by Sean Jobst
24 February 2020
Continuing on from Part 1, there are more archaeological findings from Swabia that illuminate our understanding of prehistoric folk faith while also telling us about ourselves. Found at Hohlenstein-Stadel ("hollow-rock barn") in the Lonetal region in 1939, its dating to between 35,000 and 40,000 years ago makes it both the oldest zoomorphic and figurative art ever found. It was not until 1969 that the 200 fragmented pieces were assembled together again into the 12.2 inch/31cm tall male figure with a lion's head.(1) As with the others, the Löwenmensch was carved from mammoth ivory. That many spears found within Paleolithic burials were also made from mammoth ivory despite its fragility, demonstrates an early "autonoetic" purpose for another existence after death symbolized by the material itself.(2)
The Löwenmensch's human features are evident in his upright posture and sloping shoulders, while the head, shorter arm, decorative spots and vertical scratch indicate a lion. The figure was carved primarily with a flint stone knife, with seven parallel and transverse gouges intricately carved on its left arm. Other tools were needed to separate the torso from the insides of the arms and to shape the distinctive head and shoulders. The basic shaping would have taken at least 200 hours which, except if created slowly at intervals, meant the one who carved it would have been excused from other tasks.(3) This indicates the importance of the figurine. The process itself is a spiritual cycle: a human manifesting through the creative work of both mind and hands a representation of vital natural forces using an animal material.
This was a crucial moment in the development of modern cognition, not just accessing their own human mind but also "thinking" as the animal through analogy: "It is not the image, per se, but the abstract concept behind it that argues for modern executive function and working memory. A single figurine of a lion, or a human, would not carry such weight."(4) Nicholas Conard, the Tubingen University archaeologist who led the team that excavated the Hohle Fels, has suggested that the Löwenmensch "should be considered strong evidence for fully symbolic communication."(5) Miami University anthropologist Homayun Sidky proposes:
"Shamanic thought is founded upon the type of cognitive capacity demonstrated by the artist who produced the lion-man figurine. This involved cross-modular thinking by accessing and applying information from different cognitive modules, for example, applying social intelligence upon natural history intelligence (i.e., the basis of attributing agency to non-human phenomena) and combining it in novel ways to conceive of the idea of animal-human transformation. This is the same kind of cognition that generates the notions of a sentient universe and the existence of nature or elemental spirits and all the related features of the shamanic cosmos."(6)
Archetypes from the Caves and Forests: As Above, So Below - As Within, So Without
The culture that created the figure was the Aurignacian, which spanned across most of continental Europe between 26,000 and 43,000 years ago. This explains the remarkable similarities with Aurignacian-era cave paintings from the Aquitaine region of southwest France, including the "Sorcerer" from Trois Frères and the "Bison-man" from the Grotte de Gabillou.(7) "Caves are entrances to the otherworld and regarded as the womb of the Earth Goddess, the mother of the animals. Here, deep in the earth, in her belly, animal souls mature until the goddess releases them into the external world. The shamans, the mediators between the worlds, enter these dark depths to negotiate with the goddess."(8)
Indeed, the Löwenmensch was found inside a chamber 30 meters beyond the cave entrance, along with several other objects, including pendants, ivory pearls, perforated animal teeth, and tools made from mammoth bones. Also found were a large number of thin pieces of reindeer antlers from female reindeer that threw off their antlers in the spring and several of which contained small cut marks. This led archaeologists to propose the chamber was used for cultic purposes, around which the Löwenmensch was the center piece.(9) The antlers suggest a symbolic use, especially since many chambers were used to channel sunlight. "For the ancient Europeans, the stag was a symbol of the sun spirit visiting Earth and the forests; its antlers are golden, and it possesses the gold of wisdom. If it touches a spring with its antler, then the spring becomes a healing one."(10)
Is it any coincidence that the various coats of arms for Schwaben and Württemberg have always included stag antler motifs? I suggest prehistoric roots for the stag archetype which became a common motif throughout Germanic and Celtic folk-faith. Such animals embodied the "soul" of the forest in Animistic fashion and the Druid ("oak-true") was expected to live "like the deer" within the forest for at least 20 years to learn its secrets.(11) Also related to "elk", the Algiz Rune epitomizes heightened awareness - much like an elk or stag having to stay alert within the forest - beyond our perceptions of only our physical world. Within our continental cosmology, this realm is Mittilgart -> Proto-Germanic *midjagardaz "middle yard" -> Proto-Indo-European *medyosgordos "middle enclosure". Scholars have linked this cosmology to a time when Paleolithic hunters and gatherers continued to see the forests as an extension of their "home", before the Neolithic farmers began the distinction.(12)
Important Concepts for Understanding our Spiritual Reality
