Vatni Ausa

Þóra ól barn um sumarið, og var það mær; var hún vatni ausin og nafn gefið og hét Ásgerðr.

"Thora bore a child in the summer; it was a girl. She was sprinkled with water, and named Asgerdr.

-Egils Saga

* * *

A few days ago, the Idavoll Kindred got the rare pleasure of performing the Vatni Ausa rite on a newborn child. Vatni Ausa means "sprinkling with water", but the rite is also called a "Name Fastening". The Vatni Ausa ritual is very much a Heathen baptism rite, but it is ancient and grew up independent from the later Christian ritual of baptism.

The traditional basis for the Vatni Ausa rite comes from the ancient Rigsthula. In that great work, in which we are told more of the origins of different human beings as the ancestor-God Rig traveled among ancient man, we see the fathers and mothers of newly born children "casting water" upon their infant offspring and giving them names. In verse 35, for instance, we read:

"A son bore mother / in silk they swathed him,
sprinkled water on him / and called him Jarl
Was his hair flaxen / and fair-hued his cheek,
his eyes awfully / like an adder's, blazed."

It should be noted that "flashing eyes" were seen as a token of noble birth by the ancients, as Tacitus recorded.

In the Vatni Ausa rite, a child is formally accepted by its father on its ninth night of life, and sprinkled with water made sacred by Blots, and given a name. Of course, in the modern day, most children will typically have "mainstream" names and a separate name by which they are known in the Asatru faith-community. I sincerely hope that one day we have more children whose Vatni Ausa name is the same as the one on their birth certificates, but until that fine day, we go on as we are.

A member of our Kindred named Grettir welcomed a new son about two weeks ago. On his ninth night of life, we went out to the very large and forested property where our Kindred member lives, erected a harrow (pictured above) and performed the Vatni Ausa on his tiny baby boy. His boy's name at birth was Brendan, but the name chosen by his father for his Vatni Ausa was Eyarr.

I include a transcript of the rite we used. Before I give it, a few notes on it are in order.

The water we used for the sprinkling of Brendan/Eyarr was special- it was clean spring water mingled with some water from the Tobernault Holy Well in Sligo, Ireland. The last time Thorgrimmr was there, he got a bottle of it straight from the well, and carried it back here, and we use it now for various sacred work.

Our Kindred's Vatni Ausa works in two parts. In the first part, we set up a Harrow, which includes a horn and a hlautbowl, a bowl of the water, and a hammer (pictured above).

Then the father of the child and the rite leader (usually our Godi) go into the forest looking for a Hlauteinn, a sprig of some evergreen that will be used to sprinkle the child. The Father of Brendan and I found a holly bush that was more than able to offer a nice sprig, and I sang Algiz songs to it, to consciously communicate with the wight of the holly bush, and ask it for its donation. The father responds by giving a gift to it for the hlauteinn, then we return to the ritual site.

Placing the hlauteinn on the hlautbowl, the bowl that will catch the ale from the Blot, we are ready. For the most important Blots, such as the Blots that come before something as important as the Vatni Ausa, we use the best ale we know- Chimay Grand Reserve. As a rule, the Gods and holy Kindreds must always be given the finest ale or drink you have on hand at the place where the Blot or Rite is being done, for the same reasons that you'd break out the best ale for an honored human guest or relative that came to visit.


Our Vatni Ausa has two parts, as I said before: they are preparation and Blots, and then the Sprinkling and Naming. When we are ready, we use the Hammer to consecrate the area around the Harrow, and the Harrow itself, including all the items on it.

In this particular Vatni Ausa, our Steersman Thorgrimmr drummed slowly (30 beats a minute then 15 beats a minute) while the Blots were taking place. Jorhild acted as our Horn-dis, filling horns for me (I led the rite) and holding the hlautbowl when the time came to pour and sprinkle the gathering.

four Blots were made, one to the Allfather, one to the Disir or ancestral guardian spirits of the families of the mother and the father of the child, one to the Thunderer, and one to the Earth Mother.

To the Allfather we make a Blot and ask for wisdom and guidance on the child; to the Disir, we ask that a Fylgja-Dis or a protecting spirit attach itself to the child and follow him through his life, protecting him; to the Thunderer, we ask for protection from the designs and baneful powers of Ill-wights, and to the Earth Mother we ask for health for the child.

Each time a Blot is done (and the text of the Blot calls is given below) a few drops of the consecrated ale is sprinkled into the water that will later be used to sprinkle the child.


When the four Blots are done, the father (and mother if she is participating) carries the child up to the harrow and dips the hlauteinn into the water. Looking at their child, they say "I acknowledge you as my son/daughter and name you _____". As they are saying this, they sprinkle the water lightly over the child's head.

At this point, the father and mother make their parental vows to the child- in the name of the Gods, they make whatever vows to the child they feel the need to make; to protect the child, to love it all their lives, to always support the child, etc. As long as these vows are kept, the luck-force binding the parents to the child, and the luck-force that surrounds their family, cannot be defeated.


That's our Vatni Ausa; below are the calls we use. Bear in mind that the mother, who is not Asatru, was not present for the blots. She was, however, present for the sprinkling.



Five Hammer Hallowings:

VIH THONORAZ : HELGA VE THETTA OK HALD VORDH

("Sacred (or powerful) Thunderer, hallow and hold this holy stead")



Blot for Odin

(All invocations except for the last are given with the body straight and standing, and hands raised above the head in a "Y" shape, making the body conform to the shape of the Algiz Rune, the posture of invocation since time immemorial among the Indo Europeans.)


FIMBULTYR : GALDRSFADHIR : HANGATYR : ALLFADHIR ODIN
RISTER OF RUNES : EAGLE HIGH, WYRM DEEP
SHAPER OF THE WORLD IN ANCIENT TIMES
WITH THESE WORDS YOUR CHILDREN ROWN YOU FORTH
COME AND HALLOW THIS GATHERING WITH YOUR MIGHT.

BEFORE YOU STANDS A FATHER WITH A SON NEWLY BORN
LET HIS OFFSPRING BE BLESSED
LET ALL OF HIS SON'S DAYS BE BLESSED.
GUIDE HIM, FATHER MOST WISE,
AND PROTECT HIM.


(The horn is filled and handed to the Godi, who marks it with the hammer sign and with the ANSUZ sign, and holds it up.)

ALLFATHER, ACCEPT THIS HORN OF ALE AS A TRUE AND HALLOWED SACRIFICE. RECEIVE IT. FILL IT WITH YOUR MIGHT.


The Godi lowers it and hammer signs it again, and takes a sip. It is carried around to each participant so that they can take a sip.

What remains in the horn is poured into the hlautbowl, and the hlauteinn is dipped in, and a few drops are cast into the water bowl. The Godi then offers a silent prayer to Odin, sprinkles himself, and walks to each participant now, telling them:

(NAME), Under Odin's Eye, I blood you wise and protected.

And then he sprinkles them.

When all have been sprinkled, the remains of the bowl are poured out onto the ground, with these words:

HEILIR AESIR
HEILAR ASYNJUR
HEIL SU IN FJOLNYTA FOLD.

("Hail to the Gods, Hail to the Goddesses, Hail Earth, who gives to all.")



Blot to the Disir

All is done as above, but with these changes to the calls:


DISIR OF THE FAMILY REITER
DISIR OF THE FAMILY HOBDEN
FETCH-ANCESTRESSES
WARDING WIGHTS OF MEN'S LIVES
SHIELD MAIDENS
LUCK BRINGERS
WITH THESE WORDS WE ROWN YOU FORTH
COME AND HALLOW THIS GATHERING WITH YOUR MIGHT.

SEE BRENDAN THERE, THE SON OF GRETTIR AND CATHERINE
THOSE OF YOU WHO WILL WEAVE HIM A GOOD FATE
A SAFE AND HAPPY LIFE, ATTACH YOURSELF TO HIM
AND FOLLOW HIM ALL HIS DAYS.
DO THIS IN THE NAME OF WYRD THE MIGHTY
BY THE FORCE OF THE SPINNING NORNS
IN THE NAME OF THE ALLFATHER
AND THE EARTH THAT GIVES TO ALL.


(The horn is filled and handed to the Godi, who marks it with the hammer sign and with the ALGIZ sign, and holds it up.)

DISIR, ACCEPT THIS HORN OF ALE AS A TRUE AND HALLOWED SACRIFICE. RECEIVE IT. FILL IT WITH YOUR MIGHT.


(NAME), In the name of the Clan-Mothers, I blood you lucky and protected.



Blot to the Thunderer

ATLI : ASATHOR : OKUTHOR : THUNDERER
OLD REDBEARD : HRUNGNIRS BANE :
MIDGARD'S WARDER
SIF'S BELOVED : SON OF ODIN
WITH THESE WORDS YOUR YOUNGER KIN ROWN YOU FORTH
COME AND HALLOW THIS GATHERING WITH YOUR MIGHT.

BEFORE YOU STANDS A FATHER WITH A SON NEWLY BORN
LET HIS OFFSPRING BE BLESSED;
LET ALL OF HIS SON'S DAYS BE BLESSED.
ASATHOR, KEEP HIM SAFE FROM THE DESIGNS OF WICKED WIGHTS.
KEEP HIM SAFE EVERY DAY OF HIS LIFE.


(The horn is filled and handed to the Godi, who marks it with the hammer sign and holds it up.)


THUNDERER, ACCEPT THIS HORN OF ALE AS A TRUE AND HALLOWED SACRIFICE. RECEIVE IT. FILL IT WITH YOUR MIGHT.


(NAME), Under the Hammer of the Thunder God, I blood you warded and safe.




Blot to the Earth Mother

(the invocation to Nerthus or Iord, the Earth Mother, is given by the Godi as he kneels and touches the ground)


NERTHUS : IORD : GREAT AND GIVING EARTH : WIH-MIGHT GROWING
MOTHER OF MAN : MOTHER OF ASATHOR
FLOWERING AND FILLING WITH LIFE
WITH THESE WORDS YOUR CHILDREN ROWN YOU FORTH
COME AND HALLOW THIS GATHERING WITH YOUR MIGHT


UPON YOU STANDS A FATHER WITH A SON NEWLY BORN
LET HIS OFFSPRING BE BLESSED
LET ALL OF THIS SON'S DAYS BE BLESSED
KEEP HIM IN HALE HEALTH ALL HIS DAYS, MOTHER.


