Heathen Soul Lore Foundations: Ancient and Modern Germanic Pagan Concepts of the Souls

by Winifred Hodge Rose, Dale Wood (Artist)

Heathen Soul Lore Foundations presents a living spiritual landscape, rooted in ancient Germanic languages and understanding, offered for modern Heathens to explore and use in their own spiritual practice. This book also presents an approach for identifying and exploring ancient concepts of ‘what a soul is’ that may be of interest to followers of other branches of historically based modern Paganism, and to scholars of comparative religion. Linguistic analysis, literature, folklore, comparative religion, anthropology, esoteric and philosophical approaches are used to analyze old Germanic-language words relating to 'the soul'. The following souls, identified through this process, are thoroughly Ferah, Ahma, Ghost, Hama, Aldr, Mod, Hugr, Sefa, and Saiwalo. Both scholarly and inspirational perspectives are taken, intended to stimulate both intellectual and imaginative exploration of these soul-concepts and the world-view which opens out from them. This book is richly illustrated with B&W images, in order to stimulate engagement of the imagination in comprehending these abstract entities and their metaphysical contexts. // Review by Diana L. Paxson, author of "Essential Walking the Path of Norse Paganism": “Since she first sent me the article on “Heathen Full-Souls” for A Journal of Northern Tradition in 2006, I have been fascinated by Winifred Hodge Rose’s development of the concept of the souls as an interactive system. I am delighted to see the full presentation of so many years of patient research and contemplation becoming available at last. In Winifred’s hands, philology becomes a spiritual adventure, as words from the old Germanic languages reveal new insights into who we are and our place in the spiritual universe.” // Review by John Michael Greer, author of "A World Full of Gods": “Winifred Rose has done an excellent job of gathering and synthesizing material about Heathen soul lore from a wide range of disparate sources. The resulting book is a scholarly, thorough resource that belongs on the bookshelf of every Heathen, and everyone interested in the subject.” // Review by Cat Heath, author of "Elves, Witches & Spinning Old Heathen Magic in the Modern Day": “There’s a wonderful shaping and hope-bringing quality to the work here that I think will play a key role in helping to move Heathenry towards something deep and infinitely satisfying. It's really hard to overstate the impact this book could have.”

Genres: History

575 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2021

About the author

Welcome! I'm Winifred Hodge Rose, an Elder of the Troth, an inclusive, international Heathen organization. I've followed a Heathen path for more than thirty years, serving as a scholar, writer, leader, teacher, priestess, and oracular spaewife in many Heathen venues. I grew up as the daughter of a US diplomat stationed in various countries during the 1950s and 1960s, and later lived for years in Greece and Germany. I learned foreign languages through immersion, and learned to observe and adapt to different cultures and world-views. This led me to study ancient Germanic languages, literature, and etymology on my own. These experiences have supported my efforts to understand, as well as possible, ancient Heathen world-views and adapt them for modern Heathen use. I have Bachelor's and Master's degrees in the natural sciences, and a Master's degree in political science. I'm now retired from my career as a senior research scientist working on methods for watershed and natural resources management on military installations in the US and Germany. I'm blessed with two grown children, three growing grandsons, and a good life in the Illinois countryside with my blacksmith husband Dean Rose (and various critters). Nowadays I consider myself an independent scholar of Heathen theology and philosophy, and spend most of my time thinking, studying, pursuing spiritual practice, writing and publishing on these topics. My publishing imprint is WordfrumaPress.net.

Reviews

[Charles Oppenheimer · Rating 5 out of 5]

great book

Very powerful words great message and amazing content and subject if you’re Norse pagan or heathen this is a definite read

[Kaye · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very interesting, dense text from a Heathen theologian on the souls in modern Heathen religions. I found that it was accessible to me as someone without a background in Heathenry or Asatru. I enjoyed the way that art and imagery was integrated into the text, and One place where I had some lingering questions was about the Hama. I am one of the many, many people delivered cesarean, and I'm not sure what the implications of that are for cultivating a healthy state in the Hama — on a physical level, c-sections are correlated with longitudinal weaknesses in the gut biome and immune system, for example, so it'd be nice to see some coverage about that. The relationship between the Hugr soul and ancestor veneration was nice, too, as I do ancestor veneration and have started a practice for the Dísir and for my intellectual predecessors over the past few years. I also think it's really cool to be reading a polytheistic book from a retired scientist — her career expertise totally comes out in the text and is the source of her deep knowledge when she makes analogies.

As a committed person in the Platonism camp, we obviously have a different take on the soul (the biggest difference is that the soul must have a ruling monad, and the duality + middle construction in the "soular-system" matrix doesn't fit there, nor does the idea of the self-soul as a harmony composed from constituents), but this lateral reading has helped me to contemplate the embodied soul in a more balanced fashion when thinking about both the soul's garments and its interactions with the irrational souls that it comes into contact with while embodied. I do think it's interesting to contrast the role of the Hel realm with the role of the Goddess Mnemosyne, her lake, and her daughters the Muses (who are seeded by Night and brought forth by Zeus, imo), as the Muses are very active in producing imagery. Mnemosyne contains an image of the totality of eternity that reminds me a lot of the way that Rose described Hel, and I hadn't thought of the connection between lakes and fens/bogs/marshes before.