Ирминсуль: Сақсондардың қасиетті бағанасы

Sacred, pillar like object in Saxon paganism

An Irminsul (Old Saxon 'great pillar') was a sacred, pillar like object attested as playing an important role in the Germanic paganism of the Saxons. Medieval sources describe how an Irminsul was destroyed by Charlemagne during the Saxon Wars. A church was erected on its place in 783 and blessed by Pope Leo III. Sacred trees and sacred groves were widely venerated by the Germanic peoples (including Donar's Oak), and the oldest chronicle describing an Irminsul refers to it as a tree trunk erected in the open air.

The Old Saxon word compound Irminsûl means 'great pillar'. The first element, Irmin ('great') is cognate with terms with some significance elsewhere in Germanic mythology. Among the North Germanic peoples, the Old Norse form of Irmin is Jörmunr, which just like [[List of names of Odin is one of the names of Odin. Yggdrasil (Old Norse 'Yggr's horse') is a cosmic tree from which Odin sacrificed himself, and which connects the Nine worlds. 19th century scholar Jakob Grimm connects the name Irmin with Old Norse terms like iörmungrund ("great ground", i. e. the Earth) or iörmungandr ("great snake", i. e. the Midgard serpent). A Germanic god Irmin, inferred from the name Irminsûl and the tribal name Irminones, is in some older scholarship presumed to have been the national god or demi god of the Saxons. It has been suggested that Irmin was more probably an aspect or epithet of some other deity – most likely Wodan (Odin). Irmin might also have been an epithet of the god Ziu (Tyr) in early Germanic times, only later transferred to Odin, as certain scholars subscribe to the idea that Odin replaced Tyr as the chief Germanic deity at the onset of the Migration Period. This was the favored view of early 20th century Nordicist writers, but it is not generally considered likely in modern times.

A number of theories surround the subject of the Irminsul.

In Tacitus' Germania, the author mentions rumors of what he describes as "Pillars of Hercules" in land inhabited by the Frisii that had yet to be explored. Tacitus adds that these pillars exist either because Hercules actually did go there or because the Romans have agreed to ascribe all marvels anywhere to Hercules' credit. Tacitus states that while Drusus Germanicus was daring in his campaigns against the Germanic tribes, he was unable to reach this region, and that subsequently no one had yet made the attempt. Connections have been proposed between these "Pillars of Hercules" and later accounts of the Irminsuls. Comparisons have been made between the Irminsul and the Jupiter Columns that were erected along the Rhine in Germania around the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. Scholarly comparisons were once made between the Irminsul and the Jupiter Columns; however, Rudolf Simek states that the columns were of Gallo Roman religious monuments, and that the reported location of the Irminsul in Eresburg does not fall within the area of the Jupiter Column archaeological finds.