(The horn is filled and handed to the Godi, who marks it with the hammer sign and holds it up.)


GREAT EORTH, ACCEPT THIS HORN OF ALE AS A TRUE AND HALLOWED SACRIFICE. RECEIVE IT. FILL IT WITH YOUR MIGHT.


(NAME), by this Good Earth, I blood you lucky and healthy.


After these Blots were done, at our Vatni Ausa, the new father carried his son up to the harrow, and sprinkled the child as I described before. He named him Eyarr, the "luck bringing warder", and made very touching vows to him. We clapped; it was a fine time.

The most important thing for any parent (Asatru or not) to remember is this: blessings come from many places, but the best blessing a child can have is the unflinching and unconditional love of family and kin.

The Vikings: History, Fantasy, and Reality

Everyone knows about the Vikings. From popular fiction to historical accounts, we've all experienced the drama of heavily armed raiders splashing off their fierce Dragon-ships and raiding, burning, and looting villages up and down the coastlines of England and France. We all know that these vicious men were out to rape as many women as they could, carry off as much treasure as they handle, and were all prepared to die fighting, so that they could go drink and feast in Valhalla. The truth of the matter is, like with so many other things, quite different from this picture.

The idea of the blood-crazed Viking raider, and Valhalla as the prime warrior's paradise, a place for warriors to go if they die fighting, echoes long in the historical memory of the world. While modern Asatru is not limited to the Heathen religious ideas of the Viking era only, it certainly has roots in the rich tapestry of Icelandic Heathen lore, and Iceland was founded by the Vikings.

Many have mistakened Asatru today for a "warrior religion" or a "Viking religion". Many Kindreds and other members of the Asatru faith are working hard to overcome these stereotypes, for many good reasons. At best, the Vikings, brave traders and explorers that they were, only represent a very tiny part of Germanic Heathen history and tradition as a whole. At worst, historical propaganda and falsehoods told about the Vikings lead some immature people to assume that Asatru glorifies violence, rape, murder, or stupidity.

Asatru is far more than some excuse for childish machismo and posturing or "play Viking" nonsense- it is a living faith that keeps ancestral piety close to its heart, praises courage and steadfast behavior, and focuses on the value of human bonds of support and closeness, particularly between kin. The idea that anyone can think of guys running about dressed like fake Vikings and swinging axes and swords as the essence of the Asatru religion is a terrible distortion of the reality, to say the least.

The Viking Age, spanning roughly 790 and 1000 CE, was the last Heathen age of the Germanic peoples. It is closer to us historically than any other pre-Christian age of the Germanic folk, and thus, we happen to know more about it than any other age. Despite the fact that many of the written sources from which Asatru draws its theological basis date from Viking times (but were doubtlessly based on oral tales much older) the Viking Age does not capture the full essence of Germanic Heathenry.

The Vikings deserve a defense for who and what they were. To begin with, the Vikings were not as violent and bloodthirsty as most people think.

They also were not a unified people; the term "Viking" doesn't refer to a people; it refers to something people all over the Scandinavian world did- they "went Viking"- meaning they went sailing, raiding, and trading, during the summer. The word Viking appears on several Runestones found in Scandinavia. In the Sagas, "Viking" refers to an overseas expedition (Old Norse fara í víking "to go on an expedition"), and víkingr, to a seaman or warrior taking part in such an expedition. The crews of Viking ships were packed full of young men, the younger sons of farmers who could not inherit their father's land. The land passed automatically to the oldest son, so the younger sons had to find another way to make a living. Often, they got together with the other unlanded young men from their area and arranged a Viking expedition, to find wealth through trade or exploration.

The reality of raiding is the aspect of the historical Viking tradition that most people associate with the act of "going Viking" as a whole. The reason why is because the first historical mention we have of Vikings is from the pens of Monks, who recorded the sack of Lindisfarne Monastery in 793. Vikings did sack Lindisfarne, and took its very large treasury of gold and silver for themselves. Needless to say, this attack, and several other attacks on monasteries, won the Vikings (who didn't help themselves by being Heathen) a nasty reputation in the eyes of the church. It was the Churchmen who wrote the history, and thus, the idea of Vikings being bloodthirsty Heathen raiders became not only common in written reports of the time, but in the minds of most people today who rely on history as it is written without understanding the deeper reality.

Monasteries were packed full of gold and silver and other riches- the Church wasn't poor, either then or now. While the common people sat sleeping in huts and struggling to make ends meet, Church buildings and Monasteries were filthy rich. They were relatively undefended, and so made tempting targets for Vikings. Sadly, the only people who wrote history back in those days happened to live inside the monasteries. That being said, I have a hard time rousing much sympathy for well fed, over-privileged monks who were rich (paradoxically while taking vows of poverty) while the common people were so poor.

The Vikings didn't set out to fight and murder and rape. They were prepared to fight in their voyages, of course- and they would certainly raid targets of opportunity, but in this respect, they were no more evil than any other group of people in the ancient world. Resource competition was "the name of the game", both then and now for most people. Getting money to eat and live is the bottom line. All the same, fighting is expensive and dangerous- even Vikings preferred to trade and make a fat profit that way. Despite what most people think, villages and towns in Viking times were not just helpless targets- they had armed men defending them and patrolling the coast. The chances that a crew from one longship or even several longships could attack a well-defended town or village and walk away without heavy casualties was not good.

Trading was, therefore, the primary way that the Vikings made their money. There was a trouble in trading with Christians, however. The Heathen Vikings were often subjected to unfair trade practices. It is said by some historians that Christian merchants who declared openly that they would not trade with heathens and infidels (Muslims and the Vikings) would get preferred status for availability and pricing of goods through a Christian network of traders.

It's not a stretch of credulity to think of Christian potentates making laws or rules regarding trade with Heathens and other non-Christians, and declaring either no trade allowed, or raising prices on non-Christians, in some feeble attempt to make conversion seem like a financially sound option. Vikings might have reacted negatively to what they would have perceived as dishonorable dealings, and raid just for good measure. Honestly, I can't blame them; I'd do the same.

The point of these historical facts is to remind people that the fictional "poor, scared villages of meek Christians" that we are led to believe were subjected to heartless and brutal Viking raids is just that- a fiction. It was a fiction created by Christian writers to vilify Heathen men. The historical realities show a more balanced picture.

One of the main activities of the Vikings was exploration- many of these expeditions sought new homelands. It is probable that Scandinavia lacked enough room for burgeoning populations, or that land for farming was all taken up, leading to an exodus-surge of explorers and settlers. The world of the Viking explorer was huge- they not only settled Iceland, but also Greenland and even dropped anchor off the coast of Vinland- North America. They explored the massive lengths of the rivers that cut deep into Russia and Eastern Europe, and served as mercenaries to the Byzantine Emperor. They founded the city of Dublin, ruled most of eastern England, and traded in Iberia, the Middle East, Egypt, and all over the Mediterranean. They even traded in Baghdad. Tribes of Swedes laid the foundations of Russia itself, including Russia's first and longest ruling dynasty.

Considering history, it seems to most reasonable people that the most amazing things the Vikings did were all related to exploration. So it's a little unfair (though given the nature of the Christian propaganda machine, understandable) that the Vikings are mostly remembered for raiding and killing.

Modern day members of the various branches of the Asatru faith are not Vikings. The reason why is simple: they do not live in a culture where financial pressures force them to "go Viking" every summer to trade, raid, or explore. Modern people all over the world probably have Viking blood in them, due to the nature of Viking exploration and expansion, and many members of the Asatru faith may claim literal or spiritual ancestry among the brave Vikings, but they are not themselves Vikings, at least not in the historical sense of the word. There's much to admire about the Vikings, and most good Asatruar always make it a point to show respect or admiration for them.

The most admirable thing about the Vikings is the spirit of adventure they demonstrated. Unafraid of the open ocean, their boats flew into dark, unexplored and dangerous waters that other European ships wouldn't dare- the other European vessels of their time hugged the coasts tightly. When politics became too annoying and untenable at home, the men and women of the Viking age took off- they built ships and sailed off to find a new land where they could live in peace, without interference. That is how Iceland came to be settled. That spirit of independence coupled with a zest for adventure is the main thing about the Vikings and their Age that most of us can truly get behind.

Heathen Quotes

Good quotes are good things. There are many quotes from all ages made by great thinkers which reflect the values and worldview of the Heathen way, and while many can be found online (such as most of the ones given here) many are only granted to those who hit the books and get into the seldom-visited corners of the old masterworks. I love quotes, and I thought I'd get a few together for this short post. This is a short selection of quotes that I have collected over time that reflect so well some aspect of the worldview and spiritual path that defines me as a religious being. These quotes don't just speak for me; they speak for many like me.

I don't think we (my fellow Heathens and I) will be saving the world anytime soon; to be honest, I don't think it can be saved from its date with destiny. But Fate saw fit that we should save one another from the true death which is the death of the spirit under the weight of the world's cynicism, absurdity, and materialistic dullness. With no further ado, here are some outstanding quotes that mean so much to us.

* * *


"People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors."

-Edmund Burke


"Christianity has emptied Valhalla, felled our sacred groves, extirpated our national image as a shameful superstition, as a devilish poison, and given us instead the imagery of a nation whose climate, laws, culture and interests are strange to us, and whose history has no connection with our own. A David or a Solomon lives in our popular imagination, but our own country's heroes slumber in learned history books."

- George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel


"Fearlessness is better than a faint-heart for any man who puts his nose out of doors. The length of my life and the day of my death were fated long ago."

-Anonymous lines from 'For Scirnis'


"No man lives till eve whom the Fates doom at dawning."

-Anglo Saxon Poem


"I think Scandinavian Paganism, to us here, is more interesting than any other. It is, for one thing, the latest; it continued in these regions of Europe till the eleventh century; 800 years ago the Norwegians were still worshippers of Odin. It is interesting also as the creed of our fathers; the men whose blood still runs in our veins, whom doubtless we still resemble in so many ways."

- Thomas Carlyle


"Against stupidity, even the gods are powerless."

-Friedrich von Schiller


"The most striking difference between the philosophies of the Southwestern Indian and Western man is the manner in which each views his role in the universe. The prevailing non-Indian view is that man is superior to all other forms of life and that the universe is his to be used as he sees fit. The value placed on every other life form is determined only by its usefulness to man, an attitude justified as "the mastery of nature for the benefit of man."

