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.

The Giants in the Water

Of all the great natural bodies of power that our Ancestors dealt with on a daily basis, the seas and oceans inspired more awe than most. When we stare at the great waters, we see not just an endless reservoir of power, but the origins of our very lives- the primordial genetic material that was the foundation of all life on land was once in the ocean. There is a great awe and fear of the oceans and seas, because they are containers of immense and mysterious powers, not all of them friendly to mankind.

The elements in their primordial form (which includes the ground under your feet, the water in rivers and oceans, lightning flashing through the sky, forest fires, and winds, among others) are by nature "giantish"- untamed and occasionally dangerous to man. It's impossible to avoid the feeling of awe when you see these hurricanes on satellite imaging, swirling with their massive spiraling arms, moving relentlessly towards land.

There is no evil in them; they are simply expressions of the might of nature itself, so massive and powerful that they move along on their Fated courses, heedless of the tiny specks of life that they blast by. I always compared them to the most massive whales in the deep ocean: massive creatures plowing along through the water, steadily, consuming thousands of pounds of tiny life-forms in the ocean as they go- they don't viciously seek to destroy life; they are simply doing as they do, never thinking twice about it.

We humans are tiny compared to these rightly-called "Giantish" forces. The sheer difference in scale is one of the reasons why we fear them- we know that they are blind and heedless of our lives, in the same way you or I may be blind or heedless of the tiny insects we crush in the grass as we walk by, hiking in the forest or just spending a day in a park.

The Ancestors firmly believed that the Gods- aided spectacularly by the Thunder-God, the greatest enemy of Giants- kept this world, this Middle-Earth, safe from Giantish powers. In light of what is going on right now, the implications of this belief are profound. The Ancestors dealt with disastrous weather-patterns and natural disasters just like we do, and one could say that they suffered worse from them (in a way) because they didn't have the networks of preparedness and response that we have.

So why were they so happy to point out how "safe" the Gods made the world? Because without the Gods, the elements and the other Giantish forces- deeper and more destructive than we could imagine- would overwhelm this world. Old Redbeard is a skilled killer of Giants, but even he can't destroy them all- there has to be a 1% that make it through, and have time to wreak havoc before their Fated course ends.

I think the Ancestors were aware of the fact that it could always be worse. And one of the reasons why it wasn't as bad as it could be is because powerful sentient forces, who care for mankind as their kin, were faithfully performing a Fated task of preservation.

There is one more element to this equation: the fact that we are literally in what the Ancestors described as "A wind age, a wolf age"- the final age of the world in which the decline of things was higher than it ever had been, and even the elements were possibly more destructive. "The wind age" refers to the destructive force of the winds, and in a way, the elements, but the "wolf age" refers to the destructive force of greed in human beings.

As I have said countless times, and as I believe the prophecy in Voluspa makes clear, the world is not destined to get better, in these last millenia. This makes our current age a time when the greatest heroes can (ironically) be produced. We need not just the support of the Hammer-God and his family; we need human heroes who are ready to perform what seems to be a lost cause: the cause of preserving as much as they can in the face of blind, naked natural fury.

The Gods and the Heroes go to the final battle of this world in full knowledge that they will be meeting their doom. Who does that? Beings that know that the ends are not the important part. The important part is that they will make a stand, come what may.

Help the soon-to-be victims of this storm in whatever way you can; even tiny help, help that seems pointless in the face of so much misery, is heroic. You can join me in sacrificing to the Gods for final aid and rescue for as many people as can be helped, but in this case, in this age, what we need are strong people, not just strong Gods.

I work in the Therapy field, and I face a lot of misery in my clients every day. I see cases that anyone would describe as hopeless and unthinkably depressing. When I first started, I (like most people) had the odd "savior" complex that led me to get overly concerned for my clients- but in the end, you have to realize that we don't write the story of other people's lives.

I talked to a friend and colleague of mine about my concerns regarding getting too attached to clients, and he told me one of the most amazing things anyone has ever told me. What he told me was a quote (horridly enough) drawn from a recent movie starring Kevin Costner, called "The Guardian" or something like that. But the quote was very relevant. What do you do when you see so much trauma, and you know you can't help everyone?

My friend said that in one scene of this movie, a young Coast Guard member asked Kevin Costner's character (who apparently plays a more experienced Coast Guard life saver) what he does when he faces a situation where many people are drowning, and in need of help. How do you know who to help or save?

Kevin Costner's character said this:

"I swim as hard as I can, I swim as fast as I can, I save as many people as I can, and the sea takes the rest."

At first I hadn't realized the full impact of what my young colleague had told me. Then it hit me: Fate had spoken here. Fate was the final answer. In the disguise of a pop-culture movie reference, I believe that an ancient and important wisdom was transmitted, then and there.

