The Journal of Hofstadr Hearth: The Life of a Heathen Family

Heathen Cinema Movie Review: Valhalla Rising

2011-08-06T13:49:00.000-07:00

For me, and for us, the idea of "Heathen cinema" and "Heathen film" is very important. Like it or not, both Heathens and non-Heathens draw a lot of conclusions about Heathenry, ancient and modern, from movies. We Heathens can be inspired by the right movie that presents the nobility in our Ancestors and in our religion (like "Beowulf and Grendel", starring Gerard Butler) or really uninspired by the wrong kind of movie.

The recent movie "Thor" increased people's attention to modern Heathenry, however slightly, and however strange that might seem, as the movie itself presented a full fantasy version of Valhalla and the Gods. Its presentation is only proper, as the movie was based on a sci-fi graphic novel, and not genuine Ancestral Lore. And yet, below the surface, symbols, characters, and events had a deep resonance with something very old in Indo-European culture, and thus in the deep layers of our own culture. Thor, like other movies, really has the potential to awaken something in people. Cinematic depictions of our Gods and myths, however indirect, show that these things are still alive in the collective mind-shadow of our common culture.

So, I watched "Valhalla Rising" a few days ago. Thought I'd give a minor review on the movie, and tell you why I think it might be best avoided. (The picture above is "One Eye", the character in the movie played by Mads Mikkelsen)

I like Mads Mikkelsen a lot. But this role was almost an embarrassment for him for one important reason: his character- "One Eye"- has not a single speaking moment in the entire movie. In fact, the entire movie was a bit "light" on dialogue- and by light, I mean by the time you've watched the trailer which you can see here, you've heard _every_single_ line of dialogue in the movie.

Mads Mikkelsen- who is a very good actor, by the way- spends the entire movie visualizing odd things in his head, staring, and killing people in absurdly brutal ways- once, he bashes and cracks someone's skull open (exposing a little more brain every time he hits them) and another time, he disembowels someone in the most brutal manner ever seen on film. The rest of the time, he does absolutely nothing. And he says nothing. This is a gratuitous waste of talent.

The movie is independent, indie, artsy. Those sorts of movies can be some of the best you'll see- and often enough, they can be some of the worst. This movie moved and developed so slowly that it was like sliding to your death down a one light year long slip-n-slide greased with peanut butter. The movie's trailer claims that it is a "cracked meditation on war, religion, and nation building", but if that was part of the intent of this movie, I missed it totally. The only thing that punctuates the unfolding of the "story"- such that it was- were some outbursts of violence, which while pretty well done, do not save the movie as a whole.

The Heathen characters in the beginning of the movie suck. There is no second dimension to them; they sit around in (what I presume was) northern Scotland pit fighting human beings while staring, and barely having any reactions, before trading money, putting Mads Mikkelsen back into a cage, and then repeating the next day. The only good aspect about the Heathens is how the Heathen leader speaks a grim warning about the Christian presence in their land- his characterization of Christianity is likely very similar to what many historical Heathens thought of it, when they only heard of it from a distance.

The Christian characters (not surprisingly) suck; they are idiots who just kill people, stare at people to make sure they are Christian, too, and then get into a boat hoping to make it to the "Holy Land" to "fight for Jesus"- and end up floating to Greenland, where they spend a good bit of time looking for Jerusalem and their fellow Christians, and some Muslims to kill. They don't find them, of course; they find an unspoiled, beautiful land full of painted Native Americans who are about as happy to see them as the audience is happy to see the movie at this point.

Our hero, One-Eye, would appear to be an "Odinic" figure- he does, after all, have one eye, and he has psychic visions of the future, which he seems to follow, to get to the place he's supposed to be going (presumably). He's a brutal, dark killer, and he's weird- Odinic enough. The actual climax of the movie is when our intrepid but perilously off-course crusaders suddenly get the urge to climb a big hill in Greenland somewhere, and to the pound of an excited, heavy-metal soundtrack, they race up the hill... and find nothing at the top. That's it. Everyone dies. End of story.

Some of you are doubtlessly thinking that something deep's going on here. Was the point of the movie to illustrate how lost everyone really is, how strange life is, and how futile religious wars are? Or how futile things are, in general? I'd like to think so. But I have a suspicion that this is just me reading depth into the shallow end of the pool. Of course, maybe the fact that I had those thoughts at all proves that the movie did its job, and in fact, is a brilliant movie. Perhaps it suffered from budget issues; the trouble there is that I've seen some very great movies done on small budgets. What I think it suffered from was the inability of the writers to translate their vision to the audience's brains on the resources they had.

I strongly suggest that you don't watch it to make your mind up for yourself. Save the two hours for something else you've planned to do for a while. I'm dying of thirst for good Heathen-themed movies, and I usually make it a point to find a way to like them, no matter what. Somehow, I can't do that with this one. On the plus side, if you find yourself watching this movie, at least the scenery and settings are all amazingly beautiful. Just watching the landscape and some of the good costumes might be an okay exercise- for about 20 minutes. Two hours? That's quite a challenge.

The Hammer Must Be Ready

2011-07-23T19:20:00.000-07:00

Once, and not as long ago as people want to think, the Norwegian people went about with axes and swords, and their villages had wooden statues of the Gods smeared red with blood at their centers, in low wooden buildings with heavy bronze and gold oath rings on tables before them. These were remarkable, tough people- with a society that was kinship oriented, held together by the ancient authority of oaths and bonds of ancestry, and fiercely independent. When they weren't scratching a living out of their harsh but beautiful land, they were exploring the world, raiding, trading, laying eyes on every corner of the known world. They even found their way to the New World long before Columbus did. This is a portrait of a hard-as-nails people, but also a people living in the traditional ways passed down to them by countless generations before.

But the world changed- a new religion, and the collapse of a world-defining empire started the change. The power of self-sufficiency and the power to see to a community and a family's protection was taken away from these people- the ancient duty of defence and vengeance for wrongs was taken from people and given to a new conception of "God" and given to the King, far away, and the King's men. Axes and swords were blunted. The spirit of going viking was tossed onto the middenheap of history. Now, the grandchildren of these people live in what appears to be a fully peaceful, quiet, and laid-back secular and socialist state where firearms (the swords of the modern day) aren't really owned by common people, and the "king's men"- the police- don't even carry firearms on patrol in most places.

But the King's Men took an hour and a half to reach 80 children that were being butchered by a lone maniac 48 hours ago. These quiet people are sitting by, shocked, and their King now declares that their homeostasis of peace and untroubled living will remain unchanged by this violent outburst. But I am left wondering if such an incident could have occured in Norway if it had never been rushed by force of conversion and cultural destruction 1000 years ago into the "new order" of the world. My friends in nations that are largely unarmed and peaceful may disagree, but I can't help wondering if people should ever be unarmed. An old Norwegian proverb says "A Knifeless man is a Lifeless man"- and a lot of hoary wisdom wrote that proverb.

But more than all that, the Old Culture of that land and its Old Religion produced human beings- male and female- who were as sharp and as dangerous as sword-edges. Today, we may look upon the old ways as barbaric and even frightening, but again, I can't help but wonder if sometimes, the old ways are best. "Peace" as an ideal is fine and well, but a massive population of people who are so fully unprepared for violence, and so fully shocked by it, doesn't strike me as a really healthy population. We may, pursuant to our modernist dogmas, think that it's better for a population to be so shocked by violence, and to assume the peaceful best- but is that better?

The new ways have made us all toothless in many important ways. It's true that politics in my country often makes me want to leave it, but I must say, I think the heavily-armed American population, a population which expects violence more often than not, and which has had to experience it quite a bit, compared to Norway, is an asset here. You might say that we just have more opportunities for mass shootings because of the availability of weapons- but with those opportunities come as many opportunities for non-maniacs with guns to stop maniacs with guns. And our police forces, in nearly every place, don't have trouble finding helicopters and boats when they need them.

This ties into what was lost when the red, living statues of the Gods were torn down and cast themselves onto the middenheap of history. The thunder God's hammer was always in his hands, ready to smash evil when it invaded the peaceful hearts of communities, and his followers carried his sign on their chest- the hammer- the sign of vigilance. That the wicked powers could invade the order of the community or the world at any moment was known, and it was an eternal warning for the heart of man. And greatest was the glory for the man or woman who fought, killed, and even died when the invasion came. Maybe everyone can learn from those ideals.

In times of tragedy like this, no words can make anything better. No words can stop grief, sound fitting, sound satisfying. I hope for blessings of strength on every family who had a beloved child taken from them by this insanity and wickedness. I hope that every child slain swiftly returns to their Ancestors, to rest among those who love them best. And I hope that the man who did this never looks upon the faces of his Ancestors, again.

The Season of Family and Hearth

2011-06-18T21:27:00.001-07:00

Dear friends: As you can see, I have decided to alter the course of my blog "Cauldron Born" and transform it into a journal and record of the various deeds and doings of my beloved family and my Heathen religious/cultural community- which are now exactly the same thing. It only makes sense that those who seek to really vivify and engage the Elder religious patterns of Hamingja within themselves should find their way to a family focus: the family- not the individual- was the central and basic unit of historical Heathen cultures, and it was the primary grouping which regularly experienced the majestic doings of the Gods and wights and the pervasive, transforming power of the Ancestors. It was within the family context that the religious experiences of the Heathen came to make sense and have the power they had. The family is the very root and seed of any greater community worth the name, and until family consciously achieves its own spiritual dimension, one really only has a collection of relatives.

This online transition is taking a bit of time as I hammer out aesthetic transformations and the like, but it will be complete very soon. The good news (hopefully) for my readership is this- nothing really changes but the layout of this blog.

What's really changed is me: I've learned to integrate family life- my wife, my children, and myself, and all of our deeds and sharings- with the Heathen spiritual life and worldview, forging a "Hearth", a Heathen family, the true heart of any later extended notion like "Kindred".

With this powerful heart and soul focus, which is an unassailable sanctuary for a soul like mine, my writings on all aspects of modern Heathenry and the emergence of modern spiritual practices and beliefs nourished in the hamingja of historical Teutonic/Germanic and British Isles Paganism can continue as before, but now better and stronger. The new strength comes from the fact that I have around me the community that Wyrd wove for us in blood and flesh- the most direct and powerful expression of hamingja possible, persons joined together by Fate and by blood, and the love that is natural to them. This new season of writings can also integrate my ongoing learning about Heathenry and Paganism and the evolution of my understandings, both on the scholarly level, and the level of daily life.

We have taken the name "Hofstaðr"- which means "Sanctuary", because that is what we are for one another as a Heathen family- and what we pledge to be to all modern Heathens and heathen-friendly outsider Pagans who need refuge from a world that seldom understands the kinds of souls we are. If you can find us, we are here for you.

The challenges that face families in today's world, and the challenges that face those who embrace an ethnic/religious subcultural identity such as "Heathen", are many. I will demonstrate, to the best of my ability, how our identity as Heathens, and our interactions with the Ancestors, the hamingja-Gods, with friends, the natural world, and with one another steers and guides us through those challenges. Included will be our failures as well as our triumphs (hopefully more triumphs than failures, though) and all of my deepest ponderings about what it means to be both human, and a Heathen today.

The entire corpus of writings made by me over the years under the heading of "Cauldron Born" are still here, tucked away in this virtual library, and will always be there. I may refer back to them. I may discuss the ways I have come to diverge from the views I held years ago. Like any living being, I evolve in my understanding, and I'm rather proud to have such a record of my progress- the beauty of the journal, indeed!

Bringing Forth the Gods of My Kin

2011-06-09T19:15:00.000-07:00

Bringing Forth the Gods of My Kin:

A Heathen perspective on the Hamingja, the Gods, Manifesting the Family Soul, and the “Problem of Other People in the World”

The First Fire and the Hamingja

When I became Heathen in 1995, it was on the coat-tails of what still amounts to the most powerful blot and burnt offering to Odin I have ever attended. That pyre burned as the sun came up, and it was piled with food and precious, valuable personal offerings. We gathered, spoke our words, drank our mead, poured our mead for the Sacred Guest, and we never knew then what a powerful thing we had done until years later.

At the time, I had no concept of what "Hamingja" was. Years later, I know it as one of the most crucial concepts and pylons which holds up the entire edifice of the organic and Ancestral tradition. Without a well-developed understanding of it, the soul of Heathenry remains obscure and distant. Without an understanding of it, your family and kin and friends are just people related to you by chance of birth or meeting, and related to you by genetics. With an understanding of it, a great divine reality opens itself up to view, a reality that both unifies, and makes particular; a reality that holds men and Gods, and every living thing, in its lasting grip. Hamingja is a reality that surges forth from the dense darkness of the ancient past, manifests in the deeds and persons of the present, and stands behind all things that come to pass.

It sounds a lot like Fate, and it should; the Fate-women, those divine beings called "Disir" are part of Hamingja. They see to the fateful comings and goings in every person's life, especially those two supreme and fatefully-loaded times: birth, at which time the birth-runes are marked on the soul and life-force, and death, when the Fylgja-Dis departs and returns to take a man or woman to the beyond, to dwell in deeper unseen regions of this strange world, or onward to whatever place or condition their Fate may have in store for them. Hamingja and the maidens of Hamingja are tied up with the mysteries of causality, which are other aspects of Fate- or Wyrd, for those who know better.

Hamingja is luck-force, but it is not something so simple as some inherited determining factor that will influence a lucky lottery ticket or the possibility of a traffic accident for a person. It is the sum-total of all wealful and woeful deeds done in the family line before, and the power of countless incidents and happenings that have affected one's ancestors. It is the force of life itself, truly; always protean, always shape-shifting, and always surging forth, like a river.

It moves through each person, and through each family, and through any grouping of persons that bond themselves together in any permanent or semi-permanent manner, sharing life and experience. Hamingja is there, and it does, among other things, determine "luck" as most people know it. But it does much more; it is much more.

People who become Heathen to focus on the Gods are missing most of the point of the Old Heathen way- it wasn't focused on Gods primarily; it was focused on family, clan, deeds, and living daily life. It was focused on the implements of daily life- weapons, tools, treasures, boats, the beasts of daily life- cattle, horses, pigs, and the like. It was focused on relationships between men, between men and women, between groups. It was focused on the business of being human.

What modern people don't understand is that all of these things were tied up with Hamingja, the subtle and ever-present force that could express itself in all those forms, particularly when relationships were established in a manner of holiness.

The Gods come forth from Hamingja, in the same way Ancestors do- a portion of a dead man or woman's life and power went forth into future generations through Hamingja, and so they could (and did) emerge both as newborn children, and as Ancestral spirits. The Gods, however, always stand behind the human Ancestors in the position of Godly Ancestors, responsible for the arising of mankind- and through this ancestral conduit, the Gods are here, now, with us.

When my friend Grettir and I burned that sacrificial bonfire and drank our mead, we were joining Hamingja together, though at the time we only felt it- we didn't know it, consciously or intellectually. From our fire, from our joining, from our deeds, from that time, from that place, a God came forth. And the purpose of that fire wasn't just worship, it wasn't just to "give worth" to our Sacred Guest; it was for something that Grettir needed to aid his family. And within a day, his family was blessed with the fortune we had hoped for.

Hamingja- nothing could be more holy, because holiness, power, force, these things are waves that emerge from the river of Hamingja. No one walks through life alone, ever. This could not be so; in each person is a share of Hamingja from the family lines that converge in them, and inside them is a portion of the sum total of their Ancestors. Who they were, what they did, what they loved, what they fought for, what power they had, what insight they had, and in a way, even the Ancestors themselves: these things are inside of you and all people, physically and metaphysically, in every iota of your flesh, blood, breath, and the immaterial aspects of yourself. No part of you can be apart from these Ancestral powers.

And within you is also found the mysterious "residing" of the Godly beings. There, inside you, like Ancestral powers from a "further and deeper" time, they rest. In most people, they rest in an unexpressed, largely unconscious way. In the being of the nithing or in the wicked, whose Hamingja has become so blighted with weakness that the flame of their connection to humanity and the past burns low, the Gods and Ancestors cannot make a mead-hall or a home.

But in most people, they are present, appearing to rest deeply in us. They are the sources of dreams you have and don't recall or understand. Their presence leads to that feeling of basic dignity, of conscious goodness and the desire for peace in you. They are the motivators to greatness, to risk, and all the powers that are quite strange and mystical in us, and which give impetus to imagination and industry. In those people who feel the urge- buried deep in Hamingja- to become Heathen again, to raise the banner of the Old Ways (not just the Old Gods) again, those powers wake up. They come forth. Every line of Hamingja has its Gods, just as it has its Ancestors.

One can never grasp the full impact of this awakening reality, this "coming forth", but one begins to experience it in all aspects of life- sleep, at times, becomes a portal of dreams about the Gods, and the Ancestors. Waking life becomes full of a strange yet familiar and subtle presence that a person might not have noticed before. Events take on new meaning. A new vitality starts to rise up. Inspirations arise.

One becomes stronger, more energetic, more honorable, more motivated to greater things. One becomes less able to emotionally tolerate the unconscious, honorless antics of the hordes of mankind who express no strength of Hamingja, and yet, one goes forth again, alone if they must, to live better than what they have seen before. One begins to live closer in accord with the noble standards of the Ancestors who have become long forgotten in our forgetful, shallow, and materialistic world.

Hamingja can be in "things"- it doesn't need human breath and life; we humans have relationships that run very deep with many non-human powers, and even "things". The sacred tree of a grove, the sacred stone over the graves of the Ancestral dead, the sacred treasures made by our kin, infused with the Hamingja of their creativity, and passed down to us; the hall of drinking and feasting made holy by the gathering of a kindred or a family- in all these places and "things", Hamingja is found, filling, swirling, enlivening. Even in inspired songs and poems, Hamingja flashes forth. And in the combination of all these things, wed to human beings and the beasts around us, the Gods of our Ancestors can emerge.

What Hamingja needs to really "come forth" as it did in the days of old is conscious awareness on our part, an awareness of what it is, and at times, who it is: when it manifests as a gathering of kin or friends, as a child, a wife, a husband, or even a beast made holy in the rites of the faith. When we know this, the quality of the mind changes, and with it, perceptions; we create a wide open field within ourselves for the manifestations of the fullness of Hamingja, for its fullness can come forth from any part, if the mind is well-prepared.

The Gods, The Allfather, Blot, and True Family

And that is what the Gods really are- beings who know and express the Fullness of the World-Hamingja. Each of us, and our families, we are partial streams of it; they are the whole, or should I say, they have access to the whole. Odin, as we know, sacrifices "his self to his Self"- his lesser self to the greater Self, and that greater Self is nothing more or less than the whole of Hamingja.

Through his sacrifice, he has access now to the deep, bottomless resources and powers of everything. In a direct way, he is now present to everything, at every place, to every person. This doesn't make him some abstract figure only; he is both particulate, and whole, at the same time- he is the Odin of the sacred stories and myths, and he is simultaneously the “Allfather”, the divine consciousness of the whole of Hamingja that encompasses everything, and which fills us with the breath that we draw, a breath he breathed into man and woman back near to the beginnings of things.

And in that wholeness, the other Gods are to be found, emerging as they will... and most importantly, emerging as we make them able, through our deeds and our understanding. Unlike the Christian faith, which presents humans as sinful, fallen, and helpless without divine grace, able to do nothing without the church and the god of the church except be condemned to hell, the Heathen way tells us that humans are literally capable of the Gods, because we are all together in Hamingja. We are one through the combination of deeds, places, treasures, things, beasts, kindreds, families, emotions, songs, and our sacred histories- these things make us capable, at any time, of the Godly life and Godly activity.

And when I say "Godly life" and "Godly activity", I am not speaking with cheap symbolic talk- I mean it literally, just as literally as I mean the Ancestral powers live in the being of each one of us.

Vilhelm Gronbech writes:

"Between man and God there exists no difference of kind, but there is a vital distinction of degree, the Gods being the whole Hamingja, whereas men are only part. The boundary between Gods and men is permanent, but varying in place; it is shifted downwards when men go about on their daily rounds of business, and it may be pushed upwards when they assume their garments of holiness, or sally out in a body to fight or fish. Only in the blot is the boundary line obliterated, but then during the feast there are no men, because the Hamingja is all and in all. The divineness of men when in a state of holiness is revealed by the metaphors of poetry: when the warrior is called the God of the sword or the God of battle, the expression is nothing but a matter-of-fact description. This same reality appears in the naming of woman as the Goddess of trinkets, and still more significantly as the ale-Goddess, referring to her holy office in the drink offering."

-Gronbech, Culture of the Teutons, Vol. 2

A person who understands what I have been saying, and what Gronbech has said perfectly, understands the essence of the Heathen way, both historical and modern. And Hamingja is the key to this most sacred understanding. It may be the key to unlocking the modern world's impasse, our loss of the real sacredness of the man, the woman, and of our deeds, the sacredness of our lands and our kin. It may be the thing that surges forth to spare us for a while longer, as we move into a future that becomes stripped more and more of sacredness and depth.

When I stand with my family, dressed in my long white tunic and ceremonial tabard, wearing the sign of the Sunwheel (that equal-armed cross which symbolizes the life-spirit that all are a part of, and the golden sun that is the supreme symbol of life in the heavens) and when I am there in that manner, surrounded by my people, invoking the Gods, pouring mead and ale in blot, I am bringing forth the Gods. Those with me are doing it. Together, we are the Hamingja and we call forth the Gods and Ancestors in a way that we could never manage individually, even though we can and do experience the powers in an individual way, from time to time.

In the mead and ale of blot, in the pouring, the drinking, the blessing and sprinkling, the division between "these humans out here" on the one hand, and the depths of Hamingja, the presence of the Ancestors, and the persons of the Gods on the other hand, is totally eradicated. Hamingja can, on these mighty occasions- and at others- express itself fully among us.

I am the father of a family; my wife is the mother of a family. In our children lies the entire Hamingja-legacy of both our lines, and in us, the lines that came before us. In us gathers the whole family-soul to which our children belong, and in us gathers a tributary from the river of the families that gave us birth.

In the persons of Mother and Father, of House-Dis and Hall-Warder, is found the entire spiritual family identity. In their children, the joined Hamingja surges forth anew- new (and very old) ancestral powers come to the forefront and empower human lives again. We are all united in this convergence of streams, in this joining of Hamingja. In my family, it takes on a specific identity- who we are, who we were, and who we will be. All of these things come together as one, in the present. Through my wife and I, the Ancestors watch over our children and join us in raising them and imparting wisdom and protection to them.

Even the "things" of the blot- the horn, the hammer, the hlautbowl, the hlautein, the white garment, the statues of Gods and Ancestors that might be used, the table, the flickering fires, in all these things Hamingja gathers, and from them it comes forth in union, as they are used together.

This is what we mean by "a holy occasion." It is holy because Hamingja comes forth into a new tangible, powerful expression, unique each time to that particular moment and place and gathering. These occasions- and these emergences of Hamingja- come forth because we decide to come together to make the occasion what it is. And the call for us to make that decision comes from the depths of Hamingja in the first place.

It is a perfect circle, spread across time and space, self-contained, and singing with power. It gathers the persons it needs to itself, and in that true "Ring of Troth", the Gods make their appearance. The Gods are tasted, smelled, seen, felt; they are present, fully. Only those who have experienced this can really comprehend these words, but those who have know that they cannot fathom ever falling away from these expressions again. The emotions they bring forth stir something indescribable, but precious.

Further concerning the Gods, Gronbech writes:

"In their nature, combining the neutral state of power with personality, they (the Gods) evince no particular divine gift, for this is the nature of life in all its manifestations. They reside in the holy place and in the holy treasures, but they may at any moment come forth and reveal themselves to their friends either in dreams or in the light of day. As power or luck the Gods are in Old Norse called Radh, and Regin- Radh means "rede", or wisdom and will, the power of determining and powerful determinations; Regin simply expresses luck and power. In their personal aspect, the Gods are named Ases, or in southern dialects Anses. In shape the Gods are in some clans male, in other families and localities female; their manifestation as women is naturally founded in the fact that woman generally represented a higher form of holiness than the average man. The question whether the Gods did assume the shape of animals is scarcely to the point. True, the divine power of the Hamingja walked the fields in the herd and prominently in the holy heads of cattle that were consecrated and qualified to be leaders of their flock or mediums of blessing; and in the sacrificial hall the Godly strength filled the victim of the feast. "

One of the greatest blessings of the modern Heathen way is this: I have drunk and eaten at such a holy feast, and come to know the Gods. What great fortune- what great Hamingja- that I should have been born in these times, bereft of Ancestral Wisdom, and yet, still had the luck and joy to find my way to such a frithful table!

Hamingja, Identity, and the Problem of Others

One of the most important truths that emerges into the minds of those who really understand these matters is this: we are not like “others.” There is an identity that comes from the deep layers of the world and the unseen that we do not share with everyone else in some perfect homogenized vision of "equality".

Other people, other families, other cultures- they do have their own lines and streams of Hamingja, and certainly those are a part of the whole. But we are not them, and they are not us, not on the level of particulars- that level that we must live on every day, according to Fate. In the experience and understanding I am discussing here, we come to know, in a very deep manner, “who we are”, as kin, as families, as cultures- but also even as individuals.

I am like no other; this way of Hamingja which expresses itself as me has never been seen before. But I am also not a “fully separate” being who can be made sense of- or have any true place or strength- without the broader context in which I am situated. I am also something and someone that emerges from the past, from the family, the Ancestors, my land, my life-situations, my children, friends, and allies- without this world, the Gods, all the powers that collect themselves together, my situation of life would never have been possible, and I make no sense apart from it all. This is the soul of the clan-understanding, the kindred understanding among the Ancients, and among people of honor now.

Some of the other people in this world still know their Hamingja in ways that we descendants of the Indo-Europeans have long forgotten, due to a millennia-long program on the part of the Church to erode our emotional and intuitive connection to our Ancestral beings and our Hamingja.

There are peoples on the earth who still have connections that we largely lack- and when I say "we", I am not speaking of most true Heathens, as much as westerners generally. But in having those connections, they also have a strength we lack, at the cultural level. While we do not care much these days to defend our particular cultural contributions to the world, nor defend the honor of the great things we have done (both in pre-Christian and post-Christian times) in the name of some guilt or even "political correctness", other cultures surge forth with great pride in themselves, and an energy that we often seem to lack in the west.

While we no longer protect our inner or outer borders from being washed away by a tide of humanity that cares nothing for our specific cultural needs, other cultures take painstaking steps to preserve their languages, histories, and even their own populations from excessive foreign influences.

None of these things calls for some ridiculous militant solution or revolution. What will solve this problem at its core is a re-awakening of a sense for who we are- a sense that only comes from the emergence of Hamingja on the conscious level. We have a place in this world, as unique and important as anyone else, and our contributions have been legion, even crucial, to world civilization today. We have a right to be proud and to insist that our voice be equal to any other.

This brings me to the last point that I would like to cover, which is the "problem of others", if you will. While some would look at the world with rose-tinted lenses (or just with lenses painted opaque), those of us who can truly see and feel, can see and feel that this world is not as kindly as we would hope. It certainly never has been, and it is doubtful to what extent it will ever be, especially considering that competition and conflict is a Fateful part of the fabric from which this world is woven.

While the Gods battle giantish forces for the preservation of the world, and we men and women battle (with the help of the Gods) the unbalanced powers in our own souls for the preservation of our bodies and minds and our families, there will always be battles in other places, too. Conflict as an aspect of reality was a thing that our Ancestors all over the Indo-European world accepted as given, as unalterable, and for good reason.

And it is true that, in a previous World-age, our Heathen Ancestors, when faced with others, had to make choices about how to deal with these "others" they encountered. The ancients had to deal with other cultures and peoples in the few ways they really had available to them: if "others" were a threat, such as when others stood in a position of resource competition with them, they either had to incorporate those others through establishing relationships and bonds of kinship with them, or they had to defeat them at the physical level, in battle, and absorb them or drive them away. When two peoples or cultures meet- two surges of Hamingja meet, two waves of the ocean of Hamingja; and then, absorption, incorporation, or conflict follows. At certain other times, they merely pass by one another, perhaps to meet again later.

And this was the way it was, in the distant past- all of our families, distant clans, tribes- all of them, and their larger cultural context (what we today call "Germanic", with all its variations), and up to the level of the entire people, the whole "folk" (what we now call the "Indo Europeans")- they all rushed forth, in whole and in part, into this world, and they conquered as they went; they incorporated beasts, Gods, lands, other humans, other nations, towns, villages, stories, and treasures into their group Hamingja, thundering along as they went, over many ages. If they couldn't incorporate those things, they might be swept away by them instead!

But still, in some form, they continued. Every group, race, tribe, or nation of man was like this, caught in the same drama of the age- moving through a world of hostility and strangeness, of friendship and conflict, and moving desperately down through the ages.

But to what? To now. To this day, this very day. The sweeping drama of the past has come to reside in you, and in me. And there are still identities, powers and movements of fateful force buried deep in the Hamingja of each of us. And there is a Hamingja collected in our unifying culture (such that it is) and in our families, our subcultures, and in our friends groups, our kindreds, our sacred congregations, in our military units, in our armed forces as a whole, in our fraternities and brotherhoods, in our financial institutions, and it just never ends. It seems so large to us while we are within it, but it is even larger than we imagine.

There are other cultures out there, still. Countless smaller tribes and cultures have been swallowed up by larger ones that exist today, and before that, they themselves had defeated and incorporated others. Hamingja is still present and accounted for- our defeated foes are still here with us, living through us. Those we made friends with, married into, and bonded with, they are here, too. Everyone's here. Nothing is lost, but much is forgotten.

And now, what? Shall we continue trying to gain dominance over other cultures, over other people? Hamingja in every particulate or group wants to be dominant, truth be told- when it expresses itself in the patterns of culture, in tribal identities, in the patterns of sacredness, even in a single human body and mind, it wants strength, preservation, and honor. And it seeks it. It will scorn others and only be content when the others submit to it and call it superior, or when the others at least admit it as an equal, and when it admits the others as equals, and kinship is established there between them- kinship that comes with sacred obligations, and a sharing of Hamingja, such that both become stronger and better.

Does this mean that we can expect a culture war that will only end when one culture remains? Does this mean that peace between religions (to make another poignant example of group-Hamingjas that have caused so much conflict in our world) is impossible? Christianity and Islam won't be equal to any; they will have submission, they will change all others, and absorb them, destroying any traces of the former religions they encounter. Throughout their history, these religious ideologies have done just this. Islam still desires to do it with great energy. The zeal-laced spirit of Christianity has largely been lamed in the west, and now faces its accelerating extinction, its own Hamingja expended and weakened by too many underhanded and vicious deeds (a fate that awaits Islam one day, as well, Gods be thanked.)

The Surging Power in the Present Hamingja-Age

So how can we deal with other cultures, but also other religions? I will state only my own belief on this matter. I believe that the world-age, the Hamingja-age, if you will, has changed. We are not living in Ancestral times, though we are our Ancestors. The Hamingja that was then has moved down lines of life into us, and it is here, now. But other deeper changes in Fate have taken place, and the World Age is different.

We humans have surged out to every border, in every land, and crossed every ocean. There are billions and billions of us now. Conquest is no longer a true working solution in such a world. Submission through violence costs too much now, and births too many dangers. Only what I have been calling "incorporation" can be the way forward- and I don't mean "joining forces" in this sense, as much as I mean recognizing that others simply have their place, and, insofar as they are not threatening to destroy all that we know is sacred, letting them be who they are.

Because the time has come wherein the Hamingja of the whole has reached a point it never could have been at before: we have all collectively embraced, on the mental level, a conception of the world that has never existed before, a world that is much smaller than our Ancestors thought, and now intimately connected and made tiny by the digital sorcery of this age. Hamingja itself surged forth from the primal beginning with no "goal" other than to be what it was- a whole- and to manifest a cascading exuberance of life and power. And it has carried human minds and bodies to the limits of the world.

The circle of kindred and relationship was expanded by our Ancestors as they fought and pledged and explored through the world, a circle made larger and larger by the ancients, until it came to include plants, beasts, Gods, lands, and then other peoples. This is what Hamingja inclines towards- recognized relationship, and always towards a broadening of horizons until all is encompassed, and all particulates know themselves as the whole- and yet, still exist as particulates made noble through the recognition.

Of course, relationships must be based on just principles; it is not possible to have a relationship with another person or being who means you the worst form of ill- but in most cases these days, these days in which moderation and compassion are possibilities more so than they were before, "relationship" can take on new dimensions.

As much as it pleases the fiery and ancient souls in us to imagine fighting and destroying those we feel threaten us and our own ways, sadly, the World-Age now makes new demands on us, and the "others" out there can have any dangers they sometimes pose to us eliminated in ways that don't include traditional violence.

With the inspiration and wit of the Hamingja and the Heathen group-soul, arguments, cleverness and intellect can stop enemies in their tracks these days (mentally, legally, socially, and even physically), and can even go further and change their minds and the minds of their children to be more sympathetic to our cause. All can come to see the sense in our notions of liberty and the importance of the uniqueness of identity. In this way, there are many ways to still win glory, and turn foes into allies- or at least banish foes to a safe distance that never need be crossed.

It is true that sometimes physical confrontations are unavoidable, in places, occasions in which we must defend ourselves and our ways from those who cannot or will not understand who and what we are. At times like that, the Hamingja emerges in strength and it must be channeled in the oldest of ways to eliminate a threat, though always keeping in mind the need for justice in our acts. Every human being has a natural right to defend the Ancestral force inside them, which surges forth from the depths and manifests a sacred imperative to live and be well, free of the contempt or scheming of others. When conflicts come, between persons or even communities or nations- the stronger Hamingja will prevail, one way or another. This was a sacred truth known to the Ancestors.

Whatever the case may be, I am Heathen, and I know what the Hamingja in me looks like, who it is, what it is, and what it wants for me and mine. As father of a family, I speak for our Ancestors and the Disir that follow within us, and the Fylgja-Dis that follows within me. My voice is the voice of grandmothers and grandfathers long departed, so I choose to use it as honorably as I can. All Heathens in my world feel the need, the burning urge, to stand fast for the Ways of their Ancestors, and they will represent their Ancestors with every day and night of their present life. That must and will be, until the true end of all Ages, and the world-rebirth.

The Yule-Wights Come Near

2010-12-06T11:18:00.000-08:00

In winter's rage
Seek the fire-keeper;
Woe in that time
To men and beasts
Though seeds hide
And later golden grow

* * *

We have washed ourselves clean in the birch-dales
And now stand in the hallowed place of the Yew;
Before the doors of Sunna's house may Jolnir show Sig-
Holy might from Heaven's Halls,
Holy might and main from All-Giving Earth,
Drighten of Gods and Alfs impart peace.
Grist to our houses, Frith to our joinings,
And Ljosalf-blessings on our farthest farings.

The Manifesto of the Atheling

2010-12-03T09:31:00.000-08:00

This third draft of a Manifesto I'm writing, describing a code of living for the “Interior Elite” or the Athelings – is, in a sense, my attempt to rebirth a code of Master Morality for modern people. This work blends elements of the Perennial Tradition, primordial Pagan models of spiritual and symbolic worldview, and Classical virtue all mixed with a generous dash of Ancestral Traditionalism and Spiritual Ruralism- just perfect for (and quite expected from) a mind like mine. But I have a feeling that I'm not alone. This is for the true nobles.

* * *

The Manifesto of the Atheling
Copyright © 2010

The "Interior Elite" or the "Aristocrats of the Soul"- those for whom we follow the lead of history and tradition and re-anoint with the princely title “Atheling"- are herein described. The term “Atheling” has, for this study and meditation on morality, been stripped of its old political associations (once it referred to the scion of any noble family) and is now given a more profound, internal, and universal meaning which speaks to moral and spiritual nobility.

