On Usoniandeutsch Identity Within Heathenry

By Sean Jobst

29 July 2026

[As part of my continued break from writing the typical articles here, I repost my latest article from my Swabian Heathenry blog....]

“Wo an wohlgebahnten Straßen (Where on well-paved roads)

Man in neuer Schenke weilt, (one dwells in a new inn,)

Wo dem Fremdling reichermaßen (Where the stranger is richly)

Ackerfeld ist zugeteilt, (allocated arable field,)

Siedeln wir uns an mit Andern. (We settle with others.)

Eilet, eilet, einzuwandern (Hurry, hurry, immigrate)

In das neue Vaterland! (to the new fatherland!)”

-        Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Lied der Auswanderer” (Song of the Emigrants), 1794

Illustration associated with Goethe's
"Lied der Auswanderer." He would often
be inspired to write his poems sitting
under an oak tree. The oak tree was
revered by ancient Germans, associated
with the Thunderer Donar, and with the
Celtic Druids, whose name meant "oak-wise".

"Landverhuisers" (The Emigrants, 1896) by the 
Flemish artist Eugène Laermans (1864-1940)

Lately I’ve been thinking more deeply about how Heathenry directly relates to we who live outside our ancestral lands of Heathendom. This question is not in the sense of any perceived (much less real) “conflict”, but how different layers of identity actually complement each other. These layers each form a concentric circle, distinct with their own merits but still overlapping to contribute into our holistic Being which is ever living and instinctual.

So it is that I am an American, born and raised in the United States, with a German immigrant father (and naturalized US citizen since his youth) from Schwaben (with one ancestral line also from northwest Spain), and a Flemish-American mother whose four grandparents (all my maternal great-grandparents) were immigrants from West Vlaanderen who settled in Missouri and Kansas. The fact that my step-grandfather – who was very much my grandfather for all intents and purposes – was a German-American from Missouri added another dimension to my Euro-American identity informed by nature and nurture.

Suebi and Alemanni, Alpine Celtic, Belgae, Low Country Germanics, Celtiberian – all these specific tribal lines combined to incarnate me. The sacrifices, sorrows, passions, resilience, courage, and choices of my individual ancestors combined to preserve their lineage and ultimately make me their American descendant born, raised, nurtured and rooted within these western shores. Lineage and Memory together represent continuity, and as their descendant I am as much borrowing from the past – the memories left by my ancestors – as much as I am actively building my future.        

None of these layers erase the ancestral memories encoded within my DNA, the folklore and customs (conscious and unconscious) that were passed down to me, photos and other material objects I inherited from my ancestral lands, the spätzle and other culinary traditions among my childhood memories, extended relatives I retain across the Atlantic – nor does it change the fact that Gods and Goddesses accompany a people, no matter where they come to live (or how geographically distant from the biosphere that first nurtured their veneration).

"Die Nornen" (1882) by the German
illustrator Ludwig Burger (1825-1884)

Three Living Elements of Heathenry

Heathenry is the specifically Germanic expression of Ethnic or Folk Faith. To me the latter is a more direct meaning behind the catch-all term “Paganism,” although at the end of the day these terms simply express the same deeper Reality and Being of Indigeny. Heathenry (called by the German Heidnische on this blog) is what our ancestors termed their Ethnic Faith, with connotations of home and innate belonging to a tribe.

The constituent parts of Heathenry are the Divinities, who exist and accompany us wherever we may be, without conflicting with the pre-existing spiritual beings of this land; and the Ancestors, who are within our blood and exist in a reality parallel to what we can directly perceive (but sometimes the “veils” separating the two worlds are thinned, such as with Walpurgisnacht or Samhain, about which I wrote several articles). So both elements are clearly active within a living Heathen practice in America.

Now, we get into the third constituent part of Heathenry: Animism, the knowing that there is spirit and consciousness imbuing all being, and that there is a whole tapestry of infinite beings, seen and unseen. This includes giving recognition or offerings (whatever the case may be) to various land spirits, tied to place and the various features of land, water and air. At the highest and most primal level is Mother Earth, whom all peoples and races share although we name Her by different names and interface with Her in different ways.

We find distinct land spirits everywhere, but there’s also a strong probability that some spirits we knew in our ancestral forests followed us. Although perhaps more “esoteric” and thus speculative, the subject of Diffusionism – including the oral accounts of Native Americans about transoceanic contact, comparative mythology, the complementary shapes of Europa and North America, similar forested and mountainous landscapes along the respective coasts, scientific findings about continental drift and ridges underneath the Atlantic – express another continuity between European ancestral lands and American homeland.

Within the one American homeland, these vast transcontinental frontiers with their diverse landscapes, there are multiple and distinct “nations” reflecting the dominant ethnic group which settled a region. Their customs and folklore melded with the land. Old folklore gave rise to new folklore and customs, without infringing upon either the spirit or integrity of the old.

I couldn't find the exact source of this quote, but Kurt
Vonnegut - born into a prominent German-American
family in Indiana - was very proud about his heritage

German Emigrants Embarking for America (Source)

A Distinct Usoniandeutsch Identity

This is the same for the various constituent ethnicities of the American nationality, just as it is for German-Americans. As part of my ongoing project of Schwäbisch Heidnisches Glaube, expressing a distinctly Southwest German Heathenry, I write this article as one foundation, to be followed in the near future by an account of my personal Heathen journey and another on the methodology for Swabian Heathenry. But for the time being, I introduce a term and concept that has recently come to my awareness (nothing is by “accident,” its all about resonance and synchronicity).

