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Introduction

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No part of this publication may be copied, stored, reproduced or transmitted in any form except for the purposes of private study. Reproduction, storage, transmission, publication or distribution of this material or part thereof in any form, and for any other purpose either private or public than that stated above must have the written permission of the author. The sole rights of web publication ‘for study purposes only’ are given exclusively to the Assembly of the Elder Troth Australia (AET) and the Rune-Net Australia (R-N). The copyright of this material [including intellectual copyright] always remains the sole property of the author.

This book’s aim is to reconstruct a feasible model of Teutonic heathenism. This is achieved through comparative analysis of historical religious beliefs and practices whose scope extends from prehistory through to the Middle Ages; facilitated by mythology, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, archaeology, anthropology, sociology, neurology, biophysics, and quantum field theory. The investigation ranges from Egypt and India in the south, to Lapland in the north, to Great Britain in the west, and to Siberia in the east; thus assuring the reader of an interesting journey of exploration, one that commences within the Indo-European matrix of Eurasia. Along the way we visit the cultures of the aboriginal Europeans, Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, Thracians, Scythians, Iranians, Indo-Aryans, Celts, Romans, Finns, and Huns. Such travel allows us to examine the religious philosophies and practices of Animism, Shamanism, Monotheism, Polytheism, and Monism in comparison with Heathenism. By this analysis the polymerous quality of Teutonic religious philosophy is condensed into a viable gestalt.

For the intent of exploring the sacred mysteries—in the Gothic language, Rûna—of the Pre-Christian Teutonic world, we can assume that a group of myths with central themes were shared in common by the Indo-Europeans in the Neolithic Age before the dispersal. The investigation of inherent myths and associated ritual practice, as they stand today with all their ‘daughter’ variations, can reveal to us a great deal of information about the psycho-spiritual perspectives of our Teutonic ancestors. If we can distinguish the earlier myths from the later in particular those heavily influenced by Christianity, such as the nature of man and his relation to the ‘Otherworld’ (to borrow a term from Celtic iconography) we can reconstruct to some degree, the ancestral psyche and its external projections. In short, we can attempt to develop an alternative model to the Christian distortion of Teutonic religion; where the relationship of mankind to the physical and spiritual worlds is not one of essential separation but one of seamless integration.

The runic links that I offer throughout this work—drawing on recognized interpreters of the lore—are a product of historical knowledge, logical reconstruction and intuitive perception in regards to the myths, legends and sagas of the Teutons. My contributions follow the organic custom of ancestral thought belonging to the “Folk Wise” (Old Norse fjolkyngi) tradition, but are by no means definitive. As is all explorative work on the runes, they are speculative. To suggest otherwise would be a misrepresentation and a diminution of the mysteries inherent in the ancestral experience.

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