European Native Traditions [View All]

[Cassius23]

Good morning,

While getting ready to go to bed I came across a post where, obliquely, the ancestral religion of Europeans was briefly mentioned, and it was mentioned in the vein of "earth loving, peaceful" spirituality.

I think that it should be said that, for the most part, the traditions contemporary with the Native Americans as far as "closeness to the earth" were not all that much better as far as our current views. Back then they had over 300 individual deities with a few that were sortof the "Over-bosses", once of which was the Morrigan,

The Morrígan ("terror" or "phantom queen") or Mórrígan ("great queen") (also known as Morrígu, Morríghan, Mor-Ríoghain, sometimes given in the plural as Morrígna) is a figure from Irish mythology who appears to have once been a goddess, although she is not explicitly referred to as such in the texts.

She is associated with sovereignty, prophecy, war, and death on the battlefield. She sometimes appears in the form of a carrion crow, flying above the warriors, and in the Ulster cycle she also takes the form of an eel, a wolf, and a cow. She is generally considered a war deity comparable with the Germanic Valkyries, although her association with cattle also suggests a role connected with fertility, wealth, and the land.


Or, maybe further north to the Nordic countries? Their ancient deities made the Celts look like a Dead show. There is the one story that I always liked of poor old Harald Wartooth who was so great in battle that Odin himself came down and beat him to death with Harald's own weapon.

So where am I going with this?

There never was a gentle, loving, peaceful culture in ancient Europe that we would be able to draw some sort of romantic, bucolic natural spirituality.

It was turtles, blood, spit, mud, and brutality all the way in.

C23