In our lives, however we help people, we do the best we can, and Fate takes the rest. The nobility in us- that nobility that does not die, and will survive to be reborn in the regenerated universe- does the best it can, regardless of the darkness of the situation.

Thoughts on the Future of Revived Paganism

Okay, I've decided to write a series of letters to discuss the future of revived Paganism. Understand that I have to make a distinction here between "Witchcraft" in the traditional sense- which is really a wide-ranging term including many forms of sorcery, all of which can (and do) exist despite the culture that surrounds them. Some cultures make it hard to be a sorcerer or practice occult/sorcerous arts, but still, they persist. Traditional Witchcraft, in the true modern sense, is a phenomenon that existed during Christian times, and now exists in the skeptical/scientific post-Christian era.

I don't worry too much about the "future" of Witchcraft; it will always remain, no matter how small or diffuse it is, because people will always seek out fringe elements of spirituality or the occult, regardless of society or culture's mainstream beliefs.

But what of "revived" Paganism, such as Asatru, Celtic Reconstructionism, Hellenism, Romuva, and the other revived Indo-European Pagan models? They have adherents, good lore and sources, reasonably strong structure as far as rituals and notions of sacred days and seasons: they have all they need to induct newborns and converts into their communities, and all they need to marry people and bury them, with rites. These revived faiths are pretty much complete faiths, with one exception: they all have pretty small populations of adherents.

So where do they go from here? A small population is bad news, for many reasons, but chiefly because small numbers means "little known", even in this day and age of the internet. "Little known" means "little or no political and legal recognition", and that means no support from anyone or anything else other than whatever few people (if any) you have near you that also practice your faith or believe as you do.


The Individual's Hard Road

Revived Pagan faiths are strongly distinct from "mainstream" Pagan faiths- they cannot enjoy the same sort of "recognition" given to Wiccans, for instance, because most (rightly) don't want to be associated in the public mind with Wicca or New-Age religious movements. They tend to be more insular and even ornery about their beliefs. Couple these things with the fact that they are all strongly individualistic, on the level of person and their right to believe as they will, and quite defensive at the level of community (assuming that they are lucky enough to have communities) and not willing to even entertain changing their beliefs or ways, even if it means making them closer or stronger with other members of their own revived cultural movement. I'm not saying people should need to change religiously, but an attitude change towards cooperation with others would certainly be a powerfully good thing.

Two Asatruar groups will like one another well enough (sometimes) but will become very annoyed with one another if either side imagines that the other is criticizing how they do things or believe or worship. Within umbrella movements (like say, the Troth) you get certain points that all Troth Hearths agree on- such as their universalist policy towards membership- but beyond that, very little. I'm not saying that such stances as this "radical independence" is bad, but it does expose the Asatru movement as a whole to a special weakness. It makes the Asatru movement unable to spread fast or far, unable to advertise itself or present itself as a cohesive and attractive alternative faith for people.

Individual groups or people may try, in some ways, to display their beliefs, in the hopes that "like minded" others will be attracted to them, but the nature of cultural Pagan revivalism is such that it does not have much of an "evangelical" spirit. They don't produce missionaries. There is no sense- or very little sense- that the Revivalist Pagan movement as a whole has a greater role to play in the world, or that it could make the world a better place: to be clear, most revivalists/reconstructionists have a more selfish stance on their faith, defensively viewing it as "their own thing" or "their subculture", and once they have gained some standing within it, they scorn to share it with others.

If they have communities, they either attempt to keep communities small, or watch them break up with selfish in-fighting if they get too large. Even the umbrella organizations have a history of constant fracturing through growth and bad blood. It seems that the egos of the luminary members of all these movements have caused a great deal of trouble- and all the while, the idea that Asatru or Hellenism or any of these reconstructions could provide a very wide audience of people with a positive, life-affirming, nature-reverent, and philosophically sound polytheistic life-path was lost.


The Paradox

There was an interesting occurrence back in the 1800's, in the United States: man named Joseph Smith claimed that he saw Angels and had the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven given to him and two close friends. He made a lot of claims, and a rather devoted cult following sprung up around him. They created their own community- the first Mormons- and after a lot of persecution, fled the settled east of the country, crossed the Great Plains en masse, and settled in Utah. They built a city, and prospered. Today they are well known, and while they are reviled by most mainstream Christians, that doesn't matter: They have millions upon millions of members, massive stone Temples all over the world, billions of dollars in the bank, and legal protection everywhere in the civilized world.

I don't like cults, and I especially don't like Christian cults, but these people set out to live on their terms- they created a community by giving up on their old lives, believing in a shared vision, and striking out to find a new life, just like the Norse settlers of Iceland did.

