An examination of the royal genealogies, charms, verse and other sources in an attempt to find the names and attributes of the gods and goddesses of the early Anglo-Saxons. The text is a transcript of a talk given to a meeting of The English Companions.
Examines the archaeological evidence, the folklore and writings, and the pictures and carvings of ancient Britain, and offers fresh interpretations of early Anglo-Saxon pagan worship and its continuing legacy
In The Sleeping Army, Freya went to Hel and back. She fought dragons, fled fire and outwitted giants - all to restore eternal youth to the Norse Gods. But now they're back, does anyone care? The Gods' popularity on earth is waning, and without regular worship, their powers are fading fast and their ancient enemies, the Frost Giants, are stirring. So the Gods hatch a plan - they'll come back down to earth, and they'll pursue a very different kind of popularity. They're going to become celebrities. A rollicking, thrilling and hilarious ride, The Lost Gods takes up where the Sleeping Army left off and takes us back to Simon's brilliantly-imagined modern Norse England.
In this extraordinary fantasy debut, a young assassin finds himself hunted by the brothers and sisters he has trained alongside since birth. Neythan is one of five young warriors trained and raised together by a mysterious brotherhood of assassins known as the Shedaím. When Neythan is framed for the murder of his closest friend, he pursues his betrayer – and in so doing learns there’s far more to the Brotherhood, and the machinations of the rulers of the warring kingdoms, than he’d ever thought possible. His journey will lead him across the five realms, from the Forest of Silences to the Ash Plains of Calapaar, and reveal the breaches that lie beneath the world, and the hidden truths of his oath. File Under: Fantasy [ Brothers at Arms | The Faceless Ones | Kings and Keepers | Creed of Assassins ]
Tolkien's enduring vision of Middle Earth was largely inspired by the worldview of ancient Saxon Pagans. In this pagan guidebook, Alaric Albertsson presents a complete introduction to Anglo-Saxon cosmology, deities, spirits, and rituals. Travels Through Middle Earth offers practical information about the Saxon Pagan path, including many ways to incorporate Saxon rituals into contemporary spiritual life. Discover the húsel, a basic ritual for honoring personal ancestors, the Gods, and dwarves and elves. Learn how to set up a wéofod, the Saxon altar, to connect with the Gods. Also covered in this handbook: the concept of wyrd and how it shapes your destiny, the holy tides and how to celebrate them, rites of passage, worship, magic, and even instructions for making mead.
Are there 10,000-year-old secret societies that still exist today? Was there a race of giants that once inhabited the Americas? Did ancient Egypt and ancient China have heretofore undiscovered ties? Lost Secrets of the Gods delves into these ancient mysteries and many more in articles by some of the world’s most intrepid and knowledgeable researchers. The old paradigms of history are being radically transformed as we discover more evidence of little-known cultures and what they achieved. Many ancient cultures spoke and wrote of visitors that gave them knowledge and helped shape their societies. Who were they, and where did they come from? We now know that many ancient cultures had advanced knowledge of science, agriculture, and astronomy, only some of which has been rediscovered in the last 100 years. Were The Iliad and The Odyssey really about an epic struggle in pre-Celtic Europe? What happened to the Persian army that completely disappeared from Egypt 2,500 years ago? Did the ancients know how to create psychic guard dogs to protect sacred sites? There is much more to history than what has officially been recorded. Lost Secrets of the Gods reveals startling truths and asks fascinating questions traditional historians have long ignored.
TV presenter Graham Hancock's multi-million bestseller Fingerprints of the Gods remains an astonishing, deeply controversial, wide-ranging investigation of the mysteries of our past and the evidence for Earth's lost civilization. Twenty years on, Hancock returns with a book filled with completely new, scientific and archaeological evidence, which has only recently come to light... The evidence revealed in this book shows beyond reasonable doubt that an advanced civilization that flourished during the Ice Age was destroyed in the global cataclysms between 12,800 and 11,600 years ago. Near the end of the last Ice Age 12,800 years ago, a giant comet that had entered the solar system from deep space thousands of years earlier, broke into multiple fragments. Some of these struck the Earth causing a global cataclysm on a scale unseen since the extinction of the dinosaurs. At least eight of the fragments hit the North American ice cap, while further fragments hit the northern European ice cap. The impacts, from comet fragments a mile wide approaching at more than 60,000 miles an hour, generated huge amounts of heat which instantly liquidized millions of square kilometres of ice, destabilizing the Earth's crust and causing the global Deluge that is remembered in myths all around the world. A second series of impacts, equally devastating, causing further cataclysmic flooding, occurred 11,600 years ago, the exact date that Plato gives for the destruction and submergence of Atlantis. But there were survivors - known to later cultures by names such as 'the Sages', 'the Magicians', 'the Shining Ones', and 'the Mystery Teachers of Heaven'. They travelled the world in their great ships doing all in their power to keep the spark of civilization burning. They settled at key locations - Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, Baalbek in the Lebanon, Giza in Egypt, ancient Sumer, Mexico, Peru and across the Pacific where a huge pyramid has recently been discovered in Indonesia. Everywhere they went these 'Magicians of the Gods' brought with them the memory of a time when mankind had fallen out of harmony with the universe and paid a heavy price. A memory and a warning to the future... For the comet that wrought such destruction between 12,800 and 11,600 years may not be done with us yet. Astronomers believe that a 20-mile wide 'dark' fragment of the original giant comet remains hidden within its debris stream and threatens the Earth. An astronomical message encoded at Gobekli Tepe, and in the Sphinx and the pyramids of Egypt,warns that the 'Great Return' will occur in our time...
"With the arrival of Christianity in England there was a convergence of the new religion with the old. Many of the heathen customs, superstitions, and festivals were adopted to the needs of the Church, which sought, where it could, to preserve continuity with the past. Communities came together to celebrate seasonal festivals in much the same way as before but the meaning of the events and customs was given a Christian gloss. So, while many heathen practices were outlawed, others were absorbed into Christian tradition and preserved. Thus Yuletide, Easter and harvest festivals are still with us." --book jacket.
Inscriptions from the 1st century AD provide the earliest physical evidence for a Germanic presence in Britain. From at least that time until the conversion of the Anglo-Saxon kings in the late 600s Britain had, to varying degrees, a heathen Germanic culture. After a presence of six centuries a new group of heathens arrived. Scandinavians brought with them beliefs, attitudes and a world view that were much like those that survived in Anglo-Saxon England. The Scandinavian arrival extended the heathen period to almost a thousand years. The purpose of the work is to bring together a range of evidence for pre-Christian beliefs and attitudes to the Otherworld drawn from archaeology, linguistics, literary studies and comparative mythology. The rich and varied English tradition influenced the worldview of the later mediaeval and Norse societies. Aspects of this tradition are with us still in the 21st century.