My Song of Glory for the Heathens

"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!

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

"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.

Our way of Life, Our way of Love

Those who live according to our way of life are always at home, wherever they go. When you live a life of conscious awareness of the sacredness of the Land, you are in the presence of divinity at all times. The powers that spiral and grow out of the land as plants and trees are fresh expressions of life and spirit; they are brothers and sisters in a great community of life. We are very much like them, joined to them in an unbreakable bond of kinship.

Those powers that move invisibly on the earth, like the wind, are also kin to us; those powers that exist in the interior spaces of the Land, under hills and mounds and under the verdure of the forest and pasture are our relatives. The Gods themselves are kin, but they are of massive power and awareness. We look to them with respect and we desire their guidance and teachings.

Among their number are many great powers- the teacher of all mystics and sorcerers moves about the world, hunting for spirits and sending his rays of unseen light into the minds of seers, illuminating them to the Truth. His raven-shaped messengers watch us from treetops and circle about, seeing everything that he sees. The hissing of his serpent pervades the dreams of those who come near to awakening. He heals us by healing our perceptions and giving us wisdom. I give worth and honor to the great Lord of mysterious interactions, who lays the fetters of Fate on all beings.

The master of beasts and the natural world protects all of his savage and green, growing subjects; he speaks to us of our deepest, most primal natures. It is by his leave that we are allowed to know ourselves in one of the most authentic ways- as deep, ancient powers that are coeval with every other power in the natural world. I give worth to him, as my father and the father of all life.

The great Goddess Sovereignty is always here, yet beyond all; what can be said of Her? I can say that I feel Her with me now, and in all the forms that my eyes come to rest upon. I see Her and feel Her in the Land and in the love I feel for my wife and child. I know that she is the source of the Truth and the source of the only true authority in the world- the authority that only She who is the wellspring of life can bestow. I give worth to Her and submit to Her, calling no man great or holy unless he does the same, with an open heart.

When we submit to Her and accord Her the honor She is due, She protects us and gives us prosperity and peace. When we do as Cu Chulain did, and refuse to give Her the worth that is Her due, we set ourselves up for certain and fatal doom. Cu Chulain was a great hero, but like all heroes, he had his flaws- and his flaw was the lack of wisdom that led him to turn his face away from the Truth of Her great power, selfishly trying to deny what cannot be denied. This flaw saw him dead, with the sacred Raven of the Mother sitting on his shoulder, that the whole world might know who was the authoress of his demise.

Was She cruel? She was, but the situation demanded it- the sacred story of the Hound of Ulster and his disastrous relationship to Sovereignty would survive to us intact, thousands of years later, to remind us of She to whom we owe our lives and to whom we owe respect. Respecting Her is the same as respecting life, and the mystery behind life. In that sense, She and her victim's relationship teaches us the most important lesson of all.

To rise up and be human, from the womb of a mother to the steady stance of an adult is a sacred statement of intention. It is a statement of the spirit that it is ready to be tested, and that it is ready to take the quest for Truth seriously. Each person must rely not only on their own gifts and talents, but on the wisdom that has come to us from the past, through our parents and elders.

It is the duty of parents and family to teach the young what life is really about- it is about discovering the Truth of our place in the "fitness of things", our place in the community of life. It is about fully being human, experiencing all that being human entails, without fear. As humans, we live and we love, and we enjoy the bonds of kinship, bonds that further define us and give us the power to be many things. The bond of Love is greater than all, for it gives a great strength to us, to overcome any foe that would threaten our loved ones and our mother the Land, and it bestows every minute of our lives with a great strength for living. We face many terrors and challenges, and only love can give us the allegiance with other spirits that we need to face those things and emerge victorious.

Love's activity is the ultimate validation of what we are, for no person is a failure who knows love, who gives it with innocence and honesty, and recieves it the same way. It is the key to lasting peace. The measure of a person's life, at last reckoning, is who (or what) he or she loves, and who loves them back. What they did in the name of that love are the deeds that will make them great in the inner world, as well as the outer.

Love, as a concept, makes many uncomfortable. Many people defame Love and speak ill of it, but all they are doing is defaming their own misunderstandings of this sublime power. They are also digging their own early graves, for without love, without persons or beings to whom we feel the ties of affection and the supreme desire to see live well and thrive, we will find that we begin to diminish inside.

We discover so much ability to give and to help when we find those to whom we can donate our power and efforts, through love. We find an inexhaustible cauldron of plenty inside us that never runs dry, and which keeps us forever young, in the most spiritual sense. Without that, without that devotion, we are cut off from the regenerating waters of the Lady of the Cauldron, and we are simply preparing to meet death empty, having lived and experienced only a tiny measure of what we were capable of.

Many false measures of love have been used to define "love", but we must cut through the sentimental fantasies and see that love simultaneously makes the most demands of us and also gives us the greatest freedom. It removes fear and makes us live our lives not only for ourselves, but for others. Every suffering in the world is caused by people who live only for themselves; every joy and peace experienced by people in our world is a result of people who live as much or more for others as they do for themselves. This is a sacred duty, and it derives from a much deeper allegiance. The more that we are bound to others in love, the more free we find that we are, so long as we are conscious of Love's mystery.

Love, the power that drives us to conscious connection with all other beings and mixture into the elemental realities of life, is also the power that liberates, in its own powerful way. It will not always liberate us with peace and joy; love has a dark side, as well. If we can keep our wits and be brave and trusting of the world and of Fate even in the darkest moments, Truth will be the light that shines on us when we need it the most.