How Paganism Dominated The Ancient World | Gods & Monsters | Absolute History

officially we britons have been christian for more than 1500 years but scratch the surface and you'll find our ancestors believed in far more than christ and the cross [Music] pagan gods witches demons evil spirits were all proclaimed as terrifying fact now i want to uncover what beliefs and fears really built britain this week with the help of a team of top historians i'm offering myself up to the terrifying world of pagan gods why did the celtic deities take human sacrifice to extremes all hell would be let loose you can imagine the roasting bodies how did the romans make religion a very painful affair it's a castration tongs a castration clan and why didn't the viking warriors renounce their faith without a fight [Music] today for a lot of people christianity is all about morality no killing no stealing no adultery it's what god told moses he wanted and it's the way most of us try and live our lives but rewind a couple of thousand years and religion required very different behavior the meek didn't inherit the earth they were trampled underfoot and pagan altars were places of human sacrifice and murder i'm going back to the dawn of documented british history to discover the gods that used to rule our world [Music] i want to experience for myself what being a good devout pagan was really all about why were the religious beliefs and rituals of our ancestors so bizarre and extreme the first british religion we really know anything about is that of the celts two and a half thousand years ago the celts were farmers and hunters who were completely at the mercy of the forces of nature a drought could mean starvation a storm could wipe out whole settlements but the celts believed that their religion and their gods could help control these savage forces the celts lived a fragile existence and historian dr claire downham is going to show me how they begged the gods to help them survive they would have lived in a much more uncertain world than we live in their life could almost be a daily struggle with the forces of nature and so they they would have seen this as being a very dangerous world to live in you never know what's coming around the corner you don't feel in control of your fate but i think that human need to feel a sense of being able to control what's happening to them was to populate the landscape with deities while christians believe god resides in a different realm up in heaven the celts believed their deities were invisible spirits that inhabited both the landscape and the creatures around them these celtic gods were nature itself if we were celts looking out at this landscape what are the gods that we would see standing in a place like this they wouldn't have felt alone the trees have gods and goddesses every river has a god but they would have also seen the kind of animals in the landscape as being imbued with spirits as well so you know if you see an owl you might have thought that this was an omen from a god or may even represent a deity shape-shifting into a particular creature the celts hoped that the key to taming nature's elemental forces was to keep the gods of nature on side so they offered valuable objects to their deities as sacrifices by burying them or placing them in rivers it was very much a kind of idea of reciprocity i give to you you give to me and hopefully society and the gods can both be happy this is a replica of the battersea shield which was deposited in the river thames it would have been raised in the air because you want people to see it there was probably an invocation to the god of the river and then would have been sent down into the waters the river was thought to be the god itself and the thames actually gets its name from the celtic gods tamesis what really intrigues me about these sacrifices is how business-like they were there was none of the mystery of christian worship this was a cold calculated transaction a contract which both sides men and gods were expected to honor but it wasn't just objects that would be used to bargain with the deities horrifically the celts believed the spirits of nature also demanded human sacrifices [Music] and archaeological evidence nearly 2 000 years old has revealed just how shockingly brutal killing a person for the gods could be in 1984 these ancient remains were uncovered in cheshire and were initially involved in a police murder inquiry this young celtic male now known as lindell man had his skull smashed his throat garrotted and his neck sliced open he was then thrown into a peat bog which preserved his corpse i want to know who the celts would have chosen for such a terrible fate and why such extreme violence was necessary professor miranda aldhaus green is going to show me what was really involved in giving human flesh to the celtic gods why would the gods want a human being well clearly what other offerings had failed so a human being is possibly at the apex of worth you're at your wit's end there's nothing else you can do you have to turn to a human being as the ultimate gift if a community like this was faced with a crisis like a devastating crop failure they may have decided the gods needed to be given a life to save the tribe the first people to be considered would have been those who were connected to the disaster so we've got a farmer here how's the