1. The Athelings of our world have three things in common: they all evidence a natural thoughtful introspection, a desire for the calm beauty and quiet simplicity of the rural landscape, and a natural disdain for degraded modernism.

2. Spiritual "Ruralism" is not a re-statement of the older notion that a life based on farming or agrarianism is morally superior to a life spent in the giant maws of our cities; it is, instead, a call to appreciate, preserve, and seek out whenever possible the only peace and serenity in the exterior world that can match and sooth the thirst for peace and serenity within- the peace found in the untamed, unspoiled, or prudently and respectfully modified countryside.

3. Far from the crowds, the madness, the damnable noise, and the hosts of predatory minds warped violently by the poverty of aggregation, is found the only true refuge for the Atheling.

4. The Atheling will always cultivate a mental and spiritual detachment from modernity, though they are forced by Fateful circumstances to dwell among its artifacts, and among the anonymous masses of its unthinking disciples.

5. This detachment nourishes a dignified spirit; it partially soothes a soul forced to drink the bitter waters of the dull, uninspired aesthetics, the crimes of unrestrained capitalism, unrestrained collectivism, industrialism, and the stultifying social and religious choreography that all join together to define the spirit of the modern age.

6. In the special detachment of the Atheling, the entire sublime field of experience, anciently interwoven with reason, creativity, and a taste for the mystical (that sacred reality beyond our rational understanding) is safely preserved from the shallow absurdity of materialism and the arrogance of the materialistic sciences.

7. That divine creativity which alone can spare the soul from a painful famine and final death in the barren modern wasteland, is sheltered and flourishes in detachment from the clumsy grasping of the rude masses.

8. For the true Athelings of our world, Nature is never judged to be mere “material” and “resource”; it is symbol and spirit, never separate from the living and enduring being of each person.

9. The Atheling sits, unseen by the world, on a throne of highest dignity at the center of a kingdom of conscience. The noble man or woman always experiences two lives, a life of necessity in the outer world, and a life of eminence within.

10. In the detachment of the Atheling, the stains of modernity cannot cling to his or her spotless garments; the sovereign will of the Atheling is not moved, though a billion voices together call for that will to bend.

11. That sovereign will is instead freely given over to the dictates of the quiet and faultless conscience which moves and perceives with nature's all-encompassing fluidity, and that will is given freely to itself, draped in a cloak of creativity, crowned with the diadem of inspiration, and co-existing in serene trust with the ancestral and primordial wisdom that first established the foundations of the world, the foundations of excellence and heroism, and the foundations of a just social communion, so long ago.

12. Coeval with the perennial patterning of human experience is the primordial wisdom that was the provenance of sacred mythology- those precious and timeless stories of Gods and Heroes that are keys to insight and truth for the discerning and aristocratic soul. In these things trust can be reliably placed.

13. The Atheling is beholden to no modern judge, nor human spiritual authority; like all beings, he or she will only be finally and truly judged by the ancient voices and the enduring primordial spirit by which all things are rightly measured.

14. The true Atheling does not stand out of any crowd, nor do they blend in; they are immune to the tyranny of the group-mind, the hysteria of mass unconsciousness, immune to the inducements or threats of the powerful few, and unmoved by the manipulations and power-games of the disempowered many.

15. Passing trends do not obsess the Athelings; nationalism does not impress or impassion them, and wasteful, thoughtless living arouses only a just contempt which at any rate does not distract them from the path of sovereign will and the quest for truth.

16. For the demonstrable good of society, the Athelings make sacrifices; the for the good of husband, wife, children, and dearest companions, they sacrifice even more.

17. The saga in which the noble one will be remembered, their true fame, is in the flesh of offspring, in the memories of those dearest and closest, and the in the unfailing memory of the Godly world that remains invisible yet evergreen, even in this age wherein wisdom lies abandoned and is seldom found.

18. The fear of pain and lust for pleasure alike are secondary concerns in any decision the Atheling makes; a noble bearing born of interiorized truth and the balanced, reasoned dictates of conscience accompany the Atheling’s will in any action.

19. No action is well-taken without reference to the divine; the traditional origin of true human culture is the union of the human and godly worlds, and therefore the Atheling, as a bearer of the spirit of the true culture which shines behind the long descent of history, raises (through spontaneous and organic ritual) every intentional action of substance or potential gravity to the level of a sacred act.

20. The fantasies of the noble man or woman contain more truth than the "facts" tossed about and cherished by the peasants of modernity.

21. The interior spaces of the self- that unseen country free of the anguish of time’s decay, which forever borders the profound depths that are source to all persons and things- are the fields in which the Atheling plants the seeds of life, loyalty, affection, and highest aspiration to truth.

22. That interior self, and the Godly spirit that dwells forever there, is the only justification Athelings need for any act of will; they never apologize for arising in might, or for seeking or seizing what they or their own need for life or for their flourishing.

23. The Athelings are not strangers to acts of compassion; real nobility is also marked by fairness and compassion. Their occasions of compassion never come about under compulsion, nor are they condescending acts of pity, but freely chosen displays of solidarity with another soul that struggles.

24. Athelings never apologize for strength or virtue. They never apologize for the outcomes of their own willed actions working in clear-sighted tandem with their conscience.

25. Athelings never complain about powers and forces operating outside of their control in the body of nature, nor superior forces that no courage or ingenuity of man can tame or defeat; they simply and wisely endure the unavoidable outcomes of these things.

26. Noble human beings never debase their humanity, their bodies, their souls, or their spirits by consenting to accept a degraded, guilt-ridden vision or understanding of those vessels of truth and virtue.

27. What is most precious to the true noble is given to the deepest interior of the self, never to be lost again. That great interior realm is an impregnable fortress, safe from the assaults of the degenerate age, from the shallowness that masquerades as morality and righteousness in the outer regions, and from the greatest temptation of all- that seduction that would unseat from the throne of will and conscience he or she who rightly occupies it.

28. The Atheling never feels guilt; they only feel shame for the times when they allowed their own sovereign will to be subverted and led away to the outcome of their own pain, displeasure, or harm, or the harm of others. In that shame, they re-master themselves, and wax mightier, to the accomplishment of the highest ideals.

29. The Atheling dies- alone if need be- for this morality of strength and virtue which cannot, by its very nature, submit to the wills of lesser men or demons.

* * *

The Missionaries of Heathendom?

2010-08-28T12:46:00.001-07:00

The Missionaries of Heathendom?
Our Present, Our Growth, and Our Possible Future

The "Fastest Growing' Religion?

Is Paganism of any sort, or all Paganisms out there together, the “fastest growing religion” in the West? There is much talk these days about the spread of Heathenry, and of Pagan religions in general. It goes without saying that there are more neo-Pagans of various stripes than traditional Heathens, Heathens here meaning followers of the Asatru religion, or Theodism, or the like. But taken as a whole, does the (painfully) generalized "Pagan" movement really grow as dramatically as some claim?

The best answer I've heard was during a discussion on "The Wild Hunt". A rather insightful fellow there said "The reason "the Pagan community" *seems* to be "gaining adherents" is because, in my opinion, there are no bounds that define what paganism is."

He is very right; when you get outside of the world of reconstructionism, of traditional ethnic and scholarly approaches to the Old Ways, you find yourself in a miasma of ill-defined, sometimes indefinable quasi-religious movements that all claim to be "Pagan".

This is the new-age miasma that I am referring to, of course; the broad "movement" of various forms of badly watered-down Wicca and new-agery that anyone can begin claiming as their own "ancient tradition" after just reading a book or a website. These watery hodge-podges have all the usual Eastern new-age elements ("all the gods are one god", a belief in Hindu-like or Buddhist-like reincarnation, and usually a "Great Goddess" somewhere) and people who find, create, and maintain these beliefs tend to be young, very liberal, and quite dramatic.

These people are seldom defined by who they are and what they believe, but in how flamboyant they can be and how in line with the liberal political agenda they are. They know more about chakras and the cabbala than the actual cultural stories of the Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe. They want to "draw down the moon" more than re-create the ancient and powerful ritual of sacrifice, in some form, to re-establish bonds of reciprocal giving with the living, individual Gods.

Whatever their failings may be, they are what the mainstream of the non-Heathen or non-Pagan public actually see; the eye of the media and the eye of the common man on the street encounters them far more often than they encounter serious traditional Heathens or reconstructionists. And, whether we like it or not, we Heathens get judged by the standards these new-agers set. This presents an issue worth considering, and getting back to.

A Sad State of Affairs, Really

I don't think that "Paganism" is growing so quickly- I think that, since anyone can claim to be Pagan at any time, and many do, it seems that way. But many of these "Pagans" drift away from their proclamations just as quickly as they make them. These people have, somewhere inside them, a desire for the Old Ways- I don't doubt that. But, finding no real focus, and finding only fads and passing fashion statements, that desire (lacking grounding) fades away.

It's a sad state of affairs, really. I've often said that even the worst new-ager team is better than the best Christian or Muslim one, and I mean that (however painful or tedious I find them all). But the facts would seem to be clear, to any who observe trends of "growth"- we cannot count on the general "new age" world to reliably grow into anything of social consequence beyond what it has already become.

It's done some interesting and important things- battles have been fought for constitutional rights on various issues, to Pagan symbols on grave stones, Pagan chaplains in the military, Pagan chaplains in Prison, Pagans in public office, and brave, bold men and women have taken these steps- and not all of them have been Heathen. The best and finest of the non-Heathen world are people with formidable spirits, and may Allfather and the Disir keep them safe and give them victory.

But I still believe that we won't see much beyond what we've seen now, precisely because "Paganism", as it stands, means very little. Of course, it means something different to nearly every Pagan you ask, but in meaning so many things, it ultimately means little. It has little strength to establish itself as an entity of its own, with clear boundaries and some form of identity. It will remain as it is: small cults of personality and internet celebrities and some yearly conventions and festivals for the big stars to attend, a lot of mass-media paperbacks and renaissance festivals with booths selling pentacles and Willendorf Venus jewelry.

The Dreaded Trap

Should we be concerned about the "growth" of Heathenry? Or even "Paganism", in general? Should this be an issue of discussion? What are the theoretical benefits of creating a larger, more cohesive "Pagan" movement? Or even creating a centralized "Heathen" movement? More political representation? The exploding of "myths" about "us"? A solidification of "our" identity as a suffering minority faith, persecuted and here to fight for our rights? (That's the idea I get from most new-agers, though not from many Heathens, thank the Gods).

There is a reason that even the "liberal" media doesn't take Paganism of any stripe seriously- because they can't codify it, present it in a way that the average red-blooded American can understand on the news, and because a lot of the "pagans" today have to take silly-sounding names, dress in tie-dyed Celtic knotwork robes, and make a spectacle of themselves on television or Youtube that is immature by any measure of maturity that I can personally think of.

Beyond maturity, it's undignified. These people are definitely trying to express something spiritual and important to them, but cut off from the needed education on what the real old ways were about, their "new old ways" are nothing short of embarrassing.

I can say that it would be nice to have more political protection/representation, and more friendly portrayals in media. It would be nice if the positive and useful perspectives that the Heathen way actually contains could reach the people outside of Heathendom- I believe many problematic social issues could be addressed by giving Indo-European rooted cultures in the modern day (and the people of Indo-European descent, whether genetic or cultural descent), a sense of heritage and pride in the accomplishments of their true Ancestors.

People cut off from their past and their source cannot truly flourish, nor find real purpose in this world. Perhaps the "cultural stagnation" that we've seen for centuries has a deeper origin than most people imagine!

We all know how much the world could benefit from people today adopting a spiritual-ecological approach to nature, and the ancient religions often experienced the sacred in terms of the natural world, so there is a natural advantage there, too. For most Pagans of any stripe, becoming "Pagan" is a return to seeing this world as ensouled, or full of spirits, or Gods; and that sort of reverence for nature is a powerful basis for dealing wisely with the environment.

I think that nothing but good can come from people respecting the Old Gods, for I have seen their might, kindness, and wisdom in my own life.

But how would Heathens- or even the non-Heathen pagans- go about introducing these things about themselves and their religion to the world, without falling into the dreaded trap of "evangelicalism"? Even neo-Pagans don't tend to be this narcissistic or this far gone- even they don't want to be going door to door playing the "knock knock, ever heard about the Great Goddess?" game. And Heathens, with very, very few exceptions, aren't actively seeking members in that manner. At most, Heathens will put some posts on the internet in various places advertising their community, with a polite invitation for "interested" people to come by for a beer or a blot.

Don't Look Down on Small Teams

The New-agers are, generally speaking, more willing to accept flashy personalities to speak on their behalf: they have a small corps of best-selling new-age authors with high dollar websites, busy blogs, and a lot of "public rituals" done at conventions and spiritual merchandising gatherings. But Heathens?

The few umbrella organizations of Heathens (and the oldest) that boast across-state lines members are still quite small, and aside from crossing paths with media every now and then when some issue related to racism comes up, or helping local prison wardens to "understand" Asatru among the inmates, these (sometimes very honorable) men and women cannot speak for the Heathen movement as a whole. They never have, and never will.

This is not a rebuke of those men and women; it's just an observation on the nature of Heathenry.

So how are we going to "grow"? Do we need to? Speaking directly to Heathens now, I must say, even the "big boy" Heathen organizations are still small- splinter small- compared to even a moderate-sized Methodist church in any American town. The membership in the "big boy" Heathen organizations tend to be more quality- more faithful, more tied to the heart and spirit of Heathenry, but they don't surge in numbers. Are their members all the sires and matriarchs of huge families of new Heathen children? No, not really. Even their Heathen children (like my own) may find Christianity one day, thanks to a boyfriend or girlfriend or husband and wife, and leave the Old Ways, due to the miracle of "love".

We all know it. The movement is beautiful, powerful, the Gods are real, and powerful- but the movement, as much power as it has, does not have fire for rapid (or even steady) growth. I'd like it to, actually; as I said, I think it could help this world and many people in many ways. But Fate has the final word on these matters.

As things stand, it seems Fatefully allotted for us- for all of us, Heathen or otherwise- that we will see our population of adherents remain about where it is now, for many years or generations to come. Hey- it's not all bad; Christianity was also once a tiny movement of a few people gathering here and there in backwater Roman towns, and alleys in big cities, or on their couches in their homes, and after 300 or so years of that, they managed to subvert politics and bring about the greatest social change in the history of the West.

So, I don't mean to be down on a small movement. Maybe it's time to admit that we are still young; even if we feel the ancient power of our ways, and even if we feel very old in spirit, at times, we're young as a reborn, revived movement in the Christian West.

How can we not feel ancient? Our ways are as old as human culture, and yet, our ways and Gods and symbols and religious impulses are alien to the eyes of people who see us- people whose own Ancestors once did and believed much the same things as we modern Heathens do now. It's a strange amnesia, a strange denial, a strange lack of memory. It's also a perilous loss of wisdom, and a crime against honor, to see the Ancestors' ways so forgotten, sometimes butchered, and even mocked, in some circles.

No Fire Burns Forever

But the impulse to believe in the Old Ways is (clearly) still here- in each one of us. We didn't choose to have it, and it isn't going anywhere. It was always here. But where will it lead? Who can say?

I can say this, with some certainty- as people become more and more disaffected with Christianity, they will seek alternatives. This is the destiny of organized, revealed religions- they begin on a flimsy basis, and thus, have no destiny which is worthwhile. Take Christianity, as an example: it began in a desperate, grasping need for a "savior" to come and fix the poor, lost, helpless humans- it began and still begins in a desperate need for "love", for holiness, for an identity to hold on to, and to have manufactured certainties that life doesn't tend to offer people. They needed to know the "truth" about things... and didn't want to go through the many difficulties that the truth requires before she will unveil herself. They preferred to have a book and other people just tell them the answer.

And Christians back in the day (as well as now) settled for their quick answers, no matter how harmful or absurd those answers were. This dim psychology only knows one thing: it's better to believe something, anything, than to be uncertain. There is a deadly pride here that will not allow some people to just admit that they don't know the answers to every question life poses, and that no one does.

Then, after 16-17 centuries or so, the fire of the initial massive burst of zeal finally blazed out. It ends in the same place it began: in uncertainty, fear, and in need for something to hold on to.

Truth be known, the fires of Christianity blazed out long ago- centuries ago- only rote tradition and custom has kept it going this long. This is why "revivals" are always being attempted by the most hysterical of Christians- always that killing need to "revive" the corpse. And the answer is always disappointment and silence and guilt after the revival fire dies out, which it always does.

Islam's turn is coming soon, and even sooner, now that they have encountered the marvels of Western culture, which invalidates their worldview in countless ways, and introduces them to different ways of thinking and living, more liberated ways. Even the false prophet's ravings must go back to the same silence they emerged from, as the world cycles and discards yet another religious movement. They come and they go, forever.

So, as these revealed religions come crashing down, their adherents look around with a "what now?" look on their faces. If we are there, presenting a mature front, with a solid basis for what we believe, born in the world's oldest truths and spiritual beliefs, we may see our numbers begin to grow. Half of what keeps people from really being open-minded about modern Heathenry or Paganism is the disapproval of Christian society for these things- fear of disapproval from family, community, friends, and the like. When our society no longer accords religious groups major air-time, and when the voices screaming for ten commandment tablets in all government buildings and (christian) prayers in school all go quiet, that pressure will be gone.

The Only Missionaries We Need

Wow! Doesn't that sound like a vulture's approach! Wait till their corpse goes silent, then start picking the meat off! It may seem that way, but it is not. Organic religions like Heathenry, and even the well-meaning attempts at Paganism on behalf of the new-age kids, are not vulture religions; they are the ancient land and sky that these revealed monotheistic religions have been throwing their 17 century-long fit upon. When the temper tantrum of the revealed religions finally calms down, when they lose their breath, and vanish, as they must, land and sky will remain.

Land and sky welcome any to come home to them again, they give all, take all, and give again, without moving even a bit from where they were. Natural peace and sanity is always possible. What shall we do in the meantime? Make Heathen missionary teams? No. But making a more serious and mature presentation of ourselves in public is a must. Insisting on boundaries between ourselves and the Non-Heathen who lack the needed maturity, insight, education, and depth of spirit to be a credit to the revival of ancient European religions in the modern day is also a must.

Every person who finally gets fed up with the ephemeral promises of organized religions, and the politics, and the madness, drifts on seas of uncertainty for a while, seeking better horizons, greener lands. And Heathenry is certainly a good, green country, full of rest for those whom the Gods still watch over, even though generations of their families before unconsciously fell into ignorance about the Gods.

In this age of rapid information sharing, we can reach people in incredible ways- but not necessarily "missionary" ways; by simply and honestly presenting a spiritual maturity and extolling the dignity of the Ancestral Way to the public, we can attract precisely the sorts of people that will be a credit to us. In a sense, the only "missionaries" we need to help our cause are Christian missionaries- the more people they insult, badger, use fear-tactics on, and in general harass with their nonsense, the more appealing non-Christian religions will seem to the discerning.

And we should seem more appealing, because we aren't insane. We're doing what the Ancestors were doing before the religious hysteria of revealed, organized religions spread like wildfire through Europe, and subverted the sanity that was before. But fires burn out, always. Let it be, Gods, let it be. Let the old growth forests return, and let us have peace in their dark, sheltering boughs.

Were the Viking attacks self-defense against Christianity?

2010-02-17T14:54:00.000-08:00

I found an excellent article, linked below, outlining a profound new perspective on the Viking raids on Christian settlements and monasteries during the Viking era:

http://medievalnews.blogspot.com/2010/01/viking-attacks-on-europe-were-self.html

"A new theory about what drove the Vikings to raid Western Europe in the late eight and ninth centuries has been published. It suggests that the Vikings in Denmark were reacting to a threat from the Carolingian ruler Charlemagne, who was seeking to destroy their society and impose Christianity on them.

The theory was put forward by Robert Ferguson in an article for the December 2009 issue of BBC History Magazine. His book, The Hammer and the Cross: A New History of the Vikings, was also published in November.

Starting in the 790s, Viking ships began raiding throughout Western Europe and the British Isles, often targeting monasteries. Ferguson points out that peaceful contacts between the Norse peoples and Christian societies, such as trading with each other. He therefore asks why did the Viking attacks begin when they did?

But with the accession of Charlemagne in 771, the Carolingians began to implement a new program of converting their pagan and neighbors and promoting Christianity. Charlemagne launched numerous invasions of the Saxon peoples led by Widukind.

In a podcast interview, Ferguson adds the goals of Charlemagne were to force the Saxons "to abandon their culture, political system, beliefs and everything, and make them part Christians and part of his empire."

Ferguson notes an episode of "ethnic-cleansing:" when, in 782, Charlemangne's armies forcibly baptised and then executed 4,500 Saxon captives at Verden, a town close to Denmark. The Danes would have been well aware of what was happening with the Saxons anyways, as Widukind was married to sister of the Danish king, Sigfrid, and often took refuge in Denmark to escape the Carolingians.

Considering the situation, Ferguson writes, "Should the Vikings simply wait for Charlemagne's armies to arrive and set about the task? Or should they fight to defend their culture?"

But the Norse could not fight the Carolingian military directly - instead they went after soft-targets, such as monasteries, which were symbols of the growing Christian encroachment. Ferguson says, "everything points to a hatred that goes beyond just robbers who just wanted money."

The article goes on to describe these early Viking attacks, and how their raids expanded throughout Europe, with Viking kingdoms developing on the British Isles and elsewhere.

Several other explanations have been put forward for Viking violence, such as innovations in shipbuilding which encouraged piracy, and overpopulation in Scandinavia, which forced many of its people to leave their homeland in search of fortune.

The article, "The Vikings: Why did their violent raids begin?" is in the December 2009 issue of BBC History Magazine."

I'm a Heathen, Not a New Ager

2010-02-14T12:53:00.000-08:00

I wrote a list of twenty salient facts about Heathens that separate the majority of them from the mainstream of the "new age" movement. You can see it here:

I'm a Heathen, Not a New Ager

Blot to Odin

2010-02-06T00:57:00.000-08:00

Hear me, Wild Hunt's Grim Lord, Wish-Father Wandering,
Warg-master, Wolf in Timber Howling,
Wooer of Gunnlod, two ravens following!
Odin, High Lord of the Ancestral Host,
Fare in secret to my fire-lit hall,
Come to your honored seat,
And receive your cup of holy mead.

* * *

This short article contains a form for modern Blots or sacrifices, close to the custom of Blot as it is done in the Idavoll Kindred, but also (I think) representative of most "general" Heathen Blots. It's good for poetic usage as well as a general inspirational model. The Blot itself is for the Sig-Father and Warg-Father, Odin, but the form can be extended for use in Bloting other wights.

Click Here to see it: Blot to Odin

My Song of Glory for the Heathens

2009-12-13T18:28:00.000-08:00

"Hail the troth-found folk of the heath
Great fame for their struggles borne!
Limbs of doughty kin answer their need,
The love of Gods and Disir their meed.
Great is the wisdom of Herjan's song,
Blessed with luck all who know it
Blessed with hap all who keep it;
Their joy-fires are lit behind the holt
Their fain toasts go on in secret."

* * *

This song of glory is written for the Ásatrúar who fill the heaths and forests and hills of our wide land, and any land beyond the sea. In the new Pagan era, those of the Heathen troth are many, but many more are silent, living their lives with quiet patience and sometimes quite alone. They read the Eddas and stories of old, keep faith and troth with the Old Man and with mighty Red-Beard, with The Lord of Alfheim and with his Amber-eyed sister, the Dis of the Vanir-folk. They raise toasts at high Midsummer and feel the approach of the Ancestral Host at Midwinter, and the blood of their blots spill a thousand times unheard, every moon that passes.

Listen to my song further- praise the hidden folk, the people of the Heath, the silent throng of Heathens who do not entertain the public eye or discourse, but who are the steadfast body of the faithful. It was people of the land that gave them a name and voice again, a man named Sveinbjörn who farmed the ground and composed poetry, on an island in a cold ocean; it was mothers and fathers and children that came to answer the call first. We stand on the backs of heroes, all of us; heroes not for well-praised books of meticulously researched lore nor vain attention-mongering, but heroes for simple faith and courage and respect for the true faith of their ancestors.

Heathens of this world, raising horns with hope, Where so many have forgotten, you remember. Where so many abandon the many for the one, you know the many and have their ear. Where so many surrender to despair or apathy, you maintain a fire of life and wonder inside your hearts.

The end is in the beginning; the shape of conception is the shape of the end. Where many other Pagan organizations were born in the stew of reactionary politics and faddish obsessions, Ásatrú, the great and indigenous faith of the North, was born in plowed earth, poetry, hardy souls, bravery, fields of snow, crashing waves, and glowing fire. It was born in the minds of people whose love was the finding of herbs to address illness, speaking with land-wights, and respect for the lore of old. They didn't set out to parade vulgar campaigns of change in the world; they never set out to shock the values of non-Heathens in their lands, they never set out to make foes of other faiths (though prejudices were sure to be born from others) they set out to set their souls at ease amid the pleasures of ancestral wisdom and belonging. Give a person that peace, and all else will follow.

This is the Ur-Law that all Heathens can proudly claim as their origin. This is the Wyrd woven for us by the heroes of our way. This is why all who claim the creed of the Heathens, in all its many forms, stand apart from other Pagans of our world; our strong numbers are quiet more than loud, thoughtful more than foolhardy, satisfied more than seeking, as Allfather bade them be. Like the land and the land-wights that we call kin and friend, we are as enduring as the stones.

The modern Pagan stream that thrusts itself upon the stage of the world will rise and fall on tides of amazing wonders and baleful failures, like all whirling powers of men. It will inspire and enrage, it will mesmerize and shock, and it will finally settle down to embers and fade, to change its shape to a new form for the times to come. The Heathens that belong to their own world, a deeper world, a thewful world, will gaze from silence.

My song of glory is for the lasting people, the faithful ones, the worshipers of Thor, slayer of evil, Odin, Master of Sorcery, for Frey, Guardian of the loaves of plenty, Freya, first in beauty, for Frigg, patient spinner from the fen-halls, for Heimdall, sharp-eyed watcher and protector, and for all the folk who give rightful worship to the Sacred Hosts. You are the dignity of the new Pagan era. What you believe is the ancient treasure sought by so many that was unearthed by hearts and minds, not picks and shovels. The faithless could not silence the Ancestral voices for long; here they are raised again.

What your voices say, as little as they may be heard, is the secret hope of every Pagan heart that beats this day. Few are called to the Troth-halls, but all long for the dignity and seriousness that is the religion of your everyday lives. To every Heathen that raises a toast alone, I say "you are kin of mine, we are kin together with the hosts of awe." To every kindred and hearth that passes a horn in the faith, I say "hail and might to you all- where your hlaut-bowls are spilled, there falls the greatest treasure man still possesses, true kinship." We are scattered, so unknown to most, but potent and unshakable.

May the kin of Odin endure, as they have for so long, to be the future of our new Pagan world! May those loved by the God of Thunder be safe! May those beloved of Frigg come to good ends, woven with the love of a Mother who is nurse to all the blessed young. Hail Ásatrú! Health and Blessings to the Heathens All!

End of an Era: The Heathen Eschatology

2009-12-12T14:46:00.000-08:00

Secularism has lamed Christian powers in the west. In the east, Islam is vomiting out its last pile of envy and spite, and soon, the forces of secularism and materialism will overwhelm even the bastions of Islam. It is inevitable, like the snows of Winter in the rafters of the world. It grows colder, colder, slowly, until the ice forms. No man or institution can stop it. None can halt the march of the ages, the weaving of Fate.

Israel, always a tiny group of people, have broken their strength through absorption into hateful populations that only gave them death and persecution, and have emerged as tiny enclaves of hopeful and socially active people who have finally had enough- like their Ancestors, they want to be left alone to keep their covenants and drink their kosher wines. With great joy, I can give the descendants of Israel the greatest compliment I accord to any monotheists: they've never tried to ram their God down my throat. I wish them well as the world continues to swallow them, too.

The age of religious absolutism is drawing closed. And it is a great time to be a human being, I must say. Now, as with any age, the forces of the previous age are resentful, and in their final, threadbare little stands of desperation, they kill, maim, grow desperate, make immense asses out of themselves on the stage of the world, but people no longer really care. I hate the twin forces of materialism and secularism, but I must say- blunt, freezing little tools that they are, they have a use.

Could Fate have woven these soul-numbing little terrors for a reason? It seems to me that they arise to address a fundamental imbalance in the human soul. If you force immense populations of people into the dark places of radicalism and insane religiosity, which certainly has happened to everyone in the last 2000 years, it seems that you exhaust the energy of the soul, and the deeper wisdom which was always there finally has to reassert itself. That deeper wisdom knows that all this insanity was a divergence from the Truth about man and this world. Like all wisdom, it is quiet and deeply immovable. You can plaster nonsense over it, but you can never really remove it.

When the fires of absolutism and fanaticism and false promises fade, only that wisdom is left, cool among the embers. The promises of the monotheistic West have failed; they have been shown to be empty, as empty as the "peace through submission" battle cry of the Muslim East. Only the dazed scions of Israel remain, blinking through the ashes, wondering just how in the HELL their Ancestral religion and God could ever have inspired movements like Christianity and Islam.

Well, those movements did more than just persecute them; those movements spread across the map like a black oil-slick, butchering non-Abrahamic, indigenous faiths everywhere, replacing the dignity of wisdom and Ancestral religion with the wicked crescent and the stark oppression of the cross. Gone was the diversity inherent in the human spirit, replaced with churches and mosques, all straining to fit everyone into the same creed. If there was ever a dark age, it was this one.

The Wolf-Age always surprises me. Of all the Nine Ages of the World, it appears to have the most room for shock and awe, for surprise, and for heroism. In the face of a Sauron-like flooding of Middle Earth, in which free peoples were locked in chains, a few lights of resistance and wisdom remained burning. And now, those lights, kept burning from long ago, have set fire to the dried out wood of the human spirit that was choked into silence and drought. The fire can't be controlled.

* * *
Even inside the largest dark age of the world, a new era is being born. And it is glorious to behold. There's something infuriating about watching the poor, empty, raging reactions of the former powers, but also something blissfully pleasurable. By the time you have to wail as loud as they do, you can be sure that their cause is dead and unrecoverable.

But that leaves us with new challenges. Once these failed experiments from the past die out, and die out they will, will the new powers be able to return to some semblance of sustainability and humanity? I can almost assure you that naked secularism, bolstered by the forces of atheism and materialism, can't do it. They are, in their own way, just as lethal as the insanity we had before. But I look at it this way- we can die under the wails of prayers and crusaders and deluded idiots, or under the syringes of doctors who think we are all just big science experiments, and societies that just sit around staring. I'll take the second way.

Or better yet, I'll create my own third way. I'll die like I lived, with the fire I feel burning in me, rejecting all of these hateful degeneracies and laughing my way to the Allfather's hall. He alone knows what truth was lost, and he alone knew why it had to happen. He alone waits for the few who remain true to the way of wisdom to burn out like stars fallen into a tar-like soup of apathy and falsehood. And those few will be called Allfather's Own; they will stand with him when the final forces of destruction come to smother all that remains of the resplendent, beautiful world that we have taken advantage of and besmirched with our pride and our willful ignorance.

Demon Materialism, Demon Despair, Demon Atheism, Demon Consumerism, blunt little blades of ice and oblivion! How I hate you. But no other weapons would have sufficed to cut the throats of the dark religious powers that held our world hostage. Your task is done. I should thank you. But I know that, in some ways, my throat may be next. Just as well. Something was going to destroy me from the day I was born. If you think you can do it, well, you know where to find me!

May the Hammer of the Gods continue to strike and crush those who smother the human spirit. May it turn on the giantish powers of modernity that have delivered us from one evil, only to threaten us with a new one. Let the great ice come, the great fires, and let all that we know and love freeze and burn to dust and ash. That too, has to happen.

But in the midst of it, let the fortunate few know the great joy of truth! If the final hurrah of the world must be this way, let's make the best of it. It's what the Gods would do, and what the Vala tells us they will do. How divine- to keep the hearth fire burning bright with joy, while the tide of darkness rises. If you are beginning to feel annoyed, dismayed, angry, scornful, or dismissive of my words, you are already feeling what I am saying, more than just reading. And that's good. May the Hammer of the Gods protect you, too, whoever you are.

The Doom of the Powers is coming. Whatever was good in this world will sleep in the deep places of the tree, safe from the destroying fires. Hel will give up her dead and all of the lost of this world, and they will see what the Vala has seen- new rivers pouring through new virgin wilderness, and the eagle flying again, swooping to catch fish anew. She has seen a new heavens and a new earth, and the Mighty Gods coming to their assembly again. She has foreseen it, because she has seen it many times, in my worlds before this one.

All worlds must in time be stained with darkness, but all worlds must undergo their purification and rebirth, too. A person is like that as well; each of us will be renewed. Glorious freedom! On those green fields and under that new sun- who will be the daughter of the sun currently above us- I look forward to speaking with you again.

Who Really Abandoned their Duty to the Truth?

2009-12-10T16:03:00.000-08:00

This is a five minute long video of a Catholic Priest, Father Robert Barron, and his comments on the "Danger of Turning Religion into a Toy".

The Danger of Turning Religion into a Toy

This is my response to him and his short talk.

* * *

This man has life and spirit, I can see that. But he also has the typical Christian narrow focus.

He begins with the assumption- which he takes as solid, literal truth- that humans are "hardwired" for "God"- and, in the place of God, he uses synonyms like "Truth", "Beauty", and "Good". That's very Neoplatonic of him, and I wouldn't mind that so much, except that the Pissed off God of Israel is not "Truth", "Beauty" and "Good". The God of Israel, which this man means when he says "God", is a being, an entity, not abstract universal qualities like "Truth", "Beauty", and "Good".

A being, an entity that gives laws and has a will and gets pissed off and floods the world to destroy sinners, is not a "quality". An entity- even a God- cannot simultaneously be a quality like "Truth", anymore than I can be a person and simultaneously a "happiness" or a "peace". It's like suggesting a square can be round. It's not possible. We're conflating qualities or aspects of reality that cannot merge without absurdity.

Now, let's drop the ancient Hebrew superstitions out of the equation, and give up on their hopelessly inane tribal theism. Let's give the priest, for one moment, the conclusion that "God" equates with "Truth" and "Beauty" and "Good". Now, we have something closer to the old notion of the Greek Philosophers, a notion of "The Good", or the "God of the Philosophers" as my professors once said- something distinct from the Hebrew "God of Revelations".

Let's say that the priest is correct and humans are indeed "hardwired" for finding the Truth, beauty, and the Good. His Christianity swoops in once more and prohibits him from allowing that people can discover Truth, Beauty, and Good in any way other than adherence to and agreement with his own dogmatic principles and beliefs. You can have "sorta" Truth, but it ain't "Ultimate Truth" unless you're proclaiming your faith in Jesus Christ, and (ideally) attending his church.

That's bosh. That's malarkey. Truth, Beauty, and Good are universal qualities that have countless manifestations in human lives, and a presence in all places, in all ages, worldwide. These qualities do not cluster exclusively around a single recent religion's triumphalist and exclusivist claims and mythologies. These revealed religions that want to stake total claim on Truth don't want to share, (it would certainly be financial bad business for them to share) but fortunately for us, their claims mean nothing. Truth was here long before them and will be here when their malignant organizations are washed away to dust by the tide of time.

But my critique of this man's message goes a bit further. I agree with him on some things that he says- people who give up on the natural quest for Truth and Goodness and assume the "who cares" stance that characterizes so many of the lost and degenerate of our age DO harm their souls- on this, the priest and I are in total agreement. He's also correct to say that people who repress this urge for wholeness and truth feel those repressed aspects of the soul "re-emerge" in harmful, twisted form.

