Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Is the Global Surveillance State Exploiting Covid-19? NSO Group spyware, Cryptocurrency, Israeli Unit 8200 links, China's Belt and Road Initiative, and Globalist crisis/resource management (Part 1)

by Sean Jobst
31 March 2020
(Updated 3 April 2020)

I recently gave some advice and thoughts about what each of us can be doing in these "quarantine" times, the opportunities presented for us to take if we dare. Its no different for the elites although theirs is not about personal growth, but the profane growth of their power and control over others. They see the opportunities within every event and the Coronavirus is no exception. Among those are more surveillance of the masses, the push towards 5G and Cryptocurrencies, and various other schemes for this Globalist Technocratic elite within the classic Problem-Reaction-Solution model.

The Israeli spyware firm NSO Group Ltd has recently announced that it has developed an app which analyzes a large number of data to track people, ostensibly to track and thereby contain the spread of the Coronavirus. The technology matches the "infected" person's tracking information and matches it with location data collected by mobile phone companies pinpointing everyone within the person's vicinity for more than 15 minutes, according to what a relevant source told Bloomberg News. As can be expected from a company with a long record of enabling certain governments to track and even kill dissenters through its Pegasus software, Covid-19 "tracking" is merely the cover excuse.



Directly from the source

The Mexican and Saudi governments are among those
targeting dissidents with the Israeli Pegasus spyware


"The coronavirus crisis may highlight the overlap between the surveillance state and the cryptocurrency industry," writes Leigh Cuen for Coindesk. As founder of Genesis Partners and chairman of F2 Capital, NSO Group investor Eddy Shalev is also on the board of the bitcoin mining company Spondoolies Tech, as touted on his LinkedIn profile, which also details his various investments with Israeli high-tech companies. One of Spondoolies' investors is BRM Group, which also provided the initial investment for security software firm Check Point, founded in 1993 by Israeli Military Intelligence's elite Unit 8200 alumnis Gil Shwed and Shlomo Kramer.

Little surprise there are Unit 8200 fingerprints all over these links. The NSO Group itself was founded by Unit 8200 members Niv Carmi, Omri Lavie, and Shalev Hulio in 2010. Coindesk reveals that Lavie and Hulio have invested in the bitcoin startup Simplex. One of Simplex's executives, Tal Yahalom (not to be confused with the jazz guitarist of the same name), was a Unit 8200 business intelligence developer. Expressing his misgivings about the U.S. Dollar, Jacob Rothschild referred to "interesting opportunities in other currencies as well as gold" in the 2016 semi-annual RIT Capital Partners report.



Predictive programming by the Rothschild-
owned magazine The Economist in 1988


A move towards a global e-currency?

The decentralized nature of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies would seem to preclude control by the banking elites, but growth of the Technocracy has structurally enabled exactly this. One has to question why Soros, JP Morgan, and Goldman Sachs have all "cashed in" on the Cryptocurrency trend. On the cover of its January 9, 1988 issue, The Economist - whose primary shareholders are the Rothschild and Agnelli banking dynasties - portrayed a crowned Phoenix rising over burning world paper currencies, hanging from his neck a coin inscribed with "2018". 


Was this predictive programming of the 2018 "Cryptocurrency Crash", when plunging Bitcoin prices were seized upon by speculators like Soros, who suddenly expressed a rush to trade in the same currency they had previously dismissed? Its my contention this was a "hack" whereby the Globalist banking/technocratic elite co-opted the crypto bandwagon. There was increased speculation in the months leading up to this current crisis, with many politicians and other power figures making suspicious moves on the stock market and several corporate executives quickly launching what appeared to be contingency plans.

Israel entered into a "crypto partnership" with Switzerland involving blockchain technologies. Blockchains were invented to be the public transaction ledger of cryptocurrencies. One of the leading Israeli blockchain firm is Orbs, whose "Team" includes at least five alumni of Unit 8200. Another firm is Endor Protocol, which offers AI-powered predictions and includes blockchain data. At least three of its executives are alumni of Unit 8200. The Bank of Israel has considered incorporating blockchain into its operations. A government-issued cryptocurrency would obviously belie its "solution" to the problems of fiat paper money.



Trump's handler meeting with Trump's svengali


Along with the Israeli Finance Ministry, the Bank of Israel has flouted the idea of a "digital shekel" state-sponsored crypto. Representatives from both discussed blockchain with the hawkish Zionist US Deputy Treasury Secretary Sigal Mandelker in October 2018. Trump's powerful son-in-law and Chabad member Jared Kushner - who has passed Top Secret intelligence intercepts to Israeli intelligence much to the chagrin of the NSA - organized a Bahrain summit where Orbs co-founder Netta Korin (a World Economic Forum member) sold the White House on the idea of "social impact" blockchain. Former US National Security Advisor Michael Flynn has links to the NSO Group. Netanyahu's niece and nephew, Guy and Galia Ben-Artzi, are co-founders of the blockchain start-up Bancor, which boasts of its Unit 8200 links.

Under the title "Israel and the Unexpected New World Order", Brian Schrauger, a West Bank-based Christian Zionist writer, made a stunning forecast: "A global currency collapse might be seen as a way to wipe the slate clean of nation-based currencies, especially the US dollar, and establish an international one, like Bitcoin, perhaps. If Bitcoin is the model for a new Internet-based global currency, Israel is likely to be its guardian too, protecting that currency from hackers around the world. As chief of security for the world's information and currency, and with energy independence, Israel stands to gain substantial wealth." This adds a global cryptocurrency to the schemes of China's Belt and Road Initiative in alliance with Israel. What do we make of this in light of the current event that originated in China?




Countries especially hit hard by Coronavirus, like Iran, Italy and Spain, all
appear to be important nodes on the Belt and Road Initiative. Coincidence?


Coronavirus, Unit 8200, and the Belt and Road Initiative

An article from February, when the virus was still largely contained to China and had not yet seen worldwide expansion, raised questions about China's own cryptocurrency moves in relation to its Belt and Road Initiative, including its "debt-trap diplomacy" to corral poorer countries within its orbit. My own contention about Coronavirus vis a vis the Chinese Communist regime is that the crisis got out of their control but to admit their inabilities would create ripple effects within China itself, destroy the image of a regime with complete control over the Chinese people so that a protest that started in Hong Kong could easily spread across the country.

Economies will be crashed and rebuilt, as the managerial elites "never let a crisis go to waste", to borrow Rahm Emanuel's famous catchphrase. A global economy founded upon speculation and management is revealing its internal flaws that were there all the while, but perhaps this is by design so they can move some things around, make certain crucial tweaks to give a new face to the old structure. One of these tweaks is the "outsourcing" of Globalist power centers around the world. "A 'unipolar' and a 'multipolar' world are still parallel poles to the same Globalist dialectic," as I wrote in January. "As surely as the trade networks of the ancient and medieval worlds, so too are the modern high-tech trade networks a Globalist interplay of political with mercantile elites."




One of the defining features of this modified Global Order is what Netanyahu referred to as "marrying Israeli technology with China's capacity". The links are innumerable but if we just follow up only some links directly related to the current Coronavirus, we reveal a strange complex network involving various Israeli private security and hi-tech firms founded and staffed by Unit 8200 alumni, American Neocons, Neoliberals and Trump officials, Russian-Jewish oligarchs closely tied to Putin, Chinese Communist officials, Globalist think-tanks and Communitarian technocrats, Gulf Arab oil sheikhs, and the Chabad movement. Among the main companies to watch are NSO Group, Black Cube, Frontier Services Group, Carbyne911, Renova Group, and Lev Leviev's Africa-Israel Investments.

Those of us aware of historical and natural cycles know there are epidemic cycles repeating every 100 years or so, but certain companies are exploiting the Coronavirus to slip in various AI-based algorithms to "predict" epidemics for what we can surmise are "management" purposes. Predictive analyst Kira Radinsky worked at a Microsoft Research medical data-mining operation and is currently chairwoman and Chief Technology Officer at Diagnostic Robotics, which develops Artificial Intelligence in the context of medical data and has partnered with the transhumanist Singularity Education Group. Aside from teaching at the Unit 8200-ridden Technion Institute, after her own stint in Unit 8200 she was selected for Unit 81, an even-more classified offshoot of Unit 8200. Interestingly in light of others capitalizing upon this event, Unit 81 broke its cover in a P.R. campaign about its role "fighting" the Coronavirus.

Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennett, a hardline Zionist who has a record in hi-tech firms, recently announced he wanted to use NSO Group to "fight the coronavirus". As Minister of Diaspora Affairs, Bennett promoted a system for identifying "anti-Semitism" on the Internet "developed by a company managed and staffed with former members of military technology units and veterans of the IDF Military Intelligence's Unit 8200." The system was "based on artificial intelligence that is capable of analyzing texts and provides significant information on the posts and users who upload them, all according to the definition of anti-Semitism determined by the government." This slippery definition is expanded to include opposition to Zionism, including certain activities of the Israeli government which subvert the sovereignty of other countries. We have seen that previous tragedies were similarly used to push a broad-sweeping agenda of surveillance and censorship.



The Carbyne/Frontier/Black Cube network


Carbyne911 is another crucial firm exploiting Covid-19 for an agenda we can clearly surmise through its past activities and its various investors and executives. Although also known simply as Carbyne, one has to wonder if the "911" addition serves a dual psychological imagery of "crisis management" on both a micro (911) and a more visceral macro (9/11) level. Carbyne's co-founder and shareholder Lital Leshem was an Israeli Military Intelligence Captain, who previously served as Marketing Director of Black Cube, an Israeli private intelligence firm  whose own website describes itself as "A select group of veterans from the Israeli elite intelligence units that specialises in tailored solutions to complex business and litigation challenges." Among those "challenges" were discrediting rape accusers of disgraced Hollywood movie executive (and Zionist) Harvey Weinstein, efforts against the Iran nuclear deal, and harassing lawyers involved in lawsuits against the NSO Group.

Ostensibly providing technology services to emergency centers, Carbyne exists in "a grey area giving it unprecedented access to private information". Chief Technology Officer Alex Dizengof previously handled cybersecurity in the Israeli Prime Minister's office. Carbyne CEO Amir Elichai served in a special elite and intelligence corps. According to an investigative report in Narativ, another Carbyne board member is Pinchas Buchris, former Director of Unit 8200. Two partners of his venture capital firm State of Mind Venture, Nir Adler and Yuval Baharav, were past executives at Amdocs, an Israeli billing data and credit checks firm investigated in the lead-up to 9/11 for espionage against the U.S.. Buchris serves as "mentor" to various Israeli cybersecurity start-ups founded by his former underlings, including being on the advisory board of Cybereason, founded by three Unit 8200 officers - Lior Div, Yossi Naar and Yonatan Striem-Amit. Techcrunch noted in its interview with Lior Div that "Cybereason’s work is the continuation of the six years of training and service he spent working with the Israeli army’s 8200 Unit."


Vekselberg, Putin, and Russia's Chabad Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar


Carbyne's investors include a cabal of creeps and scoundrels. Jeffrey Epstein invested $1.5 million of his pedo-money into a project that grew into Carbyne in 2015. His partner in the venture was former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, who has often appeared as Carbyne's front-man in media appearances. Two other crucial investors were billionaire Viktor Vekselberg and his cousin Andrew Intrater, who bought 24% of Carbyne's shares through the latter's Columbus Nova Technology Partners in 2017. As owner and president of the Renova Group, Vekselberg has close ties with Putin. In 2012, he donated $4.5 million towards the construction of the Chabad-directed Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow that was also partly-funded by Putin. As a member of its board of trustees, Vekselberg helped arrange for Lubavitcher Rebbe texts to be moved to the Museum. He also invested in Fifth Dimension, an Israeli company staffed by Mossad spooks such as its president, ex-Mossad deputy director Ram Ben-Barak, and CEO Doron Cohen. Intrater donated $250,000 to Trump's inauguration fund in 2017. Vekselberg and Intrater together sent $500,000 to Trump's lawyer through Columbus Nova, the American wing of Renova Group.

The Carbyne advisory board includes Michael Chertoff, the infamous head of Homeland Security under George Bush who co-authored that massive surveillance state power-grab called The Patriot Act. The treacherous dual American-Israeli citizen is notorious for ensuring the "five dancing Israelis" and other Mossad spies were not questioned after 9/11. He also blocked the criminal investigation of 9/11, ensuring that survivors' families could not seek any civil action in the courts. He appointed the Israeli Amit Yoran director of the Homeland Security's cybersecurity division, which we can now see as one of the early move outsourcing American cybersecurity to these Israeli networks. Chertoff has met with Chabad rabbis and participated in American Friends of Lubavitch dinners. An emergency dispatcher app was developed by Reporty, a direct offshoot of Carbyne whose board of directors include Barak, Chertoff, and Buchris.




Ben-Gurion's full "vision" reads like a concise utopia to all the
Globalist networks: Multipolar power blocs, Jerusalem as the
center of the world, rule by a Technocratic elite, Noahidism


These companies were already developing the software that will now be seized upon for the current crisis, but lurking underneath is a mass surveillance agenda. Another Carbyne investor is billionaire Peter Thiel, the Bilderberg Steering Committee member who has invested heavily in surveillance applications. His data analysis company Palantir Technologies use "war on terror tools to track American citizens". Thiel epitomizes the Globalist Technocrat, promoting Singularity projects and financing AI research. His obsession about cheating death calls to mind the similar transhumanist/technocratic vision (predictive programming) made by Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to Look Magazine in 1962. Thiel's fellow Palantir alum Trae Stephens, who was chair of Trump's Department of Defense transition team, also serves on Carbyne's advisory board, as does Eliot Tawil, a New York real estate developer and major Trump donor.

Managing Crises and Resources for the Belt and Road

Carbyne co-founder and shareholder Lital Leshem was former Business Development Executive of Mobileye, the Israeli subsidiary of Intel which has taken part in the GoforIsrael Conference that introduced around 100 Israeli high-tech startup companies to Chinese investors in Shanghai. She currently serves as Executive Director of the private equity fund Frontier Resource Group (FRG), which invests in "natural resource opportunities in frontier markets". FRG's founder is none other than Erik Prince of Blackwater private contractor infamy. FRG is merely the latest manifestation of this company that was also known as Xe for a time, but throughout the "theocon" Prince has employed Knights Templar imagery which is a useful psyop of the Zionist/Globalist dialectic.

The FRG is officially based in the UAE, but is actually a subsidiary of the Hong Kong-based Frontier Services Group (FSG), a logistics and security company owned by Chang Zhenming after Prince sold his majority stake in FSG to the Chinese investor in 2013. Zhenming is chairman of China's massive state-owned investment company Citic Group. For its own wreckless actions in Iraq, outside the command of a Neocon/Zionist-dominated Pentagon that outsourced operations to such private contractors, Blackwater in its current FSG mask seems keen on obediently carrying out China's interests in all strategic and resource-rich hotspots of the Belt and Road. "Frontier focuses on protecting Chinese enterprises in Africa and Asia" in its mining operations in conflict-ridden areas.




The new imperialist overseer at a copper mine in Zambia


Tracing the FRG/FSG's activities and how these intersect to those of the three main Eurasian Union/Belt and Road power centers - Israel, China and Russia - reveal just how crucial "crisis" patterns (whether real or engineered) are used to manage natural resources. One of Erik Prince's recent projects is investing in the discovery, exploitation, and delivery of resources to produce electric car batteries. His operations include the cobalt mines of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which account for the majority of the world's cobalt. The elites push "green" technology through their engineered psyop of an apocalyptic Extinction Rebellion meant to shame working-class masses for their "carbon footprint" while its elitist advocates hypocritically pollute the most. Such a  psyop is providing the fuel (pardon the pun) for the likes of Prince, his Chinese bosses, Israeli Unit 8200 partners, and various oligarchs to profit. Indeed he was quick to assure that his mining operations are done in "an efficient and environmentally acceptable manner".

