ABSTRACT
AT one time, as is recounted in the History of the Swedes and Goths, Bk I, Ch. 12, 1 the number nine was particularly esteemed in the Lsacrifices of the Goths, perhaps because the philosophy of Pythagoras, which they had learnt from Zamolxis and Diceneus, 2 instructed them that an odd number should be set before all others. And, though they paid weekly and daily the most exalted adoration to their own gods, yet every ninth month, by way of offering more solemn reverence to these very gods, they devoted nine days to dispatching sacrifices with due religious observance. On each separate day they offered up nine kinds of living creatures, to which they also added human victims. Then, after this nine-day period, in a solemn gathering of the whole kingdom a vast number of the inhabitants would go to see the temple at Uppsala which I have described; and there, at a nine days’ festival and with an appointed number of sacrifices, they slew victims to the gods at the altar. 3
Reverence for the number nine
Pythagoras’s philosophy
Nine kinds of living creatures
Nine days’ festival