The Indian view is that man is part of a delicately balanced universe in which all components -- all life forms and natural elements -- interrelate and interact, with no part being more or less important than another. Further, it is believed that only man can upset this balance.

It is a tragedy indeed that Western man in his headlong quest for Holy Progress could not have paused long enough to learn this basic truth -- one which he is now being forced to recognize, much to his surprise and dismay. Ever anxious to teach "backward" people, he has been ever reluctant to learn from them."

- Tom Bahti, Southwestern Indian Ceremonials


"I put a capital N on nature and call it my church."

-Frank Lloyd Wright


"Bad luck breaks on a stout heart."

-Cervantes


"Virtues are not accidents of nature."

-Toni Morrison


"If evil though knowest, then proclaim it to all as evil,
And make no friendship with foes. "

-Havamal


"If there's anything more powerful than Fate,
Then it's courage, which bears Fate unshaken."

-Geibel

To Know A Goddess

All we need is the great power of the Land. If you have that, you have everything. If you understand the sacredness of the very ground upon which you walk, you are immediately initiated into the great wisdoms of every age of the world that led up to this one.

The Land isn't just hills and trees and grass. It's people and animals, too. It's weather and the circulation of water through rivers, mist, clouds, and rain. It's wells, fires, and moonlight. It's food, homes, families, and it is life. I try to make this point, but often fail, as words fail to express the reality of a Goddess who is as close as the ground below us.

Just a few days ago, I stood on a hill in a forest, making offerings to the Gods. One of the great beings I shared Ale with was the Goddess Eorth, Earth; The Supreme and Great Sovereign that all owe their life-force and the flesh, blood, and bone of their bodies to. For a moment, in my repeated entreaties, as I held the horn against the ground, I could "see" her face there, deep below in my Hugauga, which I suppose was my mind's way of communicating to me her attentions. What a sacred moment; to consciously know the attentions of She from whom all arise, the true Mother of mothers.

Without the Goddess of the Land- and a sacred connection with the Land itself- no modern Pagan religion (and no modern Pagan) can be considered "complete". Paganism in Indo-European times was itself a child of earlier times wherein the Earth Mother was probably far more in evidence than she seems to have been later. All our ancestors had rites and prayers for the Earth Mother, and many myths and stories still capture the essence of her ancient interactions with mankind.

But we don't have to fondly look back to history or mythology to seek stories of her past interactions; what greater religious blessing is there than the power to experience a God or a Goddess here and now? We have that power. Because unlike Monotheists who pack their God away in heaven, or the same who compensate for the misery of that belief by claiming that their God is "everywhere" or "in the heart", we have a Goddess who is not hidden in the least way. You need no "eyes of faith" to see her, feel her, touch her, taste her, or know her. You just need the eyes of your head, your brain, and your hands.

We Heathens are bearers of an important tradition into the modern day- the tradition of the Sacred Land. From full-blown Goddess to abstract ideas about "the sacredness of nature", The Earth Mother's awesome presence informs everything we do and think, whether or not we know it. To be conscious of this is a real blessing, and it changes how you experience your life. You cannot actualize the true and full blessings of the Heathen way unless you can shift your consciousness to understand how easy it is to commune daily with a real and holy Goddess. Native Americans called this "living in a sacred manner".

The Goddess Nerthus, Eorth, Hertha, the Living Earth, the Giantess from whose womb the matter of our very bodies was born and drawn, is impossible to avoid or escape. You are living in her very sacred realm, everyday, whether you will to or not.

If you have walked by rows of corn ripening, or seen cows eating grass, eyeing you from fields on the side of the road, you have seen her. We are so used to thinking of plants and animals as separate, distant "things" apart from either ourselves or some Goddess, but they aren't. In Wyrd, everything is connected, but in the world of Wyrd that we inhabit, the world itself, the land and the living things drawn from it, along with fires and waters, ice and dust, rivers and wells, they are also parts of the body of a Giantess, a Goddess called Earth.

She is the hill, the sow, the birds flying, the streams gurgling. She is the hollow-backed forest woman, the old and terrifying crone in the cottage under the well, the spinner, the Mother of Lightning and Thunder. Words like "ancient" don't even begin to describe her, because what we consider "ancient beyond ancient" is like yesterday to her.

She is the cave, the grave, the lake, the mountain, and the grassy meadow. No matter how many thousands of years the fields have been plowed, if they are still giving fruit, her life force is still pulsing out of them. The rivers and lakes are swirling with her life, sometimes barely seen below the surface of the dark water. The shock and then the soothing of the coolness when you put your feet into the water is her touch. When you drink cold, clean water, or rich, thick ale, her power is pulsing through you powerfully- once you know this, you cannot miss it, ever again. When you taste bread or sit to rest on a hilltop, you are practically nearer to her than you are to yourself.

Sun above you, moon above you, heat and cold, ice under your feet or green grass, you are in the presence of a Goddess. The still trees, their hard and smooth bark, their rough bark, the smell of grasses and leaves, every sensory experience is an experience of her. This is an ancient truth, a venerable and universal experience of mankind, ancient and changeless.

This is the connection that can never be broken, no matter how many trees get ripped down or how many churches get built on top of the ruins of ancient Heathen holy sites. This is the heart of organic religion: the common mother of all Men, Women, Beasts, and Gods, conscious awareness of whom is the greatest blessing of the Old Ways.

Don't mistake me; I am not trying to "wash out" the Goddess by distributing her presence to the forces of nature; I'm not bowing to skepticism or to the fools who think that ancient people were just falling victim to their own misplaced metaphors and imagining that the powers of Nature were Gods and Goddesses. For me, there is no difference between the personhood of this ancient Goddess and the forces of nature.

If it suits you, you can say "ancient humans felt these things, and thought it was sacred, and named it a Goddess". You'd be missing half the point if you did, but at least you'd be in the same stretch of woods. Ancient humans felt a Goddess, they felt natural forces which ARE sacred- of this they had no doubt- and they gave due worship and allegiance to the Goddess of the Land, and the other spiritual powers that clustered in the Land, because that is the proper response when you experience the sacred in this manner.

The last thing to do is live like you understand what I've said. Pagan religions are not lost as long as you bear all these things in mind- the essence of the wisdom of the Pagan world is found right here, in the ability to go outside and experience the sacredness of things. If you can do that, understanding the nature of the Goddess that you are directly touching, you are building a bridge between yourself and the past, which allows for many blessings to flood through. Foremost of those blessings is lasting peace.

Your Land is quite literally a Goddess, a conscious, living being whose body is threaded with dirt, rivers, lakes, plants, air, fire, and animals. Go meet her. Worship her. Smell her, feel her, touch her, drink her, eat her, and be in that sacred place of communion. She has many gifts to give.

The Message

I heard a message today. Our very light rain had stopped, and it was damp outside. Stones everywhere were dark and soaked, and the sky was full. The sun was hidden, clouds were grey, and though it was cooler, it was still slightly warm and irksome. The great heat of our summer has been drenched by rain for weeks, and yet, it never really goes away. Light and water and heat just mix and the world seems green and humid. The trees around my home are tall and thick with their summer coats.

Winds barely blow in these summers, but when they do, especially after rain, they feel like slivers of delight.

I heard a bird talking, followed by the voices of other birds, and they were flying around. One bird- a very large bird- flew over without a sound. Thunder rumbled very far away. The air was silent; the trees were still. My house was standing safe, solid, strong, and the hearth inside was alive. My loves were safe, and my mind was relaxed.

Somewhere out in the world, people were quietly enjoying moments of peace; in other places, people were fighting, struggling, and dying. In some places, the sun was overhead, and in others, people were sleeping under the same stars their ancestors had slept under, for thousands of years. The world was turning, and I was standing, staring at the birds and trees in my sacred center, the place Wyrd wove for me.

That was the message.

Advice from the Seidman: Living the Heathen Way of Life

Our ancestors were brave people, and they were the holders of streams of natural wisdom and tradition that can help us today. Trust that their beliefs were inspired by truth and by the presence of their Gods and their own ancestors. To trust your ancestors in this way, and accept the truths they knew, is to place yourself in the line of tradition, of spiritual heritage, and to accept your place in things.

Never consider this world to be flawed, failed, or unnatural. The entire world, with its wilds and developed lands, its heat and cold, its designs and seeming accidents, its triumphs and defeats, is natural and appropriate. Your sorrows and joys are likewise. That may be hard to accept, but life requires heroic effort, and this fact, known through the ages, will never change.

The world did not come from the hands or mind of a creator, but from the unfolding of a great natural process which still governs the shape of things today.

From within that natural and sacred process, which has no beginning or end, arose the Gods that our ancestors knew. From the further creativity of those Gods arose trees, animals, human beings, and the creativity and arts of culture that human beings came to learn and express. To be a human in this world-order, creating things needful to survive, and helping to uphold the peace and stability of human communities, is a sacred way of life that all men and women are called to.

The Gods desire that humans be like them- creative, wise, and protective. From the start, the Gods bestowed beauty, vitality, and their own undying spirit on mortals. The Gods are not alien beings, nor hostile, but elder kin to mankind, sprung from the same natural reality that we all share.

The world-process goes through many stages. The conditions by which the Gods and other powers could arise came about; the actions of the Gods moved along with the unfolding of things, to an age where their role in defining the shape of the world was central. In that age, they played a role in the shaping of man, as well as other life.

Eventually, the conditions will come about whereby the world and life-order that emerged will collapse. The cauldron of time must fill and overflow from time to time, bring a cataclysmic end to every era. All will remain quiescent after that, pregnant with sleeping potentials, until a new beginning cycles around and the worlds are reborn. Thus it always has been, and thus it always will be.

Through these many ages and eras that have sprung up, and which will spring up endlessly, the principle of mankind has always existed and will always exist. This principle is expressed in the lives of every man, woman, and child who is alive, or who has ever lived. We dwell now in this world, as we have dwelled unremembered in many others. We will rise again into the new, renewed world, to know the Gods again, after this world has fallen apart. A few people in every age will learn the deepest wisdom that allows them to remember all that has been, or ever will be.

That this great cycle should repeat endlessly is the activity of Fate, the greatest power of all. All are bound by Fate; there are no exceptions. For you, as a human being striving to do good and gain wisdom, what you must remember is this: life is much larger than you are- we are all in the hands of greater powers. We did not choose to arise as humans; it is Fate that we should have. We do not choose to live and die; it is Fate that weaves these things for us.