But there's an issue here. He says that people who put aside "God" and the search for "God" see that repression re-emerge as addiction, or a lust for power, or what have you. He goes on to say that these things will never be enough, and indeed, I agree with him again. But how in the world does a person "have" God? Is he suggesting that the search for God actually ends, and that some blessed people have "found" God, and now, don't have addictions or lust for power, or lust generally, and none of the other false, shallow fixations that characterize so many people?

Precisely where are these saintly, happy people? I've known countless Christians, and they aren't all sitting around blissfully happy, "With" God, in lieu of all those other sorry alternatives that the poor unenlightened masses have.

This man talks a good talk about the benefits of "having" God in lieu of the shallow alternatives, but I've yet to meet anyone that appears to have seized on this holy state. EVERY Christian I've ever known- including pastors and priests- had one or more of the following: addictions, annoying personalities, troubles, rudeness, judgmentalism, depression, questions and doubts, greed, lust for power, pride, ego run amok, and any of the other issues that characterize Human Beings.

And, ironically, I don't truly hold these things against them- they are humans. But they are humans who make fabulous claims of having achieved some wonderful state above others, by virtue of their amazing Christian Truth. But it's bosh. Their own lives and minds and appearances don't verify their claims. All they really seem to have is a strong certainty that somehow, they "have" God, due to their "faith" or adherence to the dogmas and teachings of religion. Even when they can't "understand" God fully, or when things are hard for them, they have this "faith" that they've still achieved some great leap towards the Truth that others have not- but which others need to.

You'll forgive me for saying what's obvious to most, but I don't buy their claims, or his. Nothing I have experienced thus so far, and nothing I have read about Christian history and its impact on this world, leads me to believe that these people have a profound Truth that the rest of us lack.

They DO, however, have a disturbing and unwise story that they espouse, an aggressively evangelistic story of monotheism, anthropocentrism, human exceptionalism, triumphalism, elitism, and absurd, unqualified eternalism that many of us lack, but which most of us have already seen through on a philosophical level.

When I see things like this, it makes me appreciate how wise my Ancestors were, and why the organic Heathen religion is so important and relevant today: it can spare us from this particular brand of madness.

The "Truth" is not a colossal idea or set of doctrines that describe how the universe works to people, and the "Truth" is not a single monolithic idea or even a being; the "Truth" is not hidden, despite how the Philosophers and later the Monotheists want to present it that way (the better to position themselves to be able to "reveal" to others how to find it, thus winning a great measure of pride, fame, and money for themselves). The "Truth" reveals itself from moment to moment through every day of our lives, in every experience.

To hunt, to shelter from cold and heat, to raise children, to grow food, protect your loved ones, create art, build buildings, explore, compose poetry, make music, seek excellence in your crafts - all of these human pursuits are the Truth about what we are. We come to know the Truth about man and this world by experiencing it, not having it taught to us with hopelessly absurd metaphysical claims that can't be verified until we've died. Truth about human life never hid from us; we became convinced that it was hidden because we sadly allowed ourselves to believe a story that told us that we were flawed and lost.

We became, like spoiled children, unwilling to accept that the most obvious things could be our Truth. We wanted angels with trumpets and eternal bliss, not the simple pleasures of life, the love of family and kin, the great joy of surviving and thriving in this world. No longer content to be humans, we have to be Gods ourselves, or eternal spirits living in heaven. The absurdity of these things have poisoned our history for 2000 years, and poisoned our societies, our world, and threatened our survival. May the Gods guide the new generations of Heathens on the right course!

May we never forget what happened the last time Christians were given the power to "teach their Truth" to people who were brave enough to resist it:

Snorri Sturluson in the saga of St. Olaf chapter 73, describes the brutal process of Christianisation in Norway: “…those who did not give up paganism were banished, with others he (Saint Olaf) cut off their hands or their feet or extirpated their eyes, others he ordered hanged or decapitated, but did not leave unpunished any of those who did not want to serve God (…) he afflicted them with great punishments (…) He gave them clerks and instituted some in the districts.”

Indigenous Paganism and New Religious Movements

2009-12-09T15:55:00.001-08:00

Is the general term "Pagan" on the verge of a redefinition?

At the "Parliament of the World's Religions", some new and somewhat exciting/controversial statements were made by some of the persons who attended in the name of "Pagans" worldwide.

Let me begin by saying that I don't believe anyone or any small group of people can sufficiently and adequately "represent" Pagans worldwide. These people who appeared on the behalf of Pagans were not elected to go, or any such thing. Even if someone could "represent" Wiccans or other New-Age spiritual movements, Asatru and other such religions- which are always painfully lumped in with the rest- would certainly not be represented at all.

I'm pleased to report that, despite this strange and unsatisfactory state of affairs, that one of the Pagan attendees, Andras Corban-Arthen, made a very positive and somewhat profound statement about religious identity and classifications for modern Pagans. What he said is worth being reprinted here, and I shall do so by quoting online journalist and Pagan parliament attendee Ed Hubbard:

* * *

"...So the term Pagan itself is being redefined from this old Christian based definition. Part of the Teaching of Traditions series, created with the help of Pagan Trustees, describes Paganism as follows: “Paganism” is a collective term that most aptly defines Indigenous cultures of pre-Christian Europe, the Celtic and Germanic Tribes, The Balts, The Scandinavians, The Basques, The Slavs and many others.

The first Pagan presentation of the Parliament helped begin this change of identity and was called “People Call Us Pagans-The European Indigenous Traditions”, by PWR Trustees Angie Buchanan, Andras Arthen, and Phyllis Curott. The opening of the description is as follows: As the World confronts environmental devastation, we are beginning to appreciate the wisdom of Indigenous peoples who have lived thousands of years in sustainable harmony and spiritual connection with the Earth. After hundreds of years of suppression, most Westerners have forgotten that their ancestors once shared this wisdom as the Indigenous traditions of Europe. *

This concept of Paganism as being based deeply in European Indigenous Traditions has fascinated and found ground among American, European and Australian members of the Parliament. It helps move Paganism from being a New Religious Movement to an Indigenous tradition, and offers many more opportunities to reach out at the parliament.

As described by Andras Corban-Arthen most forms of modern Paganism can be described as part of the New Religious Movements as they were formed in the 20th century, yet there are several Pagan ethnic traditions that have survived Christianization. One such example is Romuva of Lithuania. It is these ethnic traditions that fit better into the description of Indigenous traditions, instead of New Religious Movements. It allows Pagans to be part of both New Religious Movements and also recognized as part of the Indigenous traditions. By accepting that Pagan Traditions are indigenous to Europe, then individuals must take another look and it presents them with a different paradigm of what Pagan stands for.

Further, Andras Corban-Arthen points out that Wicca, for example, cannot be seen as an indigenous Pagan faith practice and is instead a modern syncretic movement. Under this description Wicca therefore would not fall under the definition of Pagan, and would be squarely a New Religious Movement, while British Traditional Witchcraft could be considered a Pagan and Indigenous faith tradition. "

* * *

My hat off to Andras' bravery! The blast-back from Wiccans and others who do not fall under the heading of "indigenous" has already begun, and promises to be a raging debate for a long time to come. Here is my take on the entire topic of who is and is not "indigenous", and why the term "indigenous" is so important:

The only reason anyone gets worked up over "indigenous" is because they think that people saying "we belong to an indigenous faith" are trying to claim some legitimacy over others. But as a person who belongs to the indigenous faith of the Germanic people of Europe, I am not using the term with that intent.

Despite the attempts on the part of some peoples to try and stake an exclusive claim to the word, "Indigenous" is defined simply as "originating in and characteristic of a particular region or country"- and it also means "inherent" or "innate". Asatru did originate in the Northern regions of Europe, and it is characteristic of what pre-Christian Europeans of those regions were doing. Further, we believe it to be the inherent, innate religion of people of Northern European extraction. That's all. That's what it means, and I reject as political manipulation any other attempt to give this term "indigenous" any other meaning.

Wicca originated in England, but cannot be said to be "characteristic" of anything that historical Pagans or witches in England were doing before it, as the structure, while workable and sufficient, is new, pioneered by Gardner and other contemporary occult groups. I don't doubt Wicca's power or efficacy in the lives of the people who believe in it, and Wiccans are certainly allies to all Pagans today in the struggle for recognition. Also, Wiccans, insofar as they pray to Pagan Gods, ARE "Pagan", as I see no further definition for "pagan" needed beyond "People who believe in and/or worship Pagan Gods and Goddesses."

What qualifies as "Pagan" has been debated a long time; for the longest time, anyone who wasn't a member of an Abrahamic religion was classified as Pagan, but Native Americans, Buddhists, and others are offended by the word, for their own reasons. Now, it seems to be used for European non-Abrahamic faiths, and that's fine by me. I don't mind it at all. But the "indigenous" distinction is important to me, because all Pagans/New Religions cannot and must not be lumped together as a whole. That would be insulting to the truth about them all- different varieties of Pagan have different histories, different worldviews, different focus, and these things are very, very important to their thoughtful membership.

If we want an intellectually honest appraisal of the situation, we have to cease the lumping and start studying the great variety that we've all inherited.

I would like to end by saying that it's sad that such a distinction and conversation never happened in the mainstream of the Pagan community until unelected "representatives" of the "Pagan" world went to a parliament of world religions and brought it up. But however it had to come about, the conversation is now out and ongoing.

The Wolves of Winter

2009-12-08T18:22:00.000-08:00

When the weather turns lethal, you have no choice but to be smarter and tougher. It's 18 degrees outside right now, with snow as far as the eye can see- and more snow and ice-rain expected tomorrow. I'm excited. This weather makes you turn inward, and then makes you turn back and push against the powers that be- it makes you assert your will, makes you realize how unimportant so many of the things we get worked up over really are. Before this winter is over, -10 to -25 degrees is possible. All that stands between me and death is burning oil, wooden walls, the fellowship of my household warm bodies, and our own creativity.

The Ancestors were hard and tough, largely I think because they had to compete with other humans in bloody combat, but also because they had the cold to teach them. The Ancestors didn't have any illusions about the cold: it was a manifestation of Wyrd, of power from another world- the world of Niflheim, Ice-Home. It was the breath of Giants; a life-killing force that could and would overwhelm the world if contrary forces didn't balance it out. Luckily, contrary forces do exist.

Some of the Natives of this land weren't off mark about this either; to the Sioux, Waziah the Giant lived in the north and blanketed the world with white snow and cold- but that cold was a purifying power. It helped people, as much as it presented a danger. And that's part and parcel of organic wisdom; the contrary forces in nature had a place and a purpose that served all beings as well as hindering them at times. Part of living a happy life was to integrate these two poles of every power.

The Goddess Sunna has followed her track away to the distance, leaving this land I'm in now in the grip of cold powers. She'll come back, but until she does, the wolf-wights roam this place, eaters of the living and the dead. Frost giants don't tread here, else we'd all be frozen into blocks, but their breath and their awe-full distant presence now shrouds us in ice. Matter slows down; the wind now bites, and even sounds are swallowed in the sucking darkness. I've never "heard" such a silence as what exists on top of this snow at night.

It reminds us why the Godly work of creation is so precious- without warmth, creativity, technology, intelligence, artifice, artistry, and willpower, we'd all vanish into this darkness. In this time, your humanness stands out in sharp contrast to the gaping maw of raw nature, when she assumes her giantish face of cold. You find out more about yourself. And in the primal ice crystal-filled night space, Jolnir- Odin, the Yule-Father- rides his horse across the broad sky. His wisdom is like this darkness, because it was born in darkness. He can celebrate the sunny side of life alongside the frozen side, because he knows both sides of his being. May we all learn from his example and embrace the cold alongside the blessings of spring.

People have seen my winter side; they have seen the dismal depths to which my person can be driven. And people have seen my summer side, the caring person who is capable of much loyalty and compassion. I am two-faced and two-natured, like Allfather. I offer a cup of mead to my ice-blue Other Self. In the heat of the deep south, my other self was confused; it emerged in irksome, troublesome ways. Here it can run and play on brilliant white fields of virgin snow.

The wights of this winter won't overcome me and mine because a wolf lives in us that is just as strong- pure, savage, resentful wolves of will. This cold will discover a will-force in us that will make it rage in impotence at our inventiveness and undaunted drive. If this winter is cold and hard, we will be colder and harder. The next time some lame problem crosses my path, it will pale in comparison to the devouring cold. What the Gods have placed in us is an undying light that shines through extremes of cold or heat. We are undefeatable.

The Season of Memory

2009-12-03T22:11:00.000-08:00

A Heathen Sorcerer's Walk Through the Sacred Season of the Yuletide

* * *
There is snow falling, and a bright, large moon riding across the sky between great continents of cloud. When a man stands outside on the dark ground, on pale fields of snow glowing in moonlight, it's like standing in a dream. Shadows are never more black, and moonlight never more radiant, than when it becomes trapped in web-works of ice and shines out in a pale radiance.

The most powerful part of any walk in the winter night, to me, is the sight of houses from a distance- they are dark, too, but their windows glow in the most inviting orange and gold hue. Each of them is a warm center of life, their walls holding back the life-withering cold and ice. In a sea of freezing power, these ships of glowing life drift in place- seen from the shadowed sky, they would make the dark landscape seem aglow with golden stars.

All around me, in the village, in the woods, in the countryside, are islands of golden warmth, each of them the hearth of a family surviving another winter. Human life is persistent; its allies in the struggle for life are likewise persistent- fire, masonry, beams of wood, stone, and ingenious contraptions of wire and pipe that bring water and electricity in through the worst storms. We are enduring beings. We have endured countless winters.

From one window, a cat peers out at me. That tabby-colored cat sits in pure bliss, legs tucked under his furry chest, eyes narrowed into that tranquil meditative relaxation that cats seem to specialize in. The cat dozes in the warmth, totally unconcerned about the falling flakes of ice and snow that cascade down in front of its face just inches on the other side of glass. How many other cats, throughout the ages, have sheltered next to the warm fires of their masters in this time? That cat is a fellow traveler through time and history with me. I'm glad to see him so warm.

There are candles and wreathes and colored lights dancing about in places. The Winter Solstice time is here, and in the middle of all this frozen desolation, people are preparing to celebrate something as old as humanity itself. Most don't have any clue how far back it goes- most wouldn't think of it as going back before the birthday of Jesus, but these same people drag trees into their homes in this season, keeping alive a Heathen tree worship that certainly pre-dated the Nazarene by a great distance in time.

The name given to the supposed Galilean miracle-worker- "Christ"- has come to dominate what people in the west call this season of ancient power- Christmas- and the "advent" so awaited by the traditional faithful is nothing more than the appearance of this miraculous child. But older names for this time lurk below the surface, known to all who "Toll the ancient Yuletide carol."

* * *
When I stand in the cold and dark of the Yuletide, I always become introspective about the vastness of history and the chasm of eternity that yawns behind it. This time of year, more than most, sends my mind and imagination on a journey through the story of the West. That story begins in places that most people would shrug off as fiction more than fact, but fact it is- every bit of it. If you could have seen it, you would see more golden circles of fire glowing on snow under the veil of night- because ages ago, in the coldest and most distant of places, that's where the ancestors lived and held back the cold and dark.

They had tents, lodges, roundhouses, and villages, all glowing with healthy blazes that were beacons of survival in the frost-gripped world. They wandered a world that was not conveniently mapped out for them or easy to conceive of by whirling a plastic globe around. To the north was mountain; the east, forest; to the west rolling hills and valleys, and south, more forest, stretching as far as the eye could see. The life-giving flow of a river cut through nearby, and the Goddess of that river provided much for them. What was beyond what the eye could see? They didn't know. They would discover what; they were brave and always on the move. Where did the river come from? Who were the other people, the strangers, stalking through the forests south?

The ice and snow that blanketed their world, it was not just the predictable result of a meteorologists' report; it was magical power. It was the footprints of giants, the breath of giants, covering the world with their brutal power. It was power from a world of ice which lay far beyond, and the one day, they knew, the powers of light and life would shift and banish those cold powers, at least for a time. There was a struggle in the cosmos about them, which paralleled their struggle right here in the village or camp- to enclose themselves with safe circles of fire and strong men and women, safe in the sacred enclosure of kin.

There was nothing in the world that didn't hold some fascination, for all of it was mystical or magical power of a kind. For these people, the presence of something mystical or magical wasn't such a shock; they lived in a world full of Gods, a world full of powers. Some powers were human and animal; others were immensely greater. All were part of a web of power which excluded nothing. There were magical treasures, things humans could create or obtain, which granted safety or skill or power to their owners or their groups. There were places of power in the landscape to be found, the work of previous hands, either lost groups of human beings or perhaps the Giants themselves.

It sounds like high fantasy, but it is reality, plain and simple. This is our origin. Not just these people or their technologies, but their worldviews- their belief in the awesome sacred powers which surrounded them. When we forget these people, or consign them to a realm of fantasy, we forget so much about who we are. For who we are is partly determined by who we were- and in fact, I might say, the very best parts of us owe so much to who we were.

If we want to know where we are "going", as a culture, as massive groups of people whose bloodlines run back to those distant times, we have to look back to the ancients, for the clues to our final destination are found in our beginnings. The end is always present at the beginning, and the beginning at the end, because life and causality finally and ultimately describes a great circle of power. We aren't in an "open ended" universe, and we never were. We are enclosed in power and destiny, though it is a vision so massive as to seem quite bottomless to the person who lacks the poetic vision to really look.

My journey continues, through more dark trees and snow-covered fields, down the course of great rivers, to a southern sea that encloses the reaches of many glittering ancient civilizations. People here placed stone upon stone and raised monuments of awesome power. Here, they raised temples and gleaming cities by the water-lanes of commerce. Here, they forged ideas of philosophy that transcended their own concerns and attempted to embrace the entirety of things. Here, the Gods still lived and still joined with mortal men in the great work of destiny.

* * *
For countless generations, these societies- so different from the people of the Northern fires, and yet, so similar in other ways- wore out their Fated time, and achieved reaches of glory which have still not been matched by our vain modern day. Something of the old mysticism from time's first human dawn still lived in these ancient cities and cyclopean temples. Among the Romans, the great reign of king Saturn the Sower was commemorated in the darkness of December; the rites and celebrations of the Saturnalia were simultaneous to the joyous birth of the Persian savior Mithras. Life wasn't just enduring; it was being reborn, a new golden age was being celebrated, at the deep of winter.

These rites were half civilized and half barbaric- at times wild, orgiastic, yet solemn and profound at other times. Don't mistake me- the barbarism was found in the solemnity, not the celebration, for only people out of touch with the sacredness of the wild ever innovate the technologies and social systems that truly harm this world. But the ancient struggle of the wild and the structured pranced on in its mesmerizing leaps then, as it does now.

These Pagan people are my Ancestors, and yours. They are who we were, and in so many ways still are. I embrace them, all of them, and I love them. I appreciate their wisdom, their aesthetics, and I know their hopes in dreams by having a long look at my own. Without these great and brave people, nothing we have now would exist; not this language, this computer that I am staring at as I type, not our social values of democracy and humanitarianism, of liberty and scientific inquiry, our spirit of philosophy and our very souls. The very glass I lifted to toast with tonight, under a fresh sprig of mistletoe, was raised first by the Northern people from whom I gain this flesh and blood.

My journey has to take a dark turn now; the ragged ruins of the world around me still have some of the old wisdom glowing in them, like heat and light in the embers that remain after a majestic building is burned down. And the edifice of the ancient world's true life was burned down by fear and ignorance. Let us never forget the awful power of these twin forces- ever more devastating than any modern nuclear weapon, more pervasive than any political unrest. The precious Gods that once wandered with the Ancestors through the same snow that is under my feet, and who were once praised in temples of great majesty, were once abandoned by Kings and people of power, and gradually, by the commoners that followed them. Not everyone left the Gods behind, but many did, and soon, it was the sword that assured that only one way of believing would be allowed.

This shift wasn't simple, nor fast, nor did it reflect only a drama in the human mind; the world fell to ruins around it. Rome was undermined by it; Rome burned to the ground over it. The next fifteen hundred years are called "Dark Ages"- and not for no reason. The lamps of Greek learning were dark. Civilization's order collapsed. Literacy was lost. Ancient cultural arts and achievements were lost. The great spirit of the Northern folk was torn from the land itself and crowded into dirty villages and towns and cities, and into churches, whose harsh bells drove the spirits of the land away in disgust and fear.

There was no more magic to be found in the landscape or the mountains or in the worlds of Gods; that magic was categorized as satanic trickery and a snare of diabolism. No longer could the sun or moon or stars, or wells or groves of trees be a merging point for human souls to enjoy their connection with the sacred All; now, Popes wrote documents containing the penalties for those who enjoyed these ages-old activities.

* * *
When I look at the crosses on the church buildings near me, I see the cruelty of these ages staring back at me. I see the cross of ignorance, which has crucified countless people of my blood and of the same legacy as me. I see the old solar Gods, blazing out from their own ancient crosses, and even bloody dead Gods from Pagan times who emerged from their own deaths to the great joy of their followers, now sunk low while Jesus reigns from on high, morally pure, ready to judge the quick and the dead.

I see the continuation of the most distant and degenerate form of Roman Paganism in those churches. I see great hopes for eternal happiness, and I see despair. I see ages of ancient power echoing in the cross, that old power forming a great austere background of force that informs the entire edifice of Christianity, but which is ignored fully by the faithful themselves. That power, they reason, is God; that power is the Holy Spirit. A rather simplistic final product for so many centuries of hope and fear, of blood and conquest, of dead Gods and risen Gods, of decadent Roman courts and of dark incense-filled temples and churches covered with colorful mosaics.

Christians have never been free of the Saturnian Pagan Yuletide. Their savior gained a birthday on the winter solstice, taking for his company an ancient cavalcade of divine figures; Christians were latecomers to the ancient power of the season. But they joined, and added a new dimension to it. That dimension is, to me, the least of all; it is the least wise, the least compelling, and the most superficial. But it is the most pronounced, today- especially when you walk through the snowy village in your head, like I am now.

I see the nativity scene, complete with big plastic camels poking up with their humps out of the snow. Camels in the snow- Semitic shepherds and Persian astrologers huddled around a plastic manger, covered in snow, in a northern forest, in the front yard of a family whose surname is "Bachmeier"- as Teutonic a surname as you can get. There you have it. While the sacred Yule-season of their ancestors is glowing in power around them, the Bachmeiers place faded plastic statues of Near-Eastern goat herders and Persians and camels in their yard, and pray to an ancient Hebrew man, and the ancient God of Israel- who was never worshiped in a Yule or a Saturnalia.

Does Father Bachmeier know about Sigurd and Sigrdrifa, or Arminius? Does he know about Jolnir or the Disir of this time? Does he know what the "Weihnachten" really stands for? Or does he really sit around singing about Angels and Bethlehem and Jerusalem? We have truly lost our souls when a person even needs to ask these sorts of questions. We have lost our true senses. Thank the Gods for remaining with us through these dark times. Gods, we are coming home- but excuse us; some of us have lost the way. They'll take a little longer getting there. We know you understand, and remain with us anyway.

* * *
There is something about the West- our great spirit, our great contribution to the world- which is tied into our theism. We've always believed in Gods. Recently, we've betrayed the living Gods for the spiteful Monotheism of the ancient Hebrews, but as I said before- just wait. The end is in the beginning. The Gods are not gone, nor done with us, nor we with them. We are going through a painful growing phase. We are the ones that changed, and not so long ago, all things considered.

But something around us isn't changing. This snow- this night- it is the same. Night is night, in any age. Her darkness has touched the face of every human being that has ever lived. The same water that fell as ice onto the ancients melted and rose again to freeze again and fall onto me, now. Nature, majestic Nature, She is forever young and forever ancient. She is something we all have in common. She has seen many religions come and go, many civilizations rise and fall. She is common grave-mound and tomb to us all, and to all things. She is common mother to us all. Want a truly enduring religion? Worship her. In her is the essence of all religions arisen before or arisen recently. She is the true Godhead of creation and destruction. In her, all things come to pass. In her, all things are made new.

We Westerners are "Godists" if there ever were any. While the highest philosophical ponderings of the East lead people away from God or Gods, we hang on to our "big man in the sky". I hang on to my ancestors' "big men and women in the sky and under the earth", but that's just me and a few others like me. And I am, of course, risking the comical here- the Gods aren't men and women. Something about the spirit of the West is found in theism, found in our own belief that one day, we have to journey beyond this world to face a mystery.

For some, that mystery is in judgment. They will die and cross the final veil hoping for their heavenly retirement plans to be cashed in, and fearing that perhaps they won't be. It will be for the judge to say, after all. For others, that "final" mystery is another long journey to be back again at the beginning, and among the people of the beginning- the ancestors. And from there? Who can say?

But I can say one thing- the dead are not gone, not taken from this world, and nor is there an escape from the world. The supreme selfishness, the supreme lack of wisdom of any religion would be in how it teaches escapism of the soul or spirit. I will be dead and yet alive in the land, in the rivers, in the mounds, in the sky, in the winds. I know this, because I've seen it. I will be present to this collection of sacred powers then for the same reason I am now- because there is no other place to be. In the enclosure of life, of power, this is it. See the snow with your earthly eyes; see the trees; when you are dead, and seeing in a new way, they will still be there and so will you, though how it will seem to you then, only the dead can know.

* * *
I'm walking now, in my head, remembering a real walk through snow; I know that my journey is ongoing and won't end, ever. I'm moving through the forest now like the ancestors, and remembering them in the season of memory, the great Yule season.

While my Christian neighbors are singing happy birthday to Jesus, I will be sitting around a fire with the Ancestresses, with the Yule-father and his host, with my family and with the giants of the great cold. A collection of sacred kindreds is precisely what this season is- along with any other season, truth be known. But this sublime cold and dark cracks open a special kind of perception for those who can brave it long enough. In this darkness, we can really go back to the beginning. And we must go back to the beginning if we want to complete our circle and be whole.

My Yule-wish for all of Europe's sons and daughters- and truly, anyone else- is this: do not live on the "timeline" of the soteriologist- live in the natural circle of power which no God can create. This world did not "begin" one day at the whim of a creator, and will not "end" just as quickly; it is not an arrow-shot story with a single conclusion, but a woven circularity of eternity that has no ending. I want you all to be whole, complete, and joyful.

Your completion is not found in Judeo-christian triumphalist religious fictions, but in this very snow, this very world, in the spirits of those who came before you and who believed in the Gods. Do not isolate yourself behind the walls of churches; let the world become your temple, as it was for your ancestors. Reject the lies of human exceptionalism, and take your place as equal kin to the land and the wild beasts and the Gods.

Understand that the womb is the most sacred thing, and that our Greatest Grandmothers are the beings to whom we owe all of this. If you discover a religion blaming women for the downfall of the world, or crushing women underfoot- commanding them to subservience or silence- reject it as an enemy of the common sacred life that we all share.

Our ancestor-women were not weak women, second to men: they were women of power; seeresses, valkyries, spear-disir, women who ruled as queens, women who raised children in brutal and dangerous circumstances, who held the keys to our homes and hearths, and who remembered our sacred stories and passed down rare wisdom through many generations. They wove the threads of our Fates as certainly as they wove the sails on the ships that carried our ancestors to glory and renown, or as certainly as they wove the linens and wools that our people wore to survive in the cold and weather.

As dark irony would have it, even the Abrahamic barbarians owe their entire existence to the women they accuse of mothering sin and death, and whom they punish for leading men astray to sin with lust. For the women in those faiths, trapped without choice, or simply ignorant of the great legacy to which they belong, I wish for freedom and justice.

For those women outside of that bondage, I wish them the strength to remain outside of it, and raise strong daughters and sons like themselves, to make our new Pagan future a great one. May the strength of our woman-kind make us whole and strong, now, as always.

A Short and Concise Introduction to Ásatrú

2009-11-08T17:17:00.001-08:00

I wrote a very short introduction to the Ásatrú faith for all who are interested in learning more about it. It is part of a general information portal about Ásatrú and Heathenry that I am putting together. It can be found here.

Faining-Galdor for the World of Wyrd

2009-10-04T15:12:00.000-07:00

Hail, entire beam-work of the ancient roof of the sky;
Hail, Wyrd-spirit that penetratest from sky to earth,
From bright-homes above to dark-homes below,
And from the broad, plowed earth
Even into the midst of the Nine Worlds,
To the uttermost bounds of Ice-Hel.

Hail, Nornic spirit that fills me and shakest me...
That which shakes the branches of the Needle-Ash,
That which moved the great cow and the father of giants.

Hail, beginning and end of irremovable Nature:
Hail thou whose weaving moves the fire and rime,
The iron and stones, the winds and salty waters,
Those elements which untiringly render service
To the rightful order of All.

Hail, brightly shining Sun of Life,
Whose radiance gladly gifts warmth to all,
Hail, Moon shining from the night-roads
With a white face of fickle brilliance;
Hail all weal-wights of wind and sky,
Hail hap-wights of earth and rushing stream.

Hail great, great incomprehensible web of Wyrd,
Essence of the worlds, formed in a circle.
Hail to you, spinning and twisting in the unseen,
Having the form of water, of earth, of fire,
Of wind, of light, of darkness, of beast, God and man,
Star-glittering, damp-fiery-cold spirit.

As you be forever whole, we will fain know our wholeness.

The War for the West

2009-10-01T16:39:00.000-07:00

PHOTO: A gang of patriarchal white racists from "The Lord of the Rings"

Are you ready? Strap in.

Racist Anti-Racists call Lord of the Rings "Too Eurocentric"

Here we go again- another case of me always being the last to know some things. Last night, I got a message through one of the many groups I belong to, which discussed the famous "Southern Poverty Law Center"- a group in Alabama that claims to be a "watchdog" for "hate groups."

In reality, as I have long known, but only now feel the need to say, the group itself is staffed from the top levels down by racist "anti-racist" African-Americans (formerly called "blacks" before the current tide of political correctness hit us.)

There was a time when I thought maybe the SPLC was doing some sort of good work as a watchdog organization- but as time has passed, I have become aware that their guiding ideology is nothing more than hatred of anything that casts Europeans or European-Americans (once called "whites" before the current tide of political correctness hit us) in a positive light, or celebrates the European and Western cultural values that have made our civilization as great as it is.

And the SPLC has rankled my last nerve by linking to an article that vilifies the Lord of the Rings trilogy- the recent hit movies made by Pete Jackson, based on J.R.R. Tolkien's great works- as "eurocentric", "patriarchal" and racist. They didn't do this recently; the article was written as the final movie in the trilogy was in theaters- but I didn't become aware of it until now. And well, when anger hits you, there's no time like the present!

In the past, I'd take a lot of crap without speaking up- the pervasive miasma of "White Man's Guilt" affected me like it affected most white males, owing to the programming I received at the hands of the media and the American radical left. But times, they are-a-changin', and they've been changing. My eyes are open now to what is happening in my life in a way they haven't been before.

This doesn't mean that I'm ready to start goose-stepping, but I am ready to say what I feel needs to be said, despite the fallout that may occur when the knuckle-dragging politically-correct morons catch a small wind of my rant.

Tolkien's Legacy

Let me start by saying that J.R.R. Tolkien's work was an amazing body of literature, winner of dozens of prestigious awards and declared by many in national polls to be the greatest work of fiction of the twentieth century. Although Tolkien was a devout Catholic, his knowledge of Old English and Anglo-Saxon literature and the mythologies of the Germanic peoples of Europe was profound (he was a philologist and professor, after all) and his work drew on some of the most enduring mythical and spiritual aesthetics that inform European civilization.

It is my complaint that his Christianity led him to create a world and worldview in which an over-simplistic and unqualified dualistic vision of "good vs. evil" exists (which in Tolkien almost always equates with "beautiful vs. ugly") instead of the more authentic Heathen worldview which underlies the mythologies- one where Gods and Giants do struggle against one another, representing forces of order and chaos, but with a clear notion that both sides are necessary to the cosmic wholeness and unfolding.

But we can overlook much when we look at the way Professor Tolkien's work regenerated so much latent power and imagination that was locked in the soul of the West! Thanks to his work, the entire field and genre of High Fantasy was born- bringing fresh imagination and enjoyment of its sacred realms to countless people.

To be fair, Tolkien's work has always had a bumpy reception- but the article linked by the SPLC crosses the line in a rather absurd way, in my view.

The Pale Patriarchal Penis People Strike Again

The article that inspired this response of mine was written by Andrea Lewis, a San Francisco based writer, who decided that the final installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy- "The Return of the King" needed to be called "The Return of the Patriarchy."

I couldn't find the original article at "tolerance.org"- the laughable name of the SPLC website- (their search feature really sucks) but I was able to find it easily enough through a Google search at another "tolerance" related website here.

What problems did Ms. Lewis have with the movie? What could have inspired the SPLC to link to her? I'll let her speak for herself:

"The "Rings" films are like promotional ads for those tired old race and gender paradigms that were all the rage back in author J.R.R. Tolkien's day. Almost all of the heroes of the series are manly men who are whiter than white. They are frequently framed in halos of blinding bright light and exude a heavenly aura of all that is Eurocentric and good. Who but these courageous Anglo-Saxon souls can save Middle Earth from the dark and evil forces of the world?"

...Because you know, we can't have anything that seems too white or "Anglo-Saxon" being portrayed as heroic. Why, we'd be pushing a harmful "Heroic White Guy Stereotype"! And the last thing we want young white males today seeing is a movie that might put it in their heads that they, too, can be heroes, fighting for good causes, being self-sacrificing and brave.

Could those "old race and gender paradigms" have a role in why Western culture survived and succeeded as well as it did? I believe that anyone who digs deep enough- and isn't a devoted ideological and racist enemy of European-born cultures- will see that similar "paradigms of race and gender" have existed across the globe; the idea that other "races" were of lesser value or equality did not begin or end with European cultures- that attitude is found, historically, in Asia, Native America, and Africa, too, throughout all ages.

The notion of "gender roles" has seen a lot of variance, but again, Europe wasn't the only place women were expected (in many areas) to take on motherly roles, and to avoid fighting. Tolkien wasn't being racist when he wrote the world of Middle-Earth the way he did; he was being true to an authentic historical tradition, to add realism to his setting.

Ms. Lewis apparently takes the "war on white" so seriously that even white hair is a problem:

"On the good side, even the mighty wizard Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen) is sanitized and transformed from the weed-smoking, rather dingy figure we first meet in the "The Fellowship of the Ring," into Gandalf the White, who, by the time of "Return of the King," has become a powerful military leader complete with pure white hair and an Eisenhower attitude."

It's amusing to me that a man like Eisenhower, who risked his life leading armies to help overthrow a true racist menace like NAZI GERMANY, has a name that is now used by an ethnic woman as a slur. And it's especially amusing that Gandalf should be a more appealing character to her when he was "dingy and weed-smoking." White characters that are too clean-cut are a menace!

...But the Rainbow Coalition is Here To Save the Day

Ms. Lewis continues her racist manifesto/movie critique by introducing us to a movie and a trilogy that she does enjoy: The Matrix. Since this is the best part of her article, I'll have to let her explain why she likes it so much more:

"Say what you will about the convoluted storyline of the "Matrix" trilogy. At least those films give women and people of color some characters they can relate to.

From its earliest scenes, "The Matrix" flips mainstream Hollywood's minority representation manual on its head. A multi-cultural group of hackers dressed in black leather and sporting funky hairdos are our heroes; Secret Service-type "agents" in suits and ties are the bad guys. Neo, the trilogies' central figure, is played by mixed-race actor Keanu Reeves. His savior and mentor is Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), a powerful leader who also happens to be a black man. The wisest figure in "The Matrix" is The Oracle, a warm and witty African American woman. The films are also infused with a strong sense of Asian style and culture, exemplified by the character Seraph (Collin Chou), the Oracle's protector, who is both a martial arts expert and Buddhist meditation practitioner.