That the Chinese Communist regime oversees some of the world's worst environmental abuses is ignored exactly because in many ways this combination of the old dialectic of Capitalism and Communism overseen by a bureaucratic managerial class is exactly the elitists' utopia. While common workers in Europe and North America are told to "atone" for the "sins" of Western imperialism, China has vastly expanded its imperialist activities over Africa with no concern for either "carbon emissions" or humanitarianism. "China is a key transit point for cobalt," writes Australian investigative journalist Antony Loewenstein. "Because Chinese companies dominate the supply chain, placing Prince in prime position to capitalize, given his deep ties to Beijing. Many Chinese firms have also been found to buy cobalt mined by children in Congo."


Globalism under the same utopian banner


Blood Mines of the Chabad and Eurasianist Oligarchs

The Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation (ENRC) won a lucrative $101.5 million license to extract copper at the DRC's Frontier mine. The ENRC previously bought Congolese mining assets belonging to Israeli diamond merchant Dan Gertler. In 2000, the Kabila regime gave Gertler a sizable cut of Congo's vast copper and cobalt resources in exchange for Israeli military aid, in a deal that was brokered by Gertler's spiritual adviser and business partner, Chabad Rabbi Chaim Leibovitch - who organizes many Chabad actitivies and has called for the Lubavitcher Rebbe's teachings being spread to "redeem the entire world". Through his Dan Gertler International and Emaxon Finance Corporation, Gertler donates to Chabad and works closely with its Kinshasa branch. It was Gertler's grandfather Moshe Schnitzer who as President of the Israeli Diamond Exchange, oversaw Israel becoming the world's largest diamond center. Gertler's public relations is handled by a firm whose clients include Israeli aeronautics and robotic weapons and intelligence companies.

Although the ENRC is based in Kazakhstan, its primary shareholder and former director Alexander Mashkevitch holds an Israeli passport and "rarely spends more than a week each month in Kazakhstan" while controlling "one-fourth" of its entire economy. He founded the Jewish Congress of Kazakhstan under Chabad auspices and funded the Chabad synagogue in its capital. As former president of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, Mashkevitch met Israeli leaders and wanted to create a TV network to "represent Israel on an international level". The ENRC was the subject of a UK corruption probe that began in 2013. Mashkevitch is an investor and business partner of the real estate investment firm Bayrock Group, whose founders Tevfik Arif and Felix Sater have assorted links with Chabad, Putin, and the Trump administration. The Russian-born Sater associates with the Chabad of Port Washington in Long Island, received its "Man of the Year" award, and told Politico that he sits on the board of numerous Chabad entities. Although not Jewish, the Kazakh-Turkish citizen Tevfik Arif is among the top benefactors of Chabad of Port Washington. He was arrested and his yacht seized in Turkey on suspicion of running an international sex trafficking ring in 2010. Arif also served as an "agent on the ground" in Kazakhstan for Trans World Group, a natural resource firm whose founders, the brothers David and Simon Reuben, profited from Russia's aluminum privatization in cooperation with such future Kremlin-linked oligarchs as Roman Abramovitch in the 1990s.

Mashkevich went to the Seychelles to meet with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed in January 2017, in a meeting that also included Erik Prince, Kremlin-linked Russian investor Kirill Dmitriev, Saudi banker Abdulrahman Bin Mahfouz, and Trump-associated businessman George Nader. Mashkevitch is one of the current owners of Alferon Management, a London-based mining acquisition company with operations in Zambia, the DRC, Indonesia, Russia, Kosovo, and other countries. He owns another firm called International Mineral Resources, which along with Israeli-owned company called Cunico, operates the iron-nickel plant Ferronikeli which has caused toxic air and water pollution in Kosovo. Cunico is owned by billionaire diamond merchant Beny Steinmetz, whose real estate partners include the Reuben brothers and Olayan Group, a Saudi investment company deeply connected with the military-industrial Bechtel Corporation and a host of international banks. Steinmetz was involved in a real estate scam in Romania alongside political adviser Tal Silberstein and Shimon Sheves, Yitzhak Rabin's chief of staff. Steinmetz came under controversy for his mines in Guinea until he sold them to a Chinese company. This parallel takeover of African natural resources by Israeli and Chinese firms is a recurring story.






A 2006 report by the American Jewish Committee detailed how after 1980, "Mossad agents, military emissaries, and a small group of private businessmen....replaced diplomats as Israel's main interlocuters with African leaders and political (mainly opposition) groups," specifically citing Angola, DRC and the Central African Republic. One of these is the Uzbek-Russian-Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev, whose Chabad links I discussed in 2017 and have earned him the nickname "missionary mogul", such that Leviev says: “The rebbe is my role model, and my values are his values." Holding up the elitist technocrat Bill Gates as his own model, Leviev has also built a vast "philanthropy" empire from his unscrupulous profits. "To make this vast philanthropic enterprise run, Leviev subsidizes an army of some 10,000 Jewish functionaries from Ukraine to Azerbaijan, including 300 rabbis. Most of the 300 rabbis are Chabadniks", according to an informative biographical piece by the staunchly Zionist journalist Zev Chavets. Leviev personifies how all these Globalist interests and power-centers intersect through one vast network.

Leviev's vast business interests which include real estate and infrastructure projects in the United States and Western Europe, as with his diamond and mining interests in Africa, does position him to speculate and profit from the current crisis once the microbes settle. This includes recent real estate moves in the United States tied to well-connected oligarchs. The high tech security system at his headquarters can be expanded in ways that, as we have seen earlier, will be used for surveillance and other less than savory purposes. Leviev's primary international corporation is Africa Israel Investments (hereafter known as Africa Israel), which he purchased from Israel's Bank Leumi in 1996. One of its branches is AFI Europe, whose vast real estate activities in Central and Eastern Europe, combined with Leviev's other real estate activities in New York, seem to lend credence to Shimon Peres' boast in a Hotel Hilton Tel Aviv speech on 10 October 2007, that "From such a small country like ours, this is almost amazing. I see that we are buying up Manhattan, Hungary, Romania and Poland. Thanks to our talent, our contacts and our dynamism, we get almost everywhere."







Not surprising in light of the deepening Israeli-Chinese alliance, Leviev was the subject of a 2010 report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission that accused him of ties to Chinese intelligence via his business deals. These included Africa Israel's selling the JP Morgan building across from the New York Stock Exchange, to China Sonangol, owned by Sam Pa who has ties to Chinese intelligence. Veteran Israeli investigative journalist Yossi Melman writes: "Using the group, Chinese intelligence acquires oil and energy companies and other important assets in countries in Africa, Latin American, Southeast Asia, as well as in the United States. In this way it promotes Chinese national interests, increases its influence and guarantees the supply of raw materials - first and foremost oil - necessary for its economy." China Sonangol is part of the Hong Kong-based 88 Queensway Group, whose senior director Wu Yang "provided the Registrar of Companies in Hong Kong with an address that matches the address of Chinese foreign intelligence". Leviev had earlier sold the New York Times building to Jared Kushner, who has his own Chinese dealings. The "right hand man" of Leviev is Rotem Rosen, who as long-time CEO of the Sapir Organization - founded by a billionaire donor to Chabad - profited off the 2007-2008 economic crisis.

Leviev is also connected to the other main Eurasian power-center, the Russia of Putin whom he describes as a "true friend". The two have been close ever since Putin took Leviev and Chabad's side in an internal dispute within the Russian Jewish community, appointing Leviev's candidate Berel Lazar as the Chief Rabbi rather than the more-secular Reform Jewish elite. After this both Chabad and its oligarchs rose in prominence within Russia. Two of them, Leviev and Abramovich, funded the Chabad-run Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia. Leviev's influence extends among other leaders of former Soviet republics, including Azerbaijan's Aliyev, as well as business interests in Kazakhstan, where he serves as Israel's honorary consul. In 2002, Leviev partnered with Henry Kissinger to honor Uzbek President Islam Karimov for his support of both the "War on Terror" and Chabad's activities in his country. Leviev was also present when Karimov received the "international leadership award" from Beer Hagolah Institute, a New York-based front associated with Russian-Jewish mobsters (sponsoring many of their visas into the US) and the Great Neck Chabad House.



