For there is a savage race of men, a rustic one under the northern star
Which as yet has no knowledge of true religion:
But it worships as deities bluish snakes
And performs unspeakable rites by slaughtering a ram.
—Rector at the university of Konigsberg, 1545 [Puhvel, 105]
How Lithuania remained fully pagan up to 1400, and how its people resisted invasions by the Teutonic Knights for over a century. We also look at reverence for Zemyna, Mother Earth, for Gabieta, the hearth goddess, and Saulé, the sun goddess, as well as house snakes, and the vaidiluté, fire priestesses, who survived into the 1300s. Excerpted from “The Heathen North,” a chapter in Vol XI (unpublished) of Secret History of the Witches.
“The last die-hard pagans were the brave-hearted Samagitians, who had fought off the Order for a century. In 1407 the Samagitians sent a desperate appeal to the rulers of Europe, describing destruction, mass killings, seizure of children as hostages and of women as concubines. “And the worse they rage and destroy, the crusaders blame the pagans and pride themselves.” The Samagites say that they avoided baptism out of horror at what had become of the conquered Prussians, whose conscripts adopted the barbaric behavior of the Teutonic Knights:
We beg you, hear ye, hear ye, whoever loveth the truth! We weep more often than talk. Hear of the unspeakable oppression…. They bound and deported to Prussia our elders. They burned some of them alive, with their wives, those who would not surrender their children as hostages. Our sisters and young daughters are abducted by force, by those who wear the Cross on their breasts. With heart-rending sorrow we say, the girls were raped in our sight, we can attest to that…
—Proposicio Samaytarum [in Jurgela, 148]
How much this sounds like other terrible invasions, colonizations and captivities.
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