You may be as weary as can be of the Yahweh tyranny Nevertheless, you will find it impossible to recreate ancient European forms of belief absent the social, tribal, familial, linguistic, etc. matrix that gave life to them.
I lurked at a German neopagan site for a few evenings and watched participants squabble over minutiae regarding personal comportment and rules for decision making for pagans. It was like being a fly on the wall of a pettifogging local social democratic party meeting. It was an exasperating experience.
In the old days, priests and priestesses regulated these matters based on the ancient lore that they had studied, and their word was law. How can you reformulate the knowledge that they possessed? We are entirely different people than our ancestors, if I may speak for the "Euros" here. Our people have been entirely detribalised and subsumed in to larger nations for centuries, and we have an entirely different sort of consciousness that they posssessed.
I think that if our Celtic and Germanic ancestors were to appear before us today, in encoutering us, they would find us to be quite strange beings. Probably as strange as the Yaquis or Kalahari bushmen find us to be. They might well find us as alien as the Romans that they clashed arms with.
Our ancestors would be proud of our accomplishments. They might have some advice for us if they could stop asking us questions. They would quickly abandon anything that we might call superstition where we were capable of communicating scientific answers. They would ask us why we were so quickly able to forget them, though.
It would be a valuable exchange of views. We would benefit immensely from their knowledge of pre-Roman history and cosmology. The number of archetypes we would come to understand could become a sort of Rosetta stone to our own past.
When you suggest that we would compare to them as we do to contemporary indigenous peoples, I think you are wrong. Remember, we have become what we are because (in part) we were their descendants. They would find much in what we have done that matches what they wanted to accomplish. They would be saying things such as, "So that's how you did it!" And our religious and political affiliations would not matter much to them, because it would take them decades of study to grasp what those things mean.
They would ask us to renew our connection to nature, however. I'm certain of that.
Thank you for your response, and I knew that I would find a non-tivial reply to my post above.
Our ancestors would be proud of our accomplishments. . . . They would ask us why we were so quickly able to forget them, though.
I'm sure that they would. I can in fact hear them.
It would be a valuable exchange of views. We would benefit immensely from their knowledge of pre-Roman history and cosmology. The number of archetypes we would come to understand could become a sort of Rosetta stone to our own past.
Though we will never encounter them to have that exchange of views, an understanding of the cosmology that you mention can be gleaned from a deep appreciation of their schools of poetry, some of which remains to us. However, a real understanding and appreciation of the ancient bards requires excruciating study and discipline. It is an understanding that cannot be gleaned by merely reading the scholarship and commentary of experts. To approach the interior experience and sprirituality of old times and places, the languages that the ancients spoke have to be learned and understood and to some extent brought to life. This is no mean undertaking.
When you suggest that we would compare to them as we do to contemporary indigenous peoples, I think you are wrong.