Walpurgisnacht – Part 3: Runic Astrotheology, Meditations on Ancestral Memory, and the Germanic Mother Goddess

By Sean Jobst

21 May 2026

Illustration of the Mother Goddess Frija, by
the German artist Carl Emil Doepler (1882)

In Part 2 I compared etymology between the “saint” Walpurga and ancient seeresses, and decoded word-play alluding to various Germanic Goddesses. The magic inherent within these words manifest multiple layers of meaning – on the exoteric, denotations of sovereignty or geographical concepts; on the esoteric level, meanings related to magical processes and the otherworld. I also cited direct correspondences to qualities attributed in lore to the Mother Goddess known in Old High German as Frija. Readers accustomed to Norse lore might be confused by how I seemed to mention Frigg and Freya interchangeably. Generally, in continental Germanic traditions she is one and the same Goddess, whose name combines terms denoting “lady”, “beloved”, “beautiful,” “free” and “courtship” since she epitomizes the feminine in its various qualities:

“We gather from all this, that the forms and even the meanings of the two names border closely on one another. Freyja means the gladsome, gladdening, sweet, gracious goddess, Frigg the free, beautiful, loveable; to the former attaches the general notion of frau (mistress), to the latter that of fri (woman). Holda, from hold (sweet, kind), and Berhta from berht (bright, beautiful) resemble them both.”(1)

Our festivals expressed a sacred balance of feminine and masculine, so that for example folklore recognizes Wodan and Frija (in such regional manifestations as Frau Holle) as dual hosts of the Wild Hunt.  The close connection between words and magic is inherent within this balance, with Frija’s magical qualities in German lore largely transferred to Freya in the Scandinavian sources – but the animating spirit being much the same.(2) This sacred balance was about divine energies playing out at all levels of the magical process.(3) “Odin taught Freyja the runes, and Freyja taught Odin magic, healing magic (White-magic, herbology),” as noted by the American Heathen researcher, scholar and poet Scott Carlson, whose work I highly recommend. He continues:

“Odin has access to his runes (constellations) for extended periods of time. Freyja represents youthfulness, fertility, growth, the maiden; she represents spring through early-summer of Mother’s-time. Freyja does not have nearly as much darkness hours and therefore does not see the constellations (runes) as Odin does, just as Odin does not have access to all the herbs, plants, trees in bloom, and more, that Freyja does; but their times meet and overlap. Mother’s-time and Father’s-time overlap twice a year, spring and fall. Fall is when days begin to get shorter and things go dormant; the Northern Pagan year will end shortly (Samhain). So, it is in the spring that maiden Goddess Freyja and God Odin are presented the opportunity to teach and learn from each other.”(4)

"Freyja" (1905) by Emil Doepler, son of Carl Emil
Doepler and a renown artist in his own right. 

"Idise" (1905) by Emil Doepler. The Idisi are
the continental Germanic equivalent of the
Disir - described in the first Merseburg Charm.

Natural Healers Turned into “Witches”; and the Shamanic Qualities of Frija

When we meditate on these primal energies, joining animism with cosmic cycles, we reveal even more layers of meaning enlivening Walpurgisnacht and its connection to “witches”. We can meditate on the magic inherent within Nature, including the biofeedback loop it shares with our will and consciousness, its cycles manifesting inner and outer changes; the Runes as sacred mysteries encoded within the cellular level, to processes of the Mind, across all levels of human action, extending up to the most transcendent, primordial cosmic forces – the sacred law of correspondence. The magical gifts flowing from these complementary powers were especially feared by the Abrahamic archons, who fear-mongered about the folk healers and herbalists they slandered as “witches” with their alleged nocturnal flights:

“Freya comes from the family of the Vanir, the even older gods. Thus, Odin’s knowledge of magic is rooted in the female primal ground. The shamanic knowledge, which was supported by the myth of Odin and Freya, stood in the way of the declaration of the ‘true faith in the one God’ by Christian missionaries. Shamans, with their direct access to the world of spirits and gods, were and are the rivals of the priests and their book religion. Nevertheless, many shamanic elements have been retained in simple folk medicine.”(5)  

Frija expresses these magical and shamanic qualities in continental lore, “conjuring” a healing spell in the Merseburg Charms alongside Wodan and an otherwise unmentioned figure named Sinthgunt, identified as sister of the Sun Goddess Sunna (so likely some astral deity). Frija appears in her functions as “a caretaker of family, fertility and health.”(6) She is also associated with Urlag, the primal layer of action and manifestation governing fate and consequences across past, present, and future: “She knows all urlag, knows the unfolding of all Being, and what is to come – though never speaks of such dooms and wisdoms. In this, she is the matron of great and deep insight, and certainly linked to skills of cunning and ‘seeing’. So too, would it be that she is the proper patroness of the forasagin – the seer of natural, inborn ability, one particularly gifted with vision or what would be considered ‘psychic’ ability in New Age or mainstream thinking.”(7)

