Our Pagan Roots

America's Finest Christian/Pagan Traditions in Peril
By J. Anthony Ruth

Not a day goes by that contemporary Americans do not pay tribute to or unwittingly commemorate some aspect of one of the old Pagan religions of Europe. Indeed, a study of European history reveals that our pagan roots run old and deep and that their influences are very much a part of the life and culture of the United States today. Further, the legacy of those roots is actually a two handed sword representing both our most cherished values and a front line of defense against the threat posed by the so called "new world order". Allow me to explain.

To fully comprehend the ancient influences which are still a part of our everyday life, it is necessary to chart their origins back through the approximately 150 million US citizens whose ancestral lineages may be traced back to Nordic and Germanic origins. For those Americans unfamiliar with the modern political states in Europe within which the bloodline of the Teutonic ( Germanic ) race is dominant or has become heavily mixed through centuries of acculturation and breeding with the Celtic, Romance , Slavic and Semitic peoples, one must name the following places:

Most of Great Britain and coastal Ireland,
Germany,
Scandinavia,
Holland,
Belgium,
the northern sections of France,
Italy,
Spain,
Austria,
Switzerland,
pockets in Eastern Europe and along the Baltic coast,
the Czech Republic,
Slovenia,
pockets in Greece and the Island of Sicily.

Smaller traces of Germanic racial and cultural influence are also found across the Middle East and Central Asia resulting from ancient wars and migrations.

Moreover, if you are an American and trace some or all of your Old World origins to any of those places--this includes Afro-Americans who average about 20% European ancestry due to ... never mind--then there is a strong chance that you are, to one degree or another, of full or partial Germanic descent. However, even if you cannot trace any of your roots back to those lands of origin, there is also a 100% certainty you have adopted and utilize, again whether you realize it or not, aspects of America's Germanic pagan tradition.

To comprehend the source of that cultural tradition, we must travel far back in time to a faraway corner of Europe and to a time when Rome ruled the Western World ... or at least most of it. I say most of it because there was troublesome area of Northern Europe that the Romans could never quite subjugate.

It was a region wherein dwelt some obscure German tribes. This was centuries before their migrations of the 5th and 6th centuries AD that swept away degenerate Rome and conquered most of Western Europe. It was also about 1600 years before the descendants of those early German tribes sailed across the oceans to colonize North America, Australia, and South Africa and finally, for a brief time earlier in this century, controlled virtually the entire world. But however widespread the Germanic peoples have become throughout the world today, there was a time when the ancestors of millions of today's Americans were only found in a small district of Northern Europe.

For those who trace their ethnic origins back to any of the aforementioned areas of modern Europe in which the Germanic peoples exist today, or where they left their imprint, the original Fatherland of many of your ancestors, particularly those of English origins, is not England itself but rather a peninsula between modern Germany and Denmark. It's a place few have heard of, which the ancient Anglo-Saxons called Sleswick (Modern Schlesweig).

During the 1st century AD the dwellers of ancient Sleswick were one of three tribes, all belonging to the same low German branch of the Teutonic family, who at that time were all bound by common ties of blood and speech. In the north of old Sleswick was the tribe of the Jutes, whose name is still preserved in the region of Jutland which forms most of Denmark. In the center of Sleswick was the tribe of the Angles, or the English as they became known, while to the South of the English was the tribe of the Saxons. The Saxons ranged across the sand flats of Holstein down to the northern bank of the river Elbe. The tribes were physically indistinguishable and in alliance; thus the origins of the term "Anglo-Saxon."

There were also over a dozen other German tribes, all similar in religion, custom, speech, and physical appearance--generally fair skinned, blonde, and blue-eyed--who lived immediately to the north and south of the Anglo/Saxons/Jutes. Amongst these other tribes who left Old Germany after the 5th century to conquer the Roman world and elsewhere were the Suevi who later produced the Vikings and whose descendants are the modern Swedes. Then there were the Franks whose name was given to modern France and the Goths, Visigoths, Vandals (Spain) and the Lombards (North Italy) just to name a few.