That term and concept is Usoniandeutsch. Coined by one of the founders of Hyperborean Radio, who defines it as “an alternate term for ‘Americans’ Usonians from Usonia (United States of Northern Independent America) and the German word for Germans Deutsch.” “To meet the two identities of the American German rather than to have them be at odds,” via the heritage, culture, and history of Germans within America. Their public Telegram page is an extensive catalogue of the folklore, customs, and lived experience of German-American communities across the US (and the broader folklore and Paganism of other European peoples). As he writes:

“We have made our indelible mark on this great land. Our folklore, language, cuisine and much more. This is not a betrayal of ancestors of the old country but a carrying forth of their will to the new. The Mountains, Forests and Prairie stripped back all the extra and left what must remain. The ‘Stamm’ or Stem has shifted but we continue forth as the Race ‘Root.’ … You are part of the unbroken line of German Heritage that Stemmed Off onto this new land, but you are no less German of Blood and Bone for it.”

Parallel to this is another interest of mine: Ethnogenesis – the origin myth of a people and how it “evolves” through their migrations, not only their consciousness but the organic nature of a land and history itself.(1) The Germanic tribes migrated into other regions, leaving their imprint even outside the areas now known as the Germanic countries. This continued centuries later, such as the rise of the Donauschwaben as a German folk across the Danube, Balkans and Volga (their descendants later migrating to the Americas); or the Pennsylvania Deitsch, whose experience within one section of Nordamerika formed them into a distinct culture.   

Sometimes there is an esoteric law of correspondence “guiding” these migrations. Some of the Donauschwaben (not all of them Swabians but some from other regions) were – perhaps unknowingly – tracing the migratory paths of the Ostrogoths into those eastern lands. Or how one section from my own Suebi tribe migrated to what is now Galicia and northern Portugal, their customs blending with the Celtic tribes just as the Swabia their ancestors left had originally been Celtic – and our broader Swabian identity emerged from this blending of Celtic with the Germanic Suebi and Alemanni.

"Der große Schwabenzug" (The Great Swabian Procession)
by Alsatian-German painter Fernand Schulz-Wettel (Source)

"Wotan als Wanderer" (1903) illustration
by Arpad Schmidhammer (1857-1921)

Migrations to all the Americas – Lesson from The Wanderer

All these migrations beautifully express the spirit and archetype of Wodan – the Wanderer, the metaphoric fury of the storm and cleansing power of wind, and leader of the Wild Hunt. The striving and resilience, the relentless search for wisdom not for its own sake but to reclaim our own primal experience. To be an animist is also to recognize the death and destructive forces of Nature, not only the fertility and order – and that too was most experienced in various migrations, where the Faustian spirit embraced the land with all its mysteries. For me that is another “esoteric” lesson to be gathered from the Wild Hunt as not only about “death” and the otherworld.

This is an arduous path filled with great rewards but also challenges that come naturally and should be faced with steadfastness. This reward itself can be found in embracing the world with all its Runas – Mysteries. Such is a valuable lesson for a Heathen no matter where upon this beautiful planet we find ourselves, for our Gods and Goddesses are immanent and not distant off-planet beings.(2) I invoke the lesson of Wodan the Wanderer as expressing the energies that inspired millions of Germans to forge new paths in lands across all directions.

Some of their descendants even found themselves in the southern hemisphere, with German settlers in South America who found even their concept of time and the seasons completely turned upside-down as the magnetic pole energy flipped. Being happily and proudly married to an Uruguaya (colonial Spanish and Portuguese ancestry), and having been to both Uruguay and some Brazilian border towns of Rio Grande do Sul, the Southern Cone region is particularly dear to my own heart – and I’ve found that its own history and heritage serves as a mirror to our own experiences as North Americans of European ancestries. There are colonies of Germans and Swiss across the region, sometimes in unlikely places.(3)

Totally unrelated to my own travels, I found a Brazilian effort to reclaim the Suebi-Visigothic Heathen heritage that migrated from Portugal to that massive Lusophone country. Called Alþeis Sidus, this effort preserves distinct Heathen traditions of the Suebi and Visigoths while still incorporating the rich animistic tapestry of their own Brazilian spiritual landscape.(4) They recognize the land spirits and contributions of other ethnicities in the formation of Brazil, but their pantheon of Deities is distinctly Heathen, further informed by Germans who settled the southern estados of Rio Grande do Sol, Santa Catarina, and Parana.   

Painting of 39 German immigrants arriving in São
Leopoldo, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil (Source)

"Weihnachtsfest der Deutschen Division am Potomac"
(Christmas with the German Division of the Potomac),
American Civil War. The Yule tree a German tradition
which harkens back to Heathen times. (Source)

Living Heathenry in Nordamerika

Bringing it full circle to our experience in Nordamerika, there are several noble efforts to forge a continental Heathenry distinctly tailored to our own landscape. Pennsylvania Deitsch (misheard by the English as ‘Dutch’) preserved traditions via a vibrant Heathen tradition called Urglaawe. In the great North called Canada, a group of French descendants have reclaimed Frankish Heathenry.(5) Called Thia Frankisk Aldsido, its founder explains how “This is not a reconstructed religion but a renovated tradition built on consideration.” This is realized through “a formal structure to promote growth, development, and the localization of cult centers.” Indeed, Thia Frankisk Aldsido localized these with new sacred sites and Godpoles within Canada.