Löwenmensch speaks much to us about our own psychology vis a vis our ancient ancestors. While we are accustomed to think within corporate "logos"(13) and other sophisticated sigils, this was different for the next two human stages after the Paleolithic. Like the Paleolithic, the Mesolithic tended to use images of animals, people and places within caves such as the Aurignacian sites. For the Neolithic, the same levels of information were conveyed into lines, circles and other shapes, often as if "charged" in alignment with astronomical and seasonal events. The underlying "sophistication" of modern logos and concepts was already apparent but able to be conveyed more simply.(14)
It could also be that later names were given for realities so apparent and second-nature our earlier ancestors needed none. Nevertheless, these concepts help us to understand our natural way of being. The Germanic reality of Megin came from the Proto-Germanic *magina "might, power", representing a supernatural exchange of energy. I would suggest such Paleolithic use of the bones to create a symbolic object through the exchange of energies I described earlier, was later encoded in the story of the god Donar - who best represents Megin and indeed what we now term electromagnetism and boundaries - reanimating a goat from its bones.(15) Literally a story about Donar's own divine abilities, on a deeper level it conveys many other allegories.
These are similarly encoded within Wodan's ordeal on the World Tree for nine days and nights that obtained the Runes - although more deeply it represented a metaphoric "killing himself to himself" to seek true self-knowledge. Similarly, Germanic priests "experienced their initiation by hanging upside down from the branch of an ash tree for three whole days, without eating or drinking. The shamans undertook this ordeal to loosen the soul from the body, allowing it to fly into transcendental worlds." The same underlying idea behind the "witch" entering the body of her animal "familiar."(16) What the Norse knew as Fylgja, was the Alemannic Folge -> Old High German Folgen "to follow" -> Proto-Germanic *Fulgijana. All refer to the family guardian spirit often appearing in animal form, harkening back to these ancient understandings of soul and body.
Shamanic Wolf-Warriors of Alemannia
Much like their common ancestors who created such objects as the Löwenmensch, Celtic and Germanic tribes had warrior brotherhoods centered around wearing of certain animal skins. This conveyed the shamanic understanding that combining the bodies of two entities creates a new spiritual entity combining the powers of both. Alongside other scholars, the Austrian Germanist Otto Höfler argued for the continuity of ancient Germanic traditions in modern folklore. One of his contributions is identifying the Wild Hunt with ancient cult processions where people dressed as various deities or wild animals and experienced moments of ecstasy.(17) Within Swabian regions, this manifests even today in the Perchtenlauf traditions around Jul season.
One way this survived among the medieval Alemanni was the wolf-warrior (equivalent to the Norse úlfhéðinn "wolfskin warrior"), as appeared on the 7th-century Gutenstein Scabbard. It was found inside a grave during construction work at the St. Gallus Church(18) in Gutenstein, near Sigmaringen. It shows a warrior wearing a wolf skin, holding a large sword and spear. His Vendel-style helmet reveals trade links between the Alemanni and the Norse in Sweden. As with the closely-related Bavarians, wolf-based names were common among the Alemanni and these warriors dedicated themselves to the ecstasy god Wodan; indeed "Gutenstein" meaning "Wodanstone" following the "g" -> "w" words that were often used interchangeably for Wodan as I discussed in Part 1. As the German military historian Michael P. Speidel writes:
"A clue to the meaning of the Gutenstein scenes is the right-facing wolf-warrior who bows his head, drops his spear, and (with outsize thumb) offers his sword to Woden. The god, if one may judge from the way he holds the spear, dances the war dance, spurring on the warrior....It is nevertheless unlikely that the Gutenstein wolf-warrior following Woden and offering his sword is a fallen warrior who joins the god of death, for it seems untoward for a leader to advertise on his helmet that death is in store for his men. Self-dedication to Woden by no means meant imminent death....However they moved, one may say, with Mircea Eliade, that 'he who...could rightly imitate the behavior of animals - their gait, breathing, cries, and so on - found a new dimension of life: spontaneity, freedom, 'sympathy' with all the cosmic rhythms...ecstasy could...well be obtained by choreographic imitation of an animal.' This may be one roof of the wolf war dance, the other being representation of wolf-warrior ancestors. From such twin ecstasy it is but a small step to mad attacks."(19)
Whether lupine (wolf-like), or ursine (bear-like) such as Berserkers, elite warriors donned its skins in battle to symbolize merging its power with his own. Both Germanic and Celtic lore invested the bear with deeper solar connotations based around hibernation, which was allegorized as "rebirth". Italian philosopher Julius Evola saw these allegories encoded within the "King Arthur" legends (his name likewise related to "arctic"), which had their root in native Celtic and Germanic myths long preceding Christianity.(20) Germanic warriors wearing animal skins such as the bear, carried on the "ecstasy" personified by Wodan but also the related Germanic concepts of inherited "luck" and the "guardian spirit" which was often a totem animal.(21) Their "ecstasy" represented a shamanic journey beyond confines of place, just as the survivals of our most ancient folk-faith have transcended notions of linear time.
