“Shaman Wearing a Jaguar Pelt” 

Photo credits for the second Pic come from an Ecuadorian book about Valdivia.

shape-shift·​erone that seems able to change form or identity at will. especially: a mythical figure that can assume different forms (as of animals) ref

Shapeshifting

I made this article on shape-shifting beliefs, and how I see them likely emerging out totemism as well as shamanism, and then often adopted when deity beliefs emerged into paganism beliefs.

“In mythologyfolklore, and speculative fictionshapeshifting is the ability to physically transform oneself through unnatural means. The idea of shapeshifting is in the oldest forms of totemism and shamanism, as well as the oldest existent literature and epic poems such as the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Iliad.” ref

“Popular shapeshifting creatures in folklore are werewolves and vampires (mostly of European, Canadian, and Native American/early American origin), ichchadhari naag and ichchadhari naagin (shapeshifting cobras) of India, the huli jing of East Asia (including the Japanese kitsune and Korean kumiho), and the gods, goddesses, and demons and demonesses like succubus and incubus and other numerous mythologies, such as the Norse Loki or the Greek Proteus. Shapeshifting to the form of a gray wolf is specifically known as lycanthropy, and such creatures who undergo such change are called lycanthropes. Therianthropy is the more general term for human-animal shifts, but it is rarely used in that capacity. It was also common for deities to transform mortals into animals and plants.” ref

“Other terms for shapeshifters include metamorph, the Navajo skin-walker, mimic, and therianthrope. The prefix “were-“, coming from the Old English word for “man” (masculine rather than generic), is also used to designate shapeshifters; despite its root, it is used to indicate female shapeshifters as well. While the popular idea of a shapeshifter is of a human being who turns into something else, there are numerous stories about animals that can transform themselves as well.” ref

“Examples of shapeshifting in classical literature include many examples in Ovid‘s Metamorphoses, Circe‘s transforming of Odysseus‘ men to pigs in Homer‘s The Odyssey, and Apuleius‘s Lucius becoming a donkey in The Golden Ass. Proteus was noted among the gods for his shapeshifting; both Menelaus and Aristaeus seized him to win information from him, and succeeded only because they held on during his various changes. Nereus told Heracles where to find the Apples of the Hesperides for the same reason.” ref

“The Oceanid Metis, the first wife of Zeus and the mother of the goddess Athena was believed to be able to change her appearance into anything she wanted. In one story, she was so proud, that her husband, Zeus, tricked her into changing into a fly. He then swallowed her because he feared that he and Metis would have a son who would be more powerful than Zeus himself. Metis, however, was already pregnant. She stayed alive inside his head and built armor for her daughter. The banging of her metalworking made Zeus have a headache, so Hephaestus clove his head with an axe. Athena sprang from her father’s head, fully grown, and in battle armor.” ref

“In Greek mythology, the transformation is often a punishment from the gods to humans who crossed them.

  • Zeus transformed King Lycaon and his children into wolves (hence lycanthropy) as a punishment for either killing Zeus’ children or serving him the flesh of Lycaon’s own murdered son Nyctimus, depending on the exact version of the myth.
  • Ares assigned Alectryon to keep watch for Helios the sun god during his affair with Aphrodite, but Alectryon fell asleep, leading to their discovery and humiliation that morning. Ares turned Alectryon into a rooster, which always crows to signal the morning and the arrival of the sun.
  • Demeter transformed Ascalabus into a lizard for mocking her sorrow and thirst during her search for her daughter Persephone. She also turned King Lyncus into a lynx for trying to murder her prophet Triptolemus.
  • Athena transformed Arachne into a spider for challenging her as a weaver and/or weaving a tapestry that insulted the gods. She also turned Nyctimene into an owl, though in this case it was an act of mercy, as the girl wished to hide from the daylight out of shame of being raped by her father.
  • Artemis transformed Actaeon into a stag for spying on her bathing, and he was later devoured by his hunting dogs.
  • Galanthis was transformed into a weasel or cat after interfering in Hera‘s plans to hinder the birth of Heracles.
  • Atalanta and Hippomenes were turned into lions after making love in a temple dedicated to Zeus or Cybele.
  • Io was a priestess of Hera in Argos, a nymph who was raped by Zeus, who changed her into a heifer to escape detection.
  • Hera punished young Tiresias by transforming him into a woman and, seven years later, back into a man.
  • King Tereus, his wife Procne, and her sister Philomela were all turned into birds (a hoopoe, a swallow and a nightingale respectively), after Tereus raped Philomela and cut out her tongue, and in revenge she and Procne served him the flesh of his murdered son Itys (who in some variants is resurrected as a goldfinch).
  • Callisto was turned into a bear by either Artemis or Hera for being impregnated by Zeus.
  • Selene transformed Myia into a fly when she became a rival for the love of Endymion.” ref

“While the Greek gods could use transformation punitively – such as Medusa, who turned to a monster for having sexual intercourse (raped in Ovid’s version) with Poseidon in Athena‘s temple – even more frequently, the tales using it are of amorous adventure. Zeus repeatedly transformed himself to approach mortals as a means of gaining access:

Vertumnus transformed himself into an old woman to gain entry to Pomona‘s orchard; there, he persuaded her to marry him. In other tales, the woman appealed to other gods to protect her from rape, and was transformed (Daphne into laurel, Corone into a crow). Unlike Zeus and other gods’ shapeshifting, these women were permanently metamorphosed. In one tale, Demeter transformed herself into a mare to escape Poseidon, but Poseidon counter-transformed himself into a stallion to pursue her, and succeeded in the rape. Caenis, having been raped by Poseidon, demanded of him that she be changed to a man. He agreed, and she became Caeneus, a form he never lost, except, in some versions, upon death.” ref

Clytie was a nymph who loved Helios, but he did not love her back. Desperate, she sat on a rock with no food or water for nine days looking at him as he crossed the skies, until she was transformed into a purple, sun-gazing flower, the heliotropium. As a final reward from the gods for their hospitality, Baucis and Philemon were transformed, at their deaths, into a pair of trees. Eos, the goddess of the dawn, secured immortality for her lover the Trojan prince Tithonus, but not eternal youth, so he aged without dying as he shriveled and grew more and more helpless. In the end, Eos transformed him into a cicada. In some variants of the tale of Narcissus, he is turned into a narcissus flower.” ref

“Sometimes metamorphoses transform objects into humans. In the myths of both Jason and Cadmus, one task set to the hero was to sow dragon’s teeth; on being sown, they would metamorphose into belligerent warriors, and both heroes had to throw a rock to trick them into fighting each other to survive. Deucalion and Pyrrha repopulated the world after a flood by throwing stones behind them; they were transformed into people. Cadmus is also often known to have transformed into a dragon or serpent towards the end of his life. Pygmalion fell in love with Galatea, a statue he had made. Aphrodite had pity on him and transformed the stone into a living woman.” ref

Fairieswitches, and wizards were all noted for their shapeshifting ability. Not all fairies could shapeshift, some having only the appearance of shapeshifting, through their power, called “glamour”, to create illusions, and some were limited to changing their size, as with the spriggans, and others to a few forms. But others, such as the Hedley Kow, could change to many forms, and both human and supernatural wizards were capable of both such changes, and inflicting them on others.” ref

“In Celtic mythology, Pwyll was transformed by Arawn into Arawn’s shape, and Arawn transformed himself into Pwyll’s so that they could trade places for a year and a day. Llwyd ap Cil Coed transformed his wife and attendants into mice to attack a crop in revenge; when his wife is captured, he turns himself into three clergymen in succession to try to pay a ransom.” ref

Math fab Mathonwy and Gwydion transform flowers into a woman named Blodeuwedd, and when she betrays her husband Lleu Llaw Gyffes, who is transformed into an eagle, they transform her again, into an owl. Gilfaethwy committed rape on Goewin, Math fab Mathonwy’s virgin foothold, with help from his brother Gwydion. Both were transformed into animals, for one year each. Gwydion was transformed into a stag, sow, and wolf, and Gilfaethwy into a hind, boar, and she-wolf. Each year, they had a child. Math turned the three young animals into boys.” ref

Gwion, having accidentally taken some of the wisdom potions that Ceridwen was brewing for her son, fled from her through a succession of changes that she answered with changes of her own, ending with his being eaten, a grain of corn, by her as a hen. She became pregnant, and he was reborn in a new form, as Taliesin.” ref

“Tales abound about the selkie, a seal that can remove its skin to make contact with humans for only a short amount of time before it must return to the sea. Clan MacColdrum of Uist‘s foundation myths include a union between the founder of the clan and a shape-shifting selkie. Another such creature is the Scottish selkie, which needs its sealskin to regain its form. In The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry the (male) selkie seduces a human woman. Such stories surrounding these creatures are usually romantic tragedies.” ref

Scottish mythology features shapeshifters, which allows the various creatures to trick, deceive, hunt, and kill humans. Water spirits such as the each-uisge, which inhabit lochs and waterways in Scotland, were said to appear as a horse or a young man. Other tales include kelpies who emerge from lochs and rivers in the disguise of a horse or woman to ensnare and kill weary travelers. Tam Lin, a man captured by the Queen of the Fairies is changed into all manner of beasts before being rescued. He finally turned into a burning coal and was thrown into a well, whereupon he reappeared in his human form. The motif of capturing a person by holding him through all forms of transformation is a common thread in folktales.” ref

“Perhaps the best-known Irish myth is that of Aoife who turned her stepchildren, the Children of Lir, into swans to be rid of them. Likewise, in the Tochmarc Étaíne, Fuamnach jealously turns Étaín into a butterfly. The most dramatic example of shapeshifting in Irish myth is that of Tuan mac Cairill, the only survivor of Partholón‘s settlement of Ireland. In his centuries-long life, he became successively a stag, a wild boar, a hawk, and finally a salmon before being eaten and (as in the Wooing of Étaín) reborn as a human.” ref

The Púca is a Celtic faery, and also a deft shapeshifter. He can transform into many different, terrifying forms. Sadhbh, the wife of the famous hero Fionn mac Cumhaill, was changed into a deer by the druid Fer Doirich when she spurned his amorous interests. There is a significant amount of literature about shapeshifters that appear in a variety of Norse tales. In the Lokasenna, Odin and Loki taunt each other with having taken the form of females and nursing offspring to which they had given birth. A 13th-century Edda relates Loki taking the form of a mare to bear Odin’s steed Sleipnir which was the fastest horse ever to exist, and also the form of a she-wolf to bear Fenrir.” ref

Svipdagr angered Odin, who turned him into a dragon. Despite his monstrous appearance, his lover, the goddess Freyja, refused to leave his side. When the warrior Hadding found and slew Svipdagr, Freyja cursed him to be tormented by a tempest and shunned like the plague wherever he went. In the Hyndluljóð, Freyja transformed her protégé Óttar into a boar to conceal him. She also possessed a cloak of falcon feathers that allowed her to transform into a falcon, which Loki borrowed on occasion.” ref

“The Volsunga saga contains many shapeshifting characters. Siggeir‘s mother changed into a wolf to help torture his defeated brothers-in-law with slow and ignominious deaths. When one, Sigmund, survived, he and his nephew and son Sinfjötli killed men wearing wolfskins; when they donned the skins themselves, they were cursed to become werewolves. The dwarf Andvari is described as being able to magically turn into a pike. Alberich, his counterpart in Richard Wagner‘s Der Ring des Nibelungen, using the Tarnhelm, takes on many forms, including a giant serpent and a toad, in a failed attempt to impress or intimidate Loki and Odin/Wotan.” ref

Fafnir was originally a dwarf, a giant, or even a human, depending on the exact myth, but in all variants, he transformed into a dragon—a symbol of greed—while guarding his ill-gotten hoard. His brother, Ótr, enjoyed spending time as an otter, which led to his accidental slaying by Loki. In Scandinavia, there existed, for example, the famous race of she-werewolves known by the name of Maras, women who took on the appearance of huge half-human and half-wolf monsters that stalked the night in search of human or animal prey. If a woman gives birth at midnight and stretches the membrane that envelopes the child when it is brought forth, between four sticks and creeps through it, naked, she will bear children without pain; but all the boys will be shamans, and all the girls Maras.” ref

“The Nisse is sometimes said to be a shapeshifter. This trait also is attributed to HulderGunnhild, Mother of Kings (Gunnhild konungamóðir) (c. 910  –  c. 980), a quasi-historical figure who appears in the Icelandic Sagas, according to which she was the wife of Eric Bloodaxe, was credited with magic powers – including the power of shapeshifting and turning at will into a bird. She is the central character of the novel Mother of Kings by Poul Anderson, which considerably elaborates on her shapeshifting abilities.” ref

In Armenian mythology, shapeshifters include the Nhang, a serpentine river monster that can transform itself into a woman or seal, and will drown humans and then drink their blood; or the beneficial Shahapet, a guardian spirit that can appear either as a man or a snake. Tatar folklore includes Yuxa, a hundred-year-old snake that can transform itself into a beautiful young woman, and seeks to marry men to have children.” ref

Indian

  • Shapeshifting cobra: A common male cobra will become an ichchadhari naag (male shapeshifting cobra) and a common female cobra will become an ichchadhari naagin (female shapeshifting cobra) after 100 years of tapasya (penance). After being blessed by Lord Shiva, they attain a human form of their own, can shapeshift into any living creature, and can live for more than a hundred years without getting old.
  • Yoginis were associated with the power of shapeshifting into female animals.
  • In the Indian fable The Dog Bride from Folklore of the Santal Parganas by Cecil Henry Bompas, a buffalo herder falls in love with a dog that has the power to turn into a woman when she bathes.
  • In Kerala, there was a legend about the Odiyan clan, who in Kerala folklore are men believed to possess shapeshifting abilities and can assume animal forms. Odiyans are said to have inhabited the Malabar region of Kerala before the widespread use of electricity.” ref

Chinese mythology contains many tales of animal shapeshifters, capable of taking on human form. The most common such shapeshifter is the huli jing, a fox spirit that usually appears as a beautiful young woman; most are dangerous, but some feature as the heroines of love stories. Madame White Snake is one such legend; a snake falls in love with a man, and the story recounts the trials she and her husband faced.” ref

“In Japanese folklore obake are a type of yōkai with the ability to shapeshifting. The fox, or kitsune is among the most commonly known, but other such creatures include the bakeneko, the mujina, and the tanukiKorean mythology also contains a fox with the ability to shapeshift. Unlike its Chinese and Japanese counterparts, the kumiho is always malevolent. Usually its form is of a beautiful young woman; one tale recounts a man, a would-be seducer, revealed as a kumiho. The kumiho has nine tails and as she desires to be a full human, she uses her beauty to seduce men and eat their hearts (or in some cases livers where the belief is that 100 livers would turn her into a real human).” ref

Philippine mythology includes the Aswang, a vampiric monster capable of transforming into a bat, a large black dog, a black cat, a black boar, or some other form to stalk humans at night. The folklore also mentions other beings such as the Kapre, the Tikbalang, and the Engkanto, which change their appearances to woo beautiful maidens. Also, talismans (called “anting-anting” or “birtud” in the local dialect), can give their owners the ability to shapeshift. In one tale, Chonguita the Monkey Wife, a woman is turned into a monkey, only becoming human again if she can marry a handsome man.” ref

“In Somali mythology Qori ismaris (“One who rubs himself with a stick”) was a man who could transform himself into a “Hyena-man” by rubbing himself with a magic stick at nightfall and by repeating this process could return to his human state before dawn. ǀKaggen is a demi-urge and folk hero of the ǀXam people of southern Africa. He is a trickster god who can shape shift, usually taking the form of a praying mantis but also a bull eland, a louse, a snake, and a caterpillar. The Ligahoo or loup-garou is the shapeshifter of Trinidad and Tobago’s folklore. This unique ability is believed to be handed down in some old creole families, and is usually associated with witch-doctors and practitioners of African magic.” ref

Mapuche (Argentina and Chile), The name of the Nahuel Huapi Lake in Argentina derives from the toponym of its major island in Mapudungun (Mapuche language): “Island of the Jaguar (or Puma)”, from nahuel, “puma (or jaguar)”, and huapí, “island”. There is, however, more to the word “Nahuel” – it can also signify “a man who by sorcery has been transformed into a puma” (or jaguar). In Slavic mythology, one of the main gods Veles was a shapeshifting god of animals, magic and the underworld. He was often represented as a bear, wolf, snake or owl. He also became a dragon while fighting Perun, the Slavic storm god.” ref

Therianthropy

Therianthropy is the mythological ability or affliction of individuals to metamorphose into animals or hybrids by means of shapeshifting. It is possible that cave drawings found at Cave of the Trois-Frères, in France, depict ancient beliefs in the concept. The best-known form of therianthropy, called lycanthropy, is found in stories of werewolves. Therianthropy was used to describe spiritual beliefs in animal transformation in a 1915 Japanese publication, A History of the Japanese People from the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era.” ref

“Therianthropy refers to the fantastical, or mythological, ability of some humans to change into animals. Therianthropes are said to change forms via shapeshifting. Therianthropy has long existed in mythology, and seems to be depicted in ancient cave drawings such as The Sorcerer, a pictograph executed at the Palaeolithic cave drawings found in the Pyrenees at the Cave of the Trois-Frères, France, archeological site. Theriocephaly (Greek “animal headedness”) refers to beings that have an animal head attached to an anthropomorphic, or human, body; for example, the animal-headed forms of gods depicted in ancient Egyptian religion (such as Ra, Sobek, Anubis).” ref

Skin-walkers and naguals

“Some Native American and First Nation legends talk about skin-walkers—people with the supernatural ability to turn into any animal they desire. To do so, however, they first must be wearing a pelt of the specific animal. In the folk religion of Mesoamerica, a nagual (or nahual) is a human being who has the power to magically turn themselves into animal forms—most commonly donkeys, turkeys, and dogs—but can also transform into more powerful jaguars and pumas.” ref

Animal Ancestors

Stories of humans descending from animals are found in the oral traditions of many tribal and clan origins. Sometimes the original animals had assumed human form in order to ensure their descendants retained their human shapes; other times the origin story is of a human marrying a normal animal. North American indigenous traditions mingle the ideas of bear ancestors and ursine shapeshifters, with bears often being able to shed their skins to assume human form, marrying human women in this guise. The offspring may be creatures with combined anatomy, they may be very beautiful children with uncanny strength, or they may be shapeshifters themselves.” ref

“P’an Hu is represented in various Chinese legends as a supernatural dog, a dog-headed man, or a canine shapeshifter that married an emperor’s daughter and founded at least one race. When he is depicted as a shapeshifter, all of him can become human except for his head. The race(s) descended from P’an Hu were often characterized by Chinese writers as monsters who combined human and dog anatomy. In Turkic mythology, the wolf is a revered animal. The Turkic legends say the people were descendants of wolves. The legend of Asena is an old Turkic myth that tells of how the Turkic people were created. In the legend, a small Turkic village in northern China is raided by Chinese soldiers, with one baby left behind. An old she-wolf with a sky-blue mane named Asena finds the baby and nurses him. She later gives birth to half-wolf, half-human cubs who are the ancestors of the Turkic people.” ref

In Melanesian cultures there exists the belief in the tamaniu or atai, which describes the animal counterpart to a person. Specifically among the Solomon Islands in Melanesia, the term atai means “soul” in the Mota language and is closely related to the term ata, meaning a “reflected image” in Maori and “shadow” in Samoan. Terms relating to the “spirit” in these islands such as figona and vigona convey a being that has not been in human form The animal counterpart depicted may take the form of an eel, shark, lizard, or some other creature. This creature is considered to be corporeal and can understand human speech. It shares the same soul as its master. This concept is found in similar legends which have many characteristics typical of shapeshifter tales. Among these characteristics is the theory that death or injury would affect both the human and animal form at once.” ref

“Among a sampled set of psychiatric patients, the belief of being part animal, or clinical lycanthropy, is generally associated with severe psychosis but not always with any specific psychiatric diagnosis or neurological findings. Others regard clinical lycanthropy as a delusion in the sense of the self-disorder found in affective and schizophrenic disorders, or as a symptom of other psychiatric disorders.” ref

Ritual on the Rock. Reflection of Totemic Rites of the Deer Cult in the Rock Art of Northern Eurasia

“There are numerous complex scenes, including images of people and deer, among the rock paintings of Northern Europe and Siberia. Some of them can be interpreted as rituals (Alta, Glosa, Surukhtakh-Kaya, etc.). We consider them in the context of the deer cult, which developed in deer hunter societies and survived at a later time. Totemic and cosmological myths were the essence of this cult, they were inextricably linked with rituals — calendrical, which correlated with natural and economic cycles, and liminal, conditioned by the life cycle of people. Archaeological materials and rock paintings of the Mesolithic-Neolithic of Northern Europe and Northern Asia indicate that the cult of the deer played a leading role in the myths and ritual complex. We used the method of ethno-archaeological reconstruction for the interpretations of the compositions. We compared some narratives of rock carvings in Northern Europe and Siberia with totemic rites of the indigenous peoples of the subarctic zone. These ceremonies were supposed to guarantee success in hunting and, at the same time, the reproduction of deer. Imitating deer, creation of models of deer, killing of a sacrificial deer, dismemberment, joint eating and preservation of the remains for further restoration – those were the main elements of the rituals. These ritual actions are reflected in the rock art of Northern Eurasia.” ref

“Shapeshifting images run deep in human history, going back to ancient cave paintings (and to Damien, maybe some of the first carved figurines art). Oxford University archeologist Chris Gosden thinks they’re linked to the shaman’s ability to cross into the spirit world where humans and animals merge. He says animist beliefs are gaining new traction among some scientists, and they raise profound questions about the nature of consciousness.” ref

“Among the approximately 100 painted caves of Europe, a handful have enigmatic paintings of human-animal composites, or “therianthropes,” the meaning of which is and probably will remain a topic of speculation. In some cases, we know that the paintings had a special significance for the people who created them because of their location. For example, the famous “hunting accident” in the Cave of Lascaux, pictured immediately below, is painted near the bottom of a twenty-foot shaft in a remote corner of the cave, with room enough only for a single person to view it at a time. The extreme rarity of the images and the fact that they depict human beings or human-like entities also suggest their unique importance. Scholars have interpreted the images variously as sorcerers, mythic ancestors, gods, and human hunters in costume. However, if we accept David-Lewis’ interpretation of the geometric images on the walls of the Paleolithic caves, it is likely that therianthropic paintings depict shamans in states of trance. On this interpretation, the bird-headed human figure painted in the shaft at Lascaux is not the victim of a hunting accident, but a shaman whose ecstatic trance state is represented by an erect penis, hard to account for in other interpretations. The bird-headed staff, perhaps was a ritual instrument, and the bison spilling its entrails an animal spirit encountered and perhaps killed in the other world, in an act of hunting magic such as Abbe Breuil described.” ref

“For those who believe in the Magic of Shapeshifting. One of the best ways to connect with believed power animals is through the believed art of shapeshifting. In the shaman’s world, animals are kin, an ancient belief reflected in mythology and in animism – the belief that non-human entities are spiritual beings. It is a mental world where the seen and the unseen; the material and the spiritual merge. As their helping spirits, the shamans “might use animals, anything that grows,” says Osuitok Ipeelee, an esteemed Artic Inuit sculptor. “It was well known that the animals the shamans controlled had the ability to turn into humans. When a shaman was using his magic he had a real change of personality. When the animals entered into him he’d be chanting loudly; if a shaman was turning into a certain animal, he’d make that animal sound. Once he was filled inside, he’d begin to change; his face and his skin followed.” ref

“For those who believe in the Magic of Shapeshifting think it is more than just transforming into an animal as is often depicted in shamanic accounts and tales. It is the ability to shift your energies to adapt to the demands and changes of daily life. We all learn which activities, behaviors, and attitudes support or hinder our survival and growth. It is a natural and instinctual ability that we all share. The minimal development of this talent is the ability to mimic. We often mimic for the purpose of learning something or to blend in with our social or physical environment. It implies changing one’s pattern of appearance or behavior, rather than just using what you already have. Actors, for example, are known for their ability to take on the characteristics of another person or thing.” ref 

“For those who believe in the Magic of Shapeshifting, they may think a shapeshifter is one who manipulates their aura to access a higher or inner power in order to grow and learn. The human aura is the energy field that surrounds the human body in all directions. All shapeshifting occurs on an energy level. If everything is broadcasting its own energy pattern and if you could match and rebroadcast the same pattern, then you would take on the appearance and qualities of the thing you were matching. The only constraining factor is the degree of belief, connection, and energy. To experience this for yourself, try the following simple exercise: 

1. Create sacred space as you would for other spiritual work, dim the lights, and sit comfortably erect in a chair or on the floor.

2. Close your eyes and take a couple of deep breaths.

3. Call upon an animal that you have an affinity with. Visualize and invite this animal spirit to come into your body and consciousness.

4. Meditate with it. Be open to the feelings and sensations of being that animal. It is not uncommon to be and see the animal at the same time.

5. Simply observe whatever happens for a few minutes, and then thank the spirit animal and release it.” ref 

“For those who believe in the Magic of Shapeshifting, they may think shapeshifting, to any degree will help you develop a kinship with your animal relatives. Learning to shift your consciousness, to align with and adapt your energies to power animals, opens your heart and mind to the wisdom and strength of the animal world. You must empty yourself so that the believed “spirit” can embody you. “Become like a hollow bone,” a Lakota elder once advised me in the sweat lodge.” ref 

Werewolf (or other believed were-animals, such as a Were-Jaguar once believed in ancient Central and South America)

“A werecat (also written in a hyphenated form as were-cat) is an analog to “werewolf” for a feline therianthropic creature. Ailuranthropy comes from the Greek root words ailouros meaning “cat”, and anthropos, meaning “human” and refers to human/feline transformations, or to other beings that combine feline and human characteristics. Its root word ailouros is also used in ailurophilia, the most common term for a deep love of cats. Ailuranthrope is a lesser-known term that refers to a feline therianthrope. Depending on the story in question, the species involved can be a domestic cat, a tiger, a lion, a leopard, a lynx, or any other type, including some that are purely mythical felines. Werecats are increasingly featured in popular culture, although not as often as werewolves.” ref

“In folklore, a werewolf (from Old English werwulf ‘man-wolf’), or occasionally lycanthrope (from Ancient Greek λυκάνθρωπος, lykánthrōpos, ‘wolf-human’) is an individual who can shape-shift into a wolf (or, especially in modern film, a therianthropic hybrid wolf-like creature), either purposely or after being placed under a curse or affliction (often a bite or the occasional scratch from another werewolf), with the transformations occurring on the night of a full moon. Early sources for belief in this ability or affliction, called lycanthropy, are Petronius (27–66) and Gervase of Tilbury (1150–1228).ref

“The werewolf is a widespread concept in European folklore, existing in many variants, which are related by a common development of a Christian interpretation of underlying European folklore developed during the medieval period. From the early modern period, werewolf beliefs also spread to the New World with colonialism. Belief in werewolves developed in parallel to the belief in witches, in the course of the Late Middle Ages and the early modern period. Like the witchcraft trials as a whole, the trial of supposed werewolves emerged in what is now Switzerland (especially the Valais and Vaud) in the early 15th century and spread throughout Europe in the 16th, peaking in the 17th and subsiding by the 18th century.ref

“The persecution of werewolves and the associated folklore is an integral part of the “witch-hunt” phenomenon, albeit a marginal one, accusations of lycanthropy being involved in only a small fraction of witchcraft trials. During the early period, accusations of lycanthropy (transformation into a wolf) were mixed with accusations of wolf-riding or wolf-charming. The case of Peter Stumpp (1589) led to a significant peak in both interest in and persecution of supposed werewolves, primarily in French-speaking and German-speaking Europe. The phenomenon persisted longest in Bavaria and Austria, with persecution of wolf-charmers recorded until well after 1650, the final cases taking place in the early 18th century in Carinthia and Styria.ref

“The Modern English werewolf descends from the Old English wer(e)wulf, which is a cognate of Middle Dutch weerwolf, Middle Low German warwulf, werwulf, Middle High German werwolf, and West Frisian waer-ûl(e). These terms are generally derived from a Proto-Germanic form reconstructed as *wira-wulfaz (‘man-wolf’), itself from an earlier Pre-Germanic form *wiro-wulpos. An alternative reconstruction, *wazi-wulfaz (‘wolf-clothed’), would bring the Germanic compound closer to the Slavic meaning, with other semantic parallels in Old Norse úlfheðnar (‘wolf-skinned’) and úlfheðinn (‘wolf-coat’), Old Irish luchthonn (‘wolf-skin’), and Sanskrit Vṛkājina (‘Wolf-skin’).ref

“The Norse branch underwent taboo modifications, with Old Norse vargúlfr (only attested as a translation of Old French garwaf ~ garwal(f) from Marie’s lay of Bisclavret) replacing *wiraz (‘man’) with vargr (‘wolf, outlaw’), perhaps under the influence of the Old French expression leus warous ~ lous garous (modern loup-garou), which literally means ‘wolf-werewolf’. The modern Norse form varulv (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish) was either borrowed from Middle Low German werwulf, or else derived from an unattested Old Norse *varulfr, posited as the regular descendant of Proto-Germanic *wira-wulfaz. An Old Frankish form *werwolf is inferred from the Middle Low German variant and was most likely borrowed into Old Norman garwa(l)f ~ garo(u)l, with regular GermanicRomance correspondence w- / g- (cf. William / Guillaume, Wales / Galles, etc.).ref

“The Proto-Slavic noun *vьlko-dlakь, meaning ‘wolf-haired’ (cf. *dlaka, ‘animal hair, fur’), can be reconstructed from Serbian vukòdlak, Slovenian vołkodlȃk, and Czech vlkodlak, although formal variations in Slavic languages (*vьrdl(j)ak, *vьlkdolk, *vьlklak) and the late attestation of some forms pose difficulties in tracing the origin of the term. The Greek Vrykolakas and Romanian Vîrcolac, designating vampire-like creatures in Balkan folklores, were borrowed from Slavic languages. The same form is also found in other non-Slavic languages of the region, such as Albanian vurvolak and Turkish vurkolak. Bulgarian vьrkolak and Church Slavonic vurkolak may be interpreted as back-borrowings from Greek. The name vurdalak (вурдалак; ‘ghoul, revenant’) first appeared in Russian poet Alexander Pushkin‘s work Pesni, published in 1835. The source of Pushkin’s distinctive form remains debated in scholarship.ref

“A Proto-Celtic noun *wiro-kū, meaning ‘man-dog’, has been reconstructed from Celtiberian uiroku, the Old Brittonic place-name Viroconium (< *wiroconion, ‘place of man-dogs, i.e. werewolves’), the Old Irish noun ferchu (‘male dog, fierce dog’), and the medieval personal names Guurci (Old Welsh) and Gurki (Old Breton). Wolves were metaphorically designated as ‘dogs’ in Celtic cultures. The modern term lycanthropy comes from Ancient Greek lukanthrōpía (λυκανθρωπία), itself from lukánthrōpos (λυκάνθρωπος), meaning ‘wolf-man’. Ancient writers used the term solely in the context of clinical lycanthropy, a condition in which the patient imagined himself to be a wolf. Modern writers later used lycanthrope as a synonym of werewolf, referring to a person who, according to medieval superstition, could assume the form of wolves.ref

“The European motif of the devilish werewolf devouring human flesh harks back to a common development during the Middle Ages in the context of Christianity, although stories of humans turning into wolves take their roots in earlier pre-Christian beliefs. Their underlying common origin can be traced back to Proto-Indo-European mythology, where lycanthropy is reconstructed as an aspect of the initiation of the kóryos warrior class, which may have included a cult focused on dogs and wolves identified with an age grade of young, unmarried warriors. The standard comparative overview of this aspect of Indo-European mythology is McCone (1987).ref

Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics to abstract concepts such as nations, emotions, and natural forces, such as seasons and weather. Both have ancient roots as storytelling and artistic devices, and most cultures have traditional fables with anthropomorphized animals as characters. People have also routinely attributed human emotions and behavioral traits to wild as well as domesticated animals. From the beginnings of human behavioral modernity in the Upper Paleolithic, about 40,000 years ago, examples of zoomorphic (animal-shaped) works of art occur that may represent the earliest known evidence of anthropomorphism. One of the oldest known is an ivory sculpture, the Löwenmensch figurine, Germany, a human-shaped figurine with the head of a lioness or lion, determined to be about 32,000 years old. It is not possible to say what these prehistoric artworks represent. A more recent example is The Sorcerer, an enigmatic cave painting from the Trois-Frères Cave, Ariège, France: the figure’s significance is unknown, but it is usually interpreted as some kind of great spirit or master of the animals. In either case there is an element of anthropomorphism.” ref

“In religion and mythology, anthropomorphism is the perception of a divine being or beings in human form, or the recognition of human qualities in these beings. Ancient mythologies frequently represented the divine as deities with human forms and qualities. They resemble human beings not only in appearance and personality; they exhibited many human behaviors that were used to explain natural phenomena, creation, and historical events. The deities fell in love, married, had children, fought battles, wielded weapons, and rode horses and chariots. They feasted on special foods, and sometimes required sacrifices of food, beverage, and sacred objects to be made by human beings. Some anthropomorphic deities represented specific human concepts, such as love, war, fertility, beauty, or the seasons. Anthropomorphic deities exhibited human qualities such as beauty, wisdom, and power, and sometimes human weaknesses such as greed, hatred, jealousy, and uncontrollable anger.” ref

“Greek deities such as Zeus and Apollo often were depicted in human form exhibiting both commendable and despicable human traits. Anthropomorphism in this case is, more specifically, anthropotheism. From the perspective of adherents to religions in which humans were created in the form of the divine, the phenomenon may be considered theomorphism, or the giving of divine qualities to humans. Anthropomorphism has cropped up as a Christian heresy, particularly prominently with Audianism in third-century Syria, but also fourth-century Egypt and tenth-century Italy. This often was based on a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation myth: “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” ref

European folklore usually depicts werecats as people who transform into domestic cats. Some European werecats became giant domestic cats or panthers. They are generally labeled witches, even though they may have no magical ability other than self-transformation. During the witch trials, all shapeshifters, including werewolves, were considered witches whether they were male or female.” ref

“African legends describe werelions, werepanthers or wereleopards. In the case of leopards, this is often because the creature is really a leopard deity masquerading as a human. When these gods mate with humans, offspring can be produced, and these children sometimes grow up to be shapeshifters; those who do not transform may instead have other powers. In reference to werecats who turn into lions, the ability is often associated with royalty. Such a being may have been a king or queen in a former life.” ref

“In Africa, there are folk tales that speak of the “Nunda,” or the “Mngwa,” a big cat of immense size that stalks villages at night. Many of these tales say it is more ferocious than a lion and more agile than a leopard. The Nunda are believed by some to be a variation of therianthrope that, by day, is a human, but by night becomes the werecat. No actual evidence of such a creature existing has ever been documented, but in 1938 a British administrator named William Hitchens, working in Tanzania, was told by locals that a monstrous cat had been attacking people at night. Huge paw prints were found to be much larger than any known big-cat, but Hitchens dismissed the case, believing it more likely to be a lion with gigantism.” ref

“Mainland Asian werecats usually become tigers. In India, the weretiger is often a dangerous sorcerer, portrayed as a menace to livestock, who might at any time turn to man-eating. These tales travelled through the rest of India and into Persia through travellers who encountered the royal Bengal tigers of India and then further west. Chinese legends often describe weretigers as the victims of either a hereditary curse or a vindictive ghost. Alternatively, the ghosts of people who had been killed by tigers could become a malevolent supernatural being known as “Chang” (伥), devoting all their energy to making sure that tigers killed more humans. Some of these ghosts were responsible for transforming ordinary humans into man-eating weretigers. Also, in Japanese folklore there are creatures called bakeneko that are similar to kitsune (fox spirits) and bake-danuki (Japanese raccoon dog spirits). In Thailand a tiger that eats many humans may become a weretiger. There are also other types of weretigers, such as sorcerers with great powers who can change their form to become animals.” ref

“In both present-day Indonesia and Malaysia there is another kind of weretiger, known as Harimau jadian. Linguist and writer Zainal Abidin bin Ahmad for example has compiled oral stories of a famous weretiger named Dato’ Paroi fabled to have led the flock of all tigers that roamed in his home area of Negeri Sembilan. In Malaysia too, Bajangs have been described as vampiric or demonic werecats. The Kerinchi Malays of Sumatra were reputed to have the ability to transform into weretigers.” ref

“In the central area of the Indonesian island of Java the power of transformation is regarded as due to inheritance, to the use of spells, to fasting and willpower, to the use of charms, etc. Save when it is hungry or has just cause for revenge it is not hostile to man; in fact, it is said to take its animal form only at night and to guard the plantations from wild pigs. Variants of this belief assert that the shapeshifter does not recognize his friends unless they call him by name, or that he goes out as a mendicant and transforms himself to take vengeance on those who refuse him alms. Somewhat similar is the belief of the Khonds; for them the tiger is friendly, and he reserves his wrath for their enemies. A man is said to take the form of a tiger in order to wreak a just vengeance.” ref

“The foremost were-animal in pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures was the were-jaguar. It was associated with the veneration of the jaguar, with priests and shamans among the various peoples who followed this tradition, wearing the skins of jaguars to “become” a were-jaguar. Among the Aztecs, an entire class of specialized warriors who dressed in the jaguar skins were called “jaguar warriors” or “jaguar knights”. Depictions of the jaguar and the were-jaguar are among the most common motifs among the artifacts of the ancient Mesoamerican civilizations.” ref

N. W. Thomas wrote in the 11th ed. of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) that, according to Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius (1794–1868), the kanaima was a human being who employed poison to carry out his function of blood avenger, and that other authorities represent the kanaima as a jaguar, which was either an avenger of blood or the familiar of a cannibalistic sorcerer. He also mentioned that in 1911 some Europeans in Brazil believed that the seventh child of the same sex in unbroken succession becomes a were-man or woman, and takes the form of a horse, goat, jaguar, or pig.” ref

“In the US, urban legends tell of encounters with feline bipeds; beings similar to the Bigfoot having cat heads, tails, and paws. Feline bipeds are sometimes classified as part of cryptozoology, but more often they are interpreted as werecats. Assertions that werecats truly exist and have an origin in supernatural or religious realities have been common for centuries, with these beliefs often being hard to entirely separate from folklore. In the 19th century, occultist J. C. Street asserted that material cat and dog transformations could be produced by manipulating the “ethereal fluid” that human bodies are supposedly floating in. The Catholic witch-hunting manual, the Malleus Maleficarum, asserted that witches can turn into cats, but that their transformations are illusions created by demons. New Age author John Perkins asserted that every person has the ability to shapeshift into “jaguars, bushes, or any other form” by using mental power. Occultist Rosalyn Greene claims that werecats called “cat shifters” exist as part of a “shifter subculture” or underground New Age religion based on lycanthropy and related beliefs.” ref

Shamanism and Dogs?

