Mythical

I just got done writing a narrative regarding spiritual ecology, but beyond that, it is a full philosophical treatise regarding Land-Based Traditional Paganism and Witchcraft, and the animistic principles that I have internalized over many years of my own experiences. It is found at the link below- on the cover page is an image of a full moon; click on it to enter.

Mythical: The Voice of the Land

Traditions

When we consider the way our pre-Christian Ancestors lived and believed, we can talk about the very general and broad "Heathen way of life" or "Heathen way of thinking", which is very easy to distinguish from the Christian way of living or thinking. In Heathen times, (for example) people had no misgivings about boasting or bragging on their great deeds or their fortunes; such an attitude towards living was frowned upon by the Christian church as being "prideful". People in Heathen times loved body decoration; large amounts of jewelry, bright and colorful clothing, and the like. This too was something that was looked unkindly upon by Christian clergy as being "ostentatious".

These two examples could be accompanied by dozens more; Heathens were polytheists, while the incoming Christian worldview taught of only one God; Heathens were more likely to be unconcerned with matters too far outside their social grouping or community, while Christianity was the herald of an early form of "globalism", in which Churches established outposts all over Europe, and helped bring about the birth of the nation-state, with powerful Kings (approved by Popes) ruling over immense swaths of land and many people. Even though trade and commerce in Heathen times was broad and vast, as was travel, to be a "Christian" nation put a newly-created political unit in a tight-knit tree of new political structures, which would lead to the birth of modern Europe as we know it. The world was changing; the old tribal times were giving way to the time of nations.

There is no doubt that Christianity is responsible (following on the heels of the Roman Empire's power hunger) for creating modern Europe. I don't suggest that modern Europe is itself a "bad" thing- far from it; I have always stated that I believe the loss of Heathen cultures was the negative aspect of these social evolutions- Heathen beliefs and metaphysics, because of their strong ties to the tribalist worldview, were discarded wholesale, with little or none remaining in the new Christian world. What little did remain might be described as "vestigial Paganism", and was mostly tied to ages-old patterns in yearly religious festivals, and in that sense, they persisted, albeit heavily Christianized.

Now, today, some of us realize the detriment of simply letting entire cultural traditions fall to the wayside, and attempting to replace them with foreign cultural traditions. We see the conflict and negativity caused by it; it so happens that the Christian worldview simply doesn't speak deeply and fully to the Hamingja or ancestral power-stream of Indo-European peoples. It also doesn't represent an ideal way of seeing the world, but a punishing manner of restricting human expression in the name of pleasing the God of a foreign people, and in the name of supporting a contrived philosophy of monotheism that fails to answer life's important questions and quandaries.

Having realized the detriment, we work to re-establish lost cultural traditions. In much the same manner that Native Americans have fought to maintain and in some cases reclaim their powerful native animism, so we sons and daughters of Indo European peoples have begun our own struggle to reconsider the mistakes of history and reaffirm the spiritual value of our own battered and nearly-lost Ancestral ways.

Chiefly, we seek to re-establish traditions. We look to our wise Ancestors for guidance, and we look through the mists of time to pry their ancestral ways from the grip of confusion and sometimes revisionism. We trust in the living Gods to help us in this, and in the fact of our own spiritual and organic connection to the Ancestors to guide us, and we also trust in our own minds to consider carefully the evidence given by scholarship without forgetting to consider the limits of scholarship.

The effort has gone very well, thanks to the efforts of some great people, and the persistence of some cultural traditions that point the way for us.

But the task is far from over. Sometimes, it helps to deal with Ancestral traditions in smaller chunks, rather than chasing after a monolithic ideal of Ancestral culture or belief. We can help ourselves to understand the Old Ways better by realizing that instead of dealing with one huge "culture system" or "tradition" when we study the Heathen past, we are in fact dealing with multiple cultural and religious traditions that sometimes overlapped, but were different. These various "mini-traditions" operated together to create the larger "meta tradition" that most of us think about when we think about the Old Ways.

After Christianization, some of these mini-traditions continued to function, though changed (such as the tradition of community and the Otherworld); some fell by the wayside altogether (such as the tradition of the Gods or the traditions of sorcery).

I would like to discuss these traditions, all of which we can see and feel in our precious Lore from the past, and in the pages of history. We can also make the decision to regenerate these traditions within ourselves, and thus, within our world.


The Tradition of the Living Otherworld

Arguably one of the oldest cultural traditions, Heathen people all over Europe kept a strong belief in the "Otherworld" or an extra-sensory reality in which Godly realms were found, and into which the dead had to journey after death. This idea, of an Unseen world or worlds, is one of the most universally present ideas in all primal human cultures, and it persists today in all mainstream religions that teach about heavens and hells.

It is the specifically Heathen manner in which our Ancestors felt the presence of the Living Otherworld that interests us, however- they situated many worlds and locations in the primal "internal cosmology" that was native to both them and many other people around the world. The vertical axis of reality, pictured as a great Tree, gave a structure to place the world of the Gods within, always in the highest branches, and the world of the dead, usually near the roots. Viewing this cosmological principle in terms of the earth itself, the Gods' home is placed in the sky or above it, and the home of the dead in the Underworld, below and within the earth. Other worlds find their situation in various directions, all creating a mystical mandala or mytho-poetic geography of the unseen.

The Celtic Tradition does not lack the beauty and mystery of the Otherworld- in fact, more than most people, the Celts maintained an awareness of the Sacred unseen into Christian times. The idea of a "faery world" being under hills and mounds (an idea shared by the Germanic peoples) and the idea of special times of the year being impregnated with mystical force enough to cause humans out wandering to find themselves in another world, parallel to this one, is pervasive in folklore.