FOOTNOTES:
(1) Claus-Joachim Kind, "Das Lonetal - eine altsteinzeitliche Fundlandschaft von Weltrang," Archäologie in Deutschland, Dec. 2016, pp. 22-25; and Jarrett A. Lobell, "New life for the Lion Man," Archaeology, vol. 65, no. 2, March/April 2012.
(2) H. Sidky. The Origins of Shamanism, Spirit Beliefs, and Religiosity: A Cognitive Anthropological Perspective. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017, pp. 115-116.
(3) Jill Cook. Ice Age Art: Arrival of the Modern Mind. London: British Museum Press, 2013.
(4) Frederick L. Coolidge and Thomas Wynn. The Rise of Homo Sapiens: The Evolution of Modern Thinking. Oxford/West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, p. 232.
(5) ibid., 2018 edition, p. 250.
(6) Sidky, op. cit., p. 115.
(7) Claus-Joachim Kind, Nicole Ebinger-Rist, Sibylle Wolf, Thomas Beutelspacher, and Kurt Wehrberger, "The Smile of the Lion Man. Recent Excavations in Stadel Cave (Baden-Württemberg, south-western Germany) and the Restoration of the Famous Upper Palaeolithic Figurine," Quartar, Vol. 61, January 2014, pp. 129-145.
(8) Wolf D. Storl. The Untold History of Healing: Plant Lore and Medicinal Magic From the Stone Age to Present. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2017, p. 93.
(9) "Depot – Versteck – Kultplatz?," Museum Ulm.
(10) Storl, op. cit., p. 105.
(11) ibid., p. 15.
(12) ibid., pp. 102-103; and Philippe Descola. Beyond Nature and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014, p. 59.
(13) I wonder about a link between this term for corporate symbols and Christian theologians' "logos" concept (and Islamic equivalent "aql") they co-opted from a Greek philosophy that was becoming more henotheistic and abstract as per the Axial Age, i.e. further removed from original Hellenic faith. In their own respective ways, Abrahamism and the modern Corporate or Statist use of viscerally-charged sigils rest upon the same abstract separation of humans from natural cycles. Disorder and confusion masquerading as "order" and "reason". As for the changes that occurred with the Axial Age, I highly recommend the work of Carolyn Emerick.
(14) Thomas Sheridan. The Druid Code: Magic, Megaliths and Mythology, Second Edition. Street Druid, 2017, pp. 30-31.
(15) Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, Vol. 3, trans. James Steven Stallybass, 1883; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 995.
(16) Storl, op. cit., pp. 16, 258.
(17) Otto Höfler. Kultische Geheimbünde der Germanen. Frankfurt: Moritz Diesterweg, 1934, p. 101; and cited in Claude Lecouteux. Phantom Armies of the Night: The Wild Hunt and the Ghostly Processions of the Undead. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2011.
(18) As with many other churches throughout Europe, this one too was apparently built over a Pagan site, in this case perhaps dedicated to venerating the warrior ancestor in whose grave the sword scabbard was found. Similar reconstruction work uncovered 1st century CE Gaullic and Roman altars underneath Notre Dame in 1711. And just this month (February 2020), workers in Rome discovered a sixth century BCE tomb and temple attributed to the legendary Romulus.
(19) Michael P. Speidel. Ancient Germanic Warriors: Warrior styles from Trajan's Column to Icelandic sagas. London/New York: Routledge, 2004, pp. vii-ix.
(20) Julius Evola. The Mystery of the Grail: Initiation and Magic in the Quest for the Spirit. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1997.
(21) Rudolf Simek. Dictionary of Northern Mythology, trans. Angela Hall. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 2007, p. 129.
