The Wisdom of Vaclav Havel

"...This is related to... science as the basis of the modern conception of the world.

The dizzying development of this science, with its unconditional faith in objective reality and its complete dependency on general and rationally knowable laws, led to the birth of modern technological civilization. It is the first civilization in the history of the human race that spans the entire globe and firmly binds together all human societies, submitting them to a common global destiny. It was this science that enabled man, for the first time, to see Earth from space with his own eyes; that is, to see it as another star in the sky.

At the same time, however, the relationship to the world that the modern science fostered and shaped now appears to have exhausted its potential. It is increasingly clear that, strangely, the relationship is missing something. It fails to connect with the most intrinsic nature of reality and with natural human experience. It is now more of a source of disintegration and doubt than a source of integration and meaning. It produces what amounts to a state of schizophrenia: Man as an observer is becoming completely alienated from himself as a being.

Classical modern science described only the surface of things, a single dimension of reality. And the more dogmatically science treated it as the only dimension, as the very essence of reality, the more misleading it became. Today, for instance, we may know immeasurably more about the universe than our ancestors did, and yet, it increasingly seems they knew something more essential about it than we do, something that escapes us. The same thing is true of nature and of ourselves. The more thoroughly all our organs and their functions, their internal structure, and the biochemical reactions that take place within them are described, the more we seem to fail to grasp the spirit, purpose, and meaning of the system that they create together and that we experience as our unique "self".

And thus today we find ourselves in a paradoxical situation. We enjoy all the achievements of modern civilization that have made our physical existence on this earth easier so in many important ways. Yet we do not know exactly what to do with ourselves, where to turn. The world of our experiences seems chaotic, disconnected, confusing. There appear to be no integrating forces, no unified meaning, no true inner understanding of phenomena in our experience of the world. Experts can explain anything in the objective world to us, yet we understand our own lives less and less. In short, we live in the postmodern world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain."

-Vaclav Havel

Here's a link to the entire speech from which the above excerpt was drawn:

Vaclav Havel's Speech

This is one of the greatest short speeches I have ever read; I agree with every word of it. I love reading things that sing straight to my heart. This man- Vaclav Havel- is a true master of the art of Being Human. Modern Heathens who feel and understand the need for the sacred in the modern world, threatened as it is by the giantish forces of materialism, need to read his words carefully, and understand the Wyrd of his intent. He has a great wisdom that shines effortlessly from his words.

And when I say "Wyrd", I mean Wyrd- he has an idea he calls the "Anthropic Cosmological Principle", which is the very heart and essence of the MANNAZ Rune, the Mystery of Man. You have to read this to believe it!

The Song of Life Force

You have more power over your own mental and physical health than you realize. Real health isn't based on your ability to store up some great fund of good ideas, nutrition, or vitamins; it is based on your ability to consciously let your vitality flow into you, through you, and out of you, like an effortless stream. That vitality, your life force, is not just native to your body; it is also native to this world, to the ground and sky. You share it with them.

You have more power over the flow of your own life force than you know. Your life force wants to flow, like a river flowing fast to the ocean; and under ideal circumstances, it does just that.

You are not living your human life to block the flow of your own vital force; it is meant to rush strongly through you, from the world to you, and from you to the world. You are not meant to collect life force and hold it forever trapped, like gold slowly tarnishing; you are meant to make yourself a channel through which force rushes like a thunderstorm.

The flow of sacred vital force is more than a matter of merely living. Though life-power will be present in any life, it only reaches the white force of perfection when you are conscious of its presence and its motion.

Without realizing it, you have blocked it up in many ways, with your mind. You have locked up life-force with certain emotions, certain bad mental habits.

Your sadness and anxieties drain life force from the chief flow, that white and red flow up and down the valley of your spine. Sadness and anxiety take life force like leeches, and divert it into pools in your chest and head, and deep in your heart cavity, and trap it in caves.

The time and mental effort you spend hating and despising people and situations that are outside of your control and responsibility steal life force, as well. That hatred and spite traps life force in your back and neck, in your stomach, your throat and your head. There, it swirls around, growing dim, and aching.

The effort you make to preserve your own mental habits, ideas, and life-identity in the face of the myriad changes of Wyrd halves the power of your own life force.

The belly, like the sexual organs, contains a fire, and what you eat fills it like wood. When you give it the right amount of fuel, it burns bright. The winds of healthy-flowing life force fan the flame, making it burn healthy and perfectly.

Too much wood chokes it, and your life force becomes dimmed. The body becomes choked full of ashes, and the limbs and torso bulge with unburned refuse. That refuse soaks up life force, lowering the amount you have available to you, and chokes the life force that the heart needs to work properly.

