It is not Tolerance We Want, but Liberty

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


* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everything you Know About British and Irish Ancestry

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

By Stephen Oppenheimer

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

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

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

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

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

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


Many myths about the Celts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Anglo-Saxon ethnic cleansing?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Who was here when the Romans came?

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

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

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

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

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


Note: How does genetic tracking work?

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

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

Orlog: The Procession of the Ages of the World

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

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

You can see it here:

The Orlog Essay

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

Night Road

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

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

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

Harvest of Life-Force: Crafting a Bindrune

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

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

-Sigrdrifumol 18-19
(Bellows Translation)


* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Egil's Saga, Chapter 75



The Runes and Cosmology

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

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

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

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

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

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

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






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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


Crafting a Bindrune

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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






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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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





And here is the "curvilinear modern" form:






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

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


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

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







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


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

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






And here is its curvilinear modern form:







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

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

http://runegild.org/

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

The Wyrd of Human Purpose

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

So on we go.

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

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

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



Heathenry's Most Precious Gift

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Primordial Morality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Wyrd, Reliance, Reverence, and Respect

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

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

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

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




The Norns by Frowe Minahild



Wyrd Lays Down Layers and Spins In Accordance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The simple and hard truth is that "truth" for humans must be expressed in symbols and language- communication between most people is a very haphazard thing, especially considering the depths to which "communication" truly runs. At times, linear models can communicate something of essence, but more often than not, they are harmful to our deeper causes of wisdom. I can discuss the arising and falling away of the Nine Worlds in terms of a linear storyline, but this is not a "whole" truth regarding these things. If a person can remember that a story is just a story, a communication that is attempting to pass along some lesser or greater insight, then they can engage stories without being too trapped by them.

That the world-order certainly exists (or should I say, that it appears to our experience, as conditions arise) is without a doubt. But conditions perceptually come and go, change and spin out. It is a convenience for us to link these arisen conditions together with stories that give them a sense of coherence and meaning, but again, this convenience should never become a stumbling block, and need not become so to the wise.


I would like to turn now to what modern Wyrd-knowers have said about Wyrd. These perspectives are born in an ancient perspective which has (understandably) unfolded into the modern day in new ways, but in ways that still maintain the basic logic of interactionism. These people speak, in their own ways, for the most important wisdom of our shared past- the wisdom born from seeing the world as an inter-connected series of forces, a series from which we cannot meaningfully separate ourselves.


The Words of the Wyrd-Knowers

William Bainbridge, of the Troth organization, had many important things to say regarding Wyrd, which he describes as the "central mystery" of Heathenry. In his essay "The Ego and Heathenism", he writes:


"...Approaching this view of human life from a Heathen religious standpoint, I find it both very difficult and unrewarding to fit this complex understanding of the individual into some fixed theory, diagram, moral lesson or comprehensive program of self-improvement. Life simply is too complicated to be meaningfully explained by such things, and in any event, does not work precisely the same way for each of us, since the balance of significant causes is probably different for each of us.

What is the same for all of us is the process of working out old causes and adding new ones, and also the web of causation that ties us all together in many and profound ways, some of which we can understand and some of which remain mysteries approached only through myth and metaphor. Each of us was created by a multitude of causes, each will ultimately be destroyed and dissipated by a multitude of causes, and in the space in-between, each will be constantly transformed by a multitude of causes. While it is tempting to identify with one or a few of them, and cling to them as to a seemingly sturdy raft caught in turbulent waters, to do so is fundamentally inconsistent with the way things--the way we--really are. The raft, after all, will break up in the end, and the only resolution that promises any stability is for us to understand once and for all that we and the waters are, at bottom, not separate things.

Understanding ourselves in light of Wyrd, as patterns within the universal web of life and destiny, removes barriers that too often stand in the way of our arriving at the gratitude that impels us to give thanks. To get there, we must give up what we will inevitably lose anyway, and reach beyond ourselves to grasp what is, in fact, the true essence of ourselves.

it is not enough to give thanks for the innate rightness of life; one should go farther, and participate in that rightness, strive to carry it forward. How that further obligation seems to me to work itself out in religious practice and personal conduct, though, is not much expressed either in the lore or in modern Heathen thought, and although I believe I have arrived at my conclusions through following a relatively traditional understanding of Wyrd out to its logical consequences, I also believe I have gone out on this particular limb about as far as I intend to for now, at least in public.

Be that as it may, I would close with the suggestion that Wyrd, not gods or ethics, might actually be the central mystery of Heathen religion; but one does not drink from her well for free, and having drunk, cannot become again the person one was beforehand."


