One of the most recurring themes of our pre-Christian history, is the topic of asking the gods for advice. You find it in the Norse sagas, in the form of “divination”, you find it in Greek sources, in Celtic sources as well as in Roman sources.
Asking the gods for advice on what to do was common! This is what they did, when they were uncertain on what to do, and when they needed advice.
Also, they had great respect for the answers they received, when they did this. To some extent, the result was law, and they were obliged to follow the divine advice!
Today many will think of this as folly, and see our forebears as superstitious, ignorant and incredibly naive.
But were they?
First of all we must understand the nature of this process. What did they do? What was this all about?
They commonly received a simple “yes” or “no” as an answer to their questions, or indeed when they asked deities directly (i. e. priests or priestesses impersonating them) they would receive answers in form of riddles – that were open for interpretation.
In Germanic cultures, in Classical Antiquity, they could ask the gods for advice by e. g. placing their spears on the ground, in a pile, and ask a young boy to ride a horse over them, to know whether or not they should go to war. If the horse stepped on one or more spear shafts, it meant “war”. If it did not, it meant “not war”. Or they cut some pieces of wood and drew some symbols (no not runes… there is zero evidence to suggest they used runes for this) on them, and then they threw them to the ground, and read what symbols appeared and interpreted the result from that.
The “problem” here is that we still do this… no, not exactly like that, but when we are uncertain on what to do, we let chance decide. And we do that by flipping a coin, by casting dice, by playing “paper, rock, scissors”, or something like that. This is the same! Yes! This is what they did in the past too, and this is “asking the gods for advice”! It was more complicated some times, like with the young boy riding a horse across a pile of spears, but it was the same. And our forebears knew this perfectly well! They knew that this was chance telling them what to do. And this chance was seen as sacred and you had to respect it.
Naturally, they only asked chance when they did not know what to do, or if their voting did not produce a clear result! If they knew what to do, they would, what was best for them, then they did that – and never needed to ask the gods (chance) for advice. Again; like we still do.
When they asked the gods or goddesses themselves (impersonated by priests or priestesses) for advice, they did not trust chance directly, but instead let someone else decide, someone impartial. If these deities were uncertain themselves, they could ask chance, in a similar manner!
The riddle as an answer served a purpose too. The deities were not always absolutely certain themselves, so they did not want to say directly what their followers should do. What if they gave them bad advice!? Instead, they commonly gave a vague and general advice, that their followers could build on, and interpret themselves – they way they wanted to.
The ritualization of all of this this served a purpose too. Common people are more impressed if you make it more systematic, complicated and incomprehensible. They will believe more in it, if you have a system that you follow consequently. “This is how it is done”, followed by a time-consuming and intricate ritual, is more convincing than “heads or tails”? Sure, the latter works too, but the former is more convincing to most people. And yes, believing in the result can be important. Not just for placebo effect, but also to take away doubt and remove and half-heartedness in people. “Whatever you do, do with all your might”, after all. Half done, is not done. Half done, is badly done.
They knew perfectly well that all of this was a matter of chance, but they grew up and were educated into believing more in chance than we do today. Yes, even more than we are today. Chance was the will of the gods! Chance was sacred! Chance was law! Chance was fate!
The difference today is mainly that we leave less to be decided by chance, and that we ask chance mainly for less important matters. “Shall we watch this or that DVD tonight?” Or “Who gets to sit in the front passenger seat of the car?” Maybe because we think we know better, and think we are better equipped to know what to do, or of course because we have lived under the tyranny of Judeo-Christianity for hundreds of years.
The Pagan ideas remain though, and are still ingrained in our minds, spirits and physical beings. We still ask “the gods” for advice. We still often let chance decide.
Predicting a fairly detailed future of individuals was done too though, but for that they used the Norns, and that is a completely different topic, that I will discuss in another post….