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Ontslaap Nu In Mijn Armen, Mijn Lief * Koenraad Logghe (1996)

The complete title of this booklet is Ontslaap nu in mijn armen, mijn lief – het doodsgebeuren: een heidens alternatief. The first word is a Dutch word that isn’t used very often. It is a beautifull word which means something like ‘pass away’, ‘to fall asleep’. Then the title of this booklet means ‘Pass away in my arms, my dear – the befall of death: a pagan alternative’.

The booklet is written by Koenraad Logghe of Werkgroep Traditie from Belgium. It was published by Traditie itself and can only be ordered by Traditie. I suppose that you have guessed that it is written in Dutch. As the title suggest the booklet is about dying, death, rituals, etc. in a ‘pagan perspective’. The writer starts with discribing how illness and death are hidden away in our society. Not that long ago a person died in company of his/her loved ones who knew what to do in the periode of dying and thereafter. Nowadays many people die in a hospital and special companies take care of the burial or cremation.

Then Logghe continues to explain the difference between burial and cremation, speaks about ancient burial rituals (like with the use of cromlechs or burial mounds) and how our ancestors (might have) looked at this important face of life. Then follows detailed information about the Norse/Germanic symbols around death, rituals, the different ‘souls’, heilagr, örlogr, etc., etc. This part is a very nice compilation of this information together. The second half starts with a more psychological part about how relatives experience the death of a loved one, followed by a long part with possible rituals, songs, poems, information for speeches, etc.

Ontslaap is a very nice booklet to give you ideas about how the forgotten practices around death and dying can be revived and given meaning again. Also the first half is very helpfull to get a quick idea how our ancesters actually saw this whole process and how it fitted in their worldview. A very nice little book (about 150 pages), but you will have to contact Traditie to get a copy of it.

Tussen Hamer en Staf * Koenraad Logghe (1992)

This book was published in 1992 and has been long sold out. The writer doesn’t want it republished in this form, but hopes that some day a reworked version will be available. I was lucky enough to run into a second hand copy at antiqbook.com and I think I paid more for this second hand copy than it has costed new in 1992. The book is in Dutch (eh, Flemish) and the title means “Between hammer and staff”. The subtitle of the book is “pre-Christian symbolism in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe”. (“The Netherlands is pluriel in Dutch, so the writer means Belgium and the Netherlands.) Koenraad Logghe has investigated the pagan origins of various forms of ‘folkish art’ such as on houses, rooftops, fenses, doors, gravestones, etc., etc. You will read about the dividing of the year (summer side and winter side), the world-tree or Irminsul, mother earth symbols, acre-symbols, etc. The 187 page book is stuffed with images which serve as examples for the text. This way you will get an idea of some symbolism and possibly recognise it yourself when you run into it. Reading the book you will not only get an idea of the worldview or our ancestors, but also how elements of this worldview have survived until the present day. Often people know that certain things were used by the parents or grandparents, but they forgot the meaning of such ornamentations. Logghe gives you back the key to understand this kind of expressions. A wonderfull and very handy book if you have interests in this field. Just keep checking a site such as Antiqbook.com if you want to get a copy too. Maybe you can get a copy from a libarary and photocopy it (there are 13 Dutch libraries which have it). And even more maybe, a new version will be made available some day.
ISBN 9072100425 / 9030406666

Heidens Nederland * Judith Schuyf (ISBN: 9053450637 * 1995)

“Heathen Netherlands, visible remains of a not-Christian past” is a nice little book that was ten years ago. The second printing of 1997 is available here and there, but it seems that you can’t just order this book anywhere. I have seen second hand copies a few times, but bought a new copy last week at a museum.

As the (sub)title suggest, the writer will take you on a tour through the Netherlands looking for pre-Christian sites or symbols. When I first heard about the book, I expected some kind of catalogue which lists such sites by area with a short explanation. When I ran into a copy I couldn’t see what could be found where and I put the book back disappointed. So for start: don’t expect a catalogue with pagan remains!