Where have the days gone wherein people were willing to make radical changes in their lives, in the name of their beliefs? Revived Pagan movements won't have much of a future until they decide to truly ante up, and do something as radical as say, create a community- a physical community somewhere- for their families. Failing that, the countless splinter groups of people calling themselves "Asatru" or "Hellenist" or what have you can realize that they have a chance to gain the sort of social stability and recognition that will win their children and their grandchildren many freedoms and a better ease in social living than they had, if they could put aside petty squabbles in the name of working together better, wherever they happen to be.

The painful paradox here is evident: only brave, strong, self-willed individuals are going to be attracted to faiths like Asatru or Hellenism or CR, the sorts of people who have the guts to make a clean break from the previous religious or social conditioning they've undergone, to take such a radical new stance in life. And those very same people don't tend to play well with others, suffer fools much, or deal well with seeing the high-quality religious reconstructions they've worked so hard on being "diluted" or defamed by lesser individuals.

The very sorts of people you'd want in a Pagan organization are also the sorts of people that don't do "organization" well! This same population also (lamentably) tends to give us people who are excellent leaders, people of vision, but then, the inevitable happens: good quality followers emerge to follow them, and these "leaders" don't want to share power or abandon their little fiefs to work with others.


SPQR

Radical individuality is, as I have pointed out in many writings, not even a perspective of the Ancestral faiths, which were based foremost on the bonds of community, the well-being of city-states and settlements, the honor of families and clans, and the like.

Not everyone in ancient days was a "hero", a famous "known name" in the bard's tales, and even heroes had family matters to deal with. A strong sense of "clan ties" or family obligations was first and foremost on the minds of all people of honor. With peoples like the Greeks and Romans, even a sort of "National identity" began to form, as they began to compare the merits of their larger culture-patterns with those of foreign people they came into contact with. Some of the greatest men in the standard canons of western literature and history were honored for what? For sacrificing much in service to Rome- to Rome- the Republic or Empire as a whole, with all its variety and massive population. They were honored for being loyal, in their own ways, to an idea that was much larger than any one person or small community.

And Rome flourished with men like this, driven in this way. Another group that arose in Rome flourished likewise and for similar reasons- the fledgling Christian church had a sense of a goal and a spirit larger than any individual. For the settlers of Iceland, the goal they all bonded together to achieve was freedom from political compulsion and the tyranny of kings that were growing too powerful for the good of the people of their homelands.

It's certainly noble to honor the Ancestors' notion that "orthodoxy" should never be forced onto people: I myself couldn't agree more. The Ancestors, within their communities, were orthorpraxic and very much against "invading the heads" of other people, so long as those people held themselves up to whatever social standard was needed for the good of the community. I think this is a great model for us now- but the implications of the model have changed in our modern day.


You Must Be Worthy To Win

Whether or not many people will see it, we have threats and problems that the world has never seen before. What passes for "spirituality" in the mainstream has become shallow and materialistic, and in response, fringe lunacy has arisen- the politics of fundamentalism- which is just a manifestation of the hysteria one can expect when a movement comes crashing down, or begins to change so much that it is no longer what it was. This is happening to mainstream Christianity, though the process will not be done tomorrow. It will take another few centuries.

Islam will take longer, Gods help us- but all religious movements that are in violation of the basic truths of life cannot last forever. What are those truths? I list them as follows:

-The truth of animism and the need to live in this world of natural resources with wisdom and moderation;

-The truth of sacred reciprocity with self and community and world;

-The truth of qualified struggle between opposites,

-The truth of the natural sacredness and diversity of the spiritual world;

-The truth of the dignity of human life above and beyond what people may believe or what culture they may be born into.


If any religion or movement denies even one of these points, it cannot last. It will not last. It is not enough for an entity to win a culture war and set itself up as a dominant faith in an area of the world; it must be worthy to win, if the victory is to be lasting. How will we know who was worthy? We can see the organic spiritual beliefs of primal peoples all over the world that were NOT washed away in the crimson tide of revealed religions, and see that their beliefs were good and strong from the dawn of history, up till either this very day, or until the time came that they were destroyed. We will know worth in how they last, in how they endure.

And our Ancestral faiths have endured- through a firestorm of radical social change, and historical pogroms of annihilation. Why should we be drawn to them now? Because something of worth still exists, and has been passed down to us, something that was never defeated or forgotten.


We Don't Inherit the World From Our Parents: We Borrow It From Our Grandchildren

And what is the future of revived Paganism? Its future will be precisely what you see now, if we do not change in some manner- and when I say "change", I don't mean a minor change that is washed away in a few days. Something- I myself don't know quite what- has to change, a "second order" change as cyberneticians say- for our revived Pagan movements to be healthier and larger in the future.