Dos Santos and Leviev dividingprofits from Angola's resources


Although the two later had a major falling out over profits, the crucial figure in Leviev's expansion into Africa was the Russian-Israeli billionaire Arkady Gaydamak, who made US$790 million from trafficking Russian and Czech arms in the Angolan Civil War on behalf of the Communist MPLA government. A grateful Angolan President José Eduardo Dos Santos awarded Gaydamak with an Angolan passport and role of economic adviser. Leviev says he was introduced to Gaydamak by former Mossad chief Danny Yatom, with whom Gaydamak had established a company with activities in Kazakhstan and Angola. In 1999, Leviev and Gaydamak established a joint metallurgy operation in Kazakhstan. Aside from those two countries, Leviev also owns the Namibian Minerals Corporation, accused by both Interpol and the Namibian government of stealing and smuggling diamonds from that country. In 2002, Leviev became the second-largest exporter of Congo's diamonds, exceeded only by Gertler.

In a joint venture with the Russian state-owned diamond company Alrosa, a Brazilian company, and the Angolan state diamond company Endiama, Leviev bought into the Catoca mine. Alrosa's chairman, Anton Siluanov, is Putin's Finance Minister and current Russian regional head of the IMF and World Bank through the Eurasian Development Bank. Upon Leviev's suggestion in 1999, Dos Santos centralized control over Angola's diamond resources through their joint venture, Ascorp. In 2004, Leviev and Endiama formed a new company called Sodiam, with its office in Ramat Gan, Israel. Dos Santos and his daughter Isabel have a personal stake in these deals with Israeli and Russian diamond merchants, making "a fortune at the expense of the Angolan people" according to the Luanda Leaks report. Chabad has a presence in Angola to cater to these merchants. Not surprisingly, Lital Leshem is also drawing upon Israel's business networks in Angola on behalf of Frontier Services.

[To be continued in Part 2, about more activities of Frontier Group and NSO, and the intersecting links these companies all have to the Communitarian Smart Cities technocracy agenda. - SJ]

Friday, March 27, 2020

Coronavirus Reflections and Advice - Opportunities for Growth

by Sean Jobst
27 March 2020

We are living in interesting times, made all the more by what it has brought out of people. I've noticed that exactly in these times, people ironically show their powerlessness by ceding those very things that are in their personal control - how they respond and react to things. This has been the most concerting to see throughout this whole process. People giving in to fear and hysteria have allowed their most base habits to froth to the surface, although I also see inherent opportunities. For there is balance within all things; potentials for growth on all levels insofar as we can make our reality.

My concern is not about the statistics, the various debate about what this Covid-19 or what has been termed "Coronavirus" really is, or even conspiracy theories about where this all is heading to. But my interest is foremost on the metaphysical level. Obviously there are real medical concerns and people are dying. My thoughts particularly go out to areas seemingly affected most, not only my own country but also Italy, and especially one of my ancestral countries, Spain. We can stay within our chosen Internet bubbles and obsess about the theories, but clearly families and societies will continue to be affected to some measure on the ground.

Nearly all of us are now out of work and in varying degrees of "quarantine" or "social distancing". We are all taking a financial hit and there is uncertainty about the future. In these times I advise people to look within themselves and really appreciate what matters. That is family and the people within your lives who truly matter. Do not focus on "waking up" or "changing" people on any mass scale, but through those energies flowing from your most positive drives, impact and inspire those directly around you so they can connect to the strengths and potentials within themselves.

The sad reality is that in these times of crises - even if the specific crisis is more one engineered by (or manipulative of) fear and hysteria - many people will reveal their true selves, that they won't think twice about turning on people who trusted them if it means their own personal benefit. Such people are better left out of your lives, letting them wallow in the negative aspects by which they have chosen of their own will to construct their lives. Sovereignty for each soul and being requires that, including those harmful to our growth or vice versa.

Its all about discernment and polarities. The discerning eye can better appreciate what truly matters and, conversely, what's of no benefit for your own personal growth as an individual. The Principle of Polarity states that everything has poles, its pair of opposites which are identical in nature but different in degree. A good example are polarities of Love and Fear. If we see even emotions as vibrations we realize each one contains both negative or positive charges - it all depends on what you will to put your energy into. Our emotions and perceptions have a direct correlation with our physical state, including upon our immune system.

Explore new lines of research and curiosity. Take up old hobbies and passions. Use this time to the best now that you are do not have the distractions you had before. Create works that really follow your true soul desires. Realize your inherent power to create and thus affect changes within your own immediate sphere. I have learned that those spheres outside our control often depend upon our willing consent or willing ignorance but that their power is ultimately of what we choose to give them. Spring has always been recognized throughout many cultures as a cleansing season of great potential and growth, so too should we appreciate these liminal cycles. Simple facts our Ancestors instinctively knew, such as the amazing benefits of sunshine, are validated now more than ever.

Observe events but do not obsess about them. Channel your energies into what's immediately within your own realm of control - and explore your creativity to the max during this time. And if enough of us do so we have potential to create an amazing historical period that our descendants can look back to with pride and inspiration. The choice is ours and solely ours to make. Accustomed to seeing ourselves as powerless, if we drown out all the noise (foremost the endless news cycle) we can truly see just how much power we have. It starts in the Mind and our Perception of Reality, whether we control it ourselves or cede it to governments, media, and other babysitting institutions is our choice.

Aspects of our own habits are revealing themselves to the discerning eyes now. These habits are not "bad" in and of themselves but, as with all other things, there needs to be balance. If we don't choose to balance them they will occur naturally - and in the most rude awakenings. Certain harmful aspects upon the landscape are now being restored to balance, freed from the excessive unbalanced actions of some individuals, particularly the very elites that like passing blame to the masses. The skies are becoming more clear, free from the smog that excessive industrialization has wrought; bodies of water restored to their natural state, such as the canals of Venice; forests and landscapes in general are teeming with more life amidst the deaths - if we only choose to align to those vibrations our senses that have finally been detoxed from many of the distractions.

Possible outcomes of this have been noted by some of the figures and thinkers who inspire me. I see the potentials for the extremes to be phased out. Not only in our personal lives but certainly on the macro level. Well-funded controlled opposition narratives exposed as the psyops they are. For example, the imbalances of hysteria seen in the dialectic of that doomsday apocalyptic power-grab called "Extinction Rebellion" and of false hope seen in the other dialectic of "QAnon". All these illusory narratives promoting new versions of old fictions such as an "end of the world", a "savior" or a "mass awakening" should be exposed as just varying schemes to herd the most number of people into their chosen unbalanced frequencies of Fear or Hope.

Balance is by rejecting all these narratives and choosing to foremost look within. Using your own natural instincts and senses to guide you rather than distractions and illusions. False dependencies on governments or supranational institutions for guidance during these times are revealing themselves now, with the natural drive for local solutions asserting themselves to be more lasting and efficient than those imposed from these higher levels. Communities will continue to show the great potentials in the face of the panic and confusion shown in this crisis by adherents of Centralism and Globalism. Where are the elites, celebrities, and politicians you looked up to for "solutions" all these years?

I am as uncertain about the future as the rest of us. I don't know when my normal routine will resume. I also don't know what will become of some major travel plans I was planning for this summer. But I am using this time to explore my own creativity and passions. Producing more writings around lines of research I've been pursuing lately around the most pressing issues that we should be observing rather than the distractions. Issues I will describe within the upcoming days. Likewise pursuing my spiritual and folklore interests, as this is really the culmination of a process all the while recognizing that life is a beautiful process full of opportunities, growth, enlightenment, and the journey itself. And finally acting on what I have come to know about gardening and permaculture, unlocking within me ancestral memories as a descendant of farmers, as growth without complements the growth within.

We are each the product of a long line of Ancestors who survived plagues, wars and other crises, no matter where in this beautiful world we descend. Its not a question of if we will overcome - for that is illusory, having within itself an innate doubt disguised as "hope" (thus designed to keep us in a mental loop) - but we need to mentally convince ourselves that we can create our reality by our thoughts. So we have overcome this, as we are already on the same vibration that creates our future. We should think of this as already passing us by, knowing deep from within ourselves that its just a matter of time. But in the meantime its up to each one of us how we choose to react - how we choose to use our precious time.


