All Holies and Remembrance Day

While these days All Holies begins on the eve of October 31st, and Remembrance on November 11, both were originally part of a festive period connected with the Blood Moon. This marked the final closure of the harvest with the slaughter of cattle for smoked meats to endure the winter months. Mythically, this was seen as a time of nature's gradual withdrawal into underworld, often represented by the old stooped crone gathering a bundle of kindling in the forest. It was believed that with this transition, the spirits of the underworld had rule of the roost. Thus the All Holies feast was held to honour the dead; particularly the ancestors, family and kindred. Their graves were decorated with offerings of grains, apples, nuts and other things the season had at it's avail. Torches were lit for the spirits to find their way to these offerings. It is a time of family reunions and kindred gatherings to recount the stories of old. Council elders, chiefs and priests were usually elected at this time for the ancestors to be present. These spirits were formally invited to attend the sitting with a special place set for them at the head of the table. The ceremony was usually concluded with a special solemn eulogy for those who had fallen in battle. Although these holidays have long since been Christianized, the customs haven't really changed much. Tables are still set with place at the head of the table for those past and honoured with a raising of one's glasses in a toast to their memory.

A beautiful example of a powerful old Germanic warrior's eulogy was the one spoken in the film "The Thirteenth Warrior":

Lo, there do I see my father.
Lo, there do I see my mother and my sisters and my brothers.
Lo, there do I see the line of my people back to the beginning.
Lo, they do call to me. They bid me take my place among them
in the halls of Valhalla where the brave may live forever.

The Fylgja or Shadow Fetch

Countless Germanic Sagas mention the Fylgja, Forynja, Fyreferd, Hamingja; vividly describing the various ways the human soul spirit can manifest itself. Fylgja means "follower"; namely a shadow fetch that accompanies each of us through life. The Fylgja may appear to the owner and others around them, as an omen of death or grave misfortune. It may appear in the full human gestalt of its owner as a "Doppelgänger" (such as the famous case of Emilie Sagee), a "second face" or even shape-shifting animal gestalts, such as the Berserkers (Ulfhednar) were famous for. In the Wieland Saga, Wieland's knee ligaments were cut to prevent his escape from King Nidung in the form of a bird. Swans were also thought to be the fylgja of the Valkiris.

The Fylgja more commonly likes to reveal itself in one's dreams whereas it's more ghostly apparitions tend to prefer the waking hours. While the Fylgja may, in one way, be understood as the "Hugir" (soul), it can also describe a Fylgjukona or even a Dis, namely; guardian spirits of the female variety; that may defend their own gender, watch over an individual, or a whole kindred.

Sometimes several Fylgjur may be bound to a person to insure their safe journey in life as well as death, often in the form of the three Norns (the weavers of fate). Thus some people may have stronger Fylgjur, in essence; more fortune or "Hamingja" than others. While a Fylgjur may also embody the collective spirit of one's ancestors, it is still to be understood as its own individual entity. All in all these manifestations were generally described as dark forms until the time of Snorri Sturlsson. In his account of the Olaf Saga (Heimskringla), he presents 9 women in light robes from the south as opposed to the nine black robed Fylgjur of Norse tradition, in a cryptic attempt to illustrate some epic struggle of good and evil over the soul of the unfortunate Thidrandi.

Speaking from my own personal experience, we seem a dynamic union of matter (dark) and energy (light) in a convectional node of the local spacetime continuum. Remove the energy and you have gravity. Gravity is what defines substance, whereas energy is what breathes life (spirit) into it, makes it dynamic. The fylgia has always felt to me like that gravitational vessel that holds the soul spirit. Take away that spirit and it feels like a gravitational vortice. This defines the death fylgja. This is what I experienced from countless people who left this world. The death fylgja collects their residual energies until that channel can finally close. Yes, in a way you could say it gathers up the pieces. Take that conversely, and by the same principle you can manifest an alterego. In other words shape-shifting.