No, an "evangelical" spirit isn't required, though some Asatruar- one famous umbrella organization- has actually embraced just that. But they are alone; and despite the fact that I am still skeptical of their route to the future, I do agree with them on a few important points- we- all of us modern Pagans- need land and resources at our disposal, social and legal recognition, and education for the public.

If that means appointing boards of people to handle matters, so be it. These sorts of "panels" or "boards" can be non-sectarian; but someone has to break us out of the dark ages of our living rooms and campsites and get us all into phone books, into minutes at town hall meetings and sessions of legislation, and someone has to represent us to the public.

Who is the "us"? It isn't any one community or another, but a new idea that we will have to embrace if we will have a future of greater religious fulfillment, and life fulfillment. It is the idea (to use an example) of "Asatru" or "Heathenry" which stands above all sects or "types" or communities or Kindreds. The same can be said for the idea of "Hellenism" which stands above this or that church or temple or deme. This idea doesn't ask for obedience to any doctrine, or for people to do blots or sacrifices one way or another. It doesn't ask for the worship of any God. It just asks that we work to display, protect, and solidify an identity to the world that can have the recognition and legal protection it deserves, and which our grandchildren will need.

And honestly, I believe the world needs Revived Paganism. It needs alternative spiritualities that can fan the flames of spiritual life higher in people, and which can bring people into a new paradigm of living in this world which is better for the world and all of the living beings in it.

As Surely As Wyrd Weaves The World

As surely as Ravens come to feast
After the red rain of battle,
The spirit of me sees with one glaring eye
The truth beyond deception.
I can make crimson cuts on wood,
Manifesting the Runes of power
And shift my shape like Odhinn,
Master of sorcery,
Kin as I am to those who work in the night,
Beyond the boundaries of villages.


As surely as thunder's booming voice
Follows lightning's sharp lash,
The spirit of me wields a hammer
Against the enemies of Gods and men.
I can split the sky with my will
To smite wicked beings,
And make whole a slain animal
With my own hands,
Kin as I am to those who live and die
So that others may live.


As surely as rain falls out of dark skies,
Slaking the thirst of fields,
The spirit of me raises sharp antlers
To defend the generous land.
I can speak to the wights of mounds and trees,
Wander into worlds unseen,
And I know the number of bristles
On every boar's back,
Kin as I am to every beast that wanders every land
And swims every sea.

The Feast

I see a broad, huge, richly decorated feasting hall; I hear beautiful music, and I see countless people, men, women, children, all wandering about, laughing, talking, eating, and drinking. I've always been here; how I experience the hall has changed, of course- from the time of what I imagine are my "first memories" to now, much has changed in how I view things. But the hall has always been the hall, and its noble company has remained, in peace, for all time. It's a good place to be.

Strangely, however, there are a group of people who have turned their backs on the hall, and stand with their noses in the wall. They are in the shadows, in the corners, and they refuse to turn around, because they don't think they can; to exist, for these people, means to face one way only. They've actually forgotten that their bodies work in other ways beyond the ability to stand rigid, facing a wall. People at the table make jokes about them from time to time, but most just ignore them. They ignore them because (as they know from experience) trying to reach these people is like trying to befriend the wall.

These strange men and women stare at the wall, their eyes focused on a few inches of wood-grain, shouting over and over again that the grain right in front of them is "all there is". A beautiful hall? A company of people too large to imagine? Neverending sustenance? It's just a few yards from the backs of their heads, but it might as well be ten thousand leagues away.

When one of the serving girls tries to tap them on the shoulder and get their attention, they believe that the sensation is meaningless, just a flutter in their veins or a madness in the mind. The music doesn't reach them either; it's all around them, but they can only experience it as meaningless combinations of sound that they imagine simply occurred spontaneously one day, long ago, and which has no source in any sort of intelligence or creativity. The music would soothe them; it would remind them of their true home- but to these people, those sounds are a cacophony of confusion.

The food in the hall will never run out, and the music won't stop; the drink flows forever, too. I don't know where it all came from, but I know I'm glad to be there. I don't know why it should be this way, but I'm glad it is. I'm partly sorry for the people whose noses are in the wall, turned in bitter shadow, and I'm partly mystified by them. What has great Fate woven for them?

If you ask me what I think now, before I'm drunk on the sweet mead that the serving girl just brought me, I'd say "fear". Fear keeps them in their corners. Fear of being mocked by others, fear of being "wrong" about things, fear of having to admit that there is a majestic reality that can't be explained in terms of a few inches of woodgrain. Fear of a majestic reality which they have no choice but to participate in, and not always on their terms.

Later, after I'm heated by the drink and sliding under the table, I'll say "foolishness". No fear could be strong enough to keep me from this feast.