Inspired by an idea proposed by one of my favorite channels,
I am already mentally in the future and have already overcome
any fears or hysteria upon the completion of the next lunar cycle.
Releasing these into the Ether, out of sight out of mind.

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Roots of Proto-Celtic/Germanic Mythos, folk faith in prehistoric Swabia? (Part 3)

by Sean Jobst
24 March 2020

[For Part 1 and Part 2 of this series]

There are two final Paleolithic artifacts to discuss in relation to understanding native spiritual traditions of Schwaben and, generally, Celtic and Germanic folk faith in the process. Called such due to its posture of outstretched arms and legs as if in worship, "The Adorant" statue was found in the Geißenklösterle cave near Blaubeuren in 1979. Its dimensions are 38mm (1.50 inch) tall, 14 mm (0.55 inch) wide, and 4.5 mm (0.18 inch) thick. It was carved from mammoth ivory but microscopic analysis uncovered traces of manganese and ochre.(1) One of its most apparent features are the geometric notch rows on the long and short sides and upon the back.(2)





The placement of the incisions parallel across the arms suggests something deeper than the clothing, tattoos or scars that were proposed for the Venus of Hohle Fels.(3) These parallel markings also exist on the Löwenmensch (2,000 years younger than the Adorant), suggesting the same culture that settled in ancient Swabia.(4) A 32,000-year-old relief sculpture found in Stratzing in Lower Austria is also remarkably similar to the Adorant, establishing certain broad features of a common Alpine Paganism we can identify as prehistoric, extending to the Hallstatt Celts, and finally with the South Germanic tribes like the Suebi, Alemanni, Bavarii and Marcomanni.(5)

These Swabian artifacts are not only the oldest known Aurignacian art within Europe, but the oldest figurative art found worldwide to date. "A striking, though still insufficiently studied feature of the figurative art of the Swabian Jura are the numerous markings. Many figurines bear sequences of marks, usually found in the form of parallel lines, crosses and cross-lines, diamonds, V-shaped signs and points."(6) On the left of the raised arms are five notches; 39 notches along the edges; and 48 markings on the back. Scholars as varied as Alexander Marshack, Hansjürgen Müller-Beck, Clive Ruggles and Michel Cotte have each proposed astronomical symbolism behind the Adorant's elaborate array of notches and incisions.





Hunter in the Sky

Prehistoric peoples observed forces of the cosmos that we tend to take for granted nowadays, but appreciated the deeper symbolism enough to encode it within art, wherein they encapsulated its vastness. "Long before astronomy revealed to men the terrifying extent of the great starry spaces, the idea of vastness and of distances to tantalize the mind was already present in heathen thought."(7) A notable example are the bull cave paintings at Lascaux dating back to 15,000 BCE, which Michael Rappenglück of the University of München identified with the constellation Taurus and the Pleiades seven stars. He theorized the Adorant's use as an amulet and as a compass prototype, but more with its posture. "The shape of the anthropomorphic figure (Adorant) resembles the Orion constellation. In other words, the ivory slate from Geißenklösterle would be an example of a specialized tool for controlling the human pregnancy period in relation to the movement of the Orion constellation and the Moon."(8)

The proportions fit the location of Orion 32,000 years ago as astroarchaeology has been able to reconstruct. Indeed, ancient portrayals of Orion personified it as a male figure standing with bent knees. The Greeks were not alone in presenting him as a hunter. The ancient Sumerians viewed Orion as the hunter fighting the Bull that personified Taurus, while ancient Chinese astronomers named him the hunter Shen. Our prehistoric European ancestors seemed to invest it with more elements of fertility - Cosmic forces linked to those of Nature, all relating to reproductive cycles. "Orion was of great significance to the people of the Aurignacian, not just because of the brightness of Syrius, but because it is visible for 9 months of the year from German latitudes, which corresponds to the human gestation period. Thus linking Orion with human births."(9)


Stars are subject to life-cycles much like humans


The hunter receives the abundance and bounties of the Earth, which itself relies upon the rains and other cosmic forces for its own fertility. Innumerable sources have demonstrated the various Mythos having their role as deeper allegories of Cosmic, Natural and Human Reproductive cycles. These three cycles as well as archetypes of the Psyche, are an important way of "decoding" the Mythos and knowing them to be more "real" than those accustomed more to literalism than allegory. The Moon's connection to female cycles is well-known, so that all the various aspects of the Adorant taken together shows not coincidence but a coherent time-reckoning system of all these cycles, as two scientists expressed in an UNESCO study:

"The grouping of the notches on the plate suggests a timerelated sequence. The total number of notches (88) not only coincides with the number of days in 3 lunations (88.5) but also approximately with the number of days when the star Betelgeuse (Orion) disappeared from view each year between its heliacal set (about 14 days before the spring equinox around 33,000 BP) and its heliacal rise (approximately 19 days before the summer solstice). Conversely, the nine-month period when Orion was visible in the sky approximately matched the duration of human pregnancy, and the timing of the heliacal rise in early summer would have facilitated a ‘rule of thumb’ whereby, by timing conception close to the reappearance of the constellation, it could be ensured that a birth would take place after the severe winter half-year, but leaving enough time for sufficient nutrition of the baby before the beginning of the next winter."(10)


These two Surrealist paintings, the first by Wojtek Siudmak
and the second by Vladimir Kush, both inspired by my
favorite artist Salvador Dalí, perfectly convey the symbolic
interplay of Cosmic and Earth energies through our birth.


"Cosmic Egg": Metaphysical Powers of Above and Below

That the Earth and Cosmos were joined through the human being was also conveyed in the "Cosmic Egg", a common motif in Indo-European cultures whereby a primordial being came into existence by "hatching" from an "egg" the cosmos laid upon the Earth's primordial waters.(11) This concept is to be understood as allegorical, more about the primordial forces within the universe than an actual "creation" myth as conceived by the Abrahamics. This motif was conveyed in such mythologies as the Vedic "egg-shaped cosmos" and the Greek "Orphic Egg". As for Orion, its significant that many Indo-European languages had the same symbolism.(12) Placing the origin of the Vedas with Orion's most ancient position, the Hindu astrologer and teacher Bal Gangadhar Tilak also examined the Germanic Yuletide season extending across the end of one year and beginning of the next year, to express his "opinion that the German traditions are the reminiscences of a time when the vernal equinox was in Orion, the hunter."(13)

In contrast to the "cosmic egg" symbolism, our Celtic and Germanic ancestors tended to see fire and water as the primordial elements - ice replaced this same function of water within the Norse mythos. Water symbolic of the beginning and fire of the end: We are born from the watery uterus and the fire released us from this earthly existence as cremation was our original tradition. This likewise extended into symbolism of the "fire" radiating from the Sun then fertilizing the "water" emanating from within the Earth.(14) This purifying "fire" aspect of the Sun - but not the Sun itself - was later conveyed in the Danubian Celtic myths of Grannus, various continental Celtic figures related to Bellenos, and the Germanic myth of the shining god Balder. All these further relate to the seasons.






A Lunisolar Worldview

Another cosmic symbolism with the Adorant is the lunar and solar aspect. Scholars have noted the figure's edges are cut at equal intervals, with the number 13 repeated frequently. They conclude this is a record of the relationship of the Sun and Moon, with 13 lunar months equal to one solar year. This relationship was known to Paleolithic hunters whose nomadic way of life was subject to basic changes in Nature. During a year when the Sun returned to the same point on the horizon, the Moon already made 13 full cycles - four for each lunar phase from one full-moon to another. The Adorant's four rows of dimples can also be connected to the four lunar phases of full moon-waxing-waning-full moon.(15) These recurring numbers can be seen as 13 x 4 = 52, which happens to be the number of weeks within the solar year. It takes 354 days to complete 12 lunar cycles, but 365 days for the Earth to orbit the Sun, so that special reckonings were made to account for the 11 day difference (called the "epact") in the two. The Ancients knew that lunar and solar cycles were synchronized every 18 years.

