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In 772 CE, Charlemagne’s forces reached the Saxon Irminsul. The Frankish king, committed to converting Germanic tribes to Christianity by force if necessary, recognized the pillar’s significance. He did not simply ignore it or preach against it. He destroyed it.
The cutting down of the Irminsul was not merely vandalism but cosmic assault, an attack on the fundamental structure of Saxon reality. When the pillar fell, it was not only wood that crashed to earth but a worldview, a connection to ancestral ways, a sense of cosmic order. The destruction demonstrated Frankish military power but also theological warfare—the Christian god could overthrow the old pillar, could break the axis that connected Germanic peoples to their gods.
The Saxons fought for thirty years after the pillar’s fall, resisting conversion with desperate ferocity. They fought not merely for territory or independence but for the right to maintain their understanding of how reality was structured, how the sacred operated, how humans connected to powers beyond themselves. The pillar was gone, but the memory persisted, the knowledge that once there had been a center, an axis, a connection that made sense of existence.
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