Why a Heathen Rosary?

[jprussell]

I've written another post over on my main blog about why I'm working out a Heathen Rosary and what I hope the end result will look like.

If you have any thoughts, I'd love to hear them!

Comments

[causticus]

Jeff, this is so fascinating! I'm eager to see where all of this might lead.

BTW, if you're on the hunt for more lore, one place I've found quite interesting is medieval Germanic folklore. Sure, these peoples were (not-so-thoroughly) Christianized by that time, but as I read through the folk tales, the Christian veneer seems quite thin as the Heathen themes and symbolism shine right through. This might be relevant as you've taken it upon yourself to try and reclaim portions of Christianized Germanic culture. After reading the tale "The Swan Knight" this idea became fairly apparent to me.

On the more magical end of things, I think it was Winifred Hodge who wrote an article (I can't seem to remember the link right now...ugh) in which she used the Merseburg charms as a template to unearth a number of Medieval "Christian" German spells; it then becomes quite clear where the Heathen divine names were etched out and replaced with Christian divine names.

Anyway, I think you're onto something quite promising with all of this work you are doing!

[jprussell]

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.

Cheers,
Jeff