Mr. Bainbridge brings us to the doorstep of one of the most contentious and important topics in any worldview: the ego and the nature of "self". When we do as Mr. Bainbridge has done, and as the worldview of Wyrd requires us to do, and when we cease holding the perspective of "self" as a static, "independent" entity, and instead see "self" for what it is- a dynamic process, created and sustained by interaction, totally interacting with countless other powers in a neverending existence of communication and change, then amazing new vistas of wisdom open up to us. What we call "we" and the web of Wyrd which is the totality of the forces that give rise to the processes of our minds and bodies, cannot meaningfully be separated.

"We" are, in reality, parts of the web of life that can experience themselves as though they were separate from the whole, but, in final analysis, we are not ultimately separate. This is not to suggest (as so many others have done) that "we" ought to be struggling to lose "ourselves" into a sea of undifferentiated "Wyrd stuff"- such a proposition is absurd.

The truth is that even the sense of "self" as "thing apart" that we all experience is an important part of the outplay of forces, a fateful part of the way things are and ought to be- we are intended to understand our experience of self with wisdom, with Wyrd-wisdom, not destroy our experience in favor of a "singularity" or a "loss of self" into the "great totality". The fullest joy of living in this world is found in a wise appraisal or clear vision of our inseparable and timeless participation in the natural system of Wyrd.


Brian Bates, a foremost Wyrd-knowing sage in our modern day, writes (through the words of his Seidman Wulf) in his essential work "The Way of Wyrd":

"The patterns of Wyrd far exceed the tiny horizons of the ordinary person, for he is capable of seeing only short spans of time. Your eyes break up the course of life into tiny segments and label them as separate entities. The eyes of a sorcerer do not have this false focus. Life is comprised of waterfalls, rapids, eddies and whirlpools, but they are all part of the same watercourse. For me, life and death flow together as aspects of one river. For you, life is like a series of unconnected rain puddles and death comes when the sun dries them all up."


Understanding the deepest implications of Wyrd lead us beyond the myths of "life" and "death", as most people understand them today. The deep web of subtle forces that coalesced to give rise to mankind- to the minds and bodies of men and women- do not cease when a man or woman's body ceases to function. What we call "death" certainly includes (what seems to us to be) a change in how certain forces interact- but these interactions do not go "all the way down", as they say; "death" cannot thwart life for the simple reason that it is the totality of Wyrd's countless interacting forces that are the seat of mind and life. The true roots of life, like the roots of the World Tree itself, are so deep that not even the wisest know where they run.

Wyrd requires a new understanding of what "life" really is- and with it, the reality of that mystery we call "mind". Mind is not a field of awareness generated by a brain, which vanishes when the brain vanishes; mind relies on a complex web of forces to exist, and the coarse, obvious features of "mind" that we can observe empirically- like the coarse, obvious features of life that we can observe- are not the full story of "mind" or "life". In a very real sense, we cannot know the full story of anything- To know the fullness of forces and powers that give rise to anything like an idea or a dream, or the fullness of interactions and powers which give rise to an oak-leaf, a bird, a human, or a God, is simply not in our power.

We can say this with assurance: mind is immanent within the system of Wyrd. "Mind" as we experience it is the offspring of many forces and conditions, and always changing as its environment changes. Mind and its environment are not truly separate things- perception or experience of environment relies on mind as much as mind relies on environment. This "reciprocation" or recursive, constant arising of "mind" and "environment" leads us to the conclusion that so long as the system of Wyrd exists- and indeed, it will always exist because existence itself is nothing other than Wyrd/interaction, environment and experience will also exist.

And it is precisely this ongoing reality of experience that we find what we call "ourselves" within- though we have a very unwise habit of defining "ourselves" as "outside observers" to experience, without ever realizing that we are each inseparable parts of the neverending river of experience, which amounts to interactional immortality. It flies against our language-born logic to say it, but the "experiencer" of something is not a substance apart; if it were so, experience could not be had, by virtue of the "apartness".

There is the whole matrix of experience, which we divide, using linguistics, into a "person having" an experience, and the experience itself. Experience and experiencers are all the same watercourse, just like life and death, and thus, life and death cease to be a true concern to the wise. When one is freed from constant fear of death, the true business of living can begin- wisdom becomes the primary concern of life, the wisdom to live well and fully.


Eric Wodening, in his superb essay "The Web of Wyrd", writes:

"By far the most familiar icon for the process of wyrd is the configuration of the World Tree, Yggdrasill, and Wyrd's Well. There is good reason for this, as the iconography of the Well and the Tree fit the upward and outward action of the past as it shapes the present quite well. Yet the process of wyrd also suggests another activity, that of spinning and weaving. This comparison has had very little written about it, and even Bauschatz, in his nominal work The Well and the Tree, barely touches upon it. Still, the view of the Wyrd Sisters (ON Nornir) as spinners and weavers has much to offer heathens.

