Ascension Day

Beforehand, I would like to apologize to the readers of this blog for not writing as often as I used to. I've been very busy - and there is no need to make a list of the things that keep me occupied - so I don't have the free time I used to have to come here and write about something. I will seize these few moments of free time that I have today, to write about subjects I wanted to write before. Lets go straight to the subject of this post before my free time runs out.
The Ascension Day is a subject I wanted to write at the end of the month of May, but as I've stated before the reason why I couldn't have posted something as often as before, now I'll just have to squeeze in this May celebration in the month of June.

Once in awhile a celebration is at our doorstep. We enjoy the feasts which have been in our communities and/or country traditions for generations. But how much do we know about the origins of such celebrations? How deep do the roots of a tradition goes?

According to the christian tradition, Jesus Christ ascended into heaven after his resurrection on a Sunday during Easter - ascension Day is the universally celebration of this happening. Just like many other Church celebrations and feasts, incorporating folk traditions and pre-christian pagan beliefs, Ascension Day isn't different and has a past which was changed and given a new "look" by the Church. One of these ancient traditions during this day is beating the bounds, which is quite possible the origin of the Ascension procession (which is still carried out today in some church parishes).

When communities beat their bounds, which means going round the boundaries, the whole village would process from marker to marker (often standing stones) that determined the limits of the parish. In most cases, the stone marking the boundery was beaten with willow or hazel twigs and marked with chalk as a sign of the passing of the people. The beating reinforced the rights of the parishioners, setting the boundary of who belongs to that church, as such, could also be married and buried in the that same church and its grounds. This process marked the boundaries between the  parishioners and those who were outsiders, meaning, those living out of the village or in other villages, and those who did not participate in this process.

This tradition dates from a period before the Norman Conquest of Great Britain, so it is quite possible that it has pagan roots. The beating of the twigs in the stones, or maybe another objects, afforded the bounds between the communities and the outside wild world which was seen as the realm where gods and magical creatures dwelt. This was a process of driving out evil spirits before the land was blessed. In economical and political affairs, the procession itself may have been a means to demarcate a place of power, notifying neighbours that the boundary must not be breached just as the standing stones in prehistory did; along with many other religious and spiritual meanings, it was also to mark the boundaries of a community. Indeed, small boys often took the beating on behalf of the stone, ritually suffering to confirm the pact with the local spirits of the land. Some trees in the landscape still bear names such as Gospel Oak, showing they were part of the annual round as soon as the Church became involved in local traditions and ancient celebrations. 

As part of the church services nowadays during this celebration, the first fruits are blessed, presumably in anticipation of the harvest. This certainly replaces the earlier prayers and blessings offered to the spirits of the land at the beating of the bounds, ensuring that the soils will be bountiful in the year to come and that the next harvest will be plentiful. There are indications that the custom of blessing the land and its produce was widespread across early medieval Europe.

The modern Ascension Day feast, presumably celebrating Christ's ascending to heaven, has far older roots involving the communities' connection to the land around them, acknowledging the local spirits, and also offering thanks for the anticipated harvest to come to them and quite possible to the old gods of harvest and fertility. The spirits of the land and/or the deities, have been replaced by the son of the christian god. Ascension Day certainly has pagan roots which have been adapted and embraced by the Church.

The goodbye to Scandinavian paganism

In the countries of Norway, Sweden and Denmark, people worshiped a set of deities belonging to two different tribes of gods - the Aesir and the Vanir. The Aesir were the deities associated with the arts of war and were ruled by Odin, the god of wisdom, war and death. The Vanir were the deities associated with the fertility of animals, humans and the land itself. The latter, in time, became a subclass of gods within the Aesir and vs versa, all gods were important. By the 10th century, Christianity came into these countries and brought an end to the polytheistic worship of the Northern European peoples, thus creating three new realms unified under one faith, under one god.