farming going in spite of all my efforts the crops have failed we're dealing with a farming crisis he could be considered to be responsible and that if we sacrifice him then the gods will give us something good back on the other hand of course he's going to be needed if the crops are to pick up because he's got the skills the others that were most likely to have been considered were those that in some ways seemed different people who might offer the gods something new where'd you come from slave i was captured from the neighbouring tribe i'm the daughter of one of our tribal elders that's interesting so we've got somebody who's very low status at the moment but has been very high status so it's almost as though she's already gone through a sacrificial killing process this one's disabled what's the matter with you i was born with a disfigured leg a disabled person could be seen to be touched by the gods particularly if he was disabled from birth the pregnant woman would be a valuable sacrifice wouldn't she because she would be about to contribute something major into the society yes and she represents two people so you you've got a double sacrifice and you're also sacrificing the future so it's an enormous gift but the final choice may well have been left to the gods themselves who might reveal their preference by influencing how lots would fall this would decide who was to face a terrible and drawn out death so we have the disabled boy yes we have the slave the slave we have the pregnant woman and we have the farmer yes [Music] the slave is to be sacrificed indeed a good choice it's going to be a hideous hideous experience now our sacrificial victim has been selected we're going to reenact the triple killing that lindale man suffered we're basing this on hard forensic evidence and contemporary written accounts this is one very rare example where the roman writers and the archaeology match up like that and so we can be very very sure what the last moments of these people were so miranda how do i do this there are three basic stages the first thing you need to do is to pick up a rock or large stone that's right don't forget it's performance so it's got to take a while throw it down right hit up hard on the head not enough to kill her yet but to incapacitate her [Music] twice excessive violence was thought to make the sacrifice more satisfying to the gods you need to take a garat you need to make sure everybody can see it so you all your gestures need to be theatrical almost exaggerated and then go up behind her put it round her throat until you're judged that she's on the edge of consciousness on the edge of slipping into death each method of killing was designed to appeal to a different god the more that were used the greater the number of deities that would be pleased [Music] at that moment before she dies you take the dagger the moment between life and death was considered magical drawing it out as long as possible would render the sacrifice even more potent slice right with it the person will die and then you'll just shove her in the back with your knee so that she goes face down into the marsh marshland preserves human flesh making bogs the ideal site for human sacrifices as these offerings would last a very long time and lindau mann isn't alone across northwest europe scientists have recorded the remains of hundreds of celtic bog bodies what really shocked me and all of us was how methodical the whole thing was yes it was a brutally violent murder but it was calculated step by step by step in order to create the maximum effect for the people who were watching it it would have terrified the person who was being sacrificed but it's a bit different from the christian holy communion isn't it sacrificing one life may seem barbaric enough but there were times the celts believed this was not enough i'm about to find out the horrifying measures they took to appease their gods when threatened with invasion i'm finding out what being a pagan in britain really meant for our ancestors i started looking at the world through celtic eyes when invisible gods resided in all aspects of nature and i've learned how individual human sacrifices were made to bargain with the deities but that's pretty small beer compared with what's coming next ritual slaughter on an almost industrial scale for use only in the direst of crises the wicker man is a terrifying celtic construction the respected classical writers described it's thought it was like a colossal pagan altar built in the form of a hollow wooden man once constructed it would have been filled with people and animals and set ablaze the wicker man was an act of mass human sacrifice a desperate cry for help and for sir barry cumliff it's stark evidence the celtic gods were bloodthirsty and cruel do you think people thought the gods looked after them personally not at all there's no sense of the uh the loving god or anything like that or the loving gods they were tricky you could never trust a god they're not nice are they not nice at all no they could uh demand things of you they could trick you in every way and if you didn't do it right if you didn't get the ritual right you'd had it so so you were in fear of the gods the whole time but it wasn't just the gods the celts feared in the first century a.d the romans invaded faced with such a powerful military foe it's possible the celts