His Majesty Charles III King of the United Kingdom will soon be crowned in a ceremonial ritual which
is nearly 1050 years old. The British monarchy is even older than the ritual of coronation, and both
have their origins in Anglo-Saxon England which began with several petty kingdoms in England and
Scotland ruled by pagan kings who worshipped and claimed descent from the King of the gods - Woden.
In this video we shall learn about the symbols and rituals used in the coronation
ceremony and what they mean, but first we shall learn about the origin and meaning
of Monarchy itself - to understand this ancient institution that defines
our culture and links the British people back to their ancient ancestors and gods.
The Anglo-Saxons were the ancestors of the modern English ethnic group,
a collection of closely related Western Germanic tribes, The Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians
who migrated to Britain during the fifth century after the end of Roman government in the region.
A recent study of medieval Anglo-Saxon DNA by Gretzinger and colleagues shows
that the modern English people take between 25-47% of their ancestry from these invaders.
The origins of Anglo-Saxon kingship are first described by the 1st century Roman historian
Tacitus who reveals that the Germanic tribes called Ingævones, Istævones, and Herminiones
traced their origins to three progenitors all of whom came from a divine ancestor
called Mannus the son of the god Tuisto whom the earth brought forth.
Despite this, Tacitus tells us that their kings were not godlike but rather their authority was
dependent on their charismatic power which the tribe required for well-being. Kings were chosen
according to the nobility of their ancestry but the power was not absolute and had to be shared
with state instituted pagan priests who had a monopoly on corporal and capital punishment.
We see a similar arrangement 900 years later among the Viking Norsemen whose free men of a
certain class were able to choose which of their nobles would be king. It was far from
democratic - since only some men could choose the king, and the king himself had to belong to
the aristocracy - but it is clear pagan kingship was less absolute than later Christian kingship.
Compare it to the Norman king Richard I of England who when accused of having
unjustly captured Cyprus in 1193, defended himself saying: I am born in a rank which
recognizes no superior but God, to whom alone I am responsible for my actions.
But the kings of the Norsemen, like those of the Anglo-Saxons, legitimised their rule
by claiming descent from the wise god of death, war and esoteric knowledge - Odin.
Woden is the Old English name for the god the Norse called Odin. He is the best attested of
all the English gods, but even so we have to rely heavily on Norse sources to understand him.
Woden was also very important for Anglo-Saxon kings who needed to
prove they were descended from him in order to make a legitimate claim to the throne.
included - and with Woden consistently placed at nine removes from the founder of a dynasty.
Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, was completed in 731 and lists the genealogy of
Æthelberht of kent going back to the progenitor of the English race, Hengest - one of two divine
horse twins who were in turn descended from Woden. He also says that many other English kings were
descended from Woden and the following century when the Anglo-Saxon chronicle was completed
during the reign of Alfred the Great, we see that it contains many genealogies for the royal
houses of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which also include Woden as an ancestor. This was likely
a continuation of a pagan tradition in which kingship depended on a link to the divine - and
Woden, like Odin, was a specifically aristocratic god - a god for the elite and the military.
In Norway the same thing happened - with the pagan reactionary Hakon Jarl claiming descent from Odin.
The oldest Norse genealogy that survives is in Ynglingatal and it includes the gods Odin,
Njordr, Fjolnir and Yngvi-Freyr as ancestors.
a Viking poem called Rígsthula, tells how each of the three classes of men (slaves,
freemen, and nobles) are each descended (on the male side) from Rígr, who is identified as the
god Heimdall. But Odin is more commonly the god of kings - the poem Háleygjatal composed about
985 begins its account of the ancestry of the jarls of Hlaðir with Ódinn and his son Sæmingr.
The kings of other Germanic cultures also claimed descent from gods;
the Amali dynasty of the Goths were supposed to descend from Gapt which was their name for Odin.
But with Christianity Woden was demoted from a god to a man in a process called euhemerization and
eventually the genealogies were extended back to include the biblical Noah as an ancestor of Woden.
In the tenth century, Æthelweard, an Anglo-Saxon nobleman, wrote that the heathen Anglo-Saxons made
sacrifices to (Unoddan regis barbarorum) Woden, "the king of the barbarians" before battle, adding
that Hengist and Horsa, the founders of that race, were Woden’s grandsons (Chronicorum IV, 1).
Therefore Æthelweard was in agreement with the Anglo-Saxon chronicle and the venerable
Bede who lived two centuries earlier - the kings of England sprung from Woden’s loins.
This claim can be seen in practical terms not only as a way to legitimise kingship,
but also as a means to strengthen wider cultural bonds with other Woden worshipping kingdoms,
consolidating a wider racial identity. Divine descent ensured that the King was entitled to
his position through right of kinship. Evidence for the kin-centred basis of Anglo-Saxon kingship
can be found in the etymology of the word king from cyning which means ‘of the cyn / race’.
The myth of divine descent was an important principle of political
life for Anglo-Saxons - so essential to the structure of English society that it
maintained its political function even after we became Christian which is why Bede, a Christian,
included Woden in the royal genealogies. Even the most famous Anglo-Saxon king, Alfred the Great,
notorious for fighting against the pagan vikings, still claimed descent from the god Woden.
the King’s connection to the gods, also connected him to the priesthood.