Shamans are healers who administer to the wounds of individuals and tribe, transmuting themselves in the process. Seeresses engaged in these shamanic rituals from a high place (atop mounds or other thresholds), seen as “floating away as geese or swans,” which is why Freya was regarded as “a guardian of the geese; as a goose-maiden, she is the guardian of all souls.”(8) With this we recall her association with the Walkuries. The figure of “Mother Goose” in German fairy tales is commonly accepted to be Frau Holle, Perchta, Berchta, Holda – regional variations who all share the same feminine qualities of Frija (who should thus be viewed as the Germanic Mother Goddess whose energies flowed into these folkloric representations):

“A being similar to Holda, or the same under another name, makes her appearance precisely in those Upper German regions where Holda leaves off, in Swabia, in Alsace, in Switzerland, in Bavaria and Austria. She is called frau Berchte, i.e., in OHG. Perahta, the bright, luminous, glorious (as Holda produces the glittering snow): by the very meaning of the word a benign and gladdening influence, yet she is now rarely represented as such ; as a rule, the awe-inspiring side is brought into prominence, and she appears as a grim bugbear to frighten children with. In the stories of dame Berchta the bad meaning predominates, as the good one does in those of dame Holda; that is to say, the popular Christian view had degraded Berchta lower than Holda. But she too is evident.”(9)

Milky Way Swan Panorama, from Wikimedia Commons

Free Cosmic Bear illustration, from StockCake

Milky Way as “Swan Road”; Orion’s Belt Stars; Cosmic Bear; and Othala Rune

The Milky Way is often called the “Swan Road” since its core sets from spring to early autumn is the constellation Cygnus, whose own etymology is from the Greek word for “swan”. Closely associated with the Northern Cross, highly visible in the northern skies this time of year, this constellation and its swan symbolism is embedded within Greek mythology.(10) Relating it to Germanic mythos, Cygnus’ wings span the “Swan Road”, whose “bridge” correlates to Frigga and the “Swan Maidens” as primal laws of all-knowing, all-consciousness. The Great Bear (Ursa Major) “awakens” to move up the cosmic axis: “and once our cosmic Bear is overhead (spring/rebirth), the rebirth of valiant ancestry takes place, the rebirth of Nature takes place.” “Mother Goddess Frigga is the giver of gifts; she gives fruits of the earth during Mother’s time,” relating to Spring.(11)

Expressing the animistic/cosmic balance of masculine and feminine, the Maibaum – as a ritualistic and folkloric representation of the Axis Mundi - honors both Frija, the Mother Goddess personifying Earth at full fertility, and Balder, the Shining God representing the sun’s life-giving rays at their pinnacle, as well as the soul’s resurrection into more incarnations – just like turning of the seasons. Both were encoded within folklore, heraldry and toponyms, as I have reclaimed from within my own blood memory.(12) As Balder’s mother, Frija is similarly “bright” and “luminous” as Perchta. In Sweden and parts of Germany, the three stars of Orion’s Belt were known as “Frigg’s distaff” or “Freya’s spindle”(13), so we could also relate it to the Norns. Containing the North Star, the “Little Bear” (Ursa Minor) is allegorized as Freya’s high-seat or central “throne” around which the sky rotates. As such she has close correspondences to Venus, whose name survives in Romance language terms for “Friday” just as Freya’s does for Germanic languages.(14)

The Mother Goddess’ cosmic “dance” around Earth appears in the form of the five-pointed star, regardless of how this visceral image has been co-opted by certain political or kitsch movements. This “dance” correlates to the Othala rune, expressing ancestral inheritance harkening back to the most primal creative energies. “The Proto-Indo European name of Mother Goddess Frigg is Priya (pronounced Pre-yu), and means to love. The 5 pointed star of Mother Goddess, seen in the seed pattern of the apple and pear (fruit associated with the feminine) is also attacked in Abrahamic mythos: Chiun (Amos 5:26) and Remphan (Acts 7:43) both relate back to the name Priapus, a Heathen deity with the ability to stand on it’s own, hence the 2 legs of the rune. The name Priapus (Priya+pus) relates to the swollen womb (pus), the sacred enclosure. Thus, Abrahamic lore, as in every other instance in their texts, attacks the feminine, the Mother Goddess and her 5 pointed star (Othala).”(15)