...Most of the really bad guys in "The Matrix" are Eurotrash, including the very snobby Merovingian (Lambert Wilson) with his French accent, the dread-locked, very British albino twins (Neil and Adrian Rayment) and the Oracle's evil counterpart, The Architect, (Helmut Bakaitis), a rather stuffy and pompous white guy with white beard and white suit who reeks of imperialism."

The message is clear: so long as the villains are all white, and the heroes are black or multi-racial, we have a real festival of wholesome goodness on our hands! And it always helps to have a smooth Asian theme, to take the edge off of that oppressive Western feel.

From top to bottom, this woman makes it clear that any positive portrayal of Europeans or white people is not desirable. Black actors were cast in movies early in the 20th century and often totally presented as caricatures of real black people, and presented as oafish or undereducated or criminal, or just servants of whites- and I'm willing to bet that Ms. Lewis has screeched about the deeply ingrained racism of this fact somewhere in her other writings.

Apparently, the hate-card doesn't have two sides in Ms. Lewis' mind. If I had to guess, I'd guess that she believes that the historical wrongs of European and American cultures against other races and cultures now gives those others permission to engage in the same rampant racism and discrimination right back, to "balance the scales a bit".

Unfortunately for her, and for all of the racists like her, it doesn't work that way.

Ms. Lewis spends a good deal of time complaining that Lord of the Rings presented few strong female characters, and praising the Matrix for presenting lots of hot female ass-kickers- and I noticed that a woman's race is unimportant. She praises Carrie-Anne Moss (Trinity) for her role as a strong woman, even though Carrie-Anne Moss is certainly "whiter than white."

Lewis' war, it seems, is not just on white men, but on "patriarchy"- a catch term used to criticize deep patterns in European-born cultures these days, but which is a cultural feature found all over the world- very strongly in Asia, and also in Africa, where it has existed from the earliest of days. I'm not saying that "patriarchy is perfect"- but I am saying that the issue isn't so one-sided as radicals like to present, particularly not when they have their own agenda beneath it all. That agenda- held consciously and even unconsciously- is power- the same motivation they claim to hate in the "patriarchy."

The Will To Power

People reading me may wonder if I'm being a touch unfair. I don't see anything wrong with women or people of different ethnicities desiring to see strong, positive presentations of their own "kind". But must these presentations also accompany dismal presentations of other cultures or ethnicities? Why is the praise of one forever conflated with the detriment of another?

I think Nietzsche said it best when he discussed the "will to power" inside of cultures and even races- and individuals. When one person or group is repressed, their natural human will to power is not repressed; it simply seeks a new outlet. The capacity in human beings to twist and bend realities to suit their expression of power is amazing- our entire sense of "morality" in the west, he believed, was about that will to power emerging in ways that seem paradoxical.

I can't go into that here, but I can say with near metaphysical certainty that these "politically correct" movements are not movements that have everyone's best interests at heart. They have a certain, select group's best interests at heart- and that group is not the mainstream.

That group is the rag-tag union of all people who don't have the numbers and historical power to match the powerful mainstream, and their cries for "tolerance" (which are almost always a joke, bearing in mind their own personal intolerance) and their cries of "racism" and "insensitivity" are not as purely innocent as they seem.

These people are just as power-hungry and desirous of expressing their own personal power as the mainstream; they are every bit as racist and culturally elitist as the mainstream. There are no "good guys" in this game, just people who are better or worse at manipulating politics and opinions, stuck amid many people who are being marginalized for the crime of belonging to a majority group.

Why am I even making such a big deal out of this woman's article? Because an organization with the size and political power of the Southern Poverty Law Center linked to her and held her article up as representative of what sort of ideological thinking motivates them. The SPLC made this opinion piece into a piece of support for their perspectives and worldview, and that's when it came to my attention. And this is just the last in a long line of crap I've seen them pull, all in the name of "tolerance".

Their "tolerant world" has no place for white males like me. When I do well in life, it's not because I went to school and worked for years to get the good grades and advanced education I got- it's because I am riding on the back of the white male patriarchy that hands me the world. When a person from a non-white ethnicity does well, gets out and works, it's because they had drive, ambition, and bravery to face the deep hatred that the "man" has for them.

But no one handed me anything; I worked hard. Despite what these people think, there is no "white people club" out there, where all whites secretly share a bond of help and brotherhood. People with "white" skin have stood in my way on every level, in the pursuit of my goals. I'm just more competition for them, and for everyone.

World Culture War II

A deeper issue emerges here: what they call "culture war". That phrase means many things to many people, but now, I know what it means to me. Western culture- the culture designed and shaped by Europeans, in large part- is now marked for destruction, by forces outside of it, and by forces that are within it.

The forces that want to destroy it are not heroic avengers of "past wrongs"- they are not great "equalizers"- they are following the same blind urge to power that the "European villains" once followed to succeed as well as they did. They just aren't as good at it, outwardly, as Europeans were historically, so their tactics have intuitively evolved to continue the fight in a new form.

It's all the same thing- the justifications have just changed. There's a new tune of justification, a new battle-hymn, wrapped in notes of resilient sadness and the long-suffering "nobility" of the "downtrodden." The hymn sounds different, but it seeks to establish an empire all the same.

Some of the forces that now stalk the legacy of the West justify their assault in religious terms- they wish to replace the "Godless, satanic" West with true religion. The instruments are different, but the song remains the same.

In the same manner that the Pagan cultures of our Ancestors were undermined by forces from outside, but also by traitor converts from within, Western culture is being degraded in the same manner.

For me, this is not at all a racial issue- it is a cultural one. The people who still want to see this situation in terms of “race” are usually part of the problem. This is about something far greater than race- it’s about cultures of liberty versus cultures of tyranny, and both of those cultures contain many people of many different racial backgrounds.

The Old Crusaders went East; the New Crusaders come West

The force that threatens Western culture from the outside in these days is Islam; the forces that are within are people like Ms. Lewis, and the SPLC, and all of the radical left who, while enjoying the liberties that a bunch of dead white men bequeathed to them, seek to destroy the entire edifice, to replace it with one where they have power and authority. And their justification for this cultural genocide? The history of wrongs inflicted by some Westerners on others in the past.

When I was in my first year of college, I read "Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali", the story of a king of Mali who had to journey across his land fighting against evil sorcerers and monsters, to regain his birthright. I really loved the book- in the (very African-African) hero Sundiata, I saw the nobility of the Hero archetype from many cultures. Race was never a consideration for me. I found the same thing when I read the Iliad, and when I read other books that contained eternal visions of heroes.

It never would have occurred to me to criticize the Epic of Sundiata because it was too "Afro-centric." Sundiata's "manliness" never offended me or bothered me. I didn't think of Sundiata in my head as "blacker than black" and make some leap to this being a bad thing. Why? Because I love the hero, whatever his color- he represents the wall of safety that stands between his people (or her people, for there are female heroes from even early mythologies) and the cultural destruction of their people. Because the book "Sundiata", like the "Iliad" or "Lord of the Rings" isn't about race. It's about culture and cultural conflict.

The political correct-o's will say that I'm an enfranchised white male who has only reaped the rewards of Western white culture, and never had to endure its negative backlash. But they'd be doing precisely what they accuse "racists" of doing- judging me by my appearance.

Some of ancestors- Irish and Sicilian- endured the scorn of Americans when they came to this country. The Irish particularly were mistreated, and died poor, overworked, and malnourished in many places. No one denies that Western societies (in common with all human societies) have historically contained elements of unfairness and inequality, or that they continue to do so, in ways.

But we are more than our history, and we always have been more than our history. Western culture cannot be measured solely on the basis of what some government policies at some times have been.

In the day and age where an African-American man sits on the throne of the President, we have to consider that Western culture contains more than just a difficult human history- it contains VALUES that are crucial to the survival of liberty in this world. It always contained those values, for they could not have emerged from nowhere, and they didn't just emerge during recent civil rights movements.

Thank the Pagans for Liberty

The days of the Greeks and Romans, and the Celtic and Germanic peoples gave us a few things that some might consider important: democracy, government by the representatives of the people, pluralism and cultural/religious tolerance as a social cornerstone, the root of humanism, limitations on the powers of kings, trial by jury, and (in the case of the Northern Europeans) a woman's right to divorce her husband at will. A few other pesky things like the origins of natural and physical sciences come to mind- as well as the medical profession.

The age of Christian rulers and the power of the Church was a setback- women did lose the liberties they had enjoyed before in many societies- they lost many freedoms, and I think it's fair to say that the sciences (especially medical science) did take quite a vacation because of the Church. Tolerance for other religions was also shot to nothing.

But that age- that dark age which was directly created and maintained by Christianity (despite what some want to claim) didn't last- it ended, and a rebirth happened: a rebirth of the same values and spirit of liberty and seeking inquiry that made Europe great originally.

And these values are still with us- even the dark power of organized religion couldn't destroy them or stamp them out for good, and the fringe lunatic protestants that flowed from the church (many of whom today still oppose science and pluralistic tolerance) can't stop them.

As a culture- we westerners- we believe in Liberty. Our women aren't placed under long drapes of cloth, not able to feel the sun or wind in their hair. Our women aren't socially (or actually) killed when they have sex outside of wedlock, or just happen to be raped without enough witnesses to prove that they weren't being "immoral".

Our women don't have to have their brothers or fathers to escort them around in public. Our women can drive cars. They can own businesses, property, and go to school as much and as long as they like. We aren't jailed for having pictures of naked women, or executed by hanging in public squares for being homosexual.

We don't slice people's hands off for stealing, nor do we execute women for "witchcraft". Thanks to the Chrisitan phase of our history, we once did some idiot things, but we outgrew it- we evolved- we had a cultural and secular “enlightenment” that Islamic culture is yet to have.

We can all state our opinions in public. We can have any religion we want, or no religion. We can read whatever we want, write whatever we want. Our leaders have massive checks and balances on their power, and our political offices change hands constantly, to stop any one person or group from getting power and keeping it. Policies that we don't like can be voted down, or voted out within a few years time.

Shock Speech

THIS is what the West has done for the world- it has stood for, and achieved, liberty. Liberty, like Justice, is a high-level virtue and dream that must be fought for, and it is a powerful struggle to maintain it. But we've done it. And every Westerner has a right to be proud- whether you can claim the founding fathers of the Western world as your genetic ancestors OR your cultural ancestors (or both) they are still your Forefathers, and their legacy is yours, too.

But Islamic culture would, at a moment's notice, see this all wiped away. I say "Islamic culture" because even in the so-called "liberal" Islamic nations, some or all of the horrors I listed above are prominent. This isn't just over-generalization. The political correct-o's love to say "Islam" and "Radical Islam", as though there was a difference- but all Islam is radical, when compared to the secular and liberty-loving West.

Muslim radicals are not the "fringe" of Islam. When most Americans hear of disasters in Muslim countries, they are appalled. Our government always offers aid. When 9/11 happened, Muslims worldwide danced in the streets- as a surprising spokesman will mention at the end of this article. Some people will try to qualify what I am saying here as hate speech, but it is far beyond such a simplistic thing.

It's shock speech; it's the shock that everyone should feel when they realize that Western culture is facing a foe, a fierce and determined cultural foe that does not share its belief in liberty, and the West isn't doing too well right now- partly because we've had our "white heroes" taken from us, and seen those same heroes called "racist" or "patriarchal". Tolkien's "Heroes of the West" are not just fixtures from his stories. They are an almost prophetic call to stand up for what the West means, before it is lost.

We need to stop allowing people to be shamed and insulted just because their forefathers were white and successful. This is not "racism"- this is my culturally-ingrained sense of pride and fairness talking. This is me demanding that I be treated for my own merits, not just the fact that I am a descendant of these great men.

There is no shame being a part of Western culture, and especially no shame in being genetically related to the people who originally created it. They made a luminous light for the whole world, and without them, this world would not be what it is. The value of liberty would not exist as it does now.

Gimli Speaks

John Rhys-Davies, the actor who played "Gimli" in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, risked his career to speak out against the threat posed by Islamic culture to the liberty-loving West. He was very brave to do so, and very right. I end this rant/article by quoting him, for he says it best.

"I BELIEVE in racial equality not racial discrimination. All I was commenting on was that there are cultural changes taking place in Europe that I consider to be unacceptable. The fact that a minister of the French government has to fly to Cairo to talk with one of the religious heads in one of the mosques to get his approval for a ban on headscarves can be seen in two ways. One, is how wonderfully culturally sensitive. The other, it seems to give an authority to a wholly unelected figure well outside Europe's jurisdiction.

I am really proud to be living in a society that accepts women as our equals, that accepts civilized discourse that allows people to hold different opinions without coming to any act of violence.

Here in America when that earthquake happened in Iran the reaction of everyone I knew was horror and dismay, the reaction of everyone when they heard that the old woman had been brought out alive long after they thought there was anyone there was absolute awe at the extraordinary capacity of the human spirit to survive. Contrast that with people jumping up and down and clapping at the 9/11 disaster in certain countries.

I don't think that Western society is opposed to Islamic society at all. I think a very important part of Islamic society is opposed to Western society. It is time that ordinary Muslims stood up to be counted.

...When we are prepared to overlook certain things because we don't want to rock the boat, this is wrong. The greatest act of racism is to expect that other people will not behave according to your values and standards. Yes, I am for dead, (traditional) white male culture. It's pretty damn good, pretty damn marvelous, pretty wonderful. That's not to exclude other cultures, but it's not to diminish mine."

Ule's Farmstead

2009-09-30T16:13:00.001-07:00

Good day, sacred kindreds all:

I am helping a friend and kinsman to get through the process that we call "Heathen Formation"- the Idavoll Kindred's term for the process of being inducted into Heathen culture and gaining knowledge and insight into our way, before being formally inducted into a community of Heathens.

To help him, I've created another blog called "Ule's Farmstead". I mention it here because some of you may care to view the "perspective essays" that I am writing for him, as his Redesman or Advice-man, during this time of formation. You may consider it a full intro course into the basics of Asatru, as I know it and we know it.

The blog is here: Ule's Farmstead

And currently, two essays are up- one is about "Being True to the Gods" (that's the first one) and the most recent one is called "Faining: Righting and Rowning."

I hope all who are interested get some use out of them. I'm going to keep making posts here, too, of course. But a lot of my Heathen writing time will be going to the Farmstead for the next few months.

Raise the Horns!

Pagans of Principle: The Path of Heathen High-Mindedness

2009-07-27T18:00:00.000-07:00

A while back, I shared a link to a story about revivalist Polytheists in Greece who were enduring the unsurprising scorn of the Greek Orthodox Church. A quote from that story is with me today- a Bishop of the Orthodox Church mentioned that a "few" of the Pagans were "Pagans of principle"- his words. The rest, he said, were more involved in the recension of the Old Ways for (basically) pageantry and pedantics.

Over a thousand years of being the undisputed masters of the spiritual destiny of the West has made most Christians of any stripe very condescending; this is nowhere more apparent than in the way most devoted Christians automatically assume that one cannot be truly and perfectly principled and moral (or even truly at peace) without Christianity.

I don't have to tell most of my readers this; they've likely already experienced this attitude in people firsthand. But what the Bishop said inspired me today; I've been thinking about what it truly means to be a "Pagan of principle", and I've been just as inspired by how the Heathen path as I know it allows modern people to be just that- truly principled people- with what I feel is the most historically grounded, realistic, and visceral "code of morality" out there today.

Most Asatruar follow some variant of what they call the "nine noble virtues"- and many times blessed be these virtues, and all who take them as friends and guides to everyday life! Those who do, without a doubt, are good, honest, courageous people motivated by noble goals. When one examines (along with the many great authors and researchers who have examined) the seeds of historical reality to see what the authentic Heathen "code for living" was, one gains quite a reward. The nine noble virtues- in their many forms- serve well to approximate it, particularly in the universal insistence on guest-friendliness and loyalty to kin.

But I've thought long and hard on the "root" of the nine noble virtues, and the roots of the honor and social codes of the Ancestors; it is easy to see, if one is prepared to see, how the true origin of our Ancestors' behaviors in life-situations is the ancient and powerful notion of High Mindedness.

Let there be no doubt or obscurity on the matter: our Ancestors, and therefore all of us, are the People of the Sun. We are the descendants of the Ir-men, the people of the Tyr-pillar, the people of the Great Tree, the people who sprang from the blood of humans and the spiritual power of Gods. The solar disc- the glaring eye of Odhinn's triumphant Eagle, represents the victory of consciousness over the dim and dark powers that would drag all order and beauty down to Ur-chaos.

While we live, we live with the consciousness of the Gods in us. After we die, the Godly form bestowed on us by Allfather and his brothers, guided by the light we have preserved in this life, lives on. No greatness or nobility is ever truly lost. While we live, we are in possession of a precious gift, the most ennobling and precious gift that any wight or sentient being can have.

And it is this gift- this solar consciousness which has within it the entire conscious pattern of the Nine Worlds, and the possibility of unfolding into a direct and complete consciousness of wholeness- which is the best power any being can boast of having. It is this light of Gods and Men that gives rise to the notion of "High Mindedness"- the true human being, the true "Heathen of principle" is beholden to nothing but the highest principle in the Raidho-order of reality: the principle of constructive and beautifying cooperation and preservation.

It is stitched in the weave of Fate that we human beings were meant to apply our Godly consciousness, our minds, to the path of cooperation with one another, as the Gods cooperate to create and maintain and defend the great work of the Nine Worlds. There is no room for doubt here; we are creators like the Gods, by virtue of our gifts, and furthermore, our gift is not for us alone, but something that can and must be shared- the human "high mind" of solar-awareness is meant to protect and beautify this world, our lives, the lives of others, and to preserve what is good.

Co-creativity and Co-operation are part and parcel of the same mystery. No society worth the name ever arose on the merits of one man or woman; no society ever thrived or survived on anything other than high-minded cooperation and preservation. We have an enormous creative power and potential, and few understand that this luminous field of possibility, smoldering inside of most, but illuminating others, is the radiant presence of Allfather's spirit, which is the spirit of the Gods.

You feel it when you sense and appreciate beauty; it is why we feel so at peace when we arrange our homes in tidy ways, with beautiful, meaningful things displayed proudly, and welcome guests in. It is why we strive to build our lives around beautiful displays of nature, and neat, safe neighborhoods. It is why we create and appreciate art, music, poetry, and the like.

People talk much of "proof" for the existence of Gods or the Godly spirit, but no person who has experienced the power of creativity and orderly, beautiful aesthetics need worry over such proof. One moves in the current of Man's Fate and moves towards Man's highest intended destiny when one appreciates the beautiful things in this world and in other people.

People sometimes ask me why the "animals" (meaning "non-human living creatures") don't have this "high mindedness"- and accuse me of being "anthropocentric"; and to those people, these days I answer: they have it because we have it, and we humans are natural consecrators: we can consecrate non-human living beings, bless them, share with them, preserve and protect them, all because of our gift. We are in a web of connection and interaction- the divine light burst through fully consciously in us; it now flows from place to place and fills the web. The question becomes: will you become a willing channel?

We were meant to share our power, our special abilities. To beautify this world, preserve its many lives and forces, and live in harmony, in balance with it and with one another. When we violate this innate, Fateful directive, we see the emergence of the ugly, the destructive, and the perilous. We see and feel the difference. We know the face of the vicious wicked; we know it all too well. Only the insane can't see it and recognize it for what it is.

If there was a definition of "insanity" that I could accept, it would come down to this simple but profound thing: it would include those who have lost (or never had) the ability to sense and feel the difference between what is ennobling and what is degrading; between what is truly, spiritually healthy and what is baneful. What I am discussing is a feeling, something deep inside that guides and shelters and protects. Something innate guides the healthy people of this world away from the violating powers and the scourge of the horrid and perilous; something makes most people naturally resist the shackles of the unjust and the oppressive.

I love to think of the powerful values of the Ancestors: to have open generosity and undaunted courage; to be steadfast in friendship and uncompromising in enmity when facing the destructive and the ugly; to be faithful to kin, to one's lord, and faithful in love- to have family pride and pride in the Ancestors, keeping Troth with the sacred powers... such high-minded values rest within the ancient Teutonic belief in inexorable Fate, and the need to endure the needful and unavoidable challenges that will arise to any who stands for such high and noble values.

As I said, for me, all of these values go back to "High Mindedness"- which means to climb the rays of Odhinn's Sun-like mind and to come to understand the nature of one's own internal illumination, and to realize that we can rise above the destructiveness and greed and peril that characterizes the state of Nature's raw, red talons and which characterizes the state of the Thursic powers that still course through the deep places of the world and the cosmos.

We humans are the blossoms of the MANNAZ mystery, the vessels of and participants in the work of the Gods in our own world, with a duty to spread the light of the possibilities of the High Mind to all things. We begin with ourselves, celebrating the victory of light in us, and from there, we radiate it like the sun radiates light to all the world.

This is what freedom is: to be free of the darkness of the Thursic worlds is to be free of the selfishness that would prevent us from being generous; to be free of the unconscious drives to destroy and dominate that would prevent us from being loyal to friends and self-sacrificing for the family and community; to be free of the ignorance that prevents us from seeing ourselves as parts of a greater whole, and part of an ancestral line, allowing us to see with wisdom how the Web of Wyrd contains us all and to be proud of the greater story of which we are a part. The solar mind of the great Eagle of Odhinn has given this freedom.

We can be merciful; we are free from the unforgiving law of the talon unless we have no other recourse to it for the good of all. We can be compassionate; we can be thoughtful; we can be open-minded to many sides of many issues, weighing with wisdom the merits of what confronts us in life; we can be patient and we can be better than the bulk of those who seek only insipid self-glorification and wealth at any cost. We can see entire societies in this world based on fear, not high-mindedness; it is an eternal truth that fear is the polar opposite of the solar-minded attitude.

We see entire societies based on fear of sexuality and prudish, (sometimes violent) unthinking adherence to the words of dead scriptures; we see entire societies where the value of human life- especially female human life- has all but been lost. The way of high-mindedness is the way of life's value. Life is the seat of the solar force; it is the "high seat" of every possibility of beauty and power- and thus, no "tradition", no matter how venerable, can justify the wanton destruction of life, injustice, or the imprisonment and mistreatment of entire genders or types of people. Those who fight against these sorts of injustices fight with the righteous wrath of the Aesir- they are the true spiritual princes and spear-disir of our times.

A person who can be free in this High-Minded way of being, and increase and preserve the beauty and harmony of this world, that person is the most principled human- none can claim to be more so. And none will have a more honored seat in the Halls of the Gods when the Fate of death finally sends them to the Hel-way and then to the Doom-ring.

I do not offer promises of reward in the afterlife as some incentive; the Ancestors did not, and I do not- I offer only the truth that each person who engages the High-Mindedness that is Man's greatest gift will make him or herself into a sun in this life, and that light will shine beyond the boundaries of this life, because that is what suns and stars do. Those who remain in darkness will have only the darkness of the self when death closes their eyes and all other lights have failed.

This is not "reward for services rendered or obedience tendered"- this is "prepare your destiny now through your nobility- or lack thereof." No white Christ will let you off the hook for your own darkness- and no true "life of principle" is possible for those who have not taken full responsibility for their own light.

For those who imagine our Ancestors to have been violent, brutish people who allowed only warriors fallen in the act of battle to go to Odhinn's drinking hall, think again: it is well proven- at least to my satisfaction- that the ancient Heathens believed that men who were slain in combat and who died with the bloodstains of atrocity on their hands did not merit Valhalla. Those interested further in this point should see Rydberg's "Teutonic Mythology" for more information and evidence. Now, as in the distant past, the heavens are reserved for the stars- light for the light, and darkness for the darkness.

May the Ginnregin keep you all very safe. Let your minds join Odhinn's great victory, and be one of the heroes who helps keep the world safe until the end of Worlds.

Follow unwaveringly the course of Raidho-beauty and Wunjo-life.

The Endless Land and the Fallen Age

2009-07-05T16:22:00.000-07:00

The far north is calling, but I can't be there yet. Any journey worth the taking is long and burdensome. I have dropped sail, however, and with my family and Gods aside me, we have begun the long trek.

Our journey takes us through here, a landscape of endless forests and farmsteads fallen into half-abandonment and half-decay. This is the lay of our times: there was a dream once, that was America; all over the land, people gathered together in communities and believed that the dream would last forever, but it didn't. Their dreams were invested in their children, and those dreams, for the most part, grew up and left the tiny woods and broad fields on the side of the endless roads for cities and other destinations.

With the young gone, only the old were left to watch the world change, and change it did. entire hidden and downtrodden populations of people, once marginalized, gained their rights to a new freedom. The local networks of favoritism and nepotism died and broke apart and retired. Money changed in value, and then changed again. Services once needed were replaced by new technologies. Industries once prominent faded away. Now, boarded up homes and shadows alone remain, and I'm right in the middle of it all, lodging in a forest surrounded by neglect and sparsely populated dirt roads peopled by strangers.

The woods are wild; once, they were tamed by people on all sides. Once, goats ate the grass and low branches here; now, a tangle is everywhere. Once, cats climbed the rafters of the hand-made and raised wooden sheds and garages, but now, loose hunting dogs have killed them all. The goats vanished away, along with the chickens that were either killed by wild animals or their human masters, who could no longer afford to feed them. The chicken coops and roosts are rotted away and vine-covered. The fish pond has sunk into a murk, and goodness knows what lives in it now. The fence lines have vanished in huge gaps, and tangles of barbed wire are rolled up and rusted under ten year leaf piles.

But owls are here- and always have been. This lost region of forest was once named after the hooting owls that were prominent, and they have remained constant. They comfort me when they court and hunt at night. Something of my power hunts and courts with them. Their freedom and persistence is something of my own freedom.

It is a deplorable fate that made my road pass through here, but when the current waxing moon is full, and fades away, and waxes again to half, I will be gone, gone nearly to roof of the world. I have seen the mountains and forests that await there, in vision as well as with my own eyes. I have seen the snow and rivers, and felt the powers beckoning. I go with some risk behind me, but such as me and mine live in the hands of Wyrd and we fear no risk.

There are wights here, and they always have been here. They have grown wild themselves, alien to human beings, for the centuries of neglect that they have endured. They strike out and slay animals themselves at times. It is they that helped to bring waste to this community; all who ignore the spiritual powers that dwell in a place cannot expect to see their own families and legacies thrive in that place. On the hum of the hex-bridge, the mystery of the Helgrind, the mother of mysteries, I have dropped down and seen the landscape itself become only the crust covering a deeper power, and seen the wights moving across it.

Vaguely human shaped, I've seen them walking through the thick growth. I've seen how the falling buildings here have become haunted by them, as well as how the activities once carried out by people here have summoned powers- they are all creeping along unseen: they are grist and saw-meal; goat-hide and turned earth; blackened mound and holly edge, stone and sturdy beam, oak bark and pine-sap, resin fire and clay wight.

I have cut a small Ve-ditch in the earth, on cleared earth amid a grove of trees, to set apart a hallowed place for sacrifices. I have left a small way in opening to the east, and will fill the ditch with sacred spring water. When I sacrifice, it will be to these wild wights first, not so much for their friendship, but so that they will be satisfied to leave me and mine in peace, while we live and worship in their virid tangle, their pine-straw littered patch of thick wood. Then, my greatest grandfather Ing and his family will be given sacrifices, along with the high Thunderer, and of course The Master of Spirits and Sorcery- and always alongside the Disir and the mothers, and Earth, that greatest of mothers.

I have much to sacrifice for. Most people think of sacrifice in dim terms in these Godsless days, only framing it in Judeo-Christian terms, but our ancestral notion- ever more ancient- is far more sublime. It was the slaying- the sacrifice- of a great being- the mother/father of giants- at the dawn of the universe that made all things around me possible- from wights to the trees to the earth and sky: sacrifice is more than just the making holy of an offering, before it is slain and shared; sacrifice is about the creation of a new order. When I drag the bronze sacrificing knife crowned by a rough-hewn human head over the horn, symbolizing the slain ox of old, and fill a hlaut-bowl full of the dark ale that symbolizes blood, I am doing more than making a symbolic act of death and sharing; I am making a real act of creation, and it has power.

What the sacrifice blood touches is made new, in accordance with the will of the sacrificer. What place is sprinkled, what people and beings are sprinkled, they are made new. I want and need many things to be made new in my life, and the ancients have given me and mine a way to achieve that regeneration. Here, in the wight-haunted ruin of a tiny hamlet, as far from "civilization" as most people want to ever be, I will enact rites of timeless power.

Curse the "axial age" sages who decided that the ways of the ancestors were no longer "good enough" for the people- the axial age was the downfall of humanity, not the birth of a new humanity. From that cursed time came the scourge of Zoroastrianism, and from it, Judaism, with her two thrice-more accursed offspring Christianity and Islam. From it came Aristotle and Plato, who destroyed the true mystical and polytheistic heritage of Southern Europe, with their condescending "re-reading" and "reinterpretations" of the sacred myths of their people, and their scorn for the "superstitions", which were in fact luminous truths that their minds could not grasp. Our Greek cousins gave us the roots of the devastating "rationalism" that led to unqualified skepticism, atheism and corruption, and left many vulnerable to the rot of Christian missionaries.

In the east, world-hating religions arose, religions teaching how the world was suffering, fallen, and "transcendence" was needed, or the death of "ego", and the overcoming of desires, passions, and bodily hungers. From east to west the stink spread; in all these places, women were marginalized, packed into harems, under veils, and forced into submission and silence. Women were blamed for sin and death, and for being the seductresses that held men back from virtue.

The great civilizations of the pre-axial age accorded women their proper, sacred, and equal place; my own ancestors, I am proud to say, were such people. But the axial age was the turning of humans against the world and against women, out of fear and disgust and sorrow. They say humans in this era had become more aware of their mortality and frailty than ever before; from this fear was born what we call "religion" today.

The five regions that gave us the axial age- Iran, Greece, Palestine, India, and China, really did a fine job wrecking the world for the rest of us to be born later- but that is how curses work. They echo down through the generations of man like screams echo through canyons. By the time these screams fade, I fear, the ruin of the world will be upon us.

Why humanity waited until this particular "axial" period (800-200 BCE) to "break" and start turning like madmen against the primordial sanity of their ancestors, I don't know. But it did happen. It was a sign of the coming of the Wolf Age, the waning of the world. I have never succumbed to the madness; something strong in me- the love of the Hamingja-maiden who follows me through this life- sheltered me.

My senses were never lost; never did the wildness of nature or the spectacle of violence and death turn my stomach in fear and weaken my spirit. I am not afraid of death; as a living man, I am a part of this world, as a dead man, I will be part of it in another, more mysterious way, and I look forward to it. What sacredness now surrounds me is what always was and always will be, in countless forms. This is my life and my afterlife, and that is as Fate has woven. My Gods expected humans not to fear death, and anyone who knows the sacredness of nature and this world cannot fear death.

I lament the ruin wrought by the axial age madness, and it is more in focus for me now as I sit in a forest of waned hopes, dreams, and ruins. But a Wyrd-worker like me doesn't lament it long. Like the afternoon that falls high sun-tide, it had to happen. We can't change the world back, but each individual one of us can still live in the peace and sanity of the pre-axial age, in fellowship with the Gods and spirits. There is no greater peace, despite what the world-haters may say.

They claim that the axial-age religions and philosophies taught a revolutionary notion that people needed to "find truth" within themselves and break free of calcified traditions; they claim that the axial age was the birth-time of real virtue, as people finally reached a point where they had to look "within" to find compassion and virtue- but this is nonsense.

Virtue has always existed, and the terms "within" and "without" are shallow distinctions. There is no true "within" and "without"- all of the weave of Wyrd is one. Whatever you believe you are finding "within" yourself, is really a part of the whole, a part of this world, just as much "outside" you as it is perceptually "inside", and the same goes for whatever you believe is "outside" you. Humans started playing with their minds in new ways during the axial age, but virtue was not born. It is where it always was, in the wholeness. It lives as we live, as much a part of us and this world as anything else, for all time. The axial age was not an upward evolution; it was a disaster.

The world didn't have a spiritual revolution; humans had a narcissistic attack of "inwardness", mingled with potent fear and confusion, and we have all burned for it. The way people "found" truth and virtue before the axial age has an advantage over the new narcissism: it didn't destroy the world and hate women, and it didn't birth monstrous, judgmental, institutionalized religions that have corrupted society all the way to the level of government and spawned wars and destructive technologies beyond number.

They have crushed the remnants of the primal world, and taken a big shite on traditional wisdom, calling it (just like the Greek atheists) "superstition" and "marginal knowledge". They turned the word "myth" into a thing of stupidity and shame, but this is all only their perception. It is their curse. And it drinks the blood from us all.

I reject fully all of the "religions" and "spiritual paths" that teach that this world is bad or unsatisfactory; that men or women are corrupt, naturally and innately, on any level; that men or women must deny the body and senses to "rise above" earthly things, or any of that hogwash.

I reject fully any notion that people must shelter in some concept called "reason" or "rationality" in the face of obscurity and uncertainty and I further reject the notion that traditional pre-axial religions were superstitious, brutal savage attempts to grasp reality with made-up stories and bloody rites. This world and this existence is far beyond anything we can understand or believe, and the day the world-hating idiots recognize that, is the day that we may have a chance to breathe clean air until we all die. This story isn't over, and now, people are beginning to realize it. We can't lead the world back to sanity, but individual sanity is still a possibility.

Our cousins in Russia have heard the call as well, it seems:

Russian Pagans joyfully worship while the Orthodox Christians get pissed off

May Kupalo and Yarilo bless them powerfully. May old Volos be there as well, to shelter and protect them, with Perun alongside him. Welcome back, cousins. We are few but we are strong.

The Sacred Tree

2009-06-19T16:13:00.000-07:00

All life is figured by them as a Tree. Igdrasil, the Ash-tree of existence, has its roots deep-down in the kingdoms of Death: its trunk reaches up heaven-high, spreads its boughs over the whole Universe: it is the Tree of Existence. At the foot of it, in the Death-Kingdom, sit the three Fates... watering its roots from the Sacred Well. It's "bough," with their buddings and disleafings, - events, things suffered, things done, catastrophes, - stretch through all lands and times. Is not every leaf of it a biography, every fiber there an act or word? Its boughs are the Histories of Nations. The rustle of it is the noise of Human Existence, onwards from of old. I find no similitude so true as this of a Tree. Beautiful; altogether beautiful and great.

-Thomas Carlyle

Commanding People to Love: Revealed Religious Morality as an Insult to the Human Spirit

2009-06-05T01:43:00.000-07:00

"Morality was not brought down from Mount Sinai carved on tablets- moral is a function of the human soul, as old as mankind itself."

-Carl Jung

* * *

The other day, a friend and I were eating in a Vietnamese restaurant (a small place, and the only one we have in our one-horse town) when we encountered one of those nightmare situations that Heathens have to endure from time to time: the annoying table of Christian pastors that love to talk at the top of their lungs in a small, enclosed dining area.

No one in the room could help but overhearing what the younger of the two pastors was saying: he was talking about designing new programs for their church, to encourage people to take a more active role in community and worship. His main complaint was phrased by him just like this: "How can you love your neighbor if you don't know them?" His idea was to move the "worship" service up to a common table, upon which "thanksgiving" offerings would be spread and people would have an opportunity to gather around it and really talk. If they could know each other more, he reasoned, they would learn to love one another.

Now, I hate hearing the loud sermonizing of the revealed religionists as much as the next thinking person. I was considering asking the management to give me five dollars back for having to listen to this nonsense throughout the entire course of my meal. But after I left, it started me thinking down the course that led to my letter here today.

Our president Obama gave a big speech today, aimed at the Muslim world, from the city of Cairo. In that well-crafted (but ultimately, I think, futile) speech, he quoted revealed religious scriptures from the Koran to the Torah and the Bible, and those quotes were all around themes of treating others as you'd like to be treated, and other things like how people were created to "know" one another, and love one another, and be nice, and all of the usual blah blah snore quotes. I don't mean to sound overly dismissive, but I have little choice, because something that I've always felt became very clear to me today.

