I came across an obscure Germanic deity I have a hunch is related to Óðr, and possibly even his son. This guy:
The God’s name is Stauff or Stuffo, and he operated a popular oracle at Stuffenberg (currently known as Hülfensburg) a mountain between Heiligenstadt and Eschwege, near Geismar in Thuringia. Johann Vinzenz Wolf argued that he was originally a Mountain God (stouf meaning something like “sharp mountain peak”) specifically of the Stuffenberg, and only later developed oracular associations, while others derived his name from the Middle High German sûfen (“drinking to excess”) and a related term meaning “drinking cup.”
He seems to have been represented in the form of a pillar or tree similar to the Irminsal or Donar Oak, around which the population would dance and sing on festival days. His priest would drink to the point of intoxication, and then move through the crowd giving out spontaneous prophecies.
His cult was ended by that piece of shit Saint Boniface who cut down the pillar or tree, and then backed by Frankish forces slaughtered a bunch of his devotees who had gathered on the mountain. Stuffenberg was renamed Hülfensburg so that the memory of him would be eradicated and the pillar/tree was either thrown into a deep crevice (afterwards known as “Stuffo’s hole”) or else used in the construction of a church on the former site of his worship. Boniface appointed a priest to work out of the church and instruct the neighboring populations in Christianity and then continued his march through Germany committing murder, vandalism and innumerable other atrocities as part of his program of cultural genocide.
Stuffo survived in folktales and clandestine customs until he experienced a modest revival of interest under the 18th and 19th century German Romantics and later the Völkisch movement. Mostly this was an artistic phenomenon and today he has largely been forgotten, even in his home region – though the Stauffenberg family of Swabian nobility still claim descent from him. Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, as you may recall, was a key figure in the 1944 “20 July plot” to assassinate the Austrian artist Adolf Hitler, a fellow some consider nearly as wicked as Saint Boniface.
While an interesting story in itself, this makes me wonder if there is some distant connection to the Australian profanity “stuff it,” “get stuffed,” and so forth, which is equivalent in their parlance to “fuck” in many respects…probably not, but with a name like “Stuffo,” and a place called “Stuffo’s Hole,” one wonders! ;)
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Hail Stuffo! May you be worshipped once again!
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Maybe Galina should create a Stuffo prayer card. :)
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