What the writer probably did is make such a catalogue for herself, but she put it in the form of a book. She starts explaining what it is that she investigated, giving the religion and cults of what is now the Netherlands, saying something about this religion and cults and in the meantime noting a few places where things can still be seen.
Part II may be called “catalogue”, but it is not the catalogue that I hoped for. It is a catalogue by subject, but then in an ongoing ‘story’ and not systematically given. Schuyf tells about heathen mountains, so called ‘table mountains’, sacred trees, offering stones, devil stones, wells and pits and also a range of folkloristic (even Christian) habbits that have a pre-Christian source, such as the offering of nails, the ligate (?) of illnesses, healing trees and wells, protective crosses, tribunal places (-stones, -trees), etc. etc.

All this is -like I said- explained and the examples of (possible) remaining places all throughout the country are mentioned in the text. Sometimes there is a photo with a discription how to get there. But if you want to know what can be found in the area where you live, you will have to scan the book for place names that sound familiar or you know where they are.

All in all there are not too many, but quite a few nice things to be found in my country beside the famous burial mounds and hunebeds. These are often places of which the name suggests that in pre-Christian times they had a special significance, but here and there there are some nice (mostly folkloristic) remains that are worth checking out.

So for those interested in these kinds of things either living in or visiting the Netherlands may have to look around a bit to find this book, but it is not too expensive and a nice read with good suggestions for being/becoming tourist in the Netherlands.

Rituele Repertoires * Gerard (G.W.J.) Rooijakkers (ISBN 906168403X * 1994) & Eer en Schande * Gerard Rooijakkers (ISBN 9061684471 * 1995)

A while ago I saw Gerard Rooijakkers giving a lecture about “Volksgerichten In Zuidoost Brabant” which means something like “peoplescourts in Southeast Brabant”. “Noord-Brabant” is a Dutch province in the south. The lecture was about how the closed village-communities of a few centuries ago, made their members clear if they did something that the communitie could not agree with. Nowadays we go to court or send the police to a wrongdoer. In the 17th century this was a possibility, but in practise the communities wanted to solve things themselves. The spokesman mentioned a book of his a few times, so I looked it up and got it from the local library.

Rooijakkers wrote his thesis about the folklore of the area that I live in. The writer has a preference for what he calls “black folklore”, the part of folklore that we (try to) forget about. This was already heard in the lecture. The bookform of Rooijakkers thesis “Rituele Repertoires” is a large one (700+ pages) with a lot of information about the social, political and clerical history of Southeast Brabant. You can read about the customs of the common people, the reactions of the Catholic south to the reformation, the counter-reformation, etc. The information is about the time 1559 to 1854. Is was interesting to read such a detailed history of the area that I live in, how the southern Netherlands were formed, the invasions of the French and the Spaniards, the changes of Christianity and especially what happened in this period in the small villages where all this took place. In different ways -for example- the Catholic people tried to make clear that the Protestant priests were not welcome. This could vary from shitting in the church to molesting the priest and even ‘banishment rituals’. Rooijakkers keeps highlighting the ritual meanings of such actions and gives a wide variety of examples and quotes many old texts (in old Dutch). It is easier to give the idea by returning to the subject of his lectures about ‘peoplescourts’.

When a man did not treat his wife well, the community put him to shame to show him his place. An often-used method was the so-called “ploegspannen”. The man was bound in front of a plough (instead of a horse) and forced to plough the field in front of his house. The purpose of this method is plural. First of course physical punishment, but more important is the element of shame. The whole village (and of course the surrounding villages) knew about the incident. Even if they didn’t know what the man had done, they know now, because only in the ‘bad husband case’, the man got this kind of punishment. Further shame is the field in front of the house that was wracked up, so passers-by knew for the weeks to come that something had happened here.