Yekyua “Mother Animal”

“A Yekyua or “mother animal” is a class of Yakut spirits that remain hidden until the snow melts in the Spring. The Yakuts are a Turkic people. Each yekyua is associated with a particular animal. They act as familiar spirits to protect Yakut shamans. They are dangerous and powerful. The most dangerous are attached to female shamans. The type of animal determines the strength of the yekyua. For example, dog yekyua have little power, while elk yekyua do. Only shaman can see yekyua. When a shaman puts his/her spirit into his yekyua, he/she is dependent on his animal part. If another shaman who has manifested his animal kills the animal of another, the shaman with the dead animal dies. When the yekyua are fighting in the spring, the shaman with which they are associated feel ill. Dog yekyua are not prized as they gnaw at the shaman and destroy his body, bringing him sickness. Ordinarily, a good yekyua protects the shaman.” ref

“Throughout history dogs have been known as guardians, protectors and most importantly – MANS BEST FRIEND. Dog was the servant/soldier that guarded the tribe’s abodes, protecting them from surprise attacks. His keen sense of smell and acute hearing alerted his master of dangers. He also assisted when hunting and provided warmth in winter. The dogs medicine is loyalty, reliability, nobleness, trustworthiness, unconditional love, friendship, fierce energy of protection and service. People who have Dog as power animal are usually helping others or serving humanity in some way and have a deep understanding and compassion of human shortcomings. Dog serves selflessly, never asking for their service to be praised or anything in return. Dogs can be both sensitive and intelligent. From a dog we can learn the true meaning of unconditional love and forgiveness. Domestic dogs are faithful companions to humans with a strong sense to serve. Their ability to love even when abused is incredible. The belief in psychic gifts has been associated with Dog because of his talent to pick up on subtle energy frequencies generally unknown to mankind. Like other animals, they can feel for instance if an earthquake is about to occur, and can lead us to safety, if we trust them like they trust us. A dog’s behavior often mirrors the personality of its owner. If you own a dog, they are constantly observing you and his/her interaction with you. They then anticipate your next move, serving as a mirror image of who you truly are. The dog is a great teacher for those who wish to learn. ref

Dogs in Ancient China

“Remains of dogs and pigs have been found in the oldest Neolithic settlements of the Yangshao (circa 4000 BCE or around 6,000 years ago) and Hemudu (circa 5000 BCE or around 7,000 years ago) cultures. Canine remains similar to the Dingo have been found in some early graves excavated in northern China. Tests on neolithic dog bones show similarities between dogs from this era and modern-day Japanese dogs, especially the shiba inu. Dogs (Canis lupus familiaris), known in Classical Chinese as quan (ChinesepinyinquǎnWade–Gilesch’üan), played an important role in ancient Chinese society. According to Bruno Schindler, the origin of using dogs as sacrificial animals dates back to a primitive cult in honor of a dog-shaped god of vegetation whose worship later became amalgamated with that of Shang Di, the reigning deity of the Shang pantheon.” ref

“Systematic excavation of Shang tombs around Anyang since 1928 have revealed a large number of animal and human sacrifices. There was hardly a tomb or a building consecrated without the sacrifice of a dog. At one site, Xiaotong, the bones of a total of 825 human victims, 15 horses, 10 oxen, 18 sheep, and 35 dogs were unearthed. Dogs were usually buried wrapped in reed mats and sometimes in lacquer coffins. Small bells with clappers, called ling (鈴) have sometimes been found attached to the necks of dogs or horses. The fact that alone among domestic animals dogs and horses were buried demonstrates the importance of these two animals to ancient Chinese society. It’s reflected in an idiom passed down to modern times: “to serve like a dog or a horse.” (犬馬之勞). According to ancient folk legends, solar eclipses take place because dogs in heaven eat the sun. In order to save the sun from demise, ancient people formed the habit of beating drums and gongs at the critical moment to drive away the dogs.” ref

“Shang oracle bones mention questions concerning the whereabouts of lost dogs. They also refer to the ning (寧) rite during which a dog was dismembered to placate the four winds or honor the four directions. This sacrifice was carried over into Zhou times. The Erya records a custom to dismember a dog to “bring the four winds to a halt.” (止風). Other ceremonies involving dogs are mentioned in the Zhou li. In the nan (難) sacrifice to drive away pestilence, a dog was dismembered and his remains were buried in front of the main gates of the capital. The ba (軷) sacrifice to ward off evil required the Son of Heaven, riding in a jade chariot, to crush a dog under the wheels of his carriage. The character ba gives a clue as to how the ceremony took place. It is written with the radical for chariot (車) and a phonetic element which originally meant an animal whose legs had been bound (发). It was the duty of a specially appointed official to supply a dog of one color and without blemishes for the sacrifice. The blood of dogs was used for the swearing of covenants between nobles.” ref

“Towards the late fifth century BCE, surrogates began to be used for sacrifice in lieu of real dogs. The Dao De Jing mentions the use of straw dogs as a metaphor: “Haven and earth are ruthless, and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs; the sage is ruthless, and treats the people as straw dogs.” However, the practice of burying actual dogs by no means died out. One Zhongshan royal mausoleum, for example, included two hunting dogs with gold and silver neck rings. Later, clay figurines of dogs were buried in tombs. Large quantities of these sculptures have been unearthed from the Han dynasty onwards. Most show sickle-shaped tails not unlike the modern shiba inu or akita inu. Dogs are an important motif in Chinese mythology. These motifs include a particular dog which accompanies a hero, the dog as one of the twelve totem creatures for which years are named, a dog giving first provision of grain which allowed current agriculture, and claims of having a magical dog as an original ancestor in the case of certain ethnic groups.” ref, ref

Chinese mythology includes myths in Chinese and other languages, as transmitted by Han Chinese as well as other ethnic groups (of which fifty-six are officially recognized by the current administration of China). In the study of historical Chinese culture, many of the stories that have been told regarding characters and events which have been written or told of the distant past have a double tradition: one which tradition which presents a more historicized and one which presents a more mythological version. This is also true of some accounts related to mythological dogs in China. Historical accounts and anecdotes about dogs from ancient China and onwards exist in extant literary works, for example in the Shiji, by Sima Qian. Archaeological study provides substantial backing and supplemental knowledge in this regard.” ref

“For thousands of years, a twelve-year cycle named after various real or mythological animals has been used in Southeast Asia. This twelve-year cycle, sometimes referred to as the “Chinese zodiac,” associates each year in turn with a certain creature, in a fixed order of twelve animals, after which it returns to the first in the order, the Rat. The eleventh in the cycle is the Dog. One account is that the order of the beings-of-the-year is due to their order in a racing contest involving swimming across a river, in the Great Race. The reason for the Dog finishing the race second from last despite generally being a talented swimmer is explained as being due to its playful nature: the Dog played and frolicked along the way, thus delaying completing the course and reaching the finishing line. Other members of the canidae family also figure in Chinese mythology, including wolves and foxes. The portrayal of these is usually quite different than in the case of dogs. Tales and literature on foxes is especially extensive, with foxes often having magical qualities, such as being able to shift back and forth to human shape, live for incredible life spans, and to grow supernumerary tails (nine being common).” ref

“The personalities of people born in Dog years are popularly supposed to share certain attributes associated with Dogs, such as loyalty or exuberance; however, this would be modified according to other considerations of Chinese astrology, such as the influences of the month, day, and hour of birth, according to the traditional system of Earthly Branches, in which the zodiacal animals are also associated with the months and times of the day (and night), in twelve two-hour increments. The Hour of the Dog is 7 to 9 p.m. and the Dog is associated with the ninth lunar month. There are various myths and legends in which various ethnic groups claimed or were claimed to have had a divine dog as a forebear, one of these is the story of Panhu. The legendary Chinese sovereign Di Ku has been said to have a dog named Panhu. Panhu helped him win a war by killing the enemy general and bringing him his head and ended up with marriage to the emperor’s daughter as a reward.” ref

“The dog carried his bride to the mountainous region of the south, where they produced numerous progeny. Because of their self-identification as descendants from these original ancestors, Panhu has been worshiped by the Yao people and the She people, often as King Pan, and the eating of dog meat tabooed. This ancestral myth is also has been found among the Miao people and Li people. An early documentary source for the Pan-hu origin myth is by the Jin dynasty (266–420) author Gan Bao, who records this origin myth for a southern (that is, south of the Yangzi River) ethnic group which he refers to as “Man” (蠻). There are various variations of the Panhu mythology. According to one version, the Emperor had promised his daughter in marriage as a reward to the one who brought back the enemy general’s head, but due to the perceived difficulties of a dog marriage with a human bride (especially an imperial princess), the dog proposed to magically turn into a human being, by means of a process in which he would be sequestered beneath a bell for 280 days.” ref

One of the stock heroic supernatural beings with mighty martial prowess in Chinese culture is Erlang, a character in Journey to the West. Erlang has been said to have a dog. In the epic novel, Journey to the West Erlang’s dog helps him in his fight against the evolved-monkey hero, Sun Wukong, critically biting him on the leg. Later on in the story (Chapter 63), Sun Wukong with Erlang (now both on the same side) and their companions-in-fight battle against a Nine-headed Insect monster, when, again, Erlang’s small hound comes to the rescue and defeats by biting off the monster’s retractable head, which popped in and out of its torso: the monster then flees, dripping blood, off into the unknown.” ref

“The author of the Journey to the West comments that this is the origin of the “nine-headed blood-dripping bird”, and that this trait was passed on to its descendant. Anthony C. Yu, editor and translator of Journey to the West associates this bird with the ts’ang kêng of Chinese mythology. The Tiangou (“Heavenly Dog”) has been said to resemble a black dog or meteor, which is thought to eat the sun or moon during an eclipse, unless frightened away. According to the myths of various ethnic groups, a dog provided humans with the first grain seeds enabling the seasonal cycle of planting, harvesting, and replanting staple agricultural products by saving some of the seed grains to replant, thus explaining the origin of domesticated cereal crops. This myth is common to the Buyi, Gelao, Hani, Miao, Shui, Tibetan, Tujia, and Zhuang peoples.” ref

“A version of this myth collected from ethnic Tibetan people in Sichuan tells that in ancient times grain was tall and bountiful, but that rather than being duly grateful for the plenty that people even used it for personal hygiene after defecation, which so angered the God of Heaven that he came down to earth to repossess it all. However, a dog grasped his pant leg, piteously crying, and so moving God of Heaven to leave a few seeds from each type of grain with the dog, thus providing the seed stock of today’s crops. Thus it is said that because humans owe their possession of grain seed stocks to a dog, people should share some of their food with dogs. Another myth, of the Miao people, recounts the time of the distantly remote era when dogs had nine tails, until a dog went to steal grains from heaven, and lost eight of its tails to the weapons of the heavenly guards while making its escape, but bringing back grain seeds stuck onto its surviving tail. According to this, when Miao people hold their harvest celebration festival, the dogs are the first to be fed.(Yang 2005: 54) The Zhuang and Gelao peoples have a similar myth explaining why it is that the ripe heads of grain stalks are curly, bushy, and bent – just so as is the tail of a dog.” ref

In northern China, dog images made by cutting paper were thrown in the water as part of the ritual of the Double Fifth (Duanwu Festival) holiday, celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, as an apotropaic magic act meant to drive away evil spirits. Paper dogs were also provided for protecting the dead. Numerous statuary of Chinese guardian lions exist, which are often called “Fu Dogs” “Foo Dogs“, “Fu Lions“, “Fo Lions“, and “Lion Dogs“. Modern lions are not native in the area of China, except perhaps the extreme west; however, their existence was well known, and associated symbolism and ideas about lions were familiar; however, in China, artistic representations of lions tended to be dog-like. Indeed, “[t]he ‘lion’ which we see depicted in Chinese paintings and in sculpture bears little resemblance to the real animal, which, however, plays a big part in Chinese folklore.” The reasons for referencing “guardian lions” as “dogs” in Western cultures may be obscure, however, the phenomenon is well known.” ref

Dogs have played a role in the religion, myths, tales, and legends of many cultures. In mythology, dogs often serve as pets or as watchdogs. Stories of dogs guarding the gates of the underworld recur throughout Indo-European mythologies and may originate from Proto-Indo-European religion. Historian Julien d’Huy has suggested three narrative lines related to dogs in mythology. One echoes the gatekeeping noted above in Indo-European mythologies—a linkage with the afterlife; a second “related to the union of humans and dogs”; a third relates to the association of dogs with the star Sirius. Evidence presented by d’Huy suggests a correlation between the mythological record from cultures and the genetic and fossil record related to dog domestication.” ref

The Ancient Egyptians are often more associated with cats in the form of Bastet, but dogs are found to have a sacred role and figure as an important symbol in religious iconography. Dogs were associated with Anubis, the jackal headed god of the underworld. At times throughout its period of being in use the Anubieion catacombs at Saqqara saw the burial of dogs. Anput was the female counterpart of her husband, Anubis; she was often depicted as a pregnant or nursing jackal, or as a jackal wielding knives. Other dogs can be found in Egyptian mythology. Am-heh was a minor god from the underworld. He was depicted as a man with the head of a hunting dog who lived in a lake of fire. Duamutef was originally represented as a man wrapped in mummy bandages. From the New Kingdom onwards, he is shown with the head of a jackal. Wepwawet was depicted as a wolf or a jackal, or as a man with the head of a wolf or a jackal. Even when considered a jackal, Wepwawet usually was shown with grey, or white fur, reflecting his lupine origins. Khenti-Amentiu was depicted as a jackal-headed deity at Abydos in Upper Egypt, who stood guard over the city of the dead.” ref

Dogs were closely associated with Hecate in the Classical world. Dogs were sacred to Artemis and AresCerberus is a three-headed, dragon-tailed watchdog who guards the gates of Hades. Laelaps was a dog in Greek mythology. When Zeus was a baby, a dog, known only as the “golden hound” was charged with protecting the future King of Gods. In Homer‘s epic poem the Odyssey, when the disguised Odysseus returns home after 20 years, he is recognized only by his faithful dog, Argos, who has been waiting all this time for his return.” ref

In Hindu mythology, Yama, the god of death, owns two watchdogs who have four eyes. They are said to watch over the gates of Naraka. The hunter god Muthappan from the North Malabar region of Kerala has a hunting dog as his mount. Dogs are found in and out of the Muthappan Temple and offerings at the shrine take the form of bronze dog figurines. The dog (Shvan) is also the vahana or mount of the Hindu god BhairavaYudhishthira had approached heaven with his dog who was the god Yama himself. Dogs are also shown in the background in the iconography of Hindu deities like Dattatreya, many times dogs are also shown in the background in the iconography of deities like Khandoba. In Valmiki Ramayana there’s a tale about a dog receiving justice, passed by king Rama.” ref

“In ancient Mesopotamia, from the Old Babylonian period until the Neo-Babylonian, dogs were the symbol of Ninisina, the goddess of healing and medicine, and her worshippers frequently dedicated small models of seated dogs to her. In the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods, dogs were used as emblems of magical protection. There is a temple in Isin, Mesopotamia, named é-ur-gi7-ra which translates as “dog house”. Enlilbani, a king from the Old Babylonian First Dynasty of Isin, commemorated the temple to the goddess Ninisina. Although there is a small amount of detail known about it, there is enough information to confirm that a dog cult did exist in this area. Usually, dogs were only associated with the Gula cult, but there is some information, like Enlilbani’s commemoration, to suggest that dogs were also important to the cult of Ninisina, as Gula was another goddess who was closely associated to Ninisina. More than 30 dog burials, numerous dog sculptures, and dog drawings were discovered when the area around this Ninisina temple was excavated. In the Gula cult, the dog was used in oaths and was sometimes referred to as a divinity.” ref

“In Persian mythology, two four-eyed dogs guard the Chinvat Bridge. During archaeological diggings, the Ashkelon dog cemetery was discovered in the layer dating from when the city was part of the Persian Empire. It is believed the dogs may have had a sacred role – however, evidence for this is not conclusive. In Zoroastrianism, the dog is regarded as an especially beneficent, clean and righteous creature, which must be fed and taken care of. The dog is praised for the useful work it performs in the household, but it is also seen as having special spiritual virtues. Dogs are associated with Yama who guards the gates of afterlife with his dogs just like Hinduism. A dog’s gaze is considered to be purifying and to drive off daevas (demons). It is also believed to have a special connection with the afterlife: the Chinwad Bridge to Heaven is said to be guarded by dogs in Zoroastrian scripture, and dogs are traditionally fed in commemoration of the dead. Ihtiram-i sag, “respect for the dog”, is a common injunction among Iranian Zoroastrian villagers.” ref

“In Norse mythology, a bloody, four-eyed dog called Garmr guards Helheim. Also, Fenrir is a giant wolf who is a child of the Norse god Loki, who was foretold to kill Odin in the events of Ragnarok. In Welsh mythologyAnnwn is guarded by Cŵn Annwn.” ref

“The ANE lineage is defined by association with the MA-1, or “Mal’ta boy“, the remains of an individual who lived during the Last Glacial Maximum, 24,000 years ago in central Siberia. Populations genetically similar to MA-1 were an important genetic contributor to Native AmericansEuropeansAncient Central AsiansSouth Asians, and some East Asian groups (such as the Ainu people), in order of significance.” ref

“Groups partially derived from the Ancient North Eurasians: Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (R1a-M417, around 8,400 years ago), Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherer (around 8,000 years ago), Ancient Beringian/Ancestral Native American (around 11,500 years ago), West Siberian Hunter-Gatherer, Western Steppe Herders (closely related to the Yamnaya culture), Late Upper Paeolithic Lake Baikal (14,050-13,770 years ago), Lake Baikal Holocene (around 11,650 years ago to the present), Jōmon people, pre-Neolithic population of Japan (and present-day Ainu people).” ref

“Since the term ‘Ancient North Eurasian’ refers to a genetic bridge of connected mating networks, scholars of comparative mythology have argued that they probably shared myths and beliefs that could be reconstructed via the comparison of stories attested within cultures that were not in contact for millennia and stretched from the Pontic–Caspian steppe to the American continent.” ref

“For instance, the mytheme of the dog guarding the Otherworld possibly stems from an older Ancient North Eurasian belief, as suggested by similar motifs found in Indo-EuropeanNative American, and Siberian mythology. In SiouanAlgonquianIroquoian, and in Central and South American beliefs, a fierce guard dog was located in the Milky Way, perceived as the path of souls in the afterlife, and getting past it was a test. The Siberian Chukchi and Tungus believed in a guardian-of-the-afterlife dog and a spirit dog that would absorb the dead man’s soul and act as a guide in the afterlife. In Indo-European myths, the figure of the dog is embodied by CerberusSarvarā, and GarmrAnthony and Brown note that it might be one of the oldest mythemes recoverable through comparative mythology.” ref

“A second canid-related series of beliefs, myths, and rituals connected dogs with healing rather than death. For instance, Ancient Near Eastern and TurkicKipchaq myths are prone to associate dogs with healing and generally categorized dogs as impure. A similar myth-pattern is assumed for the Eneolithic site of Botai in Kazakhstan, dated to 3500 BC, which might represent the dog as absorber of illness and guardian of the household against disease and evil. In Mesopotamia, the goddess Nintinugga, associated with healing, was accompanied or symbolized by dogs. Similar absorbent-puppy healing and sacrifice rituals were practiced in Greece and Italy, among the Hittites, again possibly influenced by Near Eastern traditions.” ref

“Koryaks (Russian: коряки) are an Indigenous people of the Russian Far East, who live immediately north of the Kamchatka Peninsula in Kamchatka Krai and inhabit the coastlands of the Bering Sea. The cultural borders of the Koryaks include Tigilsk in the south and the Anadyr basin in the north. The Koryaks are culturally similar to the Chukchis of extreme northeast Siberia. The Koryak language and Alutor (which is often regarded as a dialect of Koryak), are linguistically close to the Chukchi language. All of these languages are members of the Chukotko-Kamchatkan language family. They are more distantly related to the Itelmens on the Kamchatka Peninsula. All of these peoples and other, unrelated minorities in and around Kamchatka are known collectively as Kamchadals.” ref

The origin of the Koryak is unknown. Anthropologists have speculated that a land bridge connected the Eurasian and North American continent during Late Pleistocene. It is possible that migratory peoples crossed the modern-day Koryak land en route to North America. Scientists have suggested that people traveled back and forth between this area and Haida Gwaii before the ice age receded. They theorize that the ancestors of the Koryak had returned to Siberian Asia from North America during this time. Cultural and some linguistic similarity exist between the Nivkh and the Koryak. Families usually gathered into groups of six or seven, forming bands. The nominal chief had no predominating authority, and the groups relied on consensus to make decisions, resembling common small group egalitarianism.” ref

“The inland Koryak rode reindeer to get around, cutting off their antlers to prevent injuries. They also fitted a team of reindeer with harnesses and attached them to sleds to transport goods and people when moving camp. Koryaks believe in a Supreme Being whom they call by various names: ŋajŋənen (Universe/World), ineɣitelʔən (Supervisor), ɣət͡ɕɣoletənvəlʔən (Master-of-the-Upper-World), ɣət͡ɕɣolʔən (One-on-High), etc. He is considered to reside in Heaven with his family and when he wishes to punish mankind for immoral acts, he falls asleep and thus leaves man vulnerable to unsuccessful hunting and other ills. Koryak mythology centers on the supernatural shaman Quikil (Big-Raven), who was created by the Supreme Being as the first man and protector of the Koryak. Big Raven myths are also found in Southeast Alaska in the Tlingit culture, and among the HaidaTsimshian, and other natives of the Pacific Northwest Coast Amerindians.” ref

“Archeologists have uncovered evidence of sled dogs during thousand year old excavations in the Kamchatka Peninsula. Early 18th century writers report the abundance of sled dogs in the region and local dependence on sled dogs for transportation. However, the Kamchatka sled dog was also used for clothing and spiritual purposes by the native Koryak people. Koryaks believe that the door to the afterlife was guarded by dogs which had to be bribed to allow the newly deceased to pass through. Prior to the introduction of reindeer, Kamchatka sled dogs were allowed to roam freely during the summer to find their own food. With the introduction of reindeer, the dogs needed to be tied up during the summers, creating a dependency on humans for feeding. While generally the Chukotka sled dog is considered the progenitor of the Siberian huskies, it is theorized that the Kamchatka sled dog may also have been intermingled, contributing the characteristic blue eyes seen in Siberian huskies but which are not standard in Chukotka sled dogs.” ref

Koryak Dog Sacrifices

“The Koryak people impaled dogs on a post as an offering to local spirits. Spiritual forces in traditional Koryak religion are associated with a particular geography, like a region, a hill, or even a house. Spirits from one place had to be kept separate from spirits associated with other places, therefore visitors would be “cleansed” by a brief ritual involving smoke and a few words. A spiritually “charged” drum used for shamanic healing was not carried from house to house by an individual shaman, but rather each household had a drum associated with the spirits of that place, which a shaman would use to talk to the spirits and heal a sick person. Scholars often refer to this kind of shamanic activity as “familial shamanism.” Each family had a person who was skilled in drumming and had some influence with spirits, and he or she would heal family and friends. Professional shamans, like those known among the Evenk (Tungus) or Sakha (Yakut) were unknown among Koryaks.” ref

“The sacrifice of nearly a whole team of dogs by coastal Koryaks (indigenous people of Siberia), was made in early spring to ensure the success of the new hunting season. The dogs are hung from poles stuck in the snow in front of a Koryak semi–dugout house.” ref

“Laikas are aboriginal spitz from Northern Russia, especially Siberia but also sometimes expanded to include Nordic hunting breeds. Laika breeds are primitive dogs who flourish with minimal care even in hostile weather. Generally, laika breeds are expected to be versatile hunting dogs, capable of hunting game of a variety of sizes by treeing small game, pointing and baying larger game, and working as teams to corner bear and boar. However, a few laikas have specialized as herding or sled dogs. Indeed the word laika is often used to refer not only to hunting dogs but also to the related sled dog breeds of the tundra belt, which the FCI classifies as “Nordic Sled Dogs” and even occasionally all spitz breeds.” ref

Modern Siberian dog ancestry was shaped by several thousand years of Eurasian-wide trade and human dispersal. The Siberian Arctic has witnessed numerous societal changes since the first known appearance of dogs in the region ∼10,000 years ago. Dogs have been essential to life in the Siberian Arctic for over 9,500 years ago, and this tight link between people and dogs continues in Siberian communities. Although Arctic Siberian groups such as the Nenets received limited gene flow from neighboring groups, archaeological evidence suggests that metallurgy and new subsistence strategies emerged in Northwest Siberia around 2,000 years ago. It is unclear if the Siberian Arctic dog population was as continuous as the people of the region or if instead admixture occurred, possibly in relation to the influx of material culture from other parts of Eurasia. To address this question, we sequenced and analyzed the genomes of 20 ancient and historical Siberian and Eurasian Steppe dogs. Our analyses indicate that while Siberian dogs were genetically homogenous between 9,500 to 7,000 years ago, the later introduction of dogs from the Eurasian Steppe and Europe led to substantial admixture. This is clearly the case in the Iamal-Nenets region (Northwestern Siberia) where dogs from the Iron Age period (∼2,000 years ago) possess substantially less ancestry related to European and Steppe dogs than dogs from the medieval period (∼1,000 years ago). These changes include the introduction of ironworking ∼2,000 years ago and the emergence of reindeer pastoralism ∼800 years ago. The analysis of 49 ancient dog genomes reveals that the ancestry of Arctic Siberia dogs shifted over the last 2,000 years due to an influx of dogs from the Eurasian Steppe and Europe. Combined with genomic data from humans and archaeological evidence, our results suggest that though the ancestry of human populations in Arctic Siberia did not change over this period, people there participated in trade with distant communities that involved both dogs and material culture.” ref

Some Important Dog Sites

“The Ertebølle culture (c. 5,300 – 3,950 BCE or around 7,300 to 5,950 years ago) Southern Scandinavia. The Ertebølle culture replaced the earlier Kongemose culture of Denmark. The Ertebølle pot was made by coil technique, being fired on the open bed of hot coals. It was not like the neighboring Neolithic Linearbandkeramik/Linear Pottery culture  (5500–4500 BCE or around 7,500 to 6,500 years ago), and appears related instead to a pottery type that first appears in Europe in the Samara region of Russia c. 7,000 cal BCE or around 9,000 years ago, and spread west. Skateholm contained also a dog cemetery. Dog graves were prepared and gifted the same as human, with ochre, antler, and grave goods. In either history or prehistory, the dog is an invaluable animal and is often treated as a person.” ref

“The Samara culture flourished around the turn of the 5th millennium BCE or around 7,000 to 6,000 years ago, at the Samara Bend of the Volga River (modern Russia). The culture is characterized by the remains of animal sacrifice, which occur over most of the sites. There is no indisputable evidence of riding, but there were horse burials, the earliest in the Old World. Typically the head and hooves of cattle, sheep, and horses are placed in shallow bowls over the human grave, smothered with ochre. Some have seen the beginning of the horse sacrifice in these remains, but this interpretation has not been more definitely substantiated. We know that the Indo-Europeans sacrificed both animals and people, like many other cultures. Some of the graves are covered with a stone cairn or a low earthen mound, the very first predecessor of the kurgan. The later, fully developed kurgan was a hill on which the deceased chief might ascend to the sky god, but whether these early mounds had that significance is doubtful. Grave offerings included ornaments depicting horses. The graves also had an overburden of horse remains; it cannot yet be determined decisively if these horses were domesticated and ridden or not, but they were certainly used as a meat-animal. Most controversial are bone plaques of horses or double oxen heads, which were pierced. The graves yield well-made daggers of flint and bone, placed at the arm or head of the deceased, one in the grave of a small boy. Weapons in the graves of children are common later. Other weapons are bone spearheads and flint arrowheads. Other carved bone figurines and pendants were found in the graves. In three papers, a male buried at Lebyazhinka (code I0124; SVP44; M340431), radiocarbon dated to 5640-5555 cal BCE or around 7,640 to 7,555 years ago, carried Y-haplogroup R1b1a1a and mitochondrial haplogroup U5a1d. This example is often referred to by scholars of archaeogenetics as the “Samara hunter-gatherer.” ref

“In North Asia, the Neolithic (c. 5500–3400 BCE or around 7,500 to 5,400 years ago) is mostly a chronological term, since there is no evidence for agriculture or even pastoralism in Siberia during the central European Neolithic. However, the neolithic cultures of North Asia are distinguished from the preceding Mesolithic cultures and far more visible as a result of the introduction of pottery. Southwest Siberia reached a neolithic cultural level during the Chalcolithic, which began here towards the end of the 4th millennium BCE: 4000 – 3000 BCE or around 6,000 to 5,000 years ago, which roughly coincided with the introduction of copper–working. In the northern and eastern regions, there is no detectable change. In the second half of the 3rd millennium BCE, bronzeworking reached the cultures of western Siberia. Chalcolithic groups in the eastern Ural foothills developed the so-called Andronovo culture, which took various local forms. The settlements of ArkaimOlgino, and Sintashta are particularly notable as the earliest evidence for urbanisation in Siberia. In the valleys of the Ob and Irtysh the same ceramic cultures attested there during the neolithic continue; the changes in the Baikal region and Yakutia were very slight.” ref

“The Ymyakhtakh culture (c. 2200–1300 BCE or around 4,200 to 3,300 years ago) was a Late Neolithic culture of Siberia, with a very large archaeological horizon. Its origins seem to be in the Lena river basin of Yakutia, and also along the Yenisei river. From there it spread both to the east and to the west. A. Golovnev discusses Ymyyakhtakh culture in the context of a “circumpolar syndrome”: “… some features of the East Siberian Ymyyakhtakh culture spread amazingly quickly as far as Scandinavia. Ceramics with wafer prints are found at the Late Bronze Age monuments of the Taimyr PeninsulaYamal PeninsulaBolshezemelskaya and Malozemelskaya tundra, the Kola Peninsula, and Finland (not to mention East Siberia and North-East Asia).” The Ymyyakhtakh made round-bottomed ceramics with waffle and ridge prints on the outer surface. Stone and bone arrowheads, spears, and harpoons are richly represented. Armour plates were also used in warfare. Finds of bronze ware are frequent in the burial grounds. The culture was formed by the tribes migrating from the shores of Lake Baikal to the north, merging with the local substrate of the Bel’kachi culture. The carriers of culture are identified either with the Yukaghirs ethnic group, or perhaps with the Chukchi and Koryaks. The Ymyyakhtakh culture continued at least until the first centuries of our era. It was later replaced by the Ust-Mil culture. After 1,700 BCE or 3,700 years ago, the Ymyyakhtakh culture is believed to have spread to the east as far as the Chukotka peninsula, where it was in cultural contact with the Eskimo–Aleut language speakers, and the Paleo-EskimosA ceramic complex comparable to the Ymyyakhtakh culture (typified by pottery with an admixture of wool) is also found in northern Fennoscandia near the end of the 2nd millennium BCE spanned the years 2000 – 1000 BCE or around 4,000 to 3,000 years ago.” ref, ref

“In the middle Bronze Age (c. 1800–1500 BCE or around 3,800 to 3,500 years ago), the west Siberian Andronovo culture expanded markedly to the east and even reached the Yenissei valley. In all the local forms of the Andronovo culture, homogenous ceramics are found, which also extended to the cultures on the Ob. Here, however, unique neolithic ceramic traditions were maintained as well. With the beginning of the late Bronze Age (c. 1500–800 BCE or around 3,500 to 2,800 years ago), crucial cultural developments took place in southern Siberia. The Andronovo culture dissolved; its southern successors produced an entirely new form of pottery, with bulbous ornamental elements. At the same time the southern cultures also developed new forms of bronze working, probably as a result of influence from the southeast. These changes were especially significant in the Baikal region. There, the chalcolithic material culture which had continued up to this time was replaced by a bronze-working pastoralist culture. There and in Yakutia, bronze was only used as a material for the first time at this point.” ref

Boys Killed Pet Dogs to Become Warriors in Early Russia around 4,000 years ago

In Russia, dismembered dogs point to an ancient initiation rite.