A group of Saxon Heathens called the Aldsidu have resurrected a living continental practice in Chicagoland, showing how being faithful to historical sources is not mere imitation of a “lost” tradition from across the ocean but flows like a vibrant spring nurturing even an urbanscape. Finally, while stressing that my own Heathenry is solitary and I do not belong to any group, there is the effort that inspires my own the most – the Irminenschaft, whose various blogs and website I link within my own blog. I highly recommend its seminal text Germanic Heathenry – to be understood as a useful handbook of traditions and folklore, not some kind of “scripture” - which immediately resonated with me in ways Scandinavian sources never could or did.

I close with some comments I made to a YouTube video where Finnish Pagan writer, Aki Cederberg, was interviewed about his book Holy Europe. It’s a very informative book holding a useful place (among many others) within my own library. The author stresses sacred spaces and spiritual pilgrimages, which need not only be to sites only regarded as “spiritual” but can include the artistic and apparently “mundane”. I know this only too well, as my trip to Stuttgart – visiting the Landesmuseum, walking along the Neckar River and adjacent streets in Bad Cannstatt where my dad in his youth and my direct paternal side lived, and hiking up the Birkenkopf – was the first catalyst to my own Heathen journey. 

Just some photos from my July 2016
pilgrimage to Stuttgart and Bad Canstatt,
catalyst for my reawakening to Heathenry

“While affirming the essential need for a travel to one's ancestral land(s), I'm convinced we can also find ancestral spiritual meaning in the lands we live. First, that the Gods are and accompany us wherever we are as a people - of whatever heritage you may be. Not just the Gods but also the land spirits exist and we know that animism was always inseparable from Heathenry. That's a profound benefit in animism since Nature IS, no matter the place or time.

“Second, we can look at Diffusionism and lost continents, continental drift, and how not only do the shapes of North America and Europe resemble a puzzle fitting together but there's something in the fact that our forested, mountainous landscapes here on this continent resemble those our ancestors left in Europe. That is certainly no accident but has something to do with our destiny of which we are active participants and co-creators.

“Third, taking the principles about ‘sacred space’ from such thinkers as Mircea Eliade etc. we can build new Heathen sacred spaces on this landscape. Was not the Irminsul the physical representation of a more cosmic, metaphysical principle that is ever existing? Were not the sacred trees and groves of our various tribes also the physical representations? So perhaps we can build new Heathen God-poles and consecrate sacred trees such as oak or elm etc. and springs and groves here in North America. Never to ‘replace’ those of our ancestral lands but to make the realities of Divinity and Heathenry as a living, uninterrupted practice more profound and evident for us.” 

....and just some photos from my hiking excursions
in the forests and mountains of southern Appalachia,
connecting with the spiritual energies of this land.

Footnotes:

(1) Origin myths are not to be confused with “creation” myths such as we see with Abrahamism. Rather the tribal and indigenous model worldwide is one of Emergence and Emanation from the Earth. I harmonized this model with the Sophianic narrative of how Earth morphed from the physical and dream body of the Goddess, with the origin myths of various tribes then picking up where that primordial universal myth leaves off. For example, the account of Tacitus about how the ancient Germans saw themselves as “autochthonous”. See the fourth article of my Animism series, entitled “Emergence, Emanation, True Meaning of Matrix, and Debunking the Simulation Inversion”.

(2) Although they certainly have cosmic correspondences, as I examined in a recent article about Walpurgisnacht and its relation to astrotheology and the Runes.

(3) For example, I once saw a Mennonite outside the Rivera bus station; and I passed Swiss-founded towns on the way to Colonia still preserving their Alpine architecture and heritage. Although this is another subject entirely, perhaps it’s no accident these Swiss descendants would be drawn to a land historically called the “Switzerland of South America” (at least before statism and ever-growing bureaucracy wrecked its damage just as in other countries). The decentralized cantons of Switzerland itself owe much to the tribal confederacy structure of the Alemanni, including the Suebi.

(4) This reminds me of the broader Brazilian syncretism called Umbanda, with its own complex cosmology informed by the Africans, Portuguese, and Indigenous Amazonians who each imbued Brazil with their own traditions. Its pantheon of the Orishas is Yoruba, syncretized as “saints” and other Christian figures - perhaps merely to hide in plain sight, although some practitioners take the Christian imagery to heart, while the related Candomblé tend to stress the African polytheism. Umbanda’s spiritual hierarchies include distinct linhas and phalanxes identified as European, African, or Indigenous Brazilian. This pattern is repeated with the Exus, a vast category who even include spiritual beings from the Ciganos (Gitanos/Romani) who settled Brazil.

(5) Due to the fact that Frankish monarchs such as Clovis and Charlemagne became the battering ram of Christianization against other Germanic tribes, we tend to forget that the Franks were also our Heathen cousins and Christianity was imposed upon them first. At times this was to great difficulty of the conquerors, as the accounts of Martin of Tours attest to lingering Heathenry of even many “converted” Franks. Christianization was never a singular event but a gradual process of centuries.

Suebi Beer Libations to Wuodan: Esoteric Musings on Blot; and Accounts from Grimm, Columban, and the Matronae

By Sean Jobst

[The following article was originally published on my Swabian Heathenry blog, a project I officially title the Schwäbisch Heidnisches Glaube. Aside from some article ideas for this blog, I've mostly been working on that other project. Since its focus is more "niche" and specified, most of its postings won't be republished here. But this current article is an exception, since some of its points intersect with themes on this blog.] 