Following the great migrations out of old Germany during the 5th and 6th centuries, each tribe subsequently developed its own distinct history and built the modern nation-states wherein their descendants have been the predominant guiding force throughout the evolution of Europe ever since.

However, as English speakers and citizens of the United States--a nation founded by the descendants of the Anglo-Saxon tribes–I will restrict my observations to that particular Germanic tribe and their legacies under which we live today. Whether that cultural tradition will endure into the future is very much up in the air and is another story to be debated another time.

But hearkening back to ancient Sleswick, one of the most important aspects of that legacy which we still embrace is the old Anglo-Saxon religion which was the same as the rest of the German race during that period. While Christianity by the 4th century had converted the Roman Empire it had not yet penetrated the forests of the north where it was neither desired nor, as it seems, served any redemptive need.

The common god of the Anglo-Saxons and all the German tribes was Woden, or Odin the war god, the guardian of roads and boundaries, to whom the worshipers attributed the invention of letters, or the runes and whom every tribe held to be the first ancestor of its kings.

Our names for the days of the week--remember whom you are invoking the next time you utter them--are actually in honor of the pagan gods whom the ancestors of many American citizens worshiped in ancient Sleswick. For example, Wednesday is "Woden'sday," Thursday is named after the day of thunder, or as the North men called him, "Thor", the god of air, storm, and rain, which was said to occur when he beat his anvil. Friday is "Frea'sday," the earth goddess of peace, joy, and fruitfulness, whose symbols during festivals were carried by dancing maidens to bring increase to every field and barn they visited. Saturday commemorates an obscure god "Soetere". Tuesday the dark god "Tiw", known to most today as the Grim Reaper whom to meet was, and still is, Death, while Monday and Sunday both commemorate long forgotten rites of moon and sun worship.

The old Anglo-Saxons were also very much in sync with nature and worshiped the natural cycle, and the main observances of their religion were correspondingly in harmony with the seasons. Eostre, the goddess of the dawn, and the spring, has given her name to the Christian Easter and the time of the resurrection appears to have been appropriated from the pagans by the Christians. The rabbit and the egg were two of Eostre's symbols ... so the next time you give your kid a chocolate bunny remember who it is you are really paying tribute to. Another one of Eostre's ceremonies involved the dancing of children around the Maypole, which really represents a giant phallus or penis symbolic of the fecundity needed for the rebirth of new life that comes after the winter in the spring. Even the date for the Christian celebration of "Eostre" is, according to the Catholic Encyclopaedia, dependent upon a pagan astronomical formula and is always observed on the first Sunday after the full moon on, or next, after the vernal equinox which is why it is on a different day each year. Such symbolistic similarities of the rebirth of life after death and the resurrection of Christ are interesting to note.

Christmas itself derives from a midwinter festival of lights, still observed in Sweden, called Candlemas which symbolizes the continuance of the spark of life and hope, even in the frozen death and darkness of winter, which would be carried forth to rebirth in the spring by Eostre. The lights you deploy when decorating your Christmas tree actually represent the pagan observance of Candlemas. Again, the symbolic celebration of hope in the midst of darkness observed by the old religion and the birth of "the light of the world" at a time when man was said to live in spiritual darkness, are remarkable.

Then, of course, there is the summer solstice, still popular with neopagans in Germany today -the Christians stayed away from that one-a time to celebrate the hiatus of the solar equinox and, with the crops in the ground, a time for relaxing from the rest of the year's hardships--a time when most Americans still take their traditional vacations to worship the sun ... at the beach.

