A Root Of Paganism On Roland

See:

A Root Of Paganism
Roots Of Paganism
Roots Of Paganism II

The Queen of Air and Darkness:

"...turned away, fading back into the darkness...Her voice died away into the wind's gentle whisper and the night's soft folding."
-Terry Brooks, "The Fey of Cloudmoor," (p. 200) (For full reference, see here.)

The Queen becomes darkness as her voice becomes wind. Brooks captures the same root of paganism as Poul Anderson did in the passages quoted in the linked posts.

More On Paganism And Christianity

In Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003), Poul Anderson's fascinating imaginative account of early interactions between Paganism and Christianity continues. Eirik Blood Ax hears mass before going in viking. Does the priest not mention "Thou shalt not kill" or "Thou shalt not steal"?

Eirik lands in Morecambe Bay and attacks Cumbria. I grew up in the town of Penrith in the county of Cumberland, the latter now re-integrated with neighboring Westmorland and Lancashire over Sands into a reconstituted Cumbria. I have lived since 1973 in the City of Lancaster whose  District boundaries include the town of Morecambe facing across the Bay towards the Cumbrian hills. So, although Anderson's narratives favour our rival City of York, this part of the novel focuses on events here in the North West!

Eirik and his wife, Gunnhild, receive Communion at Easter for political reasons but she withholds information from her confessor:

"She didn't believe it fooled Christ. Maybe he understood and forgave. If not, maybe she could make it up someday...
"Besides, there were other powers. Who could tell which of them had roots running deepest down into the world and most widely below the earth?" (pp. 259-260)

Christ and his saints have not answered her prayers for redes but this may be because she has not confessed fully? However, Christ is only one "power," not necessarily the greatest, and the source of power is the earth, not the heavens. The powers include the Man on the Cross, the Man on the Gallows and the Man with the Drum. Gunnhild, modelling deities on kings, thinks that it befits their greatness to reward their followers, even her holding back from her confessor. Odin, the gallows god, wants offerings and stalwartness, gives victory or death and, it is believed, hospitality in Valhalla till doomsday.

Following the shamanistic way of the drum, albeit quietly in the shadow of the Cross, Gunnhild sends forth her soul to witness Eirik fall in battle. Above the battle, the departing souls of the newly slain force hers aside and she does not know where they are going. This is the limit of the fantasy in this novel. Anderson shows us Gunnhild's clairvoyance but not a hereafter. And he tells us how she reflects on the powers but does not show us the powers themselves behind the scenes or as they intervene in Midgard.

Meanwhile, the Christian King Haakon, accompanied by his chaplain, thinks that it is alright for his men to kill, burn, plunder, enslave and rape because:

" 'They've done the same to our folk.' " (p. 291)

"They" obviously does not mean the particular individuals being killed, enslaved or raped. Christians and secularists alike have morally progressed to the idea that willful harm to non-combatants is a war-crime, a concept that did not yet exist back then.

Roots Of Paganism II

See Roots Of Paganism.

The attached image shows a disused railway line surrounded by nature and thus is doubly relevant to SM Stirling, The High King Of Montival (New York, 2011), Chapter Twelve, where Rudi Mackenzie articulates one root of Paganism:

"Awe at the Powers, or at the nature They embodied." (p. 232)

However, some of us reverse this proposition, thus: awe at nature and at the Powers that are imagined to embody it. Awe and imagination are two responses to nature. If it is understood that a Pagan ritual is a dramatic performance, then I can participate on that basis. Some believe that the ritual addresses real beings whereas others believe instead that the beings addressed are imaginary personifications.

Hegel's philosophy was idealist, based on the primacy of consciousness, thus "standing on its head," whereas Hegel's materialist successors stood philosophy on its feet, on the ground of unconscious being from which consciousness arose.

Rudi goes on to reflect that:

"The ancients had had awesome powers..." (p. 233)

Gods are awesome Powers and the ancients had awesome powers both in Greek mythology and in the Emberverse.

Roots Of Paganism

I discussed a "Root of Paganism" when posting about Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword. Similar roots are to be found in Anderson's "Star Of The Sea":

"Trees of the grove were huge darknesses, formless save where boughs nearly bare tossed against heaven. Their creakings were like an unknown tongue, answers to the skirl and snarl of the wind." (Time Patrol, p. 494)

People imagine speech in the wind.

"...the wind in their treetops spoke with the voices of the darkling gods. Everard suppressed a shudder." (p. 510)

Even a time traveler from the twentieth century feels it.

"Niaerdh was in [the waves] with dread and blessing." (p. 583)

Persons naturally personify nature. A fictitious character is created by an individual author whereas a deity arises in the collective imagination.

On Yet Another Beach

"The Sensitive Man," V.

See:

On The Beach, 11 August 2015
On The Beach, 18 August 2019

"They walked along the beach. It trembled underfoot with the rage of the sea. There was a grinding under the snort and roar of surf, as if the world's teeth ate rock." (p. 134)

Does the sea feel and experience rage? No.

Does it rage, if we use that word as a verb? Yes. This does not imply that it experiences anything.

Do we imagine that the sea god, Lir, rages? Certainly.

That further detail of the world eating rocks reinforces the sense of a pagan experience of nature.

See:

Pathetic Fallacy And Pagan Experience
Roots Of Paganism

Wold, Wild Hunt And Milky Way

Three Hearts And Three Lions.

"Moonlight flowed over the wold, gray, shadow-barred, glinting on rime."
-CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE, p. 149.

Every wold description here is worth quoting.

"Far and faint, at the very edge of hearing, the horns blew. They had the noise of wind and sea and great beating wings, a hawk voice, a raven voice. And Holger knew that the Wild Hunt was out and after him."
-CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR, p. 150.

The Hunt, barely audible, sounds like wind, sea, wings, hawk and raven because it is all those things plus human imagination. See Roots Of Paganism.

"Calling, as he used to call, faint and far away,
"In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day."
-see here.

(I previously quoted from "Sherwood" in Brake. See also Unexpected Connections.)

There is another description of the Milky Way.

Meeting Gods

Operation Luna, 38.

"Did the wind go from a whisper to a whistle, or was that a flute at the lips of a hunchback? Did thunder roll through these unclouded hills, or was that a drumbeat?
"I felt them approach, without knowledge of how they did. Balawahdiwa scattered sacred meal from a bowl he held onto the ground they would tread. Then it was as if the night thickened there and became the pair of them." (p. 341)

Wind becomes the sound of a flute. Thunder becomes drums. Night thickens - as it has been imagined to thicken.

Compare these blog search results for "Roots Of Paganism."

Their Last Morning In The Base Emulation

Genesis, PART TWO, X, 6.

A lane to trees on a grassy hill;
a broad view across the land;
a dazzling morning sun;
small white radiant clouds;
a radiant blue sky;
skirling autumn wind;
dawn-mists on plowland;
green pastures;
soughing in the branches;
dying leaves;
wild geese;
fragrant soil and sky;
blowing wind and rustling leaves make Gaia's words (See Roots Of Paganism);
the nodes reclaim their avatars.

I have tried to record every detail of this emulation where Christian and Laurinda came together but, at last, it is finished.

More Pagan Experience

A Midsummer Tempest, vii.

See Roots Of Paganism.

"Meanwhile Rupert said, to those twain who were like swirls and currents in the moonlight that poured around him..." (p. 50)

"Oberon trembled, like moonglow on a lake when the breeze passes over." (p. 52)

Thus, the Fairy King and Queen are (like) personifications of moonlight.