Indeed this ancient lunisolar joining of solar and lunar cycles (also seen on such artifacts as the Greek antikythera mechanism etc.) later formed the basis of Celtic and Germanic calendars. This is contrary to the fixed solar festivals around the equinoxes and solstices that form the basis of such modern "neo-paganisms" as Wicca, Asatru or "Druidry", whose "Wheel of the Year" and its various "sabbats" (a Hebrew phrase having nothing to do with European languages) are not attested in any historical sources documenting actual Celtic or Germanic traditions. Rather, its founded upon the imperial Roman calendar that was Christianized and imposed upon our Ancestors to eradicate their lunisolar worldview that was an impediment to monotheistic, centralist control and thought systems. Its worth detailing both calendars to show just how continuous our traditions have been from the Prehistoric.

The Germanic Heathen calendar was well attested in many contemporary sources(16), that attested to celebrations or other auspicious times reckoned by full or new moons, not fixed around solar events; time was reckoned by nights not days. The two halves of the year - Summer and Winter - were further divided into four quarters based on full moons with three moons assigned to each season. Summer had seven and not six moons every lunar leap year which occurred every three lunar years, so to keep alignment every three years an extra moon or month was added to Summer. This ensured that the second Yule month did not start before the Winter Solstice. The Spring festival Ostara did not occur on the Vernal Equinox (and was purely Continental Germanic and Anglo-Saxon, not celebrated by the Norse) but on the first full moon after. Midsummer was a quarter-year marker and not actually celebrated. Yule was on the first full moon after the first new moon after the Solstice, or three full moons after Winter Nights (itself the first full moon after the Autumn Equinox) - hence usually sometime in January. It was a three-day festival and not a Christianized "12 Days" replacement for "Christmas".(17)


Like the Adorant, the Gaullish Coligny bronze
calendar has holes for small wooden pegs to be
placed in to finely tune a synchronization of
solar and lunar cycles every 19 years

The Celtic Coligny calendar was created in Gaul between 40BCE and 100CE at a time when the Romans were genociding the Druids, who preserved this living testament to their advanced knowledge. There are 12 lunar months, each comprising six weeks or 29-30 days, extending from Samonios (October-November) to Cantios (September-October). To synchronize with the solar year, a 13th intercalary month known as Sonnocingos was added every 2.5 years and alternated between being inserted before Samonios or before the Spring months of Cutios and Giamonios. After a five-year cycle, two months were added. Each month was divided into halves, one "light" and one "dark", with the second half being an atenoux "renewal". Just as the day began with night (as with the Germanic), so too did the year begin with the descent into "darkness" of Winter. The entire calendar cycle was 30 years, totaling six rotations around the cycle.(18) 

Although often known as priests, the Druids had advanced knowledge of astrology, astronomy, folk medicine, and divination. In many areas of the Celtic world they were associated with upholding the tribal laws. The Romans noted their intricate awareness of lunar phases. Julius Caesar noted the 19 years following the Druid's first year as a novice, directly corresponding to the entire lunar cycle. To be worthy of the title Druid, one had to study for 20 years - which could thus relate to the beginning of a new lunar cycle after completion of the 19-year-cycle. Aside from the common lunisolar worldview, divination methods of the continental Germanic tribes as observed by Caesar and Tacitus were also similar to those of the Druids; as was the veneration of the Oak.

FOOTNOTES:

(1) Joachim Hahn, "Eine aurignacienzeitliche Menschendarstellung aus dem Geißenklösterle bei Blaubeuren, Alb-Donau-Kreis," in Denkmalpflege in Baden-Württemberg – Nachrichtenblatt der Landesdenkmalpflege, Vol. 9, No. 2, 1980, pp. 56-58.

(2) Gerd Albrecht and Hansjürgen Müller-Beck, eds., Die Anfänge der Kunst vor 30000 Jahren, Stuttgart: Theiss, 1987, p. 75.

(3) Luc Renaut, "What to Make of the Prehistory of Tattooing in Europe?," in Ancient Ink: The Archaeology of Tattooing, eds. Lars Krutak and Aaron Deter-Wolf, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017, p. 252.

(4) Genevieve von Petzinger, The First Signs: Unlocking the Mysteries of the World's Oldest Symbols, New York: Atria Paperback, 2017, pp. 90-91.

(5) With common features such as the Maibaum (May Pole), Summer bonfires and sacred rites involving fire, the Winter processions associated with the goddess Perchta or Frau Holle/Holda, common traditions involving the Wild Hunt, etc.. Folklore and traditions surviving long after conversion that indicate a continuity from ancient times. The great Austrian scholar Guido von List even placed the Germanic urheimat (primeval homeland) within the Danubian regions of Austria, Bavaria and Swabia rather than far to the north.

(6) Ewa Dutkiewicz, "The Vogelherd Cave and the discovery of the earliest art - history, critics and new questions," in Human Origin Sites and the World Heritage Convention in Eurasia, Volume II, ed. Nuria Sanz, Paris/Mexico City: UNESCO, 2015, p. 81.

(7) Hilda R.E. Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe, Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1964.

(8) Aleksander Dzbynski, The Power of the Line: Metaphor, Number and Material Culture in European Prehistory, Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013,  p. 19.

(9) Neil Harrison, The Origins of Europeans and Their Pre-Historic Inventiveness From 6 Million to 10,000 BCE, New York: Algora Publishing, 2019, p. 171.

(10) Clive Ruggles and Michel Cotte, Heritage Sites of Astronomy and Archaeoastronomy in the context of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention: A Thematic Study, Paris: ICOMOS/International Astronomical Union, 2010, p. 19.

(11) Anna‐Britta Hellborn, "The creation egg," Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, No. 1, 1963, pp. 63-105.

(12) K.S. Krishnan, Origin of Vedas, Chennai, India: Notion Press, 2019.

(13) Bal Gangadhar Tilak, The Orion, Or, Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas, Bombay: Mrs. Rádhábái Átmárám Sagoon, 1893, p. 142.

(14) 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, pp. 36, 42.

(15) Hansjürgen Müller-Beck, Die Steinzeit: der Weg der Menschen in die Geschichte, München: Verlag C.H. Beck, 2001, pp. 66-68.

(16) Tacitus, Germania, circa 98CE, Chapter 11; Bede, De Temporum Ratione, 725CE, Chapter 15; and Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, circa 817-833CE, Chapter 29. From these and other historical sources, we can reconstruct an actual Continental Heathen calendar.

(17) I am indebted to the work of the Chicago-based Saxon reconstructionist Heathen Robert Sass, whose website Aldsidu.com is an essential source for Continental Heathens; and the Swedish scholar Dr. Andreas Nordberg's work on the historic Norse calendar: Jul, disting och förkyrklig tideräkning: Kalendrar och Kalendariska riter i det förkristna Norden (Uppsala: Kungl Gustav Adolfs Akademien för Svensk folkkultur, 2006).

(18) For the Coligny calendar and Druidic astrology in general, I recommend the work of the Quebecois Celtic Pagan Michel-Gérald Boutet.

Tuesday, February 25, 2020

Roots of Proto-Celtic/Germanic Mythos, folk faith in prehistoric Swabia? (Part 2)

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)



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.

Tuesday, February 11, 2020

Roots of Proto-Celtic/Germanic mythos, folk faith in prehistoric Swabia? (Part 1)

by Sean Jobst
10 February 2020

Several archaeological findings throughout Swabia (Schwaben) illuminate our understanding of how the traditions and worldview of the tribes later known as Germanic and Celtic peoples first developed. Its my contention that there has been a distinct continuity within the region, so that the people known as the Swabians, Bavarians, Swiss and Austrians are descended not only from the Germanic tribes that migrated down into the Alpine regions, but also from the previous Danubian Celts of the Hallstatt culture.

Other Celtic cultures simultaneously arose in Gaul and Celtiberia, from whence they spread into Britannia and Ireland - where the same intermarriage with the previous prehistoric peoples (not as "backward" as establishment historiography assumes) and the great megalith builders occurred as on the Continent. So its not that Hallstatt culture gave rise to all the Celtic peoples, but specifically those within the Alpine regions with such great sites as Heuneburg.

