According to Ovid, The Golden Age was a time of perfect innocence and harmony. Humanity lived without laws, toil, or fear. The earth provided for all, and there was no need for labor, war, or travel. People were just by nature, not by compulsion.
“The golden age was first, which, without a ruler, cherished of its own will faith and right.” (Metamorphoses I.89–90)
No ships (no navigation or seafaring), no agriculture/animal domestication or tools, no metal use, no cities, no states, no private property, no laws, no warfare, no need for houses (they lived in caves), no architecture, no clothing, or toil. People lived directly from what nature provides (as hunter-gatherers) in small, egalitarian groups. And yes, this describes the Paleolithic perfectly….
Ovid describes it as a natural paradise, where man lived in simplicity and peace.
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The Silver Age began when Jupiter (Zeus) overthrew Saturn (Cronus) and introduced the first decline. Seasons appeared, ending eternal spring. Men had to build shelters and till the soil for food. This was the age when hardship and labor entered the world.
“Then Jupiter shortened the period of ancient spring, and through winter, summer, and unequal autumn and short spring, made the year revolve.” (I.112–114)
The sun’s course divided the year into seasons. Men had to use agriculture and build homes. Though still pious, men began to lose innocence and grew more dependent on toil. This, naturally, describes the Neolithic perfectly…
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From this came the Bronze Age and it was rougher and more warlike. Men became fiercer and quicker to arms, though not yet wholly wicked.
“Next came the brazen type of man, more fierce in temper, and readier for war, yet not impious.” (I.125–126)
Courage and conflict replaced the innocence of earlier ages. Still, some sense of honor and restraint remained.
***
Then finally, we arrive in the Iron Age (the age of Ovid’s own time, Classical Antiquity), the nadir of human morality. All virtues vanished; greed, fraud, and violence prevailed. Men sailed the seas, claimed private property, mined the earth for wealth, built cities, states, and even empires, and waged war on one another. Faith, truth, and modesty fled from the earth.
“Straightway all evils burst into this age of baser vein: Modesty, truth, and faith took flight, and in their place came fraud and trickery, violence and the wicked love of gain.” (I.129–131)
Humanity desecrated nature and the gods. Ovid’s tone is mournful, lamenting mankind’s moral decay.
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But what is ‘the desecration of nature and the gods’? According to Ovid, this is the exploitation of resources, rather than living in harmony with nature. This is a disrespect of the divine law and order, through violence, impiety, and greed.
He is lamenting the decline as tragic: humanity is capable of great virtue, but it has turned away from the harmony of the Golden Age. In other words: Ovid mourns what humans have lost, not what they have gained materially. Technology, war, and law may advance, but they represent a moral decline, which is the real tragedy.
As you can tell, this is in direct contrast to modern archaeology, where every technological achievement is seen as an ascent.
The ancient way of thinking was that the more men work, build, and exploit nature, the more they lose virtue. Technological advancement and moral decline go hand in hand. Each invention or discovery that makes life materially easier also takes mankind further from natural virtue and divine harmony. The modern way of thinking, on the other hand, is that the more men work, build, and exploit, the more they gain mastery and power, and the more advanced they are.
This anti-modern view was not just something we find in Ovid’s writing, though. It was deeply rooted in Greek thought before Ovid: Hesiod (8th century BC) had said exactly the same in Works and Days: that life worsened as men invented crafts, weapons, and cities. Lucretius (1st century BC), though an Epicurean materialist, also describes early man as closer to nature and therefore more innocent. Virgil, in his Georgics, longs for the rustic simplicity of the early world.
In other words, for the ancients, “progress” was moral regression. Technology, wealth, and mastery over nature were not triumphs, but symptoms of alienation; the loss of the divine harmony that once guided human life.
