Researching Origins - Deutsche Mythologie

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This is a post I was creating when Buried was released. I had it saved as a draft on the old forum & actually thought I had lost it until I found the saved word document. So I thought, "I might as well post it."
 
I started reading about Jacob Grimm whose book "Grimm's Fairy Tales" is found in Buried. I was also reading about the History of the Ahnenerbe (Nazi Research Organisation). When these 2 topics collided & had so much in common, I knew I was onto something. Backtracing the history of Ahnenerbe you will most likely come across many of the titles listed below. The name "Ahnenerbe" gives this away - "Something inherited from the forefathers".
 
 
When the trailer for Origins was released, I doubted this thread & started writing one about Tombs & Megaliths. Putting this post on the backburner. Looking back at Origins & the content that is put into the map, things like - Nordic Gods - Thor, Odin & Freya, Runestones and the Futhark Language, I can't believe how much of my "draft" was included. Unbelievable!  
 
 
This is pretty much unedited, unformatted & unfinished from the draft I created. So I thought why waste the hours I spent making this, why not post it. So, even if you skim over it, I hope you see the many key words I have hightlighted & wonder if the next storyline involves going back in history, but forward in time?

 

 

Backtracing the Start of the Zombies Storyline

 

Ahnenerbe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Himmler

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahnenerbe

 
The Ahnenerbe was a Nazi research institute that promoted itself as a "study society for Intellectual Ancient History." Founded on July 1, 1935, by Heinrich Himmler, Herman Wirth, and Richard Walther Darré, the Ahnenerbe's goal was to research the archaeological and cultural history of the Aryan race, and later to experiment and launch voyages with the intent of proving that prehistoric and mythological Nordic populations had once ruled the world. Its name came from a rather obscure German word, Ahnenerbe (pronounced AH-nen-AIR-buh), meaning "something inherited from the forefathers." The official mission of the Ahnenerbe was to unearth "new evidence of the accomplishments and deeds of Germanic ancestors using exact scientific methods."
 

 
Formally, the group was called Studiengesellschaft für Geistesurgeschichte‚ Deutsches Ahnenerbe e.V. ("Study society for primordial intellectual history, German Ancestral Heritage, registered society"), and was renamed in 1937, as Forschungs- und Lehrgemeinschaft das Ahnenerbe e.V. ("Research and Teaching Community of the Ancestral Heritage, registered society"). Much misinformation about the Ahnenerbe has circulated, due in part to adaptations of the group in fiction, and historically dubious conspiracy theories which sometimes confuse the Ahnenerbe with the roughly contemporaneous Thule Society, or the historically unverified Vril society.
 
 

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List of Expeditions 

 
Karelia, Finland
A voyage through the Karelia region of Finland, to record pagan sorcerers and witches. One of the trip’s final successes was in finding Miron-Aku, a soothsayer believed to be a witch by locals. Upon meeting the group, she claimed to have foreseen their arrival. The team persuaded her to perform a ritual for the camera and tape recorder in which she could summon the spirits of ancestors and "divine future events."  
 
 
Bohuslän, Sweden
Bohuslän was known for its massive quantity of petroglyph rock carvings, which Wirth believed were part of an ancient writing system, predating all other known systems. On August 4, 1936 the expedition set off on a three month trip starting with the German island of Rügen then continuing to Backa, Sweden, the first recorded rock-art site in Sweden. Despite scenes showing warriors, animals and ships, Wirth focused on the lines and circles he thought made up a prehistoric alphabet.  ItalyIn 1937, the Ahnenerbe sent to Val Camonica the archaeologist Franz Altheim and his wife photographer Erika Trautmann to study prehistoric rock inscriptions. The two returned to Germany claiming they found traces of Nordic runes on the rocks supposedly confirming that ancient Rome was originally of Nordic descent.  
 
 
Middle East
In August 1938, after spending a few days traveling through remote hills searching for ruins of Dacian kingdoms, the two researchers arrived at their first major stop in Bucharest, the capital of Romania.  
 
 
New Swabia
Like many other countries, Germany sent expeditions to the Antarctic region in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most of which were scientific. The late 19th century expeditions to the Southern Ocean, South Georgia, the Kerguelen Islands, and the Crozet Islands were astronomical, meteorological, and hydrological, mostly in close collaboration with scientific teams from other countries. As the 19th century ended Germany began to focus on Antarctica.
 

 
Murg Valley, Germany
In 1937 and 1938, Gustav Riek led an excavation of the Grosse Heuneberg, where an ancient fortress had been discovered much earlier. They also studied the nearby Tumulus burial mounds, which continue to be excavated today. A private expedition of Richard Anders and Wiligut into the Murg Valley had nothing to do with the Ahnenerbe.  
 
 
Mauern, Germany
In fall 1937, Dr. Assien Bohmer, a Frisian nationalist who applied to the SS Excavations Department earlier that year, took over the excavation. His team proceeded to find artifacts such as burins, ivory pendants, and a woolly mammoth skeleton. They also discovered Neanderthal remains buried with what appeared to be throwing spears and javelins, a technology thought to have been developed by the Cro-Magnons.  
 
 
Trois-Frères, France
At the Parisian Institute for Human Paleontology, Bohmers met with Abbé Henri Breuil, an expert on cave art. Breuil arranged for Bohmers to visit Trois Frères, a site whose owners only allowed a small number of people to visit. First, however, Bohmers took a quick trip to London, followed by a tour of several other French points of interest: La Fond de Gaume (a site featuring Cro-Magnon cave paintings), Teyat, La Mouthe and the caves of Dordogne. Then Bohmers moved on to Les Trois-Frères.  
 
 
Bayeux Tapestry
The Ahnenerbe took great interest in the 900-year-old Bayeux Tapestry. In June 1941, they oversaw the transport of the tapestry from its home in the Bayeux Cathedral, to an abbey at Juaye-Mondaye, and finally to the Chateau de Sourches. In August 1944, after Paris was liberated by the Allies, two members of the SS were dispatched to Paris to retrieve the tapestry which had been moved into the basement of the Louvre. Contrary to Himmler’s orders, however, they chose not to attempt to enter the Louvre, most likely because of the strong presence of the French Resistance in the historic area.  
 
 
Tibet
In 1937, Himmler decided he could increase the Ahnenerbe’s visibility by investigating Hans F. K. Günther’s claims that early Aryans had conquered much of Asia, including attacks against China and Japan in approximately 2000 BC, and that Gautama Buddha was himself an Aryan offspring of the Nordic race.  CrimeaAfter the German army conquered the Crimea in early July 1942, Himmler sent Dr. Herbert Jankuhn, as well as Karl Kersten (de) and Baron Wolf von Seefeld, to the region in search of artifacts to follow up the recent displaying of the Kerch “Gothic crown of the Crimea” in Berlin. Traveling with the 5th SS Panzer, Jankuhn’s team eventually reached Maikop, where they received a message from Sievers that Himmler wanted an investigation of Mangup Kale, an ancient mountain fortress. Jankuhn sent Kersten to follow up on Mangup Kale, while the rest of the team continued trying to secure artifacts that had not already been taken by the Red Army.
 