Unburden yourself of things that are not in your power. Concentrate instead on what seemingly has been given to you: the power to be a good man or woman, to love your family and friends and make sacrifices for them, and to consciously know and worship the Gods who will protect and guide you through good times and bad. They, and the other powers close to you but unseen, will also guide you through life and death.

Even the Gods cannot change Fate; She weaves as she will, forever. Do not think that you must discover the hidden reasons for all things; some things not even the wisest can discover. Where life came from ultimately is less important than the need to live life well and happily. Who or what the Gods ultimately may be is less important than how they have shared themselves with our ancestors and with us, and how we share ourselves with them every day.

Be at peace with things as they are, and even though the world may be doomed, sliding into its final era under the weight of war, betrayal, greed and hate, it is your privilege to be a good person in the face of these destructive forces. In this enormous effort that you must make, the Gods support you- for your struggle mirrors their struggle to uphold the world-order against the deeper destructive forces that strain against it.

Even though it is Fate that many should suffer injustice and pain, you will find yourself feeling a need to spare them that Fate, or protect them- and so you should, for Fate has also woven that feeling in you. You would not be the person you are without those feelings, and you cannot be a complete person unless you act on them. In this paradox is found the struggle and perfection of each human being.

In common with the many injustices and dangers of the world, each of us will be woven as Fate weaves, and we will feel the need to struggle against injustice and danger. In this seeming contradiction, this Nornic double-bind- itself the perfectly natural way of things- heroes are made.

Do not struggle against this idea, even if it seems absurd to you. As the ancients knew, it is the only sane way of approaching a world that defies belief and which regularly upsets all reason. The heroic person is chiefly concerned with his or her own deeds in the face of danger and absurdity. Where problems come from is less important than how we deal with them.

Your kin will die, your friends, and everyone and everything you know will die, but one thing never dies- the glory on the great dead, and the reputation of the hero or the villain. Bear in mind what you do, and strive to be remembered well. Do not compromise your own deepest morals and truths regardless of pressures from those who are cynical, who are faithless, and those who lack imagination. Give up whatever you must for those you love, so long as they are made well and kept well by the sacrifice.

Be hospitable, do not strive to be over-clever, and be flexible in your everyday life. Only dead trees do not bend when the wind strains against them. Protect life, and be satisfied with having enough- do not be obsessed with having too much. Never trust or befriend people who have proven themselves to be wicked and selfish; they can never be friends to you or any other.

See everything around you as though Fate had woven it, for indeed, She has- and be at peace with what you see. When those woven things terrify you or disturb your mind, recognize those emotions and accept them also as what had to arise in you; see them as Fate's message. Then act on that message with a heart guided by the need to protect others and maintain justice and harmony. Be moderate in how you act, and never abandon yourself to the extremes of cruelty.

If you act this way, you cannot go astray, and the judgment of the Gods will be for you. Nothing you will face in your life has been woven beyond your ability to deal with it fairly and with justice, or to endure it with peace and dignity.

Life, even with its downfalls and dangers, is a great gift, and thankfulness and joy for it is the proper human reaction. There is no greater joy than the joy of belonging together, the peace of one another, and there is nothing more beloved than children.

There is no danger in joy, no shame in celebration, and no need to doubt that all things will ultimately turn out well, even as the world suffers under the burden of its pains and the approach of its inescapable destiny. To endure challenges with bravery, and to keep healthy and honest your bonds with family and friends, are your first and most important duties.

If you succeed at those duties, you will be a successful human being for whom no praises or honors are too much. If you have failed at these things, accept your failures, and in the moment of awareness that follows that acceptance, vow to be better, and live better.

When the Norns Have Spoken

I spent a good bit of time in my last article voicing my vociferous disagreement with the modern "Heathens" who still try to believe in the modern notion of "free will". I submitted, as I have always submitted, that the genuine belief in Fate does not require (or leave room for) a belief in the Christian-born notion of "free will", and that any acceptance of the idea of free will not only fundamentally destroys the power of Fate and Destiny as our ancestors understood it, but removes the very matrix of tension and heroism that defines the old Heathen worldview.

Naturally, (for goeth ever Wyrd as she will) the hordes of the modern day have produced both "scholars" and "Heathens" who have done all the needed mental gymnastics and apologetics required to white-wash the concept of Fate and Destiny out of modern Heathenry, almost completely. They've left Wyrd or the Nornic power of Destiny completely toothless, no threat to them or the things they want to believe.

They've made the Norns into little old biddies who sit back and wait for them to "decide" things, and then weave in accordance to whatever "free choice" they think they have as humans. One might as well remove the Norns from the mix entirely! Instead of according them the power our ancestors did, these moderns have imagined that everything from the shape of their lives to their deaths are in their own hands.

Well, that's a fine enough delusion (as delusions go), and I'm sure the false sense of security that people derive from this belief is a comfort blanket second to no other. But it's not reflective of the way the Heathens of old thought, and its not reflective of reality. That such a sad state of spiritual degeneracy should exist today is to be expected- the Eddas tell us that this final age of the world will be marked by many sorts of degeneracy, from the breakdown of the bonds between families and kin, to the rising of chaos in other aspects of life. Spiritual degeneracy and loss of wisdom is another mark of the "Wolf Age" in which we are living.

But in this era of Fateful darkness, some people still stand for the light of truth. That's how it must be. While most people will be overpowered by the forces of physical, mental, and spiritual decay, a few people- a few blessed people- will enjoy the companionship of the Gods until the very end. Their protecting spirits will ensure that they do not fall victim to the real death, which is the death of the truth. Should you be spared in this manner, the only perfect human response is thankfulness.

In my last article, I took a shot at the "scholars" that modern "Heathens" search out to find the needed word-jungles and the apologetics that they need to justify their desire to be free of fundamental powers such as Fate or Destiny. So empowered by the words of these non-Heathen scholars, they reduce destiny to some thing that they have "chosen", or to some power that "influences them partially", leaving room for them to have the final say.

They rip open the books of this scholar or that scholar, looking desperately for whatever they can find to justify believing whatever they've chosen to believe about the ancient Heathens, rather than simply going to the lion's mouth. As anyone who has suffered through the world of "Recon" Paganism already knows, when it comes to the mainstream, what Truths you know in your heart (and to a lesser extent, what the actual sources say) doesn't matter- only what "PhD" you can quote matters.

And that is why Heathenry suffers as much as it does today- the orthodoxy-builders, ego-maniacal, power-hungry, and arrogant as they are, try to silence anyone who disagrees with them with charges of "UPG", and try to talk circles around the heads of the low-witted by quoting endless "scholarly" arguments, which amount to nothing when you penetrate to their cores. The attitude of "I didn't understand that... It must be true" is replaced in many "mainstream" modern Heathen circles with "Someone really important and smart-sounding said that... It must be true."

When you study these great holy cow scholars, you discover that with all but one or two exceptions, they aren't Heathens, and they aren't writing to uncover the truth about the past. Most of them write to apply nonsensical modern understandings about life to the past, to accomodate the past to the present, thus rendering our Heathen ancesors' beliefs "acceptable". Their writings are dominated by their modernistic thinking, and they never once try to put themselves in the minds and bodies of those who lived long ago.

With very few exceptions, they've never raised a horn or done a Blot to the Gods, so they can't even connect with the past in that crucial way. All they know is their scholarly skepticism or atheism, or their Christianity. And those things give them no basis to tell us what the "ancients" did or believed.

The wisdom of the Heathen eras was destroyed all but utterly by Christianity. The worldview that replaced the Heathen complex of worldviews did not resemble the older worldview very much. The leap from "Fate" to "Divine Providence" was one of the main features of the transformation, and the destruction of the uniquely Indo-European concept of "Heroic Struggle in the face of Inexorable Fate" was the final nail in the coffin of the old ways, for without this key feature of the worldview, there is no possibility of a true Indo-European hero emerging, no possibility of proper behavior before the Gods nor proper reactions to the challenges of life. There would be a lack of the metaphysical tension that drives each person forward with fearless nobility, despite life's many dangers and its final tragic end.

There are no Christian heroes; heroes don't put their faces in the earth and submit, grovelling before some "God". They don't walk around eaten up with the guilt or shame of their "sins" and actions; they don't humble themselves, because they are proud and strong people, who like all human beings, are innately worthy of the Gods. They don't live in the past, stumbling over their past mistakes or choices; they live NOW and they accept full responsibility for their actions, regardless of the fact that those same actions were part of their destiny.

That's the catch, the bind of Fate, the unfairness that simply doesn't stand in the way of these men and women being proud and defiant. It also doesn't stand in the way of us struggling for a better life, and cursing those who succumb to weakness and wickedness. Some weak-livered people say "that doesn't make sense!" to which I can honestly say "what life have you been living? Life doesn't make sense. Anyone who says it does, or has a few easy answers for you, is most certainly selling something."

Without heroic resignation and struggle against the tension of destiny, the power of inexorable Fate, you cannot be a Heathen in the most authentic sense of the word. You simply can't place yourself in the mindset of these eccentric, (from the modern perspective, and the perspective of many of their ancient neighbors) heroic, and daring people. You'll sit around living life based on YOUR grand decisions and "free will", worshipping your own self-idea, when the ancients didn't have that kind of modernistic self-idea.

Instead of accepting what comes your way as Wyrd, as your destiny, you'll waste countless months and years trying to think and "decide" your way out of it. Why bother? The attitude of "into the battle singing" is what we need, and what the Allfather needs, so that he can identify those who will be brave enough to stand with his chosen at the end of days.

Sometimes, a scholar says something worth listening to. A gentleman philosopher named Anthony Winterbourne has written a book called:

When the Norns Have Spoken: Time and Fate in Germanic Paganism. (Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2004. Pp. 187.)

You can get it from Amazon.com. A friend of mine from "teh internets" told me about it today. Read this wonderful description of the book, and notice what this writer says about Fate, and recall what I said in my last article about the Indo-European stance of accepting Fate, while simultaneously struggling with it:


In When the Norns Have Spoken: Time and Fate in Germanic Paganism, philosopher Anthony Winterbourne explores the implications of an aspect of Eddic and saga literature familiar to many: the distinctive attitude toward fate that characterizes so many heroes and villains of Old Norse literature. Winterbourne proceeds from the observation that Germanic heroes and narratives of pre-Christian Scandinavia, England, and the continent show a "consciousness of an all-embracing fate [that] somehow leaves room for pride, dignity, and defiance, rather than an encouragement to supine submissiveness; a pride demanding that one not be oppressed even by the knowledge of what fate must already have decided—hubris, in fact" (p. 88).