“At the Bronze Age site of Krasnosamarkskoe in Russia’s Volga region, they unearthed the bones of at least 51 dogs and 7 wolves. All the animals had died during the winter months, judging from the telltale banding pattern on their teeth, and all were subsequently skinned, dismembered, burned, and chopped with an ax. Moreover, the butcher had worked in a precise, standardized way, chopping the dogs’ snouts into three pieces and their skulls into geometrically shaped fragments just an inch or so in size. “It was very strange,” says Anthony. Ancient Rite of Passage: In search of clues, Anthony and Brown combed the mythology, songs, and scriptures in Eurasia’s early and closely related Indo-European languages. Many ancient Indo-European speakers associated dogs with death and the underworld. Reading through prayers composed by tribes in India possibly as early as 1400 BCE or around 3,400 years ago, the researchers found a description of secret initiation rites for boys destined to become roving warriors. At the age of eight, the boys were sent to ritualists, who bathed them, shaved their heads, and gave them animal skins to wear. Eight years later, the initiates underwent a midwinter ceremony in which they ritually died and journeyed to the underworld. After this, the boys left their homes and families, painted their bodies black, donned a dog-skin cloak, and joined a band of warriors.” ref

“The dogs of war: A Bronze Age initiation ritual in the Russian steppes. At the Srubnaya-culture settlement of Krasnosamarskoe in the Russian steppes, dated 1900–1700 BCE or around 3,900 to 3,700 years ago, a ritual occurred in which the participants consumed sacrificed dogs, primarily, and a few wolves, violating normal food practices found at other sites, during the winter.” ref 

Warrior Initiations, Midwinter Dog Sacrifices, and the Psychology of War

“Indo-European youthful initiatory war bands have not previously been documented archaeologically. Here we describe an archaeological site at Krasnosamarskoe, Russia, dated 1900–1700 BCE or around 3,900 to 3,700 years ago, that revealed the remains of a repeated series of winter-season sacrifices totaling at least 51 dogs, mostly older male dogs, and 7 wolves that were roasted, chopped and apparently eaten, an inversion of the local custom of avoidance of dogs and wolves as food. Krasnosamarskoe was a Late Bronze Age (LBA) settlement of the Srubnaya culture located in the middle Volga steppes near Samara, Russia. No other Srubnaya settlement in the region has produced so many canid bones, or canids chopped and segmented in this way.” ref

“Researchers used resources from comparative Indo-European linguistics and mythology to suggest that the canid-centered sacrificial rituals at Krasnosamarskoe were linked to the institution of initiatory Indo-European war-bands.  Initiatory warrior bands associated with dogs and wolves can be found in mythological and epic traditions known in Germanic (Männerbünde), Celtic (fian), Italic (luperci or sodales), Greek (*koryosephebes), and in Indo-Iranian, particularly in Vedic sources (vrātyas). One largely unexplored aspect of this institution through which boys were prepared to become warriors was its psychological function. Behavioral studies of modern and ancient warfare permit us to evaluate the psychological efficacy of IE warrior bands as an institution to train young men to fight together while avoiding the psychological traumas that often affect warriors on their return home.” ref 

“Archaeologists find mysterious, 4,000-year-old dog sacrifices in Russia and think it may relate to an ancient structure full of charred dog bones which to them points to a ritual related to werewolf myths. 4,000 years ago in the northern steppes of Eurasia, in the shadow of the Ural Mountains, a tiny settlement stood on a natural terrace overlooking the Samara River. The people who lived at Krasnosamarskoe were part of an Indo-European cultural group called Srubnaya, with Bronze Age technology. The Srubnaya lived in settlements year-round, but were not farmers. They kept animals, hunted for wild game, and gathered plants to eat opportunistically. Like many Indo-European peoples, they did not have what modern people would call an organized religion. But as Krasnosamarskoe demonstrates, they certainly had beliefs that were highly spiritual and symbolic. And they engaged in ritualistic practices over many generations. Perhaps the first unusual feature of Krasnosamarskoe is that the people who lived here chose to build on top of an abandoned settlement that was about 1,000 years gone when the Srubnaya moved in. That previous settlement left behind three large kurgans, or burial mounds.” ref

“Excavating one of these kurgans revealed a couple of 5,000-year-old skeletons from the first group, surrounded by 4,000-year-old remains from the Srubnaya. The people of Krasnosamarskoe obviously knew these were ancient grave mounds when they moved in, and chose to keep using them. After exhaustively cataloging dozens of burials in and around the kurgans, Anthony and his colleagues discovered a few patterns. First of all, most of the Srubnaya remains were of children. One showed signs of a degenerative disease, but the others appeared to have died of illnesses that didn’t leave clear marks on their skeletons. None showed any signs of violent death or abuse. It seems likely that people brought their sick children to this place, perhaps seeking ritual medicine. The archaeologists also found pollen from a medicinal plant, Seseli, in one of the structures. Seseli is a mild sedative and muscle relaxant that could have been used to calm the suffering children. Those who did not survive were laid to rest in the ancient cemetery.” ref

“There were also the remains of five adults, two men and two women plus the leg bones of a third person. Perhaps these were two generations of people who ran the settlement, Anthony and Brown suggest. The men both had matching skeletal injuries that showed extreme wear and tear in their lower backs, knees, and ankles. Most likely, these injuries were from doing a lot of physical labor, possibly from a very young age. Though the lower back injury wasn’t particularly unusual, the knee and ankle injuries were very rare and suggested “twisting,” as if the men were engaging in unusual physical activities associated with rituals. The dog sacrifices? The most obvious sign of ritual activity at Krasnosamarskoe was a pit full of bones from about 50 different dogs. Located inside one of the settlement structures, the pit had been filled with carefully butchered, chopped, and cooked dog bones. There were many signs that these dogs had been killed in rituals rather than for food. Perhaps most importantly, the Srubnaya people did not eat dogs as a regular part of their diets. In fact, dogs would have likely been beloved hunting companions. Anthony and Brown write in their paper that rituals are often associated with an inversion or alteration of typical eating practices. The dogs were always killed in winter, then carefully chopped into small pieces, their skulls sliced in the same specific places. Knife marks and charring on the bones suggest they were filleted and cooked. It appears this ritual happened regularly, perhaps annually in winter, for at least two generations.” ref

“To figure out what kind of ritual this might have been, Anthony and Brown looked to what we know of Indo-European culture, whose distinctive symbolic practices were common across south Asia and Europe during the Bronze Age. Dogs are sometimes associated with death in these cultures, and there are representations in various Indo-European cultures of puppies drawing diseases out of people. Perhaps the dogs were sacrificed to save the lives of the sick children whose bodies they found buried next to the kurgans? That could have been the answer, except for the fact that most of the sacrificed dogs were fairly old. This was their first hint that these dogs might have been sacrificed as part of a rite of passage ritual for boys becoming warriors. Write the authors:

“The shock attached to such an act in a culture that did not eat dogs was increased by the intentional selection of older dogs for more than 80% of the victims: familiar, well-treated, human-like companions and therefore perhaps stand-ins for human victims; rather than young dogs, more suitable if starvation explained the behavior. Old, familiar dogs, possibly even their own dogs, might have represented an emotionally significant first death for boys learning to become killers of men.” ref

“Indo-European culture is full of stories about men becoming wolves or dogs—literally or symbolically—in order to become fighters. In ancient Greece, men sometimes donned wolf pelts in warrior rituals. Anthony and Brown conclude that the remains were from warrior transformation rituals. At Krasnosamarskoe, boys killed and ate their dogs in order to symbolically merge with them, taking on their fierceness in battle. This would also explain why many of the dogs in the pit came from far away. Boys must have come with their dogs from settlements throughout the region for this winter ritual of manhood. Looked at from this perspective, the Srubnaya sacrifices were to honor dogs by absorbing their spirits. It would have been a ritual where boys learned to be killers, but also to respect their adversaries and feel their loss. Werewolves among men? Other scholars have suggested that this kind of Indo-European ritual is connected to the werewolf myths that still haunt South Asia and Europe. Over the thousands of years since the events at Krasnosamarskoe, stories of men becoming dogs have evolved. The role of the warrior transformed dramatically after the rise of city-states. Warriors were no longer the familiar men of the village; instead, they were soldiers, agents of a bureaucratic state.” ref

“Perhaps that’s why a coming-of-age ritual among villagers became a terrifying story of people whose violent, wolflike impulses are uncontrollable and dangerous. At the Krasnosamarskoe site, we have a chance to consider ritual life before modern religion, and warrior identity before modern politics. What’s remarkable is how complex the symbolism is already. The people participating in these rituals already had a sense of deep history, which is why they located their ritual center next to 1000-year-old kurgans. Their rituals were elaborate, with layers of meaning. 4,000 years ago in the northern steppes of eastern Europe, men were learning that being a warrior meant sacrifice. Boys had to kill beloved friends, and murder a part of themselves to become the dogs of war. Hidden in the violence of this ancient ritual was a profound message of sorrow and loss that can still strike a chord today.” ref

“The Löwenmensch figurine, also called the Lion-man of Hohlenstein-Stadel, is a prehistoric ivory sculpture discovered in Hohlenstein-Stadel, a German cave, part of the Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura UNESCO World Heritage Site. The German name, Löwenmensch, meaning “lion-person” or “lion-human”, is used most frequently because it was discovered and is exhibited in Germany. Determined by carbon dating of the layer in which it was found to be between 35,000 and 41,000 years old, it is one of the oldest-known examples of an artistic representation and the oldest confirmed statue ever discovered. Its age associates it with the archaeological Aurignacian culture of the Upper Paleolithic. An example of zoomorphic art, it was carved out of mammoth ivory using a flint stone knife. Seven parallel, transverse, carved gouges are on the left arm.” ref

“The Löwenmensch figurine lay in a chamber almost 30 metres (98 ft) from the entrance of the Stadel cave, accompanied by many other objects. Bone tools and worked antlers were found, along with jewelery consisting of pendants, beads, and perforated animal teeth. The chamber was probably a special place, possibly used as a storehouse, hiding-place, or maybe as an area for cultic rituals. A similar but smaller lion-headed human figurine was found in Hohle Fels. Archaeologist Nicholas Conard suggested that “the occupants of Hohle Fels in the Ach Valley and Hohlenstein-Stadel in the Lone Valley must have been members of the same cultural group and shared beliefs and practices connected with therianthropic images of felids and humans” and that “the discovery of a second Löwenmensch lends support to the hypothesis of some that the Aurignacian people practiced a form of shamanism (to Damirn they likely practiced a form of totemism).” ref

“The figurine shares certain similarities with later French cave paintings, which also show hybrid creatures with human-like lower bodies and animal heads, such as the “Sorcerer” from the Trois Frères in the Pyrenees or the “Bison-man” from the Grotte de Gabillou in the Dordogne. Debate exists as to whether the figurine depicts a lion or human-lion hybrid figure at all; with similarities to a standing bear, and the unreliable nature of the reconstructions cited.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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“The Adorant from the Geißenklösterle cave is a 35,000-to-40,000-year-old section of mammoth ivory with a depiction of a human figure, found in the Geißenklösterle cave in the Swabian Jura near Blaubeuren, Germany. The front face has a human figure of uncertain sex in relief, with raised arms and outstretched legs, but no hands. The posture is usually interpreted as an expression of worship, which is why in German the figure is called an “adorant”, a word meaning “worshipper”. It has been claimed that a belt and sword can be seen, although these are probably natural features of the ivory. On the plate’s reverse are rows of small notches. The piece is 38 mm (1.50 in) tall, 14 mm (0.55 in) wide, and 4.5 mm (0.18 in) thick. Traces of manganese and ochre can be found on it by microscope analysis. It is somewhat like the Lion-Human of Hohlenstein-Stadel ivory statue also found in Germany.” ref

“The Löwenmensch figurine, also called the Lion-Human of Hohlenstein-Stadel, is a prehistoric ivory sculpture discovered in Hohlenstein-Stadel, a German cave. The German name, Löwenmensch, meaning “lion-person” or “lion-human”, is used most frequently because it was discovered and is exhibited in Germany. Determined by carbon dating of the layer in which it was found to be between 35,000 and 40,000 years old, it is one of the oldest-known examples of an artistic representation and the oldest confirmed statue ever discovered. Its age associates it with the archaeological Aurignacian culture of the Upper Paleolithic. An example of zoomorphic art, the Lion-Human was carved out of mammoth ivory, using a flint stone knife. Seven parallel, transverse, carved gouges are on the left arm.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Chauvet cave

“The Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave in the Ardèche department of southeastern France is a cave that contains some of the best-preserved figurative cave paintings in the world, as well as other evidence of Upper Paleolithic life. It is located near the commune of Vallon-Pont-d’Arc on a limestone cliff above the former bed of the river Ardèche, in the Gorges de l’Ardèche. The dates have been a matter of dispute but a study published in 2012 supports placing the art in the Aurignacian period, approximately 32,000–30,000 years ago. A study published in 2016 using additional 88 radiocarbon dates showed two periods of habitation, one from 37,000 to 33,500 years ago and the second from 31,000 to 28,000 years ago, with most of the black drawings dating to the earlier period.” ref

“Hundreds of animal paintings have been cataloged, depicting at least 13 different species, including some rarely or never found in other ice age paintings. Rather than depicting only the familiar herbivores that predominate in Paleolithic cave art, i.e. horses, aurochs, mammoths, etc., the walls of the Chauvet Cave feature many predatory animals, e.g., cave lions, leopards, bears, and cave hyenas. There are also paintings of rhinoceroses. Typical of most cave art, there are no paintings of complete human figures, although there is one partial “Venus” figure composed of what appears to be a vulva attached to an incomplete pair of legs. Above the Venus, and in contact with it, is a bison head, which has led some to describe the composite drawing as a Minotaur. There are a few panels of red ochre hand prints and hand stencils made by blowing pigment over hands pressed against the cave surface. Abstract markings—lines and dots—are found throughout the cave. There are also two unidentifiable images that have a vaguely butterfly or avian shape to them. This combination of subjects has led some students of prehistoric art and cultures to believe that there was a ritualshamanic, or magical aspect to these paintings.” ref

“One drawing, later overlaid with a sketch of a deer, is reminiscent of a volcano spewing lava, similar to the regional volcanoes that were active at the time. If confirmed, this would represent the earliest known drawing of a volcanic eruption. The artists who produced these paintings used techniques rarely found in other cave art. Many of the paintings appear to have been made only after the walls were scraped clear of debris and concretions, leaving a smoother and noticeably lighter area upon which the artists worked. Similarly, a three-dimensional quality and the suggestion of movement are achieved by incising or etching around the outlines of certain figures. The art is also exceptional for its time for including “scenes”, e.g., animals interacting with each other; a pair of woolly rhinoceroses, for example, are seen butting horns in an apparent contest for territory or mating rights.” ref

Aurignacian burials (around 37,000-30,000 years ago) belong to the early phase of this period in Europe. Examples have been excavated at Cave of Cavillon, Liguria – a burial wearing a cap of netted whelk shells with a border of deer’s teeth, red ochre around the face, and a bone awl at the side. ref

Aurignacian in the Zagros region dates back to about 35,500 years ago at Yafteh Cave, Lorestan, Iran. ref 

“The last and deepest of the Chauvet Cave chambers, the Salle du Fond, is the home of the Venus and the Sorcerer. From the ceiling of the chamber, which is nearly 7m (20ft) high, a vertical cone of limestone hangs down ending in a point 1.10m (3ft 6ins) off the floor. It is on this hanging outcrop that the Venus and the Sorcerer are drawn in black charcoal. The black pubic triangle of the Venus is at eye level and seems to be the heart of the composition. It is shaded in with black pigment. The white vulva slit appears to have been done later with a pointed tool and is clearly indicated by a vertical line incised strongly enough to cut through both the black pigment and the yellow surface film of the rock. The legs, with plump thighs, finish in a point with the feet not shown.” ref

“This Venus is absolutely classical and her proportions, the stylistic elements, the selection of the anatomical elements shown are all characteristically Aurignacian or Gravettian, as known from the small Venus statues of Central and Eastern Europe. The Venus is not isolated. Other lines and realistic representations are associated with her, directly on the outcrop. Higher and to the left of the Venus are two felines, a mammoth and a small musk ox. To the right of the Venus is the “Sorcerer” or man-bison. The relation of the Venus to the Sorcerer cannot be simply fortuitous.” ref 

The Venus is the earliest of the designs. The feline on the left, the Sorcerer, and the multiple lines on the right, are all painted or engraved later. Their creation entailed a voluntary and selective local destruction of parts of the body of the Venus, the most obvious spot being at one of the upper extremities of the pubic triangle. Even more surprising is the voluntary absence of any super imposition. Neither the Sorcerer nor the large feline on the left cut across the Venus.” ref

“The Venus and the composition in which she occupies a privileged place are in a central topographic situation in the Salle du Fond. However, she is paradoxically peripheral in the over all design that seems centred on a beautiful horse lodged in a small chapel like niche to the left in the middle of the main panel of cave paintings. Perhaps the female representation relates directly to the corridor to the chamber, which opens just behind her. Four other female representations limited to just the pubic triangle are in the cave; they are all in the system including the Galerie des Megaceros and the Salle du Fond, indicating each time the entrance to the adjacent cavities. A cluster of convergent data suggests that the Venus is Aurignacian and that she was created in the first period of the decoration of the Chauvet Cave.” ref

Here are three figures. Seemingly the first holds an antler, the next a bull horn, and the last a possible ram horn but all are a type of horn and as horns later are a ritualistic and potentially shamanistic reference to the heavens the moon, and stars, which is the place of ancestors this could express not just a fertility right but a connection to ancestors and the sky above as well as a link with totemistic animals.

Sacred Bulls? 

“Numerous peoples throughout the world have at one point in time honored bulls as sacred. In Sumerian mythology, Marduk is the “bull of Utu“. In Hinduism, Shiva‘s steed is Nandi, the Bull. The sacred bull survives in the constellation Taurus. The bull, whether lunar as in Mesopotamia or solar as in India, is the subject of various other cultural and religious incarnations. Aurochs are depicted in many Paleolithic European cave paintings such as those found at Lascaux and Livernon in France. Their life force may have been thought to have magical qualities, for early carvings of the aurochs have also been found. The impressive and dangerous aurochs survived into the Iron Age in Anatolia and the Near East and were worshipped throughout that area as sacred animals; the earliest survivals of a bull worship are at neolithic Çatalhöyük.” ref 

“The bull was seen in the constellation Taurus by the Chalcolithic and had marked the New Year at springtide by the Bronze Age, for 4000–1700 BCE.  The Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh depicts the killing by Gilgamesh and Enkidu of the Bull of Heaven as an act of defiance of the gods. From the earliest times, the bull was lunar in Mesopotamia (its horns representing the crescent moon).  In Egypt, the bull was worshiped as Apis, the embodiment of Ptah and later of Osiris. A long series of ritually perfect bulls were identified by the god’s priests, housed in the temple for their lifetime, then embalmed and encased in a giant sarcophagus.” ref 

Grotta di Fumane figure Picture:  Link

“This peace is from an extremely important site for understanding the significant biological and cultural change in human evolution which occurred around 40,000 years ago. Grotta di Fumane is one of the major prehistoric archaeological sites in Europe with an exceptional document of the lifestyles of both Neanderthal man and early Modern humans. Moreover, this site is essential for studying the lifestyle, economy, technology, and spirituality/religion of the ancient humans that frequented the Valpolicella area from over 50,000 years to the important  understanding of the mechanisms that led, to the affirmation of Modern Human behaviors throughout Europe beginning around 40,000 years ago.” ref

“This if from a stratigraphic section made up of a heap of clastic stones which formed at the cave entrance near the left-hand wall. After cleaning the veil of calcite that completely covered its face, this fragment shows the silhouette of an anthropomorphic (possibly a woman) seen from the front. The axis of the body is painted along the length of a small ridge. The 18 cm high figure has two horns on its head (or a mask?). Under the neck, the arms are spread out and the right hand holds an object hanging downwards (a ritual object?). At the level of the navel, there are two small lateral non-symmetrical reliefs. In its lower part, the body is enlarged in correspondence with the stomach, to which are attached the bowed legs. The painting is incomplete: the image is interrupted along the length of the right side of the body. The age of 35,000-34,000 – 32,000 BP attributed on the basis of radiometric dating of the Aurignacian use of the cave gives an indication of the age of the rock fragments which fell into the zone of passage. It does not seem possible that the paintings could be older as nothing similar has been found in the underlying levels in spite of a considerable accumulation of cryoclastic fragments.” ref

“In spite of the modest amount of discoveries, Aurignacian figurative art evinces considerable variability. The sculptures from the Swabian Jura, the Stratzing figurine, the incisions in the Dordogne shelters, the paintings at the entrance to the Fumane cave, and those of the Chauvet cave all suggest as many centers, situated in far-flung regions and different environments. These works span several thousand years. Each of them is expressed in its own way. This observation in no way contradicts the attribution of all these sites to the Aurignacian, which is seen as a great taxonomic entity characterized by a common technological base: the production lines for blade tools and blades designed for use in hafts, the making of points and spear heads from hard animal matter. These common technological traditions united groups adapted to different environments who over several millennia developed ways of life, economic systems and, very probably, different social organizations and cultures.” ref

Venus of Laussel Picture:  Link  

” The Venus of Laussel is a Venus figurine, 18.11 inches high limestone bas-relief of a nude female figure, painted with red ochre. It was carved into a large block of fallen limestone in a rock shelter (Abri de Laussel) in the commune of Marquay, in the Dordogne department of southwestern France. The carving is associated with the Gravettian Upper Paleolithic culture (approximately 25 000 years old). The figure holds a bison horn, or possibly a cornucopia, in one hand, which has 13 notches. According to some researchers, this may symbolize the number of moons or the number of menstrual cycles in one year. She has her hand on her abdomen (or womb), with large breasts and vulva. There is a “Y” on her thigh and her faceless head is turned toward the horn.” ref   

Other less known Laussel Figure Picture:  Link 

“Great Shelter of Laussel, Graveltlen (around 25 000 years old). Travalilee in the round – bump, this representation femmme is seen from the front, the trails of the face are not detailed. The thorax is erect with two voluminous seems resting on the abdomen and hips. The pelvic girdle is very wide, just like the thighs. The public triangle is small. This representation is that of a woman with more children than her, a recurring theme of the female representations of Gravetnen. The arm is in extension and throws an object in the shape of an arc, WHICH had to think of the horn held by the most famous Venus de Laussel. However. It is impossible to determine the nature of this object whose contours have been deeply hollowed out.” ref 

Lascaux Cave

“The Well presents the most enigmatic scene of Lascaux: an ithyphallic man with a bird’s head. “Lascaux Cave”) is a network of caves near the village of Montignac, in southwestern France. Over 600 parietal wall paintings cover the interior walls and ceilings of the cave. The paintings represent primarily large animals, typical local contemporary fauna that correspond with the fossil record of the Upper Paleolithic in the area. They are the combined effort of many generations and, with continued debate, the age of the paintings is now usually estimated at around 17,000 years (early Magdalenian).” ref

“The cave contains nearly 6,000 figures, which can be grouped into three main categories: animals, human figures, and abstract signs. The paintings contain no images of the surrounding landscape or the vegetation of the time. Most of the major images have been painted onto the walls using red, yellow, and black colors from a complex multiplicity of mineral pigments including iron compounds such as iron oxide (ochre), hematite, and goethite, as well as manganese-containing pigments.” ref

“Charcoal may also have been used but seemingly to a sparing extent. On some of the cave walls, the color may have been applied as a suspension of pigment in either animal fat or calcium-rich cave groundwater or clay, making paint, that was swabbed or blotted on, rather than applied by brush. In other areas, the color was applied by spraying the pigments by blowing the mixture through a tube. Where the rock surface is softer, some designs have been incised into the stone. Many images are too faint to discern, and others have deteriorated entirely.” ref

“Over 900 can be identified as animals, and 605 of these have been precisely identified. Out of these images, there are 364 paintings of equines as well as 90 paintings of stags. Also represented are cattle and bison, each representing 4 to 5% of the images. A smattering of other images includes seven felines, a bird, a bear, a rhinoceros, and a human. There are no images of reindeer, even though that was the principal source of food for the artists. Geometric images have also been found on the walls.” ref

“The most famous section of the cave is The Hall of the Bulls where bulls, equines, aurochs, stags, and the only bear in the cave are depicted. The four black bulls, or aurochs, are the dominant figures among the 36 animals represented here. One of the bulls is 5.2 metres (17 ft 1 in) long, the largest animal discovered so far in cave art. Additionally, the bulls appear to be in motion. A painting referred to as “The Crossed Bison”, found in the chamber called the Nave, is often submitted as an example of the skill of the Paleolithic cave painters. The crossed hind legs create the illusion that one leg is closer to the viewer than the other. This visual depth in the scene demonstrates a primitive form of perspective which was particularly advanced for the time.” ref

Cave of the Trois-Frères

“The Sorcerer is one name for an enigmatic cave painting found in the cavern known as ‘The Sanctuary’ at the Cave of the Trois-FrèresAriègeFrance, made around 13,000 BCE. The figure’s significance is unknown, but it is usually interpreted as some kind of great spirit or master of animals. The unusual nature of The Sanctuary’s decoration may also reflect the practice of magical ceremonies in the chamber. In his sketches of the cave art, Henri Breuil drew a horned humanoid torso and the publication of this drawing in the 1920s influenced many subsequent theories about the figure. However, Breuil’s sketch has also come under criticism in recent years. A single prominent human figure is unusual in the cave paintings of the Upper Paleolithic, where the great majority of representations are of animals.” ref

Henri Breuil asserted that the cave painting represented a shaman or magician — an interpretation which gives the image its name — and described the image he drew in these terms. Margaret Murray having seen the published drawing called Breuil’s image ‘the first depiction of a deity on Earth’, an idea which Breuil and others later adopted. His views held sway in the field for much of the 20th century, but they have since been largely superseded. Breuil’s image has been commonly interpreted as a shaman performing a ritual to ensure good hunting.” ref

“Certain modern scholars question the validity of Breuil’s sketch, claiming that modern photographs do not show the famous antlers. Ronald Hutton theorized that Breuil was fitting the evidence to support his hunting-magic theory of cave-art, citing that “the figure drawn by Breuil is not the same as the one actually painted on the cave wall.” Hutton’s theory led him to conclude that reliance on Breuil’s initial sketch resulted in many later scholars erroneously claiming that “The Sorcerer” was evidence that the concept of a Horned God dated back to Paleolithic times.” ref

“Likewise, Peter Ucko concluded that inaccuracies in the drawing were caused by Breuil’s working in dim gas-light, in awkward circumstances, and that he had mistaken cracks in the rock surface for man-made marks. Also, “the Sorcerer” is composed of both charcoal drawings and etching within the stone itself; details, such as etching, are often difficult to view from photographs due to their size and the quality of the light source. Particularly celebrated prehistorian Jean Clottes asserts that Breuil’s sketch is accurate, saying “I have seen it myself perhaps 20 times over the years.” ref

Hibred Bull-Person playing the nose flute, an engraving from Trois-Frères Cave

“This representation of a human figure is located on the end wall of the room that forms the end of the lower floor of the cave, more than 400 metres from the entrance, and in which are most of the engravings. We can mention only a few cats in a small diverticulum forming something of a chapel, and a large lion nearly two metres long, of terrifying aspect with his head facing the viewer, large eyes, and a thick mane. It is engraved on the right wall a little in front of the niche and the stalagmite waterfall leading to the last room, it seems to defend the access.” ref

“This room presents itself as something of a shrine in which all niches, all corners, are overloaded with drawings of different size and technique, as well as age, as some like rhino and onager may be Aurignacian, while the majority is clearly magdalénienne. In the galleries of the upper floor, on the contrary, the Aurignacian era unquestionably dominates the drawings. These are far from achieving the perfection of the engravings of lower rooms, some of which, such as the reindeer engraved in a niche, just below the man, are treated with remarkable artistic feeling.” ref

“Through a twisting passage, whose walls are also decorated with plenty of horses, bears, and other animals, one arrives at the design that we are presenting today. It is then necessary to step over a gap, and by turning around a rocky point one is face to face with this bizarre figure. It is about 75 cm high and 50 cm wide. It is fully engraved and the body parts are painted black. It seems that the paint was faded in some places, but the whole body was never painted. The forehead and eyes have traces of color, as well as the lines delineating the nose.” ref

“A wide band marks the shoulders and back, another the belly. The legs are particularly carefully and well done. The left knee is indicated by a separate kneecap. The sexual organs shown thrust backwards, behind the buttocks, are strongly emphasized. This drawing, despite the strangeness of its attitude, indubitably represents a naked man going to the left. At first glance, he seems to be crawling, but one soon realizes he has just a strongly tilted forward tilted body and legs. The hands, in fact, do not have the motion of walking, but rather outline a beautiful action, as can be seen in the dances of some primitive peoples.” ref

“We find this same position in the human figures in les Combarelles. The buttocks are decorated with the tail of a horse. This tail is not in line with the line of the back as would a tail belonging to an animal’s skin thrown over the body. It seems to have been stuck on to the posterior. The head is particularly strange: a stag’s antlers on the top of the head, with two long hairy and erect ears. Two eyes, formed of two engraved concentric circles between which the surface has been colored black, and surrounding a white dot for a pupil, are placed symmetrically on either side of the nose, the widened part of which is marked by a painted and etched semicircle.” ref

“The cheekbone area is scraped up towards the ears. This same system of many parallel lines serves to indicate a long and elegant beard ten centimetres long, falling to the chest. The arms and hands are badly made, while the feet were drawn with care and fine strokes. The right hand has only four fingers, although they are more like claws. The outline of both hands is recorded in a single curved line. The torso and lower limbs are shown by striated bands that define the contour.” ref

“Other scraped areas may be seen inside the body and limbs, for example, the toes are separated from the instep of the foot by a scraped band. These scrapings and other engraved lines are visible only from close up, and we may wonder if they were once more visible when the rock was covered with a light clay deposit, present in other parts of the cave, that has since disappeared from this panel. On other walls of the cave, where, being better sheltered, this layer was retained, the artists got wonderful artistic effects. The contour of the neck is formed by a triple row of oblique hatchings having the appearance of bristling horse hair. This is probably a piece of the pelt that accompanies the mask worn by a man, because this certainly is someone who is trying to stay hidden from clear view.” ref

“A drawing by Abbé Breuil, allows us to see a man adorned with a big beard and a long tail. We even believe that the features we see above his head are antlers. So there would be an absolute correlation between this and the stone carving of the Three Brothers. One possibility is that this represents a kind of divine being, another is that it is of a wizard. We believe that the artist wanted to represent a magician. For what purpose we do not know. Nothing allows us to guess his thoughts or his motivations. It seems that this artist was probably the sorcerer himself, wand he would have drawn his portrait with care and integrity, as a faithful rendering of his appearance during his rituals.” ref

“It is placed in the most remote corner of the lower cave, but on a wall overlooking the hundreds of animals that he or his colleagues have, for long sequences of generations, drawn to cast spells. Because in everything in this cave we talk about magic. Most of the animals have arrows in their flank; others are surrounded or covered with these signs in the form of the letter P recalling the claviforms of Niaux and Altamira, and those found in the drawings of the Tuc d’Audoubert. They appear again here, sometimes in large numbers (there are up to twelve on one horse). At the bottom of the upper gallery, of difficult and even dangerous access, the same red painted sign occurs, forty centimetres high, like a trail of blood, above an arch.” ref

“The Grotte de Gabillou also known as Grotte de las Agnelas is a cave in France in which prehistoric ornaments stemming from the paleolithic period exist. It is situated in the commune of Sourzac in the department of DordogneNouvelle Aquitaine, and is a private property. Its sediments are from the Maastrichtian era. It is assumed that some of the ornaments stem from the Magdalenian. The cave contains more than 200 ornaments, fifty-six horses, twenty-one reindeers, eighteen birds, twelve bisons, eight ibex, and some bears and rabbits.” ref

“The animals are mostly depicted as a whole and their proportions were observed; sometimes the animals are in movement, while others are seated. Other engravings depict humans like a woman giving birth. A remarkable example is the ornament known as The Sorcerer, which is described as a horned and bearded man-like figure with a foot and leg which resembles the one of a human. Stéphane Petrognani and Georges Sauvet have compared the engraved horses at the Grotte de Gabillou with the ones of the Cave de Lavaux. They also noted that the horses in Gabillou often display elaborate sensorial organs like eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. The cave also contains a series of lamps and spearheads.” ref

Grotte du Sorcier 

“The Grotte du Sorcier is located at the Roc de Saint-Cirq, an impressive cliff face in the small hamlet Saint-Cirq, halfway between Les Eyzies and Le Bugue. The cliff face is riddled with cave entrances and abris, many were used to built a house inside. The whole ensemble is renovated very carefully and the buildings are used for the show cave, one is the ticket office, another one contains the prehistoric museum, one is the toilet. Some buildings were constructed with dry walled limestone slabs, even the roof was covered by limestone slabs without the use of mortar.” ref

“The visit to the cave includes three parts. The first is an ascent to a hermits’ cell, which is called “sportivé”. Actually, there is an uneven staircase with huge steps, then a second staircase which is torn and half of it eroded away. The handrail is a rope. After entering the small natural cave above, which has an artificially excavated entrance, there is a wooden ladder in the middle of the cave. The cave leads up to a small hole in the ceiling, only 50 cm wide and 60 cm high. A crawl through this hole ends on the floor of a small quadratic chamber some 3m wide. It has numerous small windows and trenches with numerous sills along the walls and below the windows. Those sills show numerous bowl-shaped excavations, whose use remains a weird secret. The whole room was excavated artificially from the soft Cretaceous limestone. The use of the room remains unclear, the name used is just a modern interpretation. The age is most likely Medieval.” ref

“The second part is a nice museum inside one of the restored buildings. There is a movie shown about the most important sites of cave houses in the area, in French with english subtitles. There are exhibits of Cretaceous fossils, stone tools, copies of famous Paleolithic artworks, weapons, and tools. There are even some antiques and furniture. The third part is the cave visit. The natural cave was a low passage, only about one meter high, which required crawling. It went in horizontally for about eight meters, then down two metres and a second horizontal part about six meters long. Engravings can be found from the entrance almost to the end of the cave. The first part contains bisons, deers, and horses.” ref

“The second part in the lower passage contains the most interesting engravings. The sorcerer is a human figure on a ledge, about 80 cm long, with the head to the left and the feet to the right, in an almost fetal position. It has a huge cock and only four fingers. The name sorcerer is probably wrong, it results from the fact that human figures are so rare, and generally they depict shamans with animal masks. This figure has a normal head and so it is probably no shaman at all. But it is really exceptional as there are only 14 human reprentations known, and this is one of only two complete figures, from head to feet. It is also the only one which can be visited.” ref

“Nearby is a tectiform, a geometric figure resembling a roof. And there is a bison with two female symbols. The hind legs form a triangle standing on one point and very slender, which is interpreted as a female vulva. The front legs are formed like a vertical almond with a line in the middle, which is a different, more concrete symbol of a vulva.” ref

“The cave is actually a huge chamber, nine by six meters big, with a trench at the end. This chamber was created artificially in the middle ages, when an abri, a shelter, was widened to create a cave house. The natural cave was more or less ignored, but the former floor of the cave is at the same level as the ceiling of the dugout, so it was removed completely. Today visistors can see the cave as a cupola at the ceiling on the right side of the chamber. The artificial changes have some drawbacks, some engravings have been destroyed for holes to fix beams. And the floor of the cave with all possibly existing archaeological content has also been destroyed.” ref

“The trench at the rear end allows a similar view to the engravings of the second part of the cave. However, the original cave floor is also destroyed and so it is not possible to see the sorcerer from the same perspective as the prehistoric artist. This trench is much younger and was created by the archaeologists, who discovered numerous human remains. It is also helpfull for the visitors, they have a better view, and in creating some distance between visitors and the engraving it allows guided tours, which would be impossible under more restricted conditions.” ref

Grotte du Sorcier – the Sorcerer’s cave, with prehistoric engravings

“The Grotte du Sourcier, also known as the Grotte de Saint-Cirq is one of the rare caves in the world with a prehistoric representation of a human figure. Nearly all cave paintings and engravings are of animals. La Grotte du Sorcier is a cave with engravings made by prehistoric man during the Magdalenian period, about 17000 to 12000 years ago. Inside the cave there are not a lot of engravings but one of them is a very rare engraving of a human figure known as the sorcerer. The engraving is reputed amongst historians to be one of the most beautiful engravings in Europe.” ref

“Human figures are very rare in prehistoric art and generally thought to represent particularly important people in the prehistoric groups. The “sorcier” has particularly large genitals, perhaps to indicate his power! He is named a sorcerer for no particular reason. The name was given by the Abbé Glory and has stuck. There are only 12 other human representations dating from prehistoric times in France. One of these is at the Lascaux Caves, not too far from Saint-Cirq. As well as the sorcerer there are some engravings of horses and a bison in the cave though not many. It really is for the sorcerer that you will want to visit the cave.” ref

“Rock paintings in Tadrart Acacus region of Libya dated from 12,000 BCE to 100 CE. There are paintings and carvings of animals such as giraffes and elephants reflecting the dramatic climatic changes in the area. The Acacus Mountains or Tadrart Akakus form a mountain range in the desert of the Ghat District in western Libya, part of the Sahara. They are situated east of the city of Ghat, Libya, and stretch north from the border with Algeria, about 100 kilometres (62 mi). The area has a particularly rich array of prehistoric rock art. Tadrart is the feminine form of “mountain” in the Berber languages (masculine: adrar). The Acacus Mountains were occupied by hunter-gatherers continuously in the Holocene despite fluctuating climate in the African Humid Period. These sites have been important in understanding food processing and mobility as people adapted to climate variation. Animal domestication as part of the African Neolithic was introduced in this region by around 7000 years ago, and pastoralism and foraging were the primary subsistence strategies of people in this region, not agriculture.” ref

“Sites in this region have been split into three main occupation periods: the Early Acacus, Late Acacus, and Pastoral Neolithic. The Early Acacus was a humid period from c. 9810 – 8880 years ago characterized by small groups of mobile people living in valleys and along lowland lakes. The Late Acacus (c. 8870 – 7400 years ago) was a dry period characterized by more sedentary people in larger groups living in valleys. These people greatly intensified food processing and storage of wild grains and used grinding stones and pottery extensively. The Pastoral Neolithic was characterized by increased mobility in a more humid environment again, and the domestication of animals. These people showed reduced usage of grinding stones.” ref

“The area is known for its rock art and because of the importance of these paintings and carvings. The paintings date from 12,000 BCE to 100 CE and reflect cultural and natural changes in the area. There are paintings and carvings of animals such as giraffeselephantsostriches, and camels, but also of humans and horses. People are depicted in various daily life situations, for example, while making music and dancing. Tadrart Acacus is also the site of the earliest appearance of processed milk lipids on ceramics, which have been radiocarbon-dated to 7,500 years ago. The Tadrart Acacus have a large variation of landscapes, from different-colored dunes to arches, gorges, isolated rocks, and deep wadis (ravines).” ref

Images of men as deer -Spain, Mesolithic

Shaman – Hunter – Deer

“The cult of the deer had a very important signifcance in the ideology of the primeval peoples of Eurasian forest zones. This cult included myths and rituals connected with the worship of a deer or man-deer; the ancestor of people and deer. The most important evidence supporting a deer cult in traditional societies are the totemistic myths connected with the reproduction of deer, and hunting magic rituals. These rituals were performed, above all, by shamans. The attributes of shamans: bow and arrows, deer skin and crowns of deer antlers all point to the connection of shamanism with the activities of hunters. There is considerable archaeological evidence for the existence of shamans in prehistoric deer hunting societies. Shamanism is one of the oldest forms of religious thinking and very popular among the investigators of both contemporary traditional societies and archaeologists alike. The phenomenon of Shamanism, especially “ecstatic technique” – the important feature of this religious form, is widespread across Central and Northern Asia, especially, within Siberia.” ref

Huicholi rock painting (Northern America, XX century). With a shaman, sacred Deer, ancestors, and what I used in my art, the zoomorphic being.

