Donald Trump's Celtic and Germanic Ancestry

President Donald Trump descends from several Celtic and Germanic tribes from Germany, Britain and Scandinavia. In this video I describe the sources of his ancestry; the Gaels, Vikings Suebi and other warrior peoples who made him a fighter.

Thinking Class: The Genetic Histories & Identities Of The British Peoples

I appeared on the Thinking Class podcast for the interview

TRAVEL: Top 6 Roman sites of ISTANBUL, Turkey

New Sigurd DECAL vinyl stickers

 

New vinyl decals for your car, bike, chariot etc depicting the Odinic Sigurd. Made to order here in Devon by Hippy Motors - available in 2 sizes, many colours.

This design is the dragon slaying hero Sigmund from DR-BR55 bracteate -sucking dragon blood from his thumb so he can, like Odin, perceive the speech of birds.

 Small is 160mm by 140mm /  Large is 230mm by 200mm

Hippy Motors also sell many other lovely vinyl sticker designs so have a look at the other products in their shop

Survive the Jive & Gnostic Informant on Break the Rules

 

I appeared on Break the Rules with Gnostic Informant. I go over the revelations in Indo-European studies and the revival of pagan religions in this new interview

Horror in History - JIVE TALK

Jive Book Review: Theurgy and the Soul by Gregory Shaw

 

 
 

Jive Book Review of 'Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus' by Gregory Shaw, Professor of Religious Studies at Stonehill College. In this work he outlines the philosophy and ritual practise of Iamblichus of Syria (ca. 240 325), whose teachings set the final form of pagan spirituality prior to the Christianization of the Roman Empire. Theurgy literally means "divine action" or "godly work" I describe how this work is useful for modern polytheists including Heathens like myself.

HYPERBOREAN ODYSSEY 3: Orkney and Hebrides

 

 

I visited a well preserved stone age village on a remote Scottish island. Skara Brae is 5000 years old and one of the best preserved Neolithic settlements in the world. Part 3 of my HYPERBOREAN ODYSSEY series includes Orkney, the Isle of Skye in the Hebrides, Fingal's Cave amd Ailsa Craig both steeped in Gaelic folklore, and the island of Iona where the Columban abbey was established until it was destroyed by Vikings.

JIVE TALK: Raw Egg Nationalist

What is English Identity? How old is England?

 

 

Some people are saying the English have no identity or culture of their own. Others are trying to ban the term "Anglo-Saxon" from academic discourse.

This video is my response to them.

Who Are The Irish? - Interview on Uberboyo podcast

The True History of Britain that the Government Hates

 I was a guest on the Dialogue show of Reality Check radio in New Zealand. We talked about the attack on the Anglo-Saxons in academia and the recent riots in the UK caused by the two tier legal system and the murder of native children by an African man.

The playback of the radio show is available here

The show prompted one so called "extremist researcher" from Massey University (@CTPuzzlePieces), who ironically is herself a far left extremist, to call in a hate filled thread on X for references to the Anglo-Saxon ethnic group to be erased via hate speech legislation.

🧵'Anglo-Saxons': This is echoing a theme that re-emerged in the veneered racial -cultural language of the extreme right years ago. It is warps white ancestry & religion for propaganda & agitation. #TrojanHorse #revisionst tactics. 1/ 8 https://t.co/bQHyGjne1B

— Donna (@CTPuzzlePieces) September 17, 2024

Second appearance on the Lotus Eaters

I dropped in on Beau at the Lotus Eaters to chat about British prehistory. In this clip I explain Celtic hill forts..

In this clip I compare the megalith folk to the Beaker folk. Who was more advanced?

HYPERBOREAN ODYSSEY 2: Shetland

 

 

Part two of my Hyperborean Odyssey is in Shetland, Britain's northern most islands and the alleged site of the legendary Thule described by the ancients. I visited the archaeological site of Jarlshof which has Bronze age round houses, Iron-Age wheel houses, a Pictish broch and the largest Norse settlement in the British Isles. Shetland was under Nordic rule up to 1472 so it still has some strong cultural ties to Scandinavia despite also having a rich Pictish history.