Sources confirm it was a common Suebi tradition to honor Wuodan (our original name for Him, later evolving into Old High German Wodan and modern German Wotan) with beer libations, so that a modern Swabian Heathen practice could incorporate a Giozan (Old High German “to pour” -> Proto-Germanic *Geutana, “to pour") with beer of a high quality befitting to Wuodan, preferably our own South German beers such as made with hops from the Bavarian Hallertau, where Wuodan and other Germanic Deities were honored and so their energies are imbued with the land. 

As we were animists like every other ethnic faith, our ancestors knew that through this ritual the drink itself would become imbued with a spiritual energy exchanged with the Deity. Blotar (Proto-Germanic *Blotana, “to sacrifice”) were specific offerings to the Gods or Goddesses. This included something tangible as part of the gifting and exchange cycle; but could also include words or a vow honoring the Deity, invoked by their unique kennings and qualities. As noted by two leading scholars, the Indo-European words for libation come from the same roots as words for “promise, vow.”(1)

The great German linguist and folklorist Jacob Grimm (1785-1863), himself descended from the Hessian lands of the Chatti (kinsmen of the Irminones along with our Suebi and Alemanni), rendered an essential service to continental Germanisches Heidentum by collecting the folklore of disparate regions and compiling them into a cohesive work documenting continuity to our ancient Mythology - despite all propaganda claiming everything was “lost” or broken. Grimm linked this Germanic practice to the broader Indo-European tradition:

“As it was a primitive and widespread custom at a banquet to set aside a part of the food for the household gods, and particularly to place a dish of broth before Berhta and Hulda, the gods were also invited to share the festive drink. The drinker, before taking any himself, would pour some out of his vessel for the god or house sprite, as the Lithuanians, when they drank beer, spilt some of it on the ground for their earth-goddess Zemynele. Compare with this the Norwegian sagas of Thor, who appears at weddings when invited, and takes up and empties huge casks of ale. I will now turn once more to that account of the Suevic ale-titb (cupa) in Jonas, and use it to explain the heathen practice of minne drinking [ritual toast], which is far from being extinct under Christianity. Here also both name and custom appear common to all the Teutonic races.”(2)

The concept of a sacred beverage is a defining feature of Indo-European cultures, whose various mythos are filled with stories of Gods or heroes seeking holy drinks which initiated them into higher consciousness of frenzy or gnosis, and beverages of magical qualities such as the elixir or haoma. This motif is also a defining feature of the pan-European Grail Mythos, which though outwardly “christian” reveals deeper Pagan origins, and was transmitted by Germanic Minnesänger, most notably the Bavarian Wolfram von Eschenbach. Its remnants are centered within the Celtic and Germanic worlds, but its linguistic and mythic correspondences also extend eastward to the Caucasus, and to Iran via the figure of Parzifal.(3)

Parzifal with Amfortas in the Grail Castle (1883), by
Bavarian painter August Spiess (1841-1923) for display
in Der Sängersaal of Schloss Neuschwanstein (Source)

Unfortunately, the exact format of an Alemannic/Suebi blot has not survived. For we who seek to revive our Heathenry, we can look to the formats provided by other continental Heathens, such as the Irminists or the Saxon Aldsidu, for clues on what our ancestors practiced. These sources about the beer libations to Wuodan are therefore even more valuable, for they describe a special offering vessel that contained the beer, made ‘sacred’ by the intentions of the participants and incantations uttered over it to honor Wuodan. But rather than the details, what’s most important is the overarching metaphysics of Blot, the divine purpose animating the ritual, as explained by the Finnish writer Aki Cederberg:

“Along with sumbel (meaning ritual libations of sacred drink raised in honor of the gods, ancestors, and the deeds of the living), blot is one of the central Germanic rituals of which we have historical knowledge. In a blot, an offering of drink or food was given to the gods, goddesses, spirits, or ancestors. At specific holy times, even animal and human sacrifices occasionally took place (the human sacrifices usually consisted of criminals or enemies of the community). The blot would be performed in a holy place or sacrificial grove, where a connection to the gods was particularly strong. In principle, this action was less about appeasing the divine and more about maintaining and strengthening a connection with the holy powers, which happened via sacrifice, offering, and gift-giving. The same reciprocal relationship that existed in human communities was thought to also exist between the human and the divine. Sacrifice was an expression of this principle. It was understood that by offering gifts to the gods, the latter would in turn bless humans with their gifts, such as luck, protection, fertility, love, or guidance – which, although intangible, are still at the epicenter of human life.”(4)

Generally, Abrahamics throw accusations of “sacrifice” against Heathens and Pagans, but rather than apologize about our ancestral traditions we can simply turn it back on them as projection. Their religions are centered around sacrifice, whether it be the salvationist “christ” story, the “divinely” ordered sacrifice of Isaac or Ismail (depending on which of the three iterations), Islamic Eid and halal sacrifices, the Hebrew scapegoat ritual or modern shechita, or the practice of circumcision whether against the male or female. There are biblical references to their god enjoying the “aroma” of “burnt offerings” (Exodus 29:18, Leviticus 1:9, Numbers 15:3), demanding strictly-defined sacrifices as central to his worship (Exodus 29:38-42, Numbers 15:1-29), and later extended to the sacrifice of christ (Hebrews 9:14 Ephesians 5:2). The way these verses and traditions are framed is one of a “divine” demand to be appeased by the sacrifices offered by “lesser” mortals.