Last but not least, is Walpurgisnacht which somehow survived in Bohemia and Scotland after it was long forgotten elsewhere ... except here in the States. Brought by Scottish and Irish immigrants and known to most Americans as Halloween, it's a sort of night of the living dead. Although ostensibly Celtic in origin, this was also a variation of a festival observed in pagan Sleswick in reverence that time of year, just after the harvest, when things in nature begin to die again just prior to winter. It was also considered the most propitious time to commune with the dead and those loved ones who had gone on to inhabit the nether world of spirits. However, to most Americans of all origins today, the event has evolved into a time to mock death and express morbidity while having fun without really understanding why it is done. During the 10th century The Catholic Church, in an attempt to override those pagan observances and provide something comparable for its fresh converts, came up with All Souls Day and placed it on the same date, October 31, but it was never quite as popular.

What the Church of today consistently fails to tell its followers is that there is no historic evidence to support the claim that Christ was actually born on December 25th or that he was executed on Good Friday and resurrected on Eostre Sunday. Only Church lore and tradition has it so and The Catholic Encyclopaedia even admits this fact.

Rather, it is contended by some historians that the early Christian Church deliberately scheduled its own major events to coincide with the most important dates of the pagan calender. It also apparently did so specifically for the purpose of gaining the acceptance of pagan converts while deliberately attempting to obscure and overshadow the main events of the old religion. In this regard, the Christians may have a lot more in common with the pagans of ancient Sleswick than they probably care to admit.

Behind all these major pagan Germanic festivals and gods are the dim memories which we embrace through our culture of an even older mythology. For example, we have "Wyrd" the mysterious and enigmatic death goddess, whose memory is registered forever each time you say the word "weird." Or the shield maidens, mighty female amazons who went into battle with men hurling javelins and who are still featured as the heroines of certain contemporary TV shows. Then there is "Luck" the god of good fortune whom we frequently invoke ... for you know what ... whenever we feel our personal fortunes flagging.

Nearer still to our hearts remain the deities of woods, water, and meadows, "Nicor" the water spirit who gave us water nixies, mere maids, and a line of scuba gear, "Weland the forger of mighty swords" whose name is now borne by the Weland Steel Company, or Aegil the archer from whose heroics we still relate the story of William Tell ... and the list goes on and on and on ....

However, the old Germanic nature worship did not lend itself to the type of priestly, hierarchy as exemplified by the highly codified Roman Catholic Church which organized itself along the bureaucratic lines of the Roman Empire. Converse to a bureaucratic religious hierarchy, the men and women of wisdom and spiritual power in old Sleswick were more the bearers of tradition, and never possessed the organizational hierarchy or moral and legal weight of the priests of Rome.

Rather, in contrast to the early church, it seems that each individual was his or her own priest and guardian of their own individual conscience and relationship with the gods. The common Anglo-Saxon worship lay in personal, private prayer and sacrifice before the gods on the family altar or hearth. It was also a national religion which reflected, what the philosopher Jung called, the soul conscience of the race as is opposed to the universal culture transcending faiths represented by Judaeo/Christianity and Islam.

In that regard, the old religion was in tune with nature, the rest of the tribal unit and of the individual who was in direct communion, with the deities. This Germanic element of private personal faith and individual responsibility was to become the most significant factor centuries later behind the Protestant Reformation. Protestantism is actually nothing more than a compromise between Christianity and the old German cultural sentiments of individuality and personal freedom which disavowed the Roman Church as intermediary between man and God. It is consequently no accident that the reformation occurred and took hold in those European countries which remained the most heavily Germanic and that the Protestant ethic which was born of that revolt has been the single most important element behind the success of American civilization.

Today the same battle that took place between the Roman Church and the Germanic rebels is being reenacted in the United States between those adhering to the ancient Anglo-Saxon concept of the rights of individuals vs. an increasingly stifling and regulatory, anti-national, one world ,"Universalist", Socialist government.

Religious traditions, as I already mentioned, are not the only cultural influences embraced by us today which have been passed down from the pagans of Sleswick.