This tradition, this way of seeing is crucial. The idea of boat-burials deals strongly with this notion; the "line dividing" this world and the others was often seen in the Indo-European tradition as watery; from seas to rivers, the boat becomes a symbol of the passage of the dead in many IE cultures. The watery boundary is an important clue to us today; our ancestors didn't believe that the "line of separation" between this world and the other was "hard"- it wasn't a wall, but a journey that could be taken if aided properly. The idea of a strict division between this world and the Otherworld was absent from our Ancestors' thinking; the Otherworld and this World were both parts of the system of reality, and what occurred here affected those who dwelled in the unseen, and vice-versa.

We come close to reclaiming our Ancestors' worldview when we walk in the forests or along the banks of rivers, or go anywhere, and do not think of what our eyes see as some limit of our reality- to let yourself feel the presence of the Unseen world, and to understand how it interacts in strange ways with this one, how any forest trail or river or cave can be a direct entrance into another reality- is to see like they saw. So many communities of life are there, unseen by us, but sharing this reality with us. This is a sacred awareness of truth.

Also within this tradition is found the belief and awareness (the Wyrd way of seeing) that allows mythology to come to life within us. Our myths aren't just made up stories; they are ancient, vital expressions of the strange, acausal, and dream-like sacred reality that accompanies this "other" reality that we call the "everyday world".


The Tradition of the Gods or Divine Connection

Our ancestors believed in the Gods. This is a simple and profound statement, though it often loses some important meaning when people think it or say it in the modern day. It means that the Ancestors believed in divine orders of being, which they described as the many Gods and Goddesses of their sacred stories and myths. They did not believe that there was only "one" God; they didn't think that all their Gods and Goddesses were manifestations of only "one god and one goddess". They were truly polytheists, and their world, both all that was seen and what was unseen, was full of many beings that had enough power and/or wisdom to rightly be called "Gods".

This cannot be over-stated. To be a true polytheist, and not a monotheist in disguise (which you are if you believe that all gods are really "one god") means that you have reclaimed a crucial part of the true and authentic Indo-European Pagan worldview. You can finally give the Gods the honors they deserve individually, as opposed to collapsing them all into one divine blob.

It is no more illogical that there should be many Gods than it is that there should be many human beings on this planet, or many trees in a forest, or many grains of sand on a beach. The sacred and living system of nature gives rise to things in great abundance- in no manner does this lessen the sacredness of things. For too long we have labored under some ridiculous notion that "one" God is perfectly logical and represents sacredness and holiness, but the idea of many Gods would be "illogical" or problematic.

There's nothing inherently illogical with the idea of the multiplicity of the divine, and the vast majority of people who claim that it "doesn't make sense" are (not surprisingly) monotheists, who can hardly be deemed unbiased. They also cannot be accused of ever having the ability to consider the notion of the multiplicity of the divine from outside of the monotheistic paradigm that they have mostly grown up within, and been taught not to question since day one of their spiritual lives. At any rate, the Ancestors- all of the Ancestors- knew the Gods and Goddesses and named them, and there is a great power and peace in knowing the reality of those Gods, and feeling it.

True polytheism allows for a spiritual freedom that has no equal. Every time, place, event, and phenomenon is blessed by the presence of sentient forces who oversee the eternal unfolding of the world. To worship them is to put ourselves most fully in the moment, and participate in the unfolding of things from a more whole perspective- a wholeness that is ironically found in accepting and respecting the many aspects of reality that are rightly called "divine". To know the Gods is to know the full extent of our kin, friends, and companions, and the true teachers of wisdom. There is no complete life without the Gods.

Added To the idea of the many Gods, our ancestors honored the reality of divine connection. Humans and Gods were not separated by some great gulf, but were intimately connected. Heathen lore tells us of Odin and his brothers bestowing something of their spirit on the Ancestors of all humans alive today- making all humans directly kin to the Gods. This means that all human Hamingja, all human bloodlines and spiritual lines, go back to the Gods. The connection between the Gods and humanity was also celebrated and re-created in every act of sacrifice and the sharing of sacrificial feasts with the Gods. The very idea of "sacrifice" or "blot" and divine connection are inseparable.


The Tradition of the Ancestors

The finest and most crucial works on the Pagan religions of Northern Europe have clearly revealed the fact of how central ancestral worship was to the old religions, and the common and popular veneration of the Ancestors among the peoples of Southern Europe was established. Across the Indo-European Pagan world, the Ancestral Dead were venerated as semi-divine, protectors, watchers, and residents in the unseen world, whose ongoing and mysterious existence still affected their families here in this world.

If you recall, there was no native Pagan notion of some impassable "gulf" between this world and the Otherworld; the barriers that sometimes mythologically appear between those two places can be crossed or negotiated in various ways, and at various times and places. No place is as universally accepted as an "interaction point" between the seen and the unseen more than graves and burial mounds. Death was seen- rightly- as a sacred event of "passage", forcing any place wherein death occurred to be hallowed, at least temporarily, by the passage.

Ancestral veneration has a spiritual focus for many reasons, but the primary reason is twofold: the fund of Ancestral wisdom was vital and sacred to the ancients, containing as it did the "root" of all wisdom, the hallowed wisdom of the ages that was essential to humans today for guidance through their hard times, as well as guidance on how to properly celebrate their fortunes. But the Ancestors were more than wise, and more than spirits with access to the wisdom of the deepest mysteries concealed by death; they were also representatives of a living link between humans and the first ancestors- who were the Gods themselves, or the various ancient and sacred sources of life.

Each and every one of us, whether or not we realize it, are products of ancient bloodlines that go back to the very distant, sacred, and concealed beginning of the entire human race. Few think about it, but the fact of any person's birth today is due to a direct and unbroken line extending all the way back to the "beginning"- a "beginning" which is as mythical as it is literal. The Ancestors represent the entire stretch of that sacred line through which power has descended, and right at this moment, you are the entire reason your every ancestor lived and breathed. You are the outcome of their lives; you are the living person to which their power was passed down. This aspect of our worldview is one of the most crucial and sacred aspects because more than almost any other, it situates us in our humanity, and situates us with respect to our fellow human beings and the Gods.