The Christianization of Scandinavia wasn't held in one day. It was a process which took time, and a long and painful time it was indeed. It is obvious that the Scandinavians had their own conflicts, and battles were common between them, but with the coming of Christianization war took a whole different meaning. Wars in great scale, murdering for no purpose, solely for the new faith, the new god and the hatred which was spread by lies that poisened the minds of monarchs. Denmark was the most easily transformed country. The Viking raids slowly introduced the new religion, due to the christians brought as war prizes. The Danes were often in contact with England and Normandy, allowing them to continued exposure to the new religion via political interactions. At first, there was little struggle in assimilating the two faiths, and they were able to coexist under the individual decrees of the Danish tribal leaders. This assimilation began around the 930s of our common era. The baptism of war leaders and kings built a new path for the christian faith to spread, for the kings and warchiefs demanded that their subjects had to be converted as well, since the new faith was now part of their culture. The danish tribes were united under the flag of this new god. The canonization of Canute IV in the 12th century, the Christian ruler of Denmark in the late 1000s, declared Christianity as Denmark's official religion.

The earliest recordings of Christianity in Sweden were in the 700s. In the 830s, Saint Ansgar (a monk with the mission to bring Christianity to Northern Europe), came to the northern shores to spread word of the new faith at the bid of the Swedish king of that time. However, his church at Birka was highly rejected, so it was not until Olof Skötkonung, (the first Christian king of Sweden), agreed to a toleration of the two faiths in the late 900s that Christianity found a place in Swedish culture. He established the first episcopal center in Skara rather than near Uppsala in Uppland, as there is written documentation that the largest worship center to the Norse gods existed at Uppsala. This might have been a wise choice of the king, to avoid war between the followers of the two faiths. It was King Inge later, in the 1080s, who disregarded the risks of war and ended the sacrifices at Uppsala, ultimately serving as the moment of transition between Paganism and Christianity in Sweden. Although, the result of this instance was Inge's temporary exile by his brother- By the year 1130 Christianity gained a permanent stronghold in Sweden and spread to become the foremost religion in the land. 

Norway was the most difficult to transform from polytheism to Christianity, as its history was filled with rulers who constantly dictated the religion. Most of the conflict was seen during a fifty year period (from 950 to1000 CE), under King Haakon. Haakon's method was simple: temples were left to the pagans with churches built right beside them, and though he refused on his own part to sacrifice to the Aesir and Vanir, he also refused to punish those who continued this practice. Haakon was able to begin the spread of Christianity throughout this region by showing kindness to the established polytheistic religion.

King Haakon was one of a kind, unfortunately, a rare sort of man in this period of great changes. After his death, Jarl Haakon replaced him, himself being a pagan man. All the Christianization that King Haakon had established was utterly destroyed. In acting this way, not only did Jarl Haakon create a stricter war against Christianity, but in the years to come he forged a reason for the Norwegian Christians to detest the Aesir and Vanir followers. With the end of the 10th century, the Christian king Olaf Tryggvason was very much ready to eliminate every pagan follower of the old religion. King Olaf had had a very strict christian education, and pagans were seen as the evil sort of "creatures" which worshiped the devil.

However, Tryggvason only ruled for five years, (from 955 to 1000 CE), but he made certain that they were prolific years. He travelled all over Norway to enforce the Christian faith, destroying pagan areas of worship, including temples and everyone we could find. Those who refused to submit to the new religion were tortured and severely punished, ending up dead anyway. By the end of the 12th century, Tryggvason's successors saw Christianity dominating Norway.

With the rise of the new religion, there came a need for building structures linked to the faith. The first church buildings were modelled most specifically from the longships, towering structures that loomed toward the sky like the future Gothic cathedrals with dragon heads on the roof reflecting the strength and power. These churches, called stave churches because of the stars at the heart of their post and lintel structure, were the highlight and symbol of the new religion that had swept through Scandinavia and became a symbol of the unification between the three lands at the cost of many wars, bloodshed and suffering.

