Customer Reviews

The Well and the Tree: World and Time in Early Germanic Culture

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is essential to understanding the pre-Christian Germanic culture and cosmology. In particular emphasis is placed on the view of time, action, death, change, wyrd (similar to fate, but very different), orlog.

Well researched and documented with quotes from original sources (e.g. Beowulf, the Eddas).

Before I start, I think this work is somewhat dated in a number of important respects. I don't think it should be read as authoritative. However it is very thought provoking. If course, pioneers rarely if ever get everything right. The goal of reading a pioneering work should be to pick up ideas and directions for future work.

The work is a series of essays which attempt to explore different aspects of early Germanic concepts of time and perception. This is an important piece of Germanic philology and deserves close attention by any Germanic scholar or pagan. The essays describe the relationship between concepts of past and reality, and between different aspects of myth and world.

On the negative, the book places a great deal of emphasis on the now-disregarded theories of Marija Gimbutas regarding kurgan invasions, and the author is not very good at explaining why a number of choices are made in his analysis. For example, why should the three wells be reduced to one? What are the limits of this approach? I think sometimes he gets carried away in his own simplifications.

Similarly, his discussion of language tenses centers almost exclusively on early Gothic translations of the Greek New Testiment. There is very little attempt to look at the specifics of communicating future events in Old Norse literature for example because he jumps to the conclusion that this element of communication didn't really exist as such in early Germanic. Unfortunately without a clear analysis of all the main Germanic languages, even linguistically proficient readers are not able to judge for themselves without going back and redoing the analysis themselves.

On the positive side, the author brings our attention to a number of important elements of the interplay between the Well and the Tree in Norse mythology. In particular, the connection of clay with layering, and this with laws and fate is quite interesting. Also, the connection of the well with the past provides a great deal of food for thought. The attempt to move "Skuld" out of the idea of a simple representation of the future is also welcome.

On the whole, I think this is one of the most important works in the field. Despite the negative elements above, I think this book should be required reading for anyone doing any serious studies of early Germanic cosmology and thought.

This is a fascinating philosophical monogram on time and the world-tree in Germanic culture. Bauschatz' concept that the portion of the Tree above-ground represents manifestation, and that the portion of the Tree below-ground represents potential and the past, is fascinating.

However, Bauschatz too quickly dismisses the idea that the Germanic people had a future-tense. If there is no future, when is Ragnarok supposed to happen? How is it that prophecies take place? I would take his notion less literally, and instead use it to try to get to the nuances of the Germanic notion of the future, which was more of a tending-out from the present.

He also strangely compresses the three wells (Hvergelmir, Mimir's Well, and Wyrd's Well) into one, which is completely unnecessary.

This book is available as a PDF file, I reccomend down - loading the PDF format you will find with a simple google search, and having it printed and bound so that future generations may have the priceless thoughts of a study of the Germanic mind in antiquity in print. As you can see from the available "copies" and the wonderful price this is a rare and valued work, appearing in the bibliographies of any book worth a grain of salt on the same subjects. The work itself compares to The Road to Hel, by H. R. Ellis (Davidson) in depth gravity and scholarship. Which I reccomend also, as well as following the procedure outlined above. Preserve the works!