The Tradition of the Sacred Land

Across ancient Europe, the people held a perpetual awareness of the Land beneath them, and their sacred relationship to it. Perhaps stemming from the earliest foundation of human religions, directly from the fountain of primordial animism, the veneration of the Land is universal.

Ancient tribal bonds extended to the Land itself, and the Land's presence hovered over the people as an ancient Mother figure, or, in later times, these various "toutal Goddesses" or "sovereignty Goddesses" became at home in the Land. Anciently, however, there was no separation- the hills of the Land were simply the breasts of the Earth Mother; wells and springs were her teats, and the names of rivers and the earth itself bore her mighty name.

Her body concealed the dead in mounds, symbols of her breasts and wombs; the Underworld inside her took the souls of the dead, who continued to live closer to the roots of life.

As these primal ideas continued to evolve, the truest and most ancient form of spiritual ecology evolved with them- that of mankind's ultimate and fundamental reliance on the produce of the Earth, and of his reciprocal relationship to it. The institution of sacred kingships, well attested to across ancient Europe, were born in the understanding that human communities- and their representative the King or Chieftain- had to have the blessing of the Land, the acceptance of the Land, if they wished to live freely with security and bounty.

The spirits of the Land themselves were dwarfed by this titanic Mother who, according to Heathen lore, was the first mother of humans by way of the Two Trees- the Ash and Elm from which the first humans were created sprang up from Nerthus or the Earth Goddess, before Odin discovered them and crafted Ask and Embla, the First Ancestors who were bestowed with his Godly Spirit, making them his kin. In countless other mythologies, the first humans spring up under Ash trees, or straight from the Earth itself, in her motherly role.

Shrines around sacred wells, always seen as sources of nurture and healing as well as entrances into the Otherworld, were ubiquitous in ancient Europe, as well as temples and shrines in caves, at springs, and the like. The Tradition of the Sacred Land was one of the first traditions to undergo a strong regeneration in the modern day, possibly because it was one of the first to be struck down and ignored by the unnatural religious changes that swept Europe so long ago. It was first to emerge again from the collective souls of humans because it, more than almost any other tradition, is required for the survival of the human race into the future.


The Tradition of Community or Human Connection

Heathen Europe was a tribal Europe, and few people today can really understand the meaning of the word "tribe"- we assume so much about the word based on what normally amounts to a "Hollywood level" understanding. "Tribe" is about a fundamental connection between people, due to common lineage from a shared ancestor or ancestors, or shared cultural traits. It is a broad term, applied to large groups of people, but it implies something very specific, a fundamental bond. That bond was the bond that people once lived by. Within these bonded groups of people came clans and families.

"Tribe" was replaced later in history by large clan-groupings and then communities of families and clans that had coalesced together over long periods of time, and were still bound together by shared cultural understandings and common history. At various points, their oldest tribal identity might have been lost, subsumed into their various communities- including the settling of fixed places or locations that would grow into the most ancient cities that exist today- but "clannic memory" and their group-based sacred living ethic never vanished.

No man lived alone, or on his own merits alone, in ancient times. Despite the laughable misunderstandings many have today (based on our misconceptions of the figure of the "hero") people lived, breathed, and drew identity from the group they lived within. Without family and kin, protection was lost; survival chances were not good. Without them, any hope for justice was forlorn; ones family stood up for them in legal proceedings, came together to avenge the taking of family members in illegal death cases, collected goods to help pay fines or other penalties on behalf of a family member, supported each other through hard times or "thin" times of less resources, and they raised children together.

We have lost these most natural and crucial support networks in the modern day. When the connection between people and the Sacred Land was broken- broken first by absurd foreign notions that the Land was not a sacred thing, or a Goddess, but a bundle of resources placed there for the use of man by the big father-God distantly in the sky, the clannic groups' numinal understanding of their relationship to the Land was underminded, then lost over time and even through force. When that was lost, the feeling of being strangers on the Land itself was enough to splinter the bonds of clan or family; estrangement from the first sustaining Mother and from sacred claims of "place" would be enough to estrange one human from another. Where do we belong now? To whom do we belong? Who are we? The introduction of foreign religious notions, leading some to reject the Gods and other ages-old traditions, further splintered families and communities, across the Pagan world.

Our entire notion of "nuclear family" is a sham, a fraud invented by corporate barons in the last century who needed a mobile workforce- a hard-working man, with his obedient house-keeping wife and children who were all able to independently relocate wherever the employer needed them; the man could work all day, while the wife prepared his meals, kept his living space clean, sexually satisfied him in the evenings, and raised his children- like a soldier going out to fight, with a tiny support network behind him to take care of all his needs except for the fight itself.

Across the land these "nuclear families" went, leaving behind mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, to become isolated and never seen except around the big holidays once or twice a year, and finally to rot away unseen in "old folks' homes" or assisted living homes, or to die alone in their houses, forgotten as the neighborhood around them succumbed to urban development, or more usually, urban decay.

The two World Wars shattered more than just millions of lives- they shattered the last vestiges of the rural family-based community. After the Christianization of Europe, new communities formed based around churches, centers where a foreign religion and its harmful foreign ideals were imprinted into every new generation of European people, but communities did form, and within them much of the old clannic impulse was still kept alive- the same land was occupied by the same families in many places as it had been for centuries before.

Now strangers to the spiritual truth of their connection to the land, and strangers to the real Mother of their ancestors, these people lived close to the power of the Land and they took an unconscious comfort in it, without ever fully realizing the truth of their most ancient connections to that same Land. They felt a vestigial love and respect for their land, but it now came to be expressed in nationalistic terms, and in the simple, unspoken joys of country life.

People were born in the same place, married and died and were buried all in the same church/village center. They were literally married next to the churchyard where they would be buried along with their children one day. This kind of connection between families and their land was a final pale remnant of the old Pagan or Heathen relationship of tribe and clan to the Odal-land. After the World Wars, and with the rise of Industrialism, these villages were shattered, depopulated, and forgotten. With them passed away a vital vestige of humanity's ancient legacy.