In complete contrast, our Heathen or Pagan traditions viewed sacrifice as part of the gifting and exchange cycle – it was tied to Natural law. The Deities exist and as higher vibrational Beings, they don't “need” the sacrifices - its about the exchange and flow of energy as part of the Natural Order (Rita, related to rite). At least in the Germanic and Celtic worlds, sacrifice was done to those who would've already been killed such as certain heinous criminals or war captives. And when it came to animals, those would've been killed for food anyway – yet making use of all the parts and with due humane diligence to their spirit. Through sacrifice the more “mundane” acts of the world were elevated into ritual, raising the consciousness of the entire tribe or clan in the process. It should also be said that sacrifice is a general term that can be understood as including the intangible, such as sacrificing our time and work or making vows, creative acts and poetic words. Our traditions also evolve with us as peoples, so that the definition of sacrifice and exchange has expanded.

Ancient Germanic minne ritual. Illustration by German artist
Martin Wiegand (1867-1961) for Bildersaal Deutscher Geschichte
(Stuttgart: Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1890). (Source)

Columban’s account of Suebi ritual

The source he references is the Italian monk Jonas of Bobbio, whose Vita Columbani (Life of Columban, circa 639-641) is a biography of “Saint” Columban (543-615), the Irish missionary sent by Rome and the Frankish archons to convert our Suebi/Alemanni volk to Christianity. That his mission occurred over a hundred years after our regions were conquered by the Christianized Franks (following Clovis’ conversion in 496) demonstrates how resilient our tribesmen were upon our ancestral Heathenry in the face of a Christian onslaught backed by overwhelming political and financial authority. 

Such accounts are a useful source for describing our ancestral traditions because these missionaries, desiring to convert a people to their foreign archonic religion, recorded traditions as they witnessed them, wanting to “refute” and ascribe them to the “demonic” (since it was related to Gods of ethnikos, gentilis “the nations” rather than to their own hebraic messianic egregore). These accounts can be easily discerned from their own commentary, as these were “supernatural” exaggerations obviously invented to fit their mythic hagiography, as well as to demonstrate the “truth” of Christianity and their own “miraculous” claims to sainthood. I now cite Jonas’ account in its original Latin, followed by the English translation:

“Ad destinatum deinde perveniunt locum. Quem peragrans vir Dei non suis placere animis aiet, sed tamen ob fidem in gentibus serendam inibi paulisper moraturum se spondit. Sunt etenim inibi vicinae nationes Suaevorum. Quo cum moraretur et inter habitatores loci illius progrederetur, repperit eos sacrificium profanum litare velle, vasque magnum, quem vulgo cupam vocant, qui XX modia amplius minusve capiebat, cervisa plenum in medio positum. Ad quem vir Dei accessit sciscitaturque, quid de illo fieri vellint. Illi aiunt se Deo suo Vodano* nomine, quem Mercurium, ut alii aiunt, autumant, velle litare. Ille pestiferum opus audiens vas insufflat, miroque modo vas cum fragore dissolvitur et per frustra dividitur, visque rapida cum ligore cervisae prorumpit; manifesteque datur intellegi diabolum in eo vase fuisse occultatum, qui per profanum ligorem caperet animas sacrificantum. Videntes barbari, stupefacti aiunt magnum virum Dei habere anhelitum, qui sic possit dissolvere vas ligaminibus munitum; castigatusque euangelicis dictis, ut ab his segregarentur sacrificiis, domibus redire imperat. Multique eorum tunc per beati viri suasum vel doctrinam ad Christi fidem conversi, baptismum sunt consecuti; aliosque, quos iam lavacro ablutus error detinebat profanus, ad cultum euangelicae doctrinae monitis suis ut bonus pastor ecclesiae sinibus reducebat. * Vadono (A1a), Wodano (A1b), Woda (A2)”

Columban among the "savage" Suebi/Alemanni,
portraying an obvious Christian bias

“At length they arrived at the place designated, which did not wholly please Columban; but he decided to remain, in order to spread the faith among the people, who were Swabians. Once, as he was going through this country, he discovered that the natives were going to make a heathen offering. They had a large cask that they called a cupa, and that held about twenty-six measures, filled with beer and set in their midst. On Columban’s asking what they intended to do with it, they answered that they were making an offering to their God Wodan (whom others call Mercury). When he heard of this abomination, he breathed on the cask, and lo! it broke with a crash and fell in pieces so that all the beer ran out. Then it was clear that the devil had been concealed in the cask, and that through the earthly drink he had proposed to ensnare the souls of the participants. As the heathens saw that, they were amazed and said Columban had a strong breath, to split a well-bound cask in that manner. But he reproved them in the words of the Gospel, and commanded them to cease from such offerings and to go home. Many were converted then, by the preaching of the holy man, and turning to the learning and faith of Christ, were baptized by him. Others, who were already baptized but still lived in the heathenish unbelief, like a good shepherd, he again led by his words to the faith and into the bosom of the church.”(5)

The “supernatural” element is obviously part of his mythic hagiography, contradicted by the historical resistance he faced trying to convert our kinsmen; and as it steals the qualities associated with the God he was demonstrating his alleged “power” over, as the modern German Heathen writer and artist ‘Iwobrand’ writes: “It is worth mentioning that the breath ascribed to the saint seems to point towards the very god that is supposed to be defeated by it: Wodan is the god of the storm-like spirit, Old English wōd (Germanic *wōdaz), which gets hold of the furious, i.e. the inspired.”(6) 

Jonas’ last sentence is closer to the truth, as it was only a centuries-long process of syncretism imposed by the church and its Frankish authorities, that converted the Suebi/Alemanni – notwithstanding the folklore we held onto since then which can now be a guiding light to Schwäbisches Heidentum, whose living flame was never entirely extinguished - it just went underground, often hiding in plain sight within the church, and embedded within the ancestral memories and archetypal symbols of the volk. As Iwobrand continues: “In the sixth century there was already a network of monasteries in the region, but since the fifth century a great number of Alemanni had fallen back into paganism. Especially the more remote areas, covered with thick woodland, would still be settled by a persistent pagan population.”