For example, the social basis of Anglo-Saxon society rested in the free landowner or "the churl". He was also a weaponed man who possessed a sword and spear and had the right to defend his property with lethal force against any intruder. The same concept of the sacredness of private property, self defense, and the right to keep and bear arms, although currently under assault by the advocates of the World Government, is similarly ingrained in the American pysche and traces its origins to our ancient Germanic roots.

Roman Senator and Historian of the 1st century AD, Cornelius Tacitus, recorded much of what we know about these early Germans in his book entitled "The Germania".

Tacitus noted that the German tribes, a pastoral people, were fiercely independent and individualistic even from each other, avoided communal living, loathed cities, and who set their houses as far apart from one another as possible, often planting trees and hedges to avoid the sight of their neighbors. In fact, our concepts of privacy and sanctity of home and property are derived from the early lifestyles of the old Anglo-Saxons of Sleswick. No one there would have claimed "it took a village to raise a child" ... just two parents.

The democracy we cherish today itself was the feature of government in a society of armed, landowning equals, and while there were kings and men of distinction, they were equals amongst equals, and none held absolute power. All important social decisions were through majority consensus. Typically, according to Tacitus, the entire community would gather, usually in a clearing by a sacred oak tree, to administer its own justice and resolve social disputes. Here too, "The Wittan," wise men selected by each district, met to settle questions of peace or war.

These early pagan governmental traditions continue to this day in the form of the town meeting, the city council, and the various state and national bodies of our elected Congressmen, who at least until recent years, carried out the same functions of "The Wittan". Most important, our modern system of law by precedent evolved from the Common Anglo-Saxon law and common sense.

Tacitus tells us that above all these early Germans were a virtuous people, that both male and female married as virgins, bonded for life, and that adultery, promiscuity, illegitimate births and prostitution were unheard of. The historian also noted that in contrast to Rome, children and families were sacred and that abortions, apparently practiced in Rome, would have been considered abhorrent as were homosexual acts, which were perceived as the foulest thing a man could engage in.

Moreover, Tacitus wrote, the early Germans had no need for written contracts or laws due to the high level of personal integrity and virtue which existed within their society. Wow!! And who's the genius who thought that American children would become better citizens once the Ten Commandments were removed from the schools?

How did modern Americans become the heirs of this ancient tradition? Very simple. Whilst the majority of the other German tribes were marauding over Europe and overrunning the decadent multicultural Roman Empire, the Anglo-Saxons had set sail across the North Sea with their sights upon the conquest of Britain. However, unlike their cousins who soon adopted Christianity and the customs, languages and wives of the nations they conquered--who after a few centuries became blond Frenchmen, Italians and Spaniards--the Anglo-Saxons simply exterminated the native population of Christianized Celts who had inhabited the island before them. One could call it ethnic cleansing at its cruelest ... but if it had not happened the United States would probably not exist today.

The eventual conversion of the pagan Anglo-Saxon colonists in Britain only began in the early 8th century. At that time, missionaries under the direction of the Roman Church began to visit the island. Their work went slowly but gradually took root. The Christianization of the British Anglo-Saxons came voluntarily and was never forced. For awhile the old religion and the new existed side-by-side which is why so much of that cultural heritage has survived and come down to us today.

For example, the ancient Germanic concept of a participatory government amongst equals became formalized in the Magna Carta from which the parliamentarian form of government evolved. The Anglo-Saxon founding fathers of the United States, in turn, reconfigured that concept and the old pagan Greek democratic model into our own system of representatives meeting in two houses of Congress. What we hold as ideal in democratic government has evolved from village wise men and folk gatherings under the sacred oak to the marbled halls of Congress. Even the architecture of our most important Government buildings are of pagan design. The Doric and Ionic columns which front these structures are copies of those whose crumbling remains still grace the Senate Forum of Rome where Caesar died and the ancient temples of Mars, Jupiter and Athena on the Acropolis.