An Old One-Eyed man always sits up at the head of the table. That single eye of his has a way of drilling right through you, but his jokes are the best I've ever heard. His advice is great, too.

One day, as I was stuffing myself on the roasted pork at the table, (which goes great with the seasoned apples) he told me something I'll never forget. He said: "Beliefs about the world are fine, but not nearly as fine as letting them go when they get too small- or when you see how vast and mysterious the world really is. It's wisdom to leave open the possibility that the world is more amazing than you think. The biggest fools I know are the people who refuse to accept a drink from the inexhaustible cup of possibility. Life is a feast for the wise, but a wall for most others."

We're on an express elevator to Hel- going down

Every day of your life- whether good or bad,
Is one less day you will have to live.
It sounds grim, but it's important;
You aren't going to live forever as you are now.
Some of you who read this now may live many years more.
Hel's servants are already brewing the beer
That some of you may be drinking only a few weeks from now.
What you owe to Skuld-
That debt you owe to life for how you've lived-
You are going to pay it; we all are.
You'll pay it years from now, or weeks from now,
Or days from now. And days are passing rapidly.

Fear will profit you nothing: we don't write the stories of our lives.
You won't live a moment beyond your Fate-woven doom;
It was woven quite a long time ago.
You can live well between now and your walk down the Hel-way,
Or you can live in shame,
Pursuing meaningless goals and wasting more time.
Do what you need to do, today. Do it tonight.
Swear to do it before you see another sun set.
Now is the time to do what your heart says is right.
There may not be another time.

We have arisen into the light of a human life,
But we are quickly falling back again into Hel's shadow.
A blessed few, heroes all, will remain in light,
And their glory will be in everlasting memory.
But the vast crop of men and women,
They will come to rest in the deep,
As quiet and conforming in death as they were in life.
It's all the same to the worms, but not the Gods.
Hero or common man, we are all falling quickly away to Hel.
Don't deceive yourself.
Now is the time to live, love, be truthful, be brave,
To defy the liars, the wicked, and the foolish.
There may not be another time.

From a Heathen World to a Christian World: Can Universal Morality Work?

Hail the Sig-Father here, at summer's beginning! I am happy to be back, writing at Cauldron Born, after my long hiatus. And for my return, I have a topic that I've spent a lot of time researching, and which I'm sure interests most of my readers- the realities behind the shift from a Pagan, clan-centric and locally-focused world towards a Christian world with large concentrations of political power and a focus on "nation".

How did this occur? Why did it occur? There have been many reasons given for the "triumph" of Christianity over native faiths. Christians tend to use the fact of their religion's "victory" over native religions as a sign of the rightness of their cause- but beyond questionable metaphysics, I think most people have realized that other social realities stacked up to give Christianity the power to succeed as well as it did. I've done a bit of reading on the subject, and I am preparing to show my findings and discuss them.

But before I can do that, let me assure you that I will not take the tired, boring route that most modern Pagans take- such as "the evil kings converted, and forced their people to convert" and the like. While the conversion of kings DID have a lot to do with it, there were deeper things occuring in society that aided the process of conversion. So, you can expect a more thoughtful analysis from me, in the next few days here.

Before I get to that, I'm going to do something strange- I'm going to start talking from the end, not the beginning. I'm going to take a few minutes here today to look at the "end process" of Christianization and ask a few salient questions.

To state it simply, long ago, the world was changing. One of the things that I discovered (and will report later) is that Pagan religious beliefs thrived in an environment that was socially and politically more decentralized- in the time before "kings" that took control of entire national regions (like the Kings of Norway) there were countless small local kings, and the people under those kings kept their own concentrations of culture, folk-society, and local customs alive in a single local area- a collection of farms, usually, or a small communal center. This is the place where Pagan religion thrived, among a small group of related families, who worked and lived alongside one another.

When "National Kings", aided by the new Christian religion, began to take power, they concentrated their power on courts that were in one place in their lands, and all of their new subjects no longer looked to their local regions for their "center"- they looked to a faraway King's court, and sent their money and their allegiance there. Those who became Christian looked to a faraway "Rome" for the Pope and the power-center of their religion, or to a faraway Bishop's cathedral, which was always built in a large city somewhere, far from the realities of the rural village life.

New technologies and ideas were coming into these lands, and the structure of society was being fundamentally changed. THIS was the central and main reason why Paganism was thwarted- it could not find a place to exist when the small-clan or family-centered group, the small village or township, was no longer the "center" of social life and power. Paganism was and is the religion of groups of kin and their sacred bond with their land. It is the religion of the ground and sky, and the bonds between people who know one another and care for one another.