“Mesolithic deer frontlets could be used as a hunting camouflage, and as a detail of totemistic ritual. They became the basis for a future shaman’s costume. The totemistic rituals for deer reproduction formed gradually. During the ceremonies participants, dressed as a deer, imitated deer coupling, killed, and ate sacred animals, and buried bones and antlers in honorable places for the future regeneration of the deer. The performer of sacral activity was personified during the Mesolithic age. His function was to provide hunting success, and to secure the fertility of deer and people. These shamans created a monopoly on intercourse with deer as the spirit/helper. The burials of Shamans were marked with deer antlers. The significance of deer decreased after the transition to an economy based upon the domestication of animals, but his cult was saved and transformed. Now it had to guarantee the fertility of cattle Mesolithic deer frontlets could be used as a hunting camouflage, and as a detail of totemistic ritual. They became the basis for a future shaman’s costume. The totemistic rituals for deer reproduction formed gradually.” ref

“During the ceremonies participants, dressed as a deer, imitated deer coupling, killed and ate sacred animals, and buried bones and antlers in honorable places for the future regeneration of the deer. The performer of sacral activity was personified during the Mesolithic age. His function was to provide hunting success, and to secure the fertility of deer and people. These shamans created a monopoly on intercourse with deer as the spirit/helper. The burials of Shamans were marked with deer antlers. The significance of deer decreased after the transition to an economy based upon the domestication of animals, but his cult was saved and transformed. Now it had to guarantee the fertility of cattle and harvests. Deer became a caretaker of life power and couples. Its majestic antlers were associated with the tree of life. Deer had to guarantee the king’s immortality. Deer antlers or deer images accompanied powerful deceased in their graves. The ideological significance of deer cult in traditional peoples’ thinking was so important, that it was preserved before Christian times and is fixed within ethnographical materials and documents.” ref

“The Huichols are an indigenous people who mostly live in the mountainous areas of northern Jalisco and parts of Nayarit in north central Mexico, with the towns of San Andrés, Santa Catarina, and San Sebastián as major cultural centers. The name Huichol is derived from the word Wirriarika, which means soothsayer or medicine man in the Huichol language, which belongs to the Uto-Aztecan language family. The religious faith of the Huichols is still based on a “trinity” of veneration of the deer, corn, and peyote. The last is ritually gathered each year on a long pilgrimage to the desert area of San Luis Potosí, where the people are said to have originated and used by shamans.” ref

“The importance of this and the pantheon of gods is seen in their stylistic representations on just about everything that the Huichol decorate. They did not have a written language until recently, so these symbols were and are the primary form of preserving the ceremonies, myths, and beliefs of ancient Huichol religion. The best known Huichol art is made with modern, commercially produced items such as yarn and small beads. The Tepehuánes of Durango adapted the yarn paintings. These have replaced many of the traditional materials such as clay, stone, and vegetable dyes. Making and decorating items with beads did not begin with importation of European glass beads, as it did with a number of indigenous cultures to the far north.” ref

“Techniques for making and using beads have been in place long before that with beads made from bone, clay, stone, coral, turquoisepyritejade, and seeds. Huichol art was first documented in the very late 19th century by Carl Lumholtz. This includes the making of beaded earrings, necklaces, anklets, and even more. What mostly links the yarn paintings and beaded objects made today is the continuance of the traditional patterns used for centuries to represent and communicate with the gods. The use of commercial materials has allowed for the production of more elaborate designs and brighter colors, as well as more flexibility in how traditional concepts are rendered. It has also allowed that the production of commercialized folk art along with the production of strictly religious items.” ref

“One question concerns the “authenticity” of the yarn and bead art given the current forms’ modern origins. One person to do this was Fernando Benítez, who was particularly disturbed by the depiction of the dead as floating heads in yarn paintings; something he said was not traditionally Huichol. (origensbarnett) Much of the “authenticity” of the modern works has to do with the continued use of traditional symbols and designs. However, some items of Huichol items can be deemed non-traditional or borderline traditional, such as the production of Christmas tree decorations, masks of the sun and moon, the use of the jaguar (a Mesoamerican symbol), and the incorporation of modern images such as airplanes and modern buildings into designs. Selling of the items has not been easy for the Huichol either, with limited outlets such as tourist venues, especially Puerto Vallarta, Guadalajara, and San Miguel de Allende as well as sales to middlemen who can earn much more from the works than they can.” ref

“Notable Huichol artists include Emeteria Ríos Martínez, who has done a number of yarn painting murals. José Benítez Sánchez is a shaman-artist, who helped to expand yarn painting from its early decorative function to larger more vision like pieces. Pablo Taizan is also a shaman in the village of Mesa de Tirador. He principally does beadwork featuring animal figures used in healing.” ref

“When ceremonial or religious items are made, all aspects of the making from materials to colors to designs are important as they are identified with particular gods and meanings. Mesquite and the color reddish brown belong to Tatewari, who is of the earth, and the wood of the Brazil tree is related to Tayuapa or “Father Sun.” Symbols such as the golden eagle and macaws are related to Tatewari. Shapes such as the deer, coyote, pine tree or whirlwind can be associated with Tamat’s Kauyumari, who shaped the world. The salate tree, the armadillo, and the bear are associated with Takutzi Nakahue, the mother of all gods and of corn. The toto is a small white flower with five petals associated with the rainy season.” ref

“Sashes and belts often have designs that mimic the markings on the backs of snakes, which are also associated with rain, along with good crops, health, and long life. The zigzag lines that emanate from all living things represent communication with the deities. The butterfly motif is reminiscent of the Itzpapolotl or Obsidian Butterfly, a principal deity of the classical Aztecs. The most common motifs are related to the three most important elements in Huichol religion, the deer, corn, and peyote. The first two are important as primary sources of food, and the last is valued for its hallucinogenic properties which give shamans visions.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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A 7,500-4,750 years old paganistic ritual culture of Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine. With goddess and other figurines as well as sun temples. Also, with symbols like the yin and yang were not in China until oracle bones around 3,200 years ago, and not in Chinese philosophy until the 2,400 years ago. ref, ref

“Figurines also differ in poses – standing or sitting. Near the sitting figurines, mostly at the earlier stages of the culture, stylised little chairs were often found. Researchers call some of them “horned”, since their backs are shaped as horns with their edges pointing upwards. Such “horned” images, or a crescent with its horns pointing upwards as a component of the ancient AllatRa sign, were often depicted on ceramics as well as on clay models of Trypillian houses. There are also figurines with “hats” having a shape of a crescent with its horns pointing upwards, which provides some researchers with a ground to associate such female images with lunar symbolism and call them Lunar Goddesses. Moreover, some researchers believe that the placement of such figures on a chair-throne emphasizes a special status of women in the society.” ref  

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Old Europe Ritualist Cultures: Divine Couple, Possibly animal/half-human hybrid god and goddess?

I believe this could represent a “Divine Couple,” thus relate to religion/myths. It could be speculated that this Devine Couple may represent an animal/half-human hybrid god and goddess, a ruling couple related in spirit animals or a Devine Couple of totemistic animals that relate to the clan itself even could be the mythic ancestors of the tribe believed to have been sacred/deity animals.

Left-Alter: Vădastra, Romania, 5500-5000 BCE or around 7,520 to 7,000 years ago Zoomorphic altar. ref

Right-Alter: Cucuteni Culture A phase Zoomorphic altar 4600-4000 BCE or around 6,620 to 6,000 years ago from Trușești in Romania, house no. XXIV, in its central area. ref, ref

This could relate to Hierogamy: “The ritual enactment of sexual relations between gods and goddesses in order to guarantee the fertility of crops.” ref

The cosmological symbolism also can be thought by people of the past to translated onto an animal, human form, or a mix of both. The gender at times may differ due to culture but a standard theme can be highlighted as the man was related with the pattern of the Heavens including the sun like related gods of the sun and man was the driving force of the bull (or other horned animals) like storm gods and high gods. The women also have been related to bulls like in later Egypt, but also often associate with felines/cats and the Earth or moon. Moreover, the context for the ‘Supreme Ultimate’ symbol of things like bulls and cats seen in its house shrines can be seemingly related back to places like Catal Hoyuk. ref

According to Greek mythology, the Titans were a divine race of primordial, powerful deities, such as Phoebe the female goddess was the Titaness of Brilliance and the Moon created by Goddess Gaea who was known as Mother Earth without the intervention of any man, by her own will gave birth to the Mountains and the boundless Seas in ancient Greece. Gaea also created Uranus the first ruler of the Universe and the god of Heaven/Sky to surround and cover her, they became mates producing the remaining twelve Titans. With Uranus and Gaea as lovers they thus become, for ancient Greeks, the believed first divine couple of the World. ref, ref, ref, ref

There are a few representations of a divine/royal couple enthroned, the female figure sitting in the lap of the male, in Mesopotamian iconography. In Egypt, the motif is mostly restricted to the reign of Akhenaten, seen with Nefertiti as a royal emblem, divine apparition, and erotic symbolism. This ancient divine/royal couple motif may have traveled to Egypt at a time when Mesopotamian mythological texts were used, and other motifs of eastern origin seem to have been favored. ref

“Totemism is a relationship of spiritual kinship between a human or group of humans and a particular species such as an animal; which is generally held to be an ancestor, guardian, and/or also can sometimes overlap with the human self in some way. In the pre-Christian worldview and practices of the Norse and other Germanic peoples, totemism can be thought to be manifested in two especially prominent and powerful areas: the animal helping spirits, most notably the fylgjur, and the patron animals of shamanic military societies. Many of the gods and goddesses have personal totem animals which may or may not be fylgjur. For example, Odin is particularly associated with wolves, ravens, and horses, Thor with goats, and Freya and Freyr with wild boars. It should come as no surprise, then, that their human devotees have personal totems of their own.” ref

“Fylgjur may also “mark transformations between human and animal” or shapeshifting. The idea of fylgjur as animals reflect the character of the person they represent, akin to a totem animal. Men who were viewed as a leader would often have fylgja to show their true character. This means that if they had a “tame nature”, their fylgja would typically be an ox, goat, or boar. If they had an “untame nature” they would have fylgjur such as a fox, wolf, deer, bear, eagle, falcon, leopard, lion, or a serpent. when fylgjur appears in the form of women, they are then supposedly guardian spirits for people or clans. It has been addressed that fylgja women could be considered a dís, ghost, or goddess that is attached to fate. In some literature and sagas, the fylgjur can take the form of mice, dogs, foxes, cats, birds of prey, or carrion eaters because these were animals that would typically eat such afterbirths. The word fylgja means “to accompany” like that of the Fetch in Irish folklore. It can also mean “afterbirth of a child” meaning that the afterbirth and the fylgja are connected.” ref

“One of the most ancient concepts in religion is that of the divine couple. In Sumeria, the divine couple appears as part of perhaps the earliest notion of Trinity. God the Father was symbolized as the Sun, his consort was symbolized alternately as either the Moon or the Earth, and the king was viewed as their offspring: the Son of the Sun; a living representative (or emanation) of God on Earth.
In many traditions, the gods and goddesses who comprise the divine couple are not seen as being separate or distinct entities, but rather as different aspects of one another, or even emanations of one another. In this, we see traces of an even more ancient tradition, God as the primordial androgyne.” ref

List of known divine couples in religion

“Nanna & Ningal (Sumerian) · Shamash & Aya (Sumerian) · Marduk & Sarpanit (Babylonian) · Anshar & Kishar (Akkadian) · Enlil & Ninlil (Akkadian) · Adad (Ishkur) & Shala (Akkadian) · Osiris & Isis (Egyptian) · El (Ilāh) & Athirat (Phoenician) · Hadad & Anat (Phoenician) · Hammon & Tanit (Carthaginian) · Yahweh & Asherah (Hebrew) · Teshub & Hebate (Hittite) · Sarruma & Ankara (Hittite) · Zeus & Hera (Greek) · Sol & Janus (Roman) · Jupiter & Juno (Roman) · Mitra & Varuna (Indo-Aryan) · Odin & Freya (Germanic) · Thor & Sif (Germanic) · Baldr & Nanna (Germanic)” ref

Q: What is the Lost World of Old Europe?
A: In 4500 BC, before the invention of the wheel or writing, before the first cities were built in Mesopotamia and Egypt, Old Europe was among the most sophisticated and technologically advanced places in the world. The term “Old Europe” refers to a cycle of cultures that thrived in Europe principally in the fifth and first half of the fourth millennia BC, then suffered what seems to have been a sudden collapse. ref
Q: Where in Europe did these cultures exist?
A: Old Europe refers to the cultures of southeastern Europe, centered in today’s Bulgaria and Romania, and also in parts of Moldova and Ukraine. ref
Q: What are some of the most noteworthy aspects of the pieces in the exhibition?
A: The pottery and figurines were decorated with striking designs. Female “goddess” figurines, found in almost every settlement, have triggered intense debates about the ritual and political power of women. ref
Q: Why is it called a “Lost” world?
A: Old Europe achieved a peak of creativity between 5000 and 3500 BC, but mysteriously collapsed. Later prehistoric European cultures developed in a different direction, with more widely dispersed populations, greater reliance on stockbreeding, and less investment in houses, pottery, and female symbols. Old Europe was utterly forgotten until it began to be rediscovered by archaeologists in the decades around World War I. In that sense it truly was “lost.” ref
Q: How advanced were the cultures of Old Europe?
A: At its peak, about 5000–3500 BC, Old Europe was developing many of the political, technological, and ideological signs of “civilization.” Some Old European villages grew to citylike sizes, larger than the earliest cities of Mesopotamia. Some Old European chiefs wore stunning costumes gleaming with gold, copper, and shell ornaments—displays of opulence that still surprise and puzzle archaeologists. Old European metalsmiths were, in their day, among the most advanced metal artisans in the world, and certainly the most active. ref
Q: What are the hallmarks of the cultures of Old Europe?
A: First, substantial, heavily built homes. Second, technically sophisticated pottery made of fine clays, often decorated with complex incised and painted designs. Third, figurines that portrayed females, frequently found in houses. And fourth, participation in a cycle of long-distance trade. Some of these traits—substantial houses often with room for visitors; dozens of different types of pottery (bowls, jugs, pots, pot stands, storage jars, and so on) made for elaborate service and display at social events; and figurines connected with domestic rituals—emphasized the importance of the home as a center of family, social, and ritual life. ref
Q: Why are the female figurines such a special part of the exhibition?
A: One of the most famous aspects of Old Europe is the abundance of figurines, the majority of them females. The enigmatic female-centered cults of Old Europe have generated sharp disagreement among archaeologists, historians and feminists. The exhibition includes dozens of elaborately painted and decorated female figurines of many kinds and styles. The prevalence of female images among the anthropomorphic figurines of Old Europe have suggested to some that they mirrored a matrilineal and matrifocal Old European social structure, in which women were the dominant figures in social and political life. ref
Q: What led to the sudden collapse of old Europe?
A: About 4300–4100 BC, more than six hundred settlements were burned and abandoned. People scattered and became much more mobile, depending for their food on herds of sheep and cattle rather than fields of grain. Exactly what happened to Old Europe is the subject of a long and vigorous debate. One possibility is that Old Europe collapsed in a period of intensified raiding and warfare caused by the migration into the lower Danube valley of people who were mobile herders, possibly mounted on horseback, from the steppe grasslands of Ukraine. A migration from the steppes does seem to have happened about the same time as the collapse, but whether it caused the collapse is debated. ref
Q: Did Women Rule?
A: Female figurines predominate in Old European material culture. They can be found represented individually as well as in large groups, and in contexts identified as domestic, ritual, religious, and funerary. The proliferation of female imagery throughout the fifth and fourth millennia BC has prompted some scholars to interpret Old European culture as a peaceful world where female-centered goddess worship prevailed. Males, according to this theory, played a largely secondary role in society. Some scholars, however, consider this argument idealized—in fact, many villages were fortified, weapons were buried with men, and adult males had the richest graves in cemeteries. ref
Q: What Was He Thinking?
A: One of the most famous figurines from Old Europe—“The Thinker”—represents a male seated on a low stool with his hands placed against his cheeks. The overall composition is frequently remarked upon for its affinities to modern art, and calls to mind the works of Picasso, Modigliani, and Brancusi. His unusual pose may have been meant to suggest a pensive state, but his precise thoughts, and even the meaning of his gesture, remain a matter of debate. It is important to note that the figurine’s final context was in a Hamangia grave, suggesting the possibility of a funerary significance. Is he lost in thought, or is he perhaps shown in mourning? ref
Q: Why Did They Burn Down Their Houses?
A: Archaeologists have long known that the houses in many Old European settlements were burned, but they attributed the frequent fires to warfare or natural accidents—the latter were probably a common occurrence in villages composed of thatched-roof homes. However, experimental fires set in modern replicas of Old European dwellings failed to produce the intense heat that is evident in the vitrified clay plaster of many archaeological houses. These modern experiments have convinced a number of scholars that certain Copper Age homes were filled with fuel and intentionally set ablaze. Fire is a purifying force, and was sacred in many ancient religions. In tell settlements, new houses were built on top of the leveled ruins of old burned houses, and it is possible that dwellings were destroyed by fire following the death of a revered elder or after a certain number of generations. ref
Q: Why Did They Vanish?
A: About 4300–4100 BC all of the known tell settlements in the lower Danube valley and eastern Bulgaria were burned and abandoned. Although Old European traditions survived and even thrived in the western and northern periphery of Old Europe, the tell settlements that had been occupied almost continuously for up to 2,000 years became silent mounds where sheep grazed. Marija Gimbutas of UCLA described the end of Old Europe as a war of the genders, in which patriarchal, horse-riding, Indo-European-speaking nomadic herders invaded from the arid steppes of southern Ukraine to destroy a peaceful world where females had been worshipped in Mother-Goddess cults. This idealized picture of Old Europe has not stood up to new archaeological evidence, but an alternate explanation is not yet widely accepted. It was probably a combination of declining agricultural yields, climate change, and conflict over resources, in addition to the arrival of immigrants from the steppes, that brought an end to Old Europe. ref

“The Cucuteni (and others) also made rather spectacular pottery often decorated with intricate geometric designs.” ref 

Sun imagery or swastika motifs on Cucuteni-Trypillian ceramics ref 

“The name swastika comes from Sanskrit (Devanagari: स्वस्तिक) meaning ‘conducive to well being’ or ‘auspicious’. In Hinduism, the symbol with arms pointing clockwise (卐) is called swastika, symbolizing surya (‘sun’), prosperity and good luck, while the counterclockwise symbol (卍) is called sauvastika, symbolizing night or tantric aspects of Kali.” ref 

“The earliest known use of the swastika symbol—an equilateral cross with arms bent to the right at 90° angles—was discovered carved on a 15,000-year-old ivory figurine of a bird made from mammoth tusk. The ancient engraving is hypothesized to have been used for fertility and health purposes, the pattern similar to one that is found naturally occurring on the mammoth—an animal that has been regarded as a symbol of fertility. From its earliest conception, the symbol is believed to have been positive and encouraging of life. The modern name for the icon, derived from the Sanskrit svastika, means “conducive to well-being.” It has been used by cultures around the world for myriad different purposes throughout history: as a symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism; as a stylized cross in Christianity; in ancient Asiatic culture as a pattern in art; in Greek currency; in Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque architecture; and on Iron Age artifacts. While the symbol has a long history of having a positive connotation, it was forever corrupted by its use in one cultural context: Nazi Germany.” ref 

The Cucuteni–Trypillia cultural complex 

“One of the most important and best-explored early farming communities in Eastern Europe is the Late Neolithic–Chalcolithic Cucuteni–Trypillia cultural unity (CTU). CTU sites are located either in close proximity to, or within, river valleys, in most cases on natural elevations. The number of CTU sites found in the territory of Ukraine alone is about 2,100; most of them are permanent settlements. Table 2 presents the areas of the sites. The typical (median) area of Trypillia settlements is significantly smaller than their mean area at each stage because there is a relatively small number of exceptionally large settlements that affect the average but not the median area. The difference between the mean and the median areas is not very strong at the earlier stages A–BI but becomes extreme at the later stages. In such cases, the median area best represents a typical site. There is a systematic increase in the size of the settlements, with a maximum during the middle stages.” ref 

“The animal remains identified at the Trypillia sites belong to both wild species (red deer, wild boar, roe deer, elk, etc.) and domesticated species (cattle, pig, sheep/goat and horse); the relative occurrence of species varies significantly from site to site, implying considerable variations in subsistence. Cattle (and possibly horses) were used for transportation and traction as evidenced by bone structures and pottery models of sledges with ox heads found at several sites. From the early phases, CTU settlements consisted of several one- or two-storey houses, each supposedly inhabited by a single family (sometimes, several families). The population of a typical settlement (estimated 50 to 500 people) formed a basic community unit, apparently sharing the ownership of land and other resources. No communal cemeteries are known at the CTU sites from the early and middle periods. From the earliest periods onwards, female effigies were predominant among the portable figurines, possibly symbols of fecundity, as grains of wheat and barley were found included in the ceramic fabric of several figurines at the Luka-Vrublevets’ka site. There are at least two concepts concerning the origins and expansion of the CTU; in the main, it is viewed as a result of migration from west to east and south.” ref 

Mitochondrial DNA analysis of eneolithic trypillians from Ukraine reveals neolithic farming genetic roots 

“The Cucuteni-Trypillia culture complex dominated the cultural landscape of the Carpathian foothills in eastern Romania, Moldova and the territory of modern-day Ukraine west of the Dnieper River during the Eneolithic (Copper Age) period in eastern Europe, ca. 7,,400–4,700  years ago.  Spanning more than 2,000 years, TC influenced the course of human population and cultural history in eastern Europe. Some of the best-known TC accomplishments are its proto-urban mega-sites dated to 6,100–5,600 years ago. These are architectural phenomena of communal living with each site stretching over 150 hectares with a carefully planned layout and hundreds of buildings that could house more than 10,000 people. The fact that Trypillian groups carried out active trade and interactions with their neighbors is well documented in the archeological record. Trypillian neighbors to the north and northwest were the Lengyel and Funnel Beaker (FBC, also Trichterbecker or TRB) culture groups. In the south, TC interacted with the North Pontic Region (NPR) steppe populations with which TC formed a steppe-agrarian conglomerate called Usatovo ca. 5,300 years ago, which left a lasting impression on the region and beyond. Apart from the impressive burial mounds (kurgans) the Usatovo people left behind, Usatovo also likely mediated the spread of Indo-European languages across Europe, in particular helping to forge a link between the steppe and TRB groups from southeast Poland thus facilitating the establishment of Pre-Germanic dialects.” ref 

“The agricultural revolution in Eastern Europe began in the Eneolithic with the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture complex. In Ukraine, the Trypillian culture (TC) existed for over two millennia (ca. 7,400–4,700 years ago) and left a wealth of artifacts. Yet, their burial rituals remain a mystery and to date almost nothing is known about the genetic composition of the TC population. One of the very few TC sites where human remains can be found is a cave called Verteba in western Ukraine. This report presents four partial and four complete mitochondrial genomes from nine TC individuals uncovered in the cave. The results of this analysis, combined with the data from previous reports, indicate that the Trypillian population at Verteba carried, for the most part, a typical Neolithic farmer package of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) lineages traced to Anatolian farmers and Neolithic farming groups of central Europe. At the same time, the find of two specimens belonging to haplogroup U8b1 at Verteba can be viewed as a connection of TC with the Upper Paleolithic European populations. At the level of mtDNA haplogroup frequencies, the TC population from Verteba demonstrates a close genetic relationship with population groups of the Funnel Beaker/ Trichterbecker cultural complex from central and northern Europe (ca. 5,950–4,500 years ago).” ref 

Some have suggested this culture was matriarchal though I doubt that I would say it was more likely semi-egalitarian to a certain degree, with generally male led clans with women as its main spiritual/religious leaders/elders, thus a form of societal power dualism. Women controlled some cultural things similar to how the men controlled half the culture as clan leaders/elders thus the elite where both men and women but engaging in different but mostly equal power roles in different arenas. 

“The Cucuteni-Trypillia culture communities never existed in isolation; their extensive connections with neighbouring groups are recognizable in various aspects of their material culture. Contact with the East became particularly apparent during the middle phase, when the settlements expanded further eastward and grew in size. Several sites became particularly large: Vesely Kut reached 150 ha in size; Talyanky was still larger at 341 ha and had approximately 14,000 inhabitants; the area of Maydanetske was 210 ha, with 2,900 houses identified by geophysical surveying. All these settlements were surrounded by fortifications consisting of palisades and houses built next to each other. At this stage, the Trypillia sites show signs of a growing social hierarchy, primarily evident in the occurrence of élite burials. The earliest recognizable kurgan-type barrow has been found in Moldova, at the site of Kainari. It contained a female skeleton with a rich collection of grave goods consisting of ceramic vessels (Trypillia BI) and copper adornments. Several Middle Trypillia sites included stone anthropomorphic sceptres and mace heads.” ref 

Reindeer in Siberian shamanism

“Reindeer in Siberian shamanism reflect the cultural, as well as the economic, relationship between the native peoples of Siberia, a region of Northern Asia, and the reindeer that live there. It involves the nomadic reindeer herders, those that hunt wild reindeer, and those who maintain domesticated ones. Their religious beliefs reflect the spiritual philosophy of shamanism, and their traditions often involve reindeer in several steps of the process of practicing their religion.” ref

“Russian anthropologist S. M. Shirokogoroff wrote that by being transformed into a reindeer, the shaman feels himself to be “swift, vigilant, watchful, the best animal the Tungus know.” Reindeer antlers, in particular, serve simultaneously as weapons and representations of power. Also, the definition of shamanism varies widely. Soviet scholars perceived them as a version of the priesthood, but Willerslev posits that shamanism is a “broad-based activity practiced to varying degrees by common hunters rather than as a form of ‘mysticism’ under the control of a religious elite.” ref

“A shaman’s baton is an important object for religious celebrations, where it represents the shaman’s spirit helper and serves as the tool for striking his drum, which is perceived as “driving the reindeer.” The Evenks utilise the baton to predict the future regarding the growth and welfare of their reindeer herds by throwing the baton towards the inquiring person and determining the answer based on how it falls.” ref

“The drum is the most important shamanic utensil because the sounds a shaman makes with it permit him to summon spirits to aid him in his work. A shaman’s drum consists of a circular wooden hoop over which reindeer hide has been stretched. The drum is closely associated with reindeer, the riding of which facilitated the shaman’s ability to go on journeys, and was the source of the shaman’s strength. A shaman’s drum was initiated and brought to life in an initiation ceremony that concluded with a feast of reindeer meat that had been slaughtered the day before.” ref

“The ceremony in which the drum is brought to life spans several days. On the second day, the ceremony is devoted to retracing the steps of the life of the reindeer whose skin was used to make the drum. The shaman collects everything dropped by the deer, including all hairs, and brings everything to the swamp, where Ylyunda kotta, the mistress of the universe, lives. With the help of eight wolves, the shaman catches the soul of the reindeer for his drum.” ref

“A shaman’s outfit was prepared so that the power of the reindeer whose skins constructed the robe would be transferred to the one who wore it. The headdress often consists of a metal cap with reindeer antlers, and reindeer antlers also figured heavily in the designs of objects hung on the cloak. Attached to the cloak were strips of reindeer hair or reindeer skin, referring to the body of the reindeer and to the fact that shamans regain the ability to fly that, according to the belief of the Ket people, reindeer had once possessed. Shamans also have wooden stakes that represent the reindeer on which they ride to other worlds. The best of the Enets shamans have iron reindeer staves with a face at the tip of its handle and a lower end shaped like a hoof. These staves are used for treating the sick and sending the souls of the dead to the next world.” ref

“A shaman’s main strategy in treating the sick was to intercede between the sick person, and the spirits and deities whose behaviour was associated with disease, by banishing the evil spirit from the patient and returning the soul stolen by the spirits. Shamans invite spirits inside themselves by swallowing and yawning and treat them to reindeer blood and fat before using their influence to cast his baton to discover the most effective source of treatment. They also called upon helper spirits, which were often reindeer, to transfer the disease from a human body into the helper spirit. A sick person can also be cured by placing the injured part of his body inside the “belly” of a reindeer; when the injured area is too large for this management of the problem, the reindeer’s entrails are pulled out to form a loop through which the ill person can step.” ref

“Although different Siberian peoples follow different traditions, many ceremonial practices involving reindeer possess similar underlying features. These often relate to the well-being of the herd and the monetary benefits gained as a result, reflect the people’s nomadic heritage, and express humanity’s relationship to the cyclic progression of the seasons. In general, sacrifices take place in “sacred places”, which are usually sanctified thickets in the woods that are home to gods or spirits and where hallowed trees stand. Reindeer skins, hoof, and antlers hang in the trees, because it is believed necessary for the deity to receive the entirety of the animal being sacrificed. Although different peoples perform reindeer sacrifice in different ways, all of these rites involve the offering of the animal to a spirit or deity in some way.” ref

Khanty

“To the Khanty people, reindeer sacrifice is part of a series of overarching practices around ritual killings, offered to “make life for a man easier”, in order to prolong life and help men to recover from sickness, according to the son of a shaman. Khanty differentiate between “bloody” sacrifices, or yir, in which the blood of the sacrificed animals is preserved and consumed, in addition to portions of the raw meat, and “bloodless” sacrifices, or pori, in which the meat of the sacrificed animal is boiled and eaten. Khanty have sacrificed other animals besides reindeer, including horses, cows, bulls, rams, and roosters, but reindeer are infinitely preferable because the sacrifice of a useful animal is considered to be more significant.” ref

“The choice of location for the sacrifice is revealed in a dream to the chirta-ko, or Khanty cultural specialist. The chirta-ko prepared by leading the tribe in singing spirit songs accompanied by his drum. During a specific song, he consumes mushrooms and is enlightened by their influence as to the logistical details of the sacrifice. The reindeer to be sacrificed have colored cloths tied to their necks, and the different colors hold special meanings: white is associated with the sky, black is associated with the underworld, and red is associated with earthly mortality. The gender of the reindeer should be the same as that of the spirit to whom it is being offered. The reindeer’s coloring is an important factor in determining the specific individuals to be sacrificed. The number of animals offered in communal sacrifice is usually either three or seven.” ref

“After a ritual with chanting prayers, the reindeer are killed and skinned without spilling any blood on the snow. The people clean the butchered carcasses and consume raw muscle meat with salt and cooked stomach, heart, and liver. The ceremony ends by chanting prayers of thanksgiving. They then hang the reindeer skins and bones in trees for the purpose of returning the animal’s spirit to the “Keeper of Game or Master of Animals” for the purpose of being “reclothed with new flesh and sent back to the earth-surface world for the benefit of the people.” ref 

Koryaks

“Among the Koryaks, men bring the reindeer herds away from the summer camp during the summer, but the women, children, and old people remain. At the first notice that the herds are returning, the people run out to meet them with burning fire.” ref

Chukchi

“The Chukchi hold a similar celebration, where they greet the returning herd with a boisterous welcome, before slaughtering a series of both fawns and bucks, skinning their carcasses, and extracting marrow from the reindeer’s bones as sustenance. They then use reindeer blood in a painting ritual. The “fawn festival” is an annual Chukchi event which takes place every spring, during which a reindeer is sacrificed to the “One-On-High.” The Chukchi also hold a “ceremonial of antlers” in which they collect all of the antlers of all of the animals in their herds, and when the collection becomes too cumbersome to move, they place them all in a large pile and hold a sacrifice.” ref

Burial traditions: “In general, sacrifices take place in “sacred places”, which are usually sanctified thickets in the woods that are home to gods or spirits and where hallowed trees stand. Reindeer skins, hooves, and antlers hang in the trees, because it is believed necessary for the deity to receive the entirety of the animal being sacrificed. Although different peoples perform reindeer sacrifice in different ways, all of these rites involve the offering of the animal to a spirit or deity in some way. Many cultures have some version of the idea that the souls of the dead need a vehicle to transport them to the next world, so it is logical that the peoples of Siberia, where reindeer are the most common large draught and riding animals, believe that reindeer perform this service.” ref

Khanty

“Reindeer antlers are often found piled on top of burial sites.” ref

Yugra

“The Yugra peoples also use reindeer to transport their dead for burial, but they then strangle the animals at the gravesite before slaughtering them. They then wrap the bones in the skin and leave the bundle to the left of the grave, also positioning the head (with attached antlers) on the roof of the grave-house.” ref

Evenks

“The Evenks believed in spirits that inhabited the underground, so they buried their dead above ground by sewing the bodies into reindeer skins and placing the wrapped cadavers on high poles.” ref

Chukchi

“Among the Chukchi, the burial ceremony provides the dead person with the means to travel to the underworld and to send them on their way, if not to carry them the whole distance. First, the shaman divines where the person wished to be buried. Friends of the deceased carry the body out of the tent through its smoke hole or out the back and tie it to a new or freshly repaired sledge to which reindeer have been harnessed. When the funeral cortège arrives at the burial site, the reindeer are untied and stabbed, then rehitched to the sled.” ref

“The leader of the funeral procession then takes the reins and cracks the whip, pretending to drive the reindeer to the country of the dead, and he only ceases when the reindeer are dead. Then the reindeer are butchered and the carcasses are left on the burial site with the sledge, and harness. The deceased’s family places the skins from the slaughtered reindeer on the floor of their tent and places iron objects on top of them, preventing the dead from reemerging through the ground. The Chukchi also hold a “ceremonial of antlers” in which they collect all of the antlers of all of the animals in their herds, and when the collection becomes too cumbersome to move, they place them all in a large pile and hold a sacrifice.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref

  1. From a Gerzeh/Naqada II Late Predynastic Egyptian palette with a goddess “Bat/Hathor” cow-head sun/stars motif.
  2. From a Hierakonpolis late Gerzeh/Naqada II Predynastic or early Naqada III Proto-Dynastic Egyptian porphyry fluted bowl with two reliefs on the rim, one of which was a goddess “Hathor/Bat” cow-head sun/stars motif.
  3. From an Abydos tomb, u-210 which held a small seal with a goddess “Bat/Hathor” sun/stars motif from the Gerzeh/Naqada II Late Predynastic Egyptian period.
  4. A Mongolian Copper Age bull sun/star shamanism petroglyph
  5. A Mongolian Bronze Age deer sun/star shamanism petroglyph symbol.
  6. A Kyrgyzstan Saimaly-Tash possibly Bronze Age shamanism cow-sun person symbol petroglyph.
  7. Similar X-ray style images among different peoples of the North from Siberia to Central Asia with shamanism petroglyphs of horned animals with sun symbols from possibly as old as the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. ref, ref, ref

I surmise that there is an expression in goddess representation that relates to the three realms sky goddess with the upturned arms relating to the waxing crescent, the fat sitting goddess is a representation to the full moon and the arms turned down are a representation of the waning crescent. And it is this way both up and down arms represent metaphorical bullhorns and why goddesses are associated with bulls or as bulls. Especially, with paganism.

