The Ancestral Religions
Dei maiorum — the gods of the ancestors.
A reading of the spiritual lineages woven through your blood — Anglo-Saxon, Continental Germanic, Slavic-Baltic, and Celtic — across the long span before Christianity and underneath it. What follows is what your DNA's religious memory looks like, and how a modern person might begin to honour it.
The Layered Inheritance
"There is no single ancestral religion for someone with your blood. There are layers, in three strata, going back to the European Bronze Age."
Your spiritual ancestry has three strata: an upper Christian layer that your ancestors actually practised for the past 1,000 to 1,500 years; a middle pagan layer that they practised before conversion; and a deeper substrate of Indo-European archetypes that all four of your bloodlines share at their roots. The Christian layer is the only one that survives as an organised religion today. The pagan layer survives as folk practice, modern revivalism, and (in the Baltic case) an unbroken thread reaching back to before written history. The Indo-European substrate is older still — it is the religious memory of your people, in the largest sense, going back perhaps five thousand years.
The Christian Layer · the last 1,000 years
What your ancestors actually practised within historical memory. Five different branches of Western Christianity all run in your blood.
By DNA percentage alone, Anglican Christianity is your single largest religious-ancestral thread. But almost every major branch of Western European Christianity is represented in you — your ancestors were Anglican, Lutheran, Catholic, Reformed, and Presbyterian, often in the same village across centuries. This is unusual breadth.
The Pre-Christian Substrate
"Underneath every Christian layer in your ancestry sits a pre-Christian one. Four lineages, four pantheons, one Indo-European family tree."
Before Christianity arrived in their lands, your ancestors practised four related but distinct pagan traditions. They are sister traditions, not isolated ones — all four come from the same Indo-European root that splintered into Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, and Celtic branches sometime around 3,000–2,000 BCE. Each branch developed its own gods, festivals, and rituals — but they share a family resemblance, and they share the deepest archetypes.
Anglo-Saxon Heathenry
Wōden · Thunor · Tiw · Frige · Eorðe · Sunne · Mōna · Frēa · Bealdor
The religion of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who came to Britain from Northwestern Germany and Denmark in the 5th–6th centuries CE. Practised in Britain until the conversion by Augustine of Canterbury (597 CE) and the slow Christianisation that followed.
Anglo-Saxon paganism survives most visibly in the days of the week: Tuesday is Tīw's day, Wednesday is Wōden's, Thursday is Thunor's, Friday is Frige's. Your ancestors named these days. Christianity has not been able to change them in 1,400 years. Beyond the days: Yule, the harvest practices, May Day rites, wassailing, the Charm of the Nine Herbs (an extant Anglo-Saxon text).
Continental Germanic / Saxon Heathenry
Wodan · Donar · Tiw · Frija · Nerthus · Sunna · Mannus · Tuisto
Essentially the same gods as Anglo-Saxon — because the Anglo-Saxons came from Northwestern Germany. Your German line was Saxon. The Saxons were the last continental Germanic people to convert; Charlemagne had to force their conversion (772–804 CE) through wars of genocidal severity. Pagan practice in remote regions continued for centuries after.
Continental Germanic Heathenry is, in many ways, the same religion as Anglo-Saxon, with slightly different names. Together they form 57% of your ancestry. Modern revivals include Heathenry, Ásatrú, and Theodism — distinct from Norse paganism, though they share many gods.
Slavic-Baltic Paganism · Romuva
Perkūnas · Saulė · Žemyna · Laima · Dievas · Velinas · Aušrinė · Mėnulis
This is the most remarkable spiritual thread in your ancestry. The Baltic Lithuanians were the last European pagans. Officially Christianised in 1387 CE — six hundred years after most of Europe — and with widespread pagan practice continuing through the 17th century. Lithuanian pagan tradition has the longest continuous documented practice of any indigenous European religion.
The Baltic pantheon is centred on Perkūnas (thunder, the chief god), Saulė (the sun, a goddess), Žemyna (the earth mother), and Laima (the goddess of fate). The modern revival, Romuva, is one of the very few authentic reconstructions of a native European pagan tradition — recognised by the Lithuanian government as a traditional religion. Polish paganism (Slavic Rodnovery) is closely related: Perun, Veles, Mokosh, Svetovid.