The customs of the local people did of course not only deal with punishment, but the line is sometimes thin. For example, when a man and a woman wanted to marry, the unmarried male part of the community wanted something in return for the woman, because their ‘market’ had become smaller. Usually the groom was supposed to give away beer. Should he not do this, the “jonkheit” (an old word for ‘youth’, but it refers to all unmarried males) would come to his house and make noise. If the beer still didn’t come, there were ways to spoil the marriage day in such a way that everybody would know that the groom had been a cheap-ass.

More of such customs and situations are spoken about (but the range of subjects is much wider). In “Rituele Repertoires” at length, in “Eer en Schande” (which means ‘honour and shame’) in a more modest booklet (176 pages). The dissertation is no longer in press, but the smaller booklet is. “Eer en Schande” has all the interesting and funny information of the large book, is a lot cheaper and has images that are not found in the large book. Besides what is mentioned above, you can read about rituals around death, swearing, seasonal customs, the ‘sociability’ (youth-culture of the earlier mentioned ‘jonkheit’), etc.

Rooijakkers follows the old customs to more recent times and he is about the only one who does this. The cover of ‘Eer en Schande’ shows a slaughtered dear nailed against the churchdoor of Hoogeloon in 1994. It was obvious to people that this was bad news, but noone really knew what this action meant. Rooijakkers had more of such recent examples of ‘black folklore’. It seems that he and certain individuals (the dear was put on the church door as a warning by poachers against people who had warned the police about their actions) want to keep the memory of this side of the folklore alive. Rooijakkers describes the elements and ritual value of this and other folkloristic actions.

Very interesting, especially when you live in Brabant, because it all takes place in the Southeast part of Noord-Brabant.

The Golden Bough * James George Frazer (ISBN: 0684826305)

What a book this is! Frazer (1854-1941) wanted to explain the following-up of priests in the cult of Diana. First he thought that this could be done in short, but he found out that he needed to explain many different parts from a great number of mythologies and folklore. In the end Frazer came up with a work in two volumes that was released in 1890. After the first publication Frazer was still so enthousiastic about his comperative study of mythologies, that he enlarged his work to a book in as many as twelve volumes! Still an unsurpassed work that set a new kind of studies. Frazer is regarded as the first antropologist. Anyway, twelve volumes was a complete overkill for many people, but the popularity of the book kept growing and so did the demand for a shorther version. This Frazer completed in 1920. Still a respectable book of over 900 pages that has fortunately never been out of print.
The book reads a bit like a novel and indeed, Frazer touches on almost anything. Mythology from the far East, the near East, Africa, Europe, America and more, but also habbits from the world-religions but also from local farmer-communities in the middle of nowwhere. Folkore, mythology, magic and religion of the world all to be found in one book. Coming with a proper index this is the ultimate reference-book for anyone interested in these subjects.

In Search Of The Indo-Europeans * J.P. Mallory (isbn 0500276161)

The title of this book covers the content perfectly. No straight answers, simply because they cannot be given, but a lot of information in search of answers. As the term suggest “Indo-European” refers to a people, or peoples ranging from India to Western Europe. To be more precise, the Indo-Europeans are suppose to be the peoples live from India to Western Europe. In order to determine who these cultures people are and where they came from, scientists have two methods: linguistics (the investigation of languages) and archeology. J.P. Mallory uses both in his book.

The beginning is very interesting. It tells how the term “Indo-Europeans” came into being and what strange and actually a not too acurate term it is. In chapters two and three, Mallory speaks about several Indo-European peoples, where they most likely came from, where they went to, etc. Then chapter four sets the standard for the rest of the book. Mallory keeps talking of the “Proto-Indo-European-Culture”, so the culture before the culture that is supposed to be the starting point of the Western cultures of today. This may already be quite confusing, but the idea is as follows: from the current Indo-Euopean languages (which are in some way similar), linguistics tried to recreate the language that was spoken by our foreforefathers. Finding out what words were known, a recreation of the culture, economy, social organisation, etc. is made. When possible the ideas are underbuild with archeology, but since we are talking thousands and thousands years in the past, this is more often not possible than it is.