In exploring the nature of this concept of fate and the room it paradoxically permits for heroic choice and action, Winterbourne aims at shedding light on an aspect of worldview that can seem strikingly different from that of modern Westerners: "it was the belief in the power of fate that generated just that dignity that we seem (today) to feel is available to us only through a fundamental and contrary belief in the freedom of will" (p. 109). Winterbourne brings philosophical discussions on the nature of fatalism to bear on the pre-Christian and early Christian Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon cases and seeks to uncover the philosophical systematizing that underlay the fate-embracing worldview. Crucial to this logic is the notion of fate and time as separate unrelated entities: something which, Winterbourne argues, characterized pre-Christian Germanic understandings but which was replaced in Christianization with a fused fate-time concept.


While I don't think that the attitude he's talking about equates with "Hubris", I have to agree with everything else I've read here so far. Sounds like I'm going to have to pick it up! The Heathen world needs a foil to the other "scholars" who have spent so much time degrading the true understanding of Fate. Hail the Aesir!

Fate, Free Will, and the Essential Religiosity of the Indo-European Peoples

"As a complete man with his honor unsullied, the honest Indo-European stands upright before his God or Gods. No religiosity which takes something away from man, to make him appear smaller before a deity who has become all-powerful and oppressive, is Indo-European. No religiosity which declares the world and man to be valueless, low and unclean, and which wishes to redeem man to over-earthly or superhuman sacred values, is truly Indo-European. Where "this world" is dropped, and in its place the "other world" is raised to eternal good, there the realm of Indo-European religiosity is abandoned."

-Hans Gunther

"The eternal Gods give everything utterly to their favorites: all joys, and all sorrows for all eternity- utterly and completely."

-Goethe

"If there's anything more powerful than Fate,
Then it's courage, which bears Fate unshaken."

-Geibel

* * *

Every writer or researcher worth the name who has studied the ancient Indo-Europeans has noticed something about the Teutonic branch of the family. They have noticed and remarked that the Teutons were unusually grim and fatalistic in their outlook on life. Even a short reading of the Eddas, Sagas, and other lore shows the deep belief that these noble people had in the idea of "inexorable fate". It is a cause of great regret and sadness to me that many modern Heathen writers, who should be carrying forth their Ancestors' belief in Fate, have either ignored it, or tried to water it down with cheap and false Christian models and notions of "free will".

There is no basis for assuming that our Northern Ancestors believed in "Free Will" in the sense that it is usually known in the modern Christian west. As I will show, (aided considerably by Hans Gunther) not only does "free will" simply have no place in the worldview that is ruled by Orlog and Wyrd, but our Ancestors' essential religiosity cannot be understood or reclaimed so long as a person tries to force the foreign model of "free will" to fit into it.

For so long I have seen nominally "Heathen" writers and even self-proclaimed "leaders" of communities of Heathens doing mental gymnastics to force some idea of absolute "free will" to appear from authentic Heathen lore.

I have seen them claim that the mentions of the "dew" that falls from the branches and trunk of the World Tree and the water that flows in and out of the Spring or Well of Urd somehow represent the results from "deeds" that humans choose, which go on to influence other events, (the clear implication being that humans therefore have full, free choice in influencing the motion of events) even though this is nowhere stated in the lore itself. These ideas are modern interpolations, based on a need to find some sense of "free will" in the lore.

These modern ideas about what the "dew" and the "waters" all represent are, to use a phrase, manifestations of "unsubstantiated personal gnosis", the dreaded "UPG" that so many of these same people love to excoriate others over. Never is "free choice" or "will" mentioned- just dew, flowing water, white mud on the roots of the tree, and Norns who are given power in multiple sources of authentic Heathen lore over human lives, both their beginning and their end, and over other events besides.

A person can "read into" these things whatever meaning they desire- but how many people question precisely why they read what they read into them? And how many people simply ignore the great and well-attested belief in fate and destiny that appears in so many of our Ancestral sources of lore, when they decide what to read into these things? The answer to the first question is "not many". The answer to the second is "quite a few".

For a very long time I have seen writers bending over backwards to ignore what is written in the Eddas, regarding the Norns. Here's just one passage of many, their first mention in Voluspa:

Thence come the maidens, Mighty in wisdom,
Three from the place, Under the tree,
Wyrd is called one, Another Werðende
Scored they on wood, Scyld is the third;
There Laws they laid, There life chose,
To men's sons, And spoke Orlog. (Völuspa 20-25)

Here's an alternate translation:

Thence come the maidens, Mighty in wisdom,
Three from the dwelling, Down 'neath the tree;
Urth is one named, Verthandi the next,
On the wood they scored- And Skuld the third.
Laws they made there, And life alloted
To the sons of men, and set their fates.

Even though (assuming you understand what Orlog is) this passage is quite clear, some modern "heathens" have sided with non-Heathen writers like Bauschatz, and decided that "orlog" here can't literally mean what it says. Likewise, Bauschatz has dramatically decided that the term "to choose life" is "too vague to make any decision on as to its context".

Sure! To justify the modern assumption that our ancestors simply had to believe in free will, some scholar (who was no doubt raised a Christian, and in whom the Christian worldview exerts a massive influence) has managed to lead other modern "heathens" into a race of wishful thinking and "re-interpretation" of the lore. This is called "accomodation", and is a well-known historical practice, undertaken by commentators, when the truths about the past are simply too hard for the soft stomachs of modern people.


Before I turn to Hans Gunther's insights and scholarship, (and please read the important note on Hans Gunther at end of this article) I would like to begin with a more accessible favorite of mine. Brian Bates, in his incredible work "The Way of Wyrd", gives us a fictional meeting of minds between a Christian scribe named Wat Brand and a Heathen Seid-man and Sorcerer named Wulf. One of the topics they discuss is Free Will. The relevant passages, narrated by the skeptical Wat Brand, follow:

"Wulf reached over and fingered the sleeve of my tunic. "The weave of this cloth reveals to us the pattern of Wyrd," he said. "Your individual destiny is laid out on a loom. All the incidents in your life, all the dreams, thoughts, fears, are a pattern woven on to the loom. The duration of your life is measured by the vertical thread, held taught by the weights of life-force. The horizontal threads of the loom are the forces to be encountered during the course of your life, rather than days and nights. The patterns woven on to this loom is the pattern of your life, and the pattern is woven by the Three Sisters of Wyrd."

I breathed a deep sigh of relief for I knew that Wulf had not attempted to delude me and that his healing exploits were genuine. His error was simply in believing that disparate events were joined in some way other than being part of God's kingdom. Only by the hand of the Lord could events be connected without regard to time or location. And in the Three Sisters of Wyrd I knew now the faulty basis for his bizarre beliefs; in Mercia I had heard that warriors told tales of female spirits, three wild women who were dealers in death, choosing in battle those who would die and those who would live. But in the truth the teachings of Christ the Savior would not allow us to believe such superstition, for it rested on the blasphemous belief that our lives were under the control of such spirits. My memory fed me Brother Eappa's words: "When the Creator made mankind, he gave free will to the first people." Confidently, I retaliated.

"Wulf, I cannot allow myself to believe that life is controlled by such forces, for our God teaches that individuals are born of free will. Even when people transgress God's command and obey the devil, they become guilty through their own free will."

Wulf looked at me, his brow furrowed in obvious puzzlement. "The devil? Is this a spirit?"

I felt a spasm of unease. "He is not to be dwelt on, Wulf. Know only that he is anathema to our God."

"But how are people influenced by this "devil", if he is not a spirit with powers?"

"By free will. People go against the laws of God by free will and are therefore drawn by the accursed devil."

Wulf did not seem able to grasp my argument. The blessed truth of God's gift of free will was beyond him. He lay back on the bed and gazed into the roof-thatch. Eventually he rolled over to face me again.

"There is no need for your free will. Although the Wyrd Sisters spin the web of Wyrd and weave the loom of life, they do not thereby determine it, for they are agents of Wyrd and are therefore just as much a part of the pattern as we. The Wyrd Sisters simply express the will of Wyrd. And so do we. We cannot control our lives, because we too are inseparable aspects of Wyrd and express its will. But this is not the same thing as saying that our life is determined. Rather, it is saying we live like an ocean voyager, trimming our sails to the winds and tides of Wyrd as we skim across the waters of life. And cresting the waves of Wyrd is something that happens at every instant. The pattern of life is not woven ahead of time, like cloth to be worn later as a tunic. Rather, life is woven at the very instant you live it."

I stared at the weave of my tunic. Wulf seemed to be talking in riddles, but I was intrigued by his convictions.

"Wulf, how does a person who shares your views live in accord with Wyrd? If there is no free will, how can someone change his life for the better?"

"Patterns change as they are woven. A pattern that is complex has more scope for change, for there are many themes on which a new pattern may be based. But even the simplest of lives changes over the course of time. The task of a sorcerer is to become fully aware and sensitive to all nuances of his life-design as it unfolds. Aware, as the weaver, of all the forces that impinge upon the pattern- all colours, shapes, textures. With a weaver like Wyrd, there are no limits to the possible designs and we can never fully appreciate all of our own design. But we can try."


Bates, speaking through the incomparable wisdom of Wulf, expresses the point perfectly. People who believe in free will immediately leap to the question- "Then how can we change our lives for the better?" The answer is simple, right before their eyes, though they are typically too selfish or dull to receive it: Life changes. Every life changes. Wyrd is change. Wyrd is always changing; everything is in motion. You don't change your life; your life is you changing. You don't unfold your life-design; your life design unfolds on its own. Your task is awareness.

That's not enough for most people. They want to be the weavers of Wyrd themselves. But they aren't, and they never will be. What they WILL be are people who convince themselves that they have a lot of power that they don't have.

But here is where the argument gets really good- it is Wyrd, it is Fate that these people should feel as they do. The people who refuse to believe in Wyrd or Fate are Wyrded to not believe in it, and to struggle against it.

And that is the subject of the second part of my post here: How our ancestors believed in Fate, yet fought hard and struggled every day of their lives to make a better life for themselves.


Hans Gunther, in his well-researched work "Religious Attitudes of the Indo-Europeans", makes the single statement that sums up so much about the Indo-European peoples:

"The great element of tragedy in the poetry of the Indo-European peoples stems from the tension resulting from his sense of destiny."