Christianity Vs Paganism in Russia

I came across to one of the latest news about paganism in Russia and how things are being developed. Many Slavic Neo-Pagans are bringing the old pagan ways into Russia once again, its not just important because of the historic background of the country but also because it is the very foundations of a country and its population, the culture, what connects people to their roots. Many European countries are working to bring their history back to life, their history before christianisation, a unique mark of a people, the very basis of culture, it took a lot of study, archaeological findings, years spent reading and re-reading old documents and accounts, decode mythologies and decode stories of others who watched very closely the pagan cultures and accounted them in their own perspective and also in a critic way. It is still very hard to do it, sine many cultures never left written records and with the coming of christianity and the lies told for centuries, the job was even harder and far from over, and Russia is no exception, so, preserving history is of great importance for everyone, we all have the right to know and understand our ancestors and knowing old values ​​is a good way to improve our way towards the future.

In Russia, those who are aware of the importance of the old ways, are trying to bring back the old slavic paganism, the followers of this spiritual path have built copies of old pagan monuments of wood and stone and then gather for some rituals. According to their point of view, they are all trying to reconstruct the true religion of the Russian people, a religion that was destroyed by the early Russian Christian church a 1000 years ago when it came to Russia and violently converted local pagan population to Christianity. Nowadays it seems that in Russia there are still fundamental Christians who disapprove the raise of pagan traditions and try to follow their earlier inquisitor predecessors by destroying the pagan places. Writing this to you doesn't seem to give the right justice to the case, I don't usually do this but I will post here some of the pictures about such modern pagan Russian ritual places before and after the event.

After Christians came and destroyed the place, claiming it was unholy and placing christian symbols to cleanse and sanctify the place :

Conversion of Scandinavia and Olaf Tryggvason

Charlemagne was the king who helped christianity spread more quickly through Europe, by force, by his armys and slaughtering many who wanted to keep their old faith and the beliefs of their ancestors. After his death, the empire that Charlemagne created, started to fragment, and so for a time people stood still and there was a considerable peace, the Frisians had been converted to christianity and the Franks had their own empire by the cost of many inocent lifes. There was peace now in the countries of scandinavia.


Along the ninth century, churchmen were afraid from the people of the north that still remained faithful to the old gods, and so they prayed to be relieved and be guarded from the fury of the vikings, that to these churchmen,  the peoples of the north were even more terrifying because they weren't christians, they were heathens, and for the church, these pagan people worshiped the devil and themselves were demons.


As the north countries and its people began to settling instead of raiding and pillaging, the church saw this as a good opportunity to bring the new faith into their northen neighbors, and many norse princes that were in refuge from the wars with the south and with the christians, saw this as a good  opportunity as well, because they realized that conversion to the religion of the kings with whom they had taken refuge, could win them suppot and alliance.


Denmark was the first country to fall under the new faith, king Harald Bluetooth took christianity and imposed it to his people, those that did not want to embrace this new faith and refused the orders of Harald, were forced to do so.


In Norway, at this time, an other king called Harald Hairfair, remained heathen to his death, however, he had many sons who fought over the kingship and sometimes they found in the christian alliances a very useful tool to ascend the throne.
The oldest of his sons, Eric bloodaxe was baptized with his wife, during their exile in the viking lands of England. Harald's youngest son, called Hakon, was fostered by King Aethelstan of England, who raised him as a christian. Harald's great-grandson, Olaf Tryggvason, was introduced to christianity, when he was still a very young man, when he took refuge in Russia. After taking power in Norway, all these kings tried to impose the new religion to their countrymen.