A chapter is dedicated to the Indo-European religion. This would have been the most interesting part for me, but it doesn’t go very deeply. The next chapter is called “the Indo-European homeland problem”. Scientists do not agree where the Proto-Indo-Europeans came from. Whether this was from India, or from central Asia (now Turkey, Iran), or elsewhere. Personally I find the question itself strange. It doens’t seem likely to me that there was one separate folk, living in a pinpointable place on the earth in a specific period of time who are the forefathers of the multitude of nations and cultures with their variety of languages that we call Indo-European today. As Mallory also shows, Indo-European cultures are Indo-European cultures because they speak an Indo-European language. The point is -though-, that some of the oldest of them, had a language that is already mixed with the tongue of their neighbouring cultures. Or what is also possible, a people originally didn’t have an Indo-European tongue, but in the course of time, they got it. This makes it hard, if not impossible, to say with certainty what are Indo-European cultures and which aren’t, or which are partly it. All problems the scholars meet, are dealt with in this book. Mallory proves a bit to be a popular-scientist, not shying to say where scientists are not sure or wrong in the writers opinion, showing the different ideas and schools. All in all the book is very scholarly though. It is a flood of information making it a very tiring read.

I bought this book in a second hand bookshop in Vancouver, Canada and one of the people who was with me, asked me: “Don’t you have better books about this subject in Europe?” My first reaction was that I wasn’t really looking for a book like this, I just happened to run into it, so I never really looked for in at home. I suppose that probably the title would have been chosen differently. “Indo-European” is a term that is used more often now to avoid the term “Aryan” that was mostly used before, but which word was so much abused by the Nazis. According to Hindu mythology, it where the Aryans who drove out the original population of Northern India and the Aryans were a more higher developed people. The Aryans build up a wonderfull civilisation and started to spread over the rest of the world. It is these blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryans that Hitler and his followers thought were the “Übermenschen” they stemmed from. It is not surprising that the term is not discredited and replaced. People who still know the connection, also put a burdon on the term “Indo-European”, which is actually not a too great term either, but still. Like Hitler did, and some people do still, the term “Aryan” (and now “Indo-European”) is used to divide the primal culture where ‘we’ come from, from the rest, in particular Semitic.
But to come back to the question of my Canadian guide, this book was published by Thames & Hudson, a Brittish/American publisher, so in a way it is European too. I haven’t been able to find much about the writer, but according to his style, he is an American. This fairly cheap and highly informative book is definately not a bad buy if you want to have something about this subject. There are probably better ones, or maybe more original, but still, if you buy the books of George Dumezil for example, you won’t read about other theories than his own. The nice part of a book like this is, that the writer doesn’t feel like having to write something new, but make an overview of what ideas are present and put them alongside eachother. I haven’t looked further for a similar book, but according to the back of it, I don’t have to!

A point to close off. Of course I was aware of the connections the term “Indo European” has in Europe. Still many scholars use it and why shouldn’t they? If scientists agree that there are a few primal cultures that the cultures of today come from, why can’t we give them names? Reading this book of Mallory I was quite pleased by the fact that he didn’t seem to feel like having to devend himself for putting the things in the way he did. Upto the last chapter… This chapter is entirely dedicated to “the Aryan myth”, the misuse and abuse of the terms and history of the “Aryans” or “Indo Europeans”, where people who use(d) these term for certain purposes are/where wrong. He didn’t have to do that for me, but it does put things back in perspective for people who would feel reserved to study this kind of material because of the connections that were and are made to it.