The extended family once lived together, just as the community did. They protected one another; they shared the burdens and dangers of living life. The cost of losing these bonds of support is the veil of isolation and depression that has swept across the "civilized" world. We swallow our prozac and lithium while mocking the "uncivilized" rural people of third-world nations and other traditional nations, who all live in large family groupings out in their huts- and who, after anthropological studies, don't seem to suffer the same sense of isolation or loss of support and love that so many westerners report to feel.

The Volva, the sacred prophetess of the Heathen Tradition as a whole, predicted that in this age of the world bonds between human beings would fall by the wayside, and her prophecy has largely come true. We have replaced the bonds of family with selfish delusions, and the faster we recognize those delusions as signs of the coming end of the world, the faster we will realize how sacred our ancestors really felt these bonds were. There was simply no human world without them.

The good of the group and the fate of the group was tied together; the dead joined one another in the mound or in the Otherworld, still united as a clan. When Christianity came, with its selfish belief in the primary importance of "individual salvation", the last nail in the coffin of the ancient bond of clan was driven. It awaits revival and regeneration within the souls of each person today who can still rouse themselves to a perspective that transcends the selfish fixations of ego, and discover a broader context for human interaction and support. What is a family now? What is a clan? They are the people you find, and bond with- the people you face life's dangers with, for no man is fit to do it alone.

Some are fortunate enough to find these true kinsmen among their own blood-families, but so often today, our real family is the family we choose. At any rate, find the true family, and you will find your true path. In Heathenry today, the tradition of the Symbel most directly relates back to the ancient connection of community and true family, bringing the Kindred or Hearth together in the most fundamental way.


The Tradition of Sorcery

The most vilified of all traditions by the new religion of Christianity, the tradition of sorcery, like the tradition of the Sacred Land, probably extends back to the earliest of times, to the dimmest mornings of animistic experience on the part of human beings.

Sorcery was a fact of life to the ancients- and despite what many modern Pagans would like to believe, it wasn't a fully integrated aspect of life in ancient times. If Christians feared and hated the practice of sorcery and sorcerers, most Pagans feared it and held it in awe simultaneously. While that's a real difference, it isn't as large a difference as most think. The fundamental difference is that Christians specifically targeted practitioners of sorcery by name and reputation, and singled them out as "monsters"- while Pagan peoples clearly accepted their presence, even if they were sometimes bothered by them and even on rare occasions took their own initiative to run them off or kill them, if the situation lined up right.

Sorcery is the ultimate "outsider tradition"- a mysterious phenomenon that is born in the mysterious Otherworld, and channeled into the context of human society by a sorcerer. The sorcerer, like his ancient counterpart the primordial Shaman, is the "boundary crosser", the person able to interact with Utgard, the land "outside" the spiritual and even physical boundaries of the community, the unseen world of extra-social powers and forces.

This is the source of the sorcerer's strength, but also the source of the fear that surrounded them in ancient times, as well as now. The mysterious learnings of the "outside" dimension of understanding endows the sorcerer with a mystery that enchants people, but makes them suspect in any occasion of seeming bad luck or misfortune. After all, the sorcerer is the unpredictable one, the wild card, the element of chaos that exists on the boundaries of society, much like the Giants of Heathen lore existing on the boundaries of Middle Earth.

Sorcery was related to those Giantish powers "outside" of the secure enclosures guarded by men and Gods. The Gods themselves practised sorcery- Odin and Freya were both great sorcerers, Odin the Master of Runes and a practitioner of Seid, and Freya the Great Mistress of Seid, or Trance-Sorcery. Her original practice and teaching of Seid was hated by the Gods, who called her "beloved by wicked women". Odin's character, with all its great ambiguity, hint of danger, and slyness, and his close relationship to his blood-brother Loki (who was himself a master sorcerer) is directly related to his practice of sorcery.

Why did sorcery remain such a fixture, a real tradition, among Indo-European Pagan peoples, when even they, at various times and places, took time to struggle against it? Because every system contains elements of dynamism and chaos, and while the Gods struggle against the Giants for the maintenance of the world, the Giants are still every bit as sacred and necessary for the health of the whole world.

The presence of sorcery, as a reality of human interaction with "outside" forces, and an element of human cunning interacting with extra-social and otherworldly powers, is necessary for the development of human consciousness and society- even though few people truly realize this. So many of the treasures of the Gods- things they required to perform their needed tasks- were granted to them by the sorcerer Loki, through all his wild and strange behavior and misadventures.

The activity of Sorcery, and the unlimited possibilities that lie behind it, is a reminder to humans of the limits they set for themselves, and a source for awe and wonder, even while being a source of danger and risk.

Domestic Cults, Land Spirits, and the Worship of House-Wights

It has been my experience that the old Heathen faith doesn't really become strong and clear in the hearts and minds of people who follow its ways until they join with others. When you work with a family or a kindred, or other people of like mind and faith, you experience a more primal and essential layer of ancestral religion.

In older times, there was no way to separate the realities of tribe and kin from Troth or the Elder Faith. This is because human groups, from families to tribes, are a reflection of the natural and sacred manner that humans are supposed to live. We are not solitary beings; we all feel the urge to gather with others, to take shelter with others, to share our joys and sorrows with others. The sacrifices and religious observances of the Heathen past were done largely in groups, entire families or communities coming together to worship. The religion re-affirmed their bonds to one another, and to the Holy Kindreds who are also related to us, but who dwell unseen.

"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.

It's not enough to think "well, I can't see or hear these beings, and they don't seem to affect me, so I won't worry about them." They do affect you, and you do affect them. The more conscious you are of this fact, the more aware you can become of the impact of these subtle realities on you and your own life. In blindness of the reality of these living beings, you can harm them, and they can harm you and yours. In awareness of them, and with respect, they can be the source of many blessings and much luck.