Hakon was the only one of these kings, to be tolerant, and the only one to be called "the good". Hakon was called to the throne by the heathen jarl, when his older brother, Eric, proved to be a tyrant, so king Hakon was indeed a good king, he respected the rights of his own people. When he told his people that they should be converted to chirstianity, they responded that they thought he was bringing them freedom, but now he wanted to take them prisoners into a new and strange religion, and made them forget the beliefs of their ancestors. The people had so far tolerated their king's strange ways in a strange new religion, but wanted him to join them in the autumn feasts, and so he did, a christian amoung pagans, being friends and sharing the heathen drinks to Odin. So Hakon kept the loyalty of his people. He was such a great and good king, that after his death in the last battle, the skald Eyvind sang in the old faith about Hakon and his deeds in the poem called "Hakonarmál".


Olaf Tryggvason came to power, throughout these years, any men had allowed themselves to be baptized, in order to trade with the Christian Europe, or agreed to do so when they were forced by a christian overlord. Many chieftains welcomed christian missionaries and built churches to encounrage christian merchants to come and trade with them, but even baptized, the norsemen still returned to their old ways. King Olaf resolved to put an end to that, the people should be entirely christians, or no christians at all, the old gods and old faith, should be forgotten. Those that weren't persuaded by threats or promises, he slew them, some he maimed, and some he drove  away from the land. Olaf Tryggvason pillage the heathen temples and destroyed the images of the gods, those people who were considered to do magic, he drowned, or killed them by setting a bowl full of hot coals on their belly, for exemple, there was a chieftain who was killed by being forced to swallow a poisonous snake.


In the years that followed, the new religion was very much implemented on the land. Churches had been built on the old sacred places and above the mounds of the dead, on the sites of demolished pagan temples, and bishops became powers in the land. The holy feasts became saints' days.

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How Christianity Came into Europe

Note: This post is about History, European History and how the Christian religion came into Europe, also the drawing to illustrate this, was made by me.

Note2: This was a scheduled Post.