Druid Worship & Their Temples * John Daniel (isbn 1558183922)

“Sinterklaas”-presents from American relatives can sometimes be a pleasant surprise. This is a small photocopied book (but well-done) from a small publisher from small village near Seattle. “Holmes Publishing Group” has at least two series of publications, one with Golden Dawn texts and one with other texts, including this one, but also for example The Hieroglyphic Monad of John Dee, The Divine Edda of Winifred Faraday and A Mithraic Ritual of G.R.S. Mead. This little Druid-book is fairly informative and (I suppose) also fairly inexpensive, so I think I will try to get my hands on other publications of Holmes. The books have the following address, should you want to get in contact yourself:

Holmes Publishing Group
Postal Box 623
Edmonds, WA 98020
USA

King Arthur In The Netherlands * Martine Meuwese (editor) (BPH 2005)

Since 1930 “Arthurian congresses” have been held by what later became the International Arthurian Society (IAS). This society consists of scientists in a variety of fields (linguistics, archeologists, etc.) who have an interest in the Grail-romances and -histories. For the first time in the existence of the IAS the congress was held in the Netherlands in july 2005. The Society was also interested in an exhibition of Dutch Arthurian scriptures, so they approached the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica in Amsterdam. This library -as reader of these pages will know- mostly focusses on Western esoteric, especially Rosicrucian and Hermetic texts. Because of the esoteric contents of the Grail-romances and their influence on later groups, the BPH also has several of these ancient texts. The IAS thought that the library founded by Joost Ritman was a good place for an intimate exhibition and so it happened that from 25 july to 22 october 2005 a small exhibition with old Arthurian texts can be visited in the wonderfull Amsterdam library. Following BPH customs, a catalogue of the exhibition is available which is the subject of this review.

The exhibition’s oldest item is a 1136 copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae. Further to be seen are Tristan texts, of course Chrétien de Troyes and Wolfram von Eschenbach, but also Middle-Dutch texts and histories such as Jacob van Maerlant’s Spiegel Historiael. From then on, the exhibition works all the way to the previous century with the famous drawings of Aubrey Beardsley in Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. Some books look magnificent, orther are highly affected by time. Also worth mentioning are the ‘Tristan and Isolde’ shoes! The items come from the BPH itself, but also from many other museums and private collections, so you can say that this exhibition is really unique!

Both the exhibition and the catalogue are highly informative. Each item is shortly elucidated and the different sections in the catalogue are each introduced at length, giving the history of the Grail-stories, how they were written and copied by hand, how they spread and survived to the present day. Also you can see/read how the Arthurian legends still appeal to us modern men. The best of it, this 70-pages, full-colour catalogue costs only E 10,-, so be sure to get your copy before they are all gone. Also be sure to pay a visit to the exhibition before it is over too. See www.ritmanlibrary.nl for more information about visiting the library.

Keltische Mythologie * David Bellingham (ISBN: 9057640077)

A cheap book that is currently available in Dutch bookstores (especially the dumpstores) in a series with a few other books. A nice-looking book with 9 myths from the Kelts in Dutch language with beautiful images and photos. Good buy for the money!

A Celtic Miscellany * Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson (trans.) (isbn 0140442472)

Here we haven an anthology of Celtic literature. Jackson made a bunch of subjects in which quotes from Celtic literature are put. This literature varries from seventh to the eighteenth century and from all Irish, Scottish, Gaelic, Manx, Welsh, Cornish and Breton literature. The subjects are hero-tale and adventure, nature, love, epigram, ‘celtic magic’, description, humour and satire, bardic poetry, elegy and religion. The quotes can be a few lines, but also several pages. The nice thing about a book like this, is that you get a lot of Celtic literature so you will have a good idea of the styles and forms of Celtic literature after reading this book. But the book only gives the sources of the quotes as “Irish; traditional folk song”, “Welsh; traditional verse; seventeenth century?” or in the best case “Welsh englyn; David Jones of Llangwyfen; eighteenth century.” I don’t think this is enough information to find the text where the quotes are taken from.
Then a personal note. Celtic literature can sometimes be very beautiful with fantasyfull descriptions and dreamy ways of putting things, but I find that very often this style is very tiring and even boring. Some sections of the book I read through very quickly, others at a more modest pace. It is quite strange to see how even in very early texts there are already many references to Christianity, but of course, the Celtic islands embraced Christianity pretty early in history.
A nice book to read some time, but don’t expect too much of it.