 

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Cancelled expeditions 

 
 
Bolivia
After winning 20,000 Reichsmark in a writing contest, Edmund Kiss traveled to Bolivia in 1928 to study the ruins of temples in the Andes mountains. He claimed their similarity to ancient European construction indicated they were designed by Nordic migrants, millions of years earlier. He also claimed that his findings supported the World Ice Theory, which claimed the universe originated from a cataclysmic clash between gigantic balls of ice and glowing mass. Arthur Posnansky had been studying a local site called Tiwanaku, which he also believed supported the theory. After contacting Posnansky, Kiss approached Wüst for help planning an expedition to excavate Tiwanaku and a nearby site, Siminake. The team would consist of twenty scientists and would excavate for a year as well as explore Lake Titicaca, take aerial photographs of ancient Incan roads they believed had Nordic roots. By late August 1939, the expedition was nearly set to embark, however the September first invasion of Poland saw the trip postponed indefinitely.
 
 

"Gateway of the Sun", Tiwanaku,

drawn by Ephraim Squier in 1877. The scale is exaggerated in this drawing.

  

 

Iran
In 1938, Ahnenerbe president Walther Wüst proposed a trip to Iran to study the Behistun Inscription, which had been created by order of the Achaemenid Shah Darius I—who had declared himself to have been of Aryan origin in his inscriptions.%5B1%5D The inscriptions were recorded atop steep cliffs using scaffolding that was removed after the inscriptions were made.  
 
 
Canary Islands
Early travelers to the Canary Islands had described the Guanche natives as having golden-blond hair and white skin, and mummies had been found with blond tresses—facts which Wirth believed indicated that the islands had once been inhabited by Nordics. His colleague Dr. Otto Huth proposed a Fall 1939 expedition to study the ancient islanders’ racial origins, artifacts and religious rites. At the time, the Canary Islands were part of Francisco Franco’s Spanish State (Estado Español). Because Franco refused to side with the Axis when the war started however, the trip was cancelled.
 
 

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Failed seizure of Tacitus manuscript

 
The Ahnenerbe had tried to gain possession of the Codex Aesinas, a famous mediaeval copy of Tacitus' Germania. Although Mussolini had originally promised it as a gift in 1936, it remained in the possession of the Count Aurelio Baldeschi Guglielmi Balleani outside Ancona, from where the Ahnenerbe tried to obtain it after Mussolini was deposed.
 

 

Black Sun

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sun_(occult_symbol) 

 

 

 
The term Black Sun (German Schwarze Sonne), also referred to as the Sonnenrad (the German for "Sun Wheel"), is a symbol of esoteric and occult significance. Its design is based on a sun wheel incorporated in a floor of Wewelsburg Castle during the Nazi era. Today, it may also be used in occult currents of Germanic neopaganism, and in Irminenschaft or Armanenschaft -inspired esotericism - but not necessarily in a racial or neo-Nazi context. Despite its contemporary use, the Black Sun had not been identified with the ornament in the Wewelsburg before 1991, although it had been discussed as an esoteric concept in neo-Nazi circles since the 1950s.
 
 

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The Wewelsburg mosaic

 
 
The shape of the symbol as it is used within Germanic mysticist esotericism and Neo-Nazism today is based primarily on the design of a floor mosaic at the castle of Wewelsburg (built 1603), a Renaissance castle located in the northwest of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.During the Third Reich the castle became the representative and ideological center of the order of the SS. Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS, wanted to establish the "Center of the New World". A focus of the actual SS-activities at the castle were archaeological excavations in the surrounding region and studies on Germanic early history.
 
 

 

 

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The Vienna Circle

 
 
The "Black Sun" is often associated with the mystic-esoteric aspects of National Socialism. Origin of a phantastic post war "SS mysticism" which refers to the "Black Sun" is a right-wing esoteric circle in Vienna in the early 1950s. The former SS member Wilhelm Landig of the Vienna Circle "coined the idea of the Black Sun, a substitute swastika and mystical source of energy capable of regenerating the Aryan race". Rudolf J. Mund (also a former SS member and later also member of the Vienna Circle) discusses a relationship of the Black Sun with alchemy. The visible sun is described as a symbol of an invisible anti-sun: "Everything that can be comprehended by human senses is material, the shadow of the invisible spiritual light. The material fire is - seen in this way - also just the shadow of the spiritual fire."
 
 
 

Black Sun Symbol imprinted as a Maze – Shangri-la

 

 

 

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Nazi and Neo-Nazi significance

 

 
The term Black Sun may originate with the mystical "Central Sun" in Helena Blavatsky's Theosophy. This invisible or burnt out Sun (Karl Maria Wiligut's Santur in Nazi mysticism) symbolizes an opposing force or pole. Emil Rüdiger, of Rudolf John Gorslebens Edda-Gesellschaft (Edda Society), claimed that a fight between the new and the old Suns was decided 330,000 years ago (Karl Maria Wiligut dates this 280,000 years ago), and that Santur had been the source of power of the Hyperboreans. The Wewelsburg symbol can be deconstructed into three swastikas; a "rising", a "zenith" & a "setting" one, the design is popular among German Neo-Nazis as a replacement for the outlawed singular swastika symbol. Another interpretation is that the symbol incorporates twelve reversed "Sig runes" of the Armanen runes. Allegedly, the design was drawn for Heinrich Himmler from an "old Aryan emblem", and was meant to mimic the Round table of Arthurian legend with each spoke of the sun wheel representing one "knight" or Officer of the "inner" SS. The symbol of the Black Sun is purported to unite the three most important symbols of Nazi ideology - the sun wheel, the swastika and the stylized victory rune." and that it is symbolic in its form representing "the twelve SS Knights of The Order of the Death's Head and their three retainers"

 

 

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Nazi UFO's

 
In 1988/1990 and 1992, the Austrian authors Norbert Jürgen Ratthofer and Ralf Ettl produced the documentaries "UFO - Das Dritte Reich schlägt zurück? (1998/1990) (UFO - The Third Reich Strikes Back?)" and "UFO - Geheimnisse des Dritten Reichs (1990) (UFO - Secrets of the Third Reich)" which talks of the Thule Society with the Geheimnis Schwarze Sun flashing on screen and talking about it.   Professor Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke states that "In the early 1990s, the Austrians Norbert Jürgen Ratthofer and Ralf Ettl and developed new nazi UFO myths involving ancient Babylon, Vril energy and extraterrestrial civilisation in the solar system of Aldebaran. These colourful ideas are integral elements of a dualist Marcionite religion propagated by Ralf Ettl through his Tempelhofgesellschaft (Temple Society) in Vienna, identified as a secret successor to the historic Templars, who had absorbed Gnostic and heretical ideas in the Levant"  Ratthofer and Ettl state in "UFO - Geheimnisse des Dritten Reichs (1990) (UFO - Secrets of the Third Reich)" that "Within the SS the Thule Society created a separate secret organisation called the "Black Sun"" with the "Geheimnis Schwarze Sonne" as its logo. This is a reference to the older narrative developed by the Vienna circle.  
 