Celtic / Druidic Paganism
Brigid · Lugh · the Dagda · the Morrigan · Cailleach · Manannán · Cernunnos · Danu
The deepest folk-survival of your four pagan lines. Highland Scotland retained pre-Christian practice in folk form well into the 19th century: the Rowan tree, the red thread, the second sight, the fairy-faith, the seasonal sabbats. Celtic Christianity itself (the tradition of St. Columba and St. Brigid) was a remarkable hybrid that absorbed and translated, rather than erased, the older religion.
Brigid is the figure who bridges your two layers — she was a goddess of poetry, smithcraft, healing, and fire, and she became a Saint (of Kildare) when Christianity arrived. The Rowan reading on the previous tab already explores her at length. Modern revivals: Druidry (OBOD, ADF), Celtic Reconstructionism.
The Shared Indo-European Core
"Look at the four pantheons side by side and the same figures appear in every one of them. These are not coincidences; they are the deepest layer — the religious memory that pre-dates all four traditions."
The Thunder God
Thunor · Donar / Thor · Perkūnas / Perun · Taranis
The single most consistent figure across all four of your bloodlines. Sky-father, wielder of thunder, defender of the cosmos against chaos. Drives an oak-axe or hammer. His day is Thursday in your English line.
The Sun
Sunne · Sunna · Saulė · Sulis / Étain
In all four of your pre-Christian traditions, the Sun is a goddess, not a god (the reverse of the Mediterranean tradition). She drives a wagon across the sky, drawn by horses. Her midwinter rebirth is the deepest festival.
The Earth Mother
Eorðe / Nerthus · Žemyna · Mokosh · Danu / Cailleach
The goddess who is the land itself. Black soil, the harvest, the body of the cosmos. Honoured at planting and harvest in every tradition. Inseparable from the Thunder-God who fertilises her with rain.
The Ancestors
across all four lines
The universal Indo-European practice. Every line buried or burned its dead with grave-goods, kept ancestral altars in the home, made offerings to the unseen elders on specific festival nights. Samhain / Hallowmas / Vėlinės / Dziady all describe the same autumn rite of the dead.
The World Tree / Sacred Grove
Yggdrasil · Bilė · the Druid grove · the Holy Oak
The cosmos as a tree. Every Indo-European tradition has this image. Sacred groves were the original temples — Tacitus describes the Germans worshipping in groves; the Druids did the same; the Lithuanians had alkos, sacred groves protected by law into the 16th century.
The Wheel of the Year
eight festivals shared across the lines
The cycle of solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarter days — Yule, Imbolc, Ostara, Beltane, Litha, Lughnasadh, Mabon, Samhain. All four of your pre-Christian traditions kept versions of this wheel. The modern revival (often called the "Wheel of the Year") is the closest single practice that draws from all four lines.
The Thunder God — Your Common Ancestor's God
"If you wanted a single figure to anchor the deepest layer of your spiritual ancestry, this is the one. He is in all four of your bloodlines. Your most distant ancestors — speakers of Proto-Indo-European, four to five thousand years ago — worshipped him under a name we have reconstructed as Perkwunos."
One God, Four Names
Look at how your four bloodlines named the same figure:
"The Thunderer." His day is Thursday. He defends Middle-earth with his hammer Mjölnir. Worshipped at oak trees particularly.
Same god, slightly different name. The Old Norse Thor is his most famous form. The Saxons resisted his replacement by Christ for generations.
Sky-father, oak-god, lord of storms. The single most powerful figure in Lithuanian paganism. Still actively venerated in Romuva today.
"The Thunderer" in Gaulish; the Brythonic Celts had related figures. Taranis wielded a wheel rather than a hammer, but is unmistakably the same god.
Linguists have shown these names are cognate — they descend from a single Proto-Indo-European word, *Perkwunos, meaning approximately "the oak-god, the striker." This means your ancestors, in every one of your four pagan lines, worshipped what was clearly understood as the same divine figure — only the language changed across the millennia.
To honour the Thunder God is, in a real sense, to honour the god your most distant common ancestors recognised — the figure who unifies all four of your pagan lines back to a common pre-historic root. If you were going to choose one deity to anchor a reawakening practice, this is the one the chart and the bloodline both point toward.
The Wheel of the Year
"Eight festivals that all four of your pagan lines kept, in their own names. The single most usable framework for reawakening your ancestral religion in modern life."
