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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: over the old world; never checked, but when they came in contact
with the free-riding hordes of the Eastern steppes; and so
established an equestrian caste, of which the [Greek text] of Athens
and the Equites of Rome had been only hints ending in failure and
absorption.
Of that equestrian caste the symbol was the horse. The favourite,
and therefore the chosen sacrifice of Odin, their ancestor and God,
the horse's flesh was eaten at the sacrificial meal; the horse's
head, hung on the ash in Odin's wood, gave forth oracular responses.
As Christianity came in, and the eating of horse-flesh was forbidden
as impiety by the Church, while his oracles dwindled down to such as
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