If we accept that the Land itself is filled with Land Wights, beings who naturally dwell and live in their own "way of being" and mostly unseen by us, We have to accept that our homes, which sit on the Land, must be affected by them. And this brings us directly to a point which was most crucial and time-honored by our Ancestors: the reality of Domestic Cults and the Worship of House-Wights and House-Spirits.

When human beings raise their homes in a place, they are not the first beings on the scene- Land Wights have usually been there for much longer. All natural phenomenon are guarded by wights, or are they homes of wights- streams, rivers, trees, hills, mountains, and the like. To take trees from a forest to build your home in ancient times was a matter of propitiating the Wights of those trees, and only taking prudently, only what you needed. Some trees were seen as sacred to such powerful wights, that they simply weren't touched. The Elder tree is a good example of this; as late as the 19th century, rural English folk wouldn't touch a living Elder, and only take her wood that had fallen. In times when the Elder had to be cut, a folk-charm was said to it, a charm that is worth repeating because of its implications:

"Old Gal, Give me of thy wood,
And I shall give you of mine,
When I grow into a tree."


The Goddess or female wight of the Elder was told, in no uncertain terms, that if it gave its wood, the cutter would actually return the favor in the future, when he or she died, was buried, and then "grew into a tree". You can take this two ways- when we die, our life-force leaves us and re-enters into the body of nature. We do increase the growth of things with our spent and donated life-force, which goes back into the land and sky and air and waters. But there's another way of taking this, a deeper and more serious one. This is a contract, a binding contract, in which the cutter probably originally expected to take from the Elder, but to be reborn as a tree-wight himself- and then to give his own tree over, to repay the skuld or the life-debt.

Though it is a little-known secret, there is a way to fulfill this contract without having to become reborn into the forest as a Tree-Wight, a technique that exempts a person without breaking the oath. To take acorns or tree-seeds and bathe them in your own blood, and then breathe into them to fill them with your life force and finally to "name" them after yourself, and plant them in the forest, allows "you" to grow into a tree, thus fulfilling the deal. After this, you may not be Wyrded to have to be bound to the forest, post-mortem.

The reason why I brought this "Elder charm" up is because it demonstrates, from deep within the folk-tradition, the undefeatable and primal idea of "reciprocal exchange". Even the peasants of England in the late centuries understood that they were in a two-way relationship with the wights of the trees. What the wights did for them, they would do back. These people were not blind to their sacred duties to the world around them. Incidentally, by planting new trees in repayment, a person would be balancing the debt or skuld of taking. Either way, these people were not willing to take more than they were prepared to give back.

When a home is raised in a place, humans have to befriend the wights or spirits of that place, or they cannot live there with luck and certainty. Wights are capable of causing accidents, nightmares, bad luck, disease, and other mayhems against beings that they don't want near them. When a house is built and inhabited, the nearest wights of that place, assuming that they accept the new human inhabitants, have little choice but to see and explore the house that was built. They peer into the realities of human life, and watch. They feel the effects of the human settlement on themselves and on their existence.

One shouldn't assume that spirits or wights "see" us just like we see each other and our surroundings- they do dwell in another "way", but it's clear that what we do, think, and say affects them on some level, and that they perceive it in their own manner. I believe that basic, powerful forces like fire "appear" to wights similar to how it appears to us; perhaps they perceive it as a bright power of some kind, but I know they "see" it, because nearly all ancient rituals of Indo-European source require sacred fires of some kind. There is a notion that fires act as "beacons" for spiritual powers.

I think that human emotions must "appear" to wights in ways, and affect their own emotional states, in much the same way the emotional states of other humans affect ours. When we damage the environment in which wights dwell, folklore clearly states that they perceive the damage, and react badly. In the Ballad of Tam Lin, Janet is able to summon Tam Lin by destroying plant life in the area he haunts- Tam Lin was forced to come to the site of the violation and appear.

At any rate, in most cases, over time, the wights "bond" with the house and the people who live there, becoming house wights. In Germanic countries, they were called Husinga or (individually) a Husing, a tomt, tompt, or tomtekarl. Some say that the spirits that live in the lands around the house were called tatermen, and were symbolized by little straw dolls or poppets made to be their magical images. The "scarecrow" idea is linked to this by some.

When people come to a place, so do their ancestral wights and powers, who also affect the native wights. If the wights have accepted this arrangement, they begin to work actively in the lives of the people who belong to that settlement or home. If the wights do not accept it, troubles begin.

Before I move into discussing the realities of domestic cults to wights, I should say a few words about human relationships to Land Wights and other spirits. In the grand scheme of things, we can easily see how the Gods themselves are on the "top" of the Tree of reality- the mightiest wights themselves dwell in their own worlds, and travel through this one often. In the web of Wyrd, the Gods are also affected by humans, and they affect us. We are all of us- Godly wight, land wight, or human- in the same great web of interactive reality.

All of the Nine Worlds have wights that inhabit them- numberless wights and intelligences and sentient beings. That means that this world, and this Land upon which we live, also has wights, as I have said. As a side-note, human beings are also considered "wights", but for the purposes of this conversation I am using the term "wight" to refer to beings unseen.

Wights may have powers or abilities that humans lack, and some ancient land wights can be very powerful or wise. But overall, land wights occupy a similar "place" in the grand scheme of things to human beings. They are not as powerful as Gods, and though they may live a long time, I do not think that they remain around forever. I know that the wight of an ancient tree will have been there as long as the tree lives, but after the death of its home, the wight moves on to a new kind of existence, perhaps attaching itself to a newly growing tree. The point is that wights have their own "cycles of life" similar to humans, though some seem to be very ancient.

Land wights and house wights are kin to humans, in many ways. They are another population of sentient beings that share our world, and we spring from the same source, the same web of life. The same Gods that preside over the human world also act as "chief powers" over the wights of any world. The Allfather who bestowed spirit and shape on the first humans also shaped the existence of land wights.