HYPERBOREAN ODYSSEY 1: Norway

 

 

I spent half a month working on a cruise ship, travelling around Norway and the Scottish islands. Part 1 of my Hyperborean Odyssey is in Western Norway, beginning with the ancient burial grounds of Gunnarshaug and Rehaugane near Norway's Viking capital Avaldsnes, then admiring the fjords around Ulvik and Olden and finishing off in the rainy city of Alesund. This is a historical travel series.

Jive Book Review: Polemos: Pagan Traditionalism

 

   

Polemos: The Dawn of Pagan Traditionalism is a book by Russian author Askr Svarte which attempts to describe how European pagan religion can be practised in a way consistent with the philosophy of Radical Traditionalism aka Perennial Philosophy. This episode of the Jive Book Review looks at its strengths and weaknesses.

Why did Celts build Hill Forts in the Iron Age? History Documentary

 

Why did Celts of the British Isles build over 4000 hill forts during the Iron Age? The answer may have something to do with the conflict between those Bronze Age cowboys who maintained traditional pastoralist transhumance lifestyles, and those in the forts who depended more on arable farming. This can also explain why British Celts were the most lactose tolerant people on Earth at that time. In this documentary I visited Barbury Castle in Wiltshire, Castle an Dinas in Cornwall and several other magnificent Iron Age hill forts.

Sources:
 

• Patterson, N. et al. Large-scale migration into Britain during the Middle to Late Bronze Age. Nature 601, 588–594 (2022) 
• Valdez-Tullett A. Sheep in Wealth’s Clothing: Social Reproduction across the Bronze Age to Iron Age Transition in Wiltshire, Southern England. European Journal of Archaeology. 2017;20(4):663-681. doi:10.1017/eaa.2016

 

Art created for Survive the Jive by Christian Sloan Hall and Alex Cristi. Other images are owned by their respective creators as credited on screen. 

 

Celtic punk enjoys some milk

 

How to be a REAL Norse Heathen / Asatru / Pagan

How to be a Heathen? Asatru online course

Starting Heathenry

Starting Heathenry is a NEW ritual-focused online course which will furnish you with the knowledge and confidence you need to practise the Germanic Heathen religion alone or with others, making wise decisions about worship based on reliable historical evidence.

The course teaches you how to construct Heathen prayers for yourself, not according to the established rites of any modern group, but according to what historical sources show. Starting Heathenry assumes you are interested in Germanic paganism, know about the gods and myths, and want to begin practising this religion, but require guidance on how to do so.

Key points are displayed in videos as bullet-points to help you remember them

 

Micro-learning

A modern way of learning an ancient religion

Starting Heathenry is based on a micro-learning structure which is proven to improve knowledge retention by 18-80% in students compared to other learning methods. The 10 lessons include over 50 videos, and quizzes to access from your phone or computer. Absorb more than 5 hours of learning material bit by bit, as it suits you. Within just 20 minutes after a hearing a lecture or reading a book, 50% of newly learned information is forgotten. Over the next 9 hours, that number drops by a further 10%, and after a month, only 24% of the information remains without revision or repeat learning. Micro-learning is designed so you retain the knowledge over a long period. I previously worked on crafting such learning material for the WHO to help health care professionals learn about the dangers of side effects from medicines. Now I am using the same technique to help Heathens learn to worship the gods of their ancestors.

Enroll today. Your path to knowing the gods through ritual starts here.

NEW DNA Genetic Origin of the Indo-Europeans: Yamnaya/Sredny Stog

 

A new paper called The Genetic Origin of the Indo-Europeans (2024) reveals that the Proto-Indo-European languages originated in the Yamnaya and Sredny Stog cultures of Ukraine and South Russia. The split of PIE languages from Anatolian languages is revealed to have taken place on the steppe (lower Volga). Sredny Stog DNA is found in Central Anatolian Bronze Age Hittite samples proving the real IE people were indeed Steppe herders from Eastern Europe and not an unknown Armenian population as previously claimed in 2022. I discuss the findings in this stream.