Pleroma, the Galactic Center

Paranatellon as Ancestral Memories, and the Ethno-Cosmic Observer Effect

One might naturally ask why the same cosmic phenomenon were conceived as different Deific forces by different people? For this a powerful solution is given by the Gnostic visionary John Lamb Lash, whose distilling the Sophianic narrative from the Nag Hamadi texts expresses the primal Myth common to all: Emergence of the Earth from the physical and dream body of the Aeonic Mother Gaia-Sophia, known by different names among the various ethnikos across the entire world. This is the primal Memory from whence the various tribal origin mythos emerge, to then tell the “rest of the story” of how each ethnikos arose in specific biospheres. Animism is the universal default without being “universalist”, for we each have an individual and a specific tribal/ethnic interaction with our shared Earth Mother, even if most have lost the conscious awareness and perception of that primal reality.(16)

Animism and Cosmic cycles are intricately woven together, with the Earth part of a three-bodied sentient cosmos along with the Sun and Moon (which is why those two celestial bodies specifically were always conceived as Deities by every indigenous culture), distinguished from the other planets or stars, and her cycles regulated by cosmic movements. Scattered in the various tribal origin Myths are the emergence of Earth and human beings out of the elements, referring to each people as truly autochtonous to specific biospheres (notwithstanding migrations across centuries) to which they form a biofeedback interactivity. Yet there are also fragments which speak of cosmic origins, of our relations to the stars. The narrative is that the Anthropos (human species) arose from a Divine Experiment and that from the Aeonic Mother’s ecstatic plunge from the Pleroma (Galactic Center) emerged the Earth. Our cosmic components then “seeded” into specific biospheres (as per the scientific findings of panspermia), shaped into materiality by the various metals, liquids, and minerals of the Earth.(17)

John Lamb Lash proposes not only observing but visualizing the sky. “The complete tapestry is the nine-episode Sophianic narrative, the Fallen Goddess scenario” from which the Anthropos emerged and later arose as distinct peoples. Earth as part of the three-body cosmos embedded within the celestial realm of eighty-eight starry constellations. “The Constellations are mythic images, to borrow a term from Joseph Campbell. As such, they are eternal entities whose habitat is human imagination, yet they are supercharged with the power of living creatures. They are animated and animating, for they embody ‘meaning’ as a higher form of vitality.” This active imagination of the observer expresses scientific findings about the double-slit experiment, which demonstrates that a particle changes through effects of an observer. Applying the law of correspondence, as occurs to the tiniest particles would also apply to the constellations. Rituals and agricultural events were often modelled after these images.

"Vädersoltavlan" (1636), by the Baltic
German painter Jacob Heinrich Elbfas.
It shows a "weather sun" phenomenon
in the skies over Stockholm, 1535.

While there’s an overall sky tapestry we collectively observe, the mythic images change with the observer’s biosphere. He cited two examples of such cultural anomalies as part of “the actual living, interactive perception of the cosmos.” First, how Inuit elders have recorded the Sun appearing at a different place in the sky for their people. And second, he observed at the latitude of Finland “a selection of the sky locally that reflected to them themes, images and heroes in the Kalevala.” Being that the stars are a “mirror of the psyche,” this is why Orion the Hunter is represented as “Átse Ats'oosí” (First Slender One) to the Diné (Navajo); the Pleiades perceived as “seven sisters” to some cultures but as a swarm of bees or flock of birds to other cultures; or, to bring it back to my original point, how Orion’s Belt and the Ursa Major were associated with Frija to Germanic cultures while the Romans perceived those same bodies as associated with Venus.   

Not only the mythic images, but the zodiac systems differing according to cultures reflect this unique ethno-observer effect, a biosphere’s specific connection to the cosmos – just as our various Pantheons reflect our distinct ethnic interface with the Divine. “If you go forward and approach the tapestry, bringing yourself up to it very closely which is comparable to the local being in a local setting, you'll see fine threads.” Those individual threads are the Paranatellon, those starry constellations “rising besides” the main constellations. These are neither fixed nor universal, but “change in interaction with the observer.” Deconstructing the Greek word reveals Para “beside, from, near, for” + (gen)na “birth” + teleos “aim, purpose”. Indigenous stargazers worldwide detected and derived an enduring purpose from observing these secondary constellations, whose specific images they read according to their distinct ethnosphere.

