This week I was asked by a new member of our hearth if there are any kind of Odinist baptisms for children or for people converting back to Odinism from xtianity. I'll try to answer;
1. Tacitus talks about the continental Germanic speakers immersing infants in cold water in his book Germania written in 98ad. Many years before xtianity came anywhere near the Germanic world.
2. The Old English 'fulwiht', which translates as baptism is a word that existed long before xtianity reared its head. It's translation as 'baptism' is a later translation. We may never know its original meaning though we do know the word came from a time when the real Gods were worshipped.
3. Odin's thirteenth magic spell from Hávamál. Odin does describe his ability to protect a young man (ungan man) from harm by sprinkling him with water (verpa vatni á).
4. In the Rigsula poem (from the poetic Edda) Heimdal gives his seed to the 3 classes of man with 3 different sets of parents. In this poem we read of the parents sprinkling the children with water when they are born. This poem is thought to come from a truly ancient story. It may go back even before the tribes of Europe formed as we know them.
5. People often think that the term 'Thrall' means slave. it is more complicated than that. (I've talked about thralls and the class system in an older post in more details. For this post we will stick to this topic) Thralls are basically people who cannot be held accountable for the oaths they give voice to. This means they are essentially an underclass who only have the rights given to them by the freemen or noble who has jurisdiction over them. In a way, children might be considered thralls or folk with mental disabilities? The way children become freemen is when they had reached an age and had proven themselves to their parents they were allowed to publicly speak oaths to family, tribe, the Gods and perhaps to the local noble that their parents were loyal to. These oaths might be considered a type of 'baptism' (for want of a better word). The main reason I mention this is because in Germanic traditions a father would not give a child his name until he was sure the child was sound of body and mind. The ceremony where the father gives a child his name would involve sprinkling of water.
6. This honour system would also apply to a stranger who moved into town. If a freeman took this stranger under his wing as a thrall, over the years the stranger would have to prove himself loyal and trustworthy. In time this thrall may even be able to earn the right to take the oaths to the Gods and become a freeman and maybe start his own family of good standing in the community having earned a reputation for maintaining his honour. Some freemen and tribes might only allow thralls to become freemen under very specific circumstances. Each tribe had its own rules on this. I mention this as in modern times baptism happens to adults when they take up xtianity as a faith or are 'reborn' as they say. Taking the oath to the Gods is similar.
7. Equally, the above system would apply to folk who had lost their honour and been made thralls. Perhaps they had broken a law or wronged another freeman somehow. These people would then have to earn good standing again if they were to become freemen again.
8. In the Odinic Rite (an Odinist organisation several of our hearth are members of) a member starts out as an apprentice OR member (AOR). One can be an apprentice for many years to earn good standing before professing your loyalty to the OR and the Gods. An oath is a sacred life long commitment not to be taken lightly. There is also a naming ceremony.
9. In the Saga of the Volsungs (an ancient heroic saga) we read of The hero Sigurd being sprinkled with water and given a name when he was born. Again, this story is older than xtianity.
10. On Heidreks Saga a mother and father are dead leaving an baby girl to be reared by her grandfather. The grandfathers men advise him to put her out and expose her because her father was a Berserker and they were worried she would be like him. The grandfather ignored them, sprinkled the child with water, gave her a name and accepted her into his family. It seems that this is an example of how parents took a measure of a baby and accepted them into their family. In these times, if a baby was born deformed or disabled the father would not accept them and they would be exposed in the forest :-( Some folk believed the elves took these unwanted infants and they would suffer no pain or harm when left out like that......
Some people might conclude from the above that xtianity copied baptism from our pre xtian ancestors to help acclimatise them to the new xtian ideas as they did with so many other of our cultural and religious practices. This might be a stretch as a very high % of cultures around the world had practices similar to baptism. I would, however say it seems clear that we certainly had our own version long before xtianity reared its ugly head!
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