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Chapter 4. The Sky Connection 91
In fact, Grimm was even unable to any names of heavenly bodies that would indicate
any form of divination:
“Our old Heathen fancies about the fixed stars have for the most part faded
away, their very names are all supplanted by learned astronomic appellations;
only a few have managed to save themselves in ON. legend or among common
people.” 4
Of the names which have come down to us in modern times, none indicate an
astrological system of any kind.
Many of the Anglo-Saxon herbals or “leechbooks” also mention propitious days
for collecting herbs, blood-letting, making charms, etc., but most of this information
seems to have been imported from the medical systems which came with the Romans
and later with the monks. That the night sky was important to the Germanic people
has been known since the time of the Roman historian Tacitus. In his Germania,
written around 0 CE, he writes that
“except in the case of accident or emergency, they [the Germanii] assemble
on certain particular days, either shortly after the new moon or shortly before
the full moon. These they hold are the most auspicious times for embarking
on any enterprise.” 5
Even though indigenous northern European astrology is an interesting concept, its
existence is not borne out by any of the facts as they exist today and does not
appear to have had any place of importance in the Northern scheme of things.
The ancient Germanic peoples were privy to much “scientific information” and
many very sophisticated technologies, such as navigation and time-keeping by the
stars, but these do not appear in written form. They also understood well the
techniques of “damascened” steel for sword-making, fancy metal-working for jewelry,
very sophisticated techniques for boat-building, and had developed military
strategy into an art-form which allowed them to rule northern Europe for almost
a half millennium, but for them, writing seems to have been an art form reserved
primarily for poetry, stories, and their dearly loved histories of families, communities,
and nations, not for the transmission of technical information. Incidental pieces of
information pertaining to the northern sciences and technologies did find their way
into some of the sagaic and historical writings but as literary techniques to lend
credibility to their stories and as “fill-in.” Therefore, any claims to the discovery
of an indigenous northern European astrological system should be regarded as pure
4 ibid. p. 723.
5 In Tacitus: The Agricola and the Germania tr. by H. Mattingly (Penguin Books, New York)
p. 110, 1970.