The idea that Vanir represent pre-Corded Ware agricultural gods is doing the rounds again.

Alvi makes nice videos but this old theory really doesn’t hold up. Vanir do not come from a pre IE religion:

-Thor and Odin were prayed to for good harvests
-Thor’s mother is literally Mother Earth
-Freyja is not a harvest goddess
-Frey is the god of the barrow which is the most Indo-European thing in existence
-All the Vanir names have IE etymological roots
-Other IE religions such as Indo-Iranic also have two tribes of gods (asuras and devas) - evidently a feature of PIE religion
-The last merging of peoples in Scandinavia was not the IE battle axe with the EEF TBK, rather it was merging of different IE groups

Also this isn’t how religions really work. When a people is defeated and replaced, their gods don’t usually get incorporated into the religion of the invaders.

Much is made of Frey being described with a boner by Adam of Bremen. The logic is dick=sex, sex=fertility, fertility=crops. But erect dicks in many cultures have completely different symbolic meanings eg. Romans used them as charms against evil. We know that erections were associated with virile masculinity and war in the context of Nordic Bronze Age petroglyphs so we could just as easily argue Frey is a war god as a fertility god based on his boner alone.

It just isn’t a good theory.

The goddess Athena cameo by Filippo Tignani, c. 1878, Roma

Happy Halloween from statue Poseidon and human Poseidon 🎃👻

"A.D. 1618, Republic of Poland, the Bastion of Western Civilization" (1980s)
https://redd.it/1oks73o
@r_propagandaposters

Then and Now: Chogha Zanbil is a ancient Elamite city built around 1250 BC in Khuzestan Province of Iran. Considered to be the best preserved example of an stepped pyramidal monument, it was the first Iranian site inscribed on the World Heritage List nearly half a century ago.

Thoth from Ancient Egyptian papyri in the Cairo Egyptian Museum

Amethyst cat amulet from the Ptolemaic Period (300 - 30 BC).