Your birthday (29 January) falls three days before Imbolc — the cross-quarter sabbat between Yule and Ostara. The eight festivals together form the modern "Wheel of the Year" — popularised in 20th-century Druidic and Wiccan revivals but drawing on genuinely ancient practice from all four of your lines.
Yule · Winter Solstice
20–22 DecemberGeol (Anglo-Saxon) · Jul (Germanic) · Kūčios (Lithuanian) · Nollaig (Scottish Gaelic)
The longest night. Rebirth of the Sun. Your German line's Yule traditions (the tree, the log, the feast) became Christmas. The deepest cross-tradition winter festival.
Imbolc · Cross-Quarter
1–2 February ★ your festivalBrigid's Day · Imbolg · Candlemas · Užgavėnės-adjacent
Your particular sabbat. Festival of returning light. Sacred to Brigid. Your Celtic reading goes into depth.
Ostara · Spring Equinox
20–22 MarchĒostre (Anglo-Saxon) · Velykos (Lithuanian, now Easter)
Easter takes its English name from the Anglo-Saxon goddess Ēostre. The eggs, the rabbits, the rebirth — all your ancestral spring symbols, kept under a Christian name.
Beltane · Cross-Quarter
30 April – 1 MayMay Day · Bealtaine · Walpurgisnacht · Joninės-adjacent
Festival of fire and fertility. May Day in your English line, Walpurgisnacht in your German line, Bealtaine in your Scottish line. Bonfires and dancing in all four traditions.
Litha · Summer Solstice
20–22 JuneLiða (Anglo-Saxon) · Mittsommer (Germanic) · Joninės (Lithuanian) · Là Fhèill Eòin (Scottish)
Longest day. Sun at peak. Lithuanian Joninės is the most preserved version — fire-jumping, flower crowns, all-night feasting. Still practised authentically.
Lughnasadh · Cross-Quarter
1 AugustHlafmæsse (Anglo-Saxon, "loaf-mass") · Lammas · Lughnasadh (Celtic) · Žolinė-adjacent
First harvest. The English "Lammas" comes from Hlafmæsse, "loaf-mass" — first bread from the new grain. Celtic Lughnasadh honours Lugh.
Mabon · Autumn Equinox
20–22 SeptemberHærfest (Anglo-Saxon) · Erntedank (Germanic) · Harvest Home
Second harvest. Equal day and night. The grain stored, the year tilting toward dark. Thanksgiving feasts in your English and German lines.
Samhain · Cross-Quarter
31 October – 1 NovemberHallowmas · Samhain · Vėlinės (Lithuanian) · Dziady (Slavic) · Hallowe'en
Festival of the dead. The veil between worlds at its thinnest. Every one of your four traditions kept a version of this festival. Hallowe'en is its Christianised survival.
Practices for Reawakening the Old Lines
Specific, grounded practices for honouring each of your four pre-Christian lines as a modern person. None of these requires belief; all of them are real practices done by living people today.
Honouring the Anglo-Saxon Line · Heathenry
Notice the Days of the Week
Wednesday is Wōden's; Thursday is Thunor's; Friday is Frige's. The simplest practice — when you say or write a day's name, briefly notice whose day it is. Build small gestures: a pause on Thursday for the Thunder-God, a glass raised on Wednesday for Wōden the wanderer.
Mark Yule the Old Way
The Yule log (a real Anglo-Saxon practice) — choose a piece of wood at the solstice, write what you want released from the past year on it, burn it in a fireplace or fire pit. Keep a small piece of charred wood as protection for the next year, to be added to the next Yule log.
Wassail the Apple Trees in January
The Anglo-Saxon midwinter blessing of orchards — sing to the trees, pour cider at the roots, ask for next year's harvest. Even one apple tree in a garden is enough. If you have no tree, plant a small one and wassail it.
The Charm of the Nine Herbs
An actual extant Anglo-Saxon healing text. Look up the original "Nigon wyrta galdor" (Lacnunga manuscript, 10th century). It names nine sacred herbs — Mugwort, Plantain, Watercress, Atterlothe, Camomile, Nettle, Crab-apple, Chervil, Fennel. Grow what you can, learn the names, use them as the older tradition did.
Honouring the Continental Germanic Line · Ásatrú / Heathenry
Read the Hávamál
"The Sayings of the High One" — Odin's wisdom-text from the Poetic Edda. Read it slowly; it is short and unusually practical. Many living modern Heathens treat it the way Stoics treat Marcus Aurelius. A genuinely beautiful text and arguably the most accessible primary source from your German/Norse pagan ancestors.