Continuous history shows that we are indigenous to our region, with later additions of Celtic and Germanic blood shaping our current identity(1) - they came not as invading horsemen, but as settlers who harmonized their traditions with those of the pre-Celtic peoples in what can be identified as our specific expression of Paganism. In turn, this Paganism can be recovered not only in archaeological findings but also in folklore which survived however in thinly-veiled Christianized form(2).



35,000-40,000 year old Vogelherdhöhle horse figure

What the oldest figurine art reveals

Dated to between 35,000-40,000 years ago, figures carved from mammoth bones uncovered at the site of Vogelherdhöhle represent the oldest figurine art found anywhere in the world to date! One of the figurines showed a horse, a motif that was to be found throughout all Indo-European traditions - but their discovery in pre-historic Swabia point to deeper roots than an ancestral Steppe memory. Its my contention the horse has deeper shamanic connotations beyond just a literal representation of a domesticated animal.

The god the Suebi-Alemanni knew as Wuodan(3) was seen throughout continental imagery riding a horse, which connect to his abilities to travel across worlds. Wuodan is a Wanderer steeped in esoteric connotations. His associations included the underworld and death; the "breath" of inspiration, whether it be the ecstatic fury of the warrior or the inspiration of the poet and writer; and with the wind itself(4). All these associations conjure up images of the esoteric - an unseen force present in all directions, just as his wandering extends across different worlds as truly a journey of self-discovery. He is more shadowy and mysterious than other gods such as Ziu the Sky Father, or Donar the Thunderer - but all aspects are within and without us, part of both ourselves and our landscape.



Based on the Merseburg Incantation, the painting
"Wodan Heals Balder's Horse" (1905) by the
Bavarian artist Emil Doepler

In ancient times the horse was a motif representing not just travel by land but also by sea and the sky - all conveying images of the three Shamanic realms: As Above, So Below(5). The Celtiberians linked the god Lugus with horses and the Earth Mother goddess(6), much like Wuodan in Germanic lore was associated with Mutter Erde. Inscriptions similarly connected Lugus with arable lands and soils fertilized by the rain - hence, the sky. However, the god Lugus seems most similar to in the Germanic pantheon is Ziu; although the rain fertilizing the soil would also be similar to Donar's interplay with Sibba(7).

Within the Greek Mythos, the god Poseidon was associated not only with the sea but also with horses and earthquakes. He was said to have first created the horse from a stone. The thundering hooves of a horse conveyed images of an earth shaking, just like the associations of Wuodan with "ecstasy" or "breath". Poseidon shapeshifting into a stallion to mount the agricultural goddess Demeter, is an allegory for fertilization of the soil - the same two-fold exchange of cosmic and earth energies.

These same energies in their various forms, were the interplay of Ziu, Wuodan and Donar within the Germanic pantheon with aspects of the Earth Goddess. (See my examination of the Suebi goddess Zisa). Poseidon was honored with horse sacrifices and chariot races, just as Indo-European cultures generally portrayed the Sun being pulled by a horse-drawn chariot across the sky, and the various traditions of the Wild Hunt. To the Irish, the god Mannanan mac Lir was associated with both the sea and horses....So in prehistoric symbolism, the horse could symbolize a shamanic journey across different realms so we can truly know ourselves - the different aspects of ourselves being a reflection of the interplay of land, sea and sky.

 
Mammoth figurine from Vogelherdhöhle



The "Venus of Hohlefels" as a Primordial Earth Mother Goddess

Another figurine found at Vogelherdhöhle represents a mammoth, illustrating not only the prehistory of these findings but likewise - as we will see especially in part 2 - significance that so many of these most ancient objects were carved from mammoth bones. Could it not be that this animal whose meat yielded food, whose fur was used to give both warmth and shelter, also represented the bounties of the Earth? Its my strong opinion that this approach gave rise also to what the great mythologist Joseph Campbell termed "Our Lady of the Mammoths", whom I understand as prototype of the Mother Goddess who our Celtic and Germanic ancestors alike saw as associated with the hunt, the forests and wilderness. 


Campbell based his terminology on findings in the Dnieper Valley of Ukraine, where mammoth skulls were found arranged around a female figurine: "Who, reading of the figure amid the mammoth skulls, does not think of Artemis as the lady of the wild things?"(8) To the ancient Greeks, "Artemis" was the goddess of the hunt - as with most other academics, Campbell used Greco-Roman terms but the same Archetype existed under different names among our Ancestors as well. The mammoth later gave rise to other animals such as the bear - indeed, the Hellenic Artemis' name is linked to arktos "bear" and later gave rise to "arctic" and associated with the "North Star"(9) - and the deer, which was specifically the animal associated with her Roman equivalent, Diana. More on the shamanism behind these animal representations when I discuss the "Löwenmensch" in Part 2.

40,000-year-old "Venus of Hohle Fels" found near Schelklingen  


Aside from Vogelherdhöhle, many paleolithic-era findings were also uncovered at Hohle Fels ("hollow rock"), whose very shape - when seen without the present coverage of tree growth - closely resembles the "mouth" of the mountain.(10) This astonishing fact relates to similacrum which exist within the psyche whilst manifesting throughout Nature, including spirals and various solar symbols. One of the findings at this important site near Schelklingen is the 35,000-40,000-year-old female figurine that has been dubbed "Venus of Hohle Fels". This creation of the Aurignacian culture that extended throughout Central and Southern Europe, predated the "Venus" figurines of the Gravettian culture - further extending back the prehistory of our region.

Much like later Celtic findings from Heuneburg and other Hallstatt sites, whose art was geometric, the "Venus" figurines were abstract, without concrete human features. Like the "Venus of Laussel" figure found in the Aquitaine region of southwest France, the Hohle Fels figure contains massive breasts and hips, but neither face nor feet. As a head or face is what gives individuation, the abstract headless figure with large breasts and hips personified the female principle of fertility - just as the two phalluses found at the same site corresponded to the male principle of fertility. Both the "Venus" and phalluses were carved from mammoth ivory, representing life cycles and the Earth's bounties born out of a symbolic interaction of the two principles.


Academics often have an obsession of giving Greco-Roman names (similar to the Mideastern obsession of their more religious counterparts) to other European cultures, but our Celtic and Germanic ancestors had their own names for the Mother Goddess than the Roman "Venus". Conveying the multiplicity of Nature, her various aspects are personified under different goddess names within our Swabian regions: Frau Holle, Perchta, or Zisa. Frau Holle/Holda/Perchta was associated with the "wind", underworld and hunting - thus her dual role to Wuodan, a "wind" god often linked alongside her to the Wild Hunt, and her regional names ("Gode/Wode") elsewhere linked her to his "wife" Frija.(11)




"Mistress of the Wild Hunt" (1860) by the
Prussian painter Ludwig Pietsch



Both hunting and wind motifs carry deeper shamanic allegories, perhaps why Frau Holle/Perchta was linked by medieval Christian authorities with the folk-healing women they persecuted as "witches". Generally the Christians linked her alongside her fellow huntress Diana as "queen of witchcraft". As documented by French medievalist Claude Lecouteux, traditions about the "Wild Hunt" show the remarkable survival of Paganism long after Europe's Christianization.(12) Holle seems to have her roots in the Neolithic era as theorized by Marija Gimbutas(13), lending credence to my hypothesis that this ancient "Lady of the Mammoth" whose personifications were found at such sites as Hohle Fels represents a prototypal Mother Goddess that later gave rise to Celtic and Germanic Goddesses.