The world was changing. The old tribal ways, the old way of the small kingdom was giving way to the age of the nation-state, to the age of all power being concentrated in the hands of a few, backed by a particular religious authority that would accept no competition on the spiritual level, and indeed, it could not accept competition; one of the central tenets that bound people to their king was religious; the King was consecrated by the Pope and Bishop as a righteous ruler under God. People have to believe in that God before they'll accept the hegemony of the King to the fullest, greatest extent.

These changes allowed for "Europe", as we know it, to come into existence. Old Europe was not "Europe" in any way we usually think of it; Old Europe was a place of mind-boggling cultural diversity and decentralized power. The Romans gave us the first taste of what massive power-concentration was like; they gave us the first nation-state in the West. Christianity was able to use the infrastructure of faded Rome to build it's own machine, and indeed, this is what happened. Had the Roman empire never succeeded, the Christianization of Europe might not have succeeded with the speed in which it did. The Romans laid down the template; Christians and Kings simply stepped into the vacant seat of power which was left after Rome crumbled.


Now, this brings me to the point I'd like to make with this post. I'd like to post a letter I sent to a friend here, in which I question whether or not a "nation-state" world, complete with a standardized morality for everyone in it, is actually as good or as valuable as we think. On one hand, the idea would seem to have some value- to look beyond tribal divisions and see all other humans as people of value, whose dignity shouldn't be violated, and to seek a world of peace, not a world of glory-seeking and constant tribal conflict. Some would say that this was part of the "good side" of Christianity- that the Christian social system was based on mutual love and respect for other human beings, and that this moral imperative crossed the divisions of tribe and clan.

But the real question here is not "was it good"? The real questions are these: Does it violate something essential in human nature to destroy local and individual cultures? Is it possible to create "one world" of morality and governance? As useful as it may seem to give everyone the same religious customs and morality, is such a thing desirable and possible to the bare-bone realities of human nature itself?

These are big questions. As Nietzsche said, we must question the value of the things we value- if we want to consider ourselves really moral, we have to know that the things we value truly have value, for there is much room for deception and other problems when it comes to custom and tradition, especially if those customs and traditions, put in place so long ago, began from a position of error. In my thinking, if human nature is soundly against something, then no matter how nice it sounds, or what good effects it may have in the short term, in the long term, it will fail.

Has the Christian social system failed Europe? And the Western world? Some say it has. I'll discuss that in a coming post.

Anyway, here's my letter:

* * *

The real question is this:

Does a universal morality, and the "world society" it creates, really work? Does it reflect a necessary truth about humankind, that we can use to better ourselves, or does it cross a line in human life that fails?

Last night I told you that tribal Europe was a somewhat dangerous place- and so it was. I told you that incoming religions- like Christianity- brought a new morality that took people beyond tribe and clan, and toward the new idea of "nation state". I told you (rightly) that "Europe" as we know it wasn't possible without this "across the board, boundary-crossing" morality.

But does it work, ultimately? We know it "worked" in the short term, even though dangers still existed and wars were certainly still a reality. I'm talking about on the level of the individual and the family- does it work?

Are humans meant, by nature, to be small-group dwellers, with a local moral focus, and local moral support? The earliest human societies were small tribes; that's a simple to see fact. Small tribes support and protect one another; they have their own troth or customs, they have their own ideas about how to live in this world.

Do we lose something when things get "really really big", such as the nation-state experiment that was started 1700 years ago? Organized warfare to the scale we know it was unheard of before this time. Pollution that could wreck the world was unheard of. That's two things I can think of that haven't been good developments. But what about the fact that you could expect people to be loving or forgiving if you traveled to a faraway Christian country? Surely that's worth something.

And I think it is worth something. But my question for you and for myself is: as nice as an idea may be, will it work- can it work- if it goes against something essential inside of humanity?

If we were meant to be tribal, meant to be focused on a clan/local group of people, and meant to take care of one another more (instead of allowing "the laws of the land" and "universal morality" to do our jobs for us) and if we were meant to express our individuality more than we do now, then our present system, positive though it may be in some ways, will never bring us where our hearts want to go.

I don't know. I have days where I'm tribalist all the way, clan-centric, but on other days I wonder if the "play nice world" can't also work. I don't know. In the end, I know how much madness is caused by globalization, and I shy back towards the family and friends group- because it's the only place I've ever known peace.

* * *

I've grown weary of attacking mainstream religious values based on what they believe. I'm interested now in dialogue regarding whether or not what they believe is sustainable in the face of human nature itself. If we want a "world that works", we have to stop subjecting ourselves to normalization stories that are contrary to what we know and feel on the deepest level about ourselves and about humanity.