24 February 2020
The Löwenmensch's human features are evident in his upright posture and sloping shoulders, while the head, shorter arm, decorative spots and vertical scratch indicate a lion. The figure was carved primarily with a flint stone knife, with seven parallel and transverse gouges intricately carved on its left arm. Other tools were needed to separate the torso from the insides of the arms and to shape the distinctive head and shoulders. The basic shaping would have taken at least 200 hours which, except if created slowly at intervals, meant the one who carved it would have been excused from other tasks.(3) This indicates the importance of the figurine. The process itself is a spiritual cycle: a human manifesting through the creative work of both mind and hands a representation of vital natural forces using an animal material.
This was a crucial moment in the development of modern cognition, not just accessing their own human mind but also "thinking" as the animal through analogy: "It is not the image, per se, but the abstract concept behind it that argues for modern executive function and working memory. A single figurine of a lion, or a human, would not carry such weight."(4) Nicholas Conard, the Tubingen University archaeologist who led the team that excavated the Hohle Fels, has suggested that the Löwenmensch "should be considered strong evidence for fully symbolic communication."(5) Miami University anthropologist Homayun Sidky proposes:
"Shamanic thought is founded upon the type of cognitive capacity demonstrated by the artist who produced the lion-man figurine. This involved cross-modular thinking by accessing and applying information from different cognitive modules, for example, applying social intelligence upon natural history intelligence (i.e., the basis of attributing agency to non-human phenomena) and combining it in novel ways to conceive of the idea of animal-human transformation. This is the same kind of cognition that generates the notions of a sentient universe and the existence of nature or elemental spirits and all the related features of the shamanic cosmos."(6)
Archetypes from the Caves and Forests: As Above, So Below - As Within, So Without
The culture that created the figure was the Aurignacian, which spanned across most of continental Europe between 26,000 and 43,000 years ago. This explains the remarkable similarities with Aurignacian-era cave paintings from the Aquitaine region of southwest France, including the "Sorcerer" from Trois Frères and the "Bison-man" from the Grotte de Gabillou.(7) "Caves are entrances to the otherworld and regarded as the womb of the Earth Goddess, the mother of the animals. Here, deep in the earth, in her belly, animal souls mature until the goddess releases them into the external world. The shamans, the mediators between the worlds, enter these dark depths to negotiate with the goddess."(8)
Indeed, the Löwenmensch was found inside a chamber 30 meters beyond the cave entrance, along with several other objects, including pendants, ivory pearls, perforated animal teeth, and tools made from mammoth bones. Also found were a large number of thin pieces of reindeer antlers from female reindeer that threw off their antlers in the spring and several of which contained small cut marks. This led archaeologists to propose the chamber was used for cultic purposes, around which the Löwenmensch was the center piece.(9) The antlers suggest a symbolic use, especially since many chambers were used to channel sunlight. "For the ancient Europeans, the stag was a symbol of the sun spirit visiting Earth and the forests; its antlers are golden, and it possesses the gold of wisdom. If it touches a spring with its antler, then the spring becomes a healing one."(10)
Is it any coincidence that the various coats of arms for Schwaben and Württemberg have always included stag antler motifs? I suggest prehistoric roots for the stag archetype which became a common motif throughout Germanic and Celtic folk-faith. Such animals embodied the "soul" of the forest in Animistic fashion and the Druid ("oak-true") was expected to live "like the deer" within the forest for at least 20 years to learn its secrets.(11) Also related to "elk", the Algiz Rune epitomizes heightened awareness - much like an elk or stag having to stay alert within the forest - beyond our perceptions of only our physical world. Within our continental cosmology, this realm is Mittilgart -> Proto-Germanic *midjagardaz "middle yard" -> Proto-Indo-European *medyosgordos "middle enclosure". Scholars have linked this cosmology to a time when Paleolithic hunters and gatherers continued to see the forests as an extension of their "home", before the Neolithic farmers began the distinction.(12)
 |
| Algiz Rune |
 |
| Antlers were still paired with war-armor in Swabia even in the medieval era. (Picture taken from my visit to the Landesmuseum Württemberg, Stuttgart, 8 July 2016) |
Important Concepts for Understanding our Spiritual Reality
Löwenmensch speaks much to us about our own psychology vis a vis our ancient ancestors. While we are accustomed to think within corporate "logos"(13) and other sophisticated sigils, this was different for the next two human stages after the Paleolithic. Like the Paleolithic, the Mesolithic tended to use images of animals, people and places within caves such as the Aurignacian sites. For the Neolithic, the same levels of information were conveyed into lines, circles and other shapes, often as if "charged" in alignment with astronomical and seasonal events. The underlying "sophistication" of modern logos and concepts was already apparent but able to be conveyed more simply.(14)
It could also be that later names were given for realities so apparent and second-nature our earlier ancestors needed none. Nevertheless, these concepts help us to understand our natural way of being. The Germanic reality of Megin came from the Proto-Germanic *magina "might, power", representing a supernatural exchange of energy. I would suggest such Paleolithic use of the bones to create a symbolic object through the exchange of energies I described earlier, was later encoded in the story of the god Donar - who best represents Megin and indeed what we now term electromagnetism and boundaries - reanimating a goat from its bones.(15) Literally a story about Donar's own divine abilities, on a deeper level it conveys many other allegories.