built wicker men as mass human sacrifices to their gods of war such as segamoe and rudianus do you think people would have gone in kicking and screaming or do you think that there might have been a sort of self-sacrificial element to it there could well have been a self-sacrificial element one or two of the classical writers say that they use criminals and if they couldn't find criminals they'd use anyone but there's quite a lot of evidence that people went willingly to their death people would have thought it was a the right thing to do to sacrifice themselves for the well-being of others volunteering to be burnt alive inside a wicker man would have been the ultimate act of celtic religious devotion isn't it fantastic you can almost feel the power of that structure standing there their futures were hanging on it they wanted the gods to love it they wanted the gods to love them and these weren't people who were used to bloody spectacle in the way that we are on television and in the films absolutely not no they were used to human sacrifice but that was on a much smaller scale this was human sacrifice on the most colossal scale the lighting of the wicker man would have been a moment of divine hope for spectators and unimaginable fear for the sacrificial victims inside so when the brand was actually thrown into the wicker man all hell would be let loose literally all hell would be let loose with the burning the crackling sound the screams and the smell the smell would have been awful you can imagine the roasting bodies every sense would have been attacked this was the moment when the souls or the spirits were going to go up to the gods of the sky everything going up to the guns look at that if the wicker man was a final plea to the gods of the celts to stop the roman invasion it failed the celts were defeated in a series of ferocious battles and the victorious roman army added the province of britannia to its ever-increasing empire the world of the celts was now said to change beyond recognition and their gods would never be the same [Music] again there's not much that remains of the old london wall but 2000 years ago this area was the site of a massive roman fort a symbol of rome's extraordinary power everything the romans brought with them was new their politics their economics their language their culture their laws and of course their religion life became very different for the people of britain the romans brought with them new technology literacy and the skill to construct massive stone buildings but perhaps the biggest change of all was that the gods now took visible human form as huge statues were erected in their honor [Music] i want to learn who these new deities were and what it was like to worship at their shrines all right now we need to get your toga on [Music] helping me create my own pantheon of statues is historian guy de la bedouire some models and some body paint well the romans really liked to identify their own gods with local gods recognizing that the local gods had power so what they did was take someone like mars and double barrel in me like with a local god for example something they called mars coquidius and kakidius seems to have been the local british tribal celtic god the romans turn him into a kind of mars look alike but they don't bury kakidius they put them together [Music] it was a bit like the twinning of towns today and it may have made the roman gods seem less foreign to the celts but these mighty military invaders didn't compromise on the political role their deities had to play in their new territories the romans are determined that their own gods jupiter juno and minerva the great political state cults that have driven rome's enormous military success allowing to conquer the whole of northern europe they want these political gods here in britain too these three gods of ancient mythology made up the capitalist triad that was thought to protect the empire but the pinnacle of the political pantheon were the emperor gods the men who had made rome what it was the roman state wanted people to be affiliated to the idea of a divine presence within the within the emperor so they came up with the idea of the newman the spirit of the emperors and there are loads and loads of inscriptions from britain that record people worshiping the spirits of the empress so i'm not in i'm not worshiping an emperor i'm sort of worshiping the idea of emperor'sness yes and that's what we're creating here this is going to be our statue of the imperial cult [Music] all roman gods were ultimately political deities their job was to keep the conquered britons on side whilst making them subjects of rome but it wasn't long before these deities would face a threat bigger than anyone could imagine [Music] the arrival of a prophet in the city of jerusalem in the fourth decade a.d sparked the beginnings of a new faith and when jesus was crucified his followers became vital missionaries who secured its survival the foundations of the world's most followed religion had been laid the timing was perfect with growing social unrest more and more people were looking for a different increasingly personal faith that was more spiritual than practical was like nothing the world had ever seen before after centuries of many gods there was now an unstoppable demand for a more personal relationship with a single heavenly body christianity