Drinking fermented liquids builds life force and life-fire up quickly and makes it burn bright, but drink too much too often, and the internal flames are lessened, doused, suffocated, and life force becomes dulled. The mind becomes dim, health is affected, sometimes to the point that the life force cannot flow freely ever again without the fermentation to aid it, but the cost of this aid is your wits and your health, so drink fermentation with a note of caution.

If you do not sleep enough, life force cannot replenish properly. If you sleep too much, life force is dulled, harming the body.

Trapped or dulled life force simmers and burns in you, like a flame struggling not to go out. It causes pain, and can cause unnatural, harmful growths in the body. It can cause underlying tensions in the mind that manifest as depression, restlessness, and anxiety.


Really change the focus of your attention; let it be simpler. Let yourself feel your life force. We've become so used to the feeling, that we don't realize what we have. You feel it keenly when you don't have it, when your eyelids are like lead, and when you are nodding off every few seconds. Make yourself stand up in those situations and walk around, and feel your body and mind from the "inside". That is low vitality. When you are ill and weak, the fire of life force burns low. That is an especially pronounced time of low vitality.

You realize it when you have an abundance- let yourself feel how you feel in the moments before sexual contact, or while you are feeling the exhilaration of exercise. There can be no real joy, real and strong joy, without strong life force; the very ill can be happy about something, but not overjoyed.

Most of the time, the amount of life force you have will not be very high or low, and thus, very hard to feel. Most of our daily lives in the modern day aren't conducive to extremes of life force; children have abundant life force, but after we become adults and fall into adult routines, we forget the feeling that children often enjoy. Spring mornings, however, can remind us- life force fills the body of nature in the spring, and cool, refreshing spring mornings can impart great vitality to a person who stands in the new sun. Drinking a lot of room-temperature water daily also allows the body to maintain a higher level of life force.


What you must do, everyday, is work with life force. Start by feeling how much life force you "have" within you, then picture it moving, flowing, to all parts of your body, and spilling out of you, going into the sky and ground. Let yourself feel how much life force is in the sky and ground, and know that as you sense it, and open yourself to it, it is allowed to enter you.

The Rune LAGUZ, whose power is deepest green, the force that gathers around the wights of willow trees and growing plants in general, and whose power is manifest in all flows, whether of water or life-vitality, is the mystery that you can use to improve the power of the vital flow that you experience as your own.





With the Laguz-Song, the Song of the Lake of Life Force, you can awaken your body and mind's power to take life force in and send it out, flowing. The Laguz Galdr sounds like this:

LAAAAAH GOOOOZ


When it is sung, sing it with all your breath, drawing it out as long as you can. The symbol should appear in your chest, seen with your hugauga, your mind's eye, fashioned from the deepest green possible. It should be vibrant and fluid. Every strange channel and spiritual bone in your body, from your center to the tips of your fingers and toes should resonate with the dark green flow of power from it. It should overflow you and fill the world, and you should receive from the world much power. The flow is two way, or not at all.

As you sing the sacred sound, send out life-power; the flow out is just as important as the flow in. As you breathe in, take it in, like a rushing waterway.

Sing the Galdr, see the sign, over and over and over. Walk outside; open your arms, join the flow of life-force. And pay special attention to your confining mental habits, which are the main things that twist and inhibit the flow of life-force. You don't realize it, but your lack of awareness of life force is one of the main things blocking it. Be aware that you have a subtle, fluid force that you trap in various parts of your body, and make the decision to release it.

Give up on frustrations and hatreds that you no longer need. Release stresses that you no longer need. The life force that is released by these things alone is a tangible thing, a thing that makes you immediately feel better. If you can stand under falling water, you can let the force of it hitting your skin "jar loose" the trapped pockets of power inside your body, purifying you and releasing them back to free flow. You can do the same thing in the swift current of a river, or even a shower.

Throw open your arms, lean back, stretch, Then lean forward and touch the ground; Stand up straight. Spin around if you need to. Feel the whole range of free motion with your limbs. Run or walk. Feel natural thankfulness and joy at life for your many gifts, and even if you have drawbacks in your health or life, you still have some gifts.

90% of life force blockage can be broken free with the Runic sign and song. But nothing can be done if you persist in negative mental habits and if you refuse to release stress and negative emotions. Give up these weights, if you have them- let your life force flow. Your health will improve, mentally and physically. Let your mind accept the vision of life force flowing through you like a river; accept, internalize, and celebrate that vision.

Life force flowing strongly and healthily through you will increase your life-length, increase your luck-force, and make your sorcery stronger, if you practice sorcery. It will also allow you to balance your thinking more and spread well-being to others.