Finding Manuland

I write, I speak from a very, very remote place - Ani. It’s very, very beautiful, as you see with the mountains. I thought I would just muse a little bit on what I do as a writer as Decoding Trolls and how I see my role as a writer and where my substacks fit into it, what I’m working on now, what my plans are, and how you helped me by responding and reading and reacting to my work. I wrote about E...

I’m Decoding Trolls, speaking to you from a place in southern Turkey called Göbekli Tepe, near the city of Urfa, historically known as Edessa. Yesterday, I saw an inscription dedicating Roman-era columns to the king of Edessa, son of Manu. This inscription dates back to around the third century of the Common Era, confirming that I am in the right place at the right time. In many ways, my journey t...

So, I made it to Van. Amazingly. It’s an amazingly blue-sky day, and I’m climbing up to Van Castle. It looks like I’m the first person to climb up here today because, as you can see, there aren’t many footprints. There are no fresh footprints; I’m causing the only fresh ones around. This fort was built around... well, people have lived here since 5000 BCE, but it’s of most interest to “Finding Man...

Menua, son of the founder of the Urartian Empire, once lived on the lakeside at Tushpa, whose modern name is Van (Türkiye). Tushpa / Van is the meeting place of many great empires Kura-Araxes, Hittite (Indo-European), Mitanni (Indo-Europeanish), Babylon/Mesopotamian/Assyrian, Urartu, Armenian (Indo-European), Achmænaid (Indo-European) and now, I guess, mainly Kurd (Indo-European) and Turkish! Toda...

Poem of Amergin, Celtic Ireland’s first poet-judge, sacrificing first Monarch and brother of self-sacrificing Donn (who features in much in my work) put to music and video by Arnold Hensman. Reading by Daniella Hensman. Filmed at Newgrange, Ireland. Music: Walking on Clouds, by Tea Time, (ShutterStock Music). This poem by Amergin, preserved in the Book of Leinster and the Book of the Taking of Ire...

My favourite subject, and it all begins in Kherson — whether it’s the UN Commission of Inquiry on War Crimes in Ukraine or the Yamnaya community. A relatively small number of individuals created the language, the linguistic structures, the words we use in almost every sentence, the religions, the soul’s immanence in many Indo-European religions, including what I would characterise as Christianity...

As some of you might remember, I studied law. I worked as a property lawyer in London for a little while. One of the features in English law is this idea that sometimes, for whatever reason, commercial property is let at a peppercorn rent. Generally speaking, in this day and age, no peppercorn passes between the landlord and the person who’s leasing the property. It’s in all the leases. So that wa...

M-N- sound appears to have many of the same meanings in Turkic as well as in Indo-European languages (Manas is the mythological founder of Turkic Kirghiz culture, Zaman signifies time in Turkish, for example). M-N- might therefore be Turkic rather than of Indo-European origins. Especially where its meanings and immanence’s hover around the same Moon-based metaphorical semantic signalling system of...

This Indo-European, ancient Ukrainian ancestry is in us. When coupled with all of these similarities in the mythological record — and particularly, in the context of today’s episode, MN in Manu and Mannus — we can be very sure that these are separate vectors of evidence all pointing to the same conclusion: that we all come from this Yamnaya community in southern Ukraine in some meaningful sense. I...

The sun god Sūrya — and his mother has an MN sound in her name, which is amazing. Saraṇyū is her name, and she is of Tvaṣṭṛ, which is interesting as well. We’ve got Tuisto in the Germanic and Tvaṣṭṛ in the Indic. She and the sun have three children. There are stories about how she got really hot from being burnt by the sun — a play on words which transmits and transfers between languages and meani...

So you see what I'm trying to do there. I'm expanding our mental models of time from 4100 BCE when Tamana's ancestors left ancient Ukraine to 2000 years later when Tamana's name appears in one of the first texts. The first times Indo-European language is written down in Ankira, sorry, in Kanesh, but then I see it in 2025. So it's written down between 1900 BCE and 1800 BCE in Kanesh, in ancient Ana...