 

Schwarze Sonne & Vril UFO seen on the Der Riese Chalkboards

 

 

 

Thule Society

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_Society

 
The Thule Society (German: Thule-Gesellschaft), originally the Studiengruppe für germanisches Altertum ("Study Group for Germanic Antiquity"), was a German occultist and völkisch group in Munich, named after a mythical northern country from Greek legend. The Society is notable chiefly as the organization that sponsored the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP), which was later reorganized by Adolf Hitler into the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP or Nazi Party). The Thule Society was originally a "German study group" headed by Walter Nauhaus, a wounded World War I veteran turned art student from Berlin who had become a keeper of pedigrees for the Germanenorden (or "Order of Teutons"), a secret society founded in 1911 and formally named in the following year.  In 1917 Nauhaus moved to Munich; his Thule-Gesellschaft was to be a cover-name for the Munich branch of the Germanenorden, but events developed differently as a result of a schism in the Order. In 1918, Nauhaus was contacted in Munich by Rudolf von Sebottendorf (or von Sebottendorff), an occultist and newly elected head of the Bavarian province of the schismatic offshoot, known as the Germanenorden Walvater of the Holy Grail.
 

 

Germanenorden - Teutonic Order

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanenorden

 
The Germanenorden (Germanic or Teutonic Order, not to be confused with the medieval German order of the Teutonic Knights) was a völkisch secret society in early 20th century Germany. It was founded in Berlin in 1912 by Theodor Fritsch and several prominent German occultists including Philipp Stauff, who held office in the List Society and High Armanen Order as well as Hermann Pohl, who became the Germanenorden’s first leader. The group was a clandestine movement aimed at the upper echelons of society and was a sister movement to the more open and mainstream Reichshammerbund. The order, whose symbol was a swastika, had a hierarchical fraternal structure based on Freemasonry. Local groups of the sect met to celebrate the summer solstice, an important neopagan festivity in völkisch circles (and later in Nazi Germany), and more regularly to read the Eddas as well as some of the German mystics. In addition to occult and magical philosophies, it taught to its initiates nationalist ideologies of Nordic racial superiority and antisemitism, then rising throughout the Western world.  In 1916, during World War I, the Germanenorden split into two parts. Eberhard von Brockhusen became the Grand Master of the "loyalist" Germanenorden. Pohl, previously the order’s Chancellor, founded a schismatic offshoot: the Germanenorden Walvater of the Holy Grail. He was joined in the same year by Rudolf von Sebottendorff (formerly Rudolf Glauer), a wealthy adventurer with wide-ranging occult and mystical interests. A Freemason and a practitioner of sufism and astrology, Sebottendorff was also an admirer of Guido von List and Lanz von Liebenfels. Convinced that the Islamic and Germanic mystical systems shared a common Aryan root, he was attracted by Pohl’s runic lore and became the Master of the Walvater's Bavarian province late in 1917. Charged with reviving the province's fortunes, Sebottendorff increased membership from about a hundred in 1917 to 1500 by the autumn of the following year. The Munich lodge of the Germanenorden Walvater when it was formally dedicated on August 18, 1918 was given the cover name, the Thule Society, which is notable chiefly as the organization that sponsored the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP), which was later transformed by Adolf Hitler into the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi Party).
 

 

Ariosophy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariosophy

 
Armanism and Ariosophy are the names of ideological systems of an esoteric nature, pioneered by Guido von List and Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels respectively, in Austria between 1890 and 1930. The term 'Ariosophy', meaning wisdom concerning the Aryans, was first coined by Lanz von Liebenfels in 1915 and became the label for his doctrine in the 1920s. In historic research on the topic, such as Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's book The Occult Roots of Nazism, the term 'Ariosophy' is used generically to describe the Aryan-esoteric theories of a subset of the 'Völkische Bewegung'. This broader use of the word is retrospective and was not generally current among the esotericists themselves." List actually called his doctrine 'Armanism', while Lanz used the terms 'Theozoology' and 'Ario-Christianity' before the First World War. The ideas of Von List and Lanz von Liebenfels were part of a general occult revival in Austria and Germany of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, loosely inspired by historical Germanic paganism and holistic philosophy as well as esoteric concepts influenced by German romanticism and Theosophy. The connection of this Germanic mysticism with historical Germanic culture, though tenuous, is evident in the mystics' fascination with runes, in the form of Guido von List's Armanen runes.
 
Ariosophy in its narrow sense was a Liturgic-free newthought-influenced movement without clearly delineated dogmatics, centered around the publications of Herbert Reichstein Verlag.  Ideology regarding the Aryan race (in the sense of Indo-Europeans, though with Germanic peoples being viewed as their purest representatives), runic symbols, the swastika, and sometimes occultism are important elements in Ariosophy. From around 1900, esoteric notions entered Guido List's thoughts by 1899 at the latest. In April 1903 he sent his manuscript, proposing what Goodrick-Clarke calls a "monumental pseudoscience" concerning the ancient German faith, to the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna onwards, these Ariosophic ideas (together with, and influenced by, Theosophy) contributed significantly to an occult counterculture in Germany and Austria. A historic interest in this topic has stemmed from the ideological relation of Ariosophy to Nazism, and is obvious in such book titles as: - The Occult Roots of Nazism by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke - Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab (The Man Who Gave Hitler His Ideas), Wilfried Daim's biography of Lanz von Liebenfels  

 

However, Goodrick-Clarke's comprehensive study finds little evidence of direct influence, except in the case of the highly idiosyncratic ancient-German mythos elaborated by the 'clairvoyant' (but in fact schizophrenic) SS-Brigadeführer Karl Maria Wiligut, of which the practical consequences were, first, the incorporation of Wiligut's symbolism into the ceremonies of an elite circle within the SS; and, secondly, the official censure of those occultists and runic magicians whom Wiligut stigmatised as heretics, which may have persuaded Heinrich Himmler to order the internment of several of them. The most notable other case is Himmler's Ahnenerbe. Goodrick-Clarke (1985: 192–202) examines what evidence there is for influences on Hitler and on other Nazis, but he concludes that "Ariosophy is a symptom rather than an influence in the way that it anticipated Nazism"
 
 

Werner von Bülow's World-Rune-Clock,

illustrating the correspondences between List's Armanen runes, the signs of the zodiac and the gods of the months

 

 

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Armanism

 
 
List called his doctrine Armanism after the Armanen, supposedly a body of priest-kings in the ancient Aryo-Germanic nation. He claimed that this German name had been Latinized into the tribal name Herminones mentioned in Tacitus and that it actually meant the heirs of the sun-king: an estate of intellectuals who were organised into a priesthood called the Armanenschaft. His conception of the original religion of the Germanic tribes was a form of sun worship, with its priest-kings (similar to the Icelandic goði) as legendary rulers of ancient Germany. Religious instruction was imparted on two levels. The esoteric doctrine (Armanism) was concerned with the secret mysteries of the gnosis, reserved for the initiated elite, while the exoteric doctrine (Wotanism) took the form of popular myths intended for the lower social classes.  He also believed in the magical powers of the old runes.
 