Among the Anglo-Saxons the high priests were connected to the god Woden and display the
attributes of that god such as the spear wielded by Coifi the Northumbrian high priest whose name,
meaning hooded, connects him to Woden’s epithet ‘the hooded one’ or the South Saxon priest who
took to a barrow to speak spells just as Odin does in the Norse sources Hávamál and Völuspa.
In recognising the divine power of their kings, the English share in an ancient tradition found
almost universally among all humanity throughout history, from the Egyptian pharaohs to the natives
of Fiji. In India the imperial sacrifice for the inauguration of the king, the rajasuya,
was a reproduction of the consecration of the first sovereign - the god Varuna. Mircea Eliade
wrote that “For the natives of the Fiji islands, the Creation takes place at each enthronement of
a new chief.. almost everywhere a new reign has been regarded as a regeneration of the history
of the people or even of universal history” - So we must understand the crowning of an
Anglo-Saxon king brought his people closer to the god Woden and to the moment when mankind
and the world were created by that God - and that this deeply profound religious experience
of Kingship was preserved after conversion to Christianity - with the King of England
deriving his power from the church and God. The conversion of England to Christianity
supplanted the gods and elves with one God and angels and saints, pagan priests with bishops,
priests and monks, and ancient temples and barrows with churches. The bodies of great
Kings and queens formally interred in barrows were now laid to rest in magnificent churches.
This is not to say pagan barrows lost their significance entirely.
In 1642 our Sovereign’s namesake Charles I addressed his troops from atop a bronze
age barrow near Birmingham, now known as King’s standing barrow. Likewise,
the claim of royal descent from Woden endured for centuries after his worship had ceased.
The sacred King of pagan Germanic societies has parallels in Judeo-christian mythology
with figures such as King David and King Solomon aka Shlomo - thereby justifying
the continuation of monarchy into the Christian period.
Some of the traditional symbols of Royal power were also kept. The wearing of crowns was a novel
introduction by Christians sometime in the 9th century. Our Royal family use two crowns today.
The Imperial State Crown shall be worn by King Charles III as he leaves Westminster
Abbey after his coronation. But he will actually be crowned with The St Edward's Crown which was
made for Charles II in 1661 as a reproduction of an older Anglo-Saxon crown made for Edward
the Confessor in the 11th century, but which had been destroyed by roundheads during the civil war.
Our king shall be the seventh monarch to have been crowned
with it. Elizabeth II explains its provenance: But the royal sceptre did have a pagan precedent.
This stone sceptre was found among the grave goods of the Anglo-saxon burial at Sutton Hoo,
thought to have been that of the seventh century pagan king Rædwald of East Anglia.
The four faces are believed to represent gods, and one of them has an eye struck
off - so is identified as the one eyed god himself, Rædwald’s divine ancestor Woden.
The Sovereign's sceptre represents the Sovereign’s power and governance.
Among the Ancient Greeks and Romans the king of the gods; Zeus or Jupiter, was depicted
with a sceptre. It is likely the Germanic tribes borrowed this custom from the Romans.
In England, from a very early period, two sceptres have been concurrently used,
and since the 12th century - the time of Richard I,
one has been marked with a cross and the other with a dove - two symbols of Christianity.
Another symbol of royal power derived from Roman pagan tradition is the orb
of the sovereign, originally held by the god Jupiter and representing the world.
In early medieval Europe it was combined with a cross and dubbed the Globus cruciger
‘cross bearing orb’ - it then represents not Jupiter’s but Christ’s dominion over
the world and the King holds it to show he rules only through Christ.
The sceptre and orb which shall be used at the coronation of Charles III have been used
in every coronation since 1661. They were both created for the coronation of King Charles II.
The crown, orb and sceptre, all of which were placed on the coffin of
Queen Elizabeth II during her funeral. will be presented to Charles iii at his coronation.
While medieval depictions of kings show them holding the orb in the left hand and
the sceptre in the right hand, -during the coronation service, the Orb shall be placed
in the right hand of Charles III as he is invested with the symbols of sovereignty.
Afterward it will be placed on the altar before the actual crowning. The essential
elements of the coronation have remained largely unchanged since Anglo-Saxon times.
Britain is one of the few places that have preserved this venerable medieval ritual.
We don’t know much about the pagan inauguration ceremony of kings in England, but our modern
coronation ceremony began in 973 with the crowning of the Anglo-Saxon King Edgar the Peaceful.
He had been king for 14 years by the time he was crowned, showing that the ceremony itself did
not mark the start of his reign, but was rather a formal and ritualised demonstration of his power.
King Edgar had promoted the controversial Dunstan to archbishop of Canterbury in 960, and this
was then, as it still is, the most senior clerical position within the Church of England,
then Catholic, but Protestant since 1534. 13 years after bestowing such power on him,
it was Dunstan who with this power crowned Edgar - showing that the ritual reciprocity
of power sharing between the King and the priests had been preserved from pagan
times - imbuing the Sovereign with divine power, and the church with state power.
Edgar was crowned in the beautiful town of Bath in Somerset but our king
shall be crowned in Westminster Abbey as is now the custom.
Would you like to learn more about Anglo-Saxon paganism? I highly recommend my two part series
on this subject - beginning with their gods in part 1, and going on to describe
their temples and holy sites and the elves, dwarves and other entities they believed in.