Why are May bonfires important?

 

 

In many regions of Europe people celebrate May day, or the day before, by lighting bonfires. In Ireland they call it Beltaine, in Sweden they call it Valborg, and in both countries you will see people gather around enormous fires. But why?

The roots go back not only to the pagan religions of Celtic and Germanic Europe, but even further, to their shared origins. The earliest reference to Beltane in Ireland is from the 10th century and associates it with bonfires and a Celtic pagan god whose name is something like Belenus. This god has Indo-European roots as we also see a Slavic equivalent called Belobog “The white god” and an English god called Bældæg.

Swedes gather at the ancient barrows of Gamla Uppsala while the Valborg fire burns behind them

 

The Bel part of Beltane and Belenus means “bright” and is cognate with the Old English bæl meaning “bale” as in bale-fire “funeral fire/bonfire”. Bældæg is a god attested in Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies as the son of the god Woden. His name means “bale day” or “pyre day” and he is the same god as the Norse Baldr, son of Odin. In Norse myth the god Baldr is associated specifically with a funeral pyre and this is likely the reason for the name Bældæg “pyre day”.

The name of the Anglo-Saxon Saint Walburga replaced earlier names for the May fire festivals in Germany and Sweden which became Walpurgis and Valborg respectively. But thanks to Grimm we know that previously the Germans celebrated Pholtag “Phol day” and Phol is also another name for the god Baldr.

 

 

The evidence from Germany and England confirms that Baldr was the god of the Spring bonfire in the Germanic regions of Europe, while the Gaelic regions had a similar custom for their god Belenus.

The EU has introduced a new law which bans May bonfires and therefore infringes on the religious rights of European pagans to practise their ancient customs. Our right to practice our religion must be defended at all costs.


READ AND WATCH MORE:

VIDEO: May day traditions in Cornwall and Devon 

May Day and Easter have Pagan origins 

VIDEO: Pagan May Ritual in North Devon: The Earl of Rone 

Tories threaten May day (2011) 

VIDEO: 1953 May rites in Padstow 

The Origin of Palaeo-Germanic in Sweden? A new pre-print.

‘Steppe Ancestry in western Eurasia and the spread of the Germanic Languages’ by McColl et al 2024 uses a novel method looking at IBD sharing to identify a previously unknown sub-population within Scandinavia’s Corded Ware culture which it calls “East Scandinavian”. 

    This population is alleged to have formed around 2000 BC which is 800 years after Corded Ware folk first entered Scandinavia. It is distinct from earlier Corded Ware populations in the region, and contemporary Corded Ware people in Denmark and Norway, because instead of just WHG admixture it has additional EHG admixture from a source their model predicts to come from Latvia/Lithuania. 

    The authors suggest a possible migration across the Baltic sea to explain this East Scandi group despite there being no evidence for this in the archaeological record. They point out that the “timing coincides with the introduction of a new, Late Neolithic sheep breed to Scandinavia. It also coincides with the spread of a new burial rite of gallery graves in south Sweden, the Danish islands and Norway, a new house type, the first durative bronze networks, as well as with the end of an east-west divide in Scandinavia between 4050 and 3650 BP. (2050 BC- 1650 BC)” Yet none of these new arrivals they list necessarily came from across the Baltic sea. 

 

    The feasibility of a mass migration of a people across the Baltic at this period in history is questionable. Sea crossings from the South are far more plausible or even land routes via the Arctic North. Figure 4.A shows the geographical distribution of individual samples belonging to the 3 Scandinavian Clusters they identified existing prior to 800 BC, after which they merged. They say there is a strong correspondence between the clusters and specific haplogroups as follows: 

1. Early Scandinavian including the oldest Swedish (Battle Axe Culture) and Danish samples and almost all Norwegians all have R1a. 
2. A later ‘Southern Scandinavian’ cluster restricted to Denmark and the southern tip of Sweden mostly with R1b but some I1. 
3. A second later ‘Eastern Scandinavian’ cluster, spread across Sweden and overlapping with that of the Southern Scandinavia cluster which is dominated by I1. 