"Tension resulting from his sense of destiny" is the key. Fate is the power that dominates the lives of both mortals and the Gods, in genuine Indo-European Pagan and heathen philosophical thinking. Despite the fact of merciless Fate, each person is driven to struggle, even at times against Fate and the Gods. There is a great tension here, and a sense of doom, as the world and the Gods are driven by inexorable Fate to an end- Ragnarok among the Teutons is just one example. The idea of a people who believe in Fate and ultimately accept it, and yet, who are fated to struggle with the inexorable nature of Fate, is a most powerful idea, and more than any other idea I've encountered, it goes a long way towards helping us answer the "hard questions" about life.

Because what no one wants to admit, and yet, what our Indo-European ancestors readily admitted and accepted, is that life is a fated double-bind. We have limits set by Fate that cannot be exceeded, yet, we are fated to desire to exceed them. We are fated to struggle, and even to define ourselves by struggle, fated to lose or to win, to live and to die, and the whole time there is a sense of tension, of doom, of energy that makes us feel that life is so infinite and full of possibility. Life, the Web of Wyrd, is infinite and full of possibility- but we are not the weavers of the Web of Wyrd.

We enjoy the same sense of the infinite and the awesome that all living beings enjoy, by virtue of our participation in Wyrd. But no matter how much we want to avoid it or go into denial over it, we- as human beings- are not capable of being the masters of Wyrd or of our "destinies". We are capable of becoming aware of our true place in the very large scheme of things, and finding peace and acceptance, and with it, true wisdom. We are capable of penetrating into the very roots of existence itself, like the Allfather did, and finding a special power within those mysterious insights, but when we find ourselves doing this, tapping these powers, we are fulfilling Wyrd, acting as agents of the weaving of a Wyrd which is not born "only of ourselves", but in the great and ancient layers of Ur-law and the constant dynamism of reality itself.

We are not writing Wyrd, or weaving it; in those blessed moments of insight, We are consciously experiencing what we naturally are- intrinsic and sacred parts of the Weaving. Any sense of "personal flaw" or "personal weakness" falls away in light of this great moment of truth and clarity, as does any sense that the events of our lives are "meaningless".

The tension-filled emotional/mental/spiritual reality of "being bound by Fate, yet struggling against Fate" is the supreme defining factor of authentic Indo-European spirituality. How we express our courage- and even at times our acceptance- in the face of that tension reveals to the world just what sort of people we are.

To accept a religion or philosophy that relieves a man of this tension is the supreme act of cowardice, and when that tension is lost, the true and noble essence of Indo-European Pagan religion is no longer available to that person.

I shall turn to Gunther now, and give some of his more penetrating insights, before I make some comments on the devastating consquences of the Eastern/Semitic thinking that came to permeate Europe and the rest of the world through Christianity and Islam, and the impact of its destruction of the more natural and realistic wisdom of the Indo-European peoples.

What becomes of a world where the acceptance of Fate and Destiny becomes corrupted by a belief in "free will", a belief which always arises when the belief in infinite world-cycles of repeating time becomes replaced by the false and shallow belief in "linear time"? A dangerous attitude arises and begins to destroy the fabric of life itself: the Greeks called it "hubris". Under the influence of hubris, humans begin to over-reach themselves in tragic ways, thinking that they are equal to the Gods.

Gunther writes:

"The fear of human hubris, of self overreaching, comes from the depths of the Hellenistic soul, and in the face of all hubris the limited man is admonished to keep his ordained position in the timeless ordering of the world, into which the Gods also had to fit themselves. It is the Indo-European's destiny to stand proudly, and with an aristocratic confidence and resolution, but always aware of his own limitations, face to face with the boundlessness of the Gods- and no human species has felt this sense of destiny more deeply than the Indo-Europeans; the great element of tragedy in the poetry of the Indo-European peoples stems from the tension resulting from this sense of destiny."


How the Indo-European peoples could fall victim to foreign philosophies and religions that underminded their own fundamental way of seeing the world is a question many have asked. One such man, quite a foolish man and an apologist for Christianity named W. Baetke, assumed that the anxiety arising from the Fatalism of the Indo-European way of thinking made the Indo-European peoples "ripe for redemption" or for the acceptance of the Christian worldview. To this, Gunther responds:

"It is completely impossible to conclude as W. Baetke has done, that tragic destiny signified for the Indo-Europeans a ban or spell and brought about an anxiety of destiny, which made them ripe for redemption. Not the God of Destiny, he claims, but the redeemer God brought the Teutons to the fulfillment of their religious longings. The conversion of the Teutons to Christianity can only be explained by assuming that amongst them many men of softer heart could not withstand the gaze from the eyes of a merciless destiny and- against all reality- took their refuge in the dream image of a merciful God. Indo-European men of stronger heart have always been, like Fredrick the Great, born Stoics, who standing upright like the devout Vergil, have recognized a merciless Fate."


Gunther makes it clear that despite the acceptance of Fate, the Indo-European peoples were never "fatalistic" in the usual sense of the word, for they never simply submitted to whatever unsatisfactory realities their lives might bring them. They struggled, the most noble among them being born warriors. They accepted Fate while at times struggling with it, and in so doing were driven to great glory.

Without a doubt, however, Gunther's greatest summation of the essential religiosity of the Indo-Europeans (especially the Northern peoples) comes in this excellent passage:

"H.R. Ellis Davidson has strikingly described the religiosity of the Scandanavians, whose Gods like men were subject to destiny: "Men knew that the Gods whom they served could not give them freedom from danger and calamity, and they did not demand that they should. We find in the myths no sense of bitterness at the harshness and unfairness of life, but rather a spirit of heroic resignation: humanity is born to trouble, but courage, adventure, and the wonders of life are matters for thankfulness, to be enjoyed while life is still granted to us. The great gifts of the Gods were readiness to face the world as it was, the luck that sustains men in tight places, and the opportunity to win that glory which can alone survive death."

Gunther goes on to say:

"This is the Indo-European view of destiny, the Indo-European joy in destiny, and for the Indo-Europeans life and belief would be feebly relaxed, if this spectacle were withdrawn in favor of a redeeming God... but I repeat, this Indo-European view of destiny has nothing to do with fatalism... According to his whole nature, the Indo-European cannot even wish to be redeemed from the tension of his destiny-bound life. The loosening of this tension would have signified for him a weakening of his religiosity. The very fact of being bound to destiny has from the beginning proved to be the source of his spiritual existence. "The heart's weave would not have foamed upwards so beautifully and become spirit, if the old silent rock, destiny, had not faced it."


Being true to yourself in the midst of what can be seen as a grim reality is a powerful statement, one that has been shared by all people in all times, but expressed never so purely as by the Indo-European heroes, like Achilles, Hector, the heroes of the Icelandic Sagas, and others.

Gunther writes:

"It has been said that the Teutonic conception of life was a Pan-tragedy, an attitude which conceives all existence and events of the world as borne along by an ultimately tragic primal ground. But this Pan-tragedy, which appears almost super-consciously with the true Teuton, Hebbel, is not solely Teutonic, and is found amongst all Indo-Europeans, permeating all Indo-European religiosity. The Indo-European becomes a mature man only through his life of tension before destiny. The Teutonic hero, superbly characterized by the Icelandic Sagas, loftily understands the fate meeting him as his destiny, remains upright in the midst of it, and is thus true to himself. Aeschylus commented similarly when he said "Wise men are they who honor Adrasteia", Adrasteia being a Hellenic Goddess of destiny."

Gunther goes on to say:

"Erik Therman has found a "mocking defiance in the face of destiny, a struggle against this destiny despite recognition of its supreme power" to be characteristic of the Edda and many of the Icelandic tales. Such a defiance also still speaks from the Medieval Nibelungenlied, which astonished Goethe by its non-Christian character, which characterized Teutonic imperturbability in the face of merciless destiny."


Finally, Gunther addresses the issue of how the true Indo-European person (that is, a person who has the strength and courage enough to understand and recognize inexorable Fate) can perfect themselves. He writes:

"It is not by dissolving the question of destiny in the idea of redemption that the Indo-European can perfect his nature- for such redemption would probably appear to him as an evasion; his nature is perfected solely through proving himself in the face of destiny. "This above all: to thine own self be true! The certainty of a destiny has not made the true Indo-European seek redemption, and even when his destiny caused him to tremble, he never turned to contrition of fearful awareness of "sin". Aeschylus, who was completely permeated by Hellenic religiosity and by the power of the divine, stands upright, like every Indo-European, before the immortal Gods, and despite every shattering experience, has no feeling of sin. Thus, Indo-European religiosity is not concerned with anxiety or self-damnation, or contrition, but with the man who would honor the divinity by standing up squarely amid the turmoil of destiny to pay him homage."


How powerful! How superior is this way of seeing and thinking to the typical and cowardly religious nonsense that today permeates the Western world! In these words of pure force and clarity, we can see how the West was truly lost- how the noble standards that were held up by our ancient Grandmothers and Grandfathers were stolen from us, to be replaced by eastern religious ideals in which humans were forced "below" and some false notion of "God" was raised above, a God before whom humans were expected to "repent" and grovel in the grip of their imaginary "sins".

The noble tension of destiny, which etched character into the souls of our ancestors, and which gave our heroes their noble character, was destroyed and tossed aside for the false relief offered by stupid and impossible ideas of "free will".

And to make matters worse, some people today actually believe that this change was a GOOD thing! One such man is Thomas Cahill, who wrote a book that I saw on the shelves of a bookstore this weekend, a book entitled: "The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels". I looked on the back of the book, and there the following was written:

"In The Gifts of the Jews, Thomas Cahill, author of the bestselling How the Irish Saved Civilization, reveals the critical change that made Western civilization possible. Within the matrix of ancient religions and philosophies, life was seen as part of an endless cycle of birth and death; time was like a wheel, spinning irrevocably until ancient Jews began to see time differently, as a narrative whose triumphant conclusion would come in the future. From this insight came a new concept of men and women as individuals with unique destinies, and our hopeful belief in progress and the sense that tommorrow can be better than today."


I nearly became sick in the bookstore. Here, in one short paragraph, was the very death of the Truth, and the destruction of my Ancestors' wisdom. And not only was it their deaths, but a celebration, by the fool Cahill, of the untruths that have become widely accepted and which have brought us so low in the modern day. Look closely again at what the back cover of this "best-selling" book is really saying:

It begins by completely writing off the truth that all Indo-European peoples knew: that time is not linear, but a great cycle, and that all of the worlds have existed before, will end, and exist again in a great world-regeneration.