After arriving at the Merovingian court of King Theudebert II of Austrasia at Metz (Lothringen) in 611, Columban’s mission was “granted” land at Bregenz, in Vorarlberg (the Schwäbisch part of modern Austria). Following the route of the Rhein and Donau, he met with little success among our volk, further attesting to the Heathen resilience well into the 7th century. Accompanied by “Saint” Gallus to Bregenz in 612, Columban found an oratory outwardly dedicated to “Saint” Aurelia but containing three brass idols, which he destroyed and threw into Lake Constanz, and founded the Mehrerau Abbey.(7) Gallus remained as the conquerors' religious general over Schwaben, lending his name to St. Gallen and other Swiss toponyms.

 

Bregenzerwald in Vorarlberg (Source)

Heathen worship resisted Christianization in Bregenz

A similar account was given in the Vita S. Galli, written by the Swabian monk Walafrid Strabo sometime in the early 800s: “They also found in the temple some images of bronze, gilded and fixed to the wall, which the people, having abandoned the worship of the sacred altar, adored, and were accustomed to offer sacrifices to: these are the ancient and ancient gods, the guardians of this place, whose comfort both we and ours endure to the present day.” Given the earlier account of Tacitus about the foremost Gods of the Suebi, these three could possibly represent Ziu, Wuodan and Donar. After quoting this passage (in its original Latin), Grimm gives a lengthy analysis on whose idols they possibly were:

“A doubt may be raised, however, as to whether by these heathen gods are to be understood Alamannish, or possibly Roman gods? Roman paganism in a district of the old Helvetia is quite conceivable, and dii tutores loci sounds almost like the very thing. On the other hand it must be remembered, that Alamanns had been settled here for three centuries, and any other worship than theirs could hardly be at that time the popular one. That sacrifice to Woden on the neighboring Lake of Zurich mentioned by Jonas in his older biography of the two saints, was altogether German. Lastly, the association of three divinities to be jointly worshipped stands out a prominent feature in our domestic heathenism; when the Romans dedicated a temple to several deities, their images were not placed side by side, but in separate cellae (chapels).”(8)

He continues: “By this account also the temple is first of all Christian, and afterwards occupied by the heathen (Alamanns), therefore not an old Eomanone [Irminone]. That Woden’s statue was one of those idola vana that were broken to pieces, may almost be inferred from Jonas’ account of the beer-sacrifice offered to him. Eatpert’s cantilena S. Galli has only the vague words: Castra de Turegum adnavigant Tucconium, Decent fidem gentem, Jovem linquunt ardentem [‘The camp of the Turegians sails to Tuconium, They befit the nation's faith, They leave Jove burning’]. This Jupiter on fire, from whom the people apostatized, may very well be Donar (Thunar, Thor), but his statue is not alluded to. According to Arx, Eckehardus IV. quotes Joviset Neptuni idola, but I cannot find the passage; conf. p. 122 Ermoldus Nigellus on Neptune. It is plain that the three statues have to do with the idolatry on L. Constance, not with that on L. Zurich; and if Mercury, Jupiter and Neptune stood there together, the first two at all events may be easily applied to German deities.”(9)

Its significant these passages mention “saint” Aurelia of Strasbourg and not the “Christ” figure, suggesting the Christians used various “saints” who could easily be disguised as tutelary deities to convert our ancestors, otherwise repulsed by the “Christ” stories. Even the historicity of this fourth century “saint” was questioned by Alsatian historian Philippe-André Grandidier (1752-1787) who, despite being a priest, was committed to the scientific method. The account also attests to the resilient of Heathenry, as even the semblance of Christian worship was shed in favor of the open worship of our Gods. Missionaries were continuously sent, culminating in Columban and Galli. After a year of many of his abbots – who should be seen as religious invaders – being “murdered” in the woods by our Heathen tribesmen, Columban crossed the Alps where he died three years later in Lombardy.

The missionaries had an Abrahamic-induced fear of
our forests, mountains, lakes and rivers, knowing these
contained a primal spiritual energy. An illustration by
German Heathen writer and artist Iwobrand (Source)

Other accounts of beer libations across Deutschland

Beer has an ancient history in Germany, extending at least 3,000 years. Archaeological excavations from a burial site of a Celtic or Germanic chieftain near Kulmbach (Bayern) has uncovered ceramic amphoras containing beer residue. That he was sent off to the Otherworld with gifts of beer accompanying him underscores the sacredness of beer as a ritual drink in our regions. Nearby the Kulmbacher Mönchhof brewery was founded in 1349, suggesting that much like churches so too were breweries often constructed atop Heathen sacred sites. Around 98 CE, the Roman Tacitus also recorded both the popularity of beer and its ritualistic use among the Germanic peoples. One modern historian has mentioned the cultural implications between Germanic beer culture vis-à-vis the dominant Roman vinology:

“Although beer was a common beverage in practically all ancient societies, the wine-drinking Greeks and Romans mysteriously excluded it from their diet. It is too simplistic to state that they simply disliked the drink. For each negative trait imputed to beer there almost invariably exists some further testimony to the contrary. Thus it is variously described as a sour, foul-smelling, impure, cloudy, harmful, flatulence-causing, unmanly liquid made from rotten cereals, a divine punishment, but also as a sweet, good-tasting, nice-smelling, nutritious, healthful, useful, strong cereal beverage, a divine gift. The exclusion of beer from the Greek and Roman diet is essentially a manifestation of a deep-set vinocentricity closely connected to a disdain of the ‘other’. 