A tantalizing link can possibly be seen in the word höhle "cave", which we could link with Holle, who within her aspect as the goddess Hel was specifically linked to the underworld - a realm not of "punishment" as per the Abrahamic religions, but of re-evaluation and reflection over future incarnations as life was always and everywhere before those religions conceived as an endless cycle. Holle's name also relates to "hole", symbolic of her coming from a "hole" from within the earth via burial mounds(14), to take deceased souls into the underworld. Yet she was also related like earth mothers(15) to the surface and some aspects of weather - a female counterpart to the god Wuodan who also linked the different shamanic realms:

"The character of Frau Holle is so interesting because she unites both a light and dark divine aspect. Observing the Greek or Egyptian pantheon gods of light and gods of darkness stick out, gods of the upperworld and underworld, Olympian and chthonic gods. Frau Holle unites both aspects; she lingers and acts as well in her underworld as in the light; not for nothing is she also named 'the White Woman'. She rewards and punishes the living but also wanders around with a host of dead. This makes Frau Holle a unique character. In the Germanic pantheon, the frontier between the world of the living and the dead is generally not as clear as in other pantheons. The realm of the goddess Hel (Helheim, which is even lower than the cold realm of Niflheim), where most of the dead linger, is in Germanic mythology an underworld, but Valhalla, a realm for the deceased (heroes) too, is located in an upper-world (Asgard). Thus is united in a personified form an important concept of Germanic religion in the divine character of Frau Holle."(16)



Such spiritual realities as Animism, Magic and Shamanism
were integral parts of our Ancestral faith. (Picture taken from my
visit to the Landesmuseum Württemburg, Stuttgart, 8 July 2016)


In her manifestations as Hel and Perchta, the goddess was portrayed as having two "faces" - one young and beautiful, while the other was old and "deformed". Related to Hel being the realm of self-reflection, this refers to you "choosing" your own experience - will you use your time wisely to grow, or willingly choose to remain within the lower self, the "punishment" is only of your own making while the way she appears to you is based on your own reflection. The Christianized portrayals of Perchta - despite her name relating to "bright" - as a "hag" nevertheless betray a deeper connection with protection as in the Hagalaz Rune. While Germanic warriors inscribed the Tiwaz Rune of the god Ziu upon their sword (Ziu's name among the Saxon tribe directly relates to "sword"), they often inscribed the Hagalaz Rune upon their protective shields.

A similar relation to the Runes is with *Berkanan, meaning "birch" and "rebirth". In the same way, Perchta could be associated with brooms which were often made from birch bark; its no accident that Holle/Perchta was associated with those female folk-healers labeled as "witches" whose own symbol became the broomstick. Her dual nature was similar to the Runes, with dual meanings based on whether upright or inverted. The same "cleansing" nature can be seen in the bells which her "perchten" wear to ward off negative spirits - the vibrations given off by those bells having shamanic allegories of warding off negative energy in the same way Hagalaz is protective. As she was found with a perforated protrusion, archaeologists have suggested the Hohle Fels figurine was worn as an amulet. The "motherly" energy is certainly one that is nurturing and protective, as encoded throughout the lore.



Hagalaz Rune



*Berkanan Rune


That Perchta emerged from an amalgamation of Germanic and Celtic traditions within the Alpine regions has already been accepted by academics(17), but her various qualities indicate a Shamanism which is the primordial origin of both Celtic and Germanic folk faith. As for the fertility aspect of the "Venus"' large breasts, this corresponds to the place-name Cisenberg near Augsburg related to the goddess Zisa, "mountain in the form of a breast (zitze)"(18). As consort of the sky father Ziu, the goddess Zisa naturally represents fertility and earth - while the consort of Wuodan in her various forms as Erde, Holle, Holda personifies other aspects.

The very fact that Neolithic cultures did not give the "Venus" figures a face illustrates the multiplicity inherent within Nature: its various aspects cannot be personified as only one deity. We are similarly multifaceted as individuals; our psyche has different aspects; and the deities on some level are Archetypal representations of our psyche while being Divine in their own right as much as there is a Divine Energy manifesting Nature and the Cosmos. Archaeological evidence, the prehistoric origins of fairy tales(19), and various folk traditions illustrate a remarkable antiquity to and survival of our most ancient ancestral faith which has adapted itself alongside our own growth.


FOOTNOTES:

(1) Among good sources about the Celtic element in Swabian heritage are Dr. Wolf-Dieter Storl, the cultural anthropologist and ethno-botanist who was born in Saxony but has lived in Bavarian Swabia for quite some time and brilliantly highlights our ancestral shamanism; and the Ann Arbor, Michigan writer George Weiland, on the "Celtic German" website.

(2) Contrary to those who think we have to "reclaim" something which was "lost", our ancestral Pagan traditions - and this applies to other peoples - survived in a remarkable continuity, despite over a thousand of years of forced conversion. Especially we who descend from Catholic regions, the Church simply co-opted our traditions which can be decoded as remnants of our indigenous beliefs by understanding the inherent allegories and patterns beyond the outer "Christian" terms and concepts. We do not need later Scandinavian texts which were collected by monks who saturated them with Christianized concepts.

(3) The "d" was later rendered as "t" in Old High German, hence his later continental name of Wuotan ->Wotan.

(4) The Vedic god Vayu is also associated with the Wind and his name associated with "breath", so there may be a common Proto-Indo-European etymological root.

(5) As with other occult principles stemming from Natural Law, this "Law of Correspondence" is contained throughout our ancestral lore. It was instinctively understood by Pagans who saw all the realms as reflections of each other, governed by the same natural/cosmic laws. We will see it in Part 2 with "The Adorant" figure and Celtic-Germanic practices of "sun gazing".

(6) A simultaneous interest of mine is Celtiberian Paganism, as a homage to the Spanish aspect of my heritage. Expanding archaeological evidence and academic studies in Spanish universities has uncovered much about the traditions, spiritual practices and worldview of the Celtiberians. Future articles will highlight some of these aspects and hopefully fill in some of the void of this neglected subject.

(7) The "wife" of Donar, her name being the etymological root of modern German sippe "family; kin" illustrates the allegories of us being collectively "born" and nourished by the soil. As with Ziu, Wuodan and Donar, I use the name attested to in Continental sources and not the more-famous Scandinavian names, simply because my heritage is Continental not Norse - while we recognize that close parallels and common patterns exist.

(8) Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, London: Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd., 1960, p. 328.

(9) See Paul Shepard and Barry Sanders, The Sacred Paw: The Bear in Nature, Myth, and Literature, New York: Viking, 1985, pp. 112-118; and Christopher McIntosh, Beyond the North Wind: The Fall and Rise of the Mystic North, Newburyport, MA: Weiser Books, 2019, pp. 32-33.

(10) See the article at <http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/germanyhohlefels.htm> which links to several other informative articles.

(11) For an excellent and comprehensive discussion of the rich folklore concerning Frau Holle/Holda/Perchta, see: GardenStone, Goddess Holle: In search of a Germanic goddess, Norderstadt, Schleswig-Holstein: BoD - Books on Demand GmbH, 2011.

(12) See Claude Lecouteux, Phantom Armies of the Night: The Wild Hunt and the Ghostly Processions of the Undead, Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2011.

(13) See Marija Gimbutas, The Living Goddesses, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.

(14) As in other regions throughout the world, mounds are scattered throughout Schwaben. See my article from 15 October 2018, when I was still discovering only a fraction of what I now have come to know on my journey: <https://swabian-pride.blogspot.com/2018/10/cairns-megalithic-mounds-and-mithraeums.html>.

(15) Its not a stretch to suggest that Erde, the term for the personified Earth, could have related to an earlier word with a dropped "h" -> (h)erde, holle, holda....In similar linguistic transition as the "g" and "w" in medieval Old High German; or the Alemannic "c" and "z" transition I uncovered when researching about Zisa and Ziu.

(16) GardenStone, op. cit., p. 9.

(17) Erika Timm and Gustav Adolf Beckmann, Frau Holle, Frau Percht und verwandte Gestalten: 160 Jahre nach Jacob Grimm aus germanistischer Sicht betrachtet, Stuttgart: Hirzel S. Verlag, 2003.

(18) R. Kohl, "Die Augsburger Cisa - eine germanische Göttin?," Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, Leipzig, Vol. 33, 1936, pp. 21-39.

(19) A 2016 joint study by two academics, a Durham anthropologist and Lisbon folklorist, established the prehistoric origins of Indo-European fairy tales: <https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsos.150645>. The story was even picked up by the mainstream media: <https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-35358487>.