27 Oct 2010

The Christian Gleichschaltung


Gleichschaltung is a German word that is usually associated with the history of Nazi Germany. It means "coordination," "making the same", or "bringing into line," and refers to the process of establishing a totalitarian system.

But Nazi-ism was not the first totalitarian system nor was it by any means the most successful. That dubious honour belongs to the Christian religion. It is therefore appropriate to apply this term with all its connotations of totalitarianism, tyranny and forcible standardization of culture to the process by which Christianity took over the rich pagan world of Europe and transformed it over the centuries into the arid abstractionism of Christian totalitarianism.

Where it found a rich and varied religious topgraphy, it left a bleak, spiritual desert, much like the actual desert that spawned it.

Priapus and the Phallic Saints


Priapus is a well-known Roman fertility god. After the Christianization of Europe, his worship was suppressed along with all the other pagan gods. But, while certain gods and goddesses could be subsumed relatively easily into Christianity (for example, the worship of Diana was a natural fit with the cult of the Virgin Mary, and Mithras could be merged into the Archangel Michael), Priapus was more difficult to blend into Christianity's anti-sexual system.

17 Oct 2010

The Pagan Sites of Europe Remembered: (11) Donar's Oak, Geismar, Germany

The site of the Donar Oak with a statue showing St. Boniface atop a tree stump

An oak tree that once stood at the town of Geismar in central Germany was sacred to the pagan god Thor. We know this because the somewhat fanciful account of its destruction was gleefully preserved by the Christian chroniclers of the cultural genocide of Europe's indigenous culture.

The Pagan Sites of Europe Remembered: (10) The Temple of Uppsala, Sweden


An early 20th-century reimagining of the Temple of Uppsala by Carl Larsson

One of the most authentic, interesting, and specific accounts of pre-Christian paganism was written by Adam of Bremen, a German chronicler of the 11th century, in his ecclesiastical history of the Bishopric of Hamburg.

As a Christian, he was obviously biased against paganism, but nevertheless managed to preserve some interesting information about the pagan beliefs that preceded the cultural genocide committed by the Church.

His mention of human sacrifice is a typical example of Christian hypocrisy, as the Church continued to sacrifice millions in its crusades, inquisitions, and witch hunts for many years to come.

2 Oct 2010

The Celtic Pantheon


The Christian church did a thorough job eradicating traces of earlier religions. This is especially true in the case of the Celtic pagan religion. Following the Roman conquest of Gaul and Britain, the Celtic religion was marginalized and Romanized. This means that that there are few reliable historical records of it. Also, the Celtic lands, including Ireland, were among the first to be Christianized. These factors mean that the ancient pagan religion of the Celts is shrouded in mist, with only the occasional glint of sunlight.