How Christianity came into Europe

In 219 BCE the warrior and commander Hannibal of Carthage, a Roman Province in Northern Africa, after his fathers death, gathered the army in his yound age of 16 years old, and went to conquer Rome in revange of his father's death by Roman hands. He went by land into the Iberian Peninsula, Lusitans of Portugal and Spanish from Spain, helped Hannibal, joining his army, they went to the Pyrenees in northern Spain, the border between spain and mordern france, and there the roman troops were waiting for Hannibal's army, 10.000 romans and all slaughtered, Hannibel continue to go and was helped by the Gauls in ancient gaul todays france, after this many other battles were fought, Hannibel killed many romans, and more romans came to him, till he reached northern Italy, Hannibel won all the battles but he did not reach his goal, to burn down rome, which in that time was not yet an Empire, Hannibal turned back to Carthage, strategically he has lost the war. but with this event, the Romans in reprisal start to kill and conquer all those who could oppose their safety, politics, economy and wealth. So it began the wars of rome against the rest of Europe, and it became a vast empire, the first to go down of course, were the people in Northern Italy an ancient tribe of celts and of course the northern Africa where Carthage was, then the rest of Europe. Among the many people the Romans subjected to their will, came the people of Yahushua ( Jesus Christ ), after they have killed Jesus, many created the new Religion of Christianity, and so many more joined this new faith, and the romans and the Jews were the first ones, changing all the wishes of Jesus and turning this new faith into something that would give them power over all, now it would be easier to conquer all without battle, but through faith, a new religion made by lies, and those lies would convince too many to submit themselves to a new order of power, this was not a religion but politics to increase the roman economy, so this was how christianity started to spread, but a germanic tribe called the Wandalns ( Vandals ) invaded rome and brought it down, so the Roman Empire has fallen and as it was falling apart, so all the roman citys and provinces were falling too. The people that were used to live in a roman way, with all the tecnologhy they brought, were now living in a world were all of those works were falling too, such as the aqueducts that used to bring water to all, now that rome had fallen, no one cared about that, and people start to live in a poor way, with no conditions, nor hygiene, so people start to have many problems, and since Europe belonged to no one now, many tribes became countries and those were fighting to have more land and power, and the people now living in a evil world where food was scarce, battles everywhere, the people were in need of something to save them so badly, no one was there to protect them, and now they were being robbed and murdered.
Meanwhile the franks apeared, the Franks were a West Germanic confederation, uniting the peoples in Magna Germania north and east of the Lower Rhine River. The Frankish identity emerged in the first half of the 3rd century out of various Germanic groups, including the Salii, Sicambri, Chamavi, Bructeri, Chatti, Chattuarii, Ampsivarii, Tencteri, Ubii, Batavi and the Tungri, who inhabited the area between the Zuyder Zee and the river Lahn and extended eastwards as far as the Weser, but were most densely settled around the IJssel and between the Lippe and the Sieg. From the third to fifth centuries the Frankish armies raided Roman territory and expanded their influence among the Germanic peoples previously living under Roman rule on the left bank of the Rhine. In 358, the Salian Franks came to some form of agreement with the Romans that allowed them to settle in Toxandria (roughly Noord-Brabant, Antwerpen and Vlaams-Brabant). Each tribe within the Frankish confederation consisted of extended kinship groups centred around a particularly renowned and noble family. The importance of the family bond was made clear by the Salic Law, which ordained that an individual had no right to protection if not part of a family. One particular Salian family comes to light of Frankish history in the early fifth century, in time to become the Merovingians - Salian kings named after Childeric's mythical father Merovech, whose birth was thought to be divine. Clovis, king of the Salian Franks, became the absolute ruler of a united Frankish kingdom in 486. He consolidated his rule with victories over the Gallo-Romans and all the other Frankish tribes and established his capital in Paris. After he had beaten the Visigoths and the Alemanni, his sons drove the Visigoths to Spain and subdued the Burgundians, Alemanni and Thuringians. During the period of Merovingian rule, the Franks reluctantly began to adopt Christianity following the baptism of Clovis in 496 CE. Following Clovis' conversion, a number of Franks rallied around Ragnachar, a powerful figure who had played an important role in Clovis' initial rise to power, but their rebellion was crushed. The remaining pockets of resistance within the population were overcome region by region through a quickly expanding network of monasteries. The Frankish church had to come to terms with an established Gallo-Roman clergy that actively spread anti-Germanic propaganda, which has survived in their writings and works of history; it had to Christianise traditional Frankish sensibilities and effectively suppress them; it had to provide a new theological basis for Frankish kingship, which was deeply rooted in Germanic tradition. While the Goths or the Vandals had been at least partly Christianised since the mid-4th century, traditional Germanic beliefs are thought to have flourished among the Franks until well after the conversion of Clovis to Christianity. So as i've written before, King Clovis of the Franks was cristianized just to get power and lands and noble titles, to conquer them all, and that is how france was born, and for the pope in rome this was great, because clovis was spreading thie christian faith to all Europe, by force, by slaughter, by burning, pillaging and killing. And as i've written before, those peopel that were in a great need of help, now play a big role, they needed a miracle, and came a new faith, promising salvation, all they needed! And so easily those became christians too. The Northern countries of Europe were the last to be Christianized because it was hard to go into those places, and because the people there stand in theur old religions and fought to continue to be the people they have always been, to continue their pagan spirit. The Franks tired of getting sieged by the Germanic people, ofered them titles, lands and weath in gold and jewels if they were to be christianized too, in greed for power, they all accepted, but more people accepted to be christians, so they would not be killed, because those who would not convert, were brutaly tortured and killed.
So Europe was now living in a christianized world, but there were still many to conquer, there were still many pagans who needed taxation, people that had to be christianized, to pay to their Christian Kings and ofcourse to give money to the church, then the Black Death came, an horribel plague that was killing all, in every 10, only 2 survived, the church in its wisdom, used this as a propaganda, it was a sign of God, people had to be christians or would suffer and die of the plague of death! So the people in fear, the rest of the people... were fully christianized. This was a summary of what happened, almost 1500 years to christianized all the Europeans, people that used to be free.. have a free will, a free spirit and mind.