We can access “the phylogenetic memory circuits of the Earth, a membrane of the composition of the biosphere.” Just as iron is one of the crucial elements in the constellations: “The iron in the blood probably connects to the iron in the Earth. Somehow its in the bioelectromagnetic field of the Earth which we’re immersed in those memory circuits. It’s a blood knowledge.”(18) As the individual braids of the cosmic tapestry, through the paranatellon Mother Earth is “making accessible to the folk memory of all people the particular story of their origin, people, and race-romantic identity that they can revive because they remember it and can relive it now.” “She is distributing the local variant of that folk memory which applies to the people in all of these settings; rewriting and offering it now into the imagination and into the endopsyche of peoples all around the world….She's offering that braid of every indigenous folk memory to reawaken the sovereignty of the people.”(19)

"The Wild Hunt of Odin" (1872) by the Norwegian
painter Peter Nicolai Arbo

Wodan, Sacred ‘Grimnir’, and the Esoteric Symbolisms of Anointing

One other central feature to a Germanic astrotheology is the Bear as ancestral totem, whose terrestrial cycles also correspond to movements of the “Bear” constellation, and the seasonal symbolism we already related to “Walpurgisnacht”, the Maibaum, and Wild Hunt. Returning briefly to paranatellon, the Greek term for initiates of the Pagan Mysteries happens to be Telestai “those who are aimed, have purpose”. Every ethnikos had their own indigenous initiates of these Mysteries, such as Druids across the Celtic world or the various Männebünde (warrior initiates) and Seers and Seeresses across the Germanic world. Among the warrior initiates devoted to Wodan were those who wore bear skins to channel the “Wode” that also came through the ancestral “Bear” – the anima or spirit. (As we will see soon in an upcoming passage, Wodan was not simply a “war god” but warriors as one of the tripartite divisions of Germanic society, and with their own relation to magic and animism would obviously share devotion to Wodan).

Their processions later inspired the rich folklore about the Wild Hunt, as well as the nightly processions ascribed to “the undead” – a later Christian demonization of the masculine magic just as those ascribed to “witches” demonized the feminine magic. For the Abrahamics could only project their own literalism upon a lore that is so primal and transcendent it has multiple layers of meaning we can continuously discover across time and space. The bear's cycles were also symbolic of the folk and tribe, of the Othala Rune of ancestral inheritance which is encoded in the Mother Goddess’ cosmic dance. Other Runes encode various movements of the Great Bear, marking various occasions and seasons of the Germanic festival calendar:

“As we are told in Hovamol stanzas 139 through 145, the runes are Oðin’s, but the beginning Gods (ginnregin) made them. We are also told, in Alvissmol stanza 30, that night is called night by men, and grímu by ginnregin (beginning Gods). In the preamble of Grimnismol we are told that Oðin called himself Grimnir and wore a dark blue mantle, the color of the night sky. Later in stanzas 46 and 47 of Grimnismol it is revealed that Oðin is called Grímr, the same as he was called by ginnregin, and Grimnir. There is no doubt that Oðin is the ruling God of the night-sky. Furthermore, the fires of the first two stanzas, which Oðin (Grímu) was bound between, are the sunset of the year (fall) and the sunrise of the year (spring), as this is the time when winter-nights are upon the North, and that is the time of Oðin’s-time, Father’s-time. Oðin (Grímu) takes on all the attributes of that season from harvest (reaping-time), through Samhain, the feast of Ullr, Jul (Yule) and the fimbul-winter (three months of bitter cold and snow), up to spring when things begin to thaw and then grow. Modernity depicts a figure known as the Grim-Reaper; indeed, the Grim-Reaper is Oðin. However, the time after the crops in the North are harvested, and things remain dormant for several months is a Natural occurrence, not something commanded by Oðin; Oðin is the ruling night-sky God who puts on a dark blue mantle to preside over that time, when hunting and bloodshed must take place for survival, and there was a daily struggle for life for our ancestors, our folk. This time of struggle and bloodshed has led to the mistranslations, misinterpretation, (intentionally or otherwise), and a literalist interpretation of poetry (Poetic Edda) and lore, separated from Northern Nature, and erroneously declared Oðin to be a God of War. Knowing this, then, Oðin’s runes are the constellations of the Night-sky as viewed in the holy Northern lands; constellations our ancestors viewed. The runes, then, are Folkish, ancestral, depictions of the constellations, or portions of the constellations viewed in the night sky.”(20)

"Dezember" or "Wotan mit Wölfen" (1906),
by the German Symbolist painter Hans Thoma