was spreading and was about to occupy vast territories but the world of the pagan gods was adapting to try and hold on to its own i'm about to find out which roman gods would become christianity's main rival in the battle for spiritual supremacy and what extreme lengths followers would go to in this new world of intimate relationships with a single god i'm experiencing the pagan world of our ancestors to find out what their forgotten religions had to offer the invisible celtic gods of the natural world had been replaced by the superhuman deities of the romans but the biggest shake-up of all was on its way the most powerful faith yet known was about to take hold in the first four centuries a.d christianity grew from a minority religion persecuted by the romans to a faith that dominated the roman empire and beyond but during this volatile period british paganism was also making fundamental changes it started to offer its followers some of the advantages of christianity spirituality and a personal relationship with a single god that would listen to its devotees people who wanted to worship one particular god could join something called a mystery cut these were sects devoted to a single deity but there was a catch to join followers would often have to pass a series of grueling initiation rights the most demanding was the cult of kibbeli the goddess of mother earth and the key to understanding what she required of her followers lies at the british museum an object found in the river thames nearly 200 years ago reveals just how devoted her disciples had to be during religious rituals what fascinating things curator ralph jackson explains at the very top here in the most important position is the goddess kibele and so this is linked to the cult of kibele what are they it's interesting you say they because in actual fact they're it they're two parts of the same object what was its function it's a castration tongs a castration clamp as part of a religious service as part of a religious service it was used for the castration of men why would people have had their testicles smashed in order to worship cabelly well one of the requirements if you like of priests of the cult of kibale was that they were involved in ritual castration why would you do that to yourself these were people in ecstasy totally committed to a very particular cult but what would kibeli a goddess of nature and fertility have to do with castration why would worshipping her involve sacrificing your manhood historian dr neil faulkner is going to explain by telling me the story of the goddess kibali or kibili the way the romans would have learned about her through dance he's used contemporary records to rehearse a troop in the appropriate roman steps so this is kabili who's this fertility deity this earth mother goddess and her young consort who in some versions of the myth is also her son this is a story of a love affair that goes badly wrong kibili adores attis but his attention soon wander elsewhere [Music] now he's just he's just seen this young temptress he's been pulled away from kabili his allegiance is now in question atis has betrayed the great goddess and she goes into a jealous fury she's rejecting him and she's driving him mad atis disappears deep into the forest here he despairs and does the unthinkable tony what's happened is that uh atis has castrated himself and he's bled to death and that's where we find him underneath this pine tree but then the heavens grant a happy ending kabili follows him she finds him and she's stricken with grief but she can resurrect him because she's a goddess and she resurrects him in the form of a pine tree so although he's been brought back to life again he's been brought back as one of the trees of the forest yes so that's the tragic story of the emasculated attis and the jealous goddess kabili and phallic symbols aside the appeal of worshiping kabili was that she had the power to resurrect her lover she offered a form of eternal salvation it's going i think yes here he goes the tree became a symbol of this power of resurrection and the focus of rituals performed in her honor off we go well what's happened tony is that the tree representing atis has been brought here and has been erected which of course symbolizes his return to life and of course it's a phallus and it's been driven into the ground so it's as if it's fertilizing kabili the earth mother it's like a very hot version of maple dancing well there's a sense in which our maypole the christmas tree a whole series of tree symbols are essentially symbols of fertility all participants would work themselves into a fevered frenzy for the bloody and excruciating climax this was the moment when any man who wished to be resurrected after death would offer up his own manhood and become a priest of kabili what has to happen for there to be a clean castration is that the point where the testicles are connected has to be clamped tight in order to smash the spermatic core create an internal injury begin the process of blood clotting so that when the slice comes you've already got a wound which is beginning to heal because otherwise the person might be today absolutely it's a nasty business it's a truly gruesome ritual but at the time all mystery cults believed self-sacrifice was the price for any meaningful connection with their chosen god deities like kabili however