I strongly feel that revealed religions- religions that lay down "laws" from "God" to man, that command people to love, to behave in this way or that, are very insulting to the human spirit. I didn't know what bothered me so much about the obnoxious younger pastor in the restaurant until later: it was the fact that he was looking for ways to manipulate people into "love" for one another.

* * *

Here is my thinking on the subject: by the time you have to command someone to love, or use, as a justification for why people should behave decently to others a "holy book" that has "God" as its author, you are already too far removed from the source of true decency to be able to do any good. By the time you have to tell people "love one another", people have already forgotten how to love, and why.

Organic religions- natural religions born in the primal experiences of ancient cultures, (such as Native American religions, Asatru, Shinto, and the like) have no "sacred books". There are no "scriptures" that are believed to be the words of a God, sent straight from God's desk to humankind, containing rules for human behavior. This is true for all organic religions, and these organic cultures lived for countless millenia, doing quite well for themselves, and expressing a powerful family and community-oriented ethic and morality which was pure and strong.

These cultures- including my own religious culture- naturally expressed loving, respectful, and supportive bonds between kin and clan and family which required no "commands" from the Gods to do so. The fact that revealed religions actually feel the need to "command" (or say that their God commands) people to behave well is an insult to humanity- the revealed religious worldview begins with the assumption that humans do not naturally know how to behave, that we need "do" and "do not" orders, or we'll be wild beasts.

But this is not true, not by a long shot. Humans naturally do know how to behave, how to care for others and protect others. They know how to love, make bonds, nurture, and live. At least, they used to- perhaps it is a reality now that the "civilized world", after many generations of organized, revealed religious influence, has become reduced to a massive kindergarten class that needs a ruler-wielding teacher standing over them telling them that they should behave this way or that, but this was not always the case.

The more I considered it, the more I realized how sharply insulting it is that these "big boy" revealed religions walk around chanting "commandments" and "rules for life". By the time you have to command people to live in a certain way, the natural sanity of your people is all but lost.

Or should I say, it is sleeping, waiting to be trusted enough again to re-emerge. Organic religions don't have "commands from the Gods" because no commands are needed. Humans are not naturally fallen, evil, or wicked. They can and will look after one another within their communities and families, and may the realities of our modern day which interfere with this natural caring be cursed! One of the most profound realities today which I feel interrupts that natural goodness is the constant teaching, on the parts of revealed religions, that we are NOT naturally good.

If you teach this to people long enough, they will begin to believe it, and they will look to natural good behavior as an exception to the rule, not the norm. They will begin to believe that it was only by the grace of a supernatural being that they were able to be loving and good, when it was in them all along. People will look upon what is normal and natural as an expression of willed virtue, and as some extraordinary duty that they have fulfilled and are therefore deserving of some great praise or recognition for. So you loved your neighbor? Great! You don't deserve the title "godly" or "righteous"- you deserve the title "human".

If you ask people today about the natural goodness of humanity, most of them will laugh at you and point to this atrocity or that war, as proof that anyone who believes in our "natural goodness" is just being naive. But this, too, is a function of the dominant myth that people have been taught to believe. Many will ignore all of the natural wonders and goodness that we are capable of, in favor of the horror that we are capable of, and use that one-sided perspective as their guideline for defining what is "human". That situation is, to me, intolerable.

* * *

What a terrible pain it is to see these revealed religionists thinking that cute little phrases like "love one another" and "do unto others" and the like are so profound, when in reality, they are insults. People who thrill to these sorts of statements are like the spiritual children of this world, forever having to be told to be decent and good, when in reality, decency and goodness spring from us naturally, without a word being spoken. Tribal people around the world to this day live in loving connection with their families and with the land without a single "commandment" from their Gods being given them from some authoritative "text" or scripture.

How can the revealed religionists explain this away? These are people who have never heard of Jehovah, Allah, or Jesus- they've never been tormented, as we have been, by the sheer insulting obnoxiousness of people popping along and waving "the book" in their faces and telling them how they aren't doing this or that right, or how they aren't living or believing right. Yet there they are- getting along as well now as their ancestors did since the dawn of cultural time. Do they have fights? Wars? Disharmony in ways? Of course! But then, so do the Christian and Muslim worlds- and war and stupidity at a pitch much higher than ever before in history.

What the organic cultures have that the modern "big boy religion" world doesn't, is an expression of natural goodness which needs no "instruction book". They also don't have a divine decree- either one that is there, or misunderstood as being there- to convert, harm, dislike, judge, or hate others who don't believe as they do. When they fight, it is over natural causes of conflict- resource competition, mostly. And I'd rather kill or die over resource competition- over things my people and others need to survive- than I would over religious insanity.

My ancestors didn't attack other people because those others didn't worship Odhinn and Thorr. My ancestors didn't have priests or imams wandering around with them, preaching crusade or jihad. My ancestors never would have been so insanely warped. That such cruel twists of Fate could have entangled us is a sobering lesson about what happens when people give way to massive group assimilation and fear.

By the time you have to flip open this or that book- books written by other humans long ago- and point to a passage and justify your contention that people need to "love" one another, you and your audience have forgotten how to love, and why. And no amount of pointing at your scripture passages will ever convince them to love, or make them love. If the love doesn't come naturally, it will not come through contrivance. Feelings of this nature cannot be forced, or taught.

Nothing the young pastor can do will make his congregation members actualize the ideal of love that he clearly believes in. He believes it, but does he really feel it? Does he love because he is loving, or because he learned early on that his God expected it of him? Is love for him his ticket to heaven, or is it an expression of his most authentic nature? These are hard, but important questions.

* * *

The more I study my own religious culture, the more I love the organic approach to religion- the fact that we are not burdened by these so-called "revelations" and "sacred texts" is such a powerful and precious part of our way of living and thinking. I always liked the fact that we had no such dead weight in our spiritual culture; now I understand even more why it is so powerful and important.

We are free of these shackles, and our humanity is allowed to be as it was intended to be. Our benevolence, love, caring, and concerns are allowed to emerge naturally. We are allowed to be spiritual, mental, and moral adults, not children scolded and commanded to love or "do good". We do not believe that humans come forth from the womb flawed or morally stupid. As Jung said "Morality was not brought down from Mount Sinai carved on tablets- moral is a function of the human soul, as old as mankind itself."

Obama was able to justify, using scriptures, a morality that his audience was able to understand. What a terrible pity that he had to refer to a book to get the crowd to applaud. What a terrible, terrible pity. May the Ancestral Gods preserve us in the face of such a darkness, and give their blessings to us and our families, during this strange exile of humanity.

Why was Obama's speech ultimately futile? Because his appeal to "human decency" was framed in the center of an enormous, paradoxical flaw: it was framed as though it takes a God's written command to give us all a reason to be decent. If people truly believe such a thing, they can never be truly decent- they can only put on a good act. Deep, authentic decency has to emerge previous to any rule or command, and especially previous to any rule or command that carries with it a torturous penalty for breaking it. Are we children? Are we dogs to be threatened into obedience, or horses to be broken?

I'm not a child, a dog, or a horse; and I don't need a document from the desk of Jehovah (or any being) to inspire, encourage, or justify my love, or my decency. If a person needs to flip through a book to find the "right" way to live, they have already lost the path, and I sincerely doubt that they will ever find it again easily.

Urd's Vision

2009-05-26T15:51:00.000-07:00

"Who knows the truth? Who can tell whence and how arose this universe? The Gods are later than its beginning: who knows therefore whence comes this creation? Only that God who sees in highest heaven; he only knows whence came this universe, and whether it was made or uncreated. He only knows, or perhaps he knows not."

-Rig Veda X

* * *

Urd, the chief Norn- the supreme "Fate weaver" of ancient and modern Heathen religions, may be loosely described in terms of a "being" or an entity, a nigh-incomprehensible entity whose name gives us the word "Wyrd", and whose power, along with her two lesser sisters, weaves the web of Wyrd.

The web they weave contains all possible realities; it contains all forces, all states, all conditions, and from it, arise all entities. In it, are sustained all entities. The term "Wyrd" can be used as the name of an entity, but also as the name of a process.

Today, as in the ancestral past (so far as we can tell) Wyrd was always understood more as a process. If the most ancient peoples, long previous to our historical ancestral cultures, saw Wyrd as an entity primarily, and saw all of the causal events of the world as the will of a supremely mysterious conscious entity, that we may never know. I am not against such a notion, of course; I have entertained it at times; and so long as people understand that there is more than one way to religiously or philosophically view this question, then it is an interesting perspective, to say the least.

I do view Urd herself as an entity, naturally; and, as with the other two Norns, Urd is of a great and incomprehensible nature. Is she the web of Wyrd itself? Or is the web of Wyrd something she and her sisters weave, and thus, apart from them?

I would answer that it depends on the situation, on the moment of examining the question. In one sense, Urd is Urd, The Norns are the Norns, and the Web of Wyrd is the Web of Wyrd. But in another sense, the notion of absolute "separation" is not sustainable, especially in a spiritual/interactional worldview of wholeness. A spiritual aesthetic of wholeness stops any absolute "separation" from existing, while leaving room for relative, perceptual separation, to allow for consciousness to exist and for linear experience, growth and learning and wisdom to exist.

I believe that the term "Urd" refers to an entity, but not an entity in the same manner that the Gods are entities, or human beings are entities. I believe that the Nornic reality is a non-corporeal reality beyond our ken, beyond our understanding. I can see that our mythological symbols and stories shed some indirect light on these vast and awe-filled realities, and I appreciate these gifts from the past.

I believe that Urd wove the web of Wyrd- and, indeed, perpetually weaves it- in line with a vision She had- a vast, deep, and mysterious experience on her part- and humans have a similar experience when they have what they call an "intuitive realization".

The personal reality of an intuitive realization is the closest we as humans may come to what I am discussing: and what I am discussing is nothing short of the deep reason why things "became" as they did, why things fall as they do, pass away as they do, and are regenerated as they always are. This is Urd's reality-vision, the reality-vision of Wyrd.

It may be speculation, but it is in line with what my soul tells me; for too long, people have wondered what "inspired" or "motivated" the "creator" to create; I don't believe in a "creator" in the typical sense, but beyond that, for me, nothing makes more sense than the idea that the ultimate "source" of things was motivated not by some hot and fierce idea, but by a cool, wordless intuition, a vision of unfathomable beauty or mystery. Perhaps not even the "creator" (to use more mainstream language) knows why it created, or what creation is- and what an idea! This is the birth of an organic way of seeing the highest speculative spiritual realities.

Each sentient being within the web of Wyrd which possesses the sort of consciousness which allows for high-level abstraction, reason, and self-awareness- from the mighty Gods to human beings- are called to emulate Wyrd, in a sense, by seeking a way of living that leads to creativity and to the discovery of their destiny, and the fulfillment of it.

How do we do know the right way to do this? All discrete parts of a web "emulate" the web, in a sense; they all partake of the web's whole nature; sentient beings "emulate Wyrd" through the same sacred visionary process or experience of intuition that existed/exists in the deep- they emulate Wyrd by seeking an intuitive vision of guidance.

By living their own vision, the Gods constructed the Worlds, defeated the malevolent powers, and helped to give rise to human beings and countless other living beings. By living our vision, as humans, we continued the work of Wyrd, the unfolding of things, as conscious co-creators with the Gods and Wyrd.

From the incomprehensible, down to the level of what we see everyday, conscious life and reality appears to be guided intuitively, through vision, through something sacred and sublime. We emulate Wyrd by seeking an intuitive vision for living, and living by what we experience.

The task of "creation"- or should I say "weaving"- is therefore ongoing, and it is a privilege that Gods and Human Beings should be able to take conscious part. There is no fulfillment for us if we do not. Subtle emanations of Wyrd- spirits- individual manifestations of the intangible realities- have also come into being, and some come into our lives, for many reasons.

There is a spiritual ecology here, for every part of this world has these subtle emanations attached to it- the "wights" of the ancestral lore. There are also wights or spirit-entities that seem to come from pure mystery, and play mysterious roles. There is no limit to their variety, or the helpful situations or dangers they can present, but the Wyrd-wise can seek the visionary guidance needed to deal with them successfully. The Gods can be a part of that precious schooling needed.

But in the end, it is each individual being and their own visionary intuition that forms the core of guidance. Our deaths are the arrival of another sort of vision, another chapter of guidance onward into the intangible realities, thus the "death-vision" becomes an important part of Wyrd.

We experience Wyrd typically in terms of process, interaction, and the synchronistic combination of forces that create the patterns of our lives. This is a part of Wyrd. But Wyrd as a sacred field of reality, containing all things, a fertile pool or pond or well of possibilities, is another aspect, another perspective. Wyrd as Weaver, as entity, is another.

We and the Gods are within Wyrd together, part of a greater vision of reality than we could comprehend- but which we participate in. May the Gods help us find the wisdom to participate well, as brave and honorable people, and as people who can open the intuitive eyes needed to know our way.

Man of Odhinn

2009-05-08T15:44:00.000-07:00

Duty is important; perhaps all important, because "duty", while it is a word with many levels of meaning, finally resolves back to what is expected of us as human beings, living in the world of Wyrd which we are always going to be a part of. "Duty" means recognizing what is not optional in our lives. True duties are never really "accepted" by us, taken on by us, or decided by us.

My duty is to the Ancestral way, and to the people that Wyrd has bonded me to in that way. I must strive, in the future, to do as I have spoken of so much in the past, and remember that the way of those True to the Gods is not found in national organizations or umbrella groups; it is found in day-to-day life with family and friends.

I was confused as to what "Asatru" meant and who could use the term, but now the confusion is gone. The term belongs to no one. I know what it means to be "Asatru" in my life, and I have a duty to it. One can't deny their nature; I have seen the darkness in my own nature, the cunning and the unerring ability I have to get into trouble and conflict, and now, I see the hands of the Allfather in it. I'm a man of Odhinn, and nothing in any of the nine worlds can change that.

"Do not fear your destiny; use it!"

Soon, I will be posting an essay regarding the conclusions of H.R. Ellis Davidson about Celtic and Norse religions in old Europe, and the "pattern" that lies behind them all. There is, as she saw, a pattern- and in that discovery, the Old Ways can find a new lease on life. They were never really threatened; but now, they can be understood again, fresh, clear, powerful.

The Wish-Fulfilling Horn

2009-04-01T12:24:00.000-07:00

If I could find the wish-fulfilling horn
And drink the draught of miracles
This is what I would wish for myself:
That I would always act in such a way
That I regretted nothing later.
If I could wish something for you,
I would wish that you lived in a world
Where only things that mattered upset you.

If the horn were generous,
And I could wish again,
I would wish for myself a quiet home
On a quiet meadow, near a sheltering forest,
A place where my family would be safe
And have what they needed.
For you, I would wish that you would know
The path you should take through life.
That you would recognize your place in life,
Your task, your quest, and seize it.

If the horn's bounty were so great
That a third wish was offered,
I would wish to die knowing
That my family would be well always.
For you, I would wish
That you could know the wholeness
That is the truth about you.
I would wish that you accorded yourself
The same worth that I see in you.

When I had returned the horn
To the hands of the sacred folk who keep it,
I would go, without regrets, to my home
In the meadow, on the side of the forest,
I would be in joy with my family;
And there I would take you as my teacher
And learn all that I could from you.
I would need nothing else, ever again.

In the Dark Forests of our Deepest Minds

2009-01-11T06:03:00.000-08:00

"In the dark woodland of the Northern European consciousness, a figure waits: an old man, wrapped in a blue-black cloak. His broad-brimmed hat hangs low, hiding one eye; a sharp metal point glints at the tip of his staff, and two ravens croak from the branches of the ash-tree above him. He beckons: in his hand he holds an ancient drinking-horn, and the scent that rises from it is honey and alcohol, strong enough to set the head spinning with a single whiff. He is a grim one, this old man; his spear is streaked with blood, and the hounds that crouch at his side look more like wolves than dogs. Yet the gift he offers is enough to overcome fear, for the brave . . . for those who are not afraid to die."

-Kveldúlf Gundarsson, from Wotan: The Road to Valhalla

I've been involved in the modern Pagan movement for the last 15 years of my life. I've seen a lot of people come and go through the harvest of those years: some people I knew to be good or even great; some people I considered pretty worthless, and a lot of people in-between- the bored and the indifferent.

At first, I didn't stop to consider what it was we were all doing; I don't know where it came from that I should have become a Pagan, or been drawn to these things. It was just what I did; I didn't like what I had seen before that passed as "religion", and I was drawn to the vibrant imagery and ideas of the mythologies that came from parts of the world that didn't include Palestine. There were strange figures alive in my imagination that needed to be more than just characters in fiction books; they needed to be worshiped for who and what they were before they were washed down the drain of "fiction". It was very mysterious to me, but I didn't question it.

Now I know that our lives and our desires to worship the old Gods and to resurrect the practices and beliefs of a very old way had little to do with us and more to do with the legacy that we are all a part of. At the beginning, when this legacy began to express itself through us, it was one that we were largely unconscious of.

We are all the sons and daughters of an ancient cultural tradition. No matter who we are, behind us stand older powers and tendencies than we can normally realize. The impact of the ancient layers of experience that stand behind our bloodlines are far from done with us, even today- we are still our Ancestor's offspring, affected and shaped by their holy rites, their sacred words, and their hopes and dreams.

Cultures don't vanish just because rapid changes in the world result in the transformation of the religious ideals or social structure of a people. Most people may think so: what is a "culture" if not a "cult" of people who all hold the same things up as sacred and valuable, and who practice similar and related life-ways? I used to keep that shallow definition of culture before I understood the spiritual dimension of culture, and how deep and persistent it is.

Many people today say that culture is determined largely by language. Others look to archaeological scraps dug out of the ground. I look deeper. I say that true culture is determined chiefly by the sacred powers that came together to create the root from which all of the branches of the culture grew from. Those sacred powers are timeless and resistant to age and death.

Later on down the road, it makes no difference what language the descendants of the original culture" begin to speak; it makes no difference what religion they all start to practice. It makes no difference if they leave small villages and move into big cities and become shallow, materialistic people, almost totally forgetful of their Ancestors' ways. Deep inside them, in the "dark woodland of their consciousness"- the unconscious layers of their minds- still live the originating powers. And these living powers influence them, even without their conscious knowledge.

These powers cannot be escaped. We do not have a choice over who and what we will be internally; we are born to an Orlog that was established in the time of the first Ancestors, and we'll die entwined in that Orlog. The cosmetic changes made by the vicissitudes of history are small matters compared to the sacred forces that fed the roots of each human tree.

I've seen a lot of people come and go over the years, and watched them try many things to satisfy the longing inside themselves to uncover their authentic spiritual roots. Many flashy and inviting paths exist today- but not a single one can ever satisfy a person if it does not bring them back to their own beginning.

And I'm not talking about the hospital room that we were in when most of us came screaming into the world; I'm talking about something that I can't find the words for, but which I can feel. I'm talking about the numinous "space" of origins wherein still live the potencies that our Ancestors rightly called "Gods" and where the Ancestral Women of every bloodline still work at their looms, weaving out the Fate of each individual and each family.

The experience of ultimate origins puts us back in touch with a community of sentience that includes not just Ancestors, but formative powers and layers of causality that make us who we were "then" and who we are "now".

As familiar as the various forms of modern Christianity may be, they cannot take us back the full distance; Christianity only goes back as far as the first time it ever collided with our grandmothers and grandfathers, when missionaries first wandered onto their far green shores and set about trying to destroy our foreparents' access to their true origins. All we find when we take the "Christian ride" back is a foreign institution coming and obscuring the sacred power of our origins, and trying to replace it with the strange, foreign symbols and myths of a new sort of worldview.

Many people, driven by the new unconscious patterns of long-term social programming, may take refuge in Christianity's promises and hopes, but at the end of the day (or the end of their lives) I am very confident that most people will feel the warm glow of those expectations fall cold; they will feel alienated or dis-satisfied on some level- a crisis that Christianity as a whole has always been familiar with, and which it has played off as "a crisis of faith." Worse yet, it has traditionally taken a "blame the victim" mentality, accusing people who can't explain their discomfort of lacking faith- and using guilt to keep them right where they are.

Always longing to find "home", as I believe all people do, some of these Christian folk will hope that the final promise of Christianity- that of "heaven"- will be a realization and fulfillment of that longing.

The "heaven" they really want isn't a sunny, sandy "New Jerusalem" with the Big Jehovah and choirs of angels; it is a green land of mountains, forests, and fields and blue rivers and oceans, full of game and fish and longhouses and roundhouses, villages with warm hearth-fires and sweet mead, wherein walk beautiful women and strong men, safe, happy, together with their own children and families. It isn't full of camels and ancient Iranian Magi draped in silk; it is full of horses and deer, of wolves and ravens and mystics draped in hide and fur.

Heaven is not a return to the paradise of another people, or to another people's myth of a great future; it is a return to our own origins. And in the Underworld of our Ancestors, in the Godly Realms of our Ancestors- sacred and powerful and totally unrelated to the "hell" of the Christians- that sort of completion awaits us. It is a long-sought homecoming, a long-awaited rest among our true kin.

This is not just a matter of the preferential aesthetics that we want to see for this life or even for our afterlives. I once let myself entertain the notion that the afterlife was something beyond our understanding, and only "dressed up" in symbols and words for our limited minds to grasp- but today, I know that this is wrong. The "afterlife" is no more beyond our understanding than this life is- or this room, this morning light, this music we hear today, these people we talk to and interact with now.

I'm not saying that we can understand the true roots of all reality in the way we usually understand things; I'm saying that we can understand as well as humans can who and what the things of this world are, and what the things of the afterlife are.

What we will "see" when we die isn't so different from what we "see" here- the emblems of the afterlife journey- the Hel-Road, the Ship that Crosses the Waters, the "Field of the Folk"- all of these things aren't just cheap descriptions born of a poverty of language; they are telling us what our minds will experience. The "language of the mind" doesn't suddenly change just because it can't use the eyes of the head to see- if that were the case, we'd never dream in the concrete terms of this world: we'd never dream about animals, houses, people, or places.

There are primordial forms of experience that dwell both in the mind and in this world- for these two things aren't so different after all. Having a "language for the mind" isn't a sign of some primitive limitation; it is a sign that these things are part and parcel of the deepest universal expressions.

And the primordial forms of experience- the forest, the mountain, the sea, the ship, the dwelling-place, the fire, the wandering God, the Rune, the spear, the sword, the witch, the warrior, all of these ancient forms that encapsulate so many cultural realities- they are not "romanticized" symbols of an over-imaginative former time; they are universal emblems of primal power. They were with us before; they are with us now, and will be with us again.

We lost a lot when we decided to shrug off the "trappings" of culture and tried to find some abstract "deeper meaning" for things that excluded the primordial forms. Those of us who attempted to do so were trying to conform to the ridiculous notions of some new "transcendental" learning or philosophy, trying to escape our roots in the soil and the earth, trying to transcend our ancient cultures. We were encouraged to believe that "progress" demanded such transcendence.

The call to betray the ancient root-cultures and the sacred originating powers came first from Christianity, and still continues in some ways in academia- academia, whose memory for some of the most important things of our past is either lost, or always in doubt, always non-committal, always serving the politics of the new world, and not the souls of human beings.

The call to be a "modern" person is still strong in many sectors- "modernity" apparently means getting excited about celebrity gossip, the drug-riddled lives and broken marriages of pop stars, getting the handbag of the season, and watching reality TV, and not getting too excited about what the "primitive" people of the distant past were doing or saying.

The call to be "modern" seems to be a call to give up on ever finding our unique identity, and instead submerging ourselves in a great pool of human flesh and blood in which identity is lost. It seems to ask that we accept that everyone's ancestors were all "trying to say the same thing" with their Gods and myths- and (somehow) the god of just one people was always the "real" one, and we should pray to it instead.

Of course, the religious complex that has sprung up around that particular "god" not only justifies being ignorant of our true origins, but continually upholds every sort of abuse of power, every orthodoxic invasion of other people's freedom of mind and will, every prudish distrust of the body and sexuality, every condescension towards womanhood and the feminine side of human life, and every sort of tyranny that still murders people today- it upholds regimes overseas that murder and oppress in the name of the Old Testament, just as surely as it upholds the local minister who oppresses the souls and freedoms of people in the name of the exact same book and its sequel.

We can ill afford to go on washing away our own originating traditions of sacredness into a pit of abstraction, safely removing these things from our concern so that we can comfortably replace them with new trends; our Gods are not just more "symbols of human longing for the divine"; they are more than just "archetypes"- they are Gods. They are some of those originating forces that live forever in the deep forests of our true selves, and that is where they will always be.

And until we find our way back to those woodlands within, back to the originating powers (of whom the Gods are some among many) we will never know who or what we are, and we won't ever have real peace.

We can chant like Buddhists, pray like Christians, drum like Native Americans, dance like Wiccans, or scoff at others like bitter atheists, but none of these things will bring us to the lasting peace, knowledge, and wisdom that we are naturally heirs to, and which we are naturally, fatefully inspired to seek out. We won't have peace until we resolve ourselves to the Ancestral powers that still live in us and work from the deepest places.

Living the Odhinnic Life

2008-11-25T14:54:00.000-08:00

I was recently in a discussion regarding the notion of "relationship to deity" as we Heathens understand it. It's nothing like the mainstream Christian notion of "relationship to God"- though many people who would be Heathen, and who have had the Christian model of relationship demonstrated to them all their life- expect that we will approach our Gods in the same familiar and intimate terms.

We don't. I've discussed it before, in many places, but it never really gets old: the Gods are busy running the universe and keeping the Worlds safe from being destroyed by wicked, destructive powers. This is not to say that they don't sometimes give visions or guidance to individual human beings, but it's far from a common occurrence. The Gods don't micromanage our lives, nor do they give out their "personal cell numbers" to just anyone who decides that they'll worship them. The Gods- led by Allfather- have given mankind many great and powerful assets, including the Godly spirit within each man and woman, and their ceaselessly effective wisdom, as embodied in texts like "Havamal" and other writings in the lore of the past.

The Gods give us the capability to be wise, brave, clever, resourceful, and enduring. Their spirit in us tends towards these things. They give us copious advice through the ancestral lore. They inspire us with their very presence, which can sometimes be experienced in moments of sacred might. They upheld the ancestors who knew them, and they uphold us now, even if most human beings won't give them the time of day anymore.

The Gods have fulfilled their role in the Fate of human beings; we have to stand and do our part now- return the favor, as it were, and make the most of their gifts and their aid when we can get it. Humans have to live their lives on what powers and merits they can manifest in themselves.

The only "outside aid" we can expect beyond what the Gods have done is the help and protection of the spirits of our family-lines, and our ancestral powers, who do provide us with luck and guidance, in their own strange way. Life is full of uncertainties, and there is no reason to be overly concerned about this simple and universal fact. You just accept it and live the best way you can. That's real peace; conflict begins when you either delight in delusions about life's true nature, and the true nature of death- or when you sit around wishing that the way the world works was different. We're not going to improve the world; it is being woven out by Fate. We can, however, improve our perspectives and find peace.

Organic religions, like Heathen traditions, don't come pre-packaged with "instruction books" for life. You learn all that you can from wherever you can- your elders, parents, friends, and from ancestral tradition, like the myths and lore. Then you live. You are helped, and you help others. Most importantly, you try to gain wisdom from living- wisdom, that true manifestation of the supreme solar-minded insight and inspiration which rained onto mankind when Odhinn, the Allfather and Master of the Mysteries completed his timeless quest for the deepest vision of reality. Those same blessings are mediated by his strange doings (in the mythical past and in our here-and-now present) to those who are cunning and brave enough to be "Allfather's Own".

It's odd indeed to think that the Gods can be so important to us- and to all life- and yet we don't imagine that we are having two-way phone calls with them every time we pray, fain, or sacrifice. There is no reason to be perplexed here; it is the mighty example of the Gods that supply our needs for relationship with the ruling powers. Living the "Odhinnic Life"- living by the example of the great Godly Sorcerer himself- makes one "move in his channel"- move, think, and live according to his own ancient wisdom and his own actions, and thus, we channel many of the same experiences he had.

The result of this is twofold: a precious chance to find the secrets that Allfather found, and a chance to know that we are not living a life merely of our own making, but living in accordance with a greater pattern of Wyrd, a timeless pattern with proven results: results that end in wisdom, the death of the self, given over to the Greater Self- and if we are lucky, the arrival at the same condition that Allfather resides in, perpetually.

We don't become "Allfathers", ourselves; we become what we have the potential to be inside- wise and free spirits that drink from his endless cup of inspiration, served to us by his handmaidens. That we can achieve such a blessed state is the evidence we need that, at the core of us, is that deathless spirit "in-breathed" (in-spired) by Allfather. If we were only lumps of mud and organic material, as modern science would have us believe, no such realizations or awakenings would be possible.

There are no "lumps of dead matter" to be found, anywhere in the Nine Worlds. All matter is coexistent with the fire that impelled the creation of the world-system; all matter is energetic and alive in its own way. All energy and matter, which can be reduced to the strong, impelling subtle forces and the inert, tending-to-stasis forces, (Fire and Ice) are themselves arisen from a deeper layer of reality- the layer of Ginnungagap, the void of Ginn-powers, the extremely subtle and mysterious roots of all things which not even the wisest can penetrate unless he or she dies to all relative notions of "world" and "self".

Those extremely subtle and mysterious roots are not known to me directly, but I will say one thing about them: I know that they are living powers, for the reality of sentience, spirit, and mind arose from them, and no dead thing can produce something alive. Effects are always something of the nature of their causes. The cosmos is a storm of mighty living powers, many risen to high levels of sentience, like the Gods and humanity, others not so high, tending towards darkness and chaos as they do. But the entire "cosmic event" is a powerful and timeless explosion of life and life-interaction.

And the Allfather is the Master of its many mysteries. To live in respect and worship of Odhinn is very good- very wise; it is good and right that people should worship such a being who is so tied to our own arising as human beings and our own greatness as humanity. But it is even greater and wiser to live like Odhinn- to follow in his footsteps and actualize the stages of his quest for the mysteries. Living like him places you in an intimate relationship with him, even if you never see him in a dream or see him in person.

In a sense, living like him means that you "see" him in everything that you do, for the reality of these things is such that you can't separate their power from him. The goal is to "see" that undying spirit of yourself, which he breathed into your ancestors. When you "see" that, you have seen the very essence and nature of the Gods. It frees us from despair, doubt, and death. That's what real wisdom is, to me- freedom from despair, confusion, doubt, and death.

What does it mean to live the Odhinnic way of life? It means that you look to sacred accounts of Allfather's interactions and his own quest to wisdom, to inspire your own. Below are a list of "Odhinnic perspectives" that I have crafted as a means to guidance for myself and others who are interested in the greatest path to wisdom that a human being can walk.

1. The Allfather Sacrificed his lesser self to his Greater Self, in the name of wisdom.

The quest for wisdom is greater than any other quest. Odhinn was willing to "die" to everything he thought about himself, everything he believed, and every doubt, attachment, joy, and fear he knew, just to attain wisdom. Does this mean we should give up on everything we find important in our lives, and become monks? Naturally not- "dying" or releasing ourselves from the snares of the lesser self isn't about scorning the lesser self and letting it die of starvation; it is about understanding that a Greater Self exists, and understanding what the true relationship is between lesser and Greater.

The Greater Self, to use an example, is an ocean compared to the lesser self, which is like a fish in the ocean. The fish depends so much on the great (and to it, invisible) medium of the oceanic body. There is no fish without it; it is the source of life and sustenance to the fish. It is the medium in which the fish moves and thrives. It is the resting place of the fish when the fish dies and its body comes apart.

But in the meantime, the fish swims on, blithely unaware of this great oceanic power upon which it relies, depends, and in which it moves and lives. If we were reflections on the surface of a mirror, the surface of the mirror- which effortlessly upholds all reflections as they come and go- would be like our Godly nature, our undying Greater Self. No part of a reflection is exempt from depending on the mirror, or being upheld by it. Just so, no part of our so-called "lesser self" can be apart from the Greater; the Greater is merely silent, perpetual, and supportive- the very "strong force" that holds the entire cosmos together. To die to the lesser is to grasp oceanic consciousness while still having command of fish consciousness- it is to become both lasting mirror and temporary, passing reflection at the same time.

So, dying to our lesser self is really about understanding the reality of the greater and no longer according single-minded limitation and importance to the lesser things that live and die, constantly. You don't have to give up your house, your beautiful wife or handsome husband, or give up all your money- these things that most people are quite fond of and attached to- you just have to see them with the proper, greater perspective. You have to see them with a wiser perspective.

Understanding the insubstantial nature of lesser things is precisely how we "give them up"- even if we keep them after our breakthrough in understanding, and even if we go on enjoying them, we've still "given them up" in a very important way. We've given up our slavery to our limited ideas about the natures of these things- and the nature of what we call "ourselves".

Like Odhinn, you can be alive and dead at the same time, rich and poor at the same time, loaded down with possessions and free of possessions at the same time. You only "have" the Greater Self when you let greater, wiser perspectives temper and change how you experience the "lesser" self. This is a matter of being willing to sacrifice yourself, and things about yourself that you may enjoy- beliefs you may enjoy, feelings you may enjoy, or habits you may enjoy. You have to be willing to take risks, to lose and to suffer in order to gain. Odhinn gouged out his eye to have a drink from a well that gave him much wisdom- what will you tear out to gain wisdom?

2. Allfather Welcomed a Dark Figure to his Table, and Offered his Hospitality and Friendship

Loki the Wolf's Father became bound to Odhinn through blood and troth. They shared horns and cups! Why ever? Such a dangerous, tricky figure being welcomed by Allfather? Won't Loki's giant Wolf-Son Fenris destroy Odhinn one day, with Loki leading the army that Fenris will be a part of? Sure. But the indistinct future doesn't mean squat when it comes to dealing wisely with what exists right now. Odhinn knows what role Loki has to play in the unfolding of things. Odhinn knows Loki's necessity, and he shows his acceptance of "things being risky and dangerous"- an acceptance that we all need to consider.

We all fail to live up to our highest ideals at times, and we all have risky behaviors, ideas, habits, and other dangerous powers in our lives. What do we do? Whine? Try to destroy the "other side" of things, as though it weren't necessary? It is necessary, even if it has disastrous consequences. Neither the universe nor these human societies or bodies are going to be around forever. Those dangerous powers that threaten to overthrow things are our constant companions and teachers, in a very real way- they keep us on our toes and they keep us preparing for the inevitable tests we must all face, when we are forced back down to the roots and to what is true and real.

Might as well set aside a cup of ale for the things you don't like about your life- because Fate wove them into your life for a reason, and wisdom comes from discovering that reason, not struggling against what cannot be changed. Every glorious feast or delightful meal ends up as a steaming pile of shit, eventually- that's no reason not to enjoy the feast.

Sure, every good thing is destined to be broken down- and destruction forever follows along with creation (and creation follows along with destruction)- and as much as these things might seem to be a real tragedy, consider it: Allfather and the Gods still made humans, and endowed us with spirit and life, and taught us to live well. Why would they, if all this was meaningless? Take the hint- live life happily. There must be a good reason why they thought it was worth it.

3. Allfather Wanders the World, In Many Shapes and Guises, in Search of Wisdom

He never seems to get enough! In many guises the Old Man treks about; his comings and goings are very mysterious. He seeks heroes to take as his own, seeks occult knowledge, new forms of sorcery to master, and seeks for goodness knows what else. He is the eternal student of the world- even a God in possession of omniscience still feels the need to wander and learn.

What can this mean? That knowing everything and working to know everything are not truly different- two sides of one coin. It tells us that omniscience is hard work, and that even a being that has the power to know everything- all the tidings of the earth, through his sorcery- still enjoys getting out sometime and seeing things with his own great eye.