Years before I knew about this passage or a lot of this knowledge, I cited a related word whose synchronicity is now revealing itself through this article. In one of my essays on mind-viruses and medical tyranny from 2021, I traced this Germanic word and its etymology (also with an homage to my Iberian side): “We return again to the ‘occult’ nature of words and their multiple meanings. Proto-Germanic *grimo ‘mask’ originated the Old English grima ‘mask, helmet’ and Old Norse gríma ‘mask, helmet’ and grímr ‘person wearing a mask, helmet’. Through Gothic derived Spanish grima ‘disgust, uneasiness’, Gallego grimo ‘fear, creeps, uneasiness’, and Portuguese grima ‘aversion, disgust, antipathy’. The English grim ‘fierce, cruel, savage, severe, dire, painful’ and French grimace ‘grotesque face, ugly mug’ are other derivatives of this word for ‘mask’. All stem from Proto-Indo-European *ghrey ‘to paint, streak, smear’ and *gher ‘to rub, stroke’, with their ritualistic connotations of anointing; and *ghremno ‘angry’, with social masks used to manipulate through fear and hysteria.”(21)

Relating these words back to this season of “Walpurgisnacht” and the Maibaum, while such words have been inverted via social masks or personas – the outer trappings of authority used now to control and manipulate – they express very primal truths. “Walpurga” and her anointing – or how churches were constructed atop our sacred wells and groves with their healing properties – could represent a natural yearning for a feminine counterpart to a masculine anointer. Yet the true ritual anointing was the hieros gamos, sacred marriage. The person performing the ritual is the “anointing agent,” and clearly “those who anoint must in some sense be more powerful than those whom they anoint.”(22) So one figure now becoming synonymous with “the anointed” inevitably means disempowerment of everyone else who mentally subjects themselves to this “salvationist” agent.

The Greek chrestos “anointer” – simply referring to the animistic ritual initiation of magic and empowerment, with its unique expressions across ethnospheres – was inverted into a “christ” which transposed the “messiah” mind-virus that arose in a specific corner of Levant, among a specific people, and then absorbed the traits of various Gods and coopted their Mythos so as to convert all “the nations” to this messianic hyperstition across a fabricated linear timeline. Meanwhile, the feminine was inverted into a devotion to local “Virgins” (a crude christianization of local fertility and Mother Goddesses consolidated into one “Mary” figure) and localized “saints”, complete with the imagery and healing qualities associated with the ancient nurturing, motherly Goddesses.(23)

"Germania in Ketten", by the great
German Heathen painter and mystic-
revivalist Ludwig Fahrenkrog

"Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer" (1818), by
the German Romanticist painter Caspar David Friedrich

German Idealism and the Wotanic Spirit

I end this article with some wisdom from a key figure of German Romanticism: Novalis (Georg Philipp Friedrich von Hardenberg, 1772-1801). As a true polymath, he channeled Wotan (as He was now known in the evolving Hochdeutsch), even if unconsciously. Fresh out of the Enlightenment, itself an aesthetic/philosophical return to the Classical Pagan world of the Greeks and Romans, Germania also found new enlightenment – yet there was something missing, a Sehnsucht unable to find its complete fulfillment. Many German philosophers arose proclaiming Idealism – the restless spirit of Wotan, for there is no end to attaining the Mysteries. They were unconscious Heathen revivalists, tapping into an ancestral memory nurtured across all German regions – bounded to unique tribes organically formed into länder, but also able to unite when necessary, such as with the liberator Hermann (“Arminius”) at Teutoburger Wald. This was also the real meaning behind the Sachsen poet August von Fallersleben (1798-1874)’s words “Deutschland über alles”, uttered in his 1841 poem.

Another polymath, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), expressed the Wotanic quest for continuous self-knowledge in Faust, with all that entails of adventures and overcoming any ordeal to seek Gnosis. Yet he channeled energies of the Wanderer within his own life – searching for knowledge and wisdom across Germania, travelling to Italy, hiking excursions to the Brocken where he found much inspiration. I am proud to say that Schwaben bore several of these Idealists. Schiller (1759-1805) evoked “die Götter”, acknowledged the enchantment of Nature, and proclaimed the aesthetic as morality. Hölderlin (1770-1843) personified mystical links between a transcendent Mind and the inherent magic of Words. Schelling (1775-1854) formulated a Naturphilosophie which is an unfolding Animism conceived within the Romantic philosophy transcending the strictly “logical” which forgot itself as Philo (“love of”) Sophia (“Wisdom”, the Earth Mother).

