Murray.[97
-copied from here.

(I met Philip Heselton when he visited Lancaster to address the Briganti Moot.)

Naerdha And The Neos

"Star of the Sea," 11, A.D. 49.

Norse mythology had a three-storey hereafter:

warriors killed in battle go to Valhalla;

sailors drowned at sea go to the hall of the sea giant, Njord;

everyone else, even Balder, goes to Hel which is like Hades or Sheol, not like Hell.

Veleda adds a fourth:

"'Women who die in childbed go directly to [Naerdha], like fallen warriors to the Eddic Odin.'" (p. 567)

Despite this, Everard reflects that this goddess is:

"'A pretty grim sort...'" (ibid.)

- and thinks:

"The neopagans of his home milieu did not include her in their fairy tales of a prehistoric matriarchy when everyone was nice." (ibid.)

We have responded to Everard's thought before.

It is easy to knock "neos" but:

I currently have regular contact with members of several different neopagan "denominations." Several of them are scholars of their subject. As such, they know and can expound the differences between ancient practices and attempted reconstructions and newly invented traditions and false claims of continuity with earlier traditions.

-copied from here.

When a dominant monotheism declines, every possible alternative will be tried by someone: secularism, revived polytheism, other monotheist traditions etc. Thus, we know not only atheists and agnostics but also converts to Wicca, Islam etc. Each of us needs to develop his or her own world-view which should include an understanding of past world-views. We can certainly appreciate Odin and the goddess without believing in them and can also engage in dialogue with anyone who does claim to believe in them.

Neopagans

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

Of the German goddess, Nerthus, described by Tacitus, Manson Everard of the Time Patrol thinks:

"'A pretty grim sort'...The neopagans of his home milieu did not include her in their fairy tales of a prehistoric matriarchy when everybody was nice." (p. 565)

I currently have regular contact with members of several different neopagan "denominations." Several of them are scholars of their subject. As such, they know and can expound the differences between ancient practices and attempted reconstructions and newly invented traditions and false claims of continuity with earlier traditions.

I think that prehistorical societies would have been not matriarchies, ruled by women, but anarchies, ruled by no one, as yet - maybe prearchies? - although there would have been matrilineal descent both originally before the male role in reproduction came to be recognized and even later before the institution of patriarchal monogamy made it important to identify legitimate male heirs.

Mistakes About The Past II

See Mistakes About The Past.

Another convergence -

An idol is drawn in procession through the land by an oxcart, then the slaves who wash the idol in a secluded lake are drowned. Everard remarks that the goddess, Nerthus, is:

"'A pretty grim sort,'...The neopagans of his home milieu did not include her in their fairy tales of a prehistoric matriarchy when everybody was nice." (Time Patrol, p. 565)

SM Stirling's character Lisketer says:

"'From what I've read, the Olmecs had a deep spiritual relationship with nature...'" (Island In The Sea Of Time, p. 316)

The Olmecs slaughter Lisketer's crew on first contact.