The name Wyrd itself derives ultimately from the Indo-European root *uert-, "to turn, to spin, to rotate." This in itself brings to mind the image of spinning thread and, in fact, MHG wirtel, spindle, distaff, and wheel come from the same root. The relationship between Wyrd and weaving, however, goes beyond simple etymologies. An Old English source links Wyrd directly with the activity of spinning. Wyrd, then, was viewed as the spinner of orlog. This view appears in Beowulf as well, where the end of Beowulf's life is spoken of as a thread being cut.

It is unknown whether the Germanic peoples borrowed the idea of the Wyrd Sisters as weavers from the Classical Parcae or if it evolved from the general background of the Indo-European cultural complex. There are valid arguments on both sides. The very fact that the elder heathen applied spinning and weaving as a metaphor for the process of wyrd should lend it some importance to modern heathen.

Some modern heathen believe that one of the aspects of wyrd is the interconnectivity of all things, but only one scholar, Brian Bates, has written anything on the subject. According to Bates every event is connected to all others much like the crosshatching of a spider's web. Anyone who has looked at a piece of cloth under a microscope knows it is not unlike a spider's web, so it should come as no surprise that Bates also makes comparisons to woven cloth.

In light of the loom model, Bates's comparisons appear very well grounded. Consider, each action is represented as a strand within one of the warp threads. The warp threads are interlaced with the woof threads (influences from the past?). Each action, then, is interconnected to all others through the influence exerted by the past.

That all events are interconnected has more implications that it would appear on the surface. For instance, if each man's life is represented by a thread, and every thread is connected to the others through the web of Wyrd, then each man's life is interconnected with the lives of all other men.

Not just human life would be interconnected through the web, but all other forms of life as well. In the past several decades a new science, ecology, has been developed to study the interrelationships between various forms of life. While it evolved independently of heathendom, many of ecology's conclusions are remarkably close to the concept of Wyrd's web. All life is regarded as being interdependent upon each other, in one vast, biological network, and the slightest change in that network can upset its over all balance. In terms of Wyrd's web, such activities as cutting down the South American rain forests qualify as a "bad weave" which can weaken the over all strength of the web."


If only Mr. Wodening had encountered the science of Systems theory, before he wrote this fine essay of his! He would have probably written an entire book by now on the parallels between Wyrd and the modern science of Systems theory. Still, his comparison with Ecology is quite apt- and it follows on the heels of what I have been writing thus far in this essay. We are, (whether we would be or not) parts of an ecological vision of reality, parts of a system, interacting and inter-effective parts. It is a web, a weave, and it is sacred. It does bring us into communion (and communication!) with all other beings who live.


The Wyrd of Community Systems

A few words should be said about Wyrd and its implications for the psychic and physical center of human life: the community or the communal living situation that we all must come to terms with, whether it be expressed in terms of a family, a tribe, a clan, a city, or a nation. A while back, I wrote the following passage in an essay:


"Community" did not begin as a band of scared primitive individuals that grouped together in ancient times to help protect themselves from other humans or predators; the community is not some evolutionary accident nor behavior driven solely by analysis of benefit. Community is sacred, a reflection of the sacred order which is inscribed in the souls of human beings. The Mystery of MANNAZ or Man- meaning all Mankind- is a mystery that arises not as an individual but as many men and women, and they are bound together naturally by unbreakable bonds of affection, power, and kinship.

Each person alive depends so much on others- from our parents at the beginning of our lives, to the men and women who grow our food, prepare it, and sell it; the men and women who train to be doctors, healers, therapists, soldiers and protectors; the men and women that we marry and love and who support us emotionally, and help us to create the future generations of this world. In some way, the web of human relationships and support is a perfect model of Wyrd- each person affects so many other people, and is in turn affected by them. Without the other people in the world, we could not be here, living and thriving. From our interactions, new people arise, and others die away. Between us, love and joy and sorrow arise.

The Old Ways ask us to extend that web of relationship to new dimensions- more subtle dimensions. These "subtle dimensions" of which I speak are the unseen reaches of this world, and the other worlds. Living alongside us in this world are unseen wights, sentient beings who exist in what can be conceived of as their own continuum of life. The Land upon which we walk and depend contains boundless depths of being, and the Landvaettir or Land Wights are one example of unseen sentient beings who dwell alongside us, though few people take the time to appreciate or consider them.