I've often heard people coin the term "soul retrieval" and "soul fragments" in neo-shamanism. However, I find that it does little to understand what is really happening on the para-physical level with death. My father had a severe stroke that destroyed much his left cranial hemisphere. He was a man raised on that stubborn old Briton stiff upper lip code of silence, so full of duplicity and the most ironic self contradictions. Living with the man was like a modern version of Shakespeare's King Lear. Just before he left for Holland that fateful week, the signs couldn't have been more evident, but he would not listen to reason. His last words were, "If you think I'm going to come back some kind bed ridden mental cripple you'll have to spoon feed, you're wrong. That's just not going to happen". Well it did...and in the weeks that he laid there apathetically, in the neurological clinic; all the jealously guarded mistakes, he kept hidden all these years, came down on me in one crash. The last thing I needed was his fylgja appearing in my dreams to tell me not to worry, that he'd be still around until I sorted the whole mess out. Four years I nursed his steadily failing body, that will tenaciously hanging on until there was nothing left. It practically drained the life out of me too. Three days before he finally died, his fylgja came again, only this time it was an empty vessel, a channel sequesting any empathic links to feed on them. It chilled me to the bone so I let go of them and resisted any further probing. When he passed I felt nothing, just a sense of presence when his fylgja began poltering around the house for weeks afterward. A few times it tried to draw from me again to no avail. About 6 months later, much to my relief, it finally moved on and that portal closed.

As you can see from my little anecdote of life experience, there are a number of things to be wary of in dealing with such quasi-temporal manifestations. A fylgja without a mortal vessel is the stuff of ghosts and unresolved souls. Not all of them are to be empathically reckoned with.

SW German Autumn Traditions

The harvest begins around the 1st of August with the reaping of grain. It was a time when community members of all ages gathered in the fields to assist in any way they could. Tables were laid out on the fields, with the necessary amenities so they could go about their work with little delay. Once all the grain was either milled or safely stashed away by the Harvest Moon, the occasion was celebrated by feasting and the burning of straw dollies, similar to the wicker man practices of Britain. Offerings of thanks and the hope of fair weather to insure an unspoiled crop. A crown was woven of grains and herbs and raised on a pole to mark the occasion. In the course of these celebrations through September comes the Weinfest, and in October, the Bierfest.

Once all the harvesting is completed, livestock is then herded down out of the mountains in a procession called the “Albabtrieb”. This is where the cattle are decorated with cowbells and garlands, with the lead cow wearing a huge colourful wreath of Alproses. These are also times of village fetes to sell their domestic wares. These festivities usually centered around the Hunter's Moon, which was also the time of the traditional pheasant hunt conducted by the local squires. 

Ancient European Calendrial Systems

THE NEBRA DISK
The almost circular disk has a diameter of approx. 32 cm and a thickness of 4.5 mm in the middle and 1.7 mm at the edge. It weighs approx. 2 kg. Disk is made of bronze, out of a mixture of copper and tin. The copper matched samples taken from a mine in Mitterberg near Mühlbach am Hochkönig in the eastern Alps. This source was verified by its lead isotope signatures. Aside from the very low percent of 2.5 tin content, the 0.2 % traces of arsenic is typical for bronze age metals. It was apparently hammered out of a sheet of bronze and repeatedly heated to avoid lesions. Through this process the bronze takes on a deep brown to black colour. Traces of egg white used to give the bronze a violet hue were also found. The present green coloured layer of corrosion occurred through being in the ground so long.

The appliqués of unbonded gold plate were inlaid and tempered several times. The bronze swords, axes, chisels and the remains of a spiral armband also found in the hoard give a date of their burial as approx. 1600 BCE- while the date these items were produced roughly falls between 2100 to 1700 BCE. Particularly unusual for an archaeological artifact is the evidence that the disk was modified several times over the course of its use. First the disk comprised of the round gold "stars", the larger gold sun disk, the sickle moon and the cluster of seven stars. Then two 82° bows were added on the "horizon", of gold from a different source, as indicated by its impurities. One "star" was moved to make room for the bow, while another two were covered by it on the right side of the disk, leaving thus only 30 of them visible. Later the so-called "Sunbark" was added between two parallel curves (again of gold from another region) embossed with fine indentations. Finally before it was buried, the left horizon was missing and 40 small holes were punched along the edge of the disk. What purpose they served is yet uncertain.

