Ancient Germanic Worship and Spirituality
From Dialogus, Agricola, Germania by Cornelius Tacitus, translated by William Peterson, 1914.
From: Unknown To: 120 C.E.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Dialogus, Agricola, Germania by Cornelius Tacitus, translated by William Peterson, 1914.
Worship and Spirituality
Tradition relates that some lost or losing battles have been restored by the women, by the incessance of their prayers and by the baring of their breasts; for so it is brought home to the men that the slavery, which they dread much more keenly on their women’s account, is close at hand: it follows that the loyalty of those tribes is more effectually guaranteed from whom, among other hostages, maids of high birth have been exacted.
Further, they conceive that in woman is a certain uncanny and prophetic sense: they neither scorn to consult them nor slight their answers. In the reign of Vespasian of happy memory we saw Velaeda treated as a deity by many during a long period; but in ancient times also they reverenced Albruna and many other women—in no spirit of flattery, nor for the manufacture of goddesses.
Of the gods, they give a special worship to Mercury, to whom on certain days they count even the sacrifice of human life lawful. Hercules and Mars they appease with such animal life as is permissible. A section of the Suebi sacrifices also to Isis: the cause and origin of this foreign worship I have not succeeded in discovering, except that in the emblem itself, which takes the shape of a Liburnian galley, shows that the ritual is imported.
Apart from this they deem it incompatible with the majesty of the heavenly host to confine the gods within walls, or to mould them into any likeness of the human face: they consecrate groves and coppices, and they give the divine names to that mysterious something which is visible only to the eyes of faith.
To divination and the lot they they pay as much attention as any one: A bough is cut from a nut-bearing tree and divided into slips: these are distinguished by certain runes and spread casually and at random over white cloth: afterwards, should the inquiry be official the priest of the state, if private the father of the family in person, after prayers to the gods and with eyes turned to heaven, takes up one slip at a time til he has done this on three separate occasions, and after taking the three interprets them according to the runes which have already been stamped on them: if the message be a prohibition, no inquiry on the same matter is made during the same day; if the message be permissive, further confirmation is required by means of divination: and even among the Germans divination by consultation of the cries and flight of birds is well known, but their special divination is to make trial of the omens and warnings furnished by horses.
In the same groves and coppices are fed certain white horses, never soiled by mortal use: these are yoked to a sacred chariot and accompanied by the priest and king, or other chief of the state, who then observe their neighing or snorting. On no other divination is more reliance placed, not merely by the people but also by their leaders: the priests they regard as the servants of the gods, but the horses are their confidants.
They have another method of taking divinations by means of which they probe the issue of serious wars. A member of the tribe at war with them is somehow or other captured and pitted against a selected champion of their own countrymen, each in his tribal armour. The victory of one or the other is taken as a presage
Tacitus, Cornelius. Dialogus, Agricola, Germania. Edited by T. E. Page and W. H. D. Rouse. Translated by William Peterson, W. Heinemann, 1914.
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