There is more than one reason why we should seek positive relationships with wights. Sure, they can make our lives miserable, and harm us if we anger them or refuse to acknowledge them, but fear is not the true basis of our relationship. When two beings of any kind interact, they affect one another. When humans drink in sacrifices with the Gods, for instance, we take something of their Godly essence into ourselves, thus increasing our spiritual power, and the Gods merge with us in a mysterious manner, and are likewise affected by us. The benefit to humans is immense- we are increased because the spiritual force of the Gods is so much greater than ours, and the Gods gain an experience of us that communicates something to them.

When a land wight or a house wight "communes" with humans in such a way, it too, is seemingly increased or benefited. It gains some insight or some gift from the communion. Whatever it is that Land Wights "receive" from interacting with humans, I know that they seek it out, come to appreciate it, and to desire it. Humans who commune with them literally allow them to experience the world in the way humans experience it, and so I suppose the wights gain new perspectives that allow them to grow in their own mysterious ways. I know that humans benefit as well, from friendship with the wights.

At heart, the entire point of communion with wights is recognition. We have a duty to recognize these beings, to affirm their existence, and tell them that we know them and accept them. We have a duty to ask them to accept us- this is a sacred reciprocal exchange between the world that is seen and the unseen world. It is a noble form of respect on the parts of humans for their unseen fellows. It is a demonstration, on the parts of humans, that they recognize that they are not alone in this world, and that this world does not belong only to them. It is the heart and soul of sacred ecology.

Earlier, I talked about how the Old Religions could not be separated from group observance, and how they lived as an inseparable part of family and clan or tribal life. It is true that Asatru or Heathenry really becomes a powerful reality in your life when you stand with others and worship. Even if it was powerful before, when you worshipped alone, it becomes a hundred times that with others. This is because human life and human spirituality is always a matter of relationship between humans, and between humans and non-humans, including spirits and Gods. This relationship is the very core of the Old Faiths.

To this I must now add that there is another "level" of experience, and that is the level of the Domestic Cult. A tribe may live in a land, and their worship brings together all the people and re-affirms their bond with the powers of that land and with each other. In just this manner, a family is like a tribe, and the family's home is like their land. The home is the sacred stead of the family, its "Odal Enclosure", the sacred, enclosed space in which the ancestral powers of the family are allowed to dwell and make new life, and experience frith or harmonious belonging. The family is a small reflection of the greater group of mankind, and the home is a reflection of the homeland.

Thus, all homes are sacred. They are sacred enclosures, just like a Hof or a Sacrifice-Stead in which worship takes place is sacred. And like the world "outside" the home has its own powers, the home's inner world has powers, powers that the dwellers in the home must befriend, recognize, and worship.

In ancient times, the sacredness of a family's living space was a universally held concept. All Indo-European societies took this very seriously, from Celtia and Germania down to Greece and Rome. The religious observances that took place daily in the home were led mostly by the male head of the family in Rome, who was called Paterfamilias and who was essentially the "Pontifex Maximus" or the High Priest of his family's religious life. Outside of the home, in the City of Rome itself, there was a Pontifex Maximus who presided over the cult-rites that were done on behalf of all the people of the city, but in the home, in that microcosm, the father of the family was priest.

This same pattern seems to have been found in all Indo European societies. In Germanic society, a chieftain or local elder was the leader of community rites, but in the home, a member of the family led everyone in religious rites. It's just as likely that women headed these rites in the home as men, considering the immense power that the Huswyf, the Husfrowe or the Housewife had over the house in Germanic society. She did, after all, hold the keys to the house, and could decide who was welcome there and who wasn't.

The Domestic Cult- the sacred rites done for the wights who dwell in each home or living space, is a necessary thing to establish if you are a Heathen and you have your own home. Like communal religion, worship and respect for the house-spirit is a basic tenet of ancient and modern Heathenry. The worship given to Land Wights and House Wights is partly the same, yet partly different from the worship given to the Gods. Bear in mind that "worship" really means "to give worth to"- you can communicate to any wight how worthy you believe it to be, and that counts as "worship". When you have a strong and steady relationship with your house spirit, you can trust that your house will be safer and more harmonious than it was before, and it will receive many blessings.

House wights, since time immemorial, have been worshipped with offerings of food and drink. They have also been worshipped around a central place in the home, usually the hearth. Whatever space or room is your "main" room, the place where you spend most of your time, or the "center" of your house, is the proper place for honoring house wights. There's no reason to wonder whether or not your house "has" a house wight- if your house was built long before you got there, it has one or more. They dwelled in the land on or near the building site, and after a point, were attracted there and set up their own homes, co-existing with the space occupied by the house.

* * *

When we look to folklore for guidance, we see many vibrant images and powerful stories of the human relationship with the spirits of their homes. The stories of the spirits called "brownies" from England, Scotland, and Northwestern Europe are clear manifestations in lore of wights that entered into relationships with humans, and worked for them in their homes and on their farms, in exchange for gifts of food and recognition. As a bit of trivia, the fact that the little brown cakes that we call "brownies" are called "brownies" in the first place is because of these spirits- the little cakes and bowls of milk left out at night to feed the house-spirit actually took on the name of the spirit- a brownie.

With linguistic variation, "brownie" becomes "bodach" in the Scottish Highlands, and "fenodoree" on the Isle of Man, and all refer to house guardian spirits. Fairy-type folklore can teach us something important about the human relationship to these beings. If offended, these beings became "boggarts", and became harmful to the human inhabitants of their places of dwelling. This is likely a reflection of the idea that wights can be harmful if offended or not appeased. Brownies specialized in doing house-work and protecting the home, and milk was typically left out for them, as well as bread or cakes- but there was an almost universal warning included. Brownies could never be offered a reward for its services or its labors on behalf of the home.