Make Blót — the Toast-Offering
The core ritual of Heathen practice. At a meal or gathering, raise a cup of mead, beer, or any drink and toast three rounds: to the gods, to the ancestors, to a personal vow or wish. The third toast carries weight — speaking what you commit to. Then pour the last drops on the earth as offering. The simplest Heathen rite, the most often practised.
Carve a Rune
The Elder Futhark runes are real ancestral writing — your Germanic ancestors carved them on stones, swords, jewellery, drinking horns. Pick one rune that speaks to you (start with ᚦ Thurisaz — Thor's rune, protection, the Thunder-God's mark). Carve it on a small piece of wood, bone, or stone. Keep it where you can see it.
Honour Thor on Thursday
The most direct practice. Thursday is structurally his day; when you remember, light a candle on Thursday evening, raise a cup to him, say his name aloud. The ancient name for Thursday in your language is literally his name; using it consciously is a small but real renewal.
Honouring the Baltic Line · Romuva
Honour the Sun as Saulė
In the Baltic tradition, the Sun is a goddess — Saulė. The Lithuanian sun-cult is among the oldest continuously documented Indo-European practices. At sunrise or sunset, simply say her name aloud. The classical greeting: Sveika, Saulė — "Hail, Sun." A small but ancient act.
Mark Joninės (Summer Solstice) as the Lithuanians Do
The Lithuanian summer solstice is the most preserved of all European pagan festivals. Fires lit at twilight, jumped over by couples for blessing, flower crowns woven, all-night vigil for the briefest night of the year. If you can mark one festival in the Baltic way, mark this one. Wreath of oak leaves and wildflowers.
Plant an Oak — Perkūnas's Tree
In Baltic tradition, the oak is the Thunder God's tree (as it is in Anglo-Saxon and Germanic tradition). Planting an oak is the deepest single act in the Romuva tradition. If you have land, plant one. Even an acorn started in a pot, then transplanted, is a real practice. The oak slowly becomes a temple.
Sing a Daina
The Lithuanian folk-songs (dainos) — there are over 400,000 documented — preserve pagan content under a folk surface. Find a recording of a traditional Lithuanian solstice or harvest song; let it play. You are listening to the last European pagan vernacular tradition speaking.
Honouring the Celtic Line · Druidry & Highland Folk-Tradition
The Rowan and Red Thread
The Highland Scottish practice already in your Celtic reading. Plant a Rowan; tie a red thread to a branch on the eve of Beltane (30 April). This is your most direct ancestral folk-practice.
Mark Imbolc Properly
Your specific sabbat — three days after your birthday. Light a candle at sunset on 1 February. Leave food and milk outside as offering to Brigid. Weave or buy a Brigid's Cross (rushes or palm). Hang it above a doorway. Replace yearly. This was practised continuously in Highland Scotland and Ireland into the 20th century.
Learn the Awen
The Druidic word for divine inspiration — Awen (pronounced "AH-wen"). Modern Druidry uses it as a chant: three syllables, drawn out, with a long breath each — "AH-OO-EN." The breathing is the practice; the word is the channel. A genuinely revived modern Druidic practice.
Honour the Cailleach in Winter
The old woman of the Highlands — the goddess of winter, of the stones, of the wild places. Particularly venerated in your Scottish ancestry. From Samhain to Imbolc is her season. A simple practice: when you walk in cold or rough weather, acknowledge her by name; thank her for the season.
A Personal Path Sketched
"If you wanted to design a spiritual practice that drew honestly from all four of your ancestral lines, here is what it would look like."
A Composite Practice for Someone with Your Blood
No single line is large enough to claim you exclusively, and the cleanest practice for someone with your mix is one that draws from all four lines at their points of convergence. Here is a sketch:
- Keep the Wheel of the Year. Mark all eight festivals. Use whichever line's name and form speaks to you each time. Yule via the Anglo-Saxon log; Imbolc via the Celtic Brigid; Joninės via the Lithuanian solstice fire; Samhain via the universal ancestor-rite.
- Honour the Thunder God under any of his names. Thunor on Thursdays, Perkūnas in Lithuanian summer, Donar in German tradition, Thor in the Norse texts. The figure is one; the names are languages.