“The vinocentric outlook is obvious from the fact that beer was often simply known as barley wine or wheat wine, while barbarians were said to make intoxicating beverages in imitation of wine, and to have recourse to beer when wine was wanting. Wine and beer were also often considered polar opposites: wine was civilized and beer barbaric (in being undiluted with water, though it was, it seems, just as strong as wine, and in being drunk with filtered straws); wine was manly and beer effeminate; wine upper class and beer lower class. The very fact that beer was the drink of others was enough to condemn it, and the actual taste of the beverage probably had little influence on verdicts against it. Those who actually ventured to try some brew did not necessarily find it so bad.”(10)

Perhaps the most famous of the
Matronae votive altars, the Matronae
Aufaniae (circa 164CE), discovered under
the site of the Bonn Minster church.

We now continue our journey from the South into more North German regions, further attesting to the Heathen practice of beer libations. The first clue concerns the general use of beer for sacred purposes and not only to Wuodan. Spread across Deutschland are votive offerings to the Matronae, various feminine tutelary spirits associated with specific areas. These reveal the shared animism of the Celts and Germanen, upon which later Roman elements were also added, for these were all branches of the same Indo-European family and the Matronae are the matron energies tied to place. A list of Matronae compiled by the Norwegian scholar and historian Maria Kvilhaug includes a patroness of beer:

“Alusneihae (Beer Mothers)
Where: Inden-Pier, Kreis Düren [Nordrhein-Westfalen], West Germany

Meaning: From Gmc «aluþ» — «Beer», «Intoxicating Drink» — the second part of the name is uncertain, but is possibly the same as the mysterious ‘neha’ in the goddess name Nehallennia: Is it from LAT *nex, *necare – ‘To Kill’, or from the verb ‘helan’ – ‘To Hide’, or from Gmc *neu – associated with words for seafaring or approximation (‘Mothers of Beer Approaching’, ‘Mothers of Beer Ships’ or something along that line).”(11) 

Aside from the Suebi, Grimm traces beer offerings to Wuodan among the Northern folk customs of Lower Saxony and Mecklenburg: “He [18th century Mecklenburg historian David Franck] adds, that at the squires mansions, when the rye is all cut, there is Wodel-beer served out to the mowers; no one weeds flax on a Wodenstag, lest Woden’s horse should trample the seeds; from Christmas to Twelfth-day they will not spin, nor leave any flax on the distaff, and to the question why they answer, Wode is galloping across. We are expressly told, this wild hunter Wode rides a white horse….

“A custom in Schaumburg [Lower Saxony] I find thus described [By Munchhausen in Bragur VI. 1, 2134.]: the people go out to mow in parties of twelve, sixteen or twenty scythes, but it is so managed, that on the last day of harvest they all finish at the same time, or some leave a strip standing which they can cut down at a stroke the last thing, or they merely pass their scythes over the stubble, pretending there is still some left to mow. At the last stroke of the scythe they raise their implements aloft, putting them upright, and beat the blades three times with the strop. Each spills on the field a little of the drink he has, whether beer, brandy, or milk, then drinks himself, while they wave their hats, beat their scythes three times, and cry aloud Wold, Wold, Wold! and the women knock all the crumbs out of their baskets on the stubble. They march home shouting and singing.”(12)

Finally, preserved in the texts of our Norse cousins across the North and Baltic Seas are these pertinent words directly from the High One Himself: “66. To some feasts, I’ve come much too late, And to others, much too soon- either the beer was all gone, Or not yet brewed: The unlucky man can’t seem to get it right” – Hávamál: The Words of the High One(13)

So it is that I raise a libation to Wuodan. Prost und Hail Wuodan!

ADDENDUM: Scientific Findings and Esoteric/Shamanic Musings 

I recently listened to a podcast which on the surface has nothing to do with Swabian Heathenry, but a section of it was so pertinent that I added this new section. The information comes from the Gnostic visionary and comparative mythologist John Lamb Lash (hereafter named JLL), whose work has influenced me since late 2021. I’ve incorporated the wisdom he has distilled from the Pagan Mysteries, into my own spiritual worldview, with its base foundation of my own ancestral heritage.

Our ancestors knew the properties of certain plants within their own biosphere, a reality so innate and expressive worldwide that it’s a discipline called Ethnobotany. (A great source for this within our Schwäbisch/Alemannisch context is Wolf-Dieter Storl, originally from Sachsen but long resident in and acclimated to Bavarian Swabia). Our ancestors came to these realizations – only “discovered” by science many centuries later – through their instincts, intuition, and observation of the world and their minds and bodies. As Heathens, we never had a false dichotomy between spiritual and scientific.

Our weltanschauung and traditions are incredibly logical and rational, while still embracing the Mysterious. As a God of shamanic and ecstatic qualities, its an obvious conclusion that so too would there be an esoteric layer to the beer libations to Wuodan – not on every occasion or even to most people, but certainly in rituals by initiates of His Mysteries such as männerbünde (warrior brotherhoods) and trained Zaubermacher (magicians) or Runen-Meischter (Rune masters). This would also occur on auspicious calendar times of heightened awareness and perception.

