Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth

In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.

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The Vedas Before the Vedas

Vedas - Wikipedia

On the Training of Young Warriors

 

The words of Kris Kershaw:

[I]n a highly structured and successful warrior society, like that of the Masai of even fifty years ago, the training was long and rigorous....Typically, for a good part of the period the boy lived in the forest like the beasts of the forest; he became a hardy and crafty hunter and fighter. But that was only part of becoming a man of his people. As a family man and citizen he would have to know the correct prayers and cultic practices, as well as the history of his tribe [25].

He adds:

Among pre-literate peoples, all important information, and especially anything that must be learned by heart, is in verse; the verse form acts as a mnemonic device, and at the same time, the subject matter is lifted out of the domain of the everyday. All the lore that the young...warrior had to absorb during the period of training in the Jungmanschaft was in verse; this would include the history of his people, hymns to the gods and stories about them, as well as general information on how to get along in life in a dangerous and often puzzling world [77].

He concludes:

This was knowledge, veda, long before there were written Vedas [25].

I ask:

Is it not still thus among the covens of Witchdom, training up the next generation?

 

 

From: the "Triads of Paganistan"

Three living jewels of Witchdom:

white pearl, red amber, black jet.

 

Kris Kershaw (2000) The One-eyed God: Odin and the (Indo-) Germanic Männerbünde. Washington D.C.: Journal of Indo-European Studies, Monograph No. 36

 

 

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Poet, scholar and storyteller Steven Posch was raised in the hardwood forests of western Pennsylvania by white-tailed deer. (That's the story, anyway.) He emigrated to Paganistan in 1979 and by sheer dint of personality has become one of Lake Country's foremost men-in-black. He is current keeper of the Minnesota Ooser.

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