People wonder at the "point" or "purpose" for belief in such beings. To this, it must be said that life and mind are not gifts that humans alone possess, nor is reality as simple as what appears to our eyes. The bulk of life that we can see is just a tiny amount of life, compared to the life that dwells in the vast reaches of reality. The web of Wyrd is a vastness that cannot be comprehended. Within it are places, spaces, "dimensions of reality" and "ways of being" that are every bit as natural as the one "slice of life" that human beings experience. And Wyrd being what it is, the entire continuum of Wyrd, the entire web- including all unseen realities- affects the rest of the web. That means that numberless unseen powers affect us every day of our lives, and we affect them in return.

The Wyrd-wise have always known this, and they have always worked to become conscious of the affects the unseen world and its inhabitants have on us, and just as importantly, they have worked to be aware of what affects we have in return."







Wyrd Ways: Some Propositions Regarding the Ancient Systemic and Interactive Vision of Reality

I am going to list a few propositions about how Wyrd "works", at least based on the perceptions of those who have studied the nature of natural systemic interaction, and the perceptions of those who have looked at the system of life from other angles of investigation- angles that took them out of the neat and tidy "linear" and "divided" models that are so popular today, and so tainted by materialism- and into regions of holistic wisdom.


-The Wyrd way of seeing denies that linear causality is an ultimate reality; Wyrd is holistic, non-linear and acausal. That people tend to perceive in linear ways is a function of limited perception and not some "objective" reality. That "limited perceptions" should exist is not evidence of some "flaw" in Wyrd or in human beings- such things are another part of Wyrd, with a sacred role and purpose.

-The Wyrd way of seeing focuses on patterns, processes, and relationships, not "matter" and "material". "Matter" is itself just a name given to a seemingly stable moment in a long process of interaction and change.

-Wyrd is inclusive and mysterious, even with respect to what we label as "individuals" and "observers"- Wyrd cannot be observed from the "outside" because all observers are part of the Web of Wyrd and cannot be separated from it. The full range of Wyrd's many interactions are therefore hidden from the limited perspective of any person.

-Wyrd, as a universal system of interactions, was not begun or created by any being; it is the ongoing dynamic activity of reality. Any actor that we identify as a "being", whether human, animal, spirit, God or Goddess, originally arose and continually arises from the many interactions of the web of Wyrd.

-All parts of the web of Wyrd recursively affect one another, no matter how distant they seem- "recursive relationship" means that each part has some affect on the other parts, and vice versa. The seeds of a primordial "morality of interaction" is found in this unavoidable fact of Wyrd reality.

-The interactions of Wyrd not only give rise to all beings and phenomenon, but sustain them moment to moment, in whatever form they exist in the moment.

-"Control" cannot be found in the system of Wyrd, nor in any subsystem that we can experience and label, up to and including what we call "our own lives". Control in Wyrd is radically diffuse, and based on the interaction of countless parts. We experience things we call "choices" and "decisions" but we are not ultimately the sole and only controllers of why these things arise nor where they end up. This unavoidable consequence of any complex system of interactions has led directly to the conflict between philosophical ideas of "Fate" and "Free Will", however misunderstood these terms usually are.


Wyrd and Positive Fatalism

I am what I call a "positive Fatalist"- I do not believe in absolute or ultimate free will. I do not believe that my Heathen ancestors did, either, and I have written quite extensively on the topic. Positive Fatalism is a consequence of understanding the Wyrd-reality of interaction; it means accepting Fate or Destiny as a reality, and realizing that there is a complex order in the outplay of things- what you are, what you feel, and what you do is not ultimately in your "control", and in a sense, everything happens for a reason. The Norns or the Fate-weavers fix our dooms for us.

To make such a statement relies heavily on a sort of "faith" born in the Wyrd-worldview; with so many complex systems and sub-systems of force and interaction existing, and with the power of these things influencing us, we cannot begin to guess at every angle of the truth of our existence. Anyone who claims to know the full truth about "what's going on" in life is certainly suffering from a deadly species of vanity.

Part of the trouble with the entire notion of "free will" and "self control" is this: with so many complex, ancient, and timeless forces pre-existing "us", our entire cognitive structure and matrix of self is influenced in a pre-conscious manner, long before we build our current sense of self-identity, and long before we begin to perceptually make "our choices" in life. In a way, my notion of "Fate being in charge" is a blanket notion that puts the human being (in his or her typically limited definition) secondary to the great weave of forces that gives rise to him or her, and makes the man or woman subject to this cosmos of Wyrd.