The learning process must never end. It will never end. There's always new perspectives to learn, even on old knowledge that one may believe they have mastered. It is this "infinite" nature to wisdom and learning that makes them what they are, and makes them attributes of the Godly spirit in us. If they could reach some "limit", leaving us static and with nothing new to do or learn, they would not be worthy of a Godly essence. Our interactions with the world are never done, and the process of learning is ongoing.

There is no such thing as "forbidden knowledge", and no limits to what you should be interested in learning. Odhinn crosses every country and every region of every world looking to learn useful things. So do his men and women.

4. Allfather Rules the Gods and the Worlds through Subtlety, not Might of Arms

Yes, he has powerful weapons, like his enchanted spear Gungnir, but his real weapon is his mastery of the Runes and of sorcery- the power to alter the perspectives of other beings, to outwit them and to shift his shape like the God he is. His great knowledge, insight, and wisdom is what makes him Ruler of the Gods and the Worlds, not his magic spear. The penetrating Eye of Odhinn sees all things and through all things, to their roots- though what it "sees" there is not for us to know, but to discover.

If beating Giants to death and crushing the enemies of the Gods with brute force was enough to Rule the Cosmos, then Thorr would be in charge, not his father Odhinn. Wisdom rules the world- not savagery or muscle. It may not seem that way now, in our human world, in our times where wisdom doesn't seem to be high on the agendas of many governments, but cosmically speaking, it is wisdom that sits above strength in dominance and importance.

Might fades. Strength fades with age. Empires and armies fall. But wisdom remains, and a person strong in wisdom dies well, whereas a person who can only really beat people up well is carried away by death in terror- for their fists are useless when Hel casts Her noose around the fool's neck.

The men and women of Odhinn seek to fight smarter, not fight harder.

5. Allfather has a Dark Sense of Humor

...And so would you if you lived in perpetual awareness of your true self as an indestructible reality of spirit, and could now wander around the world, in many temporary, relative forms, enjoying life, experiencing excitement and fulfilling the needful work of Fate, without ever once having to slip into despair and doubt on account of your lost wits.

On your happy journeys, you'd meet a Hel of a lot of beings who are nothing like you- whiners, greedy bastards, poufs, idiots, and drool-cup specials that seem to think that they are the most important beings in existence, and who cause themselves and others an enormous pile of trouble.

Glaring from under the brim of his hat with his drilling eye, Allfather knows the true nature of these confused beings. He knows what role they play in the scheme of things. He knows what forces wove them they way they are. He knows what the outcomes of their stupidity must be.

If you were like Allfather, you wouldn't be able to help yourself- you'd have some fun at their expense, at least some of the time. And in so doing, you'd show them a different way to be- maybe they'd get better. Maybe they'd whine even more and just end up being a lesson for posterity. Or maybe you'd help eliminate them, if that was better for them and for the world. From the outside, it might look like you were being a sneaky, slippery bastard. You might look lethal and cruel. But from the inside, the story is very different. For the truly wise, the story is always different.

They say "ruthlessness is the kindness of the wise"- and there is a drop of truth to that, when the whole story is seen. Sometimes, the wisest thing to do is pretty savage seeming. But you will always know real wisdom by its ends- when it leads to good places, to greater harmony, then it was good all along. The scale is long and hard to see, unless of course you see with the eye of wholeness. Most humans don't. Most men and women of Odhinn don't. And those that do, well, I doubt we'll ever know about them, fully- like Odhinn, they won't ever be what they appear. Their comings and goings will likely be obscure to us. But we can honor their ideal.

There's nothing left to do but have a good laugh when the truth about things is known. The show is all decided, falling away to the Ragnarok- Orlog will unfold as it must. All of the things that we've feared so much are really meaningless. We are fully free, at heart, and fully trapped by our paranoias and self-interested delusions. We won't take the gold drink that is offered us every day by the Fylgja-Women, the handmaidens to Odhinn who accompany us; we prefer to lick our spit and call it champagne.

Imagine that you took the drink! You'd be a drinker of the sweetest mead, awakened to the truth of things, and yet still surrounded by spit-drinkers. After you got over the shock of it (a shock you might not even have, considering how much you'd understand the necessity of spit-drinkers- you too, were once one, after all, and you managed to get some good out of it) you'd have to smile at the great perfection of it all. After that, it would be time for some fun.

Things that seem so tragic to others might be seen by you as cosmic comedy of the greatest quality. And the opposite is true- things others delight in may not delight you as much, knowing as you do what the true nature of things is. You'll be doomed to be like Allfather- always going your way in your own special sort of unconquerable freedom, destined to be misunderstood, feared, and ignored by people who drink spit.

And like Allfather, you'll be a great champion of the Gods and humankind, and of all worlds in which sentient life dwells. Your sorcery- your great insight- will see to it that you end up in places on your journeys where you need to be, for things to work out as they must.

6. Odhinn's Conquest of the Vertical Axis of Reality- the World Tree- gave Solar Salvation (Sig and Sal, the possibility of Victory and Health) to All Beings

And your conquest of the world-axis can do the same. Stop living an "all around me" life, that life that deals with a flat plane, north, south, east, and west- stop living on the horizontal. Look to the vertical, which allows perception and consciousness to rise to the heights and sink to the depths. In the depths of Hel are the Ginn-Powers, hidden, though come forth now as the Runes, as taught by Allfather after he won them. From the depths comes the Mead of Inspiration, won by Allfather and mediated to the whole world by him, in the form of his great Solar Eagle.

From the Depths and the Heights come different perspectives- perspectives that are co-existent with every "place" and "moment" here on the horizontal plane- and Allfather's Ravens forever fly back and forth whispering the keys to those perspectives. In the form of a serpent, he hisses about the great inspiration he found below, in the depths.

It is not the sun and life-force that Allfather mediates; it is the sun of spirit and the life-force of deathless eternity. It is the sun behind the sun, the life behind life. Those two suns are never separate; those two lives are never separate. His two Ravens are never separate, and he and his blood-brother, dark Loki, are never separate in spirit. His two wolves are with him at all times.

Allfather's lesser self (which is doomed to die at Ragnarok) is never separate from his Greater Self, which will live on from age to age, never dying. From that Greater Self he will emerge again in the regenerated world as the Reader of the Blood-Twigs, and continue on like nothing happened.

When will you rise to the heights, make the two into one, and overcome death and obscurity? Can you? The road is long and hard. Can our modern day produce such heroes? Allfather is still wandering about, waiting to see a few himself.

It is not Tolerance We Want, but Liberty

2008-11-17T13:45:00.000-08:00

The following was not written by me, but by a friend of a friend. I have not yet come across a document that better expresses something that I have always felt, but never been able to put to words. May the Gods bless the author of this insightful writing!

* * *

"During a recent discussion with an acquaintance the subject of religion came up. Now for some of you who do not know me I am a Heathen, a Theodsman in fact. No that doesn't mean I am an atheist but rather that I believe in and worship the gods that my Germanic ancestors did. As a Theodsman I am a religious Reconstructionist who is attempting to model my relations with my Gods, ancestors and the natural world on the methods of the ancient pre-Christian Germanic. It is something that has given me much happiness in my life and has helped me forge long standing, deep relationships with people who have similar spiritual goals. This growing understanding of my ancestral heritage has been an incredibly positive influence in me and I have prospered in all facets of my life because of it.

When describing my religious outlook to my friend he was quite open to the ideas and beliefs that I put forward. After we had discussed this for a while he claimed that as a Christian he could never believe what I do but as an American and a man he felt that it was his sincerest wish to be tolerant of all sorts of ideas. He let me know how much he disagreed with those Christians who are constantly proselytizing and that he honestly viewed opinions and beliefs with tolerance. He even displayed a genuine interest in my views and commented on the soundness of my reasoning. I continued my conversation with him and we are still friends but I couldn't help but to feel very insulted.

Yes, I was insulted. Offended by a friend who had nothing but the best intentions during the conversation and he has no idea how or why he insulted me. I know many of you reading this are also confused as to how I could be insulted by a man who was genuinely open and accepting of my not so mainstream ideals. What insulted me was his tolerance. The very principle he, as a liberal, progressive Christian, thinks of as a paramount social ideal had me incensed. I understand he means no harm nor did he purposely proffer insult but the very idea that my beliefs are to be tolerated by others strikes an ill chord in me.

Being tolerant of others faith is seen a sign of respect and acceptance. Is tolerance not a virtue to be admired and strived for in today's multicultural American society? If so, why was I insulted by my well intentioned colleague? It is the very nature of tolerance that offends me. Tolerance requires permission. When someone tolerates something they are allowing it or approving of it through their own forbearance. The word and condition implies that there is inherently something wrong with or inconvenient about the tolerated activity. Only with the kind permission of folks who are willing to put up with such activity will it be allowed. Tolerance is by its very nature condescending.

The ideal that folks are actually suggesting is acceptance. However most people don't really accept deep seated beliefs that are contrary to everything they believe. A Christian who sincerely believes in the absolute truth of the Bible or a Muslim who is carefully following the teachings of Mohammad simply cannot with any spiritually honesty accept the worship of Heathen Gods. It would be directly in opposition to the most profound tenets of their faith. No one can realistically expect this of anyone nor can such acceptance be forced through statute, political correctness, or multiculturalism.

So if tolerance is unacceptable and acceptance is unrealistic what is left? Is there a societal condition that will allow me to live my life and worship my Gods and Ancestors without the permission of others? Yes, there is indeed a better principle. There is a virtue, a social paradigm that is the highest expression of such living. Liberty.

The Founding Fathers recognized the simple, basic human importance of liberty when it was placed as one of only three named unalienable Rights in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness...

Unalienable Rights were seen by the framers to be nontransferable, above repudiation and not awarded by another. These are inherent states of the human condition. Liberty in the context of this declaration is the individuals immunity from arbitrary exercise of authority and the individual freedom from compulsion.

In modern Western society the ideal is the same. I have the liberty to not be forced to believe that my folk were created by a Middle Eastern deity. Christians have the unalienable right to believe their folk were indeed created by such a being. We then both have the liberty to venerate our respective Gods in whatever manner we choose provided it does not infringe upon the life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness of another. Once we recognize each others liberty we can then begin to find a mutual respect for each others right to do as we please.

With the recognition of Liberty there is no need for condescending state of tolerance between men. There is also no need for the unrealistic concession of acceptance. With Liberty we simply recognize the individuals right to believe as he pleases and his freedom to follow that belief. It is simple, it plants the seeds of respect, and it quells most religious arguments. I may believe Christians are wrong in their assessment of the divine but I fully recognize their liberty to think as they choose. I simply expect the same from them.

I do not beg for tolerance. I do not expect acceptance. I do however demand Liberty."

Everything you Know About British and Irish Ancestry

2008-11-14T20:30:00.000-08:00

Everything you know about British and Irish ancestry is wrong. Our ancestors were Basques, not Celts. The Celts were not wiped out by the Anglo-Saxons, in fact neither had much impact on the genetic stock of these islands

By Stephen Oppenheimer

Stephen Oppenheimer's books "The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Story" and "Out of Eden: The Peopling of the World" are published by Constable & Robinson

* * *

The fact that the British and the Irish both live on islands gives them a misleading sense of security about their unique historical identities. But do we really know who we are, where we come from and what defines the nature of our genetic and cultural heritage? Who are and were the Scots, the Welsh, the Irish and the English? And did the English really crush a glorious Celtic heritage?

Everyone has heard of Celts, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. And most of us are familiar with the idea that the English are descended from Anglo-Saxons, who invaded eastern England after the Romans left, while most of the people in the rest of the British Isles derive from indigenous Celtic ancestors with a sprinkling of Viking blood around the fringes.

Yet there is no agreement among historians or archaeologists on the meaning of the words "Celtic" or "Anglo-Saxon." What is more, new evidence from genetic analysis (see note below) indicates that the Anglo-Saxons and Celts, to the extent that they can be defined genetically, were both small immigrant minorities. Neither group had much more impact on the British Isles gene pool than the Vikings, the Normans or, indeed, immigrants of the past 50 years.

The genetic evidence shows that three quarters of our ancestors came to this corner of Europe as hunter-gatherers, between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago, after the melting of the ice caps but before the land broke away from the mainland and divided into islands. Our subsequent separation from Europe has preserved a genetic time capsule of southwestern Europe during the ice age, which we share most closely with the former ice-age refuge in the Basque country. The first settlers were unlikely to have spoken a Celtic language but possibly a tongue related to the unique Basque language.

Another wave of immigration arrived during the Neolithic period, when farming developed about 6,500 years ago. But the English still derive most of their current gene pool from the same early Basque source as the Irish, Welsh and Scots. These figures are at odds with the modern perceptions of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon ethnicity based on more recent invasions. There were many later invasions, as well as less violent immigrations, and each left a genetic signal, but no individual event contributed much more than 5 per cent to our modern genetic mix.

Many myths about the Celts

Celtic languages and the people who brought them probably first arrived during the Neolithic period. The regions we now regard as Celtic heartlands actually had less immigration from the continent during this time than England. Ireland, being to the west, has changed least since the hunter-gatherer period and received fewer subsequent migrants (about 12 per cent of the population) than anywhere else. Wales and Cornwall have received about 20 per cent, Scotland and its associated islands 30 per cent, while eastern and southern England, being nearer the continent, has received one third of its population from outside over the past 6,500 years. These estimates, set out in my book The Origins of the British, come from tracing individual male gene lines from continental Europe to the British Isles and dating each one (see box at bottom of page).

If the Celts were not our main aboriginal stock, how do we explain the wide historical distribution and influence of Celtic languages? There are many examples of language change without significant population replacement; even so, some people must have brought Celtic languages to our isles. So where did they come from, and when?

The orthodox view of the origins of the Celts turns out to be an archaeological myth left over from the 19th century. Over the past 200 years, a myth has grown up of the Celts as a vast, culturally sophisticated but warlike people from central Europe, north of the Alps and the Danube, who invaded most of Europe, including the British Isles, during the iron age, around 300 BC.

Central Europe during the last millennium BC certainly was the time and place of the exotic and fierce Hallstatt culture and, later, the La Tène culture, with their prestigious, iron-age metal jewellery wrought with intricately woven swirls. Hoards of such jewellery and weapons, some fashioned in gold, have been dug up in Ireland, seeming to confirm central Europe as the source of migration. The swirling style of decoration is immortalised in such cultural icons as the Book of Kells, the illuminated Irish manuscript (Trinity College, Dublin), and the bronze Battersea shield (British Museum), evoking the western British Isles as a surviving remnant of past Celtic glory. But unfortunately for this orthodoxy, these artistic styles spread generally in Europe as cultural fashions, often made locally. There is no evidence they came to Britain and Ireland as part of an invasion.

Many archaeologists still hold this view of a grand iron-age Celtic culture in the centre of the continent, which shrank to a western rump after Roman times. It is also the basis of a strong sense of ethnic identity that millions of members of the so-called Celtic diaspora hold. But there is absolutely no evidence, linguistic, archaeological or genetic, that identifies the Hallstatt or La Tène regions or cultures as Celtic homelands. The notion derives from a mistake made by the historian Herodotus 2,500 years ago when, in a passing remark about the "Keltoi," he placed them at the source of the Danube, which he thought was near the Pyrenees. Everything else about his description located the Keltoi in the region of Iberia.

The late 19th-century French historian Marie Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville decided that Herodotus had meant to place the Celtic homeland in southern Germany. His idea has remained in the books ever since, despite a mountain of other evidence that Celts derived from southwestern Europe. For the idea of the south German "Empire of the Celts" to survive as the orthodoxy for so long has required determined misreading of texts by Caesar, Strabo, Livy and others. And the well-recorded Celtic invasions of Italy across the French Alps from the west in the 1st millennium BC have been systematically reinterpreted as coming from Germany, across the Austrian Alps.

De Jubainville's Celtic myth has been deconstructed in two recent sceptical publications: The Atlantic Celts: Ancient People or Modern Invention by Simon James (1999), and The Celts: Origins, Myths and Inventions by John Collis (2003). Nevertheless, the story lingers on in standard texts and notably in The Celts, a Channel 4 documentary broadcast in February. "Celt" is now a term that sceptics consider so corrupted in the archaeological and popular literature that it is worthless.

This is too drastic a view. It is only the central European homeland theory that is false. The connection between modern Celtic languages and those spoken in southwest Europe during Roman times is clear and valid. Caesar wrote that the Gauls living south of the Seine called themselves Celts. That region, in particular Normandy, has the highest density of ancient Celtic place-names and Celtic inscriptions in Europe. They are common in the rest of southern France (excluding the formerly Basque region of Gascony), Spain, Portugal and the British Isles. Conversely, Celtic place-names are hard to find east of the Rhine in central Europe.

Given the distribution of Celtic languages in southwest Europe, it is most likely that they were spread by a wave of agriculturalists who dispersed 7,000 years ago from Anatolia, travelling along the north coast of the Mediterranean to Italy, France, Spain and then up the Atlantic coast to the British Isles. There is a dated archaeological trail for this. My genetic analysis shows exact counterparts for this trail both in the male Y chromosome and the maternally transmitted mitochondrial DNA right up to Cornwall, Wales, Ireland and the English south coast.

Further evidence for the Mediterranean origins of Celtic invaders is preserved in medieval Gaelic literature. According to the orthodox academic view of "iron-age Celtic invasions" from central Europe, Celtic cultural history should start in the British Isles no earlier than 300 BC. Yet Irish legend tells us that all six of the cycles of invasion came from the Mediterranean via Spain, during the late Neolithic to bronze age, and were completed 3,700 years ago.

Anglo-Saxon ethnic cleansing?

The other myth I was taught at school, one which persists to this day, is that the English are almost all descended from 5th-century invaders, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, from the Danish peninsula, who wiped out the indigenous Celtic population of England.

The story originates with the clerical historians of the early dark ages. Gildas (6th century AD) and Bede (7th century) tell of Saxons and Angles invading over the 5th and 6th centuries. Gildas, in particular, sprinkles his tale with "rivers of blood" descriptions of Saxon massacres. And then there is the well-documented history of Anglian and Saxon kingdoms covering England for 500 years before the Norman invasion.

But who were those Ancient Britons left in England to be slaughtered when the legions left? The idea that the Celts were eradicated—culturally, linguistically and genetically—by invading Angles and Saxons derives from the idea of a previously uniformly Celtic English landscape. But the presence in Roman England of some Celtic personal and place-names doesn't mean that all ancient Britons were Celts or Celtic-speaking.

The genocidal view was generated, like the Celtic myth, by historians and archaeologists over the last 200 years. With the swing in academic fashion against "migrationism" (seeing the spread of cultural influence as dependent on significant migrations) over the past couple of decades, archaeologists are now downplaying this story, although it remains a strong underlying perspective in history books.

Some geneticists still cling to the genocide story. Research by several genetics teams associated with University College London has concentrated in recent years on proving the wipeout view on the basis of similarities of male Y chromosome gene group frequency between Frisia/north Germany and England. One of the London groups attracted press attention in July by claiming that the close similarities were the result of genocide followed by a social-sexual apartheid that enhanced Anglo-Saxon reproductive success over Celtic.

The problem is that the English resemble in this way all the other countries of northwest Europe as well as the Frisians and Germans. Using the same method (principal components analysis, see note below), I have found greater similarities of this kind between the southern English and Belgians than the supposedly Anglo-Saxon homelands at the base of the Danish peninsula. These different regions could not all have been waiting their turn to commit genocide on the former Celtic population of England. The most likely reason for the genetic similarities between these neighbouring countries and England is that they all had similar prehistoric settlement histories.

When I looked at exact gene type matches between the British Isles and the continent, there were indeed specific matches between the continental Anglo-Saxon homelands and England, but these amounted to only 5 per cent of modern English male lines, rising to 15 per cent in parts of Norfolk where the Angles first settled. There were no such matches with Frisia, which tends to confirm a specific Anglo-Saxon event since Frisia is closer to England, so would be expected to have more matches.

When I examined dates of intrusive male gene lines to look for those coming in from northwest Europe during the past 3,000 years, there was a similarly low rate of immigration, by far the majority arriving in the Neolithic period. The English maternal genetic record (mtDNA) is consistent with this and contradicts the Anglo-Saxon wipeout story. English females almost completely lack the characteristic Saxon mtDNA marker type still found in the homeland of the Angles and Saxons. The conclusion is that there was an Anglo-Saxon invasion, but of a minority elite type, with no evidence of subsequent "sexual apartheid."

The orthodox view is that the entire population of the British Isles, including England, was Celtic-speaking when Caesar invaded. But if that were the case, a modest Anglo-Saxon invasion is unlikely to have swept away all traces of Celtic language from the pre-existing population of England. Yet there are only half a dozen Celtic words in English, the rest being mainly Germanic, Norman or medieval Latin. One explanation is that England was not mainly Celtic-speaking before the Anglo-Saxons. Consider, for example, the near-total absence of Celtic inscriptions in England (outside Cornwall), although they are abundant in Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Brittany.

Who was here when the Romans came?

So who were the Britons inhabiting England at the time of the Roman invasion? The history of pre-Roman coins in southern Britain reveals an influence from Belgic Gaul. The tribes of England south of the Thames and along the south coast during Caesar's time all had Belgic names or affiliations. Caesar tells us that these large intrusive settlements had replaced an earlier British population, which had retreated to the hinterland of southeast England. The latter may have been the large Celtic tribe, the Catuvellauni, situated in the home counties north of the Thames. Tacitus reported that between Britain and Gaul "the language differs but little."

The common language referred to by Tacitus was probably not Celtic, but was similar to that spoken by the Belgae, who may have been a Germanic people, as implied by Caesar. In other words, a Germanic-type language could already have been indigenous to England at the time of the Roman invasion. In support of this inference, there is some recent lexical (vocabulary) evidence analysed by Cambridge geneticist Peter Forster and continental colleagues. They found that the date of the split between old English and continental Germanic languages goes much further back than the dark ages, and that English may have been a separate, fourth branch of the Germanic language before the Roman invasion.

Apart from the Belgian connection in the south, my analysis of the genetic evidence also shows that there were major Scandinavian incursions into northern and eastern Britain, from Shetland to Anglia, during the Neolithic period and before the Romans. These are consistent with the intense cultural interchanges across the North sea during the Neolithic and bronze age. Early Anglian dialects, such as found in the old English saga Beowulf, owe much of their vocabulary to Scandinavian languages. This is consistent with the fact that Beowulf was set in Denmark and Sweden and that the cultural affiliations of the early Anglian kingdoms, such as found in the Sutton Hoo boat burial, derive from Scandinavia.

A picture thus emerges of the dark-ages invasions of England and northeastern Britain as less like replacements than minority elite additions, akin to earlier and larger Neolithic intrusions from the same places. There were battles for dominance between chieftains, all of Germanic origin, each invader sharing much culturally with their newly conquered indigenous subjects.

So, based on the overall genetic perspective of the British, it seems that Celts, Belgians, Angles, Jutes, Saxons, Vikings and Normans were all immigrant minorities compared with the Basque pioneers, who first ventured into the empty, chilly lands so recently vacated by the great ice sheets.

Note: How does genetic tracking work?

The greatest advances in genetic tracing and measuring migrations over the past two decades have used samples from living populations to reconstruct the past. Such research goes back to the discovery of blood groups, but our Y-chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA are the most fruitful markers to study since they do not get mixed up at each generation. Study of mitochondrial DNA in the British goes back over a decade, and from 2000 to 2003 London-based researchers established a database of the geographically informative Y-chromosomes by systematic sampling throughout the British Isles. Most of these samples were collected from people living in small, long-established towns, whose grandparents had also lived there.

Two alternative methods of analysis are used. In the British Y-chromosome studies, the traditional approach of principal components analysis was used to compare similarities between whole sample populations. This method reduces complexity of genetic analysis by averaging the variation in frequencies of numerous genetic markers into a smaller number of parcels—the principal components—of decreasing statistical importance. The newer approach that I use, the phylogeographic method, follows individual genes rather than whole populations. The geographical distribution of individual gene lines is analysed with respect to their position on a gene tree, to reconstruct their origins, dates and routes of movement.

Orlog: The Procession of the Ages of the World

2008-11-14T17:12:00.001-08:00

Finally, after a long week of work, I have prepared a lengthy essay discussing a particularly Heathen view of history, in line with what the ancient lore tells us about the "Ages of the World", the world-shaping and the coming world-doom.

I describe it as "A Suggested Schema for Understanding the Becoming, Perishing, and Re-Becoming of the Nine World System Based on Voluspa and Gylfaginning."

You can see it here:

The Orlog Essay

More than anything, I think this work was valuable to me for arranging my thoughts in line with the lore, and valuable to many others as a way of learning about the perspective of the life-cycle of the Nine World System (particularly our Middle world) from the point of view of Heathen mythology and cosmology.

Night Road

2008-09-20T12:28:00.000-07:00

Inside of wind-driver, horse-hoof rider,
A height to wood and tangle flies this ghost:
A ghost in that bird-shelter, deer-shelter,
Serpent home among the hidden:
To the hollow tree this fetch has flown
And into his darkness, into the ground.
To the dark-way, the Hel-way wide
And dim, flying by the thunder, the horse deep sound
Pounding hoof-waves, a shudder in body's cloak
Taken down to shadow's home, uncounted leagues.

And lo, an unlit forest deeper, earth-blue,
And the long wind-limbs of night-caller,
The shadowy flutter of mouse-bane's wings
To shake the earth of the bones,
To rumble in body's rivers,
This is the bath of evening-howler's strong power.

And visions in the dark rise to sealed-shut eyes
Dreams so strange and far from sleep, and yet more:
The wind of rushing to lich-home's bed
From the deepest places of the world to awake,
Yet the midnight-beak comes again:
To fill heart's hall with powerful breath
To make swift the spirit of Gods in me
To establish me again, by pact, in his company.

Harvest of Life-Force: Crafting a Bindrune

2008-09-18T12:11:00.000-07:00

"Shaved off were the Runes that of old were written,
And mixed with holy mead,
And sent on ways so wide;
So the Gods had them, so the elves got them,
And some for the Wanes so wise,
And some for mortal men.

Beech-Runes there are, birth Runes there are,
And all the Runes of ale,
And the magic Runes of might;
Who knows them rightly and reads them true,
Has them himself to help;
Ever they aid,
Till the Gods are gone."

-Sigrdrifumol 18-19
(Bellows Translation)

* * *

A few days ago, I found myself in contact with a very nice lady from the holy isle of Britain, who was seeking to create a meaningful Bindrune for herself. Her ultimate goal was to create a Runic symbol to tattoo onto her body, for the purpose of reminding herself of the hard times she had recently endured (and triumphed over) and for the future purpose of calling forth the powers she feels that she needs to live a better life.

I have been a student of the Runic Mysteries for many years, and to this day, I am a practicing Galdrman- a man who daily invokes key Runic powers through meditation, chanting (galdrar) and other devotions. I wanted to help this fine lady, and after fainings to the Lord of the Runes himself- the Allfather Odhinn, I was able to bring my experience to bear on the task, and create both a Rune-row and a Bindrune for her, which will sorcerously serve her purposes.

I got her permission to share the process of this powerful work here at Cauldron Born, and so I will now write a post regarding the many dimensions of this ancient brand of sorcery, beginning with some background material, and moving through the many levels of consideration that result in the mighty crafting of a Bindrune. It was a powerful and good experience for me to be able to do this work.

Before I begin, a tiny background primer on the Runes themselves is needed. Despite rampant misunderstanding and misuse by well-meaning but misguided new-agers, the Runic system remains one of the most popular systems of magical symbolism in the modern Pagan world. When one really sits down and studies the inner mysteries of Runology, they discover that Runes are far more than simply magical symbols, to be grabbed and used for this purpose or that.

The Runes, all together, are expressions of a total cosmology- literally the entire power of the Nine Worlds that encompass all things, and they are a sacred language which speaks of the shaping, maintaining, and destructive powers of the Gods and of Fate itself. They are expressions not only of the "seeds" from which the World-Tree itself grows, but the language used by Allfather, the Master of Sorcery, to create the Worlds. They are powerful beyond estimation, to those who comprehend their deepest forms.

That people underestimate the Runes is by far the greatest danger faced by uninitiated people who try to use them. In the Icelandic sagas, we are treated to stories revealing the dangers of using the Runes without knowing them well enough.

In Egil's Saga, we are shown a story wherein a sick woman was made worse by a man who tried to heal her with a Runic talisman- but his knowledge of the workings of the Runes was very sloppy, and it took the hero Egil destroying his talisman and making one that actually worked to spare her. I give that portion of the story here:

"While they sat at meat Egil saw that a woman lay sick on the daïs at the ends of the hall. He asked who was that woman in such sad case. Thorfinn said she was named Helga, and was his daughter; she had long been ill; her complaint was a pining sickness; she got no sleep at night, and was as one possessed.

'Has anything,' asked Egil, 'been tried for her ailment?'

'Runes have been graven,' said Thorfinn; 'a landowner's son hard by did this; and she is since much worse than before. But can you, Egil, do anything for such ailments?'

Egil said: 'Maybe no harm will be done by my taking it in hand.'

And when Egil had finished his meal, he went where the woman lay and spoke with her. Then he bade them lift her from her place and lay clean clothes under her, and they did so. Next he searched the bed in which she had lain, and there he found a piece of whalebone whereon were runes. Egil read them, then cut the runes and scraped them off into the fire. He burned the whole piece of whalebone, and had the bed-clothes that she had used hung out to air. Then Egil sang:

'Runes none should grave ever
Who knows not to read them;
Of dark spell full many
The meaning may miss.
Ten spell-words writ wrongly
On whale-bone were graven:
Whence to leek-tending maiden,
Long sorrow and pain.'

Egil then graved runes, and laid them under the bolster of the bed where the woman lay. She seemed as if she waked out of sleep, and said she now felt well, but she was weak. But her father and mother were overjoyed. And Thorfinn offered to Egil all the furtherance that he might think needful."

-Egil's Saga, Chapter 75

The Runes and Cosmology

The word "Rune" means "Mystery" or "Secret". Each of the Runes is a secret, a mystery of Nature itself which manifests to our senses in many ways. One of the ways they manifest is in the shape of the Rune that we can see: the actual symbol. Another way is in the sound that is associated with that symbol or form. But these two "levels of manifestation" are only the very tip of the iceberg; they go down so deep as to reach that place that even the Allfather says "the wisest themselves do not know".

Every single natural force or phenomenon- including Gods, human beings, animals, plants, the sky, the earth, you name it- they are all expressions of Runic mysteries. And this system doesn't end there: the Runes, as we know them today, in the order we have them in their alphabetical form, are a sacred text- a key to understanding how the sacred cosmologies and mythologies of our Ancestors form a cohesive, dynamic portrait of how this world really works. I will explain in detail soon, but for now, it is enough to realize that the process of nature, the arising and falling away of the Nine Worlds, and every detail of every life, is part of a dynamic flow of Runic power.

Our Ancestor's sacred myths about the creation and shaping of the world-order are themselves secondary to the Mysteries of the Runes that underlie these sacred and powerful processes. It is the Runes that are expressions of the "highest reality", or should I say, the "deepest, most essential reality of creation and transformation". Myths are secondary expressions of these mysteries that must be understood and experienced in ways that are apart from them, though ultimately sprung from them.

Allfather suffered death on the World-Tree, so that he could lay aside his lesser self, and enter into the timeless space of the Greater Self, and plunge his consciousness into the dark void of Hel at the roots of the World-Tree, to see what forces actually lay behind the world of the senses. He saw, in the mightiest imaginable vision, the Mysteries themselves, these strange powers, that gave rise to all things. He came back to life to share these discoveries with the Gods and mankind- but he could not bring back the full and pure essence of what he experienced.

His Godly mind had to transmit these Mysteries to Gods and Man through symbols and other expressions- and thus, the Runic Symbols as we know them came to be. This is their mythical origin, but it tells the truth: No being can experience the Runes in their true, pure form by simply hearing about them from another, or seeing the shapes that somehow "express" them.

We must do as the Allfather did and plunge ourselves into the void of utter darkness and depth that lies at the roots of all things, to really see what Odhinn saw, to experience what he experienced. Fortunately for us, the Rune-symbols give us doors to that experience. In meditation, and in singing the sacred songs and sounds that belong to each Rune, we can reach that place, but it is the work of a lifetime to achieve such wisdom.

When people look at the Elder Futhark, the Elder Rune-Row, they sometimes wonder at the ordering of the Runes. We are so used to alphabetical systems beginning with "A B C" that it makes some wonder at why the Rune-Rows begin with "F U TH A R K". The first six Rune-symbols or letters in the Rune-Row are, as I said, F, U, TH, A, R, and K. This is not an accident. If one is aware of the cosmological story, the sacred creation myth, given in the Eddaic literature, the Rune Row suddenly makes a deep, penetrating sense- and again, this is not an accident.

In the Creation myth of the Eddas, at the beginning of the cosmos-cycle, only a great Void- Ginnungagap- existed, and on its outer reaches were the polarized regions of Fire and Ice. It was this fire that was the first "impelling force" that started the process of cosmogony. This fire, active and fierce, melted some of the ice from the ice-region, and sent rivers of yeasty water into the Yawning Gap. From the interplay of these two forces, two beings arose from the ice and water: Ymir, the greatest and most powerful Giant, who was and is the sire of all Giants, and Audhumbla, the great Cow who nourished Ymir with the warm milk from her udders. Ymir began to sire giants from his own body.

Audhumbla did more than transmit life to Ymir and his offspring and sustain them: she liked the "salt-block" that arose in the deep, and from it, she helped to lick free (or manifest) the first God, who married one of the Giant offspring of Ymir, and sired the second God, who, through his own marriage, gave birth to Odhinn and his brothers. Odhinn and his brothers- members of the race of Gods who were intelligent, wise, and powerful, could not stand the company of such dark, oafish, and savage beings as the giants, so they went to war, slaying mighty Ymir- and the flood of Ymir's blood nearly wiped out his giantish offspring.

Odhinn and his brothers then tore Ymir's body to pieces, raising them up and creating the World from the parts of his body. With these primordial natural materials, the Allfather and his kin used their divine creativity to shape the cosmos-order. They shaped it in accordance with the Fateful pattern of "rightness" which governs the manifestation of all things. This pattern is innate in the structure of the universe itself. From Ymir's blood came the rivers and oceans, from his flesh the earth, from his hair the plants and trees, and so forth.

The giants who survived were forced to the "outer reaches" of the newly-created and ordered world, but they strive forever to invade the regions of order to destroy what the Gods have done. Thus, a conflict is set up between the intelligent ordering forces of the world, and the savage powers of chaos that forever threaten the world. It is the task of the Gods- and their kin, human beings- to work for the order and maintenance of the world, though one day, as Fate would have it, the order that was begun must collapse and the entire cycle must undergo regeneration.

After the Gods created the world-order, other beings arose from the interaction of the many parts within; from the earth and the natural world, still full of the primordial fire that was there at the beginning, the Vanir Gods arose- from Earth herself and Njord, the God of the Oceans. On the coast of a primordial ocean, Odhinn himself discovered two rotting tree trunks- an Ash and an Elm- and from them, he shaped the first man and woman, breathing his Ond, his immortal spirit of inspiration, into them; and thus, this Gift of the Gods onto natural genetic material was the origin of mankind. After that time, there was a "golden age", a period of harmony in the newly formed world.

What follows later is too long a tale for me to go into, but I am stopping here to show how the first Eight Runes in the Elder Rune-Row are telling the same tale.

The first Eight Letters are "F, U, TH, A, R, K, G, W". They are the Runes Fehu, Uruz, Thurisaz, Ansuz, Raidho, Kenaz, Gebo, and Wunjo.