Conclusion:
Long before Rousseau, the ancients already idealized the uncorrupted natural man; the one untouched by luxury, money, or empire. When Rousseau (18th century) wrote of the “noble savage” (the natural man unspoiled by civilization) he wasn’t inventing a new idea. He was reviving the classical Pagan idea of the Golden Age, reinterpreted through modern philosophy. Rousseau’s “state of nature” is simply Ovid’s “Golden Age” restated. Rousseau gave it a social-contract framework; the ancients gave it a mythic and moral one. But the underlying idea is the same.
Man is born good in nature and becomes evil through civilization.
This skepticism toward technological and social ‘progress’ is characteristic of the Pagan worldview. The noble savage represents the ideal Pagan man: morally virtuous, living in harmony with nature, and uncorrupted by wealth, luxury, or social artifice.
For us today, I would claim that we should hope for individuals (likely) and entire socieites (less likely) to recover virtue and live according to nature (and thus the divine), by using knowledge and tools wisely rather than letting them enslave the soul. The virtuous man has a moral armor, and are less susceptible to the chaos, greed, and other corruption that sweep through our societies today. When others fall, the true Pagan will maintain integrity, be self-sufficient, live in harmony with nature, and have association with like-minded people (only?).
Varg Vikernes
Sources: Hesiod (Erga kai Hēmerai), Lucretius (De Rerum Natura), Virgil (Eclogues, Georgics), Seneca (De Vita Beata, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium, and De Beneficiis), Tacitus (Germania), Ovid (Metamorphoses).
Long before modern hospitals, psychologists, or neuroscientists, our ancestors developed elaborate rituals to preserve identity, memory, and knowledge across generations. Interestingly, this was a system remarkably akin to modern techniques used to treat amnesia. While cloaked in myth, symbolism, and ritual, these practices were far from arbitrary. They were designed with purpose, subtlety, and astonishing psychological insight.
The Pagan traditions, sacred items, burial mounds, and ceremonial acts were tools to restore the memory and identity of returning souls or reincarnated children. Items buried with ancestors weren’t intended merely to accompany them in some afterlife, they served as anchors for memory, cues to help the newly incarnated recognize themselves and reclaim the knowledge, skills, and possessions of past lives.
A trusted guide (often called a sorcerer, druid, or “midwife of the mind”) would oversee this process, ensuring that only the rightful individual could reclaim their legacy. These guides were ritualistically trained to present objects, locations, and symbols in ways that awakened recognition and understanding.
Most myths, far from being whimsical tales, encode this memory-restoring process, as explained and exemplified in detail by my wife (Marie Cachet) in her book, The Secret of the She-Bear.
Today, therapists use remarkably similar methods to help amnesia patients:
Patients are exposed to personal items, photos, or objects tied to strong emotional memories (= burial mound possessions).
Familiar environments are used to trigger recognition and memory reconstruction (= sacred places, sacred trees, ceremonies, traditions).
Guided therapy helps patients restore identity and integrate lost knowledge (= the guidance of the sorcerer).
The logic is the same: memory is recovered through context, emotional attachment, and guided recognition. Ancient Pagan rituals accomplished the same thing, but in symbolic, narrative, and ritualized form.
Conclusion:
These practices were not arbitrary or naïve. They reveal that our ancestors had a systematic understanding of how memory and identity could be restored across lifetimes. To remember was to return; to recover not only knowledge, but the very self carried from a prior existence. What modern neuroscience describes clinically, ancient rituals achieved symbolically and ritually, with the same underlying logic of continuity.
By studying these traditions, we uncover not superstition, but a rational framework of practical intelligence: a method by which reincarnation was guided, memory was reawakened, and identity was re-established in the living.
Continuing on the topic I brought up yesterday, let us discuss pilgrimage.
To many of you this is a term linked to Christianity, but in reality, “Pagan” Europeans went on pilgrimage thousands of years before Christianity was even a thing.
People in pagan cultures regularly traveled to sacred sites, holy springs (e.g., the Well of Segais), groves (e. g., the Nemeton), mountains, tombs, or oracles. In Ancient Greece pilgrimage to the Oracle at Delphi or Asclepian healing temples (like Epidaurus) was common.