It could not be otherwise; we are all woven by the same system. Instead of being vain and assuming that we are each powerful enough to "separate" ourselves from the weave of Wyrd, and "create" uninfluenced and independent expressions of will, apart from Wyrd's weave, I believe we should be realistic and realize that our thoughts, deeds, and actions are influenced by countless powers, and truthfully, they cannot be separated from those powers.

Now, I call my belief "positive Fatalism" because I don't think this belief means that you should sit back and do nothing with your life- in fact, I think we have all been Fated to feel as though we DO have free will, and even the belief in destiny doesn't stop us from struggling with our destiny, most of the time. The Northern European people, in their own legends, sagas, and the like, didn't sit back while the world trampled them; they fought hard- and yet, they still believed in Fate or destiny, in a very grim sort of way. Their beliefs even said that the Gods themselves had to face a dark Fate one day. They had no illusions about how hard life was.

Yet, they lived life to the fullest, thankful for the gift of life and for the gifts of the Gods, and they didn't make apologies for being the best they could be. They didn't sit back and accept substandard situations; they explored, fought, conquered, and composed majestic songs and poems. These strange contradictory things fly to the heart of the Indo-European belief in Fate, which isn't as simple as most people want to make it out.

Most people today strongly believe in "free will", but I don't believe that it can exist as they say, because we are all parts of a great and immense system of life and causality. If you look at even a simple system, you can see that the idea of "control" cannot be found anywhere within it, because all parts of a system affect the others. Control is largely an illusion. What I mean to say by this is that we are all parts of a system, and we react to the many forces that affect us, and we affect the system, too. When you have a system in which the parts all affect one another, you can't find where the ultimate "cause" of things is.

For example, you may build a fire when it gets cold outside, but can you say that you made the decision alone to build the fire? It seems that conditions arose in the natural world that led to you making the decision to make a fire to keep warm. If those conditions had not arisen, you would not have felt the need for the fire, and would not have made a decision to build one. If the conditions weren't there, you wouldn't have made the decision- so can your decision belong only to you? Can it be a thing separate from those conditions in the world around, conditions that you didn't choose to be there? The answer is no.

So we can look at this system and ask "where was the decision ultimately made?" Was it in the cold weather, the conditions that made it cold, or the human who responded to those things? The decision is not in one place or the other- the decision arose in the system, because of the system. The decision is not the full "property" of the human actor in the system.

That's how the weave of Wyrd seems to work, at least from a limited perspective- decisions appear through the various parts of the system, but they don't belong fully to any one part. Anyone who thinks they are making decisions apart from the world around them, is being very limited in how they perceive the reality of things. We are not isolated from the weave of Wyrd; we are parts of it.

We can say that "we" had an idea, but the seeds of "your" ideas were sown long ago in the combinations and interactions of many powers that pre-existed "you". This is Wyrd, the weave of causality and reality, and we are all parts of it. What we call our actions are not fully "ours"- it is more realistic to say that the universe itself is working through us, rather than to say that we are separate from the universe, and working "inside" it somehow.

The belief in "free will" requires people to believe that they are very separate from the natural world, and it is a belief which is central to Christianity- early Christians often scorned Pagan beliefs in Fate, and bragged that their God was not beholden to any "fate". To believe in Fate is to put yourself directly back in the genuine stream of pre-Christian thinking.

To believe in "Free Will" is, in final analysis, to make the bold (and untenable) announcement that each human being is a miniature "First Cause", capable in and of themselves of creating "new" strands of Wyrd, capable of changing the essential nature of the cosmos, capable of creation and action completely independent of the many other forces that create the web of causality in which we are all inseparably suspended, and which we cannot remove ourselves from. Such a belief in this sort of "free will" is not a part of a genuine understanding of Wyrd.

If a person bears all these things in mind, their entire worldview changes; they approach life in a fearless way, realizing their kinship to all powers that exist. They realize that things must work in a certain way, and there's no need to worry yourself over things that are outside of your control, and indeed, many things that people usually do worry about are far outside of their control.

Positive Fatalism asks us to be as good as we can be, to be brave and honorable, but not to be so foolish as to think that we are separate from the world, or not affected by it. It's a very "Wyrd" way of seeing; positive Fatalism is "world concern" as much as it is "self concern". It also asks us to endure whatever befalls us with acceptance and fortitude, but never to settle for bad situations if we think it's possible to do better.

Even if we are Fated to fail at our efforts, that really doesn't matter- our desires and efforts must be expressed, and these are the things which (in a certain manner) make us "who we are" to others, and which decide how we will be remembered. It's better to die trying for a better world than to succeed at maintaining a mediocre world.