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Who Rides the Wagon

[Note: Much of the information presented below regarding Nerthus was gathered from a single source, A History of Pagan Europe by Prudence Jones and Nigel Pennick. If this is interesting to you, I encourage you to read the masterpiece that it flows from.]

The Suebians lived along the Elbe in ancient Europe. A Germanic tribe descended from the Irminones, they followed the ways handed down to them through time. They did not write down their own customs, beliefs, or histories — but in the first century CE, the Roman politician and historian Tacitus recorded a Suebian ritual in honor of the Mother Earth goddess Nerthus (Latinized from the Proto-Germanic *Nerþuz).

Nerthus was said to live on her own island, and when the attending priest sensed the presence of the goddess, he unveiled her wagon. He would then lead a team of slaves to accompany the wagon as it circled the Suebi territory, drawn by two choice heifers. Along the way, there would be much celebration for the blessings of bountiful growth that such a visit brought the people and the land, and while she made this wagon ride, all iron goods and weapons were put away, all acts of war abstained from.

But while the wagon procession called for great rejoicing, anyone who dared to look upon the goddess faced the punishment of death.

After the wagon completed its perambulation around the territory, the wagon was brought to the waters near Nerthus’ island where the slaves ritually cleaned the wagon. They were then drowned in the same waters.

W.G. Collingwood’s The Lovesickness of Frey (1908)

Origins of Nerthus

The true origins of the Goddess Nerthus are obscure, thanks to the lack of a written record. She does seem to have profound connections to the Vanir — a group of Norse gods associated with vitality, health, fertility, and divination.

Among the Vanir, Frey (also Freyr) and Freya were said to be the children of the sea god Njörd (Latinized from the Old Norse Njörðr). Njörd lived in what was called the shipyard, and he ruled over the peace and tumult of the waters. He is said to have had a sister-wife who bore him his children, but this wife remains unnamed in the Eddas. Some say she was Nerthus, others are not so sure.

The issue centers on the names of Nerthus and Njörd. They stem from the same name: *Nerþuz. Nerthus is the direct latinization, while Njörd comes from the name’s immigration into Old Norse.

So there might have been a change in sex for the god over time, as well as a change in dominion. Of course there might have been a surviving Mother Earth tradition that borrowed the name at some point. We do not know.

Before moving on, we should mention that the worship and attribution of Frey is quite similar to that of Nerthus (who might be Frey’s mother or a development out of his father). Frey travelled in a wagon and had strong associations with the sea, including a ship that he could fold and put in his pocket when he didn’t need it. Further, it was a strong taboo to commit violence in Frey’s temples, and weapons were not allowed inside.

And while Nerthus was not necessarily a Vanir, Frey certainly was. The Vanir, as we have discussed, were gods of fertility and prosperity. Nerthus, too, was worshipped for such powers. And so, there is still a third possibility: that Nerthus is an entity that spawned (or spawned from) both Frey and Njörd.

The Trundholm sun chariot, National Museum of Denmark

Wagon Ceremonies Across Germanic Groups

The wagon ceremony of Nerthus is compelling and worth tracing out for more connections. It’s simplicity, clarity of purpose, and severity recommend it as one of the great rituals from pagan Europe. Despite this, we have very little record of it, relying singly on Tacitus. And yet, when we keep our eyes open, we find commonalities throughout European paganism.

We find King Athaneric sending a wagon through his territory, carrying the image of a Pagan god that the leader was trying to reinstate after Christianization. The goddess Berencyntia had her image carried around Autun in a wagon to promote the growth of crops. There are also a number of burials that involve the dead buried inside a chariot, as in Dejbjerg Mose in Denmark. And the examples continue.

This prevalence of ceremonial wagon rides is maintained also in the material culture of European pagan societies. For instance, the Trundholm solar chariot, discovered in a peat bog and dated to 1400 BCE. The solar chariot is a gorgeous artifact, a sculpture depicting a horse pulling a wagon that carries a sun disk.

Now, part of this can be explained simply by the ease of travel in a wagon. At the time, it was likely the best mode of transportation. A god or goddess seems a likely candidate to have the best in vehicles. Even still, when ceremonies build around particular items, there tends to be attributions that slowly mount over time, giving guidance for later usage of the symbols. It is that influence over later symbolic use of wagons that we turn to now.

Visconti-Sforza’s Triumphal Chariot card design

Survival in Occult Symbolism

Wagons continue in occult symbolism today, and perhaps if we consider the story of Nerthus, we might better understand the lineage of this image and its full meaning.