Why?
Official history tells us they were seeking healing, wisdom, favor from the gods, or to fulfill vows.
I will not object to any of that, but they say nothing about how going on a pilgrimage to a sacred site could give you any of that. There is no explanation to how that works.
So let me clear that up to you….
If you read yesterday’s post, about how we understand by remembering, it should become evident to you: the original purpose of the pilgrimage is to visit places that you visited and knew from previous lives. To – yes – ‘seek healing, wisdom, favor from the gods’, and perhaps also ‘to fulfill vows’.
Because, by doing so you awaken memories from previous lives. You see the same trees and views that you saw in previous lives. You hear the same waterfall or trickling stream. You pick up the same scents, and sensations. You perform the same rituals. You sing the same songs. You recite the same verses. You experience the same.
You understand more, because you remember. You wake up – yourself. Your previous self. Ergo, indeed, you “heal” (become complete), you become wiser (to remember is to understand, to understand is to remember), you receive favor from the gods (you re-claim and strengthen your magical force, the Hamingja). You pick up the runes (secrets) that you knew in previous lives.
Yes! You become yourself.
Remember this the next time you want to visit some historical site…. You might have that desire for a reason.
They were originally maggots in the corpse of Ymir, the primordial ettin, and they were given a human-like shape by the gods.
Quite enigmatic, isn’t it?
The thing is, the ettin (the ogre of the fairy tales) is ‘the twin’ that we know, for example, from the tale of Romus and Romulus, and that is always killed in the myths. It is killed because it has to…
Again rather enigmatic, isn’t it?
Yes, and it is intentionally so. Because the purpose of our mythology was to test the young, their wits, and their ability to remember. Therefore it was intentionally enigmatic, and intentionally impossible. Yes! Filled with creatures that don’t exist, situations that are absurd, claims that are contradictory, and quite simply impossible. The first step to uncover the hidden meaning behind these myths is to acknowledge that: ‘This is impossible‘.
When you understand that it is indeed impossible, you can also understand that there must be something else said by this. If there are no eight-legged-flying horses, or goats pulling wagons through their air, or ettins, or dragons, or hammers that return to your hand when you cast it, then these things must be something else. They must represent something else.
In Norse, we know such things as kennings, or ‘poetic metaphors’, as we would say in English, but also as heiti, or ‘compound metaphors’, as we would say in English.
Now, you can always believe that these impossible creatures and powers are real, and I would be a fool trying to deny you this belief! Be my guest! Remain in ignorance! See if I care! In fact, you should remain in ignorance, if you cling to these childish beliefs and refuse to listen to what I have to say about this, because that means you are not worthy. You do not understand, and you do not remember. You are probably not a reincarnated ancestor. Just some brand new ‘spark’ in this world, with no roots, no past, and no future. This is not for you, pleb. Send your wish list to “Santa Claus”, and keep believing.
If you, on the other hand, understand that there must be something else in these myths, you have the wits needed, and you probably do because you remember.
I just made this up? Like some claim?
No. If you remember Socrates, who in Plato’s dialogues discusses the idea that learning is actually anamnesis; a form of remembering. This is well known from Meno, where Socrates suggests that the soul already possesses knowledge from past existence, and that what we call learning is merely recollection.
So no. I am not making this up. This is not just some philosophical dialogue from Greece, but actually how all pre-Christian Europeans saw things. The mythology is the means to test this, to see if the child remembers. If the child doesn’t remember? Then he is not a reincarnated ancestor…. As simple as that.
But if the children do remember what the compound and poetic metaphors of the myths actually mean, what the myths tell us, their own past name even, then they are their ancestors, and will be allowed to claim their own identity. And possessions…
And these children, who started out life in the womb of the mother as little ‘maggots’, alongside their grotesque ‘twins’ (placentas), grew and grew, and whilst growing they learnt from their ancestors, Óðinn, by drinking from the Well of Mímir (that ‘by chance’ means ‘remembrance’). That is, in normal terms: they were built and shaped and nourished in the womb by the placenta, via the umbilical cord.