So the Ingaevones, this is the ancestors who then became the English, comes from Ing, who corresponds to the Old Norse god Ingvi, Freyr. And Freyr is actually a pre-Indo-European remnant, we believe. So in this tripartite structure I talked about where we have sovereign, soldier (so sovereign representing, you know, the monarch, the magical aspect of sovereignty, (which is all of the mystical, myt...

So this is the second part of the “Manu or Mannus: Which Came First?” I've decided to try and do these recordings in shorter elements. Then like a Netflix (where they issue the whole series at once)… But instead of issuing a whole series of ten one-hour-long shows, these are going to be much shorter. Then you can decide whether you listen to them all together. So Manu or Mannus… This episode, like...

Here in the manner of a Netflix season, I’m going to drop all six episodes in this ‘Mannus or Manu’ season in one go. Then, on PowerofMana.net or Spotify or Apple Podcasts (search for ‘Finding Manuland’ and subscribe!!), you can binge listen, or eke out listening as you might savour a fine wine. Germany or India: Which came first? Let’s use the Finding Manuland method to see which of these two gre...

⚡️ Kherson today is the future of EVERY single European city. Russians safari hunting individuals with armed drones. This future’s out there, thanks to Zarina Zabrisky reporting. It’s just not evenly distributed. Yet. Killing people going about their daily business every day, on every street. What did you do to halt this inevitable future being realised? @ZarinaZabrisky has been cataloguing this...

Hi there, I’m Decoding Trolls. Welcome to Finding Manuland. This is the “Archetypes” episode. When we are thinking about transforming our own mental models—our entire conception of human culture in our minds—this is hopefully really why you are going to be interested in Finding Manuland. Obviously, you may not accept everything I say, or you may Google it and go, “Oh, maybe this or maybe that,” bu...

Following in the footsteps of the Hittite emperors and empresses, Decoding Trolls makes a pilgrimage to Mount Ḫazzi on the Syria/Türkiye border. Decoding Trolls narrates his visit to Ḫazzi, or as it is written in the bible Mount Zephon (Saphon in Greek), the most sacred mountain in Hittite religion. In Hurrian religion (some of which was adopted by the Indo-European Hittites and ancient Greeks) th...

Today, we’re looking at how the Finding Manuland iterative method of discovery works. And, we look at the first two of ten reasons why Finding Manuland matters. I'm Decoding Trolls and I'm welcoming you to Finding Manuland. And this is our first recording, which is on the road, as it were. I am on the road. I am in Turkey and I am here in Ankara, here to visit the Museum for Anatolian Civilization...

Deity, Death, day, *Tiwas (Germanic deity who gave their name to Tuesday),… all derive from the Ancient Ukrainian word for sky *Dyeus. That’s right: when you say someone is ‘dead',’ quite sweetly, you’re saying, ‘they’re in the sky.’ If we can trace that sound and meaning (*Dyeus meaning sky) into every branch of the Indo-European / Ancient Ukrainian language family, then, that’s proof of concept:...

My room in Severodonetsk (eastern Ukraine). As it was at the moment I read the email telling me Harry had died. My room now, after multiple Ruschian lootings of the house. My flat in Kosovo - our Mana remains in the manses, domains, maisons, and mansions in which we once lived. My cat Stanitsia on my OSCE bullet proof vest that I wore every day in work 2015-2018 in eastern Ukraine. On the way to K...

Welcome to the Power of Mana podcast. This is the Finding Manuland version, episode one: The X Energy. I’m Decoding Trolls. Welcome to Finding Manuland. Since this is episode one, let’s begin with an introduction. I’m going to do something very conventional in terms of podcasts: I’m going to set out what I’m going to do, and then I’m going to do something slightly differently — I’m going to tell y...

Hi there, I'm Decoding Trolls. This is the Power of Mana podcast and the Finding Manuland branch of the Power of Mana podcast. I've recorded two episodes already of Finding Manuland and we're going to give this the moniker Episode Zero because it's an introduction to the podcast. I want to challenge this view that many of us have and we hear anecdotally whenever anyone mentions, for example, that...