 |
| "Donar-Thor" (1906), by the Prussian artist Max Friedrich Koch |
These are similarly encoded within Wodan's ordeal on the World Tree for nine days and nights that obtained the Runes - although more deeply it represented a metaphoric "killing himself to himself" to seek true self-knowledge. Similarly, Germanic priests "experienced their initiation by hanging upside down from the branch of an ash tree for three whole days, without eating or drinking. The shamans undertook this ordeal to loosen the soul from the body, allowing it to fly into transcendental worlds." The same underlying idea behind the "witch" entering the body of her animal "familiar."(16) What the Norse knew as Fylgja, was the Alemannic Folge -> Old High German Folgen "to follow" -> Proto-Germanic *Fulgijana. All refer to the family guardian spirit often appearing in animal form, harkening back to these ancient understandings of soul and body.
Shamanic Wolf-Warriors of Alemannia
Much like their common ancestors who created such objects as the Löwenmensch, Celtic and Germanic tribes had warrior brotherhoods centered around wearing of certain animal skins. This conveyed the shamanic understanding that combining the bodies of two entities creates a new spiritual entity combining the powers of both. Alongside other scholars, the Austrian Germanist Otto Höfler argued for the continuity of ancient Germanic traditions in modern folklore. One of his contributions is identifying the Wild Hunt with ancient cult processions where people dressed as various deities or wild animals and experienced moments of ecstasy.(17) Within Swabian regions, this manifests even today in the Perchtenlauf traditions around Jul season.
 |
| Representation of the Gutenstein Scabbard, taken from my visit to the Landesmuseum Württemberg, Stuttgart, 8 July 2016.... The original Scabbard was looted by the Soviets from Berlin and displayed in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow. |
One way this survived among the medieval Alemanni was the wolf-warrior (equivalent to the Norse úlfhéðinn "wolfskin warrior"), as appeared on the 7th-century Gutenstein Scabbard. It was found inside a grave during construction work at the St. Gallus Church(18) in Gutenstein, near Sigmaringen. It shows a warrior wearing a wolf skin, holding a large sword and spear. His Vendel-style helmet reveals trade links between the Alemanni and the Norse in Sweden. As with the closely-related Bavarians, wolf-based names were common among the Alemanni and these warriors dedicated themselves to the ecstasy god Wodan; indeed "Gutenstein" meaning "Wodanstone" following the "g" -> "w" words that were often used interchangeably for Wodan as I discussed in Part 1. As the German military historian Michael P. Speidel writes:
"A clue to the meaning of the Gutenstein scenes is the right-facing wolf-warrior who bows his head, drops his spear, and (with outsize thumb) offers his sword to Woden. The god, if one may judge from the way he holds the spear, dances the war dance, spurring on the warrior....It is nevertheless unlikely that the Gutenstein wolf-warrior following Woden and offering his sword is a fallen warrior who joins the god of death, for it seems untoward for a leader to advertise on his helmet that death is in store for his men. Self-dedication to Woden by no means meant imminent death....However they moved, one may say, with Mircea Eliade, that 'he who...could rightly imitate the behavior of animals - their gait, breathing, cries, and so on - found a new dimension of life: spontaneity, freedom, 'sympathy' with all the cosmic rhythms...ecstasy could...well be obtained by choreographic imitation of an animal.' This may be one roof of the wolf war dance, the other being representation of wolf-warrior ancestors. From such twin ecstasy it is but a small step to mad attacks."(19)
Whether lupine (wolf-like), or ursine (bear-like) such as Berserkers, elite warriors donned its skins in battle to symbolize merging its power with his own. Both Germanic and Celtic lore invested the bear with deeper solar connotations based around hibernation, which was allegorized as "rebirth". Italian philosopher Julius Evola saw these allegories encoded within the "King Arthur" legends (his name likewise related to "arctic"), which had their root in native Celtic and Germanic myths long preceding Christianity.(20) Germanic warriors wearing animal skins such as the bear, carried on the "ecstasy" personified by Wodan but also the related Germanic concepts of inherited "luck" and the "guardian spirit" which was often a totem animal.(21) Their "ecstasy" represented a shamanic journey beyond confines of place, just as the survivals of our most ancient folk-faith have transcended notions of linear time.