The Visconti-Sforza tarot, the oldest known tarot design, has a Chariot card in its major arcana — the Chariot card would continue through the popular Marseilles and Waite-Smith designs and beyond. In the original Visconti deck, the Chariot is driven by two white horses and the driver is a blonde woman in regal attire. While the Marseilles deck also has a blonde driving the chariot, many readers interpret the character as a young male. Still later developments solidified the driver as a man, often a warrior.

Nevertheless, the correspondences in the Chariot are quite interesting. Seeing later iterations, it is clear that while the driver developed away from Nerthus, the symbolism retained similar attributes. For instance, there are several aquatic references in the Chariot of Crowley’s Thoth deck:

Cancer is the cardinal sign of the element of Water (Hence St. John Baptist's Day, and the various ceremonials connected with water.), and represents the first keen onrush of that element. Cancer also represents the path which leads from the great Mother Binah to Geburah, and is thus the influence of the Supernals descending through the Veil of Water (which is blood) upon the energy of man, and so inspires it. It corresponds, in this way, to The Hierophant, which, on the other side of the Tree of Life, brings down the fire of Chokmah.

…His only function is to bear the Holy Grail.

Upon his armour are ten Stars of Assiah, the inheritance of celestial dew from his mother… 

Cancer is the house of the Moon; there are thus certain analogies between this card and that of the High Priestess…

The central and most important feature of the card is its centre — the Holy Grail.

— The Book of Thoth, Aleister Crowley (p. 85-6) [Emphasis added.]

As we can see, there is a strong connection between the feminine powers of Binah and the High Priestess, as well as multiple references to water. Crowley emphasizes that the most important element of his Chariot card is the Holy Grail, which is a chalice — another symbol of water.

Bringing Together the Water and the Wagon

Aleister Crowley’s Thoth The Chariot card design

So let’s gather these insights together and think about them. Nerthus was a goddess who lived on an island, worshipped as a Mother Earth or Great Mother figure. Her central ceremony was a wagon ride.

But Nerthus was not created whole cloth, her name suggests a strong connection to the Norse sea god Njörd. She may be a reinterpretation of Njörd or his otherwise unnamed sister-wife. Thus, she has her own connection to the water that we can derive linguistically through her name’s connection to the Vanir. But the connection to water goes much further. She lives on an island, and her wagon ceremony finds its grim finale in the water.

We find that the tarot’s interpretation of the Chariot makes this connection again, with a powerful feminine energy being transported by chariot (which is, after all, a wagon).

These connections are complicated by the fact that the chariot is so often used as a mythological transport for the sun — consider the above mentioned solar chariot or the Greek god Helios who travelled with the sun in his chariot across the sky. [1]

So then, when we find the symbol of a wagon or chariot, how do we disambiguate? Do we simply check for moon/water/feminine imagery or solar/fire/masculine imagery? That would work in a pinch. However, we still need to understand why these dual purposes.

One is tempted to say that the similarity of transport comes down to the paths which the moon and sun appear to take in the sky above. If one is carried by chariot, why not the other? But the wagon ceremonies of Nerthus and related ones in the pagan world occurred on terra firma.

But inside the question is our clue. Chariots and wagons move across the land. They may bring great reward, but these rewards are not permanent and arrive across the earth over time. Celestial cycles are a great example of this, because just as the sun appears to move from the eastern horizon to the western horizon during the course of the day, so too do the bounties of the sun (crops, namely) appear in Spring and increase over Summer until they go dormant in Autumn.

The chariot and wagon are symbols for divine forces that are experienced in waves, in time. Note that Nerthus lived on an island and only began her wagon ride once her attending priest knew that it was “time” for another ceremony. Living in the West after Christianization, it is easy to fall into the idea of a god as non-temporal, as a permanent and ever present fixture of existence. The chariot and wagon present a different form of presence. The god of Abraham can’t really visit you, because he was always there. The goddess who rides a wagon, however, comes and goes.

The chariot and the wagon, then, connect us to an entirely different tradition of relating to the presence of divinity. It is a form that was more or less eradicated by force over the last 17 centuries, surviving through the mysteries of the occult and silent artifacts.

By looking closely at Nerthus, we discover this thread through the Western tradition, a new way to understand the blessings that come to us in time.

Notes

[1] There are a number of other charioteers carrying the sun on its passage through the sky. But there is one in particular that is interesting given its similarity to Nerthus. It comes from the Slavic and Baltic pagans who worshipped a sun goddess named Saulė. She, too, is worshipped for bringing prosperity to the plants, and what is her conveyance? A copper-wheeled chariot. At the end of the day, Saulė washes her horses in the waters of the sea before returning to her home, which is also the land of the dead. The Slavic and Baltic people who worshipped Saulė were much less linguistically related to the Suebi than the Suebi were to the Norse, yet we find a similar goddess. What makes this even more interesting is the relative dominance of masculine forces attributed to the sun across the world.