JLL cited the 2001 work by Richard Evans Schultes, Albert Hofmann, and Christian Rätsch (Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers), who observed how botanists discovered these plants to be nitrogen-bearing, expressing their surprise as to why since nitrogen serves no apparent benefit to these plants. But as he notes: “They’re a benefit to humanity and to human animals, that's why they have these entheogenous properties.”

“Nitrogen is a component of the biosphere, you breathe it, and it permeates your skin and pores.” Why is the atmosphere 78% nitrogen? Drawing on his Gnosis, JLL mentions “interaction with nitrogen, detection of the effects of nitrogen, and delving into the inner recesses of the nitrogen zone of the planet,” through shamanic practices which we can also experience as a living reality beyond the merely conceptual, in the same way we experience oxygen or hydrogen.

"The Sacred Grove of the Druids", painting from the Opera
Norma, by Italian artist Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835),
portraying the sky in much the same way as the telestic
method described by John Lamb Lash. The Druids were
the uniquely Celtic initiates of the Pagan Mysteries.

“Several things happen when you direct your awareness in a telestic trance, to a nitrogen zone.” The sky “turns green” and “fractalizes into hexagonal facets.” This isn’t hallucination but are related to Benard cells, related to “the activity of chaos and complexity out of which everything emerges.” So through this observation you go deeper into the cells and through gazing into these facets, you see the activity within like “a wild thrashing of tendrils.” (Could this be another layer of meaning to the Wild Hunt?). “If you look deeper, keep a gentle steady gaze, these rising tendrical forms inside each facet, will assume the form of a dakini, a sky dancer.”

JLL references Tibetan Vajrayana shamanic practices corresponding to those recorded of our own ancient European mystic initiates. He mentions experiments with fermented beer by the Tibetan Nyingma scholar-yogi Longchenpa (1308-1364). Similarly: “The chemical element of the drink at Eleusis was fermented barley.” (The Hellenic Eleusinian initiates’ barley drink kykeon, was known – after a nine-day period of fasting and purification – to induce profound visions and transcending fear of death, much like those of the Germanic initiates to Wuodan. The Greek state of thummos is very similar to our own Germanic state of wode).

“Longchenpa attested in some of the records attributed to him, about he and a group of eight apprentices – that’s interesting because Gnostics were in groups of eight and sixteen – and describes vividly how they see these dakinis dancing in the sky.” “And that’s one experience you can have at the nitrogen zone, when you’re actually feeling and processing nitrogen, these paranormal states come spontaneously.”(14) 

Notes:

(1) Douglas Q. Adams and J.P. Mallory, “Libation,” Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, London/Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997, p. 351.

(2) Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, Vol. I, trans. James Steven Stallybrass, London: George Bell & Sons, 1882, p. 59.

(3) Among leading scholars of Grail and Arthurian literature, the English Jessie Weston (1850-1928) and American Roger Sherman Loomis (1887-1966) argued convincingly for pre-Christian origins of the Grail Mythos, particularly within Celtic mythology and folklore. See also the online lectures of John Lamb Lash, who gives a Sophianic Animistic description of the Grail journey and its meaning. For the Heathen origins of the German Minnesänger, see Guido von List's Das Geheimnis der Runen (1908) and Otto Rahn's Luzifers Hofgesind (1937).

(4) Aki Cederberg, Holy Europe, North Augusta, SC: Arcana Europa Media, 2024, p. 5.

(5) The Life of St. Columban, by the Monk Jonas, trans. Dana Carleton Munro, Book I, Chapter 53, < https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/basis/columban.asp>.

(6) Iwobrand, “Alemannic Paganism in the Vitae Columbani & Galli,” Oct. 5, 2020, <https://iwobrand.wordpress.com/2020/10/05/alemannic-paganism-in-the-vitae-columbani-galli/>.

(7) See Columba Edmonds, “St. Columbanus,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 4, New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908. Online: <https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04137a.htm>.

(8) Grimm, op. cit., p. 109.

(9) ibid., p. 110. Later in his work, Grimm proposes that “Neptune” refers to either Wodan or Njord. But I place little relevance here, as there is obviously no attestations of Njord among our inland mountainous volk, although sometimes there is overlap between sea and chthonic Deities. I'm prone to chalk the account up to how far-removed these missionaries were from their own Germanic or Celtic ancestry, conceiving the pre-Christian generally in Roman terms. May the Truth be uncovered either way.

(10) Max Nelson, “The Cultural Construction of Beer Among Greeks and Romans,” Syllecta Classica, January 2003, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 101-120, < https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268871081_The_Cultural_Construction_of_Beer_Among_Greeks_and_Romans>.

(11) Maria Kvilhaug, “Ancestral Mothers and Goddess Collectives in German Iron Age Votive Altars and Inscriptions dedicated to the ‘Matrones’,” Jan. 21, 2020, <https://bladehoner.wordpress.com/2020/01/21/ancestral-mothers-and-goddess-collectives-in-german-iron-age-votive-altars-and-inscriptions-dedicated-to-the-matrones/>. 

(12) Grimm, op. cit., p. 156.

(13) From the translation by James Hjuka Coulter, Sewell: Hammerstede, 2^nd edition, 2002, reproduced in his book: Germanic Heathenry: A Practical Guide, 1^st Books Library, 2003, p. 261.

(14) From The Psychedelic Podcast, “John Lamb Lash – Telestic Shamanism: Gnosis, Cognitive Ecstasy, and Entheogens,” 25 June 2022.