Gods, Geats, Gutes, Goths and the Gothic

All meanings have contexts. 

Yet some contexts have no known meaning.

They may, instead, involve speculations.

You may have speculated about Germanic languages and the origins of particular words. 

The word god is of Germanic origin.

What is your acquaintance with the Germanic peoples, including those described as Geats, Gutes and Goths?

There has been much speculation about the name of the Goths.

You may know something about the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths.

You may be familiar with the Gothic Wars.

What do you know about Gothicism?

What do you know about barbarians?

What do you know about Gothic script and Gothic art and Gothic architecture?

What do you know about Gothic Revival architecture and Gothic fiction?

What do you know about the Goth subculture?

How have you been comparing one image with another and another?

How do images influence your beliefs, whether those images are described in words or presented through the visual arts, or in performance?

How do you distinguish between superficial images and deeper meanings?

If you believe you are urgently addressing immorality, how do you know you are not doing so hypocritically?



How do you reflect upon existential questions?

Perhaps you do so dressed in black whilst imagining the world as Pandæmonium.

Perhaps you are obsessed with darkness, whether in terms of visual experiences or emotional experiences, or both.

You may be aware that Lord Byron wrote Darkness in 1816, the Year Without Summer.  

Soon afterwards, he began Manfred, a work with considerable subsequent influence.

How do you compare one of those results with another?

How do you tell the difference between a witch and a spirit?

How do you tell when a person needs mental health support?

How do you usually assess moroseness?

How have you been thinking about Macbeth recently? 

What is your attitude towards life at present, and why?

What is your attitude towards death at present, and why? 

How do you usually assess usefulness?

How do you usually assess uselessness?

How do you prefer to improve the world?

Perhaps you do not believe the world can be improved.

Perhaps you are really only interested in improving your own experiences of life.

Perhaps you are really only interested in taking your mind off death.

Or perhaps you mainly study death, whether usefully or otherwise.

What is your acquaintance with the ethereal and how to you compare it to other experiences of reality?

Perhaps you do not regard the ethereal as real.

Perhaps the timelessness of the EverTime is more real to you than any of the fleeting moments of temporal experience you pass through on your journey towards death and posterity.

How, if at all, are you investing in real friendships?

What do you believe to be the basis of real friendships?

How, if at all, are you investing in improving political practices?

What does history teach you about that subject?

Perhaps you are keen to participate in the Dance of Death rather than the dance of life.

Perhaps you have a fascination with the macabre rather than the magnificent.

How do you assess subcultures in terms of your own aesthetic preferences and lifestyle preferences?

How do you assess political beliefs, particularly in relation to conformity and subversion?

 

 

How do you imagine Death as a personification, and why?

How do you imagine Life as a personification, and why?

How do you respond to symbols of death, and from which cultural/subcultural perspective?

How do you respond to symbols of life, and from which cultural/subcultural perspective?

How do you respond to The Dance of Life by Edvard Munch.

How do you respond to The Sick Child by the same artist?

How do you distinguish between your present experience and your memories of experiences?

How do you compare Expressionism with other art movements? 

What is your acquaintance with films associated with, or influenced by,  German Expressionism?

How have your experiences of grief influenced your subsequent aesthetic preferences?

How, if at all, have you experienced mourning?

Perhaps your ideas about life and death have been influenced by your perceptions of religion and/or Romanticism.

What do you know about German Romanticism?

What do you know about the influence of Romantic literature in the English language? 

What do you know about Medievalism?

What is your attitude towards Realism in the arts?

What have you discovered about the process of Christianisation in various times and places?

How do you compare ancient Germanic peoples with the Celts and other ancient peoples?

What do you believe you know about authenticity and artificiality?

What do you believe you know about originality and mimesis?

How do you respond to the picturesque?

What is your attitude towards historical re-enactments, especially in terms of authenticity?

Perhaps you are more interested in fantasy-based interpretations of history.

What do you know about authenticity in art and life, and how do you know it?

Perhaps your view of the authentic has been influenced by other people's fantasies.

Perhaps your view of morality has been influenced by other people's fantasies.

 


What do you regard as authentic leadership, and why?

Perhaps you have a secessionist view of authentic leadership, whether through art or through politics.

Perhaps you are currently part of an art colony and/or intentional community.

Perhaps you associate art and intent with affluence and/or influence.

How, if at all, have you been investing money for artistic purposes?

How, if at all, have you been investing money for political purposes?

How, if at all, have you been investing money for other purposes?

Perhaps money is your god.

Perhaps friendship is your god.

Perhaps you worship political power.

Perhaps you worship yourself.

How do you compare religious activities in ancient Greece and religion activities in ancient Rome with the religious beliefs and practices of Germanic paganism, and the religion of the Celts, and various other pagan groups?

How do you compare those beliefs and practices with the idea of patron saints?

What do you know about the revival of Heathenism?

Perhaps you would find these questions here easier to answer if you had a sip of Poetic Mead.

How do you usually reflect upon the connection between art, nature and society, across time and at a particular moment? 

How do you think about technology in relation to that connection?

What do you know about  the history of the Republic of Venice?

What do you know about  by St. George and the Dragon by Vittore Carpaccio?

What do you know about magic in the Greco-Roman world?

What do you know about the Ara Pacis in Rome?

How do you tell the difference between theatrical performances and non-theatrical activities? 

If you have travelled in various parts of the world, how has that experience influenced your point of view on various matters?

What do you regard as the purpose of travel?

What do you regard as the purpose of art?

What do you regard as the purpose of understanding the past, and the present?

What is your acquaintance with the work of John Ruskin?

You may be aware that The Nature of Gothic is a chapter from volume two of The Stones of Venice, published in the early 1850s.

In May 1849, The Seven Lamps of Architecture was first published.

In 1843, the first volume of Modern Painters was published, primarily in defence of the perceptive insights of J. M. W. Turner.

How do you attempt to acquire and express perceptive insights?

How, in fact, are you investing in awareness?

And what do you believe you intuitively and/or instinctively know?

Perhaps you believe you intuitively know about Odin and Frigg.

You may even believe you intuitively understand archaeological cultures.

What do you know about Sleipnir?

How do you compare the Vikings with the Huns?

What do you know about Transcendentalism and the associated concept of self-reliance?

How do you compare various concepts?

Perhaps you believe you intuitively know about Thor and Sif.

Perhaps you believe you intuitively know about Loki and Sigyn.

What do you believe you know about Gunnlöð?

What is your acquaintance with Götaland?

What do you know about the Angles and Saxons?

What do you know about English Gothic architecture?

What do you know about the origin stories of the Gothic peoples? 

What do you know about the self-indulgent attitudes of various cultures and subcultures of the past and present?

Perhaps you regard all lifestyles to be alternative.

Perhaps you regard everything Gothic as gloomy and possibly even sinister.

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