To this very day, that Indo-European wisdom exists in the beliefs of living Hindus and Buddhists, who are (outside of the brave men and women who practice Asatru and other revivalist Indo-European Pagan faiths) among the last people to benefit from this powerful and truthful perspective on life.

It was a real tragedy- a departure from the truth due to the worst breed of wishful thinking- that led the ancient Hebrews to fantasize that "time" was a narrative, a linear story told and directed by their God, with a "triumphant" ending, an ending that culminated in the benefit of their people being restored to life after their deaths, and restored as God's "chosen" again, in a paradisal world.

It is wishful thinking; it bears no relationship to reality. Christians who inherited this foolishness are likewise lost in the most wretched depths of wishful thinking. When Christianity largely replaced the ancestral faiths of the Indo-Europeans, our Ancestors were doomed to leave their children to live in a world ruled by untruth.

But the back cover of this book goes further- it actually becomes insulting. It presumes, outright, that our ancestors who accepted the TRUTH of the cyclical nature of time did not believe that men and women were "individuals" nor people with "unique destinies". This is a savage falsehood. All of our ancestors accorded men and women individuality, and the idea that each person had a unique destiny is ancient among the Indo-Europeans. By extension, Cahill is saying that Buddhists and Hindus alive today who accept the cyclical nature of time and reality cannot give dignity and accord unique destiny to human beings, but we know this is false, as Buddhism accords real dignity and respect to men and women, and does so in a profoundly deep manner.

It is worth pointing out here that Cahill's book has been rightly and soundly criticized by people, for the simple fact that he blatantly ignores the many formative contributions of the Greeks, the Romans, and many other great people in the creation of the modern Western world, and chooses to focus completely and sycophantically on the Jews.

This is a typical attitude for Christians, and few attitudes are more disgusting from the perspective of ancestral spirituality. We are the sons and daughters of Indo-Europeans, and to vampirically suck off of the legacy of people who are not our Grandmothers and Grandfathers is the greatest dishonor we can do to our ancestors. Cahill is an example of a modern degenerate who is so far out of touch with his own ancestral roots that he lies dying on the ground, cut off from his true source, and blindly gropes in the corners of other people's spiritual history to find some meaning for his own life.

Jewish people alive today have their own organic spiritual and ancestral legacy, and they, through every era of their history, have been very honest and attentive to it. No one can accuse the Jews of selling themselves like whores to the beliefs and philosophies and religions of foreign people! They are known for sternly and conservatively perserving their own beliefs and cultural uniqueness in any place they have gone to live, despite the scorn they have received for this from many of their neighbors.

Thus, we can all learn a lot from the Jewish peoples with respect to our own search for ancestral faith and piety, but before we can actualize our own cultural uniqueness, we must stop trying to be other people, and stop co-opting the heritage of other peoples for our own. Europeans have done this to the Jewish people for too long.

If we respect them (the Jews) as a unique people, which they certainly are, we have to act respectful and stop forcibly inserting ourselves into their cultural hamingja and making plunder of it, to make up for our own lack of identity. It became so bad at one point, that European academics in earlier centuries did their best to "prove" that the "ten lost tribes of Israel" were the source and origin of the peoples of Europe. Some very ignorant people still believe this, though science has long ago shown that Europeans are from different stock than Semitic peoples.

We sons and daughters of the Indo-Europeans (whether we be their physical or spiritual descendants) have our own unique heritage and way of seeing the world, and we need it now, more than ever. Our lost souls can no longer remain deluded. I am not an unrealistic purist; all cultures will have influences on each other, in this small world of interaction that we live in. But if we look at modern Jewish people, we see a good example of a people who have, despite influences from outside cultures, managed to maintain their ancestors' unique way of seeing the world. The sons and daughters of the Indo-Europeans can do the same.


I support Muslims and Christians who wish to stubbornly remain who and what they are, entrenched in moronic worldviews that keep them asleep in delusion; I support modern Jews who wish to maintain a separate existence from their neighbors, and keep their religious beliefs alive and expressed in their unique cultural ways.

Never mind the fact that I think modern monotheistic beliefs are absurd; that beliefs like "there is only one God" or "there is only linear time, beginning at creation and ending at God's will, followed by a single judgment" and the concept of "redemption" are foolish ideas of the worst kind; never mind that I know for a fact that these things do not exist in any place except for the wishful thinking of people who simply cannot face the power of inexorable Fate. The undeniable fact is that people who believe these things are, in my estimation, Fated to believe as they do, possibly as a warning to the rest of us of the devastating consequences of fleeing from our duty as human beings to stand upright in the face of hardship, and to face the truth.

After all, what Fate have the sons and daughters of Israel received for their beliefs and their strange ways of looking at the world? Certainly not peace and prosperity; they are a tiny people, a diaspora people, a long-persecuted people, still telling themselves over and over again that their God will "make it all better" one day, while the actual Gods have little chance to help them on account of the fact that their ancestors broke their bonds of friendship with the Gods ages ago. Even their own scriptures give us an account of Hebraic women lamenting the loss of their traditional Goddesses and Gods, and the pain, hunger, and violence that swept over their society when they were forced to abandon Pagan truths.

What have Christians and Muslims done for the world? What has their acceptance of their own fairy tales done for them and for the rest of us? It certainly hasn't brought them- or the world- any peace. Instead, they have bathed the world in oceans of blood. They created the world that we live in now on the plundered remains of the brilliant cultures of antiquity which they helped to destroy, and with them were destroyed the lion's share of the wisdom and scientific and philosophical advancements of antiquity.

Living as they do in their own spiritual denial, far distant from the truth, monotheists have been unconsciously and forcefully inspired to acts of madness and fear, acts of maniacal desperation to "convert" everyone else who maintained other religious worldviews. The new order cannot allow vestiges of the old to persist, especially not when the old order stares at them with accusing eyes, reminding their deeply guilty spirits that they have shirked the truth to embrace a lie.

I support any people who have a legitimate ancestral tradition to return to it and/or preserve it, and I support their right to live unharmed and unhindered. It's not truly my business what ethnic peoples from around the world wish to do with their ancestors' beliefs, regardless of how false I may think those beliefs are. It IS my business, however, to address the real loss of the unique and important ways of thinking that were once found among the Indo-European peoples, and to seek for those alive today who are strong enough to return to the unique Indo-European way of seeing the world. So long as I do not harm others nor suggest they be harmed, I have the same right they have: to disagree with their beliefs, or to call their beliefs false. And so I do.

They certainly do the same to me; but life and reason itself will show who is "correct" when our minds are examined: in whose mind do we find suffocating anxiety and guilt, which must be assuaged through farsical beliefs in scapegoating saviors or adherence to the dead set of some "law" that was supposedly actually written on tablets by some great God? Not mine. In whose mind do we find fairy-tale stories about "heavenly rewards for the righteous" and "free will" and "salvation" and "physical eternal life"? Not mine. In whose mind do we find pernicious religious teachings that suggest that newborn infants are born in sin, deserving of everlasting hellfire? Not mine.

In whose mind is there a hope for facing our difficult world that is based on a belief in a big "merciful God" who is protecting me, or on what reward I might get after I die? Not mine. In whose mind will you find sexual repression and tension, hatred for natural feelings and emotions, or dissatisfaction with this world? Not mine. In whose mind will you find outrageous religious beliefs justifying the repression of women, or the hatred of homosexuals? Not mine. If you're a Christian, you no doubt think that my mind is swimming in oceans of sin. If you're sane, on the other hand, your opinion of me will likely be quite different.


Cahill's ridiculous book claims it was only when we replaced the ancient and truthful Indo-European belief in the endless cycles of time with the Semitic belief in linear time, that we were able to accord men and women a sense of uniqueness, and to believe that "progress and a better tommorrow" was possible. Without this change, he says, "Western civilization" wasn't possible. This infuriating and untruthful statement is really believed by many foolish people today, whose actual spiritual and historical legacy has been stolen from them, and buried under layers of ignorance.

It was the Greeks who laid the foundations for democracy, for the idea of humanism, and the entire edifice of western art and science. They were in the Promethean heights of "civilization" long before many other peoples knew the meaning of the word.

It was the Teutons that believed in trials by jury, who accorded women the right to divorce husbands at will, and whose spirit of independance and freedom led to the foundation of a society totally governed by assemblies of free people. It was the Indo-European spirit that always treasured individuality, hated tyranny, limited the powers of kings, and which expected nothing from the world beyond a hard destiny which they knew they had to face with nobility.

They didn't expect some great reward for their noble actions towards other humans; the seat of their morality was in the noble individual, who treated others well because that was simply the sort of person they were. With few exceptions, we will never see a human being of this nobility ever again.

* * *

Note on the works of Hans F.K. Gunther: Hans Gunther was a professor at the University of Frieburg and a proponent of racial science under the National Socialist government of Germany in the last century. He was found, after the conclusion of the last World War and after a stringent trial and investigation, to be unconnected to the horrid atrocities of the former ruling party. The single work of Gunther's that was quoted in this article, "Religious Attitudes of the Indo-Europeans", is not a work of racist propaganda, but a legitimate historical review of religious attitudes among historical Indo-European peoples.

I have no connection with or sympathy for the Nazi party, either the historical Nazis or the modern "neo" Nazis. This particular work of Gunther's is a good work, in my opinion, for pointing out the important differences between Indo-European religious thinking and the religious thinking of other peoples with whom the Indo-Europeans came into contact. I have not read, nor do I endorse any of the other works by Gunther, especially his books regarding race and eugenics, which no doubt contain many outdated and unscientific ideas about "race". Gunther was, in final analysis, a product of his times. If close proximity to the ruling party of Germany during World War II is enough reason to ignore a man's writings, I suppose people should ignore the writings of the current Pope of the Catholic Church, Joseph Ratzinger, who was a member of the Hitlerjugend.

Why a Return to Indo-European Polytheism is Needed

Most of you have already heard these questions and these charges, but I need to state them again: What if the entire New Testament was a construct, a forgery, a fake? What if Jesus never existed, and was instead a composite figure cobbled together from the myths of many other Gods that long pre-existed Christianity? For the sake of argument, let's say that this was the case- what would be the right course of action? For me, the answer is simple:

We would have to pick up where we left off.