However, the fate of the Anglo-Saxons who remained in old Sleswick after the conquest of Britain was much different and should stand as a warning to us today. Simply put, the pagans of North Germany had no interest in conversion and rejected the Church. For so doing their end was tragic. During the last half of the Eighth century AD, the Christianized German Emperor of the Franks, Charlemagne, encouraged and financed by the Church of Rome, made it his mission to impose Christianity upon the rest of Pagan Europe. With that goal he began a series of invasions and wars of terror against Sleswick which by that time was known as the Kingdom of Saxony.

The ensuing conflict was bitter and lasted 24 years. It culminated in the defeat of the Anglo-Saxon nation. Many of the proud Saxon warriors and chiefs chose death in battle, execution, or suicide, rather than understand the need, in their view, of having to grovel for salvation before the image of a dead Jew.

As part of their national suppression, all weapons were seized and all private property was confiscated by the Conquerors. The Anglo-Saxon people were themselves reduced to slavery as serfs under a system of feudal lords appointed by Charlemagne and the Church. The priests sent from Rome assumed the role of political commissars who held the power of life and death over their enslaved parishioners. Thereafter, every individual was obligated to attend regular services. A ruinous tax was levied on all persons to support the occupying oppressors. All children were required to be baptized and be given Christian names. All persons were obligated to kneel and kiss the Crucifix of any priest who appeared at any time--failure to perform any of the above was an automatic sentence of death.

Today, the same traditions, virtues and evolved institutions of the pagan and Christian forefathers face the same threat of obliteration from a new and more terrifying universal creed--the nation destroyers of the New World Order.

Who are these NWO people and what do they represent and want? Mostly, they are Socialists who under varying names, "Labour Party," "Social Democrats," or just "Democrats" now control every nation in the Western alliance.

What are the differences in the ultimate goals between a Socialist and a Communist? Nothing except their choice of tactics to attain the same end.

Their objective is a one world government, the elimination of sovereign states and the concept of "nationality". In the name of "social justice" or "for the children", its end is the enslavement of mankind. But above all else it is a philosophy which seeks to turn mankind away from God and any form of spiritual enlightenment and enslave it to materialistic creed. The socialism of the NWO is applied Satanism at its worst and should be contrasted to forms of national public assistance for citizens. An example of the type of "faith" idealized by the NWO elite may be seen in the so called "meditation room", off limits to visitors, inside the UN Building in New York. This prototype temple of the future, where the current Secretary General married his Swedish wife, is just an empty room. Outside in the plaza stands a sculpture representing the NWO ideal of humanity. The sculpture itself, a vaguely shaped human torso, has the featureless face of a blob! Hail Satan ... welcome to the NWO.

The difference between Socialists and Communists is strategy. Communists are Revolutionary whereas Socialists are evolutionary. The dispute between the two erupted in 1902 at the second party congress of the original Communist Party (RSDWP) which had been founded by the Jewish Socialist Bund in Minsk as a non national party in 1898.

In 1902, the party split into "Bolshevik" and "Menshevik" factions, the latter advocating an "incremental approach" as the means to power and their tactics have been the modus operandi of all Socialist parties ever since. Their destructive methods to attain and keep power include the slow erosion of individual liberties, burdensome regulations and laws, progressive taxation, regulation of private resources and bankrupting the treasury through rampant spending and so-by-doing, shackling perpetual debt slavery to the people. Their most insidious ploy, however, is the deliberate dilution of the predominant national culture (incremental genocide) through biologically impossible social policies ... to create an amorphous herd of non thinking sheep.

Currently, one of the most visible tools of this work of social destruction is the Clintonite Department of Education. Its primary function appears to be the erasure of our cultural heritage so as to leave our children ignorant of the traditions that made America great. Through its work our children are being stripped of their moral sense and turned into haters of their own heritage. Within the United States itself the NWO crowd considers the old Germanic values as representing the greatest threat to their plan of world control.