At birth they had to fight a dragon, and cut its head off. That is, they had to cut the umbilical cord.
So much for birth…
Those who ‘remembered’ would, around age 7, be allowed, after proving that they indeed remembered, to enter the burial mounds of their ancestor, to claim his possessions, his life, his name, and his spirit, for themselves. Therefore, they took his thigh bone (life), his skull (mind/spirit), and his valuables (memories), that he had been buried with, and emerged – from the burial mound, the womb of Mother Earth – reborn as him. Themselves given to themselves. Not born, but reborn.
And when they did, they were called ‘dwarves’….
Greedy? Because they craved for the valuables, gold, in the grave, and greedily collected it, to re-possess it.
Small? Because they were 7-year-old children.
Bearded? Because they held the bearded head of their ancestors above their heads, when they emerged.
Skilled? Well, they held in their hands only the most precious items they had owned in a previous life. Well-crafted items of high quality!
Underground creatures? Because they emerged from the burial mound…
Yeah, that is the mythological Dwarf. And what do you think ‘dwarf’ means? The meaning was lost for a long time, but we (I actually) have remembered it. We can tell from the female form, ‘dyrrgjá, from proto-Nordic ‘dwerge’, meaning ‘door’ (dyrr) ‘opening in the ground’ (gjá). Yes, it is a reference to whence they come: from the opening of the burial mound. Before that, when the child enters, it is just a child. He has no bearded skull in his hands. He only becomes a Dwarf when he emerges with the bearded skull from the opening in the ground.
I could say more, there is much more to say about this, but not today.
Exoteric Paganism has always existed, because it has a real purpose. The idea that “Santa Claus is real” is important, and I will explain why…
In the distant past we were different. We were undomesticated, physically stronger, and more intelligent. We were, because life was more difficult for us back then. For hundreds of thousands of years, Mother Nature without any mercy weeded out everyone not strong enough, and everyone not smart enough.
And yes, we know this today, because we can tell from the remains of our distant forebears, that they had a more powerful skeleton and a bigger brain too. We can tell from our own bodies today, that our jaws were more powerful before: this is what the wisdom teeth tell us.
These smarter versions of ourselves had discovered that everything in Mother Nature moves in circles. On the Sky, you see the Sunrise in the morning, rise high on the sky during the day, and then set in the evening, and during the night she is gone. Dead. Likewise, the planet we live on has seasons, that come and go, in steady rhythm. Likewise, the Moon has phases and go from waxing, full, and waning to a Lunar eclipse.
And likewise, we are born, we live, we die, and we remain dead for some time, before we are born again…
They recognized these patterns, and based their world view and traditions on this.
However, the “being dead” phase is rather mysterious. The Sun is on the other side of the planet we live on, the Moon is hidden by the shadow of the Earth, and we? Where are we in death? And when we return, why have we no memories of where we were, and what we were before, in previous lives? We obviously return to life, and we are the same as we were before, but we have no clear recollections of our previous lives. We forget.
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Now, let us make a huge leap here, and move to modern medicine, and take a look at how they treat amnesia patients. We can agree, that people suffering from amnesia have forgotten who they were, what they were. Sometimes they even forget the languages they knew. Everything.
But how do they treat them?!
They present to them items that their loved ones knew that they cared much about, that they had strong emotional ties to. They present to them the people they knew and loved, and take them to places where they had strong experiences or strong emotional connections to. By doing so, they wake up their memories, and slowly but surely return them to… themselves. This makes them remember again. It removes the amnesia.
Funnily enough, this is also exactly what our forebears did, and it explains our Traditions perfectly. Our distant forebears placed the dead in burial mounds with the items they had strong emotional ties to. They buried them in locations that we today would call “sacred”, near vast, magnificent trees, beautiful waterfalls, on hilltops with a fantastic view, and where the dead grew up, where they had married, where they had spent all the high festivals, where they had been educated, and so forth.