If they were offered a reward, they would usually flee or become harmful. This taboo seems odd, but the old folklore says that these beings were too free-spirited to be "bound" to humans through the acceptance of payment. It seems that they would accept praise and they would take the offerings left out, but if the humans said "Take this in exchange for what you have done for us", the spirit balked at the bond that accepting such a gift would entail.

Our own lore says it clearly: "A gift demands a gift". There is a bond created between two people who give gifts to each other. There is an expectation that follows this sacred act. The house-spirit desires communion, recognition and participation with human beings, but it doesn't desire to be bound as a servant. It is enough to leave gifts for the wight or spirit, which it will accept, and to thank the spirit through recognizing its presence and praising its good deeds for the home, but to offer it a reward for this is something that the wise should not do. The offerings of food and milk given to the house-wight are not a "reward" any more than a blot or sacrifice to the Gods or Ancestors is a reward to them for being Gods or Ancestors. It is an expression of connection with them, a ritual of recognition and communion.

As an aside, the one offered reward that drove house-spirits away more than any other was clothing. To offer a brownie or house-spirit clothing as a reward would drive it way, infallibly. It is also worth noting that brownies and other types of house-guardians and spirits hate Christian religious symbols. I don't expect my fellow Heathens to have such things in their houses, but those who do can be certain that the house-wights have long since departed.


I will close this letter with an account of my personal experiences with house-wights. My family recently moved into an extraordinary new place, and while conversing with my Fylgja the other day, she informed me that we had not fulfilled our duties to the house-wight fast enough. She affirmed that we indeed had a spirit in our house, and that my wife and child were in danger from it, because it was not yet honored by us. Accidents had happened, before, minor things, but accidents nonetheless. That very day, another accident occured, and I realized that I had to move a bit faster than I was planning.

Before my hearth, I put out one of the small cakes that my wife had baked a few days before, and a bowl of milk, and using the Algiz-galdor, I induced a condition by which I could communicate with wights. I walked around the house, calling to the house-wight, and asked it to come to the hearth so that I could honor it. I didn't have to wait long; its tangible otherworldly presence was hanging over my mantle and fireplace very quickly. I gave it the offerings, and told it who we were, my family and I, and I recognized it as existing as the first inhabitant of this place, this home that means so much to us.

I told it that we would always dedicate any occassion of house-cleaning to it; this is very important, because house-wights folklorically seem to really love it when mortals keep neat houses, and clean house. This goes back to the idea of the "Ryta" or the "Right Order" of the cosmos being reflected even in our living places. I told it that we would leave out these offerings pretty regularly, and asked that it protect us and our home. I concluded by invoking the Gods, and, through my own mind and body, mediating the blessings of the High Thunderer and the All-Father onto the spirit of the house. They too, can receive blessings.

The simple act of meaningfully placing out offerings of milk and cakes is by itself a powerful act, and enough to please wights. My wife, later that day, placed out some cookies for it. Later, those offerings were gathered and carried to the tree behind our house, where we lay out all offerings to return into the ground. This formal act of "establishment" was successful- I could tell that the house-wight was pleased, and the atmosphere of the house has been quite lighter and more pleased ever since.

The Trollkyrka

As a student of folklore, I am always on the lookout for the genuine remains of Heathenry in the body of folklore from many European nations. Despite the great regional variations in the nature of folklore, nearly every nation's own folk-wisdom and stories contain deep and penetrating insights into the pre-Christian impulses and even practices of former times.

With great pleasure, I stumbled across a fine poem discussing the Trollkyrka, a hallowed place for the ancient Gods in the wilds of Sweden. I enjoyed what I found so much that I felt the need to share.

The Trollkyrka (Troll-Church or Troll's Church) is a rock formation in the heart of the Tiveden Forest of Sweden. This forest is 'famous for its scenery and throughout history notorious for its wilderness and dangers; historically a hiding place for outlaws'. Wikipedia says "the name (Tiveden) is very old and disputed. -Ved is cognate to English Wood and the first part of its name, Ti-, either means "god" or refers to the god Tyr. Tiveden separates Närke from Västergötland, and was formerly a frontier between the Geats and the Swedes. The national park area has never been inhabited, but there are several ancient remains of human activities such as worshipping grounds and sacrificial sites.'

The Tiveden Park site mentions more about the fact of many Pagan holy sites being present in the forest. It says 'There are several caves, the best known being Stenkälla, an old sacrificial site from pagan times. There is little animal life in Tiveden, but there is a large capercaillie population. The flora is also poor, since the biotope is stony pine forest.'

Along with the Stenkalla, the Trollkyrka stands out. It is a high butte of stone, that is reached by a long, meandering path. The local folklore surrounding it is a rich source for modern Pagans and Heathens of the Northern Tradition. The Trollkyrka, itself an ancient Horgr or sacrificial ground/site, is called so for the fact that Christianity associated the Heathen Gods with "trolls"- and by "trolls" they meant malicious spirits.

I have written extensively on Trolls in my book Helsongs, as well as on the subject of Trullskapir, the magical art of manipulating and influencing potentially dangerous spiritual powers towards ends directed by the sorcerer. As I point out in that work, the term "troll" is a very complex term, and its original meaning is far from clear. It does refer to any manner of natural powers and spiritual powers, which run the range from friendly to dangerous, depending on what segment of folklore you are reading. Even in Heathen times, it's likely that the term "troll" didn't always mean something desirably natural or good- it has been suggested that it may have always held a dangerous connotation.

Naturally, "troll" took on a far more sinister meaning with the advent of Christianity in the Northlands- an actual formal renunciation of Paganism was required of Christians baptised in Scandanavia which denounced "Odin, Thor, Tyr, and all the other Trolls worshipped by (the) people." The Trollkyrka, being a former Pagan holy site, and apparently one that was used as such up until very recent times, would be remembered in Christian folklore as the home (or church!) of Trolls.