The Sachsen Novalis himself sought a synthesis between naturalism and theism into what he termed “Religion des sichtbaren Universums“ (religion of the visible universe), perhaps observing the skies as much as the Nature all around him. Others have termed his philosophy “magical idealism“. Yet no matter what term is given, his philosophy was very much Heathen – tapping into the indigenous wisdom of Deutschland. He perceived the external world as a “great runic script” with deeper magical meanings just waiting to be discovered. In the following passage, he tapped into a Wotanic spirit yearning for a higher awareness, related as much to the Gnosis within as to visualizing the constellations. Perhaps these words from around 1790 expressed his own timeless initiation into the Mysteries:

“The Voice must certainly have spoken of our Master, for he knows how to collect the indications that are scattered on all sides. A singular light kindles in his glance when the sublime Rune is unrolled before us, and he looks discerningly into our eyes to find out whether for us too the Star has arisen that shall render the Figure (of life-itself) visible and comprehensible. If he sees us sad, that our night is not breaking, he comforts us and promises future joy to the faithful and assiduous seer.”(24)

Notes:

(1) Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, Vol. 1, London: George Bell & Sons, 1882, p. 302. .. It makes sense that in Scandinavia, with its harsher winters, faint summers, and more seasonal shifts in daylight than Germania, there would be greater divergence between the two and more significance given to Freya, who thus assumed more of Frija’s magical functions.

(2) Archaeological evidence, surviving folklore, and the secrets contained within etymology reveal many of the same central lore as the Norse Eddas, but also many distinct elements which should be acknowledged and can be used to build a distinctly continental Heathenry, especially in South German regions which absorbed much from the Alpine Celts. Its about celebrating what is truly within one’s bloodline and ancestral memory down to the most local level possible, striving for the authenticity and gnosis which most comes from the ethno-biosphere. While at some level recognizing an over-arching unity, especially when it relates to our worldview, cosmology, and common destiny, what we could call the “Faustian Spirit” to borrow a most pertinent phrase from Oswald Spengler.

(3) This is contrary to the imbalance of some modern neo-Paganisms, such as Wicca: founded by people with suspicious links to intelligence agencies and Kabbalistic occult groups, as well as a granddaughter of a Frankfurt School subversive psychoanalyst (Adler). Their imbalance is a henotheism which reduces the multitude of sacred feminine energies to one “goddess” whose origins they trace to the Levant, viewing them all as Astarte and turning the wild, horned gods of European forests into an Abrahamic-inspired description of Baal. Wicca started as an inversion of Celtic traditions but serves now as a confused syncretism designed to forestall a truly authentic return to the folk faith of every people, who are expected to subsume all their indigenous Pantheons into this Levantine henotheistic cauldron that can still only be defined by the same Abrahamic paradigm it pretends to oppose (but as any dialectical antithesis, that paradigm needs an “adversarial” spirit it holds within itself).

Another imbalance is expressed by self-professed “Thursatru/Rokkatru” groups, which worship Loki and the various forces of chaos and decay which were acknowledged but never venerated in any way, shape or form. Whereas Wicca is an imbalanced worship of the feminine, this current represents another imbalance: Worshipping and internalizing Loki as the androgynous spirit of self-loathing and envy. I have concluded that Loki is the same energy force as Yaldabaoth, the delusionary, pathetic imp who claims to be the “creator god” but is envious of the various ethnic Deities, whose powers and transcendence he can never achieve. Internalizing this energy only disempowers and is self-destructive to those who embrace it, contrary to how the delusionary imp inverts his role.

Yaldabaoth morphed into the “god” of Abrahamism, egregorized only by the collective energies and powers of human beings who call him different names according to Abrahamism’s three iterations. Yet while aspiring to be the “one god”, there are clues even within these “holy, revealed” scriptures where he recognizes the existence and powers of the real Deities, merely proclaiming himself “jealous” and demanding only he be worshipped. Likewise, there are clues within various mythologies about Yaldabaoth and the forces of decay and self-destruction he represents – the Archons, the mind parasites who intrude minds, working through mind-viruses and the various archonic programming it has spawned from that initial mind-intrusion.

(4) Scott and Billie-Jo Carlson, Northern Paganism: The Runes, 2019, p. iv. 

(5) Wolf Dieter Storl, The Untold History of Healing: Plant Lore and Medicinal Magic from the Stone Age to Present, Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2017, p. 98. .. My blog essays from 2020/2021 detailed how the same control system was behind the State, Abrahamic religion, and Big Pharma. I described its personification in King James, who presided over the most brutal and sadistic “witch” hunts in Scotland, wrote a manual on “demonology”, corporatized medicine while suppressing native healers of the Highlands, and later as King of England published his famed namesake Bible which still today is treated as sacrosanct and “supernatural” by many Christian groups. I also traced Big Pharma to pharmakos “sorcery”, also the name of a scapegoat ritual in ancient Athens, where Axial Age shenanigans began the gradual erosion of Hellenic folk-faith. This is the same scapegoating spirit which demonizes the human body’s own abilities to healing and immunity. There is obviously a place for modern medicine, guided by balance and discernment; but the coercive State-backed, profit-motive of Big Pharma owes more to Archonic mind-intrusion than anything truly healing.