From 1891 onwards he claimed that heraldry was based on a system of encoded runes, so that heraldic devices conveyed a secret heritage in cryptic form. In April 1903, he submitted an article concerning the alleged Aryan proto-language to the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna. Its highlight was a mystical and occult interpretation of the runic alphabet, which became the cornerstone of his ideology. Although the article was rejected by the academy, it would later be expanded by List and grew into his final masterpiece, a comprehensive treatment of his linguistic and historical theories published in 1914 as Die Ursprache der Ario-Germanen und ihre Mysteriensprache (The Proto-Language of the Aryo-Germanics and their Mystery Language). List’s doctrine has been described as gnostic, pantheist and deist. At its core is the mystical union of God, man and nature.
 
Wotanism teaches that God dwells within the individual human spirit as an inner source of magical power, but is also immanent within nature through the primal laws which govern the cycles of growth, decay and renewal. List explicitly rejects a dualism of spirit versus matter or of God over against nature. Humanity is therefore one with the universe, which entails an obligation to live in accordance with nature. But the individual human ego does not seek to merge with the cosmos. "Man is a separate agent, necessary to the completion or perfection of ‘God’s work’". Being immortal, the ego passes through successive reincarnations until it overcomes all obstacles to its purpose. List foresaw the eventual consequences of this in a future utopia on earth, which he identified with the promised Valhalla, a world of victorious heroes.  
 
List was familiar with the cyclical notion of time, which he encountered in Norse mythology and in the theosophical adaptation of the Hindu time cycles. He had already made use of cosmic rhythms in his early journalism on natural landscapes. In his later works List combined the cyclical concept of time with the "dualistic and linear time scheme" of western apocalyptic which counterposes a pessimism about the present world with an ultimate optimism regarding the future one. In Das Geheimnis der Runen, List addresses the seeming contradiction by explaining the final redemption of the linear time frame as an exoteric parable which stands for the esoteric truth of renewal in many future cycles and incarnations. However, in the original Norse myths and Hinduism, the cycle of destruction and creation is repeated indefinitely, thus offering no possibility of ultimate salvation (Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 79; 239, note 14 to Chapter 9).
 

 

Guido von List

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guido_von_List

 
Guido Karl Anton List, better known as Guido von List (October 5, 1848 – May 17, 1919) was an Austrian/German (Viennese) poet, journalist, writer, businessman and dealer of leather goods, mountaineer, hiker, dramatist, playwright, and rower, but was most notable as an occultist and völkisch author who is seen as one of the most important figures in Germanic revivalism, Germanic mysticism, Runic Revivalism and Runosophy in the late 19th century and early 20th century, and continues to be so today. He is the author of Das Geheimnis der Runen (The Secret of the Runes), which is a detailed study of the Armanen Futharkh, his intellectual world-view (as realised in the years between 1902 and 1908), an introduction to the rest of his work and is widely regarded as the pioneering work of Runology in modern occultism.  In 1862 a visit to the catacombs beneath the Stephansdom (St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna) made a deep impression, and List regarded the catacombs as a pagan shrine. As an adult he claimed he had then sworn to build a temple to Wotan when he grew up.  
 
 

Ideology

Guido von List was strongly influenced by the Theosophical thought of Madame Blavatsky, which he blended with his own racial religious beliefs, founded upon Germanic paganism. List called his doctrine “Armanism” (after the Armanen, supposedly the heirs of the sun-king, a body of priest-kings in the ancient Ario-Germanic nation). Armanism was concerned with the esoteric doctrines of the gnosis (distinct from the exoteric doctrine intended for the lower social classes, Wotanism). List claimed that the tribal name Herminones mentioned in Tacitus was a Latinized version of the German Armanen, and named his religion the Armanenschaft, which he claimed to be the original religion of the Germanic tribes. His conception of that religion was a form of sun worship, with its priest-kings (similar to the Icelandic goði) as legendary rulers of ancient Germany.  
 
He also believed in magical powers of the old runes. In 1891 he claimed that heraldry was based on the magic of the runes. In April 1903, he had sent an article concerning the alleged Aryan proto-language to the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna. Its highlight was a mystical and occult interpretation of the runic alphabet. Although the article was rejected by the academy, it would later be expanded by List and become the basis for his entire ideology. Among his ideological followers was Lanz von Liebenfels. More controversially, some allege that, in his pagan-Theosophical synthesis, List developed the direct precursor of occult Nazism. His defenders counter that any influence was indirect and inconsequential; in Nazi Germany the strongest occult influence upon Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, was Brigadeführer Karl Maria Wiligut who believed List's Armanism to be a heresy from his own ancestral religion of Irminism and had various of List's followers interned in concentration camps.  
 
List’s Ariosophy was closely related to the philosophy of the Thule Society. In 1919, Anton Drexler, a member of the Thule Society, founded the German Workers’ Party (DAP), the predecessor of the Nazi party (NSDAP). List’s prophecy that a “German Messiah” would save Germany after World War I was popular among Thule members. Thule member and publicist Dietrich Eckart expressed his anticipation in a poem he published in 1919, months before he met Hitler for the first time. In the poem, Eckart refers to ‘the Great One’, ‘the Nameless One’, ‘Whom all can sense but no one saw’. When the Thules met Hitler in 1919, many believed him to be the prophesied redeemer. As most Thule members were socially and politically influential, their faith was crucial to Hitler’s meteoric rise.  
 
 

Runic revivalism

 
The row of 18 so-called "Armanen Runes", also known as the "Armanen Futharkh" came to List while in an 11 month state of temporary blindness after a cataract operation on both eyes in 1902. This vision in 1902 allegedly opened what List referred to as his "inner eye", via which he claimed the "Secret of the Runes" was revealed to him. List stated that his Armanen Futharkh were encrypted in the Hávamál (Poetic Edda), specifically in stanzas 138 to 165, with stanzas 146 through 164 reported as being the 'song' of the 18 runes.  
 