 |
| Illustration of Iron Age Alemanni warrior by Frithjof Spangenberg, based on archaeological reconstructions |
FOOTNOTES:
(1) Claus-Joachim Kind, "Das Lonetal - eine altsteinzeitliche Fundlandschaft von Weltrang," Archäologie in Deutschland, Dec. 2016, pp. 22-25; and Jarrett A. Lobell, "New life for the Lion Man," Archaeology, vol. 65, no. 2, March/April 2012.
(2) H. Sidky. The Origins of Shamanism, Spirit Beliefs, and Religiosity: A Cognitive Anthropological Perspective. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017, pp. 115-116.
(3) Jill Cook. Ice Age Art: Arrival of the Modern Mind. London: British Museum Press, 2013.
(4) Frederick L. Coolidge and Thomas Wynn. The Rise of Homo Sapiens: The Evolution of Modern Thinking. Oxford/West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, p. 232.
(5) ibid., 2018 edition, p. 250.
(6) Sidky, op. cit., p. 115.
(7) Claus-Joachim Kind, Nicole Ebinger-Rist, Sibylle Wolf, Thomas Beutelspacher, and Kurt Wehrberger, "The Smile of the Lion Man. Recent Excavations in Stadel Cave (Baden-Württemberg, south-western Germany) and the Restoration of the Famous Upper Palaeolithic Figurine," Quartar, Vol. 61, January 2014, pp. 129-145.
(8) Wolf D. Storl. The Untold History of Healing: Plant Lore and Medicinal Magic From the Stone Age to Present. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2017, p. 93.
(9) "Depot – Versteck – Kultplatz?," Museum Ulm.
(10) Storl, op. cit., p. 105.
(11) ibid., p. 15.
(12) ibid., pp. 102-103; and Philippe Descola. Beyond Nature and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014, p. 59.
(13) I wonder about a link between this term for corporate symbols and Christian theologians' "logos" concept (and Islamic equivalent "aql") they co-opted from a Greek philosophy that was becoming more henotheistic and abstract as per the Axial Age, i.e. further removed from original Hellenic faith. In their own respective ways, Abrahamism and the modern Corporate or Statist use of viscerally-charged sigils rest upon the same abstract separation of humans from natural cycles. Disorder and confusion masquerading as "order" and "reason". As for the changes that occurred with the Axial Age, I highly recommend the work of Carolyn Emerick.
(14) Thomas Sheridan. The Druid Code: Magic, Megaliths and Mythology, Second Edition. Street Druid, 2017, pp. 30-31.
(15) Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, Vol. 3, trans. James Steven Stallybass, 1883; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 995.
(16) Storl, op. cit., pp. 16, 258.
(17) Otto Höfler. Kultische Geheimbünde der Germanen. Frankfurt: Moritz Diesterweg, 1934, p. 101; and cited in Claude Lecouteux. Phantom Armies of the Night: The Wild Hunt and the Ghostly Processions of the Undead. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2011.
(18) As with many other churches throughout Europe, this one too was apparently built over a Pagan site, in this case perhaps dedicated to venerating the warrior ancestor in whose grave the sword scabbard was found. Similar reconstruction work uncovered 1st century CE Gaullic and Roman altars underneath Notre Dame in 1711. And just this month (February 2020), workers in Rome discovered a sixth century BCE tomb and temple attributed to the legendary Romulus.
(19) Michael P. Speidel. Ancient Germanic Warriors: Warrior styles from Trajan's Column to Icelandic sagas. London/New York: Routledge, 2004, pp. vii-ix.
(20) Julius Evola. The Mystery of the Grail: Initiation and Magic in the Quest for the Spirit. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1997.
(21) Rudolf Simek. Dictionary of Northern Mythology, trans. Angela Hall. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 2007, p. 129.
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