Thanks very much for the encouragement and the nudges of where to look for more stuff. I'm definitely interested in medieval and early modern Germanic folklore, as a) I'm pretty far to the "Brothers Grimm" end of the spectrum when it comes to "how much pre-Christian stuff survived in folklore?" That article sounds fascinating, I'll have to see if I can find it - Stephen Pollington has written about the Merseberg charm pretty thoroughly in, I believe, Leechcraft and The Elder Gods, but I don't think he talked about it as an example of a wider "class" of charms. Another "Christian" charm with its Heathen showing pretty clearly is the Anglo-Saxon Aecerbot, and it has influenced my own practice (basically I accept the interpretation that "Erce" is most likely the name of an earth Goddess that it is likely right to identify with Nerthus).
Oh, and before I forget, besides the magnum opus of the Grimms, any recommendations for sources of Germanic folklore to check out? I have Lecouteux's Encyclopedia of Norse and Germanic Folklore, which does a good job of giving more "folklore" than Simek's Dictionary of Northern Mythology, but other than a few books of fairy tales and Anglo-Saxon poetry (like "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"), I don't have a ton of the tales themselves.
One element of your comment I find rather interesting is putting the Rosary in the context of a "Christian veneer over Heathen themes and symbolism" - honestly, that's not an idea I had considered, other than the Spenglerian assertion that the prominence of Mary in Western European Catholicism was a clear Faustian upwelling in the Magian pseudomorphosis of Christianity. I hadn't delved much into the history/origin of the Rosary beyond the basics, but it might be interesting to try to work out if there might have been any earlier practices that influenced it.
If anything, as I've read works like The Secret of the Rosary, I've been inclined to accept more or less at face value the claims of visions, visitations, and miracles attributed to the Rosary by its Catholic proponents and to see that as proof that this particular approach has a lot to recommend it structurally and behaviorally, but as practiced by Catholics, it is obviously very tightly attuned with Mary, and to a slightly lesser extent, Jesus.
At any rate, thanks very much for the food for thought, and I'll try to track down that Merseburg charm article.
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Oh, and before I forget, besides the magnum opus of the Grimms, any recommendations for sources of Germanic folklore to check out? I have Lecouteux's Encyclopedia of Norse and Germanic Folklore, which does a good job of giving more "folklore" than Simek's Dictionary of Northern Mythology, but other than a few books of fairy tales and Anglo-Saxon poetry (like "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"), I don't have a ton of the tales themselves.
One element of your comment I find rather interesting is putting the Rosary in the context of a "Christian veneer over Heathen themes and symbolism" - honestly, that's not an idea I had considered, other than the Spenglerian assertion that the prominence of Mary in Western European Catholicism was a clear Faustian upwelling in the Magian pseudomorphosis of Christianity. I hadn't delved much into the history/origin of the Rosary beyond the basics, but it might be interesting to try to work out if there might have been any earlier practices that influenced it.
If anything, as I've read works like The Secret of the Rosary, I've been inclined to accept more or less at face value the claims of visions, visitations, and miracles attributed to the Rosary by its Catholic proponents and to see that as proof that this particular approach has a lot to recommend it structurally and behaviorally, but as practiced by Catholics, it is obviously very tightly attuned with Mary, and to a slightly lesser extent, Jesus.
At any rate, thanks very much for the food for thought, and I'll try to track down that Merseburg charm article.
Cheers,
Jeff