 

Armanen Runes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armanen_runes

 
List noted in his book, The Secret of the Runes, that the "runic futharkh (= runic ABC) consisted of sixteen symbols in ancient times.". As a side note to this, in the English translation of the work, Stephen Flowers notes that "(the designation futharkh is based on the first seven runes it is for this reason that the proper name is not futhark -- as it is generally and incorrectly written -- but futharkh, with the h at the end; for more about the basis of this, see the Guido von List Library number 6, The primal language of the Aryan Germanic people and their mystery language)"  List's system was allegedly based on the structure of a Hexagonal Crystal. You can shine light through a crystal at different angles and project all 18 of the Armanen runes. List's rune row was rather rigid; while the runes of the past had had sharp angles for easy carving, his were to be carefully and perfectly made so that their shape would be a reflection of the 'frozen light', a pattern that he had found in his runes. All of his runes could be projected by shining the light through a hexagonal crystal under certain angles. Rune Hagal is so-called 'mother-rune' because its shape represents that hexagonal crystal. Karl Hans Welz states that the "crystalline structure of quartz is the "hexagonal system" which is also one of the bases of the Runic symbolism (the hexagon with the three inscribed diameters)." and that "The hexagonal cross section of quartz and the fact that all of the 18 Sacred Futhork Runes are derived from the geometry of the hexagon is the basis of an enormous increase in crystal power when it is associated with Rune images."
 

 

 

Karl Maria Wiligut

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Maria_Wiligut

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irminenschaft

 
 

Karl Maria Wiligut (alias Weisthor, Jarl Widar, Lobesam) (December 10, 1866, Vienna, Austrian Empire – January 3, 1946, Arolsen, Germany) was an Austrian Occultist and SS-Brigadeführer.  In 1908, followed the Neun Gebote Gots, where Wiligut first claimed to be heir to an ancient tradition of Irminism. Both List and Wiligut were influenced by Friedrich Fischbach's 1900 Die Buchstaben Gutenbergs. Wiligut claimed to be in the tradition of a long line of Germanic mystic teachers, reaching back into prehistoric times. He also claimed to have spiritual powers that allowed him direct access to genetic memories of his ancestors thousands of years previously. From 1908, Wiligut was in contact with the occultist Ordo Novi Templi in Vienna. Wiligut claimed that the Bible had originally been written in Germanic, and testified to an "Irminic" religion – Irminenreligion or Irminism – that contrasted with Wotanism. He claimed to worship a Germanic god "Krist", whom Christianity was supposed later to have appropriated as their own saviour Christ. 
 
Germanic culture and history, according to Wiligut, reached back to 228,000 BC. At this time, there were three suns, and Earth was inhabited by giants, dwarfs and other mythical creatures. Wiligut claimed that his ancestors, the Adler-Wiligoten, ended a long period of war. By 12,500 BC, the Irminic religion of Krist was revealed and from that time became the religion of all Germanic peoples, until the schismatic adherents of Wotanism gained the upper hand. In 1200 BC, the Wotanists succeeded in destroying the Irminic religious center at Goslar, following which the Irminists erected a new temple at the Externsteine, which was in turn appropriated by the Wotanists in AD 460. Wiligut's own ancestors were supposedly protagonists in this setting: the Wiligotis were Ueiskunings ("Ice kings") descending from a union of Aesir and Vanir. They founded the city of Vilna as the center of their Germanic empire and always remained true to their Irminic faith.  
 
During the 1920s, Wiligut wrote down 38 verses (out of a number purportedly exceeding 1,000), the so-called Halgarita Sprüche, that he claimed to have memorized as a child, taught by his father. Wiligut had designed his own "runic alphabet" for this purpose. Werner von Bülow and Emil Rüdiger of the Edda-Gesellschaft (Edda Society) translated and annotated these verses. They claimed that numbers 27 and 1818 are connected with the Black Sun. Verse number 27 according to Willigut is a 20,000 year old "solar blessing": "Legend tells, that two Suns, two wholesome in change-rule UR and SUN, alike to the hourglass which turned upside down ever gives one of these the victory / The meaning of the divine errant wandering way / dross star in fire's sphere became in fire-tongue revealed to the Earth-I-course of the race of Paradise / godwilling leaders lead to the weal through their care in universal course, what is visible and soon hidden, whence they led the imagination of mankind / polar in change-play, from UR to SUN in sacrifical service of waxing and waning, in holy fire Santur is ambiguously spent in sparks, but turns victorious to blessing".  
 
Santur is interpreted as a burnt-out sun that was still visible at the time of Homer. Rüdiger speculates that this was the center of the solar system hundreds of millennia ago, and he imagines a fight between the new and the old Suns that was decided 330,000 years ago. Santur is seen as the source of power of the Hyperboreans. 
 
 

Wiligut's Runes

 
The rune row developed by Wiligut in 1934 was loosely based on the Armanen runes of Guido von List even though Wiligut rejected List's runes and his overall philosophy. Wiligut claimed to have been initiated into "runic lore" by his grandfather Karl Wiligut (1794–1883). His rune row has 24 letters, like the Elder Futhark. Like von List's Armanen runes that are closely based on the Younger Futhark, many of Wiligut's runes are identical to historical runes, with some additions. The historical Futhark sequence is not preserved. Wiligut's names for his runes are: Tel, Man, Kaun, Fa, Asa, Os, Eis, Not, Tor, Tyr, Laf, Rit, Thorn, Ur, Sig, Zil, Yr, Hag-Al, H, Wend-horn, Gibor, Eh, Othil, Bar-Bjork. Runes without precedent in the historical runes are Tel (a crossed ring, similar to the sun cross symbol), Tor (like a Latin T), Zil (like a rotated Latin Z), Gibor (taken from von List's runes). The shape of Wend-horn is similar to Tvimadur.
 

 

Runes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runes

 
Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets, which were used to write various Germanic languages before the adoption of the Latin alphabet and for specialised purposes thereafter. The Scandinavian variants are also known as futhark or fuþark (derived from their first six letters of the alphabet: F, U, Þ, A, R, and K); the Anglo-Saxon variant is futhorc or fuþorc (due to sound changes undergone in Old English by the same six letters). Runology is the study of the runic alphabets, runic inscriptions, runestones, and their history. Runology forms a specialised branch of Germanic linguistics. The earliest runic inscriptions date from around AD 150. The characters were generally replaced by the Latin alphabet as the cultures that had used runes underwent Christianisation, by approximately AD 700 in central Europe and AD 1100 in Northern Europe. However, the use of runes persisted for specialized purposes in Northern Europe. Until the early 20th century, runes were used in rural Sweden for decorative purposes in Dalarna and on Runic calendars.The three best-known runic alphabets are the Elder Futhark (around AD 150–800), the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc (AD 400–1100), and the Younger Futhark (AD 800–1100). The Younger Futhark is divided further into the long-branch runes (also called Danish, although they also were used in Norway and Sweden); short-branch or Rök runes (also called Swedish-Norwegian, although they also were used in Denmark); and the stavesyle or Hälsinge runes (staveless runes). The Younger Futhark developed further into the Marcomannic runes, the Medieval runes (AD 1100–1500), and the Dalecarlian runes (around AD 1500–1800).
 