Could it be that the emergence of this new goddess cult of the sitting mother goddess in the Levant, somehow related to the new problems these Neolithic women faced as there was a decrease in mean age at death for Neolithic females which may be the result in higher levels or maternal risk associated with child-birth. It is intriguing to consider the shifts in perceptions and behaviors surrounding women’ health, pregnancy, and childbirth, and kin relations that might extend from such changes. Studies point to increasing fertility and higher birth rates among some newly sedentary groups. ref 

Goddess and the Bull and what of the smaller figurines from Neolithic contexts in the southern Levant?

Neolithic Levantine figurines are typically deposited in domestic fill, rather than pits, caches, or other distinctive features. Some are made of stone, but most are made of clay. Breakage patterns suggest that some of the figurines may have been intentionally broken. The stone examples indicate perhaps different meanings attached to different kinds of rituals being performed as in a more personal domestic cult (involving an association with mother goddess) and an additional clan ancestor cult many seem male in expression some with erect or presented phallus and the many associations in art like that at Çatalhöyük it wich groups of men are believed to be performing ritual hunting scenes that may involve group taunting of the horned animals (involving an association with horned animals such as the bull-horns being both a part of the early phallus phenomena as well as a representation of the moons emerging crescent or dissipating crescent associated with arms of the goddess). In terms of sex/gender identification, there are figurines that encode no recognizable clues about sex or gender. And there are also examples of figurines with dual-sex connotations. While the majority exhibit a female form, there are also examples of male figurines. refref 

A prehistoric wall art that to me, is expressions of Hunting Cult behavior, 9,500-7,700 years ago in Catal Huyuk, in Turkey with Paganism.  

“Bat was a cow goddess in Egyptian mythology depicted as a human face with cow ears and horns. By the time of the Middle Kingdom, her identity and attributes were subsumed within the goddess Hathor. The worship of Bat dates to earliest times and may have its origins in Late Paleolithic cattle herding. Bat was the chief goddess of Seshesh, otherwise known as Hu or Diospolis Parva, the 7th nome of Upper Egypt. ” ref 

Nut (goddess) 

“In Egyptian mythology, Nut was the goddess of the sky. Her body made a protective layer over the Earth. Nut was the sister and wife of Geb, the mother of (with Ra) Osiris, Nephthys, Isis, and Seth, and grandmother of Horus. Horus was also a grandchild of Ra. The ancient Egyptians believed that Nut swallowed the sun-god, Ra, every night and gave birth to him every morning.” ref 

“The ancient Egyptians had three calendars, but the Agricultural one was the one that was used in everyday life. It was made up of three seasons, each containing four months. The seasons were Akhet, (the inundation) Peret (when the water retreated), and Shemu (harvest season). Nut loved Geb, but Ra was not happy that she loved Geb so he told Shu, their father (the air god) to separate them. Then, Ra put a curse on Nut so she could not have babies on any of the three-hundred sixty days of the year. Thoth wanted to let Nut be able to have babies so he challenged Khonsu, the moon god, to a game of Senet. If he won, he would be able to add five days to the year. If he lost, he would be killed. Thoth won and added five more days to the year. On the first day, Nut had Osiris to replace Ra, but Set later deceived him and Osiris became a god of the underworld. On the second day she had Horus, the war god. On the third day, she had Set, the god of storms, evil, and Chaos, on the forth day she had Isis the goddess of magic, and on the fifth day she had Nephthys the river goddess. After a long time, the Egyptians realized the calendar was off because they did not have the quarter day at the end, like we do by having leap years. The calendar said it was flood season, but the flood did not come until later. The ancient Egyptians noticed the star Sirius would rise right before the flood. They used this as the beginning of the year and as the beginning of flooding.” ref  

Did you know the God of the Bible once was known by bull symbolism?

· Bible God El in ancient pictographic Hebrew then in modern-day Hebrew.

· God El is seen 250 times in the Hebrew bible primarily describing the God of Israel (Isra-El).

· Bible God YHWH or Yahweh in ancient pictographic Hebrew, with upraised arms like “KA” an Egyptian (life-force or spirit after death) hieroglyph of upraised arms relating to the bull.· Egyptian with upraised arms means High, Rejoice, or Support, which to me, is similar to both the hieroglyph KA with upraised arms and the people pictographic Hebrew symbols (meaning Lo, Behold, “The”) for Yahweh with upraised arms.

· The KA statue, on the statue of pharaoh Awibre Hor, provided a physical place for the KA to manifest of the hieroglyph representing KA’s upraised arms. KA was sometimes depicted on top of the head of the statue to reinforce its intended purpose.

· Egyptian meaning “High, Rejoice, or Support” which to me, is similar to both the hieroglyph KA with upraised arms and the people in the pictograph Hebrew symbols for Yahewh with upraised arms.

· Sinai 357 reflects an Egyptian name to a Hurrian god “Teshub” using an inherited Northwest Semitic formula and a sacred bull was Teshub’s animal. So Canaanites payers to gods such as El in their own Proto-Sinaitic / Proto-Canaanite scripts that later inspired ancient pictographic Hebrew followed by Paleo-Hebrew.

· 1. Egyptian Hieroglyphs 5,200 years ago 2. Proto-Sinaitic 3,850 years ago to Proto-Canaanite / Pictograph Hebrew 3,550 years ago 3. Phoenician 3,200 years ago to Paleo-Hebrew 3,000 years ago 4. Greek 2,800 years ago 5. Latin 2,700 years ago. ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

To have faith is to make a presumption of faith towards something and the most common use of faith is toward things that relate to concepts of gods such as their names. Another way to have faith would mean to understand why a god would change their name. In the Jewish and Christian religions, their god’s name was changed. In the beginning, god’s eternal name is El, Near East god is most holy, and the father of all gods. El is a Semitic word meaning “god” or may relate to multiple ancient Near Eastern deities such as Hebrew: el, Amorite: il, Arabic ilah, Akkadian and Ugaritic: ilu, Aramaic and Phoenician: l, and is the known name of the original god to the Abrahamic religions. ref, ref, ref 

In Judaism, the later Hebrew and Aramaic texts, as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating around 2,408 to 1,700 years ago, used El or Elohim for the names of God and sometimes were in written paleo-Hebrew script dating about 3,000 years ago, and used in the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah, which shows that El was still treated as special. ref, ref 

In the first statement of the Muslim confession of faith in the Quran, it states that “There is no god (ilah) except God (al-Lah or Allah).” And al-ilah, “the god” relates to El and Elah, the Hebrew and Aramaic words for God. ref, ref 

Also what is interesting is that Hebrew is a Semitic language and according to a popular Israeli news source the Haaretz, the country Isra-El (Israel) expresses the relationship with the 3,300 years old Canaanite deity El who was the head of the Canaanite pantheon. ref 

However, El’s name changed in the human-made Bible to El Shaddai. El Shaddai was the Bible-God’s name as first seen in Genesis 17:1, “God appeared to Abram, saying I am El Shaddai.” Similarly, in Genesis 35:11, Bible-God says to Jacob, “I am El Shaddai.” And seen in Exodus 6:2–3, El Shaddai was God’s name known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. All must follow El and Baal whose features were absorbed into the Yahweh religion. ref  

God El, the Semitic god, and the creator have a son named Baal “The Lord,” who is the governor of all adversaries to the fake god of the Jews, Yahweh or his other name El Shaddai. Bible-God, the Abrahamic god and the creator have a son named Jesus “The Lord.” It is interesting how people say that Jesus is “Lord” because Jesus is the son of Bible-God and without realizing they seem to be referencing Baal, which can mean “Lord” and is the son of El. No? Okay, let me try again! Why would a god go and change its name anyway? Some religious scholars have stated that the early Hebrews used the names Baʿal (“Lord”) and Baʿali (“My Lord”) to refer to the Lord of Israel, who is El and Yahweh. This use of Baʿal and Baʿali occurred both directly and as the divine element of some Hebrew theophoric names, which means consisting of the name of a deity and a verb. A few names that included the element Baʿal and presumably referring to Yahweh, including Saul’s son Eshbaʿal (“The Lord is Great”), and David’s son Beeliada (“The Lord Knows”). The name Bealiah is the combination of Baal and Yahweh (“The Lord is Jah” + “Yahweh is Baʿal” = “Yahweh is Lord”). ref 

To have faith would mean you would have to believe that you already know all of your god’s different names and believe you have the right god and not some other religions’ god or a combination of gods.

Heluan Ka-palette from the Early 1st Dynasty, Ancient Egypt. ref
“Ka, in ancient Egyptian religion, with the ba and the akh, a principal aspect of the soul of a human being or of a god. The exact significance of the ka remains a matter of controversy, chiefly for lack of an Egyptian definition; the usual translation, “double,” is incorrect. Written by a hieroglyph of uplifted arms, it seemed originally to have designated the protecting divine spirit of a person. The ka survived the death of the body and could reside in a picture or statue of a person.” ref
Archaeological findings at Serabit el-Khadim
“Serabit el-Khadim is a locality in the southwest Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, where turquoise was mined extensively in antiquity, mainly by the ancient Egyptians. Archaeological excavation, initially by Sir Flinders Petrie, revealed ancient mining camps and a long-lived Temple of Hathor, the Egyptian goddess who was favored as a protector in desert regions. Thirty incised graffiti in a “Proto-Sinaitic script” shed light on the history of the alphabet. The mines were worked by prisoners of war from southwest Asia who presumably spoke a Northwest Semitic language, such as the Canaanite that was ancestral to Phoenician and Hebrew. After a century of study and the initial publication by Sir Flinders Petrie, researchers agree on the decipherment of a single phrase, cracked in 1916 by Alan Gardiner: לבעלת l bʿlt (to the Lady) [baʿlat (Lady) being a title of Hathor and the feminine of the title Baʿal (Lord) given to the Semitic god], although the word m’hb (loved) is frequently cited as a second word. The script has graphic similarities with the Egyptian hieratic script, the less elaborate form of the hieroglyphs.” ref

“Hathor was often depicted as a cow, symbolizing her maternal and celestial aspect, although her most common form was a woman wearing a headdress of cow horns and a sun disk. She could also be represented as a lioness, cobra, or sycamore tree. Cattle goddesses similar to Hathor were portrayed in Egyptian art in the fourth millennium BC, but she may not have appeared until the Old Kingdom (c. 2686–2181 BC). With the patronage of Old Kingdom rulers she became one of Egypt’s most important deities. More temples were dedicated to her than to any other goddess; her most prominent temple was Dendera in Upper Egypt. She was also worshipped in the temples of her male consorts. The Egyptians connected her with foreign lands such as Nubia and Canaan and their valuable goods, such as incense and semiprecious stones, and some of the peoples in those lands adopted her worship. In Egypt, she was one of the deities commonly invoked in private prayers and votive offerings, particularly by women desiring children.” ref 

“Hathor is an ancient Egyptian goddess associated, later, with Isis and, earlier, with Sekhmet but eventually was considered the primeval goddess from whom all others were derived. She is usually depicted as a woman with the head of a cow, ears of a cow, or simply in cow form. In her form as Hesat she is shown as a pure white cow carrying a tray of food on her head as her udders flow with milk. She is closely associated with the primeval divine cow Mehet-Weret, a sky goddess whose name means “Great Flood” and who was thought to bring the inundation of the Nile River which fertilized the land.” ref 

Sinai 357 reflects an Egyptian name fulfills a vow to a Hurrian god “Teššob/Teshub” using an inherited Northwest Semitic formula and a sacred bull was also his signature animal. Sinai 357 shows how the Canaanites try to write their payers to their gods such as El in their own Proto-Sinaitic / Proto-Canaanite scripts that later inspired ancient pictographic Hebrew that was followed by Paleo-Hebrew. ref, ref 

“In the Hurrian schema, Hurrian god “Teššob/Teshub” was paired with Hebat the mother goddess; in the Hittite, with the sun goddess Arinniti of Arinna—a cultus of great antiquity which has similarities with the venerated bulls and mothers at Çatalhöyük in the Neolithic era. His son was called Sarruma, the mountain god.” ref  

“The Hurrians worshipped a great number of gods derived from various different cultures, especially Mesopotamia and Syria. Many gods were syncretised with Mesopotamian and Syrian deities over time; for example, Šauška was identified with Ishtar of Nineveh, Teššub with the Weather god of Aleppo [de], Kušuḫ with the moon god Sîn von Ḫarran [de] and the Sun god Šimige with Šamaš of Sippar.[1] This syncretism also embraced the native partners of the gods, like the Syrian Ḫebat as wife of Teššub among the western Hurrians, Nikkal as wife of the moon god, and Aya as wife of the sun god. The chief god of the Hurrians was the weather god Teššub. All of the Hurrians also worshiped Šauška, god of love and war, the fertility-god Kumarbi, the moon god Kušuḫ and the sun god Šimige.[2] Only the western Hurrians worshipped Ḫebat and her son Šarruma, who were of Syrian origin. Other important deities were the mother goddesses Ḫudena Ḫudellura, the Syrian oath-goddess Išḫara [de] and Kubaba, as well as the Mesopotamian god of wisdom, Ea (Eya-šarri), and the death god Ugur. At least among the western Hurrians, the gods were divided into male and female groups, as is clear in the kaluti lists [de] from Hattusa. The male gods (enna turroḫena) were led by Teššub in his various manifestations, while the female gods (enna aštoḫena) were led by Ḫebat and her children. The order of the gods and goddesses in these lists is not entirely fixed, but lists of gods from Hattusa and Ugarit show clear similarities. Also, the presence of groups of gods, especially the father gods (enna attenevena) is shared in these lists. No similar lists of gods are known from the eastern Hurrian area. Dyads or double gods sharing a single cult are also typical of the Hurrians. For example, Ḫebat and her son Šarruma formed the dyad Ḫebat-Šarruma.” ref  

“Although Sinai 357 is one of the longest and best-preserved early alphabetic inscriptions from Serabit el-Khadem, these characteristics have not made it any easier to interpret. Most scholars read it as a command from a mining foreman to one of his subordinates, but this reading creates logical and contextual problems. To avoid these problems, I read Sinai 357 as a votive inscription to the Hurrian deity Teššob that employs language similar to first-millennium Northwest Semitic dedicatory inscriptions. Such a reading reflects cultural and linguistic contact between speakers of Egyptian, Hurrian, and a Northwest Semitic language at the site of Serabit el-Khadem.” ref 

Sacred Bulls, the Moon, and Fertility begins at least around 35,000 years ago?

Paganism: spread of Haplogroup J and its Seeming connection of Bull Worship

Was the Bull Head a Symbol of God? Yes!

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

refrefrefrefrefref

Native American Rock art that likely relates to Shamanism

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Finnish rock art

Finnish rock art pictographs created during the Stone Age have been found at 127 sites around Finland. They consist mainly of brownish-red figures and markings painted onto steep granite walls, often overlooking waterways. There are scenes featuring people, boats, elk, fish, and mysterious part human figures. The survival of the art in adverse climatic conditions is due to their protection by a naturally forming thin layer of silicon dioxide on the rock surface. The Comb Ceramic Culture who lived in what is now Finland between 5000 to 2000 BCE is credited with their production. The paints used included a mix of iron oxide, blood, and animal fat or egg, although traces of the organic materials are no longer detectable.” ref

“Characteristics to the art are sacrificial parts (arrow points, bones, signs of fire, etc.) and the location on steep cliffs at water’s edge. Similar sites can be found in parts of Northern Sweden, Norway and Russia – mainly, it seems, in areas once populated by the Saami or other Finnic peoplesMost of the paintings lie in the Saimaa and Päijänne lake districts. By far the best-known site, at Astuvansalmi, and another site is Värikallio in the Hossa Hiking Area. This has unusual figures with triangular heads. The biggest painted area is in Central Finland, where the Saraakallio rock paintings include 50–200 pictures, maybe even more.” ref

Värikallio rock paintings

The Värikallio rock painting is located in Suomussalmi Hossa National Park in KainuuThe rock painting is the third largest in terms of motifs in Finland and it was apparently painted in the Stone Age. Today, the region is an almost uninhabited wilderness. The Värikallio rock painting is located on the northern shore of the easternmost part of Somerjärvi on the tops of the Oulujoki watershed. The distance from the Kuusamo border is 700 meters to the south. The painting surface is on the vertical rock wall facing southwest. There are paintings at a distance of 10.5 meters, approximately 0.2–2.5 meters above the lake level. A vertical cliff descends directly into the water.” ref

“Hossa is a village in Finland, located in the province of Oulu and part of the Suomussalmi municipality. The village is a popular outdoor tourist destination and is known for the oldest rock paintings in Northern Finland, dating back to 1500-2500 BC (Värikallio). The name “Hossa” originates from the old Sami word Huossa meaning “a place far away.” ref 

“The age of the rock paintings in Finland has been estimated based on the tilting of the lake basin due to land uplift. However, the height of the water level at Värikallio has remained almost at the same level throughout the post- glacial period, and therefore this timing method is not suitable for this site. Most of the rock paintings in our country are from the comb ceramic period, i.e. from the period 5000–3200 BCE. The youngest paintings may date back to 2000 BCE  stages or even later. Based on their style, the Värikallio rock paintings are estimated to have been made between 1500 and 2500 BCE.” ref

“The Värikallio rock painting is Finland’s third largest picture field. The largest picture field is Saraakallio I and the second largest is Astuvansalmi . The painting field is quite compact and its patterns are small. A maximum of 61 separate patterns have been identified on Värikallio, most of which depict human figures and deer. Some of the patterns have not been preserved intact and have remained unrecognized. The human figure with a horned head is located just above the crack in section C.” ref

Astuvansalmi rock paintings

The Astuvansalmi rock paintings (FinnishAstuvansalmen kalliomaalaukset) are located in RistiinaMikkeliSouthern SavoniaFinland at the shores of the lake Yövesi, which is a part of the large lake Saimaa. The paintings are 7.7 to 11.8 metres above the water-level of lake Saimaa. The lake level was much higher at the time the rock paintings were made. There are about 70 paintings in the area. The rock where the paintings are located looks like a human head, the form especially visible during wintertime when viewed from the ice of the lake. The rock has presumably been some kind of a cult or ceremony site. The images of moose in Finnish rock paintings may be related to ‘animal ceremonialism’, whereupon the continuity of the hunted species is guaranteed by a ritual in which the animal is sent back to its ‘owner’.” ref

The oldest paintings were made about 3000–2500 BCE. They are located at the highest level (about 11 metres). The water level changed rapidly (about 2.5 metres) with the landslide of Vuoksi. Later on the level slowly went down 8 metres to its present level. All the later paintings were made from boats during the different historical water-levels. Other archaeological artefacts have been found on the site, at the bottom of the lake, among them small amber statuettes of old gods (Ukko and Akka). Some animal jewellery was also found, one showing a bear head. The jewellery and statuettes refer to some religious ceremonies held on the site. Arrowheads have also been found, dated to 2200–1800 BCE and 1300–500 BCE. Stone age settlements from about 3300–2800 BCE have been found near Astuvansalmi in Heiniemi.” ref

The Astuvansalmi rock paintings contain the following pictures: 18 to 20 moose, about as many human figures, tens of hands and animal tracks, 8 to 9 boats, and geometrical figures and pictures that are thought to show a fish and a dog. The paintings could have a link to the Siberian and North European shamanistic tradition, where the sun was thought to be a deer or an moose running through the sky. The Lapps (or Sami people) also had a belief that the sun was a running Cosmic Sun-Reindeer. The people in the paintings were the shamans, who had a contact with the spirit world through trance with their drumming and songs. Shamanism is the oldest cultural tradition of Finland and the North. It has been actively present already in the Paleolithic age.” ref

“The human figures are both shamans and spirits, who are connected with hunting ceremonies. The human figures could also have meant the people who drew them. The rare woman figure holding a bow in her hand is thought to show the mythic “Tellervo“, a goddess from the Kalevala mythology, who is thought to be the progenitor of the human race. Women never usually took part in the hunting, that is why she is thought to be of a more divine nature. The moose has traditionally been a very important prey for the people of the north. The moose has also meant the Center of the Universe. Some of the eighteen moose of Astuvansalmi have dots on their heart. All except one is looking west. Some are moving and some are standing. The boat was an important means of transport in the lake regions of prehistoric Finland. Big boats of skin and wood were already being made before the Vikings started making their big ships. The boats were quite similar to the North American Indian models.” ref

Tellervo

“The rare woman figure holding a bow in her hand is thought to show the mythic “Tellervo“, a goddess from the Kalevala mythology. Tellervo is the Finnish goddess of forests. She was the daughter of Tapio, an East Finnish forest spirit.” ref, ref

The Kalevala is a compiled from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology, telling an epic story about the Creation of the Earth, describing the controversies and retaliatory voyages between the peoples of the land of Kalevala called Väinölä and the land of Pohjola and their various protagonists and antagonists, as well as the construction and robbery of the epic mythical wealth-making machine SampoThe Kalevala is regarded as the national epic of Karelia and Finland and is one of the most significant works of Finnish literature with J. L. Runeberg‘s The Tales of Ensign Stål and Aleksis Kivi‘s The Seven Brothers. The Kalevala was instrumental in the development of the Finnish national identity and the intensification of Finland’s language strife that ultimately led to Finland’s independence from Russia in 1917. The first version of the Kalevala, called the Old Kalevala, was published in 1835, consisting of 12,078 verses.” ref

Comb Ceramic culture

The Comb Ceramic culture or Pit-Comb Ware culture, often abbreviated as CCC or PCW, was a northeast European culture characterized by its Pit–Comb Ware. It existed from around 4200 BCE to around 2000 BCE.  The bearers of the Comb Ceramic culture are thought to have still mostly followed the Mesolithic hunter-gatherer lifestyle, with traces of early agriculture. The distribution of the artifacts found includes Finnmark (Norway) in the north, the Kalix River (Sweden) and the Gulf of Bothnia (Finland) in the west, and the Vistula River (Poland) in the south. It would include the Narva culture of Estonia and the Sperrings culture in Finland, among others. They are thought to have been essentially hunter-gatherers, though e.g. the Narva culture in Estonia shows some evidence of agriculture. Some of this region was absorbed by the later Corded Ware horizon.” ref

“The Pit–Comb Ware culture is one of the few exceptions to the rule that pottery and farming coexist in Europe. In the Near East farming appeared before pottery, then when farming spread into Europe from the Near East, pottery-making came with it. However, in Asia, where the oldest pottery has been found, pottery was made long before farming. It appears that the Comb Ceramic Culture reflects influences from Siberia and distant China. By dating according to the elevation of land, the ceramics have traditionally been divided into the following periods: early (Ka I, c. 4200 – 3300 BCE), typical (Ka II, c. 3300– 2700 BCE), and late Comb Ceramic (Ka III, c. 2800– 2000 BCE). However, calibrated radiocarbon dates for the comb-ware fragments found (e.g., in the Karelian isthmus), give a total interval of 5600 – 2300 BCE.” ref

The settlements were located at sea shores or beside lakes and the economy was based on hunting, fishing, and the gathering of plants. In Finland, it was a maritime culture that became more and more specialized in hunting seals. The dominant dwelling was probably a teepee of about 30 square meters where some 15 people could live. Also, rectangular houses made of timber become popular in Finland from 4000 BC cal. Graves were dug at the settlements and the dead were covered with red ochre. The typical Comb Ceramic age shows an extensive use of objects made of flint and amber as grave offerings. The culture was characterized by small figurines of burnt clay and animal heads made of stone. The animal heads usually depict moose and bears and were derived from the art of the Mesolithic. There were also many rock paintings. There are sources noting that the typical comb ceramic pottery had a sense of luxury and that its makers knew how to wear precious amber pendants.” ref

Genetics

“Saag et al. (2017) analyzed three CCC individuals buried at Kudruküla as belonging to Y-hg R1a5-YP1272 (R1a1b~ after ISOGG 2020), along with three mtDNA samples of mt-hg U5b1d1, U4a, and U2e1. Mittnik (2018) analyzed two CCC individuals. The male carried R1 (2021: R1b-M343) and U4d2, while the female carried U5a1d2b. Generally, the CCC individuals were mostly of Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG) descent, with even more EHG than people of the Narva culture. Lamnidis et al. (2018) confirmed and specified this to 65% Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG), 20% Western Steppe Herder (WSH), and 15% Western Hunter-Gatherer (WHG) ancestry. This amount of EHG ancestry was higher than among earlier cultures of the eastern Baltic, while WSH ancestry had previously not even been attested among such an early culture in the region.” ref

Finland’s Horned Shaman and Pre-Horned-God at least 4,500 years ago?

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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The interconnectedness of religious thinking Animism, Totemism, Shamanism, Paganism, and Beyond

So, to me, it all starts in a general way with Animism (theoretical belief in supernatural powers/spirits), then this is physically expressed in or with Totemism (theoretical belief in mythical relationship with powers/spirits through a totem item), which then enlists a full-time specific person to do this worship and believed interacting Shamanism (theoretical belief in access and influence with spirits through ritual), and then there is the further employing of myths and gods added to all the above giving you Paganism (often a lot more nature-based than most current top world religions, thus hinting to their close link to more ancient religious thinking it stems from). My hypothesis is expressed with an explanation of the building of a theatrical house (modern religions development).

Pre-satanism Devil/horned-god worship?

“The god of the witches/pagans was not the Devil but the ancient horned god.”“Many horned deities are known to have been worshipped in various cultures throughout history. Such as the Horned God Naigamesha of the Indian sub-religion Kaumaram. Possibly from the Shunga period (1st-2nd century B.C), or earlier. Deities depicted with horns or antlers are found in many different religions across the world. Hathor is commonly depicted as a cow goddess with head horns in which is set a sun disk with Uraeus. Twin feathers are also sometimes shown in later periods as well as a menat necklace.” RefRef 

“Hathor may be the cow goddess who is depicted from an early date on the Narmer Palette and on a stone urn dating from the 1st dynasty that suggests a role as sky-goddess and a relationship to Horus who, as a sun god, is “housed” in her. Bat was a cow goddess in Egyptian mythology depicted as a human face with cow ears and horns. By the time of the Middle Kingdom her identity and attributes were subsumed within the goddess Hathor. The worship of Bat dates to earliest times and may have its origins in Late Paleolithic cattle herding. Bat was the chief goddess of Seshesh, otherwise known as Hu or Diospolis Parva, the 7th nome of Upper Egypt.” RefRef

“The imagery of Bat as a divine cow was remarkably similar to that of Hathor the parallel goddess from Lower Egypt. The significant difference in their depiction is that Bat’s horns curve inward and Hathor’s curve outward slightly. It is possible that this could be based in the different breeds of cattle herded at different times. Pan was a god of shepherds and flocks, of mountain wilds and rustic music. Depictions in Celtic cultures of figures with antlers are often identified as Cernunnos (“horned one” in Latin). The prime evidence for this comes from a pillar in Paris which also features the Roman god Jupiter. Cocidius was the name of a Romano-British war-god and local deity from the area around Hadrian’s Wall, who is sometimes represented as being horned. He is associated with warfare and woodland and was worshipped mostly by military personnel and the lower classes.” RefRef

“A ram-shaped oracle god whose name is unknown was worshiped by Libyan tribes at Siwa. The figure was incorporated by the Egyptians into depictions of their god Amun that’s considered an ”Interpretatio graeca” of the Greek Zeus-Ammon. Adherents of Odinani (the traditional folk religion of the Igbo people of south-eastern Nigeria) worship the Ikenga, a horned god of honest achievement, whose two horns symbolise self-will. Small wooden statues of him are made and praised as personal altars. The Pashupati seal, a seal discovered during the excavation of Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan has drawn attention as a possible representation of a “proto-Shiva” figure. This “Pashupati” (Lord of animal-like beings – Sanskrit paśupati) seal shows a seated figure with horns, possibly ithyphallic, surrounded by animals. RefRef 

“Amun (also Amon, Ammon, Amen; Greek Ámmōn, Hámmōn) was a major ancient Egyptian deity who appears as a member of the Hermopolitanogdoad. Amun was attested from the Old Kingdom together with his wife Amaunet. With the 11th dynasty (c. 21st century BC), Amun rose to the position of patron deity of Thebes by replacing Monthu. After the rebellion of Thebes against the Hyksos and with the rule of Ahmose I (16th century BC), Amun acquired national importance, expressed in his fusion with the Sun god, Ra, as Amun-Ra or Amun-Re. Amun-Ra retained chief importance in the Egyptian pantheon throughout the New Kingdom (with the exception of the “Atenist heresy” under Akhenaten).” ref 

“Amun-Ra in this period (16th to 11th centuries BC) held the position of transcendental, self-created creator deity“par excellence”, he was the champion of the poor or troubled and central to personal piety. His position as King of Gods developed to the point of virtual monotheism where other gods became manifestations of him. With Osiris, Amun-Ra is the most widely recorded of the Egyptian gods. As the chief deity of the Egyptian Empire, Amun-Ra also came to be worshiped outside Egypt, according to the testimony of ancient Greek historiographers in Libya and Nubia. As Zeus Ammon he came to be identified withZeus in Greece. In the early history, Amun and Amaunet are mentioned in the Old EgyptianPyramid Texts. The name Amun (written imn) meant something like “the hidden one” or “invisible.” ref 

Finnish mythology

Finnish mythology is a commonly applied description of the folklore of Finnish paganism, of which a modern revival is practiced by a small percentage of the Finnish people. It has many features shared with Estonian and other Finnic mythologies but also shares some similarities with neighboring Baltic, Slavic, and, to a lesser extent, Norse mythologies. Finnish mythology survived within an oral tradition of mythical poem-singing and folklore well into the 19th century. Of the animals, the most sacred was the bear, whose real name was never uttered out loud, lest his kind be unfavorable to the hunting. The bear (“karhu” in Finnish) was seen as the embodiment of the forefathers, and for this reason it was called by many circumlocutions: mesikämmen (“mead-paw”), otso (“browed one”), kontio (“dweller of the land”), metsän kultaomena (“the golden apple of the forest”) but not a god.” ref

The first historical mention of Finnish folk religion was by the bishop and Lutheran reformer Mikael Agricola (1510–1555) in the preface to his 1551 Finnish translation of the Psalms. Agricola supplied a list of purported deities of the Häme (in Swedish, Tavastia) and Karjala (Karelia), twelve deities in each region, with their supposed functions briefly set out in verse form. (Some commentators state that only eleven deities were listed for Häme, not counting Agricola’s mention of Piru, the Devil.) Due to the lists, Agricola is considered to be the father of the study of Finnish religious history and mythology. Later scholars and students commonly quoted Agricola’s lists as a historical source; only in the late eighteenth century did scholars begin to critically evaluate the “gods” in Agricola’s lists and the information he presented about them, determining with further research that most of the figures in his lists were not gods, but local guardian spirits, figures from folk mythology or explanatory legends, cultural heroes, Christian saints under alternative names, and, in one case, a harvest-time festival.” ref

“The world was believed to have been formed out of a bird’s egg or eggs. The species of the bird and the number of eggs varies between different stories. In the Kalevala the bird is a pochard that lays seven eggs (six of gold and one of iron); examples from other stories include a swallow, a loon, and a mythical giant eagle, kokko. The sky was believed to be the upper cover of the egg; alternately it was seen as a tent, which was supported by a column at the north pole, below the north star. The movement of the stars was explained to be caused by the sky-dome’s rotation around the North Star and itself. A great whirl was caused at the north pole by the rotation of a column of sky. Through this whirl souls could go to the outside of the world to the land of dead, Tuonela.” ref

“Earth was believed to be flat. At the edges of Earth was Lintukoto, “the home of the birds”, a warm region in which birds lived during the winter. The Milky Way is called Linnunrata, “the path of the birds”, because the birds were believed to move along it to Lintukoto and back. In Modern Finnish usage, the word lintukoto means an imaginary happy, warm and peaceful paradise-like place. Birds also had other significance. Birds brought a human’s soul to the body at the moment of birth, and took it away at the moment of death. In some areas, it was necessary to have a wooden bird-figure nearby to prevent the soul from escaping during sleep. This Sielulintu, “the soul-bird”, protected the soul from being lost in the paths of dreams. Waterfowl are very common in tales, and also in stone paintings and carvings, indicating their great significance in the beliefs of ancient Finns.” ref

Tuonela was the land of dead. It was an underground home or city for all the dead people, not only the good or the bad ones. It was a dark and lifeless place, where everybody slept forever. Still a brave shaman could travel to Tuonela in trance to ask for the forefathers’ guidance. To travel to Tuonela, the soul had to cross the dark river of Tuonela. If the shaman had a proper reason, then a boat would come to take them over. Many times a shaman’s soul had to trick the guards of Tuonela into believing that they were actually dead. Ukko (“old man”) was a god of the sky, weather, and the crops. The Finnish word for thunder, “ukkonen” (little Ukko) or “ukonilma” (Ukko’s weather), is derived from his name. In the Kalevala he is also called “ylijumala” (overgod, Supreme God), as he is the god of things of the sky. He makes all his appearances in myths solely by natural effects when invoked.

