A Practical Guide to Pagan Priesthood: Community Leadership and Vocation

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Old English place-names also provide some insight into the pre-Christian beliefs and practices of Anglo-Saxon England. Similarly, four Anglo-Saxon burials have been excavated where it appears that the individual was buried while still alive, which could imply that this was a part of either a religious rite or as a form of punishment. British Romanticism at the same time had at its disposal both a Celtic and a Viking revival, but nothing focusing on the Anglo-Saxons because there was very little evidence of their pagan mythology still surviving. Dunn suggested that for Anglo-Saxon pagans, most everyday interactions would not have been with major deities but with such "lesser supernatural beings".

Pagan Priesthood: Setting the Table, Restoring the - Patheos Pagan Priesthood: Setting the Table, Restoring the - Patheos

Developing from the earlier Iron Age religion of continental northern Europe, it was introduced to Britain following the Anglo-Saxon migration in the mid 5th century, and remained the dominant belief system in England until the Christianisation of its kingdoms between the 7th and 8th centuries, with some aspects gradually blending into folklore.The deity's name also appears in other compounds too, as with Thunderfield ("Thunor's Open Land") in Surrey and Thunores hlaew ("Thunor's Mound") in Kent. For instance, many Norse mythological themes and motifs are present in the poetry composed for the court of Cnut the Great, an eleventh-century Anglo-Scandinavian king who had been baptised into Christianity and who otherwise emphasised his identity as a Christian monarch. Elves seem to have had some place in earlier pre-Christian beliefs, as evidenced by the presence of the Anglo-Saxon language prefix ælf in early given names, such as Ælfsige (elf victory), Ælfwynn (elf friend), Ælfgar (elf spear), Ælfgifu (elf gift), Ælfric (elf power) and Ælfred (modern "Alfred", meaning "elf counsel"), amongst others. Some men are so blind that they bring their offering to earth-fast stone and also to trees and to wellsprings, as the witches teach, and are unwilling to understand how stupidly they do or how that dead stone or that dumb tree might help them or give forth health when they themselves are never able to stir from their place.

Pagan priesthood, practically: an interview with Lora O’Brien

The historian Clive Tolley has cautioned that any Anglo-Saxon world tree would likely not be directly comparable to that referenced in Norse textual sources. As archaeologist Sarah Semple noted, "the rituals [of the early Anglo-Saxons] involved the full pre-Christian repertoire: votive deposits, furnished burial, monumental mounds, sacred natural phenomenon and eventually constructed pillars, shrines and temples", thereby having many commonalities with other pre-Christian religions in Europe.A number of Scandinavian furnished burial styles were also introduced that differed from the Christian churchyard burials then dominant in Late Anglo-Saxon England. In the seventh century, the first laws against pagan sacrifices appeared, while in the Paenitentiale Theodori one to ten years' penance was allotted for making sacrifices or for eating sacrificed meat. Another form of burial was that of ship burials, which were practised by many of the Germanic peoples across northern Europe. This possibility is linked to an account provided by Tacitus in his Germania in which he refers to a male pagan priest who wore female clothing.

Pagan Israelite Priests Were the Celtic Druids Pagan Israelite Priests

According to Semple "ancient remains in the landscape held a significant place in the Anglo-Saxon mind as part of a wider, numinous, spiritual and resonant landscape". There was also a belief in a variety of other supernatural entities which inhabited the landscape, including elves, nicors, and dragons. Various recurring symbols appear on certain pagan Anglo-Saxon artefacts, in particular on grave goods. Stenton assumes that the connection between Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian paganism occurred "in a past which was already remote" at the time of the Anglo-Saxon migration to Britain, [25] and claims that there was clear diversity among the pre-Christian belief systems of Scandinavia itself, further complicating the use of Scandinavian material to understand that of England. While historical investigation into Germanic paganism and its mythology began in the seventeenth century with Peder Resen's Edda Islandorum (1665), this largely focused only upon Norse mythology, much of which was preserved in Old Icelandic sources.A number of place-names including reference to pre-Christian deities compound these names with the Old English word lēah ("wood", or "clearing in a wood"), and this may have attested to a sacred grove at which cultic practice took place. Not only do we need to figure out what we want our priests to do, we need a bigger vocabulary for religious specialists. There is no evidence that anyone living in Anglo-Saxon England ever described themselves as a "pagan" or understood there to be a singular religion, "paganism", that stood as a monolithic alternative to Christianity. A number of other place-names associate the deity's name with a high point in the landscape, such as dūn or hōh, which might represent that such spots were considered particularly appropriate for cultic practice.

Review: A practical guide to Pagan priesthood | Wiccan Rede

Yet the fact that these questions are coming to me shows that – at least in part – we expect our priests to have some expertise with contemplative practices.The leader of this mission, Augustine, probably landed in Thanet, then part of the Kingdom of Kent, in the summer of 597. There has however been speculation that 23 of the corpses at the Sutton Hoo burial site were sacrificial victims clustered around a sacred tree from which they had been hanged. She suggested that those who were used as victims included slaves, criminals, or prisoners of war, and that such sacrifices were only resorted to in times of crisis, such as plagues, famine, or attack.