Fehu means "cattle", "livestock", or "fee, money". It is associated with the "mobile wealth" or "mobile power" that drove the ancient society of our Ancestors- Money and wealth, as represented by cows and livestock. To the Ancestors, you weren't really gold-rich until you were livestock-rich, for in those days, wealth wasn't just a matter of piles of money. It is wealth that gives people the power to go on expeditions, build, create, and acts as the impelling force behind a society. It is no accident that fire happens to often be gold in color- for gold and fire, or fire and wealth, have a vital connection.

Fehu, in the Rune-row is first for the same reason the fires of Muspelheim were the first impelling forces that drove the process of the creation of the cosmos. Fehu is the mystery that we experience when we experience having wealth, energy, fire, and motivation. Even sitting before the crackling flames of a fire is an experience of this Rune, but also of the raw power of the primordial flame which drove the universe-process forward. The Rune-shape of Fehu looks like the horns of cows, and again, this is no mistake: it was a cow that also appeared first, along with Ymir, in the Yawning void.

Uruz means "Auroch" or "ox", but also "drizzle". It refers directly to the "next phase" of the creation myth, in which the great World Ox-Cow Audhumbla arose. In the myth, the interaction of melting ice and fire caused a rain or drizzle, as well as rivers of yeasty, slimy water, to appear in the void. The Auroch is a now-extinct giant bovine creature which once lived in Europe and other parts of the world; it was, in a way, Audhumbla's closest living cousin.

The deeper mystery is this: this Rune refers to the mystery of mighty, vast strength of life that gives rise to the further motion that creates: Audhumbla is a great, primal force of shaping that rushed through the void, spilling forth the essence of fire in her warm "milk" to sustain the first life-forms, and which acted on the "block of salt" that floated there, eroding it, and revealing new forms within the world-pattern, including the first sentient forms of life: the Gods. It takes mighty strength to do this; this Rune is the Rune that channels that strength, for health and the purpose of well-shaped ends. Like the Auroch, it is stronger than any other land creature; it is savage and powerful.

As you can see, the Runes are, in fact, matching with the creation myth. The next Rune, Thurisaz, is the Rune of the Giantish races- it means "strong one, giant" or just "giant" in Old Norse; but it also refers to a "thorn", the natural injuring force that protects plants. The power of the Giants, and their race emerging at this point in mythical history, is represented by this Rune, but the natural destructive power of this Rune is also wielded by the Gods, particularly the God Thorr, and used to protect mankind and the world-order. The next Rune in the row after Thurisaz, which shows the birth of the Giantish races, is Ansuz- the Rune whose name means "God"- and this is the stage of creation in which the first God arises from the natural processes that are playing out here. From this Rune-mystery comes the Aesir-Gods, of whom Odhinn and his Brothers were the first.

The Rune that follows this is Raidho- the Rune of "Riding" and the Chariot-Way, which refers to the Solar-Chariot and its ordered path through the sky. This is the Rune of "Right Order"- it refers to the Order of things that the Gods created from the chaotic natural material of Ymir's Body. It is the Rune of the Right Ordering of the World, the emergence of the World-Order. The next Rune, Kenaz, the rune of controlled fire (fire within the ordered world can now be controlled to willed ends, safe from its original, giantish primordial and dangerous form, which was powerful enough to throw the cosmic process forward). But it is more than this; it is the life-fire within the body of nature, and within all living beings.

It is a Rune of fertility and sexuality, and thus, one of the special Runes of the Vanir-Goddess Freya- and in the myths, it was she who came first to the Halls of the Gods, from the Vanir family, and began the somewhat uncomfortable interactions they had to undergo together before the two families resolved themselves to one another. It is, in a way, the Rune of the Vanir-Gods, and represents their emergence, as well as another stage in the cosmic development.

The Rune that follows this is Gebo- the Rune whose name means "Gift". This "gift" refers not just to the institutions of reciprocal giving that unite human and Godly society, but of that precious Gift that was given by Odhinn to mankind- the Gift of an immortal spirit. This Rune shows us another part of the unfolding of the Cosmos, as in the myth: the creation of Humankind. And the Rune that follows, Wunjo, is the Rune of "joy" and "pleasure"- the Rune which shows the harmonious interaction of many parts, all working together in rightness. It represents, in the cosmological story, the "Golden Age" before the turnings of Fate led to the darker interactions that began the movement towards strife and the eventual destruction of the world, the Gods, and the world-order.

Now, from this short walk through the first eight symbols of the Rune-Row and the sacred myths, we can see why the Runes were ordered as they were. They are telling a cosmological story: the story of all that has happened, of all that is happening, and all that will happen. If I were to continue on with the next eight Runes, and the next Eight, you would see what I mean: the entire row tells the story of the creation of the world, of the emergence of human societies and the struggles of the Gods, and of the final ending of things, and the regeneration of things. The Rune-Row is sacred for many reasons, but the main reason is because it reveals the entire Shape of Things.

The "arrangement" of the Runes in certain orders is the deepest magic, because by taking certain Runes and making a row of them, a being- God or Human- is manipulating the hidden pylons of nature and manifestation, towards a willed end. Allfather arranged the Runes to create the world.

Crafting a Bindrune

We know that Runes were used by the Ancestors for sorcerous reasons. We know that tools and weapons and other things had Runes carved onto them for the purpose of endowing them with magical or Runic power, to increase their effectiveness, but more than that, to place these tools within a deeper cosmic framework of hidden yet constantly developing and acting power, thus empowering them.

Instructions for using Runes to empower things are found in the Eddas and in other writings. The Magical powers of the Runes are praised in other places, and examples of them being used, in various forms, to bring about healing and even cursing are also found. But before one can "use" Runic powers to bring about what appear to be "changes" in this world, before one can use them to perceptually influence twists of Wyrd-threads and Fate, one must understand them on a deep level. I have touched on some of the deeper levels above; the truth is, one should not really attempt to "use" Runes until they have meditated on the symbols and made some progress towards penetrating into the wordless mystery behind each Rune.

As I said before, this is the work of a lifetime; but even moderate progress can be made by a person who is able to go beyond their need to explain everything and simply "move into" the mysterious space of the Runes a short distance. The Runes cause deeper changes in a person who opens to their mysteries than can be explained. But an empowerment certainly happens, and it affects everything in that person's life.

When one has made such internal transformations, one can begin to approach the Runes with an eye towards creating Rune-Rows and Bindrunes. A Rune-Row is an arrangement of Runes, in a straight line, sealed closed with a bar running along the top and bottom of the Row, bringing those Runes together into a cohesive statement of Runic power. A Bindrune, on the other hand, is all of the Runes of a row merged together into a single symbol. Both Rune-Rows and Bindrunes have the same sorts of affects and power, though the Bindrune can show hidden relationships that may not be so obvious in a Rune-Row.

The purpose of any practical Rune-work will be to affect some short or long-term change in a person or in the world. What the Rune-crafter is doing is working with the Mysteries of the World and of Fate, to create an entity of Runic force that naturally attracts certain situations or outcomes to itself. That it does so has less to do with the Rune-crafter and more to do with the innate mystical nature and power of these Mysteries. Of course, one cannot rule out the importance of the human craftsman whose Godly gift of imagination- a truly divine element- acted in conjunction with the timeless and primordial mysteries. Every Rune-creation is a re-enactment of the primordial creation of the world by Odhinn. Thus, all Rune-sorcery is a sacred affair.

One of my greatest complaints about new-agers who toss Runes around carelessly is that they are being disrespectful. The Runes are not toys, nor just a cheap "divination method". You can't read one book on them and then imagine that you are a master of their secrets. They are profoundly merged with the religious structure of Asatru, and thus, only people who have devoted themselves to the Gods and to the Mysteries of our Ancestors can truly "work" with Runes on a successful level. Others are simply lacking in the necessary internal realizations, the necessary respect, and will end up hurting themselves or others, most likely.

When one desires to create a Bindrune or a Rune Row, one must take into account the end that is willed, and must understand the Runes well enough to know which of these powers, or combination of them, will serve to most likely be sympathetic to those aims. Then, one must take into consideration the Runic numerological system- and understand what certain tallies and numbers mean, in the working of things. Finally, the Runes must be carved and colored in a manner that empowers them, which channels the full power of the Runes into the creation.

Historically, as well as in the modern day, most Rune-work is used to produce talismans and carvings on various stone and wood surfaces, like houses, doorways, posts, etc. Pieces of wood that are worn around the neck or carried in leather bags on the body of the person who needed the talisman are the most common practical manifestation of this art. They can also be carved, scratched, or painted onto horns, cups, metal items, and the like.

My client in this work had already been using and experiencing the power of the URUZ Rune. She had recently recovered from an illness of the mind and body, and was looking to create a Rune-Row or Bindrune that symbolized not only her initiatory triumph (she took it as initiatory, as an important milestone in her life) but also which would channel the power of health, both mentally and physically, and good life-outcomes within the structure of the unfolding of her life, into the future. She didn't say this, but what she is looking for is a harmonious increase and development in Hamingja- the luck-force that manifests through all of our genetic and ancestral/spiritual bloodlines, and which gives rise to our mental and physical health, as well as our luck in life-situations.

She wanted health, strength, vitality, but all of it to manifest slowly, over time- not all at once. This is a life-long creation she was asking for, and so, I have done just this for her.

I selected five Runes which would create the Rune-Row, the statement of power, that I was attempting to manifest. I selected these Runes:

These Runes are, in order: HAGALAZ, FEHU, URUZ, LAGUZ, and JERA.

No detail of this operation is meaningless. I selected these five because of the statement I was trying to express, correlated with their own meanings, but I selected five because five, in Runic Numerology, is the number of ordered time and space- a powerful invocatory formula. What this young lady was asking for was a power to emerge within the world-order, in an orderly fashion, in a harmonious way over time.

But this goes further- the number five doesn't simply have a meaning; it also refers to the fifth Rune in the Elder Rune-arrangement: Raidho. Raidho is, as I explained earlier, the Rune of the rightful ordering of things, of the emergence of the world-order within the boundaries of rightness. It is the constantly transforming and emerging "order" of this lady's mind and body that I wish to affect, and so, the number five is connected to that, mystically, on more than one level. And most importantly, it is connected by a Runic power which governs order in harmony.

Now, to the Runes I selected. I started with Hagalaz for a very important reason: Hagalaz is, by far, one of the most powerful Runes in the entire system, when it comes to manifesting things that one needs or desires. Hagalaz is the Rune-Mother, the ninth Rune, and thus, the Rune that rules over the emergence of form out of force. Hagalaz shows the entire structure of the universe- there are Nine worlds after all; it was nine nights that Odhinn hung from the World-Tree to gain the knowledge of the Runes, but more than this, if one takes Hagalaz in her younger form- the form I have above in the Row I created- (it looks like a snowflake) one sees the "Hex-sign", the ultimate symbol of the mysteries of Gothic sorcery.

This Rune is the "Mother" of all the others because one can take that symbol, connect her ends with straight lines, and see the primordial "block" or world "seed-crystal" that Audhumbla licked to bring forth all things. From that symbol, you can create any of the other 23 Runes!

The mysteries of Hagalaz are too many to write here, but I chose it because it begins the Rune-row with the atmosphere of magical manifestation, of the power to bring anything into being, but only in accordance with the cosmological pattern. Thus, Hagalaz is also a very protective Rune.

And what do I call first out of this magically charged sphere of potential? Fehu. I call the power of the world-impelling fire/energy forth, to give this Rune-row "forward motion", to empower it towards completion. But there's more here; Fehu is also the Rune that manifests what we call Hamingja, or Luck-force, ancestral power that impels family or ancestral lines forward into activity and interaction. Hamingja is protective and lucky for each human being, and increase of Hamingja means increase in personal power and fortune. This Rune doesn't just add fuel to the Rune-Row; it brings forth, from the Rune-Mother Hagalaz, good protection and luck for the client within the harmoniously developing framework of Hagalaz.

So next, I call forth Uruz. The atmosphere is set, and from it, comes the fiery forward motion of development, and into what does it develop? Uruz- strong, powerful vital energy and health for the client. We've reached the center of the Rune-Row, and now, at this peak point, a change takes place. Within the manifesting atmosphere that has sent forth world-fire and luck-force into creating vitality and health, a secondary manifestation is asked: Laguz.

Laguz, the 21st Rune in the Rune-Row, is actually quite related to Uruz; Rune-Master Edred Thorsson points out in his book "Runelore" that by the laws of Skaldcraft, Uruz became connected to the concept of Aurr, or "water". And this Rune Laguz- which is fourth in our Rune-Row, is the Rune of the "Lake" or Water, the body of water, lake, or sea. It refers to the frozen waters of the icy-region which melted into the primal rivers and drizzle, and which contained (after being empowered by the primal fire) the seeds of all life.

Thus, Laguz is a Rune of life-force and vital power as well, but not quite like Uruz is. Whereas Uruz is strong and outwardly manifest, Laguz is quieter, deeper, more dealing with the deep places of the mind (think the latent vitality of the subconscious mind). In Laguz's form "Laukaz", it means "leek"- a growing plant, growing and developing, growing organic force.

Laguz refers to the vitalizing, developing force within the mind-body complex, the blood, the "life from water" whereas both Fehu and Uruz are related to the "life from fire". To mix them together alone may cause a conflict, but to place them both within a Rune-row ruled by Hagalaz is to make them both merge and develop harmoniously, constrained by the Rune-mother, and impelled by Fehu's fire.

As an aside, this lady desired that her Bindrune show a "badge of passage", a reminder of what she had endured, and mark a new beginning- and Laguz is the Rune to do just that, as the ancient ritual of "Vatni Ausa"- the sprinkling of a newborn baby with water, to initiate it into the Clan- is tied to this Rune's mystery. It is a Rune which shows rites of passage, births, deaths (the dead must cross the waters to the next world) and even "deaths" of transition in this world, like initiations.

The last Rune I chose was Jera- the "year" Rune, which also refers to the "season" and the "harvest"- it is the Rune whose "arms" making a spinning wheel shape, showing the motion of the cycles of time, of seasons. It is a Rune whose power, last in the Row, receives the Runic spell I have created and places the discharge of its power within the natural cycles of time.

Together, this Rune Row summons forth to manifestation the power of world-fire and Hamingja to increase the vital health-power in the mind and body of this woman, and make it develop in harmony with the world/mind/body pattern, and to mediate its powers into her over the natural cycle of time and seasons that will make up the rest of her mortal life.

One might think that this was the end of our considerations of this Rune-row, but we still have one more important consideration: a deeper layer of numerology. We know that there are five Runes in this row, and we know what "five" means on two Runic numerological levels. But now, we must add up the numerical values of each Rune in the Row to see if we haven't accidentally created a Row that will backfire on us or not work as we hoped.

Hagalaz is the ninth Rune; it's value is nine. Fehu is the first Rune; it's value is one. Uruz is the second Rune; it's value is 2. Laguz is the twenty-first Rune; it's value is 21. Jera is the twelfth Rune; it's value is twelve (and, as the Rune of the cycles of time, it represents the twelve months of the year!)

Together, these Runes total up to 45. And that, dear friends, is 9 times 5. It couldn't be more perfect: Nine, the most sacred and powerful number in Runic numerology, which gives power and force to any purpose, and five- the number I decided on initially, which represents the manifest ordering of space and time. Nine times five, and the power of nine gives Her strength to the entire row. Superb!

So now, this Rune-row can be used, once it has been empowered and brought to life. The process of doing that, however, is a far more complex subject; and this woman's purpose is not for a talisman or a carving that needs to be charged and colored according to complex ritual procedures, and bound to her by name- it is for a tattoo. While this Row, if tattooed, won't have nearly the same power as it would if made into a talisman, it will still have power- the simple shape of these Runes and their arrangement has power- it does affect things on a subtle level, and the more so if it is tattooed onto her body in a permanent way.

Now, I started all of this to create a Bindrune. Now that I have the Rune-Row, and it works on every level, I can create the Bindrune. And so I have. Here is the Elder Form of the Bindrune:

And here is the "curvilinear modern" form:

Let us focus on the Elder Form. As you can see, the Rune-Mother, Hagalaz, is the central Rune. This is powerful; the entire Bindrune is a field of her power, and on her limbs, we see the powers we wish to manifest. Beginning at the top, we have Fehu; to both sides the vital empowering Runes of Uruz and Laguz, and at the bottom the "receiver"- Jera, who will mediate these powers over time to the owner of the Bindrune. Notice that Jera on this Bindrune looks like a square; this is because, for the purposes of Bindrunes, I always use Jera's Anglo-Saxon form, which is a central line with the two "arms" of Jera merged on it, looking like a diamond. It is still Jera; it is NOT the "Ing" Rune, and the intention and knowledge of the Rune-inscriber would have to be kept on this fact.

I have named this Bindrune "Harvest of Life Force". To make the name powerful, I like to look at the phonetic sounds of the Runes involved- in this case H, F, U, L, and J (the J making a "y" sound) and pick a name that uses those sounds. H- F- L; Harvest of Life Force. This is also what the Bindrune does; it distributes a harvest of life-force, health, and harmony to the client.

I'd say I was going to end now, but before I finished this work, I discovered something very amazing and powerful about this Rune-Row and its Bindrune: It can be doubled, and the numerology still reveals a working pattern! This is uncommon in Bindrunes and in Rune work in general, so I knew I had to include this alternative here.

If one takes the Rune-row I created, and "doubles" it, that is, leaves the Hagalaz Rune at the center, and places the same Runes on the other side of her, making this:

One has gone from five Runes total in the row to Nine- the most sacred number, which, while maintaining the original meaning and purpose of the Row, now makes it twice as powerful. "Doubling" the Runes in the Row gives them a doubling of power- they partner with one another now to increase their force. And, if you add up the numerical values of all nine Runes, you get this:

12 + 21 + 2 + 1 + 9 + 1 + 2 + 21 + 12 = 81

And 81 is what? 9 times 9. The most powerful possible numerological combination-outcome for any Rune Row or Bindrune. "Harvest of Life Force" therefore has two forms- both in its Row-form, and in its Bindrune form. Here is the "doubled Bindrune":

And here is its curvilinear modern form:

I love looking at the doubled Rune-row, seeing that Hagalaz in the center, radiating out the spell in either direction, with such great power. It is important to note that some Runes in the Rune-System as a whole are dangerous, unless mitigated by combination with other Runes, which channel their force safely. This is why a deep working knowledge of these powers is needed, lest we end up with the sort of situation we saw in Egil's Saga! Harvest of Life Force, however, is both powerful and safe, though its power in its "doubled form" is greater than in its natural, singular form, and not as stable in manifestation, as the numerology behind it moves away from five, and totally towards nine. But Nine is likewise a "forming within stable framework" number, so the danger is mitigated. And nine is a very powerful number for manifestation. It is the Rune-Mother.

I wish the user of this Bindrune great luck and success in all she does. I encourage everyone who reads this, who is interested in learning the deeper mysteries of Runology, to join the Rune Gild, whose website can be found here:

http://runegild.org/

And Hail the Lord of the Runes, who guided me in this process! Hail Harvest of Life Force! Reyn Til Runa!

The Wyrd of Human Purpose

2008-09-07T16:32:00.000-07:00

Nearly every religious person I know spends a good deal of time talking (and worrying) about the "purpose" of human life. For the first years of my life, I did spend a bit of time thinking about such things myself. Truthfully, I heard more about it than I thought about it- teachers and other respectable adults in my life were almost non-stop in their sharing of the many myths of human purpose.

It seems so logical, to quite a lot of people, that we should all have a "purpose". When I say "purpose", I'm really not talking about any individual sense of destiny. I'm talking about that general sense of "what humans are and what important challenges or choices we face". The best (and by far the most worn-out) example of a widespread myth of human purpose is found in the halls of Christianity: the myth of fall and redemption.

Humans, in this myth, are creations of a loving and all-powerful being. This being endowed humans with "free will" and, thanks to the exercise of this fine gift, all of mankind "fell from grace", into a state of sin and death- where we currently find ourselves. This situation is grim- we were created, as the story goes, to give unending praise to our generous creator. Now, we've made quite a botch of things, and suffer greatly, in need of redemption. Our kindly creator responded to our need and sent a perfect sacrifice in the form of his son, Jesus, and now, anyone who accepts the sacrifice can be assured redemption and eternal life... after this life is over, of course. Until then, you still have to suffer, just because.

Now, I don't want to sound to flippant because I find that nearly all myths from ancient traditions have some value. But my point in writing out a short and somewhat irreverent outline of the Christian myth is to illustrate my original topic and point: for Christian people, life has a real and burningly important point: to submit to the redemptive powers of Christ and get spared from eternal death, or (worse yet) hell. Life's purpose is a high-tension race to redemption, an urgent quest to find the "right" redeemer, find the correct and narrow path, find the righteous way, and die in it.

And in the Christian myth, you only get one chance. No more, no less, no seconds or thirds, and (depending on which Christian you talk to) very little mercy for failure to comply with the rules as Christian churches teach them.

When I personally sit down to consider human life and purpose- and consider it I do, every day- I have little choice but to view it from the perspective of the worldview of Wyrd. This is not surprising; I am a Wyrd-worker, a Wyrd-knower, a Seidman and a Heathen mystic/philosopher of types. Given that I have all those labels weighting me down, I am entitled to a few biases and presuppositions about things. Furthermore, I am human, and just being human gives me a right to a few natural biases, chief of which is the right to consider life from a more compassionate, balanced, and (dare I say it?) realistic angle for human purpose, than the typical myth of fall and redemption.

You'll have to forgive me; maybe it's just the benighted little Heathen heart in me dragging me down to hell, but I can't bring myself to believe that all of this great and vast universe, and all of this great and vast variety of mind, emotion, and experience that we are all heirs to, can be reduced to such a simplistic and slanted myth as taught and believed by our Christian cousins. As appealing as such a fast and simple little story may be (to some) I can't believe that life is that simple, or that the universe really amounts to a simple little human-choice drama.

Let me take a little side-path here, and have a mini-rant about "belief" and "faith".

I don't just believe in the vast kindreds and hosts of wights and beings that fill this universe; I know them. I don't set my mind and heart-knowledge aside in the category of "belief", thus rendering it "one step less true" than other beliefs like "science" or what have you. I don't place my knowledge on the "belief" pedestal, thus introducing it to the endless attacks and debates and the constant moronic harping of the skeptical fools regarding the differences between "knowledge" and "faith" and what have you. I don't have faith in the Gods. I know the Gods. I know them because I, like you, live on the back of a Goddess and see her every day. She holds my house up, my hometown, my state, my country, and even has the oceans in big, deep indentions in her body.

So, seeing this Goddess every day, I don't have to have "faith" in her. I just have to treat her well and walk with respect on her back. Now, this gives a Heathen blackguard like myself a "one up" on my philosophical opponents in the many other "faiths" in this world- few can take me outside and introduce me to their God.

Now, back on track, and to my point: the universe is vast- all of its Nine Worlds are packed full of power, beings, wights, Gods, giants, and Wyrd the Mighty knows what else: and we humans are only a tiny part of this massive outplaying of many sentient and non-sentient forces. This is the worldview of the sorcerer: this is how sorcerous eyes see. This is the ultimate mystical vision of mental, physical, and spiritual plurality.

This is it: we are parts of the Web of Wyrd, a web without boundaries, as "large" as the universe, and infinite- without beginning or ending, forever full of every force interacting, changing, evolving, friction-tearing, communicating, trembling and weaving, spinning perpetually. In this vast web of forces, life arises, in many places, in many forms, some "physical" as we know the word, others not so, but no less alive or intelligent.

All these forces rely on one another, in some ways; all can communicate; most do communicate, though "communication" comes in many forms; All of this power- all of this vast power- you feel it every day that you live and walk and breathe. Set your mind just a bit to the side of Wyrd's weave, a little up, a little down, a little high, a little deep, and entire new vistas of reality open themselves to you.

It is to our benefit to know this reality of endless interaction, and interact well with the other beings that share this universe with us, beginning with the beings who share our planet. It is in our power to tremble the threads of Wyrd to wonderful or devastating effect. We humans may be a tiny group of players in a vast cosmos-scape of Wyrd, but we are no less important than any other part of the web. Without us, the web would not be complete, and therefore, the web would not be able to exist in wholeness. It would, in fact, cease to be, for it needs all of its parts. Wyrd is the ultimate vision of inclusiveness.

This is enough to outrage the fools in our modern world who love to belittle mankind and talk about how unimportant we are in the "grand scheme of things"- as though their blind little eyes, sometimes squinting through telescopes, oftentimes stuck in the pages of a Dawkins book- could really know what the true "grand scheme of things" entails! One does not discover the true depth of the "grand scheme of things" by looking at distant stars or measuring distances between galaxies. One discovers the grand scheme of things by looking within the mind and measuring how deep the Underworld really goes- which is, as they say, "all the way down".

Until you've taken into account the depth of emotion, mind, interaction, and the unutterable mysteries of sacred mythology, you've not even begun to dimension the grand scheme of things. Until you've seen into another world, and glimpsed the timelessness of spirit, there is no chance of understanding "the grand scheme of things".

The "grand scheme of things"! What a figure of speech! This, of course, brings me right back to where we started: the grand scheme of things, and the "human place" or purpose within it.

What does it mean to be a form of life, a human being, whose body-mind-spirit complex coalesced out of the many turnings of Wyrd, and was a child of so many forces? What does it mean to be one of this race, this species, this group we call "mankind"?

Are we stuck in a rat-race to get the right religion's stamp of approval on our souls, before Wyrd turns our bodies back into dust? Are we "here" to learn this or that secret about the universe, or to be kind to one another? Are we here because we ignorantly wandered here, under the power of delusion, to suffer through yet another lifetime, before moving on to another?

All fine questions. And while I feel the need now to suggest an answer (I wouldn't have made you wait this long for nothing!) I need to warn you that such answers seldom fall easily into letters and words. The sheer complexity of Wyrd prevents over-simplifications in anything, truth be told. And I don't want to over-simplify an answer to a question of this much importance, lest I fall into the error of the Christians or the Muslims.

Because goodness knows many great men have thought on this answer for thousands of years, and have given many great answers. Who am I compared to them? I'll be honest with you- and say what you probably already suspect- I'm not much compared to them. I'm not Plato or Augustine or Mohammed or Buddha.

I'm a man from the southern forests of a beautiful but suffering continent, an exile from his ancestors' homelands, who claims he can see visions and talk to spirits. I'm a Pagan in a Christian world, only surviving because times have changed, and the local church in these days can't send policemen to arrest and burn me.

I'm a guy who fully admits to being phobic of air travel and public bathrooms. I have a nice (and alarmingly large) collection of University degrees behind my name, but I'm not particularly wealthy, and I've not managed to start an academy in Athens; I've been to lots of caves, but I've never had tight conversations with Archangels; I've sat under lots of trees in trances and meditated, but never found "enlightenment". I've written a lot of letters that pissed a lot of people off, but I've never been handed a sainthood for all my troubles. No, I don't stack up to the "great men" of philosophy and religious history.

There are lots of nasty names for people like me, and lots of pills that can be prescribed for people like me. You probably don't have any reason to trust me, and I wanted to be up-front about this. If you like what I am about to say, you'll have to accept it on your own terms, Caveat Emptor and all. I'm not a great sage from history, but I am very honest and unafraid to live my own path through life, regardless of what all the hostile little faces around me say.

I do communicate with spirits and have a capacity for spiritual vision that extends beyond the normal; the fire in me certainly is the delirious demon of the DSM-IV, but it is also the fire that has burned in a lot of muddy-bearded mystics on the side of a lot of forest roads in a lot of distant countries. And I'm strangely comfortable with it... except of course, when I'm not. On those days, I write long, rambling letters and post them on the internet somewhere.

So why listen to my answer (which I swear that I'm getting to?) Because you've read this far, you might as well. And because Wyrd the mighty has woven you here, just like She wove me typing these words right at this instant. We're together, you and I; we're inseparable. And you probably won't like what I'm about to say.

I would NEVER think to tell you "human life has no purpose; purpose is all constructed". I HATE it when people pull that cop-out. But they do have a point about the word "purpose" and its cousin-word "meaning". Everyone seems to have a different opinion or idea about what these words entail, in relation to human beings and our lives, anyway. Who's right?

The people who are "right" are likely the people who can (to a lesser or greater extent) separate themselves from pre-conceived notions born in culture and religion BEFORE they try to puzzle out the definitions or "meanings". But what's left when you step outside of cultural encapsulation?

The bare facts of Wyrd- of the system of linear AND non-linear causality- are left. The bare bones or threads of the universal tapestry. And here we are, all right where we've been woven. I can't say why I'm here, but I can say where I am and what I do here. I am in the southern forests; I'm in my house; I'm in my town; I'm in my profession. I'm in this world. What do I do? I think, I write, I read, I go into trances, I talk to people, I help to bring about therapeutic change within the systems of other people's lives; I love my family. I know where I am and what I'm doing.

I can't even begin to describe the chain of forces that came together to make such a being as myself, or which stands behind all the things I do. I can't describe those forces in their totality for you or for anyone else. I couldn't describe them for even the smallest grain of sand. But I know where (at least a few) grains of sand are, and what they do.

And I know what I hope- and what many others hope. And I know what people have done, and why I still do what ancient people- my ancestors- did. It's enough. It moves me through life with peace in my heart.

My answer is now forming, but it isn't enough; it's not complete yet.

Here we are, spinning in the web of Wyrd, you, me, everyone, everything. A point comes- I don't know when, or how, but a point comes when you find yourself wherever you happen to be, doing what you happen to be doing. A moment of clarity arises, for all of us. When you string those moments of awareness together long enough, use that fine memory of yours to create a personal story, a personal narrative of moments, (give yourself some chronology) then you have a "life", so-called. And there's your life, spinning out, and here is mine.

You knew this already. We can all get this far. But why did we get this fine clarity, this space of mind, these memories, this ability to string together moments, these hopes, these inclinations, these dreams?

They are Wyrd. Fate spun them out. Fate spun you out, and me. It may seem so self-willed, but in reality, it is quite mechanical. This is the universe, not that poor tiny thing you call "you", friend. What "you and I" really have is the precious chance to realize all this, and marvel at the amazing power of it all. At this moment, stop and look- smell the Wyrd Roses; how marvelous is all this greatness! The vast deep- the great sweep of timeless experience and causality- real eternity, all right now, in this moment of clarity.

Man, this is material enough for a smile, a headache, or yet another psychotic break. I'm not sure which. Or maybe it's just food for thought. Whatever it is, it brings me one step closer to my answer.

We are not here to find "redemption". There was no primordial error in Wyrd, nor among our first ancestors. We didn't "fall" from anywhere. We were always here, though this moment, this human moment, may be the first time we've ever consciously experienced things as human beings. We all think we were born, and are living, and dying, and yes, I think there's some truth to that. But I don't think that "birth-life-death" is the entire story. I don't want to venture too far into saying what I think the "entire" story might be, because as I have always said, Wyrd won't ever let us know the "entire" story; it's just too big.

And that should be a tip to us all: if it's too big for your minds, then you don't need to know the whole story to live well. So stop worrying about such abstract things, and deal with what you do know- where you are, and what you are doing. If you add a sense of wonder to those two things, you get a life of quality.

But is it our "purpose" to "get a life of quality"? I can say this: Wyrd didn't "plan" out our lives; Wyrd is not "predestination". Life isn't a planned-and-executed event; it is a perpetual motion of reality. That's us, spinning along, right now, like always.

A point comes when you have a chance to think about these things, in a very abstract way. I don't know how or why the point comes, but it comes- a space of mental clarity sort of "opens up" for you.

Maybe, if you haven't pulled your hair out by now from reading my thoughts, you're in that space as we communicate now. Maybe you like what I've said. Maybe you hate it. Maybe you don't understand it. Maybe you think you understand it too well. Maybe you think I'm trying to be too deep. Maybe you think this is shallow. Whatever. You think what you like- but think. Use the moment when it comes to you. We're human beings, beings that have an opportunity, a chance that comes many times in our long and perpetual existence, to think about things, to study this world, to come to many sorts of knowledge. We are, after all, "Homo Sapiens"- right?

We're forever parts of this web of life, this web of Wyrd, and for "most of our time" (not that time matters over-much when you escape from the boring limitations of basic perception) we haven't been very aware of the fact of our participation in the great sacred web. And yet, here we are, and always were, and always will be. Maybe we, for timeless ages, were hyper-conscious of our state; perhaps we were Hel-dark and unaware. But something changed, and here we are, as human beings. I have an idea about what changed; the pure spirit that is the seat of these thoughts- it was in Allfather, before he breathed it into human bodies, born of this earth. Now that spirit is part of the experience of a Human Being.

There's no purpose here, just opportunity. We can grow in awareness, gain in wisdom, or not. The universe won't end if we don't; we won't be punished by the Gods if we don't; all will be well- as it always was and always will be.

So the pressure's off. This life- our timeless existence in the weave of Wyrd- is, in my opinion, about exploration. There's no punishment for not exploring, although you can hardly help it; it's part of being woven through so many different situations and experiences. Of course, if you don't explore, you'll be unhappy, because the deepest longings within your mind and heart will always wish they had gone further, seen more, discovered more.

I can say that I do think the Gods- who are fellow beings exploring this Web of Wyrd with us, though much wiser and powerful and more long-lived than we- have given us good advice on how to be happy and fulfilled during our explorations. Our explorations come at different times- the moments just come, and I don't really know how. But the mead of experience comes. Whenever the moments come, these precious times, the Gods are there to help and guide. So are our fellow wayfarers. Some beings are there to hurt. Some don't appear to care.

There's no time limit on your expeditions of exploration or learning. This does NOT mean that I believe "life is all about learning, and you learn lessons in each life"- no, I think that's a bit silly (though it's no more silly than what most people believe, and actually, a lot less hateful or harmful than some myths that were already under discussion) but I still think it's silly. I don't think we're all consciously "choosing" to be born here and live and explore. Wyrd is weaving this for us. We weren't here, it seems... and then, we were. We emerged from the web, consciously. And we began to make sense of it all. And so on we go.

This vision, this story of "exploration within complex causality and mystery" makes more sense to me than the "UP OR DOWN, SINNER" story. It seems to suit our environment- that of great timeless sacredness and complexity- better. It shows how so many explorations can lead to so many different experiences, conclusions, and places, without one being "the only right one". It just makes sense. Like Wyrd, this story is inclusive and not a little strange.

So, is there an end to this exploration? No. That might sound fearful or tiring, but as vast as this web of reality is, trust me- the vast spirit in you wouldn't have it any other way. In my vision, the beings who are honored to dwell in the worlds of the Gods are those valiant souls who cast themselves into the voids of uncertainty and the great task of life- with all its many dangers- without fear.

Those beings who come to rest in the deepest darkness of the Underworld are people who could be in the worlds of the Gods, if they weren't afraid or avoiding the exploration out of some personal weakness. Those who Fate has seen fit to place on the side of the mountain are us, in this middle-world, spiraling along our roads, which can go many places. The moments (which we call "roads") just come- they arise. I don't know from where they come, but I know where they can go.

So on we go.

Bear in mind, dear reader, that these are just words, models, ideas. Tools for the exploration. Be safe.

A Wyrd Way of Seeing: The Worldview of Wyrd as Primordial Cybernetics

2008-09-04T19:56:00.000-07:00

The Spinning of the Nornir and the Ancient Worldview of Wyrd as Expressed in Terms of Modern Systems Theory

Heathenry's Most Precious Gift

The worldview of Wyrd- the Heathen name given to the web-like reality of interconnected and interacting forces of which all beings and phenomena are a part- is arguably the most enduring and important gift of Heathenry to this world.