The items they buried them with were not meant to “go with them to the afterlife”, to some fictional ”Heaven”. Our forebears were not the idiots our “scholars” and priests think they were, and present them as, in their books about pre-Christian customs. The items were there to help lift the amnesia that had been placed upon them by death. When they returned to life and entered the burial mounds to reclaim the items they had owned in previous lives, these items would – just like in the case of amnesia patients today – help them remember. The remains in the grave would too, and the location itself: a sacred place used by them for thousands of years.
Later on, they would use gold for such items to ensure that they would remain intact. Even after a thousand years, a gold amulet, a golden hair needle, or anything else golden in the burial mound, would remain the same.
But I trust you see the problem here, right?
How do you know that you have reincarnated as the person in that particular burial mound? How do you recognise yourself?
This is where we enter the topic of exoteric Paganism….
***
To make sure that no impostors would enter your burial mound and steal your sacred items, and claim to be you, they developed a system that we would define as being a “Tradition”, or a “Religion”, if you like. One person in each tribe would be given the task to ensure this. He would learn many secrets that nobody else would know, and he would keep these secrets, and when he grew too old, he would pass them on to his replacement. Some secrets would be remembered like this for thousands of years….
Now, I say “he” here, but yes, this “sorcerer” could be a woman just as well as a man. And this sorcerer was seen as “a midwife of the mind”, one who could help “give birth to minds”. So he dressed like a midwife: in white robes.
Before you died, you would give what we would call a “password” to the sorcerer, which he would memorise, and pass on to his replacement, who in turn would pass it on to his replacement, etc., for generations. So if you returned to life in 100 or 1.000 or even 10.000 years, the sorcerer would still be able to determine if you had actually returned. You would know the password, and be able to give it to him.
The password would in itself be remembered by you because the sorcerer presented the items to you that you needed to remember. If you did not remember the password when these items were presented to you then obviously you were not the right one.
And voila! Thus they were able to determine if and when you – the person in the grave – had actually returned to life. Thus they could deny access to all impostors, and ensure that only you would be allowed to collect the items that you had owned in previous lives.
Yes, therefore a “dwarf” will never tell you his true name… because it is a password, that would enable you to enter his lair and steal his gold….
Ah, yes, you understand now, the purpose of having an exoteric tradition? You understand now, the purpose of presenting to you all sorts of myths and stories, traditions and customs? Not only were they in themselves designed to help you remember (because you had seen and participated in the same in previous lives, and you had solved those riddles before), but they would ensure that no impostors would claim your spiritual heritage. And indeed, that is what this is: the items you owned in previous lives are of real spiritual value to you! They are what will help you become yourself again! Without them, you will not fully reincarnate. Only parts of you will.
The nature of this reincarnation can be discussed up and down, and I will suggest that it was not like what many think reincarnation is: it was not about directly waking up memories of what you had done before. I don’t think they remembered their previous lives, in the most direct meaning. “Oh, I remember the last time I was here, and I threw a rock into that river.” No. It was about regaining your spirit, and becoming yourself. If I shall use RPG language, it was about regaining as much of the XP (experience points) from previous lives as possible, so that you could avoid having to start on Level 1 again in this life. It enabled you to start “playing” (living) from age 7 (when you went through this reincarnation ritual) on level 2 or 3, or maybe even 10 or 20.
The more you remembered, the more XP from previous lives you gained.
But what if you did not remember your password?
***
At one point our forebears adopted agriculture. This changed society, but it also changed our forebears. When before the weak and stupid had been weeded out, agriculture ensured not only that they could become more numerous, but also that all of a sudden you no longer needed to be all that strong and smart, to survive. The weak came under the protection of land owners, because they became useful as farm workers.
