--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: x99lynx@...
> To: cybalist@...
> Sent: Friday, May 17, 2002 7:05 PM
> Subject: [tied] Re: the New Age Irmin
>
>
> > Based on what I could find on the web, the word "irminsul" from
early on consistently refered to a pillar or column with an image on
top, when it is described in detail at all. This makes it a dead
ringer for a Roman/Greek herma.
>
> The word <su:l> meant 'post, stake, pillar', so, literally, <irmin-
su:l> was perhaps no more than 'huge post'. There is no _consistent_
reference to images on top. The Germani had no better word for things
like 'column', so they employed <irminsu:l> to render Latin
<columna>, including e.g. that of Simon the Stylite. They also used
the word for other tall structures like <pyramides> and <colossi>,
and surely for some kinds of <hermae>; incidentally, a herma was
originally any kind of boundary mark, milestone or signpost, even a
heap of stones, though square blocks of stone supporting a bust of
Hermes were a particularly popular form of Athenian hermae.
>
> > There's really no reason to think that the word referred to
anything else, except among members of the Mystic Order of the The
Magnanimous Tree. The fact that is was wood would be no surprise to
any archaeologists, since the Saxons (despite their name) were not
building with much stone at the time.
>
> I understand you are expressing the opinion of the Hermetic
Hermandad of Hermundurian Hermae ;-).
>
> > Rudolf's description does not contradict that. <universalis> in
any of the annals is rarely if ever a reference to the Universe or
Cosmos or other mysterious stuff. It most often means accessible or
belonging to everyone - just like "catholic" - being opposite of
<singuli> or <proprius> ("nihil... proprium aut universale"). "quasi
sustinens omnia" can be read as nothing more than "as if providing
for all people" (e.g.,"si qua spes reliqua est, quae fortium civium
mentes cogitationesque sustentet", "conscientia sustentor", "Caesaris
summa in omnis,... nunc eius adflictis fortunis universa sustinet.")
>
> Here's what Rudolf writes: <Truncum quoque ligni non parvae
magnitudinis in altum erectum sub divo colebant, patria eum lingua
Irminsul appellantes, quod Latine dicitur universalis columna, quasi
sustinens omnia.> Translatio: "They also worshipped the trunk of a
tree of no small size, set upright under the open sky, calling it in
their country's language the Irminsul, which translates into Latin
as 'universal pillar', as if supporting everything." Note, Steve,
that <quasi sustinens omnia> _can't_ be read "providing for all
people", since "all people" would be <omnes> in Latin -- a small but
significant nuance.
>
> > Of course, pillars that support the sky are a dime a dozen in
mythology (that is what the "pillars of Hercules" are sometimes, but
most times herculae are just one form of hermae. But perhaps Nut the
Egyptian god and Irmin/Wodan's world tree and Atlas and his pillars
are all just "representations" of the pillar that must have
misfunctioned in Atlantis?).
>
> Personally, I don't worship trees, not even big ones. However, as
you know very well, some ancient peoples had their mythical "world-
trees". No need to go to Atlantis for inspiration; the world-tree
motif was certainly present in Germanic mythology.
>
> > Rudolf's folk etymology here, aside from creating some kind
of "para-god" in later minds, simply confused the herma/Hermes/erma
pillar word with the (H)ermo:n-/irmin/erma concept word - "unbounded,
with free-access, not-closed-out." Rudolf, unlike most other
commentators, probably did not have known that hermaes were pillars.
>
> Rudolf of Fulda was one of the most distinguished scholars of his
time, a student of Rhabanus Maurus and a younger colleague of
Eginhard (Charlemagne's biographer), as well as Eginhard's successor
as editor of the Annales Fuldenses. He was also in charge of the
school at Fulda after Rhabanus, and later became the chaplain and a
personal friend of Ludwig the Pious -- a position he owed to his
extraordinary learning. Rudolf was a much greater erudite and a far
more accomplished scholar than Widukind of Corvey. He wrote his
description of the Saxon Irminsul in the 860s, just a few decades
after Charlemagne's Saxon campaigns, when some first-hand informants
were still available -- he himself was probably in his sixties at
that time. (Widukind wrote his Res Gestae Saxonicae more than a
century later.) The Translatio Sancti Alexandri, from which the
Irminsul passage comes, was begun at the request of Waltbraht, whose
grandfather was Widukind -- the Saxon rebel, not the historian. As
regards folk-etymologising and getting confused, it seems to me,
Steve, that thou behold'st a mote in Rudolf's eye but considerest not
an irminsul in thine own ;-).
>
> Piotr
>
> PS One of Rudolf's students was Ermenric, abbot of Elwangen,
another example of "ermenonymy".
I don't mean to butt in to this intersting discussion, but I looked
up Hermae in Funk and Wagnall's Standard Dictionary of Folklore,
Mythology and Legend adn came up with this:
"In ancient greece, squared pillars of stone, narrower at the base
that at the top, surmounted by a head of Hermes(or some other deity)
and with a phallus on the shaft of the column: a development of the
more ancient representation of the gods as a mound of stones or an
unhewn monolith. Hermae stood before houses, where they were
worshipped by women as bringing fertility, on street corners and
roads, carrying ther street directions and moral precepts...The
Hermae were decorated with offerings of dried figs and the like and
flower gardens. In Rome, the Hermae were identified with the termini,
or boundary markers, and were utilized in more functional ways, sich
as supporting the barriers in the Circus Maximus....Compare cairn"
I think the ithyphallic and fertility giving aspect of the Hermae
described here is intersting, and it seems to coexist with their
importance as boundary markers.
I know that phallic=pillar connection may seem obvious, but what
about a sort of combined world tree/male deity symbol, also connected
with boundaries and transitions(the crossroads, the barrier between
home and outside the home). Odin was assoicated with travellers as
well as Hermes(also Funk and Wagnalls)
Also, I read in Funk and Wagnalls' that Odin had a messenger son
named Hermod who rode Sleipnir into the underworld to pass news of
Balder's death. Does anyone know if this is a late borrowing?