Even though most people don't consider this perspective often, preferring instead to focus on Heathenry's adventurous spirit and straightforward moral code, or its preservation of the traditional religious culture of the ancient northern peoples, the very concept of Wyrd runs as deep as the ocean, and has the power to carry all people into a shared space of philosophical relevance, understanding, and communication. While our Gods and religious rites and values are not shared by all people, the understanding of Wyrd as a form of systemic thinking about reality is something that all people can (and should) understand.

Wyrd, as a primordial form of Systems theory, makes immediate demands on each individual who has the wit to grasp what an interactional worldview entails. The notion- so important to me- of "spiritual ecology" is born from the idea of interactionism- the belief that all things (seen or unseen) are directly and meaningfully connected, and that our way of interacting with the many other forces in this world has a direct and relevant impact on who and what we are at the moment, and what we become in “future” moments, as well as an impact on what the world is and what it becomes.

While "ecology" by itself conjures up notions of natural relationship or interaction in the visible world, "spiritual ecology" carries this system of interaction into the vast, unseen spaces of reality, in which the unseen but very real and sentient powers of spirits and Gods and departed Ancestors exist.

The worldview of Wyrd, in which all things are seen as intimately connected and interacting with one another on countless coarse and subtle levels, gives rise immediately to the "logic" that stands behind both communication and religion, on the basic level. I can talk about how we all dwell in an interactive reality, but the impact of that statement doesn't become real and strong until I point out that interaction is, in fact, another word for communication. Reality isn't just countless parts and forces interacting; reality is a great, ongoing field of communication. Human words being passed between two people are only one form of communication; so many other forms of communication exist.

Added to this, the reality we belong to will not allow us to exempt ourselves from the essential process of communication or interaction: one cannot not communicate with others; even attempting to ignore another or cease speaking to them is itself a very clear communication. Attempting to ignore reality and the demands of life, spirituality, duty, or what have you, is an act, a communication. Breathing is interaction; seeing is interaction; living is interaction.

It is an article of my own Heathen faith that sentient beings or entities exist who are "Wyrd Wise", who have a greater ability to be aware of the system of interacting powers in a broader way, thus giving them various levels of "omniscience". I call them "Gods", and feel that my Ancestors would have done the same, though any spirit or wight could achieve the skill and wisdom that placed them within the web of interactions with greater insight than other beings.

That our religious fainings, prayers, sacrifices and devotions "shake" or "tremble" the web of Wyrd, unavoidably causing a chain of interactions or communications to spread out into the vast and unseen spaces, such that it can be "heard" or experienced by our Gods, is also an article of my own faith- a faith that is based on the basic notion that every thought, feeling, word, or deed does not exist or arise alone within the amazing web of causality that is its mother and its final resting place.

All prayer is a communication with the being prayed to; all sacrifices are communications to the being or beings to whom the sacrifices are intended. As we will see soon, communication and interaction are never "one way"- the web of Wyrd and interaction is recursive; our thoughts, deeds, sacrifices and prayers are one half of a single communication to Gods or spirits that are "answered" on the "other half" of the system; "A gift demands a gift"- the Gods or spiritual powers reciprocate in many ways, the two most common ways being guidance through dreams or the creation of omens- meaningful events within our natural systems that communicate something of importance or need to us.

Our human lives are, indeed, a Wyrd arrangement of forces- forces interacting, sustaining one another, and at times destroying one another. From the cellular level of the body, up to the complex web of interactions that tie human societies together, countless forces interact to create our experience. We are not the ultimate authors of these forces; the web of forces is massive beyond our human reckoning, and ancient beyond the usual meaning of the word "ancient". A better word is "timeless"- this very reality, at the most essential and bare level, is not a "creation", not the creation of some superior being, with a definite beginning point and end-point, but a timeless web of interacting forces which has always existed and always will.

Without a web of power enlinking all things in reality, no communication would be possible. No change or evolution would be possible. No birth or death would be possible, and thus, nothing would exist as we know it or experience it. I should simplify this and say that experience would not be possible.

Primordial Morality

In all of the amazing ranges and reaches of human experience, we often find ourselves comparing our way of living and thinking to others, after the many "ways of being and experiencing" collide and interact with one another, sometimes to good impact, sometimes to disaster. Wyrd forces us to take seriously our deeds and way of thinking; it also forces us to consider the way others act and think, for the deeds, thoughts, tendencies, and beliefs of other people can and will affect us all, eventually.

Those who wish to fall into a sort of laziness regarding the lives of other people, in the name of a truly unrealistic sense of "non-involvement" or even "leaving others to their ways" will swiftly find the danger involved. History gives us many examples of how disastrous social movements and conflicts began in very distant lands, but had a way of spreading out and eventually consuming the entire globe in their power.

The fact that our ancient ancestral culture was eventually all but wiped out by a tiny sect of renegade Roman and Hebrew religious fanatics in the Near East is a sufficient example for now. Understanding Wyrd forces us to realize that all events in our world are relevant to us, and carries us to the full meaning of the old saying "involvement is the primary duty of the wise".

When we think interactionally, we easily find our way into what I refer to as "primordial morality"- You begin wherever you happen to be, and you see yourself as a part of the social system that you are necessarily involved with- one's people, one's family, one's friends, and one's society. Those human groupings are necessarily involved with what we call the "natural" system of the world- the local water, land, forests, animals, and environment.

It's all one web of power; these distinctions are only made to illustrate a point, and made to satisfy the dualistic nature of language and human understanding. You can (usually) see who and what you rely upon, and who and what your people and your land rely upon.

Reliance is a very widespread notion within the systemic model of interactionism- in the web of Wyrd, we rely on countless powers and beings. Acting and thinking in such a manner as to ensure the safety and health of our community-systems and the natural systems upon which they rely is the greatest "commandment" of natural or primordial morality.

When we consider things in this manner, and examine the realities of life in the ancient world, we arrive immediately at the notion of "tribal" morality; people in ancient times had to live and act in ways that preserved the immediate concerns of family and people. In our modern times, in these times in which the world has perceptually "shrunk" and forced all human beings together into an unavoidable interactive wedlock, the seeds of a global morality are blooming.

This isn't a morality based on religious notions of "sin" or "God" or what have you- it is not a morality based on which culture is "superior" or "right" or "better"- it is a morality based on interactions that give rise to the common good of human beings and planet earth. Our own "good" is tied to the good of others- what any group of people do to the web of life, they do to all life. Our own survival- and the survival of our cultures- is also tied to others.

Wyrd, Reliance, Reverence, and Respect

The ancient idea of Wyrd and modern Cybernetics or Systems Theory are clearly related; they are, in fact, one and the same in their worldview and implications. It is a testament to the great wisdom of the past that modern and postmodern worldviews like Systems Theory effortlessly reflect and (in a way) give new life and usage to the older models.

In Wyrd, we understand a vision of connection and reliance that has implications far beyond the horizons of simple ecology or social life. In the vision of reliance and interaction, something else arises: a sense of reverence for the forces and beings upon which we rely, and a sense of respect. The truth of inter-connectedness gives us the single greatest vision of kinship that we can have: all beings are, truthfully and fully "kin" to one another. The natural reverence that arises when we understand our reliance on many other powers and beings is the origin of primordial and animistic religion, in the deepest sense of the word.

I have always thought that the modern-day "kindred" or congregation of Asatruar occupies two places in our religious understanding and experience: firstly, it is the immediate group of people with whom we mingle our own Hamingja and Wyrd, for the purposes of allegiance, mutual support, friendship, and honor to the Ancestors and Gods. Secondly, the kindred becomes a small and local working model of the frithful and respectful, supportive way we should approach the many other communities of beings in any world.

We celebrate our larger connection to the many beings of the many worlds through our participation in the kindred's activities: the same can be said of successful families in any other capacity. We celebrate a righteous and wholesome manner of moral and ethical living when we successfully work and live alongside the kindred.

The Norns by Frowe Minahild

Wyrd Lays Down Layers and Spins In Accordance

In the thinking of the Ancestors, the primordial "layers" of interaction- those established at the dawn of the current world-order, were called Orlog. The web of Wyrd, the reality of timeless interaction, has no beginning or end, but an perceptual order for experience does arise within the web of Wyrd- captured in the Ancestral myths as the "shaping" of the Nine Worlds by the Allfather and his Brothers.

In a sense, mythology as a whole represents the best attempt on the part of humanity to give a name to the mysterious processes that are rightly called "fateful" and "divine", and which structure so much of our experience, from the deepest level. Mythology and Wyrd are tied together, solidly, for all mythical statements (like any other sort of statement) are "Wyrd statements"- attempts to capture the essence of some aspect of this vast reality.

Orlog is a name given to the "primordial layers" of causality and interaction that came together at the perceptual "beginning" of the processes that would lead to this experience we have of our "world" and our "lives"- and Orlog is what truthfully decides the shape of things present and to come.

It does not "decide" like a man or woman may "decide" what to eat at night; what I mean to say is that the arrangement of primordial forces and their interplay are the deciding factor as to what "new conditions" arise, and from the point of the "new" conditions, further present-moment conditions arise, all following along with the necessities dictated by previous conditions.

From the past, then, rises the present. "Future" as a division of time or experience, has no place in this worldview; Our ideas about the past, and our hopes or fears for the future, are both parts of the present, and found nowhere else. The forces that did correlate and interact in the past, and which we have some dim record of in memory, lay their own weight and direction on the weaving of the new present experience. To know "what is" can give a perceptive enough mind a good idea of "what was", and to know what was, can give the wise a good idea of what must be, either now or in the mental construct we call "future".

Wyrd's way of seeing doesn't deal with mystical visions of a future that has not yet arisen; prophecy in the tradition of Wyrd deals with strong, deep interaction with the realities of the present, and a deeply held knowledge of the past.

The Orlog of this universe, of the current "way of experiencing" that we call "our world", was established perceptually long ago, and our world, in common with all Nine Worlds, has a fated end, a Wyrded Doom, in line with what must come to pass based on Orlog's lay. Each part of the system of our world has a similar doom or fate, again, based on Orlog as a whole, but also on that "balance of causes and realities" that exist on every family line, on every living creature, and on every form arisen from interaction. When we focus on "beginnings and endings" in this way, we are already removing ourselves one step from the Wyrd-reality of acausality and non-linear thinking, and this is certainly a concern.

The simple and hard truth is that "truth" for humans must be expressed in symbols and language- communication between most people is a very haphazard thing, especially considering the depths to which "communication" truly runs. At times, linear models can communicate something of essence, but more often than not, they are harmful to our deeper causes of wisdom. I can discuss the arising and falling away of the Nine Worlds in terms of a linear storyline, but this is not a "whole" truth regarding these things. If a person can remember that a story is just a story, a communication that is attempting to pass along some lesser or greater insight, then they can engage stories without being too trapped by them.

That the world-order certainly exists (or should I say, that it appears to our experience, as conditions arise) is without a doubt. But conditions perceptually come and go, change and spin out. It is a convenience for us to link these arisen conditions together with stories that give them a sense of coherence and meaning, but again, this convenience should never become a stumbling block, and need not become so to the wise.

I would like to turn now to what modern Wyrd-knowers have said about Wyrd. These perspectives are born in an ancient perspective which has (understandably) unfolded into the modern day in new ways, but in ways that still maintain the basic logic of interactionism. These people speak, in their own ways, for the most important wisdom of our shared past- the wisdom born from seeing the world as an inter-connected series of forces, a series from which we cannot meaningfully separate ourselves.

The Words of the Wyrd-Knowers

William Bainbridge, of the Troth organization, had many important things to say regarding Wyrd, which he describes as the "central mystery" of Heathenry. In his essay "The Ego and Heathenism", he writes:

"...Approaching this view of human life from a Heathen religious standpoint, I find it both very difficult and unrewarding to fit this complex understanding of the individual into some fixed theory, diagram, moral lesson or comprehensive program of self-improvement. Life simply is too complicated to be meaningfully explained by such things, and in any event, does not work precisely the same way for each of us, since the balance of significant causes is probably different for each of us.

What is the same for all of us is the process of working out old causes and adding new ones, and also the web of causation that ties us all together in many and profound ways, some of which we can understand and some of which remain mysteries approached only through myth and metaphor. Each of us was created by a multitude of causes, each will ultimately be destroyed and dissipated by a multitude of causes, and in the space in-between, each will be constantly transformed by a multitude of causes. While it is tempting to identify with one or a few of them, and cling to them as to a seemingly sturdy raft caught in turbulent waters, to do so is fundamentally inconsistent with the way things--the way we--really are. The raft, after all, will break up in the end, and the only resolution that promises any stability is for us to understand once and for all that we and the waters are, at bottom, not separate things.

Understanding ourselves in light of Wyrd, as patterns within the universal web of life and destiny, removes barriers that too often stand in the way of our arriving at the gratitude that impels us to give thanks. To get there, we must give up what we will inevitably lose anyway, and reach beyond ourselves to grasp what is, in fact, the true essence of ourselves.

it is not enough to give thanks for the innate rightness of life; one should go farther, and participate in that rightness, strive to carry it forward. How that further obligation seems to me to work itself out in religious practice and personal conduct, though, is not much expressed either in the lore or in modern Heathen thought, and although I believe I have arrived at my conclusions through following a relatively traditional understanding of Wyrd out to its logical consequences, I also believe I have gone out on this particular limb about as far as I intend to for now, at least in public.

Be that as it may, I would close with the suggestion that Wyrd, not gods or ethics, might actually be the central mystery of Heathen religion; but one does not drink from her well for free, and having drunk, cannot become again the person one was beforehand."

Mr. Bainbridge brings us to the doorstep of one of the most contentious and important topics in any worldview: the ego and the nature of "self". When we do as Mr. Bainbridge has done, and as the worldview of Wyrd requires us to do, and when we cease holding the perspective of "self" as a static, "independent" entity, and instead see "self" for what it is- a dynamic process, created and sustained by interaction, totally interacting with countless other powers in a neverending existence of communication and change, then amazing new vistas of wisdom open up to us. What we call "we" and the web of Wyrd which is the totality of the forces that give rise to the processes of our minds and bodies, cannot meaningfully be separated.

"We" are, in reality, parts of the web of life that can experience themselves as though they were separate from the whole, but, in final analysis, we are not ultimately separate. This is not to suggest (as so many others have done) that "we" ought to be struggling to lose "ourselves" into a sea of undifferentiated "Wyrd stuff"- such a proposition is absurd.

The truth is that even the sense of "self" as "thing apart" that we all experience is an important part of the outplay of forces, a fateful part of the way things are and ought to be- we are intended to understand our experience of self with wisdom, with Wyrd-wisdom, not destroy our experience in favor of a "singularity" or a "loss of self" into the "great totality". The fullest joy of living in this world is found in a wise appraisal or clear vision of our inseparable and timeless participation in the natural system of Wyrd.

Brian Bates, a foremost Wyrd-knowing sage in our modern day, writes (through the words of his Seidman Wulf) in his essential work "The Way of Wyrd":

"The patterns of Wyrd far exceed the tiny horizons of the ordinary person, for he is capable of seeing only short spans of time. Your eyes break up the course of life into tiny segments and label them as separate entities. The eyes of a sorcerer do not have this false focus. Life is comprised of waterfalls, rapids, eddies and whirlpools, but they are all part of the same watercourse. For me, life and death flow together as aspects of one river. For you, life is like a series of unconnected rain puddles and death comes when the sun dries them all up."

Understanding the deepest implications of Wyrd lead us beyond the myths of "life" and "death", as most people understand them today. The deep web of subtle forces that coalesced to give rise to mankind- to the minds and bodies of men and women- do not cease when a man or woman's body ceases to function. What we call "death" certainly includes (what seems to us to be) a change in how certain forces interact- but these interactions do not go "all the way down", as they say; "death" cannot thwart life for the simple reason that it is the totality of Wyrd's countless interacting forces that are the seat of mind and life. The true roots of life, like the roots of the World Tree itself, are so deep that not even the wisest know where they run.

Wyrd requires a new understanding of what "life" really is- and with it, the reality of that mystery we call "mind". Mind is not a field of awareness generated by a brain, which vanishes when the brain vanishes; mind relies on a complex web of forces to exist, and the coarse, obvious features of "mind" that we can observe empirically- like the coarse, obvious features of life that we can observe- are not the full story of "mind" or "life". In a very real sense, we cannot know the full story of anything- To know the fullness of forces and powers that give rise to anything like an idea or a dream, or the fullness of interactions and powers which give rise to an oak-leaf, a bird, a human, or a God, is simply not in our power.

We can say this with assurance: mind is immanent within the system of Wyrd. "Mind" as we experience it is the offspring of many forces and conditions, and always changing as its environment changes. Mind and its environment are not truly separate things- perception or experience of environment relies on mind as much as mind relies on environment. This "reciprocation" or recursive, constant arising of "mind" and "environment" leads us to the conclusion that so long as the system of Wyrd exists- and indeed, it will always exist because existence itself is nothing other than Wyrd/interaction, environment and experience will also exist.

And it is precisely this ongoing reality of experience that we find what we call "ourselves" within- though we have a very unwise habit of defining "ourselves" as "outside observers" to experience, without ever realizing that we are each inseparable parts of the neverending river of experience, which amounts to interactional immortality. It flies against our language-born logic to say it, but the "experiencer" of something is not a substance apart; if it were so, experience could not be had, by virtue of the "apartness".

There is the whole matrix of experience, which we divide, using linguistics, into a "person having" an experience, and the experience itself. Experience and experiencers are all the same watercourse, just like life and death, and thus, life and death cease to be a true concern to the wise. When one is freed from constant fear of death, the true business of living can begin- wisdom becomes the primary concern of life, the wisdom to live well and fully.

Eric Wodening, in his superb essay "The Web of Wyrd", writes:

"By far the most familiar icon for the process of wyrd is the configuration of the World Tree, Yggdrasill, and Wyrd's Well. There is good reason for this, as the iconography of the Well and the Tree fit the upward and outward action of the past as it shapes the present quite well. Yet the process of wyrd also suggests another activity, that of spinning and weaving. This comparison has had very little written about it, and even Bauschatz, in his nominal work The Well and the Tree, barely touches upon it. Still, the view of the Wyrd Sisters (ON Nornir) as spinners and weavers has much to offer heathens.

The name Wyrd itself derives ultimately from the Indo-European root *uert-, "to turn, to spin, to rotate." This in itself brings to mind the image of spinning thread and, in fact, MHG wirtel, spindle, distaff, and wheel come from the same root. The relationship between Wyrd and weaving, however, goes beyond simple etymologies. An Old English source links Wyrd directly with the activity of spinning. Wyrd, then, was viewed as the spinner of orlog. This view appears in Beowulf as well, where the end of Beowulf's life is spoken of as a thread being cut.

It is unknown whether the Germanic peoples borrowed the idea of the Wyrd Sisters as weavers from the Classical Parcae or if it evolved from the general background of the Indo-European cultural complex. There are valid arguments on both sides. The very fact that the elder heathen applied spinning and weaving as a metaphor for the process of wyrd should lend it some importance to modern heathen.

Some modern heathen believe that one of the aspects of wyrd is the interconnectivity of all things, but only one scholar, Brian Bates, has written anything on the subject. According to Bates every event is connected to all others much like the crosshatching of a spider's web. Anyone who has looked at a piece of cloth under a microscope knows it is not unlike a spider's web, so it should come as no surprise that Bates also makes comparisons to woven cloth.

In light of the loom model, Bates's comparisons appear very well grounded. Consider, each action is represented as a strand within one of the warp threads. The warp threads are interlaced with the woof threads (influences from the past?). Each action, then, is interconnected to all others through the influence exerted by the past.

That all events are interconnected has more implications that it would appear on the surface. For instance, if each man's life is represented by a thread, and every thread is connected to the others through the web of Wyrd, then each man's life is interconnected with the lives of all other men.

Not just human life would be interconnected through the web, but all other forms of life as well. In the past several decades a new science, ecology, has been developed to study the interrelationships between various forms of life. While it evolved independently of heathendom, many of ecology's conclusions are remarkably close to the concept of Wyrd's web. All life is regarded as being interdependent upon each other, in one vast, biological network, and the slightest change in that network can upset its over all balance. In terms of Wyrd's web, such activities as cutting down the South American rain forests qualify as a "bad weave" which can weaken the over all strength of the web."

If only Mr. Wodening had encountered the science of Systems theory, before he wrote this fine essay of his! He would have probably written an entire book by now on the parallels between Wyrd and the modern science of Systems theory. Still, his comparison with Ecology is quite apt- and it follows on the heels of what I have been writing thus far in this essay. We are, (whether we would be or not) parts of an ecological vision of reality, parts of a system, interacting and inter-effective parts. It is a web, a weave, and it is sacred. It does bring us into communion (and communication!) with all other beings who live.

The Wyrd of Community Systems

A few words should be said about Wyrd and its implications for the psychic and physical center of human life: the community or the communal living situation that we all must come to terms with, whether it be expressed in terms of a family, a tribe, a clan, a city, or a nation. A while back, I wrote the following passage in an essay:

"Community" did not begin as a band of scared primitive individuals that grouped together in ancient times to help protect themselves from other humans or predators; the community is not some evolutionary accident nor behavior driven solely by analysis of benefit. Community is sacred, a reflection of the sacred order which is inscribed in the souls of human beings. The Mystery of MANNAZ or Man- meaning all Mankind- is a mystery that arises not as an individual but as many men and women, and they are bound together naturally by unbreakable bonds of affection, power, and kinship.

Each person alive depends so much on others- from our parents at the beginning of our lives, to the men and women who grow our food, prepare it, and sell it; the men and women who train to be doctors, healers, therapists, soldiers and protectors; the men and women that we marry and love and who support us emotionally, and help us to create the future generations of this world. In some way, the web of human relationships and support is a perfect model of Wyrd- each person affects so many other people, and is in turn affected by them. Without the other people in the world, we could not be here, living and thriving. From our interactions, new people arise, and others die away. Between us, love and joy and sorrow arise.

The Old Ways ask us to extend that web of relationship to new dimensions- more subtle dimensions. These "subtle dimensions" of which I speak are the unseen reaches of this world, and the other worlds. Living alongside us in this world are unseen wights, sentient beings who exist in what can be conceived of as their own continuum of life. The Land upon which we walk and depend contains boundless depths of being, and the Landvaettir or Land Wights are one example of unseen sentient beings who dwell alongside us, though few people take the time to appreciate or consider them.

People wonder at the "point" or "purpose" for belief in such beings. To this, it must be said that life and mind are not gifts that humans alone possess, nor is reality as simple as what appears to our eyes. The bulk of life that we can see is just a tiny amount of life, compared to the life that dwells in the vast reaches of reality. The web of Wyrd is a vastness that cannot be comprehended. Within it are places, spaces, "dimensions of reality" and "ways of being" that are every bit as natural as the one "slice of life" that human beings experience. And Wyrd being what it is, the entire continuum of Wyrd, the entire web- including all unseen realities- affects the rest of the web. That means that numberless unseen powers affect us every day of our lives, and we affect them in return.

The Wyrd-wise have always known this, and they have always worked to become conscious of the affects the unseen world and its inhabitants have on us, and just as importantly, they have worked to be aware of what affects we have in return."

Wyrd Ways: Some Propositions Regarding the Ancient Systemic and Interactive Vision of Reality

I am going to list a few propositions about how Wyrd "works", at least based on the perceptions of those who have studied the nature of natural systemic interaction, and the perceptions of those who have looked at the system of life from other angles of investigation- angles that took them out of the neat and tidy "linear" and "divided" models that are so popular today, and so tainted by materialism- and into regions of holistic wisdom.

-The Wyrd way of seeing denies that linear causality is an ultimate reality; Wyrd is holistic, non-linear and acausal. That people tend to perceive in linear ways is a function of limited perception and not some "objective" reality. That "limited perceptions" should exist is not evidence of some "flaw" in Wyrd or in human beings- such things are another part of Wyrd, with a sacred role and purpose.

-The Wyrd way of seeing focuses on patterns, processes, and relationships, not "matter" and "material". "Matter" is itself just a name given to a seemingly stable moment in a long process of interaction and change.

-Wyrd is inclusive and mysterious, even with respect to what we label as "individuals" and "observers"- Wyrd cannot be observed from the "outside" because all observers are part of the Web of Wyrd and cannot be separated from it. The full range of Wyrd's many interactions are therefore hidden from the limited perspective of any person.

-Wyrd, as a universal system of interactions, was not begun or created by any being; it is the ongoing dynamic activity of reality. Any actor that we identify as a "being", whether human, animal, spirit, God or Goddess, originally arose and continually arises from the many interactions of the web of Wyrd.

-All parts of the web of Wyrd recursively affect one another, no matter how distant they seem- "recursive relationship" means that each part has some affect on the other parts, and vice versa. The seeds of a primordial "morality of interaction" is found in this unavoidable fact of Wyrd reality.

-The interactions of Wyrd not only give rise to all beings and phenomenon, but sustain them moment to moment, in whatever form they exist in the moment.

-"Control" cannot be found in the system of Wyrd, nor in any subsystem that we can experience and label, up to and including what we call "our own lives". Control in Wyrd is radically diffuse, and based on the interaction of countless parts. We experience things we call "choices" and "decisions" but we are not ultimately the sole and only controllers of why these things arise nor where they end up. This unavoidable consequence of any complex system of interactions has led directly to the conflict between philosophical ideas of "Fate" and "Free Will", however misunderstood these terms usually are.

Wyrd and Positive Fatalism

I am what I call a "positive Fatalist"- I do not believe in absolute or ultimate free will. I do not believe that my Heathen ancestors did, either, and I have written quite extensively on the topic. Positive Fatalism is a consequence of understanding the Wyrd-reality of interaction; it means accepting Fate or Destiny as a reality, and realizing that there is a complex order in the outplay of things- what you are, what you feel, and what you do is not ultimately in your "control", and in a sense, everything happens for a reason. The Norns or the Fate-weavers fix our dooms for us.

To make such a statement relies heavily on a sort of "faith" born in the Wyrd-worldview; with so many complex systems and sub-systems of force and interaction existing, and with the power of these things influencing us, we cannot begin to guess at every angle of the truth of our existence. Anyone who claims to know the full truth about "what's going on" in life is certainly suffering from a deadly species of vanity.

Part of the trouble with the entire notion of "free will" and "self control" is this: with so many complex, ancient, and timeless forces pre-existing "us", our entire cognitive structure and matrix of self is influenced in a pre-conscious manner, long before we build our current sense of self-identity, and long before we begin to perceptually make "our choices" in life. In a way, my notion of "Fate being in charge" is a blanket notion that puts the human being (in his or her typically limited definition) secondary to the great weave of forces that gives rise to him or her, and makes the man or woman subject to this cosmos of Wyrd.

It could not be otherwise; we are all woven by the same system. Instead of being vain and assuming that we are each powerful enough to "separate" ourselves from the weave of Wyrd, and "create" uninfluenced and independent expressions of will, apart from Wyrd's weave, I believe we should be realistic and realize that our thoughts, deeds, and actions are influenced by countless powers, and truthfully, they cannot be separated from those powers.

Now, I call my belief "positive Fatalism" because I don't think this belief means that you should sit back and do nothing with your life- in fact, I think we have all been Fated to feel as though we DO have free will, and even the belief in destiny doesn't stop us from struggling with our destiny, most of the time. The Northern European people, in their own legends, sagas, and the like, didn't sit back while the world trampled them; they fought hard- and yet, they still believed in Fate or destiny, in a very grim sort of way. Their beliefs even said that the Gods themselves had to face a dark Fate one day. They had no illusions about how hard life was.

Yet, they lived life to the fullest, thankful for the gift of life and for the gifts of the Gods, and they didn't make apologies for being the best they could be. They didn't sit back and accept substandard situations; they explored, fought, conquered, and composed majestic songs and poems. These strange contradictory things fly to the heart of the Indo-European belief in Fate, which isn't as simple as most people want to make it out.

Most people today strongly believe in "free will", but I don't believe that it can exist as they say, because we are all parts of a great and immense system of life and causality. If you look at even a simple system, you can see that the idea of "control" cannot be found anywhere within it, because all parts of a system affect the others. Control is largely an illusion. What I mean to say by this is that we are all parts of a system, and we react to the many forces that affect us, and we affect the system, too. When you have a system in which the parts all affect one another, you can't find where the ultimate "cause" of things is.

For example, you may build a fire when it gets cold outside, but can you say that you made the decision alone to build the fire? It seems that conditions arose in the natural world that led to you making the decision to make a fire to keep warm. If those conditions had not arisen, you would not have felt the need for the fire, and would not have made a decision to build one. If the conditions weren't there, you wouldn't have made the decision- so can your decision belong only to you? Can it be a thing separate from those conditions in the world around, conditions that you didn't choose to be there? The answer is no.

So we can look at this system and ask "where was the decision ultimately made?" Was it in the cold weather, the conditions that made it cold, or the human who responded to those things? The decision is not in one place or the other- the decision arose in the system, because of the system. The decision is not the full "property" of the human actor in the system.

That's how the weave of Wyrd seems to work, at least from a limited perspective- decisions appear through the various parts of the system, but they don't belong fully to any one part. Anyone who thinks they are making decisions apart from the world around them, is being very limited in how they perceive the reality of things. We are not isolated from the weave of Wyrd; we are parts of it.

We can say that "we" had an idea, but the seeds of "your" ideas were sown long ago in the combinations and interactions of many powers that pre-existed "you". This is Wyrd, the weave of causality and reality, and we are all parts of it. What we call our actions are not fully "ours"- it is more realistic to say that the universe itself is working through us, rather than to say that we are separate from the universe, and working "inside" it somehow.

The belief in "free will" requires people to believe that they are very separate from the natural world, and it is a belief which is central to Christianity- early Christians often scorned Pagan beliefs in Fate, and bragged that their God was not beholden to any "fate". To believe in Fate is to put yourself directly back in the genuine stream of pre-Christian thinking.

To believe in "Free Will" is, in final analysis, to make the bold (and untenable) announcement that each human being is a miniature "First Cause", capable in and of themselves of creating "new" strands of Wyrd, capable of changing the essential nature of the cosmos, capable of creation and action completely independent of the many other forces that create the web of causality in which we are all inseparably suspended, and which we cannot remove ourselves from. Such a belief in this sort of "free will" is not a part of a genuine understanding of Wyrd.

If a person bears all these things in mind, their entire worldview changes; they approach life in a fearless way, realizing their kinship to all powers that exist. They realize that things must work in a certain way, and there's no need to worry yourself over things that are outside of your control, and indeed, many things that people usually do worry about are far outside of their control.

Positive Fatalism asks us to be as good as we can be, to be brave and honorable, but not to be so foolish as to think that we are separate from the world, or not affected by it. It's a very "Wyrd" way of seeing; positive Fatalism is "world concern" as much as it is "self concern". It also asks us to endure whatever befalls us with acceptance and fortitude, but never to settle for bad situations if we think it's possible to do better.

Even if we are Fated to fail at our efforts, that really doesn't matter- our desires and efforts must be expressed, and these are the things which (in a certain manner) make us "who we are" to others, and which decide how we will be remembered. It's better to die trying for a better world than to succeed at maintaining a mediocre world.

The Giants in the Water

2008-08-31T16:12:00.001-07:00

Of all the great natural bodies of power that our Ancestors dealt with on a daily basis, the seas and oceans inspired more awe than most. When we stare at the great waters, we see not just an endless reservoir of power, but the origins of our very lives- the primordial genetic material that was the foundation of all life on land was once in the ocean. There is a great awe and fear of the oceans and seas, because they are containers of immense and mysterious powers, not all of them friendly to mankind.

The elements in their primordial form (which includes the ground under your feet, the water in rivers and oceans, lightning flashing through the sky, forest fires, and winds, among others) are by nature "giantish"- untamed and occasionally dangerous to man. It's impossible to avoid the feeling of awe when you see these hurricanes on satellite imaging, swirling with their massive spiraling arms, moving relentlessly towards land.

There is no evil in them; they are simply expressions of the might of nature itself, so massive and powerful that they move along on their Fated courses, heedless of the tiny specks of life that they blast by. I always compared them to the most massive whales in the deep ocean: massive creatures plowing along through the water, steadily, consuming thousands of pounds of tiny life-forms in the ocean as they go- they don't viciously seek to destroy life; they are simply doing as they do, never thinking twice about it.

We humans are tiny compared to these rightly-called "Giantish" forces. The sheer difference in scale is one of the reasons why we fear them- we know that they are blind and heedless of our lives, in the same way you or I may be blind or heedless of the tiny insects we crush in the grass as we walk by, hiking in the forest or just spending a day in a park.

The Ancestors firmly believed that the Gods- aided spectacularly by the Thunder-God, the greatest enemy of Giants- kept this world, this Middle-Earth, safe from Giantish powers. In light of what is going on right now, the implications of this belief are profound. The Ancestors dealt with disastrous weather-patterns and natural disasters just like we do, and one could say that they suffered worse from them (in a way) because they didn't have the networks of preparedness and response that we have.

So why were they so happy to point out how "safe" the Gods made the world? Because without the Gods, the elements and the other Giantish forces- deeper and more destructive than we could imagine- would overwhelm this world. Old Redbeard is a skilled killer of Giants, but even he can't destroy them all- there has to be a 1% that make it through, and have time to wreak havoc before their Fated course ends.

I think the Ancestors were aware of the fact that it could always be worse. And one of the reasons why it wasn't as bad as it could be is because powerful sentient forces, who care for mankind as their kin, were faithfully performing a Fated task of preservation.

There is one more element to this equation: the fact that we are literally in what the Ancestors described as "A wind age, a wolf age"- the final age of the world in which the decline of things was higher than it ever had been, and even the elements were possibly more destructive. "The wind age" refers to the destructive force of the winds, and in a way, the elements, but the "wolf age" refers to the destructive force of greed in human beings.

As I have said countless times, and as I believe the prophecy in Voluspa makes clear, the world is not destined to get better, in these last millenia. This makes our current age a time when the greatest heroes can (ironically) be produced. We need not just the support of the Hammer-God and his family; we need human heroes who are ready to perform what seems to be a lost cause: the cause of preserving as much as they can in the face of blind, naked natural fury.

The Gods and the Heroes go to the final battle of this world in full knowledge that they will be meeting their doom. Who does that? Beings that know that the ends are not the important part. The important part is that they will make a stand, come what may.

Help the soon-to-be victims of this storm in whatever way you can; even tiny help, help that seems pointless in the face of so much misery, is heroic. You can join me in sacrificing to the Gods for final aid and rescue for as many people as can be helped, but in this case, in this age, what we need are strong people, not just strong Gods.

I work in the Therapy field, and I face a lot of misery in my clients every day. I see cases that anyone would describe as hopeless and unthinkably depressing. When I first started, I (like most people) had the odd "savior" complex that led me to get overly concerned for my clients- but in the end, you have to realize that we don't write the story of other people's lives.

I talked to a friend and colleague of mine about my concerns regarding getting too attached to clients, and he told me one of the most amazing things anyone has ever told me. What he told me was a quote (horridly enough) drawn from a recent movie starring Kevin Costner, called "The Guardian" or something like that. But the quote was very relevant. What do you do when you see so much trauma, and you know you can't help everyone?

My friend said that in one scene of this movie, a young Coast Guard member asked Kevin Costner's character (who apparently plays a more experienced Coast Guard life saver) what he does when he faces a situation where many people are drowning, and in need of help. How do you know who to help or save?

Kevin Costner's character said this:

"I swim as hard as I can, I swim as fast as I can, I save as many people as I can, and the sea takes the rest."

At first I hadn't realized the full impact of what my young colleague had told me. Then it hit me: Fate had spoken here. Fate was the final answer. In the disguise of a pop-culture movie reference, I believe that an ancient and important wisdom was transmitted, then and there.

In our lives, however we help people, we do the best we can, and Fate takes the rest. The nobility in us- that nobility that does not die, and will survive to be reborn in the regenerated universe- does the best it can, regardless of the darkness of the situation.