     The third map of this so-called “Eastern Scandi” group shows mainly samples from the South though, and the I1 haplogroup distribution is not demonstrated to have come from the “East”, in fact it appears from this data to have come from the south. We already have an I1 sample from North Germany dating to 3300 BC, older than these samples, so by tying this newly identified group to the I1 haplogroup, they have brought into question their own claim that it has a Baltic origin. This will only be settled with the discovery of an I1 sample in a Corded ware context dating to around 2700 BC. 

 They admit that it is now necessary to confirm “the proposed Bronze Age source of the East Scandinavians along the Baltic coast.” My own view is that the elevated EHG ancestry in this East Scandi group may incorrectly have been identified as Latvian in origin due merely to a sampling bias, and lack of SHG samples. The elevated EHG in Sweden seems more plausible to be local and the I1 is most likely to have entered Scandinavia from the South, not across the Baltic. The reliability of their IBD method depends on the reference samples used. 

While I question their conclusions about the origin of this East Scandi group, I am more convinced by their suggestion that it was responsible for the spread of the ancestor of what became Palaeo-Germanic language in the period between 1050 BC - 500 BC when it borrowed from Celtic and into Finno-Saamic. They show that after 2000 BC the East Scandi group expanded into Denmark and Norway. The mixing of East Scandi with South Scandi is dated between 1700 BC-1400 BC which spans both Nordic Bronze age 1 and 2 and directly precedes the construction of the famous Kivik tomb in Scania around 1400 BC. 

 

This mixing event formed the Iron Age Scandinavian genetic profile such that by the Iron Age Jutland can be entirely modelled with the admixed Danish Bronze age source, while Iron Age Norway and the Danish Isles also have additional East Scandi admixture on top of the initial Bronze Age mixing, showing further migrations of these intrepid East Scandis. They say this admixed Iron Age Southern Scandinavian group is “central to understanding the Germanic dispersal” and I agree. We can trace the spread of IA South Scandi ancestry into Germany, Britain and the Netherlands. The findings about Germanic expansion in the historical period are very interesting too.

Odin's Role as God of Runes and Galdra

Returning to the topic of the highest god, Odin. First I address why the Romans weren't entirely wrong when they compared him to Mercury/Hermes. Then I present my theory about how Odin learned the nine sacred songs called Galdra and why this is related to his role as the god of the runes. The dankest god, Odin, and esoteric theories go together like runes and galdra. I look at the origins of runes themselves and the usage of runes in conjunction with galdra and thus seek to solve the mystery of the runes and the god who first learned them on the world tree. 

The First Britons were Black? JIVE TALK

Is UK Society anti-Pagan? The Future of Polytheism in Britain

First published in WhyNow magazine 11th May 2022

It is estimated there are now over 250,000 pagans in the UK, in addition to a similar number of Hindus, who, like pagans, worship many gods. This summer the latest census results are due to be published and it is expected there will be a significantly greater number of pagans than in any previous year. The growth of pagan religions in the UK over the 20th and 21st centuries has been accompanied by an overall decline in religiosity, and a growing tolerance of religious diversity. The Witchcraft Act of 1735 was repealed in 1951 and common law offences relating to blasphemy were abolished in England and Wales in 2008 and in Scotland as recently as 2021. In light of these developments, it would seem Paganism is now just another faith among the diverse religions practised in modern Britain, but closer analysis reveals that ancient prejudices against traditional polytheistic religions still result in exclusionary language and policies from powerful institutions, even those which claim to promote diversity and interfaith dialogue.

Transnational organisations like the United Nations present themselves as representing the values of a “global humanity”, yet that organisation was founded by Westerners on a specific set of uniquely Western (and therefore Christian) values which they are attempting to impose on the world. While they condemn the old colonial European powers, they are in fact the natural continuation of them. The ancient Indian custom of Sati (ritual suicide of widows) appalled European colonists so it was banned by French, Dutch, Portuguese and British administrators who viewed it through a Christian moral lens. This is hardly different from the UN crusades against other religious customs which are unpalatable to Western tastes such as female circumcision and child marriage. The British government generally conforms to the same values as the UN and so we can see the notion of “religious freedom” is applied selectively both here and abroad.