But this goes further (and comes closer home) than a "world that works". This is ultimately about "lives that work"- because our real world is our home, our family, and our minds. Those are the places and the people that make up the realities of our everyday life. We have to have peace there. If we have peace there, and those around us also do, then our community will work. If communities have that, then that region will work. The "world that works" starts and ends nowhere else but right here, in me, and right there, in you.

Look at Asatru today- how does it work? On the local, small level of Kindred. Tiny communities, all over, doing things their own particular way. Their own Troth, their own ways, harmonious with one another. They don't look to distant cities and buildings for guidance; they look to one another. They look for support and protection to one another. THAT is a community in the best sense of the word. THAT, I feel, is what so many people lack. This structure for modern Heathenry neatly and perfectly reflects the social and religious structure of the very old times. Does Heathenry succeed for so many because it answers longings that are embedded naturally in their souls?

Bear in mind that my discussion in this letter has been about Christianity and Paganism as social systems- not religious systems. As religious systems, they have other realities that need closer inspection. But I will say this- in Heathenry or Asatru, you can't separate the religion from the community, because the community- the bonds of friendship, of work, of protection, of marriage, of procreation, of Troth- all of those ARE religious concepts. The Heathen social system and religious system are impossible to dis-entangle.

I look around at my world today- which is the end-product of the Christian social system- and I see so many people, everywhere, struggling hard (some unconsciously) to return to a more "local" focus on things- they want their own individual expression of sacredness; they want their own close friends group to be with, they don't want to be forced to accept cookie-cutter identity.

I suppose humans have always fought for personal identity, but never so hard as now. In our new secular world, boundaries have been lifted- the sky is quite literally the limit. Self-definitions can now rest on far more variables than ever before. Christianity as a social system is no more- Christianity only exists as a religious system now, and it has been forced to take a seat on the sidelines of society, along with all the other religions. A secular social system is in place, and in the west, this is a new development.

Most Christian denominations don't like this fact. They rail and struggle against it- when the courts of law remove their Ten Commandments displays, churches begin picketing. When establishments that perform services in violation of Christian morality are legally allowed to hold shop, picketers come and groups are formed to fight the law and change the law. Christianity, as a whole, was spoiled for 1700 years, as it was allowed to not only be a religion but a social system. Now, it has been reduced to a religion. From Popes to Ministers, this does not sit well.

As much as many fundamentalist Christians will tell you that they don't want to force Christianity onto anyone, and that it is a "choice", and so on, the reality is different; they want to influence laws and legislate their own form of morality. They are not content to be just a church were people come to pray and consider the religious teachings of a Bible or a Minister; they want to be so much more. They want to be present at every level. They want to be the backbone of social life and government- and they will use harsh tactics to get what they want.

I support the secular social system, but I know its dangers. There are things about it I don't like, but that is a discussion for another time.

I'll say what I do think: that the "social experiment" embodied in Christianity in the west seems to have failed. This is not to say that the religion itself failed, but that the social system it promulgated failed, and I believe it failed because humans are by nature not meant to live in nation-states, where the identity of the family and the identity of the local community are lost and the map is just a big set of boundaries with a uniform color and a big-letter label like "UNITED STATES" or "NORWAY" or "RUSSIA" is splashed. We aren't meant to lose our unique spiritual identities in the pews of a Church, believing just as everyone else does- and why? Because a group of men in a faraway land decided that this is how everyone should believe.

We aren't meant to live our lives working single-mindedly in a factory or on a farm, and sending our products out to a faceless, anonymous market, to feed some ruler's war machine or the invisible wheels of an economy that we don't understand, and which never seems to benefit us.

We aren't meant to gaze longingly at some faraway place that most of us will never see, and tell stories about faraway miracles and Gods, and go home dreaming about the "faraway" sacred places that we are told are so important to all humanity. What about the forest right near your house? Doesn't it have the spirits and powers that have helped protect your community since the time of your ancestors? What about the Gods of your fields, or the spirit of the community well or the nearby river that has given your grandparents and their grandparents water to drink?

What about the mountain overlooking your dwelling, where the Thunder God once fought a powerful giant, and killed him, thus saving your land? Don't think that Pagans who converted to Christianity were just happy to stare away to distant Jerusalem or Rome- before long, they had "saints" who had done miracles in their land, or been martyred in their lands, and shrines to those saints popping up in the countryside, where they could be closer to the sacred in their own country. This is the persistence of the Pagan- and human- need to tie the sacred to one's own sacred homeland and village.

This comes down to the sacred being something you can access right here and now. This is how it was, long ago, and how it can be again. This is how (I believe) human nature will make it, again.

Disting

Disting is here. What used to be an ancient gathering of kings and people at holy Uppsala eventually evolved into a market festival, and to this day, its final echoes can be seen in the marketplace of northern countries around this time of year. Disting, for us (and in common with its roots) is "The Assembly of the Disir", the Assembly of all the Ancestral Feminine Spirits that accompany us through our lives, and act as our protectors and true judges.