Extensive forensic and isotopic analysis of the Nebra disk and the rest of the bronze objects established beyond a doubt that they all belong to the same horde found buried on the Mittleberg near Nebra. The analysis also established the age and authenticity of the Nebra disk. The age of the swords and tools was also easily recognized by their style compared to similar items found in Hungary. Carbon dating for the disk could not be done as such metals contains no carbons. A fragment of birch bark found on one of the swords however, gave a date between 1600 to 1560 BCE.

FIRST PHASE: According to Archaeologist Harald Meller und Astronomer Wolfhard Schlosser the cluster of 7 gold dots likely represent the Pleiades in the constellation of Taurus. The other 25 stars however, were only later recognized by other astronomers as reflecting an actual planisphere of the night sky.

The large gold disk is the assumed to represent the sun as well as the full moon, whereas the sickle is the waxing lunar cresent. According to Meller und Schlosser two dates for the visibility of the Pleiades on the west horizon. During the Bronze Age, this was on the 10th of March briefly before nightfall, and on the 17th of October, briefly before dawn. When in March the Moon was in conjunction with the Pleiades, it appeared as a fine sickle just before new moon. In the October conjunction the moon was full. However, given the different lenths of the lunar year as compared to the solar, not every year did this conjunction fall on these dates. By this the disk served as an agrarian reminder for planting and harvesting cycles. According to the Astronomer Rahlf Hansen this device helped Bronze Age farmers coordinate the moon year of 354 days with the sun year of 365 days, in essence keep track of necessary leap years. Similar knowledge is in found in old Babylonian cuniform texts. For this reason skeptics assumed the disk may have been imported, but the measure of 82° for the sun arc on the on the edge of the disk corresponds totally to the latitude of Nebra. Thus, it goes to show that central European astronomers of the time were far more advanced than historians had previously thought.

THE GOLDEN HATS
(from Wikipedia)

Golden hats (or Goldhüte) are a very specific and rare type of archaeological artifact from Bronze Age Central Europe. So far, four such objects ("cone-shaped gold hats of the Schifferstadt type") are known. The objects are made of thin sheet gold and were attached externally to long conical and brimmed headdresses which were probably made of some organic material and served to stabilise the external gold leaf. The following Golden Hats are known at present:

Golden Hat of Schifferstadt, found in 1835 at Schifferstadt near Speyer, circa 1400-1300 BC.

Avanton Gold Cone, incomplete, found at Avanton near Poitiers in 1844, c. 1000-900 BC.

Golden Cone of Ezelsdorf-Buch, found near Ezelsdorf near Nuremberg in 1953, circa 1000-900 BC; the tallest known specimen at c. 90 cm.

Berlin Gold Hat, found probably in Swabia or Switzerland, circa 1000-800 BC; acquired by the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte, Berlin, in 1996.

The hats are associated with the pre-Proto-Celtic Bronze Age Urnfield culture. Their close similarities in symbolism and techniques of manufacture are testimony to a coherent Bronze Age culture over a wide-ranging territory in eastern France and western and southwestern Germany. A comparable golden pectoral was found at Mold, Flintshire, in northern Wales, but this appears to be of somewhat earlier date.

The cone-shaped Golden Hats of Schifferstadt type are assumed to be connected with a number of comparable cap or crown-shaped gold leaf objects from Ireland Comerford Crown, discovered in 1692) and the Atlantic coast of Spain (Gold leaf crowns of Axtroki and Rianxo). Only the Spanish specimens survive.

Unfortunately, the archaeological contexts of the cones are not very clear (for the Berlin specimen, it is entirely unknown). At least two of the known examples (Berlin and Schifferstadt) appear to have been deliberately and carefully buried in antiquity. Although none can be dated precisely, their technology suggests that they were probably made between 1200 and 800 BC.