“Ukko’s origins are probably in Baltic Perkons and the older Finnish sky god Ilmarinen. While Ukko took Ilmarinen’s position as the Sky God, Ilmarinen’s destiny was to turn into a smith-hero, or the god of the rock. In the epic poetry of the Kalevala, Ilmarinen is credited with forging the stars on the dome of the sky and the magic mill of plenty, the Sampo. Ukko’s weapon was a hammer, ax, or sword, by which he struck lightning. While Ukko and his wife Akka (“old woman”) mated, there was a thunderstorm. He created thunderstorms also by driving with his chariot in clouds. The original weapon of Ukko was probably the boat-shaped stone-axe of battle ax culture. Ukko’s hammer, the Vasara (means merely “hammer”), probably meant originally the same thing as the boat-shaped stone ax. When stone tools were abandoned in the metal ages, the origins of stone-weapons became a mystery. They were believed to be weapons of Ukko, stone-heads of striking bolts of lightning. Shamans collected and held stone-axes because they were believed to hold many powers to heal and to damage. The viper with the saw-figure on its skin has been seen as a symbol of thunder.” ref

 

Heroes, gods, and spirits

  • Ahti (or Ahto), god of the depths, giver of fish.
  • Ajatar (sometimes Ajattara), an evil forest spirit.
  • Akka (“old lady”), female spirit, feminine counterpart of “Ukko”.
  • Äkräs, the god of fertility and the protector of plants, especially the turnip.
  • Antero Vipunen, deceased giant, protector of deep knowledge and magic.
  • Hiisi, demon, originally meaning a sacred grove, later a mean goblin.
  • Iku-Turso, a malevolent sea monster; probably same as Tursas.
  • Ilmarinen, the great smith, maker of heaven. Designed the Sampo mill of fortune. Originally a male spirit of air.
  • Ilmatar, female spirit of air; the daughter of primeval substance of creative spirit. Mother of Väinämöinen in Kalevala.
  • Jumala, a generic name for a major deity. Originally the name given by the Finns to the sky, the sky-god, and the supreme god. Later taivas and Ukko were used as the names for the sky and the sky-god. The word means god and was later used for the Christian God. The origin of the word is unknown – some possible explanations are derivation from Jomali, the supreme deity of the Permians and origination from the Estonian word jume.
  • Kalevanpoika (son/man of Kaleva), a giant hero who can cut down forests and mow down huge meadows, identical with Estonian national epic hero Kalevipoeg.
  • Kave, ancient god of sky, later the deity of the lunar cycle. Father of Väinämöinen. Also Kaleva.
  • Kullervo, tragic antihero. Model for Túrin Turambar in Tolkien‘s Silmarillion.
  • Kuu, goddess of the Moon.
  • Lemminkäinen (Ahti Saarelainen, Kaukomieli), a brash hero.
  • Lempo, originally a fertility spirit, became synonymous with demon in the Christian era.
  • Lalli, Finn who slew St. Henry of Uppsala on the ice of Lake Köyliö, according to a legend.
  • Louhi, the matriarch of Pohjola, hostess of the Underworld.
  • Loviatar, the blind daughter of Tuoni and the mother of Nine diseases.
  • Luonnotar, spirit of nature, feminine creator.
  • Menninkäinen, a fairy spirit, gnome, leprechaun of some sort.
  • Metsänväki, spirit of forest, forest creature.
  • Mielikki, wife of Tapio, the goddess of the forest.
  • Nyyrikki, the god of hunting, son of Tapio.
  • Näkki, the fearsome spirit of pools, wells and bridges (A spiteful and beautiful womanlike creature with woman’s body and fish’s behind who flatters men into water in Estonian mythology). Same as Nix.
  • Otso, the spirit of bear (one of many circumlocutory epithets).
  • Pekko (or Pellon Pekko), the god of crops, especially barley and brewing.
  • Perkele, the Devil. Originally a god of thunder, Perkele was demonized with the introduction of the Christian religion. Related to Baltic Perkunas and Norse Thor.
  • Pellervo (or Sampsa Pellervoinen), the god of harvest.
  • Pihatonttu, tutelary of the yard.
  • Piru, spirit, demon. Probably later loan word related to “spirit”.
  • Päivätär, the goddess of day.
  • Rahko, the Karelian god of time; Rahko tars the moon describes the phases of the moon.
  • Surma, the personification of a violent death.
  • Saunatonttu, tutelary of the sauna.
  • Tapio, the god of the forest.
  • Tellervo, the goddess of the forest, daughter of Tapio and Mielikki.
  • Tonttu, generally benign tutelary. Originally, a patron of cultivated land, keeper of lot.
  • Tuonetar, name referring to both the mistress and the daughter of Tuoni.
  • Tuoni, the personification of Death.
  • Tursas, the Tavastian god of war. May be the same as the Norse Tyr and the Germanic Tîwaz.
  • Tuulikki, daughter of Tapio and Mielikki, goddess of animals.
  • Ukko (“old man”) the god of the sky and thunder, related to Thor (Estonian Taara).
  • Vellamo, the wife of Ahti, goddess of the sea, lakes and storms. A current image of Vellamo can be seen on the coat of arms of Päijät-häme.
  • Vedenemo (“mother of waters”) the Karelian Goddess of water of the Karelia region resembles a mermaid, with the body of a fish and the torso and head of a human woman. Like a Greek siren, she sings and seduces humans into the murky depths. Fishermen used to offer their first catch to appease Vedenemo, and spotting her was regarded as an extremely bad omen.
  • Väinämöinen, the old and wise man, who possessed a potent, magical voice. Also related to Estonian Vanemuine. The central character in Finnish folklore and he is the main character in the Kalevala.” ref

Finnish paganism

Finnish paganism is the indigenous pagan religion in Finland and Karelia prior to Christianisation. It was a polytheistic religion, worshipping a number of different deities. The principal god was the god of thunder and the sky, Ukko; other important gods included Jumo (Jumala), Ahti, and Tapio. Jumala was a sky god; today, the word “Jumala” refers to all gods in general. Ahti was a god of the sea, waters, and fish. Tapio was the god of forests and hunting. Finnish paganism shows many similarities with the religious practices of related cultures, such as Estonian, Mordvin, Mari, Sami, and other Eurasian paganism. It shares some features with its neighboring Baltic, Norse, and Germanic paganisms.” ref

“The organic tradition was sidelined due to Christianization starting from ca. 12th century and finally broken by the early 20th century, when folk magic and oral traditions went extinct. Finnish paganism provided the inspiration for a contemporary pagan movement Suomenusko (Finnish: Finnish faith), which is an attempt to reconstruct the old religion of the Finns. It is nevertheless based on secondary sources. The Finnish pagans were polytheistic, believing in a number of different deities. Most of the deities ruled over a specific aspect of nature; for instance, Ukko was the god of the sky, and thunder (ukkonen and ukonilma (“Ukko’s air”) are still used in modern Finnish as terms for thunderstorms).” ref

“These deities were often pan-Finnic, being worshipped by many different tribes in different regions. The Finnish pagans were also animists, worshipping local nature deities at site-specific shrines to that particular deity. These shrines are thought to be mainly “tree-gods”: wooden statues or carvings done in trees or treestumps, depicting human figures, and have been scarcely preserved. One confirmed Stone Age wooden statue has been found in Pohjankuru, and folklore about worshipping tree-gods has been documented. Another kind of shrine are “cup-stones” (Finnish: fi:kuppikivi), large natural stones into which cup-sized recesses have been drilled. Votive offerings of food or drink were left into these cups. Despite Christianization, offerings on these cup-stones continued up to the early 20th century.” ref

It is believed by some scholars that shamanism played a big part in Finnish paganism, as it did (and still does) in the Siberian paganism to the east of Finland. A tietäjä (shaman, literally “one who knows”) is a wise and respected person in the community, believed to have a special relationship with the spirit world. Shamans go into a trance to commune with spirits and ancestors or to take a journey into the spirit realm. In trances shamans may ask their ancestors or various nature spirits for guidance. They believe that nature has the answers to all questions. Tietäjäs or healers were typically men of high standing in the local society, often landed peasants; it was thought that wealth was evidence of magic powers.” ref

“Among the Finns’ western neighbors, the Norse of Scandinavia, it was a common belief that the Finns were wizards. In the Norse sagas, the inclusion of a Finnish element almost always signifies a supernatural aspect to the story. Finns were also called Kvens. However, “Finn” in some Norse sagas could also mean the Sami and not the Finns. In the iron age, the nomadic Sami people inhabited much of the same lands as Finns, and the Sami warlocks (Lapin noita) were a parallel and coexisting tradition. Sami warlocks inherited their position and traditions through a paternal line.” ref

Major deities

“Several key deities were venerated across nearly all of Finland and Karelia. These pan-Finnic deities controlled many aspects of nature.

  • The chief god was Ukko (also (thought to be) known as Perkele), who was the ruler over the sky and thunder. A corresponding figure is known in countless other cultures of the world.
  • Another deity that appeared very significant to the Finnish pagans, but about whom modern scholars know very little, was Jumi, whose name is related to “Jumala“, the modern Finnish language word for a monotheist God.
  • There were many other important deities who ruled over a specific aspect of the natural world, and who have been referred to as “kings”[citation needed]. The king of water was often called Ahti, and the king of the forest was Tapio.
  • Other major deities included Äkräs, the god of fertility; Mielikki, the goddess of the forests and the hunt; Kuu, the goddess of the moon; and Lempo, the god of wilderness and archery.
  • Great heroes, who had, in mythology, once been human, such as Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen, were also objects of worship, in a way similar to the Greek pagans‘ worship of mythical human heroes like Herakles.” ref

Haltija

“Local animistic deities, known as haltijas or haltias, were also worshipped. These haltijas could be male or female, and could take a human or another animal’s form. Haltijas could be found everywhere in nature, both in the biotic and abiotic parts. Every human has a haltija, usually called haltijasielu (haltija soul) or luontohaltija (nature haltija), which is one of the three parts of a person’s soul. The tradition blends with the Swedish tomte: the Finnish tonttu was a being analogous to haltija, but which lives in a building, like a home (kotitonttu) or a sauna (saunatonttu). Certain “haltiat”, known as “maan haltija” (literally “tutelary of land”), guarded the property of an individual, including their house and livestock. Votive offerings would be given to these haltijas at a shrine, as thanks for the help given and also to prevent the haltija from causing harm. Sometimes haltijas of certain families and farms acted against other families and their farms by stealing their wealth or making the animals infertile, for instance. Many local haltijas were believed to have originally been the sacred spirits of ancestors. In some cases a haltija was the first inhabitant of house. Sometimes while making a new house a local spirit of nature could be “employed” to work as a maan haltija.” ref

Väki and haltija

“Different elements and environments had their own haltijas. Haltijas were grouped into types or races called väki. “Väki” has multiple connected meanings of “strength”, “force”, “throng”, “military troop”; in the magical context, it referred ambiguously to magical strength and numbers. There were, for instance, different väki of water, forests, and graveyards. Väkis could become angry if people acted in a disrespectful manner in their area. For example, cursing close to water made the väki of water angry. When angry, väkis could cause diseases and other misfortune to befall the human victim. Some väkis were always angry, like the väki of fire, explaining why every time you touch fire it burns, no matter how respectful you are around it.” ref

“Each tribe of väkis belonged to specific environments and if they were misplaced, problems occurred. For example, most väkis were misplaced if they attached to a human being, and they made the human being ill because they were in the wrong place. Illnesses were removed by sending väkis back to their right places. Shamans who cured diseases were returning the cosmic balance. For example, it was believed that on contact with the ground, as in falling on one’s face, diseases could spread to the human, caused by the “väki” of the earth. Similarly, löyly (sauna steam) was believed to contain a väki spirit (löylyn henki), which could cause open wounds to get infected.” ref

“According to the concept of väki being divided in two (into power and folk of haltijas) the ancient Finns believed that the world was totally animistic in that no force of nature or intelligent life existed without väkis or haltijas. In other words, nothing happened in the universe without it being caused by a group of spirits. Even a person’s soul consisted of many spirits. The pagan Finnish belief about the soul dictated that the human soul is composed of three different parts: henki, luonto and itse. Each of the three were autonomous beings on their own. Similar beliefs about multiple autonomous souls are found amongst other peoples speaking Uralic languages, such as the Khanty and Mansi, who believe in two souls: the shadow and the lili (löyly).” ref

Henki (translated as “life”, “breath” or “spirit”, sometimes also referred to as löyly) was a person’s life force, which presented itself as breathing, the beating of one’s heart and the warmth of their body. Henki was received prior to birth and it left at the moment of death. The word hengetön (lit. “one without henki”) can be used as a synonym for dead in the Finnish language even now.” ref

Luonto (translated as “nature”) was a guardian spirit or protector. Luonto has also been referred to as the haltija of a person. A strong willed, artistic or otherwise talented person was believed to have a strong haltija who granted them good luck and skills to complete their tasks well. A weak luonto could be strengthened by various spells and rituals. Luonto could leave a person’s body without the person dying, but its lengthened absence would cause problems, such as alcoholism and other addictions. Unlike henki, luonto was not received prior to birth but instead either at the time of getting the first teeth or being given a name. A newborn child was thus considered to be particularly vulnerable. These concepts share similar basics with the idea of hamr (life force) and Hamingja (luck) in Norse belief.” ref

Itse was a spirit received at the time of birth or a few days after. It was believed to define one’s personality and receiving itse made one a person. In modern-day Finnish the word itse means “self”, but in old days itse was different from one’s self, minuus. Like luonto, itse could leave one’s body without the person dying but long absence would cause illnesses and misery. Depressions, for instance, was seen as a result of having lost one’s itse. If a person was diagnosed to be itsetön or luonnoton (without one’s itse or without one’s luonto), a shaman or a sage could try locating the missing part of the soul and bring it back. Although itse and luonto were usually lost after a traumatising event, it was possible to purposefully separate one’s itse from their body. This was required if a missing part of the soul needed to be found. Itse could also leave the body to appear as an etiäinen (a sort of false arrival apparition). At the time of a person’s death their itse joined the other deceased of the family or, in some cases, stayed among the living as a ghost; much like the Norse concept of Fylgja (follower).” ref

Finnish paganism, Ancestor veneration, and the Afterlife

People were afraid of ghosts, but spirits of ancestors could also help their living relatives, and they were asked to help. A shaman could be sent to Tuonela to ask for knowledge of spirits or even to take a spirit to the world of living as luonto. A Spirit of the dead had to be honored by giving him/her sacrifices. Places where sacrifices were given to ancestors were called Hiisi ( = sacred forest, also a kind of open-air temple, often included the Offering-stone, uhrikivi, collective monument for the dead of the family). Christianity held hiisi to be evil creatures and places. The old sacred places were often desecrated by being used as the building sites for the churches of the new religion, and the old sacred trees were hacked down.” ref

Tuonela

“The Finns believed in a place of afterlife called Tuonela, or sometimes Manala. In most traditions it was situated underground or at the bottom of a lake, though sometimes it was said to exist on the other side of a dark river. Tuonela was ruled over by the god Tuoni, and his wife, the goddess Tuonetar. Tuonela was a dark and lifeless place, where the dead were in a state of eternal sleep. Shamans were sometimes able to reach the spirits of their dead ancestors by traveling to Tuonela in a state of trance created by rituals. He had to make his way over the Tuonela river by tricking the ferryman. While in Tuonela, the shaman had to be careful not to get caught: the living were not welcome there. Shamans who were caught could end up decaying in the stomach of a giant pikefish with no hope of returning to normal life. If the shaman died during the trance ritual, it was believed that he had been caught by the guards at Tuonela.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

I am just pondering facts to see if there are some connections from shit to believed sacred animals.

7,000-year-old manure’ belongs to a dog or prehistoric person?

6,200 years ago, Cattle appear to have been valued largely for their poop?

Sacred Shit and Sacred Animals?

  Horned female shamans and Pre-satanism

Devil/horned-god Worship at least 10,000 years ago?

“Yes, Horned female shamans, which I surmise are at least 10,000 years old.”

Nordic Paganism/Shamanism, Vikings, White Supremacists Imaginary, Viking Past, Neo-paganism/Neo-Shamanism, and Far-right Religio-Nationalism Bigotry

“God/spirit revealed it to me or a person of God/spirit had it revealed to them” – theist thinking

“Misinformation, Delusion, or Wishful thinking revealed it to you or them, you mean” – atheist interpreting the theist’s thinking

Norse SHAMANISM

 “What is shamanism, and to what extent was it present among the pre-Christian Norse and other Germanic peoples? “Shamanism,” like “love,” is a notoriously hard word to define. Any meaningful discussion of an idea, however, depends on the idea first being clearly defined so that everyone understands exactly what is being discussed. For our purposes here, shamanism can be considered to be the practice of entering an ecstatic trance state in order to contact spirits and/or travel through spiritual worlds with the intention of accomplishing some specific purpose. It is a feature of countless magical and religious traditions from all over the world, especially those that are tied to a particular people and/or place.” ref

“The pre-Christian religion of the Germanic peoples teems with shamanic elements – so much so that it would be impossible to discuss them all here. Our discussion will have to be confined to those that are the most significant. We’ll start with Odin, the father of the gods, who possesses numerous shamanic traits. From there, we’ll examine shamanism in Norse magical traditions that were part of the female sphere of traditional northern European social life, and then move on to the male sphere of the berserkers and other “warrior-shamans” before concluding.” ref

Odin and Shamanism

“Odin, the chief of the gods, is often portrayed as a consummate shamanic figure in the oldest primary sources that contain information about the pre-Christian ways of the Germanic peoples. His very name suggests this: “Odin” (Old Norse Óðinn) is a compound word comprised of óðr, “ecstasy, fury, inspiration,” and the suffix -inn, the masculine definite article, which, when added to the end of another word like this, means something like “the master of” or “a perfect example of.” The name “Odin” can therefore be most aptly translated as “The Master of Ecstasy.” The eleventh-century historian Adam of Bremen confirms this when he translates “Odin” as “The Furious.” This establishes a link between Odin and the ecstatic trance states that comprise one of the defining characteristics of shamanism.” ref

“Odin’s shamanic spirit-journeys are well-documented. The Ynglinga Saga records that he would “travel to distant lands on his own errands or those of others” while he appeared to others to be asleep or dead. Another instance is recorded in the Eddic poem “Baldur’s Dreams,” where Odin rides Sleipnir, an eight-legged horse typical of northern Eurasian shamanism, to the underworld to consult a dead seeress on behalf of his son. Odin, like shamans all over the world, is accompanied by many familiar spirits, most notably the two ravens Hugin and Munin. The shaman must typically undergo a ritual death and rebirth in order to acquire his or her powers, and Odin underwent exactly such an ordeal when he discovered the runes. Having done so, he became one of the cosmos’s wisest, most knowledgeable, and most magically powerful beings. He is a renowned practitioner of seidr, which he seems to have learned from the goddess Freya.” ref

Shamanism in Seidr

“Freya is the divine archetype of the völva, a professional or semi-professional practitioner of the Germanic magical tradition known as seidr. Seidr (Old Norse seiðr) was a form of magic concerned with discerning the fated course of events and symbolically weaving new events into being in accordance with fate’s framework. To do this, the practitioner, with ritual distaff in hand, would enter a trance and travel in spirit throughout the Nine Worlds accomplishing her intended task. This generally took the form of a prophecy, a blessing, or a curse. The völva wandered from town to town and farm to farm prophesying and performing other acts of magic in exchange for room, board, and often other forms of compensation as well. The most detailed account of such a woman and her doings comes from The Saga of Erik the Red, but numerous sagas, as well as some of the mythic poems (most notably the Völuspá, “The Insight of the Völva“) contain sparse accounts of seidr-workers and their practices.” ref

“Like other northern Eurasian shamans, the völva was “set apart” from her wider society, both in a positive and a negative sense – she was simultaneously exalted, sought-after, feared, and, in some instances, reviled. However, the völva is very reminiscent of the veleda, a seeress or prophetess who held a more clearly-defined and highly respected position amongst the Germanic tribes of the first several centuries CE. In either of these roles, the woman practitioner of these arts held a more or less dignified role among her people, even as the degree of her dignity varied considerably over time. Such was not usually the case for male practitioners of seidr. According to traditional Germanic gender constructs, it was extremely shameful and dishonorable for a man to adopt a female social or sexual role. A man who practiced seidr could expect to be labeled argr (Old Norse for “unmanly;” the noun form is ergi) by his peers – one of the gravest insults that could be hurled at a Germanic man.” ref 

“While there were probably several reasons for seidr being considered to fall under the category of ergi, the greatest seems to have been the centrality of weaving, the paragon of the traditional female economic sphere, in seidr. Still, this didn’t stop numerous men from engaging in seidr, sometimes even as a profession. A few such men have had their deeds recorded in the sagas. The foremost among such seiðmenn was none other than Odin himself – and not even he escaped the charge of being argr. We can detect a high degree of ambivalence seething beneath the surface of this taunt; unmanly as seidr may have been seen as being, it was undeniably a source of incredible power – perhaps the greatest power in the cosmos, given that it could change the course of destiny itself. Perhaps the sacrifice of social prestige for these abilities wasn’t too bad of a bargain. After all, such men could look to the very ruler of Asgard as an example and a patron.” ref

Shamanism in Warrior Magic and Religion

“In any case, there were other forms of shamanism that were much more socially acceptable for men to practice. One of the central institutions of traditional Germanic society was the band of elite, ecstatic, totemistic warriors. Some of the warriors in these warbands were berserkers. These were no ordinary soldiers; the initiation rituals, fighting techniques, and other spiritual practices of these bands were such that their members could be aptly characterized as “warrior-shamans.” ref

“The divine guide and inspiration of such men was the same as for the seidr-workers: Odin. The Ynglinga Saga has this to say about them:

Odin’s men went armor-less into battle and were as crazed as dogs or wolves and as strong as bears or bulls. They bit their shields and slew men, while they themselves were harmed by neither fire nor iron. This is called “going berserk.” ref

“Or in the astute and evocative words of archaeologist Neil Price:

They run howling and foaming through the groups of fighting men. Some of them wear animal skins, some are naked, and some have thrown away shields and armour to rely on their consuming frenzy alone. Perhaps some of the greatest warriors do not take the field at all, but remain behind in their tents, their minds nevertheless focused on the combat. As huge animals their spirit forms wade through the battle, wreaking destruction.” ref

“This combat frenzy (“going berserk”) was one of the most common and most potent forms that Odin’s ecstasy (óðr) could take. In such a battle-trance, these hallowed warriors bit or cast away their shields, the symbolic indicators of their social persona, and became utterly possessed by the spirit of their totem animal, sometimes even shifting their shapes to become a bear or a wolf. By extension, they achieved a state of unification with the master of these beasts and the giver of this sublime furor: Odin. Given the prominence of shamanism in other traditional northern Eurasian societies, it would be shocking if it were absent from traditional Germanic society. So it’s hardly surprising to find, instead, that the established social customs of the pre-Christian Germanic peoples brimmed with shamanic elements.” ref

“It’s just as important, however, to stress the uniquely Germanic form of these elements. At the center of the Germanic shamanic complex is the “Allfather,” Odin, who inspires the female seidr-workers and the male “warrior-shamans” alike with his perilous gift of ecstasy, granting them an upper hand in life’s battles as well as communion with the divine world of consummate meaning. Looking for more great information on Norse mythology and religion? While this site provides the ultimate online introduction to the topic, my book The Viking Spirit provides the ultimate introduction to Norse mythology and religion period. I’ve also written a popular list of The 10 Best Norse Mythology Books, which you’ll probably find helpful in your pursuit.” ref

Neo-Shamanism

“Neoshamanism refers to new forms of shamanism. It usually means shamanism practiced by Western people as a type of New Age spirituality, without a connection to traditional shamanic societies. It is sometimes also used for modern shamanic rituals and practices which, although they have some connection to the traditional societies in which they originated, have been adapted somehow to modern circumstances. This can include “shamanic” rituals performed as an exhibition, either on stage or for shamanic tourism, as well as modern derivations of traditional systems that incorporate new technology and worldviews. Antiquarians such as John Dee may have practiced forerunner forms of neoshamanism. The origin of neoshamanic movements has been traced to the second half of the twentieth century, especially to counterculture movements and post-modernism. Three writers in particular are seen as promoting and spreading ideas related to shamanism and neoshamanism: Mircea EliadeCarlos Castaneda, and Michael Harner.” ref 

“In 1951, Mircea Eliade popularized the idea of the shaman with the publication of Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. In it, he claimed that shamanism represented a kind of universal, primordial religion, with a journey to the spirit world as a defining characteristic. However, Eliade’s work was severely criticized in academic circles, with anthropologists such as Alice Beck Kehoe arguing that the term “shamanism” should not be used to refer to anything except the Siberian Tungus people who use the word to refer to themselves. Despite the academic criticism, Eliade’s work was nonetheless a critical part of the neoshamanism developed by Castaneda and Harner. In 1968, Carlos Castaneda published The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, which he claimed was a research log describing his apprenticeship with a traditional “Man of Knowledge” identified as don Juan Matus, allegedly a Yaqui Indian from northern Mexico. Doubts existed about the veracity of Castaneda’s work from the time of their publication, and the Teaching of Don Juan, along with Castaneda’s subsequent works, are now widely regarded as works of fiction. Although Castaneda’s works have been extensively debunked, they nevertheless brought “…what he considered (nearly) universal traditional shamanic elements into an acultural package of practices for the modern shamanic seeker and participant.” ref

“The idea of an acultural shamanism was further developed by Michael Harner in his 1980 book The Way of the Shaman. Harner developed his own system of acultural shamanism that he called “Core Shamanism” (see below), which he wrote was based on his experiences with Conibo and Jívaro shamans in South America, including the consumption of hallucinogens. Harner broadly applied the term “shaman” to spiritual and ceremonial leaders in cultures that do not use this term, claiming that he also studied with “shamans” in North America; he wrote that these were WintuPomoCoast Salish, and Lakota people, but he did not name any individuals or specific communities. Harner claimed he was describing common elements of shamanic practice found among Indigenous people world-wide, having stripped those elements of specific cultural content so as to render them accessible to contemporary Western spiritual seekers. Influences cited by Harner also included Siberian shamanism, Mexican and Guatemalan culture, and Australian traditions, as well as the familiar spirits of European occultism, which aid the occultist in their metaphysical work. However, his practices do not resemble the religious practices or beliefs of any of these cultures.” ref

“Neoshamanism comprises an eclectic range of beliefs and practices that involve attempts to attain altered states and communicate with a spirit world through drumming, rattling, dancing, chanting, music, or the use of entheogens, although the last is controversial among some neoshamanic practitioners. One type of spirit that journeyers attempt to contact are animal tutelary spirits (called “power animals” in Core Shamanism). Core Shamanism, the neoshamanic system of practices synthesized, promoted, and invented by Michael Harner in the 1980s, are likely the most widely used in the West, and have had a profound impact on neoshamanism. While adherents of neoshamanism mention a number of different ancient and living cultures, and many do not consider themselves associated with Harner or Core Shamanism, Harner’s inventions, and similar approaches such as the decontextualized and appropriated structures of Amazonian Ayahuasca ceremonies, have all had a profound influence on the practices of most of these neoshamanic groups.” ref

“Neoshamans may also conduct “soul retrievals”, participate in rituals based on their interpretations of sweat lodge ceremonies, conduct healing ceremonies, and participate in drum circles. Wallis, an archaeologist who self-identifies as a “neo-Shaman” and participates in the neopagan and neoshamanism communities, has written that he believes the experiences of synesthesia reported by Core Shamanic journeyers are comparable with traditional shamanic practices. However, Aldred writes that the experiences non-Natives seek out at these workshops, “also incorporated into theme adult camps, wilderness training programs, and New Age travel packages” have “greatly angered” Native American activists who see these workshops as “the commercial exploitation of their spirituality.” Scholars have noted a number of differences between traditional shamanic practices and neoshamanism. In traditional contexts, shamans are typically chosen by a community or inherit the title (or both). With neoshamanism, however, anyone who chooses to can become a (neo)shaman, although there are still neoshamans who feel that they have been called to become shamans, and that it wasn’t a choice, similar to the situation in some traditional societies.” ref

“In traditional contexts, shamans serve an important culturally recognized social and ceremonial role, one which seeks the assistance of spirits to maintain cosmic order and balance. With neoshamanism, however, the focus is usually on personal exploration and development. While some neoshamanic practitioners profess to enact shamanic ceremonies in order to heal others and the environment, and claim a role in modern communities that they believe is analogous to the shaman’s role in traditional communities, the majority of adherents practice in isolation and the people they work on are paying clients. Another difference between neoshamanism and traditional shamanism is the role of negative emotions such as fear and aggression. Traditional shamanic initiations often involved pain and fear, while neoshamanic narratives tend to emphasize love over negative emotions. And while traditional shamanic healing was often tempered with ideas of malevolence or chaos, neoshamanism has a psychotherapeutic focus that leads to a “happy ending.” Harner, who created the neoshamanic practice of Core Shamanism, goes so far as to argue that those who engage in negative practices are sorcerers, not shamans, although this distinction is not present in traditional societies.” ref

“Although both traditional shamanism and neoshamanism posit the existence of both a spiritual and a material world, they differ in how they view them. In the traditional view, the spirit world is seen as primary reality, while in neoshamanism, materialist explanations “coexist with other theories of the cosmos,” some of which view the material and the “extra-material” world as equally real. Native American scholars have been critical of neoshamanic practitioners who misrepresent their teachings and practices as having been derived from Native American cultures, asserting that it represents an illegitimate form of cultural appropriation and that it is nothing more than a ruse by fraudulent spiritual leaders to disguise or lend legitimacy to fabricated, ignorant, and/or unsafe elements in their ceremonies in order to reap financial benefits. For example, Geary Hobson sees the New Age use of the term “shamanism” (which most neoshamans use to self-describe, rather than “neoshamanism”) as a cultural appropriation of Native American culture by white people who have distanced themselves from their own history. Additionally, Aldred notes that even those neoshamanic practitioners with “good intentions” who claim to support Native American causes are still commercially exploiting Indigenous cultures.” ref

“Members of Native American communities have also objected to neoshamanic workshops, highlighting that shamanism plays an important role in native cultures, and calling those offering such workshops charlatans who are engaged in cultural appropriation. Daniel C. Noel sees Core Shamanism as based on cultural appropriation and a misrepresentation of the various cultures by which Harner claims to have been inspired. Noel believes Harner’s work, in particular, laid the foundations for massive exploitation of Indigenous cultures by “plastic shamans” and other cultural appropriators. Note, however, that Noel does believe in “authentic western shamanism” as an alternative to neoshamanism, a sentiment echoed by Annette Høst who hopes to create a ‘Modern Western Shamanism’ apart from Core Shamanism in order “to practice with deeper authenticity”. Robert J. Wallis asserts that, because the practices of Core Shamanism have been divorced from their original cultures, the mention of traditional shamans by Harner is an attempt to legitimate his techniques while “remov[ing] indigenous people from the equation,” including not requiring that those practicing Core Shamanism to confront the “often harsh realities of modern indigenous life.” ref

 Norse TOTEMISM

“Totemism is a relationship of spiritual kinship between a human or group of humans and a particular species of animal or plant. The totem animal or plant is generally held to be an ancestor, guardian, and/or benefactor of the human or humans in question. The totem animal or plant is sometimes held to overlap with the human self in some way. In the pre-Christian worldview and practices of the Norse and other Germanic peoples, we find totemism manifested in two especially prominent and powerful areas: the animal helping spirits, most notably the fylgjur, and the patron animals of shamanic military societies.” ref

The Fylgjur

“Remember the cats, ravens, and other familiar spirits who are often the companions of witches in European folktales? These are fylgjur (pronounced “FILG-yur”) in the plural and fylgja (pronounced “FILG-ya”; Old Norse for “follower”) in the singular. The fylgja is generally an animal spirit, although, every now and then, a human helping spirit is also called a fylgja in Old Norse literature. The well-being of the fylgja is intimately tied to that of its owner – for example, if the fylgja dies, its owner dies, too. Its character and form are closely connected to the character of its owner; a person of noble birth might have a bear fylgja, a savage and violent person, a wolf, or a gluttonous person, a pig. This helping spirit can be seen as the totem of a single person rather than of a group. Many of the gods and goddesses have personal totem animals which may or may not be fylgjur. For example, Odin is particularly associated with wolves, ravens, and horses, Thor with goats, and Freya and Freyr with wild boars. It should come as no surprise, then, that their human devotees have personal totems of their own.” ref

Totemistic Warriors

“One of the most prominent examples of group totemism among the ancient Germanic peoples is that which occurs within the institutional framework of the initiatory military society. Many of these societies had a totem animal, usually the wolf or the bear, who would lend his ferocity and strength to the warriors. Initiation into one of these societies typically involved spending a period of time alone in the wilderness. The candidate’s food was obtained by hunting, gathering, and stealing provisions from nearby towns. In the words of archaeologist Dominique Briquel, “Rapto vivere, to live in the manner of wolves, is the beginning of this initiation. The bond with the savage world is indicated not only on the geographic plane – life beyond the limits of the civilized life of the towns… but also on what we would consider a moral plane: their existence is assured by the law of the jungle.” The candidate lived in imitation of the group’s totem beast.” ref