(6) Tobias Wolfsberg, The Merseburg Charms: Ancient Spells and Germanic Magic, Nightfall Arcana Press, 2025, p. 34. .. The magical phrases of the Merseburg Charms are an indigenous German expression of a most-ancient tradition across the broader Indo-European spiritual traditions, from its farthest west – the Irish charm of “ault fri halt dí & féith fri féth” (“joint to joint and sinew to sinew”) Miach incanted for Nuada’s new arm (see the Cath Maige Tuired), citing nine days which has obvious correspondences to Odin/Wodan; to its furthest east branch, where a Vedic hymn of natural healing incants: “Let thy marrow unite with marrow, and thy joint with joint. Thy blood, thy bone shall grow, thy flesh grow together with flesh” (Atharva Veda, IV, 12).

(7) James Hjuka Coulter, Germanic Heathenry: A Practical Guide, 1st Books Library, 2003, p. 66.

(8) Storl, op. cit., p. 268.

(9) Grimm, op. cit., pp. 272-273.

(10) William Tyler Olcott, Star Lore Of All Ages, New York/London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1911, pp. 169-176.

(11) Scott and Billie-Jo Carlson, Northern Paganism: Exposing Abraham, 2020, pp. iii-iv, 82-83.

(12) The name of one of my ancestral villages, Baldern (part of the larger town of Bopfingen), on the länder boundaries of Württemberg and Bayern, clearly indicates an ancient sacred site honoring Balder. This is especially with its overlooking hill dominated by Schloss Baldern, which even before Alemannic settlement was site of a Celtic hill-fort. Family memories passed down to me continuously cite this hill – weddings and masses in its former chapel (later moved downhill in town), and mein Ururgroßvater working as a groundskeeper, harkening back to the ancient Celtic and Germanic forest protectors. Such winding hills were used for shamanic purposes in ancient times, the primal meditation of a labyrinth procession later encoded into cathedral architecture, and indeed a “Catholic” shrine was placed along the hill much as it was around groves and healing wells.

More recently I discovered that the family crest of another of my paternal lines – the Neuners (from the Mittelhochdeutsch niun “nine”, meaning an ancestor was member of a town council of nine – the symbolism of nine preserved from Heathen times), from the Swabian part of Bayern – contains two swans. That was the family line of mein Urgroßvater, whom I always felt a strong personal connection to even though he died in combat as a Wehrmacht Gebirgsjaeger in the Caucasus, 1943 – more than forty years before I was born. His only child was my Oma, whose maternal side are my Swabian ancestors from Baldern and my Spanish side that settled in Ellwangen. I strongly encourage others to search and meditate upon ancient meanings contained within their own bloodlines and surnames, unlock the mysteries of your own Memory.

Among my oldest family photos is this postcard of
Schloss Baldern, overlooking the village, late 19th century

(13) Lewis Spence, Dictionary of Non-Classical Mythology, 1913; New York: Cosimo, 2005, p. 70.

(14) Germanic: Freitag (German) [or Freidich in my ancestral Schwäbish], Friday (English), Vrijdag (Dutch/Flemish), Vrydag (Afrikaans), Freideg (Letzeburgesch), Fredag (Danish/Norwegian/Swedish), and Fostudag (Icelandic). Romance: Viernes (Spanish), Venerdi (Italian), Vendredi (French), Venres (Galician), Vienres (Asturian), Divrendes (Catalan/Occitan), Vineri (Romanian), Veneris (Latin), and Venderdi (Romansh); the only anomaly is Portuguese Sexta-feira, “sixth day,” although this too being feminine expresses the Venusian format. Just as interpretatio romana compared the Germanic Frija to Venus, so too was the indigenous Goddess Ataegina of the Celtiberians and Lusitanians compared to Venus. All are unique expressions of Mother Goddess energies connected to distinct biospheres.

(15) Carlson, Northern Paganism: The Runes, p. 16. .. Priapus is a Greek fertility deity related to the masculine generative power. The Hellenes portrayed him as perpetually erect but impotent, which could be symbolic that the masculine generative power is “impotent” unless joined in Hieros Gamos with the feminine generative power. Priapus also representing protection from the evil eye, demonstrates the masculine expression of magical power – just as Odin/Wodan “sacrificed” one eye to attain the Runes (Mysteries). Just some “unverified” speculative gnosis on my part.

