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

~ (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 280 pages
• Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Pr (May 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0870233521
• ISBN-13: 978-0870233524
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,538,691 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars essential, May 27, 2000

By	Mark Henderson (Sammamish, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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).

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, but Take With a Grain of Salt, August 9, 2006

By	Carla O'Harris - See all my reviews

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.

36 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb work - destroys misconceptions, August 17, 2002

By A Customer

This glorious work (very dry reading for many, I'm afraid) puts the nails in the coffin of the highly-popular and much-promoted idea that the ancient Germanic (Norse/Saxon/Gothic/Frankish-Teutonic/Frisian.....and even Slavic and Celtic) cultural-world view can in any way be reconciled with the Masonic/Hermetic/Jewish-Kaballistic drivel that many "Aryan" occultists and politicos have insisted on for the last several hundred years. The "Superman" notion that the Nazi party fixated upon and the "Faustian" ideal that generated it, which seeped across Europe thanks to various "Saturnian" elements (Freemasons, Rosicrucians, etc.) has NOTHING at all to do with our ancient heritage or the outlook native to our race. In fact, the view of "present-becoming past" that our ancestors held to IS far more valid than the lie and deception of a "future" which everyone has swallowed today. Because of their views, our ancestors lived in the present and did not WAIT for some "future" to traspire. As you will see in this book, they recognized that the "swirl of life" and circumstances could not be predicted and therefore they concerned themselves with the present and the past....unlike so many people from the plague of early Christianity onward, who neglected their lives in the present and focused on some trumped-up notion of a "future" handed to them by culture-subverting con men. Of couse, seeing life in terms of a "present-becoming past" perspective did not inhibit our ancestors from advancing technologically. One look at the expansive drive that they had in pre-Christian/pre-Kabbalistic/Jewish times will serve to show that our relatives of those far distant days were much more dynamic than we are now! And perhaps the absolute LIE of a "Future" and the hypnotic hold this gyp-notion has on our race today might explain why our numbers are dwindling to the point where we aren't even replacing ourselves with offspring.....in other words, we are headed for extinction as a race if this trend continues for much longer. Not that such a development wouldn't absolutely delight the Kabbalistic con men who promoted the "future" hogwash in our lands to begin with (read "Judaism's Strange Gods" for more details)! If the concepts of this book are grasped, and you begin to make an effort to view your life in the original way of our ancestors, I think you'll find it exceptionally empowering.
An excellent work and very much worth reading. Unfortunately, I doubt if many will ever be exposed to it.