 

Codex Runicus, a vellum manuscript from approximately AD 1300

containing one of the oldest and best preserved texts of the Scanian Law, is written entirely in runes

 
 

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Magical or divinatory use

 
The earliest runic inscriptions found on artifacts give the name of either the craftsman or the proprietor, or sometimes, remain a linguistic mystery. Due to this, it is possible that the early runes were not used so much as a simple writing system, but rather as magical signs to be used for charms. Although some say the runes were used for divination, there is no direct evidence to suggest they were ever used in this way. The name rune itself, taken to mean "secret, something hidden", seems to indicate that knowledge of the runes was originally considered esoteric, or restricted to an elite.  The 6th-century Björketorp Runestone warns in Proto-Norse using the word rune in both senses: I, master of the runes(?) conceal here runes of power. Incessantly (plagued by) maleficence, (doomed to) insidious death (is) he who breaks this (monument). I prophesy destruction / prophecy of destruction.  The stanza 157 of Hávamál attribute to runes the power to bring that which is dead back to life. In this stanza, Odin recounts a spell: I know a twelfth one if I see,up in a tree,a dangling corpse in a noose,I can so carve and colour the runes,that the man walks And talks with me
 
 

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Runic Magic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runic_magic

 
There is some evidence that, in addition to being a writing system, runes historically served purposes of magic. This is the case from earliest epigraphic evidence of the Roman to Germanic Iron Age, with non-linguistic inscriptions and the alu word. An erilaz appears to have been a person versed in runes, including their magic applications. In medieval sources, notably the Poetic Edda, the Sigrdrífumál mentions "victory runes" to be carved on a sword, "some on the grasp and some on the inlay, and name Tyr twice." In early modern and modern times, related folklore and superstition is recorded in the form of the Icelandic magical staves. In the early 20th century, Germanic mysticism coins new forms of "runic magic", some of which were continued or developed further by contemporary adherents of Germanic Neopaganism. Modern systems of runic divination are based on Hermeticism, classical Occultism, and the I Ching.  The Armanen runes "revealed" to Guido von List in 1902 were employed for magical purposes in Germanic mysticism by authors such as Friedrich Bernhard Marby and Siegfried Adolf Kummer, and after World War II in a reformed "pansophical" system by Karl Spiesberger. More recently, Stephen Flowers, Adolf Schleipfer, Larry E. Camp and others also build on List's system. Several modern systems of runic magic and runic divination were published from the 1980s onward. The first book on runic divination, written by Ralph Blum in 1982, led to the development of sets of runes designed for use in several such systems of fortune telling, in which the runes are typically incised in clay, stone tiles, crystals, resin, glass, or polished stones, then either selected one-by-one from a closed bag or thrown down at random for reading. Later authors such as Diana L. Paxson and Freya Aswynn follow Blum (1989) in drawing a direct correlation between runic divination and tarot divination. They may discuss runes in the context of "spreads" and advocate the usage of "rune cards". Modern authors like Ralph Blum sometimes include a "blank rune" in their sets. Some were to replace a lost rune, but according to Ralph Blum this was the god Odin's rune, the rune of the beginning and the end, representing "the divine in all human transactions".
 

 

Runestones

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runestone

 
A runestone is typically a raised stone with a runic inscription, but the term can also be applied to inscriptions on boulders and on bedrock. The tradition began in the 4th century, and it lasted into the 12th century, but most of the runestones date from the late Viking Age. Most runestones are located in Scandinavia, but there are also scattered runestones in locations that were visited by Norsemen during the Viking Age. Runestones are often memorials to deceased men. The tradition of raising stones that had runic inscriptions first appeared in the 4th and 5th century in Norway and Sweden, and these early runestones were usually placed next to graves. The earliest Danish runestones appeared in the 6th and 7th centuries, and there are about 50 runestones from the Migration Period in Scandinavia. Most runestones were erected during the period 950-1100 CE, and then they were mostly raised in Sweden and Denmark, and to a lesser degree in Norway.  The tradition is mentioned in both Ynglinga saga and Hávamál:For men of consequence a mound should be raised to their memory, and for all other warriors who had been distinguished for manhood a standing stone, a custom that remained long after Odin's time.—The Ynglinga saga A son is better,though late he be born,And his father to death have fared;Memory-stonesseldom stand by the roadSave when kinsman honors his kin.—Hávamál

 

 

The Stenkvista runestone in Södermanland, Sweden, shows Thor's hammer instead of a cross. Only two such runestones are known.

 
 

 

Elder Futhark

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elder_Futhark

 
The Elder Futhark (or Elder Fuþark, Older Futhark, Old Futhark) is the oldest form of the runic alphabets. It was a writing system used by Germanic tribes for the northwestern and Migration period Germanic dialects. Its inscriptions are found on artifacts (including jewelry, amulets, tools, weapons, and runestones) from the 2nd to 8th centuries. In Scandinavia, from the late 8th century, the script was simplified to the Younger Futhark, while the Anglo-Saxons and Frisians extended the Futhark which eventually became the Anglo-Saxon futhorc. Unlike the Anglo-Saxon and Younger Futharks, which remained in use during the Early and High Middle Ages, respectively, knowledge of how to read the Elder Futhark was forgotten until 1865, when Norwegian scholar Sophus Bugge deciphered it.  The Elder Futhark (named after the initial phoneme of the first six rune names: F, U, Th, A, R and K) consist of twenty-four runes, often arranged in three groups of eight runes called an ætt. In the following table, each rune is given with its common transliteration:

 

 

 

 

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Younger Futhark

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Futhark

 
The Younger Futhark, also called Scandinavian runes, is a runic alphabet, a reduced form of the Elder Futhark, consisting of only 16 characters, in use from about the 9th century, after a "transitional period" which lasted during the 7th and 8th centuries. The reduction, somewhat paradoxically, happened at the same time as phonetic changes led to a greater number of different phonemes in the spoken language, when Proto-Norse evolved into Old Norse. Thus, the language included distinct sounds and minimal pairs which were not separate in writing. The Younger Futhark is divided into long-branch (Danish) and short-twig (Swedish and Norwegian) runes, in the 10th century further expanded by the "Hälsinge Runes" or staveless runes. The lifetime of the Younger Futhark corresponds roughly to the Viking Age. Their use declined after the Christianization of Scandinavia; most writing in Scandinavia from the 12th century was in the Latin alphabet, but the runic scripts survived in marginal use, in the form of the Medieval runes (in use ca. 1100–1500) and the Latinised Dalecarlian runes (ca. 1500–1910).
 
 

The Younger Futhark: Danish long-branch runes and Swedish/Norwegian short-twig runes.