failed to remain more popular than christ and ironically the supremacy of christianity was due to the romans themselves two key individuals played decisive roles in ensuring it would eventually become the state religion here in britain and the most practiced faith in the world in the fourth century on the eve of a great battle the emperor constantine saw a fiery cross in the sky and believed it to be a sign from the christian god when he won almost overnight christianity became the new official religion of the roman empire and it was from rome three centuries later that augustine was dispatched by the pope to convert the heathen britons to the way of god now we're told that his success ended thousands of years of paganism but actually that isn't quite true churches and cathedrals were springing up around the country but christianity still had battles to fight as pagan warriors would soon bring new gods to our shores i'm about to find out why the viking deities struck terror in the heart of every briton and what it would take to make these warrior gods finally admit defeat i'm exploring the bloody world of pagan britain to find out what our forgotten faiths had to offer i've reached the 4th century when christianity became our official religion and it seemed pagan gods had been resigned to the history books but old habits die hard christianity may have replaced paganism but it hadn't eradicated it and when the vikings invaded in the late 700s they brought with them a brand new pantheon of powerful pagan deities by the 8th century most of europe was christian [Music] but up in scandinavia beyond the icy north sea the fierce viking tribes remained unconquered and resolutely pagan and when they came to british shores they brought their pagan gods and ways with them [Music] i'm meeting historian dr claire downham on the south coast where some of their very first raids took place what was the reaction of the local people i think one of shock and we've got a whole series of attacks which follow on soon after and particular one on the north east coast at lindisfarne where we've got very vivid description of the blood of priests being splattered across the altar of the church so the shock is really evident they had a heathen religion and didn't play by the rules of christian society the vikings were fierce warriors and they believed their gods were too their religion was merciless bloody and dedicated to winning battles the most terrifying warrior of them all was odin the god of war this is odin he is the most powerful of the norse gods he is the god of warfare and this makes him a rather scary individual you'll see he only has one eye and this is because odin is said to have sacrificed one of his eyes to gain knowledge from the well of wisdom so it's almost like the sight that he's lost in this world he's gaining a special insight into the wisdom of the other world odin was worshiped by all viking warriors but his most devoted followers were known as berserkers [Applause] these were the kamikaze fighters of their day men who were prepared to sacrifice their lives in battle to honor their bloodthirsty god i want to see for myself what worshiping a terrifying god like oh then really involved to do this i need to assemble a group of viking berserkers the nearest i can find is a team of rugby players but helping me transform them into disciples of odin or odin is nordic specialist historian thor ewing odin represents inspiration but also madness and fury he's the battle god of the viking so that's why the berserkers were so suitable to be his followers absolutely and that's why they went berserk in what way did they go berserk they chewed on their shields they howled and yowled and they took on a kind of animal identity in battle these buckinghamshire rugby players have agreed to be trained up in the animalistic ways of the berserkers so i can experience their religious rituals of war for myself and helping them get into character is choreographer mark bruce okay so mark mark's going to teach you about how to move like animals and how to be possessed by the spirit of animals and by the end of it you will be animals you will if you believed in some incredible god up there was going to send lightning through and release that inside you so it's going to be releasing energy really powerfully so it's like as soon as that lightning has struck into your stomach you've become that animal yeah and you have to make it scary because that one looks very scary and well the lads are learning how to go berserk in a way that would have made odin proud thor wants to show me a particularly brutal aspect of viking religion it's how they transform their foes into offerings to odin this is it and it's not for the faint-hearted this might look grisly enough but you have to imagine that this is a human being what we're about to perform is the blood eagle can you get the knives yeah the blood eagle is where the rib cage is opened up and the lungs pulled out through it's a way of sacrificing to odin and it was probably done to the leader of a vanquished enemy army this person you want to keep them alive so this person wouldn't yet be dead not dead this person is still alive they're gonna die they're gonna die from the trauma of this but you don't want to actually cut a killer blow to the head what has this got to do with odin the blood eagle is an