It is assumed that the Golden Hats served as religious insignia for the deities or priests of a sun cult then widespread in Central Europe. Their use as head-gear is strongly supported by the fact that the three of four examples have a cap-like widening at the bottom of the cone, and that their openings are oval (not round), with diameters and shapes roughly equivalent to those of a human skull. The figural depiction of an object resembling a conical hat on a stone slab of the King's Grave at Kivik, Southern Sweden, strongly supports their association with religion and cult, as does the fact that the known examples appear to have been deposited (buried) carefully.

Attempts to decipher the Golden Hats' ornamentation suggest that their cultic role is accompanied or complemented by a usability as complex calendrical devices. Whether they were really used for such purposes, or simply presented the underlying astronomical knowledge, remains unknown.

The gold cones are covered in bands of ornaments along their whole length and extent. The ornaments - mostly disks and concentric circles, sometimes wheels - were punched using stamps, rolls or combs. The older examples (Avanton, Schifferstadt) show a more restricted range of ornaments than the later ones.

CALENDRICAL FUNCTIONS
It appears to be the case that the ornaments on all known Golden Hats represent systematic sequences in terms of number and types of ornaments per band. A detailed study of the Berlin example, which is fully preserved, revealed that the symbols probably represent a lunisolar calendar. The object would have permitted the determination of dates or periods in both lunar and solar calendars.

Since an exact knowledge of the solar year was of special interest for the determination of religiously important events such as the summer and winter solstices, the astronomical knowledge depicted on the Golden Hats was of high value to Bronze Age society. Whether the hats themselves were indeed used for determining such dates, or whether they simply represented such knowledge, remains unknown.

The functions discovered so far would permit the counting of temporal units of up to 57 months. A simple multiplication of such values would also permit the calculation of longer periods, eg. metonic cycles. Each symbol, or each ring of a symbol, represents a single day. Apart from ornament bands incorporating differing numbers of rings there are special symbols and zones in intercalary areas, which would have had to be added to or subtracted from the periods in question.

The system of this mathematical function incorporated into the artistic ornamentation has not been fully deciphered so far, but a schematic understanding of the Berlin Golden Hat and the periods it delimits has been achieved.

The Land of My Fathers

The Solar Wheel

The Celts were a largely agrarian folk, thus many of these traditions are still celebrated around rural Europe. Although their deities vary greatly with tribe, location and cultural period; their pantheons of Sun, Moon and Earth deities were relatively similar, at least until the Romans came. Until then, the Earth goddess had four calendrial aspects (as illustrated in my graphic above), corresponding to the solar wheel; the cycle of life, maturity, death and rebirth as they understood it in their agrarian wisdom. Death was regarded as a necessary process of renewal just as the frosts restore fecundity to the soil.

As the legend goes, the sun god, having fertilized the fallow earth in his underworld journey, ascends again after Winter Solstice. Beltaine (eve of April 30 - 1st of May) celebrates his virile youth and sexual union with the maiden earth mother. The "Gladyearhalf" was believed to be dominated by all manner of capricious light spirits and fae. Samhain (eve of October 31 - 1st of November), on the other hand, honours the Sun god's return with her (as the crone) to her underworld domain. It was believed that with this transition to the dark underworld regime of things, dark spirits and ghosts of the dead had the rule of the roost. Thus at feasts, the dead were ceremoniously welcomed to attend, with a place specially set for them at the table. In this time, leaders were also elected and critical decisions made- with all due respect that the ancestors be present. In Winter, death of course came as the Morrigan and her ravens, to collect the souls of the lost. Much like her Germanic equivalent, she appeared to the doomed as half beauty - half corpse.

At this point, I think it should be known that the idea of a Triple goddess and its alleged lunar associations are purely a romantic invention of Robert Graves poetical myth "The White goddess". Yet, as much as it has inspired much popular acclaim through such neopagan revivalists as Gerald Gardner and Margaret Murray; unfortunately, it serves very little in the way of actual Celtic culture. Rather, the moon was generally regarded as the daughter of the Earth Mother by the ancient Celts.

Another misconception is the attempt to delineate Celtic from Germanic as if for some form of racial pedigree, albeit Aryans or some paleolithic eve from the Basquelands. Even Irish folklore tells of the countless migrations and invasions from afar over the course of millennia, so it's not as if genealogy is that simple.