A Practical Guide to Pagan Priesthood: Community Leadership and Vocation

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It remains difficult to determine the extent to which pre-Christian beliefs retained their popularity among the Anglo-Saxon populace from the seventh century onward. Blair highlighted evidence for the existence of square enclosures dating from the early Anglo-Saxon period which often included standing posts and which were often superimposed on earlier prehistoric monuments, most notably Bronze Age barrows. There are also a number of recorded cases of parts of non-human animals being buried within such graves.

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Yet the fact that these questions are coming to me shows that – at least in part – we expect our priests to have some expertise with contemplative practices. At present, while some Anglo-Saxonists have ceased using the terms "paganism" or "pagan" when discussing the early Anglo-Saxon period, others have continued to do so, viewing these terms as a useful means of designating something that is not Christian yet which is still identifiably religious. However, there are four references to pre-Christian cultic structures that appear in Anglo-Saxon literary sources. In Suffolk however, ships were not burned, but buried, as is the case at Sutton Hoo, which it is believed, was the resting place of the king of the East Angles, Raedwald.Burial mounds remained objects of veneration in early Anglo-Saxon Christianity, and numerous churches were built next to tumuli. Such wooden pillars would have been easy to convert into large crucifixes following the conversion to Christianity, and thus a number of these sacred sites may have survived as cultic spaces within a Christian context.

Anglo-Saxon paganism - Wikipedia Anglo-Saxon paganism - Wikipedia

Let us raise a hymn, especially because He who thrust into Tartarus of terrible torture the ghastly three-tongued serpent who vomits torrents of rank and virulent poisons through the ages deigned in like measure to send to earth the offspring begotten of holy parturition. Both secular and church authorities issued condemnations of alleged non-Christian pagan practices, such as the veneration of wells, trees, and stones, right through to the eleventh century and into the High Middle Ages. Ceremonies which took place at these sites included at least one annually (probably around November) which involved a large sacrifice of cattle. Place names containing Wodnes- or Wednes- as their first element have been interpreted as references to Woden, [99] and as a result his name is often seen as the basis for such place names as Woodnesborough ("Woden's Barrow") in Kent, Wansdyke ("Woden's Dyke") in Wiltshire, and Wensley ("Woden's Woodland Clearing" or "Woden's Wood") in Derbyshire.Those Britons who continued to practise Christianity were probably perceived as second-class citizens and were unlikely to have had much of an impact on the pagan kings and aristocracy which was then emphasising Anglo-Saxon culture and defining itself against British culture. It has been suggested that the idea of a world tree can be discerned through certain references in the Dream of the Rood poem. A king ( cyning) was elected from among eligible members of a royal family or cynn by the witena ġemōt, an assembly of an elite that replaced the earlier folkmoot, which was the equivalent of the Germanic thing, the assembly of all free men. One of the aspects of Anglo-Saxon paganism that we know most about is their burial customs, which we have discovered from archaeological excavations at various sites, including Sutton Hoo, Spong Hill, Prittlewell, Snape and Walkington Wold, and we today know of the existence of around 1200 Anglo-Saxon pagan cemeteries. Growing up in a Baptist church, the standard response was “go talk to the preacher and ask him to pray with you.