“As his training progressed, imitation gave way to identification. The warrior achieved a state of spiritual unification with the bear or the wolf, which would frequently erupt in bouts of ecstatic fury. This bond was displayed to others by the warrior’s dressing himself in a ritual costume made from the hide of the animal, an outward reminder of the man’s having gone beyond the confines of his humanity and become a divine predator. It’s hard to imagine a grislier or more frightening thing to encounter on the Viking Age battlefield.” ref

“This transformation was more than merely symbolic, and fell somewhere along the continuum that includes having the animal as one’s fylgja, possession, and, at the farthest extreme, shapeshifting. The sagas contain numerous accounts of elite warriors shapeshifting into a bear or a wolf; Egil’s Saga and The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki provide a few examples. The most telling example of this phenomenon, however, comes from The Saga of the Volsungs. As part of the hero Sigmund’s training of his protégé, Sinfjötli, the two don wolf pelts and become wolves, and in this form they rage through the forest killing their enemies. Sigmund and Sinfjötli are archetypal úlfheðnar (“wolf-hides”), Viking Age warriors who had wolves as their totem animals. Those who had bears as their totem animals were none other than the famous berserkers, “bear-shirts.” The names berserkir and úlfheðnar are both references to the ritual bear- or wolf-costumes worn by these warriors.” ref

What It Means To Be Human

“Totemism can be seen as a precursor to the modern idea of Darwinian evolution, and evolution, in turn, can be seen as a scientific restatement of some of totemism’s most fundamental assumptions. In the words of the contemporary philosopher David Abram,

Darwin had rediscovered the deep truth of totemism – the animistic assumption, common to countless indigenous cultures but long banished from polite society, that human beings are closely kindred to other creatures… In the wake of Darwin’s bold insights, we have learned to consider all humans as members of a common family. But the wild, animistic implication of Darwin’s insight has taken much longer to surface in our collective awareness, no doubt because it greatly threatens our cherished belief in human transcendence. Nonetheless, it is an inescapable implication of the evolutionary insight: we humans are corporeally related, by direct and indirect webs of evolutionary affiliation, to every other organism that we encounter.” ref

“In this perspective, while every species is unique in some way, humans aren’t uniquely unique compared to other species. There’s nothing that fundamentally separates mankind from the other animals or from the fleshly world we inhabit alongside them. The totemism of the Norse and other Germanic peoples is an instantiation of how they perceived much of the non-human world to be full of enchantment and spiritual qualities. Looking for more great information on Norse mythology and religion? While this site provides the ultimate online introduction to the topic, my book The Viking Spirit provides the ultimate introduction to Norse mythology and religion period. I’ve also written a popular list of The 10 Best Norse Mythology Books, which you’ll probably find helpful in your pursuit.” ref

Wolfs, Odin, Berserkers, and Norse Mythology

The god Odin is also frequently mentioned in surviving texts. One-eyed, wolf– and raven-flanked, with a spear in hand, Odin pursues knowledge throughout the nine realms. In an act of self-sacrifice, Odin is described as having hanged himself upside-down for nine days and nights on the cosmological tree Yggdrasil to gain knowledge of the runic alphabet, which he passed on to humanity, and is associated closely with death, wisdom, and poetry.” ref

“Fenrir or Fenrisúlfr is an antagonistic being in Norse mythology under the shape of a monstrous wolf. Fenrir, along with Hel and the World Serpent, is a child of Loki and female jötunn Angrboða. He is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda and Heimskringla, composed in the 13th century. In both the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda, Fenrir is the father of the wolves Sköll and Hati Hróðvitnisson, is a son of Loki and is foretold to kill the god Odin during the events of Ragnarök, but will in turn be killed by Odin’s son VíðarrOld Norse Fenrir can roughly be translated as ‘fen-dweller’, with Fenrisúlfr (often translated as “Fenris-wolf”) meaning “Fenrir’s wolf”, possibly indicating the wolf as a hamr (magical shape) of Fenrir.” ref

“Other names for the beast includes Hróðvitnir and Vánagandr, the former roughly meaning ‘fame-wolf’, with vitnir being a noa-name for wolf, possibly cognate to Old Norse: víti, “penalty, punishment”, meaning something akin to criminal, alternatively the opposite based on other vitnir-compounds, such as punisher (“penalty giver”) and law-abiding (“penalty avoider”). Vánagandr on the other hand is a poetic title, meaning something akin to “the river Ván”, though, referencing the being of the river Ván. The word “gandr” can mean a variety of things in Old Norse, but mainly refers to elongated “living” entities and or supernatural beings, such as, among other things, fjord and river.” ref

In the Old Norse written corpus, berserkers (Old Norseberserkir) were those who were said to have fought in a trance-like fury, a characteristic which later gave rise to the modern English word berserk (meaning “furiously violent or out of control”). Berserkers are attested to in numerous Old Norse sources. It is proposed by some authors that the northern warrior tradition originated from hunting magic. Three main animal cults appeared: the cult of the bear, the wolf, and the wild boar. The Old Norse form of the word was berserk (plural berserkir). It likely means “bear-shirt” (compare the Middle English word ‘serk, meaning ‘shirt’), “someone who wears a coat made out of a bear’s skin“. Thirteenth-century historian Snorri Sturluson interpreted the meaning as “bare-shirt”, that is to say that the warriors went into battle without armor, but that view has largely been abandoned.” ref

“Wolf warriors appear among the legends of the Indo-Europeans, Turks, Mongols, and Native American cultures. The Germanic wolf-warriors have left their trace through shields and standards that were captured by the Romans and displayed in the armilustrium in Rome. Frenzy warriors wearing the skins of wolves called Ulfheðnar (“Wolf-Coats”; singular Ulfheðinn), are mentioned in the Vatnsdæla saga, the Haraldskvæði, and the Grettis saga and are consistently referred to in the sagas as a group of berserkers, always presented as the elite following of the first Norwegian king Harald Fairhair. They were said to wear the pelt of a wolf over their chainmail when they entered battle. Unlike berserkers, direct references to ulfheðnar are scant. Egil’s Saga features a man called Kveldulf (Evening-Wolf) who is said to have transformed into a wolf at night. This Kveldulf is described as a berserker, as opposed to an ulfheðinn. Ulfheðnar are sometimes described as Odin‘s special warriors: “[Odin’s] men went without their mailcoats and were mad as hounds or wolves, bit their shields…they slew men, but neither fire nor iron had an effect upon them. This is called ‘going berserk’.” In addition, the helm-plate press from Torslunda depicts a scene of a one-eyed warrior with bird-horned helm, assumed to be Odin, next to a wolf-headed warrior armed with a spear and sword as distinguishing features, assumed to be a berserker with a wolf pelt: “a wolf-skinned warrior with the apparently one-eyed dancer in the bird-horned helm, which is generally interpreted as showing a scene indicative of a relationship between berserkgang … and the god Odin.” ref

Totemism and Symbolism in the White Supremacist Movements: Images of an Urban Tribal Warrior Culture

“Abstract: The white supremacist movements represent a real threat to the peace of America’s increasingly diverse communities. They have entwined nationalism, religion, racism, and fascist political philosophy into a warrior culture that seeks to justify their racist views. These groups rely heavily on totemism and various symbols to promote loyalty and fidelity among their members and to attract new converts. Often claiming that they are a religion, or that their writings and speeches represent free political expression, these movements pose a dual threat to law enforcement officers both as urban street gangs and, perhaps even more dangerously, as prison gangs within a confinement situation. As a pseudo-warrior culture, members of these movements decorate their writings and graffiti, as well as their bodies, with symbols, totems, and other artifacts that express and enforce their religious, racist, and political beliefs. The article points out that law enforcement and correctional officers can analyze the symbols as indicators of an individual’s level of involvement in these groups. While membership in their groups is not a crime, many white supremacists have become suspects in hate crimes and, when they are imprisoned for their crimes, they become a special security classification threat. Figures, bibliography.” ref

Neo-Paganism

“Modern paganism, also known as contemporary paganism and neopaganism, is a term for a religion or a family of religions which is influenced by the various historical pre-Christian beliefs of pre-modern peoples in Europe and adjacent areas of North Africa and the Near East. Although they share similarities, contemporary pagan movements are diverse and as a result, they do not share a single set of beliefs, practices, or textsScholars of religion often characterize these traditions as new religious movements. Some academics who study the phenomenon treat it as a movement that is divided into different religions while others characterize it as a single religion of which different pagan faiths are denominations. Adherents rely on pre-Christian, folkloric, and ethnographic sources to a variety of degrees; many of them follow a spirituality that they accept as entirely modern, while others claim to adhere to prehistoric beliefs, or else, they attempt to revive indigenous religions as accurately as possible.” ref

Modern pagan movements can be placed on a spectrum. At one end is reconstructionism, which seeks to revive historical pagan religions; examples are Baltic paganismHeathenry (Germanic), Rodnovery (Slavic), and Hellenism (Greek). At the other end are eclectic movements, which blend elements of historical paganism with other religions and philosophies; examples are WiccaDruidry, and the Goddess movementPolytheismanimism, and pantheism are common features of pagan theology. Some modern pagans are also atheist. Described as secular paganism or humanistic paganism, this is an outlook which upholds virtues and principles associated with paganism while maintaining a secular worldview. Secular pagans may recognize goddesses/gods as archetypes or useful metaphors for different cycles of life, or reframe magic as a purely psychological practice. Contemporary paganism has sometimes been associated with the New Age movement, with scholars highlighting their similarities as well as their differences. The academic field of pagan studies began to coalesce in the 1990s, emerging from disparate scholarship in the preceding two decades.” ref

“Contemporary paganism has been defined as “a collection of modern religious, spiritual, and magical traditions that are self-consciously inspired by the pre-Judaic, pre-Christian, and pre-Islamic belief systems of Europe, North Africa, and the Near East.” Thus it has been said that although it is “a highly diverse phenomenon”, “an identifiable common element” nevertheless runs through the pagan movement. Discussing the relationship between the different pagan religions, religious studies scholars Kaarina Aitamurto and Scott Simpson wrote that they were “like siblings who have taken different paths in life but still retain many visible similarities”. But there has been much “cross-fertilization” between these different faiths: many groups have influenced, and been influenced by, other pagan religions, making clear-cut distinctions among them more difficult for scholars to make. The various pagan religions have been academically classified as new religious movements, with the anthropologist Kathryn Rountree describing paganism as a whole as a “new religious phenomenon”. A number of academics, particularly in North America, consider modern paganism a form of nature religion.” ref

“Some practitioners completely eschew the use of the term pagan, preferring to use more specific names for their religion, such as “Heathen” or “Wiccan”. This is because the term pagan originates in Christian terminology, which individuals who object to the term wish to avoid. Some favor the term “ethnic religion”; the World Pagan Congress, founded in 1998, soon renamed itself the European Congress of Ethnic Religions (ECER), enjoying that term’s association with the Greek ethnos and the academic field of ethnology. Within linguistically Slavic areas of Europe, the term “Native Faith” is often favored as a synonym for paganism, rendered as Ridnovirstvo in Ukrainian, Rodnoverie in Russian, and Rodzimowierstwo in Polish. Alternately, many practitioners in these regions view “Native Faith” as a category within modern paganism that does not encompass all pagan religions. Other terms some pagans favor include “traditional religion”, “indigenous religion”, “nativist religion”, and “reconstructionism.” ref

Various pagans who are active in pagan studies, such as Michael York and Prudence Jones, have argued that, due to the similarities of their worldviews, the modern pagan movement can be treated as part of the same global phenomenon as pre-Christian Ancient religions, living Indigenous religions, and world religions like HinduismShinto, and Afro-American religions. For some pagan groups, ethnicity is central to their religion, and some restrict membership to a single ethnic group. Some critics have described this approach as a form of racism. Other pagan groups allow people of any ethnicity, on the view that the gods and goddesses of a particular region can call anyone to their form of worship. Some such groups feel a particular affinity for the pre-Christian belief systems of a particular region with which they have no ethnic link because they see themselves as reincarnations of people from that society. There is greater focus on ethnicity within the pagan movements in continental Europe than within the pagan movements in North America and the British Isles. Such ethnic paganisms have variously been seen as responses to concerns about foreign ideologies, globalizationcosmopolitanism, and anxieties about cultural erosion.” ref

“Although they acknowledged that it was “a highly simplified model”, Aitamurto and Simpson wrote that there was “some truth” to the claim that leftist-oriented forms of paganism were prevalent in North America and the British Isles while rightist-oriented forms of paganism were prevalent in Central and Eastern Europe. They noted that in these latter regions, pagan groups placed an emphasis on “the centrality of the nation, the ethnic group, or the tribe”. Rountree wrote that it was wrong to assume that “expressions of Paganism can be categorized straight-forwardly according to region”, but acknowledged that some regional trends were visible, such as the impact of Catholicism on paganism in Southern Europe.” ref

“Positive identification with paganism became more common in the 18th and 19th centuries, when it tied in with criticism of Christianity and organized religion, rooted in the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment and Romanticism. The approach to paganism varied during this period; Friedrich Schiller‘s 1788 poem “Die Götter Griechenlandes” presents ancient Greek religion as a powerful alternative to Christianity, whereas others took interest in paganism through the concept of the noble savage, often associated with Jean-Jacques RousseauSome pagans distinguish their beliefs and practices as a form of religious naturalism or naturalist philosophy, including those who identify as humanistic or atheopagans. Many such pagans aim for an explicitly ecocentric practice, which may overlap with scientific pantheism.” ref

“Based upon her work in the United States, Adler found that the pagan movement was “very diverse” in its class and ethnic background. She went on to remark that she had encountered pagans in jobs that ranged from “fireman to PhD chemist” but that the one thing that she thought made them into an “elite” was as avid readers, something that she found to be very common within the pagan community despite the fact that avid readers constituted less than 20% of the general population of the United States at the time. Magliocco came to a somewhat different conclusion based upon her ethnographic research of pagans in California, remarking that the majority were “white, middle-class, well-educated urbanites” but that they were united in finding “artistic inspiration” within “folk and indigenous spiritual traditions.” ref

“Generally, modern pagan currents in Western countries do not advocate nationalist or far-right ideologies. Instead, they advocate individual self-improvement and liberal values of personal freedomgender equality, and environmental protection. The nationalist sentiments expressed by modern pagans in Western countries are marginal, so the ideas of cosmopolitanism are prevalent. Faith and dogmas give way to active practices, including psychotechnics, which was extensively influenced by neo-Hinduism. In contrast, many areas of post-Soviet modern paganism, including Russian, are occupied not so much with individual self-improvement as they are occupied with social problems, and they also create nationalist ideologies based on the “invented past”. Modern paganism is one of the directions in the development of romantic nationalism with its components such as the idealization of a particular people’s historical or mythological past, dissatisfaction with modernity, and the ease of transition to a radical stage with the postulation of national superiority.” ref

“The “volksgeist“, which is given great attention within the framework of ethnic nationalism, is often identified with religion, so there is a desire to create or revive one’s religion or nationalize one of the world’s religions. Heinrich Heine linked nationalism with paganism. The philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, who shared Heine’s opinion, noted the regularity of the tendency of the transition of German antisemitism into anti-Christianity. At the beginning of the 20th century, the spiritual crisis in Russia led to a fascination with paganism, at first ancient and then Slavic “native gods”, which was especially true for the symbolists. The publicist Daniil Pasmanik (1923) wrote that consistent antisemitism should reject Judaism and Christianity. He noted that this trend had already led Germany to worship Odin and, in the future, in his opinion, would inevitably lead Russia to worship Perun.” ref

“German occultism and modern paganism arose in the early 20th century, and they became influential through teachings such as Ariosophy, gaining adherents within the far-right Völkisch movement, which eventually culminated in Nazism. The development of such ideas after World War II gave rise to Wotanism, a white nationalist modern pagan movement at the end of the 20th century. In Germany in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Völkisch movement, characterized by a racist antisemitic ideology of radical ethnic nationalism of the dominant population, spread. The central elements of the worldview were racism and elitism. The movement included a religious modern pagan component. The ideology developed out of German nationalist romanticism. Nazism is considered one of the movements within the völkisch or as strongly influenced by the völkisch. Völkisch consisted of many religiopolitical groups whose leaders and followers were closely associated with each other and the developing Nazi Party. This ideology significantly impacted various aspects of German culture at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.” ref

“Liberalism and rationalism, which demystified the time-honored order that accepted authorities and prejudices, also caused an adverse reaction from supporters of the völkisch movement. A negative attitude towards modernity characterizes the writings of German nationalist “prophets” such as Paul Delagardie, Julius Lang, and Arthur Moeller van den Bruck. The movement combined a sentimental patriotic interest in German folklore and local history with anti-urban back-to-the-earth populism. To overcome what they considered the ailment of scientific and rationalistic modernity, the authors of völkisch found a spiritual solution in the essence of the “people”, perceived as genuine, intuitive, even “primitive”, in the sense of the location of the “people” on the level with the original (primordial) cosmic order. Völkisch thinkers tended to idealize the myth of the “original nation”, which they believed could still be found in rural Germany, a form of “primitive democracy freely subject to its natural elite”. The idea of the “people” (GermanVolk) was subsequently transformed into the idea of “racial essence”, and Völkisch thinkers understood this term as a life-giving and quasi-eternal essence and not as a sociological category, in the same way as they considered “Nature.” ref

“Modern pagan ideas were present in Ariosophy, an esoteric teaching created by the Austrian occultists Guido von List and Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels in Austria between 1890 and 1930. The term “ariosophy” can also be used generically to describe the “Aryan”/esoteric teachings of the völkisch subset. The doctrine of Ariosophy was based on pseudoscientific ideas about “Aryan” purity and the mystical unity of spirit and body. It was influenced by the German nationalist völkisch movement, the theosophy of Helena Blavatsky, the Austrian pan-German movement, and social Darwinism and its racist conclusions. Ariosophy influenced the ideology of Nazism. The works of the Ariosophists describe the prehistoric “Aryan” golden age when the wise keepers of knowledge learned and taught occult racial teachings and ruled over a “racially pure” society. It is alleged that there is an evil conspiracy of anti-German forces, including all “non-Aryan” races, Jews, and the Christian church, seeking to destroy the ideal “Aryan” German world by freeing the “non-Aryan” mob to establish a false equality of the illegitimate (representatives of “non-Aryan” races). History, including wars, economic crises, political uncertainty, and the weakening of the power of the German principle, is seen as the result of racial mixing.” ref

“The doctrine had followers in Austria and Germany. Occultism in the doctrines of the Ariosophists was of great importance as a sacral justification for an extreme political position and a fundamental rejection of reality, including socio-economic progress. The Ariosophists sought to predict and justify the “coming era” of the German world order. To counter the modern world, “corrupted” by racial mixing, the Ariosophists created many small circles and secret religious societies to revive the “lost” esoteric knowledge and racial virtues of the ancient Germans to create a new pan-German empire. To recreate the religion of the ancient Germans, List used the Scandinavian epic and the work of contemporary theosophists, in particular Max Ferdinand Sebaldt von Werth, who described the eugenic practices of the “Aryans”, as well as The Secret Doctrine by Helena Blavatsky and The Lost Lemuria by William Scott-Elliot. Influenced by these works, List used the terms “Ario-Germans” and “race” instead of “Germans” and “people”, perhaps to emphasize the overlap with the fifth root race in Blavatsky’s scheme. List and Lanz developed ideas about the struggle between the “Aryan race of masters” and the “race of slaves” and about the ancestral home of the “Aryans” on the sunken polar island of Arctogea.” ref

“In Nazi Germany, Germanic pagan folklore, as a source of primordial moral standards, was revered higher than Christianity associated with Judaism. Many Nazis saw anti-Christianity as a deeper form of antisemitism. Heinrich Himmler spoke of the need to create a “neo-Germanic religion” capable of replacing Christianity. The Old Testament was especially repugnant to the Nazis. Adolf Hitler called it “Satan’s Bible”. Rosenberg demanded that it be banned as a “vehicle of Jewish influence” and replaced by the Nordic sagas. The Nazi ideology combined the veneration of the “pagan heritage of the ancestors” with puritanical, Christian sexual morality, which the “Nordic” Apollo was supposed to personify. White supremacist ideologies and neo-Nazism, including ideas of racism, antisemitism, and anti-LGBTQ, have infiltrated or assimilated many Germanic modern pagan movements such as Odinism and some Ásatrú groups, including the Asatru Folk Assembly. These groups believe that the Germanic beliefs they hold constitute the true Caucasoid ethnic religion.” ref

“The issue of race is a major source of contention among modern pagans, especially in the United States. In the modern pagan community, one view is that race is entirely a matter of biological heredity, while the opposite position is that race is a social construct rooted in cultural heritage. In US modern pagan discourse, these views are described as völkische and universalist positions, respectively. The two factions, which Jeffrey Kaplan has called the “racist” and “non-racist” camps, often clash, with Kaplan claiming that there is a “virtual civil war” between them within the American modern pagan community. The division into universalists and völkisch also spread to other countries, but had less impact on the more ethnically homogeneous Iceland. A 2015 survey showed that more modern pagans adhere to universalist ideas than völkisch.” ref

“Going beyond this binary classification, religious scholar Mattias Gardell divides modern paganism in the United States into three factions according to their racial stance:

  • the “anti-racist” faction, which denounces any connection between religion and racial identity
  • the “radical-racist” faction, which believes that members of other racial groups should not follow their religion because racial identity is the natural religion of the “Aryan race”
  • an “ethnic” faction seeking to forge a middle path by recognizing their religion’s roots in Northern Europe and its connection to people of Northern European origin” ref

“Religious scholar Stephanie von Schnurbein accepted Gardell’s tripartite division, and referred to these groups as the “aracist”, “racial-religious”, and “ethnic” factions, respectively. Supporters of the universalist and anti-racist approach believe that the deities of Germanic Europe can call anyone to worship them, regardless of ethnic origin. This group rejects the völkisch focus on race, believing that even unintentionally, such an approach can lead to racist attitudes towards people of non-Northern European origin. Practicing universalists such as Stephan Grundy emphasize that ancient northern Europeans married and had children with members of other ethnic groups, and in Norse mythology, the Æsir did the same with the Vanirjötnar, and humans, so these modern pagans criticize racist views. Universalists favorably accept practitioners of modern paganism who are not of Northern European origin; for example, The Troth, based in the United States, has Jewish and African American members, and many of its white members have spouses who belong to different racial groups. While some pagans continue to believe that Germanic paganism is an innate religion, universalists have sometimes argued that this paganism is an innate religion for the lands of Northern Europe and not for a particular race. Universalists often complain that some journalists portray modern paganism as an inherently racist movement, so they use the Internet to highlight their opposition to far-right politics.” ref

“In Heathenry, the terms “völkisch”, “neo-völkisch”, or the Anglicised “folkish” are used both as endonyms and exonyms for groups who believe that the religion is closely related to the claimed biological race. Völkisch practitioners consider paganism to be an indigenous religion of a biologically distinct race that is conceptualized as “White“, “Nordic“, “Aryan”, “Northern European”, or “English”. Völkisch modern pagans generally regard these classifications as self-evident, despite the academic consensus that race is a cultural construct. Völkisch groups often use ethnonationalist language and claim that only members of these racial groups are entitled to practice a given religion, taking the pseudoscientific view that “gods and goddesses are encoded in the DNA” of the members of a race. Some practitioners explain the idea of linking their race and religion by saying that religion is inextricably linked to the collective unconscious of that race. The American modern pagan Stephen McNallen developed these ideas into a concept he called “metagenetics”. McNallen and many other members of the modern pagan “ethnic” faction explicitly state that they are not racist, although Gardell has noted that their views may be considered racist under specific definitions of the term. Gardell considered many “ethnic” modern pagans to be ethnic nationalists.” ref

“Many völkisch practitioners disapprove of multiculturalism and racial mixing in modern Europe, advocating racial separatism. In online media, modern pagan völkische often express a belief in the threat of racial miscegenation, which they blame on the social and political establishment, sometimes claiming that their ideas of racial exclusivity are the result of the threat that other ethnic groups pose to “white” people. While these groups generally claim to be aiming to revive Germanic paganism, their race-centric views have their origins in 19th-century culture, not antiquity. This group’s discourse contains the concepts of “ancestors” and “homeland”, which are understood very vaguely. Researcher Ethan Doyle White characterizes the position of the Odinic Rite and the Odin Brotherhood as “far right.” ref

“Ethnocentric modern pagans are highly critical of their universalist counterparts, often claiming that the latter have been misled by New Age literature and political correctness. Members of the universalist and ethnocentric factions criticize those who adopt an “ethnic” stance. The former view “ethnic” modern paganism as a cover for racism, while the latter view its adherents as race traitors for their refusal to fully accept the superiority of the “white race”. Some modern pagans of the völkisch movement are white supremacists and outright racists representing a “radical racist” faction that uses the names OdinismWotanism, and Wodenism. According to Kaplan, these adepts occupy the “most remote corners” of modern paganism. The lines between this form of modern paganism and Nazism are “extremely thin” because its adherents praise Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, claim that the “white race” is threatened with extinction by the efforts of a Jewish world conspiracy, and dismiss Christianity as a work of the Jews.” ref

“Many in the inner circle of the terrorist organization The Order, a white supremacist militia operating in the US in the 1980s, called themselves Odinists. Various racist modern pagans supported the Fourteen Words slogan, which was developed by The Order member David Lane. Some racist organizations, such as the Order of Nine Angles and the Black Order, combine elements of modern paganism with Satanism, while other racist modern pagans, such as Wotanist Ron McVan, reject the syncretism of the two religions. American neo-Nazi William Luther Pierce, the founder of the neo-Nazi organization National Alliance, whose ideas stimulated neo-Nazi terrorism, also created the Cosmotheistic Community Church in 1978. He considered the teaching he created within the framework of this church to be pantheism and leaned towards the “Panaryan” Nordic cults. These cults emphasized the idea of a unique closeness of “white people” with nature and the natural “spiritual essence”, which was influenced by the ideas of Savitri Devi. According to the doctrine, each race has its predestined role: “whites” are predisposed to strive for God, blacks strive for laziness, and Jews strive for corruption.” ref

“In 1985, Pierce purchased a large piece of land at Mill Point in West Virginia, fenced it in with barbed wire, and began selling books on Western culture and Western “pagan traditions” there. He aimed to save the “white race” away from the federal government. In part, he also drew on British Israelism and the racist religion of Identity Christianity. The “National Alliance” met regularly to discuss the ideas of “cosmotheism”. Pierce dismissed Christianity as “one of the chief mental illnesses of our people” through which “Jewish influence” spreads. Pierce saw the proposed government after the “racial revolution” as religious, which would be “more like a holy order.” He considered the future religion of the “white race” the “Aryan religion” – the “cosmotheism” that he created. Sociologist Marlène Laruelle notes the activation of “Aryan” modern paganism in the West and Russia. For example, social movements are thus developing that appeal to the Celtic past and call for a return to the “druidic religions” of pre-Christian Europe. For the most part, the French and German Nouvelle Droite share the common idea of a pan-European unity based on an “Aryan” identity and the desire to part with Christianity, the period of domination of which is seen as two thousand years of “wandering in darkness.” ref

Slavic neopaganism (Rodnoverie) has a close connection with Nazism, reproducing its main ideas: the “Aryan” idea, including the idea of the northern ancestral home (in Rodnoverie, it is in the Russian North, the Northern Urals, or beyond the Arctic Circle); the connection of their people with the “Aryans” or complete identification with them (in Rodnovery, “Slavic-Aryans”); the antiquity of one’s people and its racial or cultural superiority over others; their people (or the ancient “Aryans” identified with them) are regarded as cultural tregers, distributors of high culture, founders of great civilizations of antiquity, (in Rodnoverie, Slavic or “Slavic-Aryan” “Vedic” technological pracivilization, “taught” all other peoples), and creators of ancient writing (in Rodnoverie, Slavic runes); “Aryan” proto-language (in Rodnoverie, “Slavic-Aryan” or Old Slavic), from which all or many other languages of the world originated; reliance on esotericism; orientation to the faith of ancestors (hence paganism); anti-Christianity (the idea that Christians seek to enslave the people) and antisemitism (Jews as “racial enemies”); “Aryan” socialism (an integral part of the ideology of Nazism) as the most natural for its people (in Rodnoverie, the “original tribal system” of the Slavs, which is thought of as a kind of “Aryan” socialism); symbols and gestures close to or derived from Nazism, etc.” ref

“One of the main starting points for the formation of Slavic neopaganism was the search for a rationale for the national idea. Hence follows an increased interest in the origins of national self-consciousness and the national type of religiosity. In the post-Soviet period, in the conditions of the loss of the great “empire” (USSR), land, and influence and in search of internal and external enemies, neopaganism became widespread among nationalist ideologues, just like in Germany in the 1930s. In Rodnoverie, the unity of the Russian people was undergoing a new re-mythologization with an appeal for support to the ideas of the “golden age“, the primordial untainted tradition, and the native land. Historian Dmitry Shlapentokh wrote that, as in Europe, neopaganism in Russia pushes some of its adherents to antisemitism. This antisemitism is closely related to negative attitudes towards Asians, and this emphasis on racial factors can lead neopagans to neo-Nazism. The tendency of neopagans to antisemitism is a logical development of the ideas of neopaganism and imitation of the Nazis and is also a consequence of some specific conditions of modern Russian politics.” ref

“Unlike previous regimes, the current Russian political regime and the ideology of the middle class combine support for Orthodoxy with philosemitism and a positive attitude towards Muslims. These features of the regime contributed to the formation of specific views of neo-Nazi neopagans, which are represented to a large extent among the socially unprotected and marginalized Russian youth. In their opinion, power in Russia was usurped by a cabal of conspirators, including hierarchs of the Orthodox Church, Jews, and Muslims. Contrary to external differences, these forces are believed to have united in their desire to maintain power over the Russian “Aryans”. Some associations of neopaganism, in particular Slavic, are evaluated by researchers as extremist, radical nationalists. In Russia, individual neopagan organizations and essays were included in the list of extremist organizations of the Ministry of Justice of Russia and the Federal List of Extremist Materials, respectively.” ref

“The historian and ethnologist Victor Schnirelmann considers Russian neopaganism as a direction of Russian nationalism that denies Russian Orthodoxy as an enduring national value and distinguishes two cardinal tasks that Russian neopaganism sets for itself: the salvation of Russian national culture from the leveling influence of modernization and the protection of the natural environment from the impact of modern civilization. According to Schnirelmann, “Russian neopaganism is a radical variety of conservative ideology, which is distinguished by frank anti-intellectualism and populism.” Religious scholar Alexei Gaidukov considers it wrong to reduce the diversity of native faith groups to nationalism only – he views the ecological direction of Rodnovery as no less significant. Historian and religious scholar Roman Shizhensky believes Rodnovery poses little danger and law enforcement agencies should deal with radical groups.” ref

“The Austrian occultist Guido von List, who created the doctrine of Ariosophy, argued that an ancient developed “Ario-Germanic” culture reached its dawn several millennia before Roman colonization and Christianity. According to him, before Charlemagne‘s forced introduction of Christianity, Wotanism was practiced in what is now the Danubian territory of Germany. List considered Charlemagne the killer of the Saxons in memory of the bloody baptism of the pagans of Northern Germany by him. List considered the entire Christian period as an era of cultural decline, oblivion of the true faith, and unnatural racial mixing, when the “Aryan” ruling caste of priest-kings was forced to hide, secretly saving their sacred knowledge, which now became available to List as a full-fledged aristocratic descendant of this caste.” ref

“In Slavic neopaganism, there is the idea of an ancient multi-thousand-year-old and developed civilization of the “Slavs-Aryans”, while the entire Christian period seems to be an era of regression and decline, the enslavement of the “Aryans” by foreign missionaries who imposed on them a “slave” (Christian) ideology. Rodnovers often regard these missionaries as Jews, “Judeo-Masons“, or their accomplices. At the same time, the Slavic “Aryan” volkhvs or priests had to hide in secret places, preserving the knowledge that was now passed onto their direct descendants, Rodnovers. The idea of the Jewish-Khazar origin of Prince Vladimir the Great is popular, explaining why he introduced Christianity, an instrument for the enslavement of the “Aryans” by Jews, and staged the genocide of the pagan Slavs. Roman Shizhensky singles out the neopagan myth about Vladimir and characterizes it as one of the most “odious” neopagan historical myths and one of the leading Russian neopagan myths in terms of worldview significance.” ref

“The author of this myth is Valery Yemelyanov, one of the founders of Russian neopaganism, who expounded it in his book Dezionization (1970s). Shizhensky notes that the neopagan myth about Vladimir contradicts scientific work on the issue and the totality of historical sources. Concerning the trend of convergence of neopagan associations from different countries, Andrey Beskov notes that neopagan nationalism is not an obstacle to “neopagan internationalism“, and anti-globalism, one of the manifestations of which was the popularity of ethnic religions, itself acquires a global character.” ref

Horned female shamans?

“The Evolution from Grandmother Shaman Chief reduced to Maiden Bride.” 