offering to odin because the eagle is odin's bird when the leader of the enemy is offered like this he's transformed into an eagle according to the oldest sources we have on this ritual berserkers would use the lungs of the captured leader to make the wings of the eagle there aren't any lungs in here but for health and safety reasons our pig has already been gutted and luckily for me that means i'll get an idea of this barbaric ritual without having to experience its full horror it's not going to look the same as as pulsating lungs although i have to say i don't think they'd still be pulsating at this point but um if you can imagine the red lungs coming out instead of the fat i'm from under the skin so like that and this would be the purple lung spread out across here that's a horrific thing to do to anybody it's certainly not how we usually think of a religious act today although of course the middle ages reinvented this sort of thing as hanging drawing and quartering a medieval christians were willing to burn fellow christians at the stake for what they called heresy and the central image of christianity is christ being crucified on the cross in a not particularly different configuration to the blood eagle absolutely and that is one of the things that made pagan sacrifice anathema to the christians why because for the pagans any sacrifice became one with the gods whereas for christians only jesus could be sacrificed because he was the only person who could go up to god absolutely so when the berserkers went into battle and were killed or turned their foes into blood eagles this wasn't mindless cruelty and bloodshed for them it was a way to rise up and be with their god and to make offerings to the heavens this is the real stuff but how would this religious fervor have manifested itself on the battlefield it's time to see whether our rugby players can bring the divine frenzy of the berserkers back to life today's foe is a kiwi rugby team who declare war with the intimidating maori hacker but will the berserkers do better [Laughter] the guys have been really brilliant of course but what struck me was that they so understood what it must have been like to be a berserker at the beginning of a battle they had to be completely abandoned absolutely uninhibited because that way the enemy would know that they would go to whatever lengths it took they would be as brutal as possible they would sacrifice their own lives they would rip the enemy apart in the service of odin the berserkers always hoped to be victorious in battle but if a viking warrior did sacrifice his life to odin what could he expect in return what was their pagan heaven valhalla like [Music] this hall of the dead was a far cry from the quiet contemplation of christian heaven historian dr chris abram has used legends and sagas as sources to recreate it [Music] what did they do once they got to valhalla they did very much what they did on earth there was a lot of fighting there's a kind of continuous practice battle every day in valhalla the warriors get up each morning they fight each other any who are killed get resurrected in the evening and they come and join this fantastic feast which is going on forever every evening what sort of things do they eat they had pork funnily enough according to our main source the 13th century sonora edda there was an everlasting magic pig whose flesh would replenish every time you carved us carved a slice off so it was pork for every meal and the drink is mead which comes from the others of a goat named hathan this hedonistic warrior heaven valhalla would have seemed a very bizarre place to christians [Music] by far the strangest aspect was the idea that it wasn't eternal the vikings never intended valhalla to last forever the whole point about valhalla myth is that these warriors are preparing themselves for ragnarok which is the battle at the at the end of the world [Music] and at that final battle everything is going to be destroyed and that's it is it full stop end of story there will be a new world which takes its place and we think that these might be references to to the influence of christianity because the vikings of course were surrounded by christians on all sides so we get the feeling that the vikings knew that their pagan world was ending but they still had something to look forward to a better world yet to come the myth turned out to be true valhalla wasn't eternal by the 11th century the vikings had converted to christianity pagan gods would never rule britain again [Music] only one god was now master of the skies and in terms of the official religion here more than a thousand years later that is still very much the case or is it even a thousand years on christians still honor pagan festivals think of the winter solstice at christmas and the spring equinox at easter and one heavenly entity i don't think so what about the virgin mary and the huge pantheon of christian saints paganism has shaped our history and in many ways paganism lives on

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 184,575

Keywords: history documentaries, quirky history, world history, ridiculous history, tony robinson, gods and monsters, wicker man, paganism, religious history, religion in britain, european paganism, sacrifice

Id: KViumtPd5RE

Length: 46min 33sec (2793 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 02 2021