And yes, this is where terms such as “Lord” and “Lady” appears, and also where our forebears were divided into different social classes: the nobles would rule, the warriors would protect society form others, and the peasants would work.
Yeah, “Lord” literally means “Bread Warden”, and “Lady” literally means “Baker of Bread”. They controlled who ate, and who did not. And they fed all their workers…
And after thousands of years with this, our skeletons grew weaker, our jaws shrunk, and our brains too shrunk. And perhaps most importantly: what had been one race of men became a race made up of three different types of people: rulers (with intelligence), warriors (with strength), and peasants (with less of both). The smart would gravitate to the ruling class, the strong and brave to the warrior class, and the dumb to the peasant class.
With time, fewer and fewer were able to make sense of the religious riddles presented to them by the sorcerer. Fewer and fewer were able to remember their password… Riddles that had been designed to be solved by 7-year-olds, had become too hard to solve for most people, even in adulthood.
Indeed, reincarnation became a thing for the elite only. Only they were smart enough to solve the riddles presented to them, and to therefore remember, and with time only they were given a burial mound to begin with.
The distinction between exoteric and esoteric Paganism became more and more significant. In Classical Antiquity, a majority of our forebears were living in ignorance, were never allowed to “reincarnate”, and basically were destined to believe in things that made no sense to them.
“Santa Claus” climbs down the chimney, delivers gifts to good children, and then flies off in a wagon pulled by reindeer, across the sky!?
Ódinn rides an eight-legged horse, he only drinks wine, has two wolves that he gives all the food, and sends out two ravens every day to collect information? He cuts off the head of Mímir and talks to it!?
Our entire mythology is full of completely illogical and impossible stories like that!
These stories make zero sense to low-brow commoners.
But was this the purpose? To ensure that no idiots would be allowed to reincarnate?
***
When asked about this, or when writing about this, our sorcerers (or druids, or whatever you like to call them) kept true to their purpose: to keep the solutions to the riddles and answers secret. So when our “scholars” today refer to sources talking about our ancient traditions, they only know the exoteric versions of everything. And as we can expect, they ridicule them, and present them as absolutely illogical, impossible, and frankly childish too.
“The Greeks frequently sacrificed a 100 oxens in the battle of Troy, bruh.”
“No, they actually did not, but…. as a commoner with too little intelligence to understand this, I am sure you will believe that.”
***
Now, I am constantly called an “atheist” when I talk about this, and frankly, I don’t really care, because these are just the opinions of feeble-minded peasants, who spiritually speaking never even moved beyond the 7-year-old level, who still believe “Santa Claus is real, bruh”, who never reincarnated, and who never will reincarnate either.
But I do understand that such NPCs have “a need for the impossible”, to have ritualised worship of “Santa Claus”, a need to believe in something fantastical, etc. Fine. So in principle, I am not negative to the exoteric Paganism that they embrace, even though they are adults and should have moved beyond that.
However, I also see the need for a return to greatness, for our own to become not only stronger again, but especially smarter. For more of us to be able to reincarnate, and by doing so become better. Wiser. And not least; Braver.
More Lucky…
***
Luck. Yes. The Norse term for reincarnation is “Hamingja”, meaning “Walking-in-Shapes”, in the meaning “you move through time in different bodies”. However, in Modern Icelandic the term means simply “luck”. And this is not by chance…
Hamingja represents a person’s luck and fortune in life, ensured by a spiritual force linked to your character, actions, honor, and deeds. Our forebears saw it as a personified guardian spirit, protecting and guiding individuals. It influenced your fate, and ensured success in battle and leadership. Christian recorded it as being something that was “passed down through generations”, but as you can understand after reading my text above, it is of course linked to you, and it remains in you via your own reincarnation. And only thus is it “passed down through generations”.
Hamingja is your divine favor, the blessing you receive from the gods. It is what makes you successful in life.
Best wishes,
V.
The Druid presenting his sacred items to you, to see if you remember your password…
Thulean Perspective 