Moreover, the only obstacle standing between them and their goal are the 200 million privately held weapons of those millions of Americans who still adhere to the Christian/Pagan heritage. The NWO cabalists know they could face a rebellion which they could neither win nor control if they move too fast. Thus, the slow whittling away of rights, the slow sapping of our will to resist ... the slow disarming in increments, and the unrelenting "propaganda" aimed at our children to gradually erode the values of the future adults of the nation.

Eventually, they want our children to pledge allegiance to some type of UN flag. Children of European descent are already being taught that their ancestors were evil. The move to renounce all national identities and concepts of sovereignty will be next. Those who resist will end up like the ancient Saxons. Those who don't may anyway.

What will it take to save us? The modern Church seems to have become neutered and has forgotten it ever had an aversion to weapons or using force when its ideals were threatened by the secular world. The old Church fathers understood that in addition to faith it also took men and women willing to go on armed crusades and die if need be for their ideals.

Indeed, the old Church often underwrote the use of force to further its interests in the secular world. Christ himself even exhibited physical violence by committing something they'd call aggravated battery today when morally outraged at one point. This was exemplified by his flogging of the money changers from the temple. (Anyone for flogging their asses out of Washington?) Unfortunately, the so called "World Council of Churches", a one world socialist "peace" front headquartered in Geneva, has done wonders in pacifying the contemporary church and robbing it of its former revolutionary zeal. Forgotten is the America carved from the wild by good folks who carried a bible in one hand and a rifle in the other and who knew when it was appropriate to use either.

While throughout its history the ancient Church was guilty of absolutism, undemocratic ways and atrocities, the Christian ideals were and still are, in their evolved form, the greatest hope for mankind. While we should appreciate some of the finer values and traditions that have come down to us from the pagan world and merged with Christianity, the days of paganism are irretrievably gone. The commendable aspects of pagan society have survived mostly because they were compatible to the Christian values which came to replace them.

As an ideal Christianity itself remains immaculate. But like all ideals, considering man falls short of the glory, at times it becomes corrupted and has breaks down on the human level. Worse still, in recent years, it has even been targeted for exploitation by the NWO clique and their false prophets who now claim that Christianity is in reality most consummate to what they preach. Allowing the NWO pack to usurp the morality of Christendom as a cover to further its own sinister agendas may spell the faith's doom if allowed to succeed. Folk need to be alert to the regime's attempts to anoint itself with this cloak of piety ... don't be deceived! Al Gore recently said that the DNC was going to "take back God in 2000"! The ignorance and arrogance of that statement alone is evidence that its utterer has not a spiritual bone in his body and has relegated the almighty to just another aspect of polling data.

Finally, to the NWO crowd, a verse from the Bible which comes down to us from another fed up man long ago who in Exodus XII:3133 is essentially quoted as saying: "we're tired of your plague, now get off our land". In the end, however, it may take modern Christian men and women of old pagan virtue and courage to turn that command into a reality to topple the rotting edifices of the neo-Roman Empire being hurriedly erected around us.

J. Anthony Ruth is a European-raised historian who spent two years in England living in Coventry and hanging around the Cotswolds and places like Stone Henge.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
1) The Invasion of Europe by the Barbarians , Dr.J.B. Bury, (Cambridge),1927 .
2) A Short History of the English People , John Richard Green ,(Oxford),1880 .
3) The Jewish Bund in Russia-From its Origins to 1905, Dr. Henry Tobias (Uof O),1972.
4) The Birth of the Middle Ages , 395-814 , H.St.L.B. Moss ,(Oxford), 1935.
5) The Agricola and the Germania , C. Tacitus , (Roman Historian-Senator) 98 AD.
6) Class Struggle in the Pale , The formation Years of the Jewish Workers Movement in Tsarist Russia , Dr. Ezra Mendelsohn ( Cambridge U.) , 1970 .

June 29, 1999 by OpinioNet(tm), All Rights Reserved

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