If Christianity's claims are shown to be unfounded and untrue, and its gospels were shown to be the products of forgers, liars, and men charged by a certain Roman Emperor or politicians to create an orthodoxy of religion for their empire, and if it continued to grow as a well-timed and placed falsehood, widening its power and political pull until evidence of its fraudulent foundations was either forgotten or covered up, we would have to conclude something very powerful.

We would have to conclude that the religions of the pre-Christian peoples were born from organic truth, that their Gods were more than likely quite real, and that the Pagan customs forcibly stopped under Christian political power were in fact traditional and proper ways of worshipping the real Gods and celebrating life.

Westerners everywhere would have to look back to what their Pagan ancestors were doing and believing if they wished to find their way back to the truth about the Gods.

Now, I don't imagine that even if direct evidence was shown that the New Testament was a forgery and Jesus never existed, that Christians everywhere would drop what they were doing and believing. The spell has gone on too long to be broken in that way. Christians need to believe the things they believe. They have to believe in an all-good God being in charge of the world, ultimately. They need to believe that there is a glorious heaven waiting for them. They need to believe these things, and if they lost them suddenly, quite a few of them would go mad.

I don't even want to guess at the impact of such a shift in spiritual paradigm, because it will never happen- even if shown conclusive evidence, 99% of Christians would ignore it, call it false without even looking into it, and go on believing just as they do now. That's the nature of their belief. Like the transition from the Pagan world to a Christian world, the change will have to come slowly, if it comes at all for the majority.

I have recently been shown an article which gives what I consider damning evidence for the falsehood of the establishment of Christianity, and all its claims of the divinity and resurrection of Jesus. I'd like to share the link, because it had quite an impact on me. What had the most impact on me was the discussion the author had about the Sinai Bible- why do most people not know about the Sinai Bible?

It contains the oldest version we have of the oldest Gospel- Mark- and that wouldn't be a problem, except that it's missing what modern Christians might think of as a few important little bits of doctrine. The author of the article names them:


It (the version of Mark in the Sinai Bible) starts with Jesus "at about the age of thirty" (Mark 1:9), and doesn't know of Mary, a virgin birth or mass murders of baby boys by Herod. Words describing Jesus Christ as "the son of God" do not appear in the opening narrative as they do in today's editions (Mark 1:1), and the modern-day family tree tracing a "messianic bloodline" back to King David is non-existent in all ancient Bibles, as are the now-called "messianic prophecies" (51 in total). The Sinai Bible carries a conflicting version of events surrounding the "raising of Lazarus", and reveals an extraordinary omission that later became the central doctrine of the Christian faith: the resurrection appearances of Jesus Christ and his ascension into Heaven. No supernatural appearance of a resurrected Jesus Christ is recorded in any ancient Gospels of Mark, but a description of over 500 words now appears in modern Bibles (Mark 16:9-20).

Despite a multitude of long-drawn-out self-justifications by Church apologists, there is no unanimity of Christian opinion regarding the non-existence of "resurrection" appearances in ancient Gospel accounts of the story. Not only are those narratives missing in the Sinai Bible, but they are absent in the Alexandrian Bible, the Vatican Bible, the Bezae Bible and an ancient Latin manuscript of Mark, code-named "K" by analysts. They are also lacking in the oldest Armenian version of the New Testament, in sixth-century manuscripts of the Ethiopic version and ninth-century Anglo-Saxon Bibles. However, some 12th-century Gospels have the now-known resurrection verses written within asterisks, marks used by scribes to indicate spurious passages in a literary document.


It is clear that Paul seems to know nothing about the "miraculous birth" (Virgin Birth) of Jesus; the article mentions this too. The case this author makes in a very short article for the artificial construction of the New Testament- and therefore all of Christianity- is a very good one. I would personally like to see Christian apologists explain to me, and the rest of the world, why all mentions of the resurrection, as well as many other claims to the divinity of Jesus, and miracle stories, are not in these earliest manuscripts of the Gospels. It is clear that they were added at a later date.

Here's the article:

The Forged Origins of The New Testament

As you read this article, understand something: I do not think that the sources used by the author have complete merit; my friend and polytheist colleague Erik Dutton has pointed out that the author uses "God's Book of Eskra" as one of his sources, which is certainly to my idea a spurious source. My focus on this article was not the article as a whole, but specifically the section on the Sinai Bible, which I find very interesting, and which actually has a foundation in reality.

What's written in this article may come as no news to many scholars of the Bible (and, it seems, to many Church scholars) but it would be news to the average Christian in the field who never gets around to reading Bible Scholarship that isn't first approved by their Church or their Pastor.

For me, it is another nail in the coffin in the claims of Christianity, and part and parcel of the true Resurrection- the resurrection of the Old Religions and the Old Gods. We NEED to return to the Older Way of believing, especially people in the western world and people of European ancestry.

In much the same way that Native Americans don't really re-capture their dignity and their direction as people without practicing their true and original animistic beliefs, I firmly believe that people of European descent don't re-capture their ancestral dignity, the truth about themselves, or any sense of true spiritual direction and purpose in life without worshipping the Gods of their Ancestors. I believe that a return to the Old Ways isn't just a good idea, but an imperative, without which we can't hope for a better future.

And it is possible to believe and worship as our Ancestors did- modern Pagan religious reconstructions, from Germanic to Celtic, Greek, Roman, and Slavic, have been given much attention, carefully reconstructed in the spirit of the original faiths. It's true that some people have abused the activity of reconstruction with their own political agendas, but the core of the Pagan faithful today are good people who are smart enough (generally) to see through it. The larger these Pagan religious communities become, the more quality and sincere spirit we will see. In my decade of involvement, I've already seen and experienced so much true religion.

Like it or not, the state of evidence is clear- a return to the Old Ways is the only sane and realistic option we have. No other way escapes the corruption, distortions, and political conspiracies of the past. No other way takes us back to where we belong- with one another, the Sncestors, the Gods, the land, and the sky.


When I think of the crimes committed by the arch-fiend Olaf Trygvasson, the King of Norway who murdered his own people, burned their farms, cut off their hands and blinded them, all because they refused to convert to Christianity, I remember why I do what I do- I remember the great wrongs, the monstrously and universally huge crimes committed against our Grandmothers and Grandfathers at the hands of politicians that had forged unholy alliances with Christianity. I praise the wisdom of those Pagans who resisted Christianity- they saw it for the falsehood it was.

There is no sanity without returning to the old Polytheistic ways of our ancestors. The Gods are real, and have waited for us, helped us, guided us, and even protected us in their anonymity, ever since their names were silenced on people's lips. They never left us; what came among us was a pernicious ignorance and falsehood which tainted our people, forcing us into the shadow world that we now live in. You all know that world- the world of endless spiritual paper-chases that end in nothing but spiritually dis-satisfied people, repressed people, crazy people, or worst of all, good people who lack the courage or inclination to question why they believe what they believe, and who have settled down to believe falsehoods- good people who will die expecting things to happen that are never going to happen.

There is the comfort of Truth to be found in realizing that our deaths lead us to exist as spiritual beings in the Underworld, or perhaps in another of the many worlds, and that "physical resurrection" is a nonsensical idea. It's contrary to Fate, contrary to natural reason and to the natural forces that create and destroy all things. There is comfort in coming to know the great Sky Father, Tiwaz, and the Earth Mother below us, mother of all life. There is power in knowing the Allfather, creator of all worlds, and the mighty Thunderer, and consciously knowing them and gaining their protection and favors.

There is comfort in knowing the spirits of your Ancestors are always with you, living in your flesh, blood, and even able to know you from across the divide of time and the other worlds. There is comfort in knowing that Destiny or Fate is the supreme decider of what must come to pass, not some "all-good God" who still somehow allows horrors off the scale to occur, even to his faithful, and whose so-called "love" includes an eternal roasting if you dared to question the church, have the wrong political and social views, or if you ended up just attending the wrong church.

There is comfort in knowing that there is a natural, organic, and right way to live that doesn't include the ridiculous alien moral codes that are found in the so-called "scriptures" which were lies the first day they were written. Our Indo-European Ancestors had deep and powerful moral and ethical codes, religious beliefs, and myths that were and are appropriate to them and their descendants- we do not need Middle-Eastern and Oriental religious beliefs, which are spiritual invaders to our old homelands, and which do not speak to our spirits truly. These spiritual invaders also deny the truth of the Many Gods and Goddesses, and thus, deny life itself- for there is no life or peace without the Truth. Native Indo-European religiosity is a long-standing, historically attested-to reality; it is distinct from Semitic or Oriental religiosity, and we must reclaim it, forsaking all alien creeds.

Someone actually tried to comment to this article asking me the question why Indo-European polytheism? They actually asked me why Semitic polytheism or Asian polytheism wasn't "good enough" for me. They tried to be a bit insulting, and tried to insinuate that I was some sort of racist, while they were at it. I expected ignorant people to try such a thing. Why Indo-European polytheism? Because I and my family and friends are the descendants of Indo-Europeans, and Indo-European polytheism is part of our heritage. We ARE those same Ancestors who lived then, alive today in these bodies. There is an ancestral connection here that most outsiders cannot understand, as clearly the person who asked me this question does not understand.

The question that was asked to me is as nonsensical as asking a Native American "Why Native American animistic beliefs?" I never said that IE Polytheism was ontologically better than others; but it is better for me and for people who are descendants of European people.

I don't think we can trust last names or skin color to prove who is a descendant of "Old Europe" in the modern day, so we have no choice but to allow all who would worship the Gods with honesty in their hearts, into our religious communities. But for those of us who do clearly come from European ancestors, I think nothing short of a re-embracing of the Old Ways is a requirement for true happiness.

If we would be truly free people, we have to consider the scenario in our heads, really consider it: there our ancestors were, believing as their people had believed since time immemorial, knowing the Gods and one another in Troth, in the bonds of ancient ritual and worship, and then, Christian missionaries came, peddling lies that were written so long ago that even the missionaries didn't realize that they were peddling nonsense. They converted kings with promises of political favor, and with absurd promises of physical immortality, and they used their influence to have laws passed BANNING the ancient and traditional faiths which were part and parcel of our spiritual identities. Murder enters into this- death was used as a penalty for those who refused conversion or who backslid into Pagan practices.

This was one of history's greatest outrages; the theft of our spiritual identities and our destines as the sons and daughters of Old Europe. This was the downfall of the West. We don't know who we are and never will until we re-embrace what our Ancestors believed and come to know their Gods once more.