 

 

Poetic Edda

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetic_Edda

 
The Poetic Edda is a collection of Old Norse poems primarily preserved in the Icelandic mediaeval manuscript Codex Regius. Along with Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, the Poetic Edda is the most important extant source on Norse mythology and Germanic heroic legends, and from the early 19th century onwards has had a powerful influence on later Scandinavian literatures, not merely through the stories it contains but through the visionary force and dramatic quality of many of the poems. It has also become an inspiring model for many later innovations in poetic meter, particularly in the Nordic languages, offering many varied examples of terse, stress-based metrical schemes working without any final rhyme, and instead using alliterative devices and strongly concentrated imagery. Poets who have acknowledged their debt to the Poetic Edda include Vilhelm Ekelund, August Strindberg, J.R.R. Tolkien, Ezra Pound and Karin Boye.
 
 

The title page of Olive Bray's English translation of the Poetic Edda

depicting the tree Yggdrasil and a number of its inhabitants (1908) by W. G. Collingwood.

 

 
 
Codex Regius was written in the 13th century but nothing is known of its whereabouts until 1643 when it came into the possession of Brynjólfur Sveinsson, then Bishop of Skálholt. At that time versions of the Prose Edda were well known in Iceland but scholars speculated that there once was another Edda—an Elder Edda—which contained the pagan poems which Snorri quotes in his Prose Edda. When Codex Regius was discovered, it seemed that this speculation had proven correct. Brynjólfur attributed the manuscript to Sæmundr the Learned, a larger-than-life 12th century Icelandic priest. While this attribution is rejected by modern scholars, the name Sæmundar Edda is still sometimes associated with "Poetic Edda." Bishop Brynjólfur sent Codex Regius as a present to the Danish king, hence the name. For centuries it was stored in the Royal Library in Copenhagen but in 1971 it was returned to Iceland.  Like most early poetry the Eddic poems were minstrel poems, passing orally from singer to singer and from poet to poet for centuries. None of the poems are attributed to a particular author though many of them show strong individual characteristics and are likely to have been the work of individual poets. Scholars sometimes speculate on hypothetical authors but firm and accepted conclusions have never been reached.
 
 

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Prose Edda

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prose_Edda

 
The Prose Edda begins with a euhemerized Prologue followed by three distinct books: Gylfaginning (consisting of around 20,000 words), Skáldskaparmál (around 50,000 words) and Háttatal (around 20,000 words). Seven manuscripts, dating from around 1300 to around 1600, have independent textual value. The purpose of the collection was to enable Icelandic poets and readers to understand the subtleties of alliterative verse, and to grasp the meaning behind the many kenningar (compounds) that were used in skaldic poetry. The Prose Edda was originally referred to as simply the Edda, but was later called the Prose Edda to distinguish it from the Poetic Edda, a collection of anonymous poetry from earlier traditional sources compiled around the same time as the Prose Edda in 13th century Iceland. 
 
The Prose Edda is related to the Poetic Edda in that the Prose Edda cites various poems collected in the Poetic Edda as sources. The assumption that Snorri Sturluson is responsible for writing the Prose Edda is largely based on the following paragraph from a portion of Codex Upsaliensis, an early 14th century manuscript containing the Prose Edda: This book is called Edda. Snorri Sturluson compiled it in the way that it is arranged here. First it tells about the Æsir and Ymir, then comes the poetic diction section with the poetic names of many things and lastly a poem called the List of Meters which Snorri composed about King Hakon and Duke Skuli. It has been noted that this attribution, along with other primary manuscripts, are not clear whether or not Snorri is more than the compiler of the work and the author of Háttatal or if he is the author of the entire Prose Edda. Whatever the case, the mention of Snorri in the manuscripts has been influential in the acceptance of Snorri as the author of the Prose Edda.
 
 
 

This colourful front page of the Prose Edda in an 18th century

Icelandic manuscript shows Odin, Heimdallr, Sleipnir and other figures from Norse mythology.

 

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Prologue (Prose Edda)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prologue_(Prose_Edda)

 

The Prologue is the first section of four books of the Prose Edda, and consists of an euhemerized Christian account of the origins of Nordic mythology: the Nordic gods are described as human Trojan warriors who left Troy after the fall of that city (an origin similar to the one chosen by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 12th century to account for the ancestry of the British nation, and which parallels Virgil's Aeneid).  According to the Prose Edda, these warriors settled in northern Europe, where they were accepted as divine kings because of their superior culture and technology. Remembrance ceremonies later conducted at their burial sites degenerate into heathen cults, turning them into gods.  Alexander M. Bruce suggested that Sturlson was in possession of the Langfeðgatal or a closely related text when he composed the detailed list of gods and heroes given. He noted parallel sequences in the Langfeðgatal and the Edda, noting the second appearance of a "Scyld figure" as both an ancestor and a descendant of Odin in both. This figure is expanded upon in the Edda detailing Skjöldr as Odin's son after his migration northwards to Reidgothland and his ordination as a King of Denmark.

 

  

Gylfaginning

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gylfaginning

 
Gylfaginning (Old Icelandic "the tricking of Gylfi") follows the Prologue in the Prose Edda. Gylfaginning deals with the creation and destruction of the world of the Nordic gods, and many other aspects of Norse mythology. The section is written in prose interspersed with quotes from skaldic poetry, including material collected in the Poetic Edda. 
 
 

Skáldskaparmál

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skáldskaparmál

 
Skáldskaparmál (Old Icelandic "the language of poetry") is the third section of the Prose Edda, and consists of a dialogue between Ægir, a god associated with the sea, and Bragi, a skaldic god, in which both Nordic mythology and discourse on the nature of poetry are intertwined. The origin of a number of kenningar are given and Bragi then delivers a systematic list of kenningar for various people, places, and things. Bragi then goes on to discuss poetic language in some detail, in particular heiti, the concept of poetical words which are non-periphrastic, for example "steed" for "horse", and again systematises these.  
 
 

Háttatal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Háttatal

 
Háttatal (Old Icelandic "list of verse-forms") is the last section of the Prose Edda. The section is composed by the Icelandic poet, politician, and historian Snorri Sturluson. Using, for the most part, his own compositions it exemplifies the types of verse forms used in Old Norse poetry. Snorri took a prescriptive as well as descriptive approach; he has systematized the material, and often notes that "the older poets didn't always" follow his rules.
 

 

Jacob Grimm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Grimm

 
Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm (4 January 1785 – 20 September 1863) was a German philologist, jurist and mythologist. He is best known as the discoverer of Grimm's Law (linguistics), the author (with his brother) of the monumental Deutsches Wörterbuch, the author of Deutsche Mythologie and, more popularly, as one of the Brothers Grimm, as the editor of Grimm's Fairy Tales.
 