(16) Perhaps this primal reality is why throughout both the Germanic and Celtic mythos, a “veil” is said to exist between this world and the otherworld, save for those auspicious times when its at the thinnest – “Walpurgisnacht,” Bealtaine, and Samhain. The “veil” could be an allegory for whatever obscures conscious perception of the living Earth, especially with how these festival times correlate to specific cosmic phenomena with close correspondences to nature cycles – As Above, So Below. It all points to Animism, the intrinsic interaction between Anthropos, Earth, and the Cosmos.

(17) See my article, “A Broad Overview of Cosmology. Towards a Gnosis of Earth-Cosmos,” 20 Oct. 2022, <https://sjobst.blogspot.com/2022/10/animism-and-lessons-of-earths-power-3.html>. Recognizing there is a cosmic material within us should not be confused with the New Age “starseed” and “galactic federation” drivel, which is nothing but a world-denying escapism - another iteration of the off-planet archonic salvationist mind-virus which hates the Anthropos and our sacred connection to a sentient Earth. No wonder then that such psyops are saturated with the imagery and symbolism of Merkabah mysticism, easily manipulated by the control system.

(18) Stressing this is again my own Gnosis, but this could be another layer of meaning to Donar’s Hammer: It was forged from iron by the “dwarves”, who also represent the lower self – that part of you that receives “commands” from the Divine (Ansuz/Aesir) and then shines as a “mirror” (through which we perceive ourselves, the “face” giving the personality) to project the things we want so long as its on one of the pathways our highest self has chosen in our current incarnation. Through ritual such as what we also “forge” with the iron within our blood and the Earth’s memory, we can also cleanse the lower self. One of the powers represented by Donar is the Earth’s electromagnetic field. In his Protector role, he battles Jormungandr, the “world serpent” who could also be allegorized as contraction which must be balanced and checked out by his force of expansion. I meditated upon this during one of my hiking excursions here in the Southeast US, comparing Germanic and Native American mythology and cosmology in my ensuing article: “Hiking Up the Serpent Mound, Autumn 2022 - Path of Souls, Kundalini, Gnosis, and Esoteric Meaning of the Serpent,” <https://sjobst.blogspot.com/2023/01/hiking-up-serpent-mound-autumn-2022.html>.

(19) The direct quotes and most of this section, while interspersed with some of my own observations, are my notes from three online lessons of John Lamb Lash: His 2018 talk “The Aeonic Earth Mother Guides the Native Peoples into Their Racial Memory-Lines”; the Nemeta.org course on “11 Skywatching,” <https://nemeta.org/course/11-skywatching/>; and his recent interview by Disco Orpheus, “The Man on the Stick and the Question of Suffering”.

(20) Carlson, Northern Paganism: The Runes, p. ii. I can only recommend this book again, for he exhaustively and conclusively reveals many correspondences with each Rune and the constellations, cycles of nature, the Deities, etc..

(21) See my article, “Addendum 2:0: On Death Pathology, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Occult Truths, and the Masks of Authorities,” 6 Nov. 2021, <https://sjobst.blogspot.com/2021/11/addendum-20-on-death-pathology-neuro.html>.

(22) John Lamb Lash, Not In His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief, 15th Anniversary Edition, White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2021, p. 64.

(23) I examined this appropriation within two articles. First, resolving my previous interest in Mariology to my recently awakened Paganism in “Blessed Mother Goddess: Syncretism in Mariology and Marian Veneration Cults,” in The Real & The Illusory: Essays on the Perennial Philosophy, ed. Troy Southgate, Black Front Press, 2018, pp. 131-155. Second, my blog article on “Zisa, A Swabian Goddess,” 2 Oct. 2019, <https://sjobst.blogspot.com/2019/10/zisa-swabian-goddess.html>. In that second article, I examined Zisa as a uniquely Swabian Goddess, the consort of Ziu – the same God known to the Norse as Tyr and Anglo-Saxons as Tiw. She was a localized fertility Goddess who, as consort to Ziu the Germanic Sky Father, represents this “sacred marriage” of animism and the cosmos. Now adding another layer of meaning, Zisa can also be seen how the localized Alpine setting perceived (and received) the sky with its rich tapestry of constellations.  

(24) Novalis, The Disciples At Sais and Other Fragments, 1790; London: Methuen & Co., 1903, p. 92.