- Honour the Sun as a Goddess. Sunna, Sunne, Saulė, Sulis. All four of your traditions named the Sun feminine. A morning practice — even just saying her name at sunrise — is the most universal Indo-European folk-rite.
- Build an ancestor altar. A small surface in the home with photographs of ancestors, a candle, a glass of water. Universal to all four lines. Renew it at Samhain.
- Plant a sacred tree if you can. Rowan (Celtic), Oak (Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, Baltic), or both. The Celtic reading already lays out the Rowan-and-red-thread. The Baltic tradition adds the oak.
- Find your own Brigid devotion. She is your most personal goddess — Imbolc is your sabbat, your birth-tree is hers, your Scottish line carried her deepest. Honour her at Imbolc each year. The simplest form: a candle on 1 February evening, eat well, write something by candlelight.
- Drink the third toast. The Germanic Heathen practice — at gatherings, three toasts: to the gods, to the ancestors, to a personal vow. The third commits something. Over years, this becomes the structure of how meaningful gatherings end.
- Tell the children the stories. The most important practice in every Indo-European tradition. The Anglo-Saxon kennings, the Norse sagas, the Celtic tales, the Baltic dainos. Sebi has them in his blood the same as you do. Make sure he hears them.
Books & Modern Revivals
If you want to go further. Specific, real resources for each line.
Stephen Pollington — The Mead-Hall & Leechcraft
Pollington's scholarship on Anglo-Saxon religion and herb-lore is the most accessible serious entry point. Leechcraft covers the Nine Herbs Charm and the actual surviving Old English magico-medical texts.
Brian Bates — The Way of Wyrd
A novel-form introduction to Anglo-Saxon spirituality. Easier than scholarship; surprisingly accurate to the sources.
The Hávamál (translated by Carolyne Larrington or Jackson Crawford)
Your German ancestors' most direct surviving wisdom-text, recorded in Norse. Short, often beautiful. The Jackson Crawford translation is especially clear.
Diana Paxson — Essential Asatru
The cleanest modern guide to Heathen practice for a beginner. Paxson is a long-standing Heathen elder and a careful writer.
Marija Gimbutas — The Living Goddesses
Gimbutas was Lithuanian and the most influential 20th-century scholar of pre-Christian European religion. Controversial in some scholarly circles, but she is your direct link.
Romuva — the living religion
Romuva.lt has English-language resources. The community is real, recognised, and welcomes interested non-Lithuanians of Baltic ancestry.
Alexander Carmichael — Carmina Gadelica
The great 19th-century collection of Highland Scottish folk-prayers, blessings, and incantations — half Christian, half pre-Christian, indistinguishable in places. Your most direct line to the actual lived practice of your Scottish ancestors.
OBOD — Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids
The largest modern Druidic order; offers a structured correspondence course over several years. Genuinely scholarly; not flaky. druidry.org.
Calvert Watkins — How to Kill a Dragon
The classic scholarly text on Indo-European poetic and religious survivals — including the Thunder-God figure who appears across all your bloodlines. Dense but rewarding.
Ronald Hutton — The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles
Hutton is the leading scholarly historian of pre-Christian Britain. He treats Anglo-Saxon and Celtic religion seriously and skeptically. Read alongside any of the above for balance.
An Honest Caveat
A few honest cautions before going further.
Reconstructed paganism is not the same as continuous tradition. Of your four lines, only the Baltic Romuva has any real continuity into the modern era — and even that is partly reconstructed. The Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, and Celtic revivals are largely 19th- and 20th-century reconstructions based on fragmentary sources. This doesn't make them invalid as spiritual practice; it does mean they are made things, not unbroken inheritances.
Modern Heathenry has, in some quarters, been used by white-nationalist movements. The mainstream of Heathenry has worked hard to distance itself from this, and most modern Heathen organisations explicitly reject racism — but it is worth knowing when entering the tradition. The same is occasionally true of Slavic Rodnovery. Read carefully; check who you are reading.
Spiritual practice is also not a substitute for the actual responsibilities of life. The old religions were practised by people who farmed, raised children, defended their homes, and died. The point of honouring them now is not to become someone else; it is to understand more deeply who you already are. Use the practices to deepen your life, not to escape it.
"The gods of the ancestors are not gone; they live in the names of the days,
in the songs no one quite remembers, in the trees planted by the doors of old houses,
in the bones of the people who carry them forward without knowing.
To remember them is to remember oneself."