Trollkyrka was believed to be a dangerous place for Christians to go, and for a very surprising reason: the Wikipedia article on Trollkyrka says:

"According to (the folklorist) Lidman, old people used to say: "No Christian can go there. The mountains of the troll church belong to the heathen trolls. If a Christian ventures there, he will come to grief."

In fact, local tradition relates that the mountain was used not long ago for heathen rites and that anyone who was not initiated and saw it risked either to be buried in a bog in the forest or sworn into the brotherhood. These precautions clearly indicate that the rites took place as late as the period 1604-1735, which was a time when there was a penalty of death on practising such rituals."

The folklorist Carlshult was doing research on the folk-traditions surrounding another nearby monument of the Tiveden forest, the Skaga Stave Church. A few words about this stave church are in order- according to history, the Church-body in Sweden in the 1800's decided to demolish this beautiful stave church, which was built originally in the 12th century by Skaga, the daughter of a Viking with the rather intimidating name of "Ramunder the Evil".

In a frightening twist of Fate, the Black Death (a plague widely believed in the North to be the work of angry Heathen Gods, venting their frustration on the people parting from the Old Ways) devastated the area of Tiveden, leaving it uninhabited, and the existence of the church was actually forgotten as it stood lost for a century or two before a party of bear hunters just stumbled across it.

In the 1800's, as I said before, the church leaders decided to demolish the church, and one of the reasons given was to "punish" the local people for the persistence of heathen beliefs and practices in the area. Somehow, the Church always manages to get re-built, however, and was rebuilt very recently, following its original design.

While researching these topics, Carlshult came across a poem of great power, at least from the perspective of those interested in the persistence of ritual and mystical practices from Heathen times to now. The poem, which documents a ritual observance of a Heathen holy season at the Trollkyrka, goes as so:


"The procession creeps on a meandering path
Preferably unseen to the Troll hills.
A mass shall be held for three days,
This will be the beginning of the holiday.

The frock is long, so it reaches down to the ground,
The socks are sharply pointed,
The hood is pulled down so that the holes for the eyes fit.
Everybody looks alike except for the height,
The prelate counts their number.

The password is given in a low voice,
The prelate blows three times in a horn.
The fire is kindled with nine kinds of wood,
That is the old custom.
A sacrifice is offered to the spirits,
Everyone is sprinkled with the blood.
The best part is gifted to spirits,
What remains is to be consumed by the men.

In the midnight hour
When stars glitter,
The prelate asks for silence
And this is obeyed by all the men.
They fall down onto the ground,
The prelate looks grimly at the heavens.
And incantations and summons echo in the dells
The prelate is summoning spirits.

Everyone received an answer to their question,
No one heard from another man what the answer was."


A bit of analysis is in order, though the poem speaks admirably well for itself. The "Holiday" (Holy-day) is unknown, though I like to think that this poem records a general ritual used for any season of Heathen importance. What is striking is that a procession takes place to the Horg or the Hallowed Area at the Trollkyrka (processions into and out of holy places are a common fixture in many pre-Christian religions, and even today, Catholic masses begin with the procession of priests and their attendants up to the Altar) and the attendees are dressed in a striking manner.

They apparently have long, sharply pointed socks, long frocks, and hoods with eye-holes in them. Surely some of this was for the sake of remaining anonymous if they were seen, and for a good fright factor in the same event, but there may be more to it- they would appear quite ghoulish in the right light (or should I say lack of light, or perhaps torch or moonlight) and this kind of costume could have represented a hiding of the human identity and an assuming of a visage intended to convince spirits that they belonged to the spirit-world. The notion of dressing like spirits or putting on masks and disguises at "between times" or holy seasons and rituals is not unheard of in the shamanisms of primal societies, and a yearly distant show of this same practice at Halloween is well known to us all.

Of all the parts of the ritual outlined in this poem, however, I'd be willing to bet that this part- the odd dress- is the most "modern" addition. It's hard to imagine the common people of Heathen times really dressing in this manner at every ritual sacrifice, and indeed, such a thing would have been mentioned. However, as we shall see, there is more happening here than just a ritual sacrifice. The last part of this ritual-program seems to be a genuine working of Seid or Trance-sorcery in which Spirits are summoned and questions are asked of them by the gathering. The odd dress on the parts of the participants makes a bit more sense in that light; these are not merely "the Heathen laypeople", but people performing Seid.

The next parts of the poem are pure poetry- the "prelate", or the rite-master, gives a password and blows a horn three times- very powerful, indeed! The nature of the password is not known, but it's easy to guess what was happening there; he was formally calling to the Gods or the local Spirits by their names or by-names. His horn blasts summon their attention or perhaps their full presence; no doubt one blast is sent to the heavens, the other to the corners of this world, and the last to the land of the dead below.

The sacred fire of their rite and their sacrifice is composed of "nine woods"- nine, the number again and again mentioned in all Heathen lore, is without a doubt the most sacred concept, then and now. The poem ends this portion by saying "this was the old custom". How old? I can assure you that the practices this poem is outlining are as old as the hills.

A straightforward Heathen Blot is described next, a blessing, a sacrifice and sprinkling with blood. The portions of the sacrifice are shared by men and the spirits- this portion of the poem is a marvelous and direct proof that Blots were being done at a very late date, and at sites holy to Heathenry since very ancient times.

The final and most powerful part to me is the "Seid" rite that is detailed- "in the midnight hour", the participants are sent to the ground in silence while the rite-master sings chants or invocations, and each person "received an answer to their question", though "no one heard from another man what the answer was."

In other words, Spirits told each person their answer. We can recall the Sagas here, where the Volva in Greenland receives her answers, on behalf of the questioning public, directly from spirits that she sings to summon as well.


All in all, this gem of folklore is something that every modern Heathen should pay attention to, and more than one modern Traditional Witch should look to it as well, as a pattern for genuine modern day revivalist rites. I believe that there is power in this pattern, and I well know the power of it, as it is a pattern that I have used for many years now in my own practice.