“One particular ancient shamanic lineage still has a modern tradition is the Russian headdresses of the Baltic-Slavic shaman women who wore what is called today, the Russian or Slavic “Horned Kichka.” These also have similarities of the traditional Norwegian Headdresses, including Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Balkan headdresses of Georgia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, all resemble a basic folk traditional headdress that are remarkably alike. The original prehistory or shamanic headdresses were made from animal antlers, from large to small Moose, Stag, Elk and Ram’s horns attached to her headdress defining the clan leadership of the women.” ref

“For example, the Grandmothers who were the most experienced shaman or leader, wore the biggest horns, the Mothers (adult women) wore smaller ones and the Maiden were not allowed to wear any horns. These ancient headdresses today are now limited to maidens who are getting married and wear the brides hat. Today’s tradition of Bridal headdresses are called Kichko, Kokoshnik, Kika кика (головной убор). Woman’s mysterious rites of pre-pagan shamanism were later defined in pagan era’s as the silver-haired sorceress, the beautiful goddess spinner Mogosa, as her skirt made of coarse cloth, embroidered with symbolism and head as goddess of fate, crowned by her shaman’s Horned Kichko. These headdress are made up of two horizontal horns. The Horned Kichko (Kika and sometimes Kichka) in particular of all Slavic and Russian headdresses, Since the 13th century, rather than loose these origins of her shamanic past of which the horned kichko symbolizes, the women would integrate their headdresses into modern religious or pagan ceremonies (weddings) as a way to keep the original horned headdress alive (without the animal horns.)” ref

“Kichko or Kichka and “Chelo kichnoe” was first mentioned in a document in 1328 when it was worn mainly by women in the southern provinces of Tula, Ryazan, Kaluga and Orel and the women were still wearing the headdress in the form of Elk, Ram, Moon, Deer or other horns which appeared in ancient times and regarded by the elder shaman women as a sacred talisman. These horns were worn by the female shaman elder warrior for its community and clan. Women shamans also wore them as a way to protect themselves from the shadow souls of living humans that wandered from peoples clans and then villages. Kichko had a large distribution in the regions of Arkhangelsk and Vologda province in Russia and were very dominant and in later periods of rising clans, the Finno-Ugric ancestors (X – XIII centuries), which had some of the same kinds of female headdresses, originating from indigenous white Slav and Balkan women. Young women (maidens or younger girls) were not allowed to wear any such headdress, especially in tribe ceremonies, they would be horn-less as the longest horns of the Kichka are only worn by the eldest grandmother shaman leaders and the smaller horns by the mothers and adult women for ceremony.” ref

“These horned headdresses would never be worn outside of ceremony. The Russian nation was formed originally from two basic ethnic groups, the Slavs and the Merja and the Merja were the originators of the Horned Kichka and that is why they are so different and more ancient with the references to animals (shamanic cultures). The Woman’s headdress or ancestral inheritance of the Merja tribe is shown in these Kichkas. There is also the “Magpie headdress” and like the Kichko it is without the horns defining the aspect of Maiden. Unusual “magpie” headdress of a chief or a peacock’s tail, wore representative ethnographic group Novosilkih Cossack Women, who lived in several villages of the former county Novosilski Tula. Investigated in 1902 this region N. M. Mohyla wrote: “Magpie – Old Russian headdress of women and was widely distributed in the central parts of Russia, as well as some groups Mordovians.” ref

“It was the richest of women’s hats; to the beginning of the XX century until the “Forty” headdress fell into disuse. The Magpie as a Headdress is the structure of the Kichko (Kika, Kichka) but over her forehead a little lower, and laterally several inches higher than the normal Kichko. The main objects that form a Magpie, goes together in this headdress were Kichko, Forty, Pozatylnik, Nalobnik, and the Handkerchief . Additional – various ornaments from beads, feathers, ribbons, artificial flowers were added also.” Magpie can be defined as the cut and always decorated with embroidery on it. A piece of cloth that is worn “over” the horned Kibalko (Kichko / Kichka). Magpies, which are particularly a certain cut that is flatter and the sewn part (like a case), worn on the horns Kichko also or the basic structure of it – stick these horns back or stick them up in the Peasant headdress of women.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

People don’t commonly teach religious history, even that of their own claimed religion. No, rather they teach a limited “pro their religion” history of their religion from a religious perspective favorable to the religion of choice. 

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Do you truly think “Religious Belief” is only a matter of some personal choice?

Do you not see how coercive one’s world of choice is limited to the obvious hereditary belief, in most religious choices available to the child of religious parents or caregivers? Religion is more commonly like a family, culture, society, etc. available belief that limits the belief choices of the child and that is when “Religious Belief” is not only a matter of some personal choice and when it becomes hereditary faith, not because of the quality of its alleged facts or proposed truths but because everyone else important to the child believes similarly so they do as well simply mimicking authority beliefs handed to them. Because children are raised in religion rather than being presented all possible choices but rather one limited dogmatic brand of “Religious Belief” where children only have a choice of following the belief as instructed, and then personally claim the faith hereditary belief seen in the confirming to the belief they have held themselves all their lives. This is obvious in statements asked and answered by children claiming a faith they barely understand but they do understand that their family believes “this or that” faith, so they feel obligated to believe it too. While I do agree that “Religious Belief” should only be a matter of some personal choice, it rarely is… End Hereditary Religion!

Opposition to Imposed Hereditary Religion

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Animism: Respecting the Living World by Graham Harvey 

“How have human cultures engaged with and thought about animals, plants, rocks, clouds, and other elements in their natural surroundings? Do animals and other natural objects have a spirit or soul? What is their relationship to humans? In this new study, Graham Harvey explores current and past animistic beliefs and practices of Native Americans, Maori, Aboriginal Australians, and eco-pagans. He considers the varieties of animism found in these cultures as well as their shared desire to live respectfully within larger natural communities. Drawing on his extensive casework, Harvey also considers the linguistic, performative, ecological, and activist implications of these different animisms.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

We are like believing machines we vacuum up ideas, like Velcro sticks to almost everything. We accumulate beliefs that we allow to negatively influence our lives, often without realizing it. Our willingness must be to alter skewed beliefs that impend our balance or reason, which allows us to achieve new positive thinking and accurate outcomes.

My thoughts on Religion Evolution with external links for more info:

“Religion is an Evolved Product” and Yes, Religion is Like Fear Given Wings…

Atheists talk about gods and religions for the same reason doctors talk about cancer, they are looking for a cure, or a firefighter talks about fires because they burn people and they care to stop them. We atheists too often feel a need to help the victims of mental slavery, held in the bondage that is the false beliefs of gods and the conspiracy theories of reality found in religions.

“Understanding Religion Evolution: Animism, Totemism, Shamanism, Paganism & Progressed organized religion”

Understanding Religion Evolution:

“An Archaeological/Anthropological Understanding of Religion Evolution”

It seems ancient peoples had to survived amazing threats in a “dangerous universe (by superstition perceived as good and evil),” and human “immorality or imperfection of the soul” which was thought to affect the still living, leading to ancestor worship. This ancestor worship presumably led to the belief in supernatural beings, and then some of these were turned into the belief in gods. This feeble myth called gods were just a human conceived “made from nothing into something over and over, changing, again and again, taking on more as they evolve, all the while they are thought to be special,” but it is just supernatural animistic spirit-belief perceived as sacred.

 

Quick Evolution of Religion?

Pre-Animism (at least 300,000 years ago) pre-religion is a beginning that evolves into later Animism. So, Religion as we think of it, to me, all starts in a general way with Animism (Africa: 100,000 years ago) (theoretical belief in supernatural powers/spirits), then this is physically expressed in or with Totemism (Europe: 50,000 years ago) (theoretical belief in mythical relationship with powers/spirits through a totem item), which then enlists a full-time specific person to do this worship and believed interacting Shamanism (Siberia/Russia: 30,000 years ago) (theoretical belief in access and influence with spirits through ritual), and then there is the further employment of myths and gods added to all the above giving you Paganism (Turkey: 12,000 years ago) (often a lot more nature-based than most current top world religions, thus hinting to their close link to more ancient religious thinking it stems from). My hypothesis is expressed with an explanation of the building of a theatrical house (modern religions development). Progressed organized religion (Egypt: 5,000 years ago)  with CURRENT “World” RELIGIONS (after 4,000 years ago).

Historically, in large city-state societies (such as Egypt or Iraq) starting around 5,000 years ago culminated to make religion something kind of new, a sociocultural-governmental-religious monarchy, where all or at least many of the people of such large city-state societies seem familiar with and committed to the existence of “religion” as the integrated life identity package of control dynamics with a fixed closed magical doctrine, but this juggernaut integrated religion identity package of Dogmatic-Propaganda certainly did not exist or if developed to an extent it was highly limited in most smaller prehistoric societies as they seem to lack most of the strong control dynamics with a fixed closed magical doctrine (magical beliefs could be at times be added or removed). Many people just want to see developed religious dynamics everywhere even if it is not. Instead, all that is found is largely fragments until the domestication of religion.

Religions, as we think of them today, are a new fad, even if they go back to around 6,000 years in the timeline of human existence, this amounts to almost nothing when seen in the long slow evolution of religion at least around 70,000 years ago with one of the oldest ritual worship. Stone Snake of South Africa: “first human worship” 70,000 years ago. This message of how religion and gods among them are clearly a man-made thing that was developed slowly as it was invented and then implemented peace by peace discrediting them all. Which seems to be a simple point some are just not grasping how devastating to any claims of truth when we can see the lie clearly in the archeological sites.

I wish people fought as hard for the actual values as they fight for the group/clan names political or otherwise they think support values. Every amount spent on war is theft to children in need of food or the homeless kept from shelter.

Here are several of my blog posts on history:

I am not an academic. I am a revolutionary that teaches in public, in places like social media, and in the streets. I am not a leader by some title given but from my commanding leadership style of simply to start teaching everywhere to everyone, all manner of positive education. 

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

To me, Animism starts in Southern Africa, then to West Europe, and becomes Totemism. Another split goes near the Russia and Siberia border becoming Shamanism, which heads into Central Europe meeting up with Totemism, which also had moved there, mixing the two which then heads to Lake Baikal in Siberia. From there this Shamanism-Totemism heads to Turkey where it becomes Paganism.

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Not all “Religions” or “Religious Persuasions” have a god(s) but

All can be said to believe in some imaginary beings or imaginary things like spirits, afterlives, etc.

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Low Gods “Earth” or Tutelary deity and High Gods “Sky” or Supreme deity

“An Earth goddess is a deification of the Earth. Earth goddesses are often associated with the “chthonic” deities of the underworldKi and Ninhursag are Mesopotamian earth goddesses. In Greek mythology, the Earth is personified as Gaia, corresponding to Roman Terra, Indic Prithvi/Bhūmi, etc. traced to an “Earth Mother” complementary to the “Sky Father” in Proto-Indo-European religionEgyptian mythology exceptionally has a sky goddess and an Earth god.” ref

“A mother goddess is a goddess who represents or is a personification of naturemotherhoodfertilitycreationdestruction or who embodies the bounty of the Earth. When equated with the Earth or the natural world, such goddesses are sometimes referred to as Mother Earth or as the Earth Mother. In some religious traditions or movements, Heavenly Mother (also referred to as Mother in Heaven or Sky Mother) is the wife or feminine counterpart of the Sky father or God the Father.” ref

Any masculine sky god is often also king of the gods, taking the position of patriarch within a pantheon. Such king gods are collectively categorized as “sky father” deities, with a polarity between sky and earth often being expressed by pairing a “sky father” god with an “earth mother” goddess (pairings of a sky mother with an earth father are less frequent). A main sky goddess is often the queen of the gods and may be an air/sky goddess in her own right, though she usually has other functions as well with “sky” not being her main. In antiquity, several sky goddesses in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Near East were called Queen of Heaven. Neopagans often apply it with impunity to sky goddesses from other regions who were never associated with the term historically. The sky often has important religious significance. Many religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic, have deities associated with the sky.” ref

“In comparative mythology, sky father is a term for a recurring concept in polytheistic religions of a sky god who is addressed as a “father”, often the father of a pantheon and is often either a reigning or former King of the Gods. The concept of “sky father” may also be taken to include Sun gods with similar characteristics, such as Ra. The concept is complementary to an “earth mother“. “Sky Father” is a direct translation of the Vedic Dyaus Pita, etymologically descended from the same Proto-Indo-European deity name as the Greek Zeûs Pater and Roman Jupiter and Germanic Týr, Tir or Tiwaz, all of which are reflexes of the same Proto-Indo-European deity’s name, *Dyēus Ph₂tḗr. While there are numerous parallels adduced from outside of Indo-European mythology, there are exceptions (e.g. In Egyptian mythology, Nut is the sky mother and Geb is the earth father).” ref

Tutelary deity

“A tutelary (also tutelar) is a deity or spirit who is a guardian, patron, or protector of a particular place, geographic feature, person, lineage, nation, culture, or occupation. The etymology of “tutelary” expresses the concept of safety and thus of guardianship. In late Greek and Roman religion, one type of tutelary deity, the genius, functions as the personal deity or daimon of an individual from birth to death. Another form of personal tutelary spirit is the familiar spirit of European folklore.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) iKorean shamanismjangseung and sotdae were placed at the edge of villages to frighten off demons. They were also worshiped as deities. Seonangshin is the patron deity of the village in Korean tradition and was believed to embody the SeonangdangIn Philippine animism, Diwata or Lambana are deities or spirits that inhabit sacred places like mountains and mounds and serve as guardians. Such as: Maria Makiling is the deity who guards Mt. Makiling and Maria Cacao and Maria Sinukuan. In Shinto, the spirits, or kami, which give life to human bodies come from nature and return to it after death. Ancestors are therefore themselves tutelaries to be worshiped. And similarly, Native American beliefs such as Tonás, tutelary animal spirit among the Zapotec and Totems, familial or clan spirits among the Ojibwe, can be animals.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Austronesian beliefs such as: Atua (gods and spirits of the Polynesian peoples such as the Māori or the Hawaiians), Hanitu (Bunun of Taiwan‘s term for spirit), Hyang (KawiSundaneseJavanese, and Balinese Supreme Being, in ancient Java and Bali mythology and this spiritual entity, can be either divine or ancestral), Kaitiaki (New Zealand Māori term used for the concept of guardianship, for the sky, the sea, and the land), Kawas (mythology) (divided into 6 groups: gods, ancestors, souls of the living, spirits of living things, spirits of lifeless objects, and ghosts), Tiki (Māori mythologyTiki is the first man created by either Tūmatauenga or Tāne and represents deified ancestors found in most Polynesian cultures). ” ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Mesopotamian Tutelary Deities can be seen as ones related to City-States 

“Historical city-states included Sumerian cities such as Uruk and UrAncient Egyptian city-states, such as Thebes and Memphis; the Phoenician cities (such as Tyre and Sidon); the five Philistine city-states; the Berber city-states of the Garamantes; the city-states of ancient Greece (the poleis such as AthensSpartaThebes, and Corinth); the Roman Republic (which grew from a city-state into a vast empire); the Italian city-states from the Middle Ages to the early modern period, such as FlorenceSienaFerraraMilan (which as they grew in power began to dominate neighboring cities) and Genoa and Venice, which became powerful thalassocracies; the Mayan and other cultures of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica (including cities such as Chichen ItzaTikalCopán and Monte Albán); the central Asian cities along the Silk Road; the city-states of the Swahili coastRagusa; states of the medieval Russian lands such as Novgorod and Pskov; and many others.” ref

“The Uruk period (ca. 4000 to 3100 BCE; also known as Protoliterate period) of Mesopotamia, named after the Sumerian city of Uruk, this period saw the emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia and the Sumerian civilization. City-States like Uruk and others had a patron tutelary City Deity along with a Priest-King.” ref

Chinese folk religion, both past, and present, includes myriad tutelary deities. Exceptional individuals, highly cultivated sages, and prominent ancestors can be deified and honored after death. Lord Guan is the patron of military personnel and police, while Mazu is the patron of fishermen and sailors. Such as Tu Di Gong (Earth Deity) is the tutelary deity of a locality, and each individual locality has its own Earth Deity and Cheng Huang Gong (City God) is the guardian deity of an individual city, worshipped by local officials and locals since imperial times.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Hinduism, personal tutelary deities are known as ishta-devata, while family tutelary deities are known as Kuladevata. Gramadevata are guardian deities of villages. Devas can also be seen as tutelary. Shiva is the patron of yogis and renunciants. City goddesses include: Mumbadevi (Mumbai), Sachchika (Osian); Kuladevis include: Ambika (Porwad), and Mahalakshmi. In NorthEast India Meitei mythology and religion (Sanamahism) of Manipur, there are various types of tutelary deities, among which Lam Lais are the most predominant ones. Tibetan Buddhism has Yidam as a tutelary deity. Dakini is the patron of those who seek knowledge.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) The Greeks also thought deities guarded specific places: for instance, Athena was the patron goddess of the city of Athens. Socrates spoke of hearing the voice of his personal spirit or daimonion:

You have often heard me speak of an oracle or sign which comes to me … . This sign I have had ever since I was a child. The sign is a voice which comes to me and always forbids me to do something which I am going to do, but never commands me to do anything, and this is what stands in the way of my being a politician.” ref

“Tutelary deities who guard and preserve a place or a person are fundamental to ancient Roman religion. The tutelary deity of a man was his Genius, that of a woman her Juno. In the Imperial era, the Genius of the Emperor was a focus of Imperial cult. An emperor might also adopt a major deity as his personal patron or tutelary, as Augustus did Apollo. Precedents for claiming the personal protection of a deity were established in the Republican era, when for instance the Roman dictator Sulla advertised the goddess Victory as his tutelary by holding public games (ludi) in her honor.” ref

“Each town or city had one or more tutelary deities, whose protection was considered particularly vital in time of war and siege. Rome itself was protected by a goddess whose name was to be kept ritually secret on pain of death (for a supposed case, see Quintus Valerius Soranus). The Capitoline Triad of Juno, Jupiter, and Minerva were also tutelaries of Rome. The Italic towns had their own tutelary deities. Juno often had this function, as at the Latin town of Lanuvium and the Etruscan city of Veii, and was often housed in an especially grand temple on the arx (citadel) or other prominent or central location. The tutelary deity of Praeneste was Fortuna, whose oracle was renowned.” ref

“The Roman ritual of evocatio was premised on the belief that a town could be made vulnerable to military defeat if the power of its tutelary deity were diverted outside the city, perhaps by the offer of superior cult at Rome. The depiction of some goddesses such as the Magna Mater (Great Mother, or Cybele) as “tower-crowned” represents their capacity to preserve the city. A town in the provinces might adopt a deity from within the Roman religious sphere to serve as its guardian, or syncretize its own tutelary with such; for instance, a community within the civitas of the Remi in Gaul adopted Apollo as its tutelary, and at the capital of the Remi (present-day Rheims), the tutelary was Mars Camulus.” ref 

Household deity (a kind of or related to a Tutelary deity)

“A household deity is a deity or spirit that protects the home, looking after the entire household or certain key members. It has been a common belief in paganism as well as in folklore across many parts of the world. Household deities fit into two types; firstly, a specific deity – typically a goddess – often referred to as a hearth goddess or domestic goddess who is associated with the home and hearth, such as the ancient Greek Hestia.” ref

“The second type of household deities are those that are not one singular deity, but a type, or species of animistic deity, who usually have lesser powers than major deities. This type was common in the religions of antiquity, such as the Lares of ancient Roman religion, the Gashin of Korean shamanism, and Cofgodas of Anglo-Saxon paganism. These survived Christianisation as fairy-like creatures existing in folklore, such as the Anglo-Scottish Brownie and Slavic Domovoy.” ref

“Household deities were usually worshipped not in temples but in the home, where they would be represented by small idols (such as the teraphim of the Bible, often translated as “household gods” in Genesis 31:19 for example), amulets, paintings, or reliefs. They could also be found on domestic objects, such as cosmetic articles in the case of Tawaret. The more prosperous houses might have a small shrine to the household god(s); the lararium served this purpose in the case of the Romans. The gods would be treated as members of the family and invited to join in meals, or be given offerings of food and drink.” ref

“In many religions, both ancient and modern, a god would preside over the home. Certain species, or types, of household deities, existed. An example of this was the Roman Lares. Many European cultures retained house spirits into the modern period. Some examples of these include:

“Although the cosmic status of household deities was not as lofty as that of the Twelve Olympians or the Aesir, they were also jealous of their dignity and also had to be appeased with shrines and offerings, however humble. Because of their immediacy they had arguably more influence on the day-to-day affairs of men than the remote gods did. Vestiges of their worship persisted long after Christianity and other major religions extirpated nearly every trace of the major pagan pantheons. Elements of the practice can be seen even today, with Christian accretions, where statues to various saints (such as St. Francis) protect gardens and grottos. Even the gargoyles found on older churches, could be viewed as guardians partitioning a sacred space.” ref

“For centuries, Christianity fought a mop-up war against these lingering minor pagan deities, but they proved tenacious. For example, Martin Luther‘s Tischreden have numerous – quite serious – references to dealing with kobolds. Eventually, rationalism and the Industrial Revolution threatened to erase most of these minor deities, until the advent of romantic nationalism rehabilitated them and embellished them into objects of literary curiosity in the 19th century. Since the 20th century this literature has been mined for characters for role-playing games, video games, and other fantasy personae, not infrequently invested with invented traits and hierarchies somewhat different from their mythological and folkloric roots.” ref

“In contradistinction to both Herbert Spencer and Edward Burnett Tylor, who defended theories of animistic origins of ancestor worship, Émile Durkheim saw its origin in totemism. In reality, this distinction is somewhat academic, since totemism may be regarded as a particularized manifestation of animism, and something of a synthesis of the two positions was attempted by Sigmund Freud. In Freud’s Totem and Taboo, both totem and taboo are outward expressions or manifestations of the same psychological tendency, a concept which is complementary to, or which rather reconciles, the apparent conflict. Freud preferred to emphasize the psychoanalytic implications of the reification of metaphysical forces, but with particular emphasis on its familial nature. This emphasis underscores, rather than weakens, the ancestral component.” ref

William Edward Hearn, a noted classicist, and jurist, traced the origin of domestic deities from the earliest stages as an expression of animism, a belief system thought to have existed also in the neolithic, and the forerunner of Indo-European religion. In his analysis of the Indo-European household, in Chapter II “The House Spirit”, Section 1, he states:

The belief which guided the conduct of our forefathers was … the spirit rule of dead ancestors.” ref

“In Section 2 he proceeds to elaborate:

It is thus certain that the worship of deceased ancestors is a vera causa, and not a mere hypothesis. …

In the other European nations, the Slavs, the Teutons, and the Kelts, the House Spirit appears with no less distinctness. … [T]he existence of that worship does not admit of doubt. … The House Spirits had a multitude of other names which it is needless here to enumerate, but all of which are more or less expressive of their friendly relations with man. … In [England] … [h]e is the Brownie. … In Scotland this same Brownie is well known. He is usually described as attached to particular families, with whom he has been known to reside for centuries, threshing the corn, cleaning the house, and performing similar household tasks. His favorite gratification was milk and honey.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

refrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefref

“These ideas are my speculations from the evidence.”

I am still researching the “god‘s origins” all over the world. So you know, it is very complicated but I am smart and willing to look, DEEP, if necessary, which going very deep does seem to be needed here, when trying to actually understand the evolution of gods and goddesses. I am sure of a few things and less sure of others, but even in stuff I am not fully grasping I still am slowly figuring it out, to explain it to others. But as I research more I am understanding things a little better, though I am still working on understanding it all or something close and thus always figuring out more. 

Sky Father/Sky God?

“Egyptian: (Nut) Sky Mother and (Geb) Earth Father” (Egypt is different but similar)

Turkic/Mongolic: (Tengri/Tenger Etseg) Sky Father and (Eje/Gazar Eej) Earth Mother *Transeurasian*

Hawaiian: (Wākea) Sky Father and (Papahānaumoku) Earth Mother *Austronesian*

New Zealand/ Māori: (Ranginui) Sky Father and (Papatūānuku) Earth Mother *Austronesian*

Proto-Indo-European: (Dyus/Dyus phtr) Sky Father and (Dʰéǵʰōm/Plethwih) Earth Mother

Indo-Aryan: (Dyaus Pita) Sky Father and (Prithvi Mata) Earth Mother *Indo-European*

Italic: (Jupiter) Sky Father and (Juno) Sky Mother *Indo-European*

Etruscan: (Tinia) Sky Father and (Uni) Sky Mother *Tyrsenian/Italy Pre–Indo-European*

Hellenic/Greek: (Zeus) Sky Father and (Hera) Sky Mother who started as an “Earth Goddess” *Indo-European*

Nordic: (Dagr) Sky Father and (Nótt) Sky Mother *Indo-European*

Slavic: (Perun) Sky Father and (Mokosh) Earth Mother *Indo-European*

Illyrian: (Deipaturos) Sky Father and (Messapic Damatura’s “earth-mother” maybe) Earth Mother *Indo-European*

Albanian: (Zojz) Sky Father and (?) *Indo-European*

Baltic: (Perkūnas) Sky Father and (Saulė) Sky Mother *Indo-European*

Germanic: (Týr) Sky Father and (?) *Indo-European*

Colombian-Muisca: (Bochica) Sky Father and (Huythaca) Sky Mother *Chibchan*

Aztec: (Quetzalcoatl) Sky Father and (Xochiquetzal) Sky Mother *Uto-Aztecan*

Incan: (Viracocha) Sky Father and (Mama Runtucaya) Sky Mother *Quechuan*

China: (Tian/Shangdi) Sky Father and (Dì) Earth Mother *Sino-Tibetan*

Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian: (An/Anu) Sky Father and (Ki) Earth Mother

Finnish: (Ukko) Sky Father and (Akka) Earth Mother *Finno-Ugric*

Sami: (Horagalles) Sky Father and (Ravdna) Earth Mother *Finno-Ugric*

Puebloan-Zuni: (Ápoyan Ta’chu) Sky Father and (Áwitelin Tsíta) Earth Mother

Puebloan-Hopi: (Tawa) Sky Father and (Kokyangwuti/Spider Woman/Grandmother) Earth Mother *Uto-Aztecan*

Puebloan-Navajo: (Tsohanoai) Sky Father and (Estsanatlehi) Earth Mother *Na-Dene*

refrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefrefref 

 

Sky Father/Sky Mother “High Gods” or similar gods/goddesses of the sky more loosely connected, seeming arcane mythology across the earth seen in Siberia, China, Europe, Native Americans/First Nations People and Mesopotamia, etc.

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref

Hinduism around 3,700 to 3,500 years old. ref

 Judaism around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (The first writing in the bible was “Paleo-Hebrew” dated to around 3,000 years ago Khirbet Qeiyafa is the site of an ancient fortress city overlooking the Elah Valley. And many believe the religious Jewish texts were completed around 2,500) ref, ref

Judaism is around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (“Paleo-Hebrew” 3,000 years ago and Torah 2,500 years ago)

“Judaism is an Abrahamic, its roots as an organized religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Some scholars argue that modern Judaism evolved from Yahwism, the religion of ancient Israel and Judah, by the late 6th century BCE, and is thus considered to be one of the oldest monotheistic religions.” ref

“Yahwism is the name given by modern scholars to the religion of ancient Israel, essentially polytheistic, with a plethora of gods and goddesses. Heading the pantheon was Yahweh, the national god of the Israelite kingdoms of Israel and Judah, with his consort, the goddess Asherah; below them were second-tier gods and goddesses such as Baal, Shamash, Yarikh, Mot, and Astarte, all of whom had their own priests and prophets and numbered royalty among their devotees, and a third and fourth tier of minor divine beings, including the mal’ak, the messengers of the higher gods, who in later times became the angels of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Yahweh, however, was not the ‘original’ god of Israel “Isra-El”; it is El, the head of the Canaanite pantheon, whose name forms the basis of the name “Israel”, and none of the Old Testament patriarchs, the tribes of Israel, the Judges, or the earliest monarchs, have a Yahwistic theophoric name (i.e., one incorporating the name of Yahweh).” ref

“El is a Northwest Semitic word meaning “god” or “deity“, or referring (as a proper name) to any one of multiple major ancient Near Eastern deities. A rarer form, ‘ila, represents the predicate form in Old Akkadian and in Amorite. The word is derived from the Proto-Semitic *ʔil-, meaning “god”. Specific deities known as ‘El or ‘Il include the supreme god of the ancient Canaanite religion and the supreme god of East Semitic speakers in Mesopotamia’s Early Dynastic Period. ʼĒl is listed at the head of many pantheons. In some Canaanite and Ugaritic sources, ʼĒl played a role as father of the gods, of creation, or both. For example, in the Ugaritic texts, ʾil mlk is understood to mean “ʼĒl the King” but ʾil hd as “the god Hadad“. The Semitic root ʾlh (Arabic ʾilāh, Aramaic ʾAlāh, ʾElāh, Hebrew ʾelōah) may be ʾl with a parasitic h, and ʾl may be an abbreviated form of ʾlh. In Ugaritic the plural form meaning “gods” is ʾilhm, equivalent to Hebrew ʾelōhîm “powers”. In the Hebrew texts this word is interpreted as being semantically singular for “god” by biblical commentators. However the documentary hypothesis for the Old Testament (corresponds to the Jewish Torah) developed originally in the 1870s, identifies these that different authors – the Jahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and the Priestly source – were responsible for editing stories from a polytheistic religion into those of a monotheistic religion. Inconsistencies that arise between monotheism and polytheism in the texts are reflective of this hypothesis.” ref

 

Jainism around 2,599 – 2,527 years old. ref

Confucianism around 2,600 – 2,551 years old. ref

Buddhism around 2,563/2,480 – 2,483/2,400 years old. ref

Christianity around 2,o00 years old. ref

Shinto around 1,305 years old. ref

Islam around 1407–1385 years old. ref

Sikhism around 548–478 years old. ref

Bahá’í around 200–125 years old. ref

Knowledge to Ponder: 

Stars/Astrology:

  • Possibly, around 30,000 years ago (in simpler form) to 6,000 years ago, Stars/Astrology are connected to Ancestors, Spirit Animals, and Deities.
  • The star also seems to be a possible proto-star for Star of Ishtar, Star of Inanna, or Star of Venus.
  • Around 7,000 to 6,000 years ago, Star Constellations/Astrology have connections to the “Kurgan phenomenon” of below-ground “mound” stone/wood burial structures and “Dolmen phenomenon” of above-ground stone burial structures.
  • Around 6,500–5,800 years ago, The Northern Levant migrations into Jordon and Israel in the Southern Levant brought new cultural and religious transfer from Turkey and Iran.
  • “The Ghassulian Star,” a mysterious 6,000-year-old mural from Jordan may have connections to the European paganstic kurgan/dolmens phenomenon.

“Astrology is a range of divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that claim to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the apparent positions of celestial objects. Different cultures have employed forms of astrology since at least the 2nd millennium BCE, these practices having originated in calendrical systems used to predict seasonal shifts and to interpret celestial cycles as signs of divine communications. Most, if not all, cultures have attached importance to what they observed in the sky, and some—such as the HindusChinese, and the Maya—developed elaborate systems for predicting terrestrial events from celestial observations. Western astrology, one of the oldest astrological systems still in use, can trace its roots to 19th–17th century BCE Mesopotamia, from where it spread to Ancient GreeceRome, the Islamicate world and eventually Central and Western Europe. Contemporary Western astrology is often associated with systems of horoscopes that purport to explain aspects of a person’s personality and predict significant events in their lives based on the positions of celestial objects; the majority of professional astrologers rely on such systems.” ref 

Around 5,500 years ago, Science evolves, The first evidence of science was 5,500 years ago and was demonstrated by a body of empirical, theoretical, and practical knowledge about the natural world. ref

Around 5,000 years ago, Origin of Logics is a Naturalistic Observation (principles of valid reasoning, inference, & demonstration) ref

Around 4,150 to 4,000 years ago: The earliest surviving versions of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, which was originally titled “He who Saw the Deep” (Sha naqba īmuru) or “Surpassing All Other Kings” (Shūtur eli sharrī) were written. ref

Hinduism:

  • 3,700 years ago or so, the oldest of the Hindu Vedas (scriptures), the Rig Veda was composed.
  • 3,500 years ago or so, the Vedic Age began in India after the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilization.

Judaism:

  • around 3,000 years ago, the first writing in the bible was “Paleo-Hebrew”
  • around 2,500 years ago, many believe the religious Jewish texts were completed

Myths: The bible inspired religion is not just one religion or one myth but a grouping of several religions and myths

  • Around 3,450 or 3,250 years ago, according to legend, is the traditionally accepted period in which the Israelite lawgiver, Moses, provided the Ten Commandments.
  • Around 2,500 to 2,400 years ago, a collection of ancient religious writings by the Israelites based primarily upon the Hebrew Bible, Tanakh, or Old Testament is the first part of Christianity’s bible.
  • Around 2,400 years ago, the most accepted hypothesis is that the canon was formed in stages, first the Pentateuch (Torah).
  • Around 2,140 to 2,116 years ago, the Prophets was written during the Hasmonean dynasty, and finally the remaining books.
  • Christians traditionally divide the Old Testament into four sections:
  • The first five books or Pentateuch (Torah).
  • The proposed history books telling the history of the Israelites from their conquest of Canaan to their defeat and exile in Babylon.
  • The poetic and proposed “Wisdom books” dealing, in various forms, with questions of good and evil in the world.
  • The books of the biblical prophets, warning of the consequences of turning away from God:
  • Henotheism:
  • Exodus 20:23 “You shall not make other gods besides Me (not saying there are no other gods just not to worship them); gods of silver or gods of gold, you shall not make for yourselves.”
  • Polytheism:
  • Judges 10:6 “Then the sons of Israel again did evil in the sight of the LORD, served the Baals and the Ashtaroth, the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the sons of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines; thus they forsook the LORD and did not serve Him.”
  • 1 Corinthians 8:5 “For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords.”
  • Monotheism:
  • Isaiah 43:10 “You are my witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me.

Around 2,570 to 2,270 Years Ago, there is a confirmation of atheistic doubting as well as atheistic thinking, mainly by Greek philosophers. However, doubting gods is likely as old as the invention of gods and should destroy the thinking that belief in god(s) is the “default belief”. The Greek word is apistos (a “not” and pistos “faithful,”), thus not faithful or faithless because one is unpersuaded and unconvinced by a god(s) claim. Short Definition: unbelieving, unbeliever, or unbelief.

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Expressions of Atheistic Thinking:

  • Around 2,600 years ago, Ajita Kesakambali, ancient Indian philosopher, who is the first known proponent of Indian materialism. ref
  • Around 2,535 to 2,475 years ago, Heraclitus, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Anatolia, also known as Asia Minor or modern Turkey. ref
  • Around 2,500 to 2,400 years ago, according to The Story of Civilization book series certain African pygmy tribes have no identifiable gods, spirits, or religious beliefs or rituals, and even what burials accrue are without ceremony. ref
  • Around 2,490 to 2,430 years ago, Empedocles, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a citizen of Agrigentum, a Greek city in Sicily. ref
  • Around 2,460 to 2,370 years ago, Democritus, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher considered to be the “father of modern science” possibly had some disbelief amounting to atheism. ref
  • Around 2,399 years ago or so, Socrates, a famous Greek philosopher was tried for sinfulness by teaching doubt of state gods. ref
  • Around 2,341 to 2,270 years ago, Epicurus, a Greek philosopher known for composing atheistic critics and famously stated, “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god?” ref

This last expression by Epicurus, seems to be an expression of Axiological Atheism. To understand and utilize value or actually possess “Value Conscious/Consciousness” to both give a strong moral “axiological” argument (the problem of evil) as well as use it to fortify humanism and positive ethical persuasion of human helping and care responsibilities. Because value-blindness gives rise to sociopathic/psychopathic evil.

“Theists, there has to be a god, as something can not come from nothing.”

Well, thus something (unknown) happened and then there was something. This does not tell us what the something that may have been involved with something coming from nothing. A supposed first cause, thus something (unknown) happened and then there was something is not an open invitation to claim it as known, neither is it justified to call or label such an unknown as anything, especially an unsubstantiated magical thinking belief born of mythology and religious storytelling.

How do they even know if there was nothing as a start outside our universe, could there not be other universes outside our own?
 
For all, we know there may have always been something past the supposed Big Bang we can’t see beyond, like our universe as one part of a mega system.

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

While hallucinogens are associated with shamanism, it is alcohol that is associated with paganism.

The Atheist-Humanist-Leftist Revolutionaries Shows in the prehistory series:

Show one: Prehistory: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” the division of labor, power, rights, and recourses.

Show two: Pre-animism 300,000 years old and animism 100,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”

Show tree: Totemism 50,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”

Show four: Shamanism 30,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”

Show five: Paganism 12,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”

Show six: Emergence of hierarchy, sexism, slavery, and the new male god dominance: Paganism 7,000-5,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Capitalism) (World War 0) Elite and their slaves!

Show seven: Paganism 5,000 years old: progressed organized religion and the state: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Kings and the Rise of the State)

Show eight: Paganism 4,000 years old: Moralistic gods after the rise of Statism and often support Statism/Kings: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (First Moralistic gods, then the Origin time of Monotheism)

Prehistory: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” the division of labor, power, rights, and recourses: VIDEO

Pre-animism 300,000 years old and animism 100,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO

Totemism 50,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO

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