 

Jacob Grimm, ca. 1860

 

 

 

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Grimm's law

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm's_law

 
Grimm's law (also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift or the Rask's rule), named after Jacob Grimm, is a set of statements describing the inherited Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stop consonants as they developed in Proto-Germanic (the common ancestor of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family) in the 1st millennium BC. It establishes a set of regular correspondences between early Germanic stops and fricatives and the stop consonants of certain other centum Indo-European languages (Grimm used mostly Latin and Greek for illustration).  Grimm's law consists of three parts, which must be thought of as three consecutive phases in the sense of a chain shift: Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops change into voiceless fricatives.Proto-Indo-European voiced stops become voiceless stops.Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirated stops become voiced stops or fricatives (as allophones). The chain shift can be abstractly represented as: bʰ → b → p → ɸdʰ → d → t → θgʰ → g → k → xgʷʰ → gʷ → kʷ → xʷ Here each sound moves one position to the right to take on its new sound value. Notice that the new sound value entails the loss of a feature at each of the three steps. First the aspiration feature is lost, then voice and finally stop leaving a continuant.  Grimm's law was the first non-trivial systematic sound change to be discovered in linguistics; its formulation was a turning point in the development of linguistics, enabling the introduction of a rigorous methodology to historical linguistic research. The correspondences between Latin p and Germanic f was first noted by Friedrich von Schlegel in 1806. In 1818 Rasmus Christian Rask elaborated the set of correspondences to include other Indo-European languages such as Sanskrit and Greek, and the full range of consonants involved. In 1822 Jacob Grimm, the elder of the Brothers Grimm, in his book Deutsche Grammatik, formulated the law as a general rule (and extended to include standard German).
 
 

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Brothers Grimm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brothers_Grimm

 
The Brothers Grimm (German: Brüder Grimm or Die Gebrüder Grimm), Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859), were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, lexicographers and authors who together collected and published folklore. They are among the most well-known storytellers of folk tales, popularizing stories such as "Cinderella" (Aschenputtel), "The Frog Prince" (Der Froschkönig), "Hansel and Gretel" (Hänsel und Gretel), "Rapunzel", "Rumpelstiltskin" (Rumpelstilzchen), and "Snow White" (Schneewittchen). Their first collection of folk tales, Children's and Household Tales (Kinder- und Hausmärchen), was published in 1812. The popularity of the Grimms' collected folk tales endured well beyond their lifetimes. The tales are available in more than 100 translations and have been adapted by filmmakers including Lotte Reiniger, and Walt Disney, with films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Sleeping Beauty. In the mid-20th century the tales were used as propaganda by the Third Reich; later in the 20th century psychologists such as Bruno Bettelheim reaffirmed the value of the work, in spite of the cruelty and violence in the original versions of some of the tales that were sanitized. 
 
 

Deutsche Sagen, (German Legends)

included stories such as "Pied Piper of Hamelin", shown here in an illustration by Kate Greenaway.

 
 

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Grimms' Fairy Tales

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm's_Fairy_Tales

 
The first volume of the first edition was published, containing 86 stories; the second volume of 70 stories followed in 1814. For the second edition, two volumes were issued in 1819 and a third in 1822, totalling 170 tales. The third edition appeared in 1837; fourth edition, 1840; fifth edition, 1843; sixth edition, 1850; seventh edition, 1857. Stories were added, and also subtracted, from one edition to the next, until the seventh held 211 tales. All editions were extensively illustrated, first by Philipp Grot Johann and, after his death in 1892, by Robert Leinweber.  
 
 

Grimm's Fairy Tales book found in Buried

 
 
The first volumes were much criticized because, although they were called "Children's Tales", they were not regarded as suitable for children, both for the scholarly information included and the subject matter.%5B1%5D Many changes through the editions – such as turning the wicked mother of the first edition in Snow White and Hansel and Gretel (shown in original Grimm stories as Hänsel and Grethel) to a stepmother, were probably made with an eye to such suitability. They removed sexual references—such as Rapunzel's innocently asking why her dress was getting tight around her belly, and thus naïvely revealing her pregnancy and the prince's visits to her stepmother—but, in many respects, violence, particularly when punishing villains, was increased. In 1825 the Brothers published their Kleine Ausgabe or "small edition", a selection of 50 tales designed for child readers. This children's version went through ten editions between 1825 and 1858. 
 

 

Teutonic Mythology / Deutsche Mythologie

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Mythologie

 
Deutsche Mythologie (Teutonic Mythology) is a seminal treatise on Germanic mythology by Jacob Grimm. First published in Germany in 1835, the work is an exhaustive treatment of the subject, tracing the mythology and beliefs of the Ancient Germanic peoples from their earliest attestations to their survivals in modern traditions, folktales and popular expressions.The structure of the Deutsche Mythologie is fairly encyclopaedic. The articles and chapters are discursive of philological, historical, folkloristic, and poetic aspects of the pre-Christian Germanic religions. The sources are varied epochally and geographically. In many instances, Grimm cites the North and West Germanic variants of a religious entity; thus the entry on Thor is titled 'Donar, Thunar (Thôrr)'. Older Germanic words, particularly those concerning ritual, are often compared to Latin equivalents, as evident in the table of contents.  
 
 
Many variations in either original scanned or PDF format
http://openlibrary.org/works/OL45439W/Deutsche_mythologie  
 
 
AN OVERVIEW of the GERMANIC MYTHOLOGY'S EPIC ORDER
http://www.germanicmythology.com/ugm2/ugm2overview.pdf  
 
 
Chapters 
> Ch. 1 - Introduction
> Ch. 2 - God
> Ch. 3 - Worship
> Ch. 4 - Temples
> Ch. 5 - Priests
> Ch. 6 - Gods
> Ch. 7 - Wuotan, Wodan (Oðinn)
> Ch. 8 - Donar, Thunar, (Thorr)
> Ch. 9 - Zio, (Tiw, Tyr)
> Ch. 10 - Fro (Freyr)
> Ch. 11 - Palter (Balder)
> Ch. 12 - Other Gods
> Ch. 13 - Goddesses
> Ch. 14 - Condition of Gods
> Ch. 15 - Heroes
> Ch. 16 - Wise Women
> Ch. 17 - Wights and Elves
> Ch. 18 - Giants
> Ch. 19 - Creation
> Ch. 20 - Elements
> Ch. 21 - Trees and Animals
> Ch. 22 - Sky and Stars
> Ch. 23 - Day and Night
> Ch. 24 - Summer and Winter
> Ch. 25 - Time and World
> Ch. 26 - Souls> Ch. 27 - Death
> Ch. 28 - Destiny and Well-Being
> Ch. 29 - Personifications > Preface
> Ch.30 - Poetry
> Ch. 31 - Spectres
> Ch. 32 - Translation
> Ch. 33 - Devil
> Ch. 34 - Magic
> Ch. 35 - Superstition
> Ch. 36 - Sickness
> Ch. 37 - Herbs and Stones
> Ch. 38 - Spells and Charms
 
 

 

[Dahniska]

Good post with lots of interesting information. Keep it coming!

Brains awarded.