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The transformation of bog mud into iron was understood as participation in cosmic processes of creation and transformation. Fire was sacred element, its power to change matter from one form to another was magic made manifest. The smelter worked with fire, commanded it (to the extent fire could be commanded), used it to accomplish transformation that seemed almost divine in scope.
Some smelters performed rituals before or during smelting—offerings made to fire, prayers spoken over the ore, protective measures taken to ensure success and prevent injury. These were acknowledgments that the work involved more than mechanical process, that forces beyond human understanding were being engaged, that proper relationship with those forces increased likelihood of successful outcome.
The bog itself was spiritually charged space—boundary between earth and water, place where decomposition occurred, site where the dead were sometimes deposited. To extract ore from such place was to take from realm of decay and death, to rescue useful material from swamp that consumed and transformed. The transformation of bog iron from death-realm muck into life-sustaining tools carried metaphorical weight that Germanic peoples certainly perceived even if they did not articulate it in those terms.
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