The Norns by Johannes Gehrts, 1889
4,547 words
Part 2 of 4 (Part 1 here; Part 3 here; Part 4 here)
4. Tradition
Having now discussed the clannic being of the individual purely in philosophical terms, I now turn to a consideration of the treatment of this idea in the Germanic tradition.
The first thing we must note is what can be called the “primacy of the past” in that tradition. Read more …
Ancestral Being, Part Three
Rupert Sheldrake
3,409 words
Part 3 of 4 (Part 1 here; Part 2 here; Part 4 here)
6. The Presence of the Past: A View from the Margins of Science
Some of the above remarks might suggest that we should interpret the Germanic hamingja–fylgja teaching as a mythic, symbolic, or even superstitious way of understanding the phenomenon of inheritance – something our ancestors relied upon because they did not have the modern science of genetics. Read more …