The author Tom Holland has demonstrated in his book Dominion that the values of the modern West, even when it professes atheism and humanism, are rooted in Christianity. The idea of a global humanity exists in the Bible with the myth of the common ancestors Adam and Eve. The metaphorical description of time as a kind of space, through which one “progresses” becomes possible only with the invention of linear history and the “year 0” of Christ’s birth. Among traditional religious groups such as Hindus and European pagans, time is regarded as cyclical, so for them it is merely an abstraction to speak of “progress”. Yet unshakeable faith in progress is the defining belief system of the modern West and of global powers in general. This faith, looking ever forward to salvation in a future governed by ‘reason’ and furnished with the marvels of technological innovation, has inevitably become affiliated with the rather flimsy but popular philosophy of transhumanism.

Transhumanism has recently been promoted by the UN affiliated World Economic Forum and by UN promoted author Yuvel Harari. This is nothing new for the UN though - way back in 1957, the first director of UNESCO, Julian Huxley, expressed his desire to reject old superstitions and make way for a new belief he called "transhumanism". Its adherents assert that mankind is “limited” and that these limitations need to be overcome through technology. Just as Christ was said to have “conquered death”, some transhumanists see death as undesirable and unnecessary - an obstacle to be overcome through technology. Yet unlike Christians they do not believe in an immaterial, transcendent realm or God. The early Christian Gnostics asserted that this natural world is evil and that we must instead seek unification with God in the next world. Similarly, many transhumanists anticipate the emergence of a super artificial intelligence which shall surpass man, an event called the technological singularity, and that man may unify with this posthuman intelligence in a man-made realm of pure data - the materialist heaven. Feminist author Mary Harrington has coined the term “fully automated luxury Gnosticism” to describe the goals of certain very-online technophiles with an aversion to the natural world. This Messianic anticipation is also connected to the idea of the “posthuman” - the alleged next stage of non-biological human evolution (progress). This is no fringe cult. It is a hugely influential belief system promoted by the most powerful organisations on Earth. It is poised to become a global religion - a desirable outcome according to UN Assistant Secretary-General Robert Muller, “the philosopher of the United Nations'' who said the world’s religions must “globalize themselves” so they can “give birth to the first global, cosmic, universal civilization.”

Pagan thinkers like the Neoplatonist Iamblichus rejected Gnostic beliefs entirely, instead asserting that the material world is divine - existing within the divine. Most modern pagans also regard the natural world as holy. Hinduism and European forms of paganism revere death - some believe that in death you unite with ancestors, others that you are purified in the underworld so that you can be reincarnated. Death is itself deified as various gods of the underworld like Hela, Hades and Yama. As it says in the Atharva Veda “Praise to that Yama; praise to Death!” Whether you seek freedom from samsara, rebirth as a descendant or unification with the divine, death is essential and desirable. 

Another part of what defines pagan religions is their regional and temporal character - gods are worshipped because they are the gods of our ancestors, and rites are observed in sympathy with the cycles of the natural world. We cannot decouple paganism from the natural world - nor can paganisms be integrated into a global religion without ceasing to be pagan since they are defined by their regional and ethnic character.

So pagans are justifiably concerned about the rhetoric echoing from the halls of power which marginalises them, while claiming to represent them. That’s why we are coming together in London on the 25th of June 2022 for the Pagan Futures conference. The speakers are myself, Tom Rowsell, a practising pagan of 13 years, known for my YouTube channel Survive the Jive, and Dr. Borja Vilallonga, also a pagan and a scholar of history and religion previously at Columbia University, New York University, and the University of Newcastle. There will also be a live musical performance from the pagan folk artist Wolcensmen and a Q&A session during which the audience will be able to ask us about the pressing issues regarding the future of paganism in an increasingly anti-pagan, neo-Gnostic world.

Celtic, Germanic and Scythian: Torcs