For my kindred, it's also a time to get together and recharge our bonds in the first really powerful manner in the new year; we call this early time of the year "winter sheltering", and its usually a tough time for most people. The Disir know that we have had our own challenges in the leap from last year to this one.

At this time, along with the Disir our Ancestresses, we blot to Frey, the lord of light and the life-force in the land and sky, to make the ground of our minds fertile for the seeds of the new year to blossom into good fruit, once we've made it further into the procession of days and nights, under the growing sun. It's a good time for eating together and celebrating our friendship in the long cold.

And so many changes have lashed us since Yule! Strong Wyrd powers were at work even before Yule, but things finally came clear, and a new order of things began- for the world, and for our tiny kindred. For each of us, in our lives, a new order began. Our struggle now is to integrate the ideal of "kindred" into the new lives we lead; the new arrangement of forces requires us to redefine our thinking regarding one another, and ourselves. This is life; this is the flux of Wyrd; this is the task of each human being- finding peace while riding the waves of fate.

The art of Wyrd-working requires all of one's attention; if you take even a moment's rest, the great chain of forces that we call "life" rapidly creates so many things you never would have expected, and the shape of life thereafter is filled with many surprises- some good, some not so good. Maybe surprises and variety is the spice of life; at least, that's how some old saying goes. We can't guess life out fully because we are all too intimately woven into it, and the system itself is rather immense. But we can endure the bad and celebrate the good, and we can do that as long as we don't lose heart.

Disting gives us a chance to establish ourselves in the peace of the Mothers and the Lord of Alfheim, enlisting their subtle aid in our road ahead, through the last of the cold. Peace- what a concept! It runs alongside Frith, inseparably. Peace is truly being who you are, and letting the world be what it is, both of you joined in the great ambiance of things working out as they must. Peace and freedom are cousins in this manner; when you can truly just "Let Be", then no force rises to thwart your will, because your will is the same as the working out of things, the flow of life.

It's hard to believe what changes take place sometimes, in life, in relationships, anywhere. Hard to believe. But disbelief- an inability to fully align oneself to the overpowering and undeniable evidence of the senses and the mind- is a rejection of the world, a rejection of wisdom and a rejection of responsibility. It is the last vestige of the dream-life that all Heathens (especially those who enmesh themselves in the mystery of Wyrd) have pledged to leave behind.

Where's real strength? It's found in immediately allying oneself with the reality of Wyrd the moment it strikes and reveals itself, which is of course every moment that arises. You're weak in denial, but strong in acceptance. Disting is a good time to accept what was, what is, and what may be- no matter how strange it may seem, or contrary to our wishes.

Change we can count on occurring, no matter what; this moment doesn't need our strategies and excuses; it only needs the full weight of our awareness and honesty. It's easy to fall asleep in the winter; retreat into the warmth of the covers, covering the eyes, covering the good senses while you fade into comfort. But the light is coming, longer days are coming, and a need to go back out into the world, to re-engage. We've had rest and sleep; we have no wish to sleep too long. Disting is the time to accept things that you've been sleeping to avoid.

Time's gone. Time's here. Times are coming. If you drop the foolish word-hoard bits, drop the labels, then time becomes one... and then it becomes nothing. We're not having an experience of days and hours; we are experiencing a majestic mystery, and butchering it with the need of our minds to create labels. Back away; re-enter the stream of organic power which is timeless. This is a way to peace, and wisdom.

I'm not saying that I sit around in full awareness of the timeless at every moment. I'm not saying that I'm 100% free of labels and words; no, I'm as human as the next person; I'm just a human who has seen the face of a certain sort of wisdom that directs me to occasions wherein I may escape the tyranny of "concept" and "word", and live freely.

That wisdom and that sort of freedom has a way of shining out into your so-called "everyday" life which lies supposedly "outside" of your practice and beliefs and spiritual aspirations. It shines into my life, and even here, to this blog, and it leads me to preach the good word of the Heathen witchery and mysticism that I preach. It's worked for me; It worked for many before me; I know it can work for many others, though whether anyone else will dance to my tune, I have no idea. What matters for me is that I sit in the corner and sing the tune. That is the "shape of things" for me; that is part of my fate.

So here we sit, the world turning as always, fate spinning, and the "things happening" all hammering us and caressing us by turns. That is the way of things, but the way of wisdom is deeper still. Wisdom's reality is not the same as those "things that happen", and yet, it's not different from them, not separate from them. Wisdom is the ultimate truthful perspective on what we've come to call "common things".

Disting is the time of renewal of strength amid the winter-cold. Frey quickens the land to get it ready; the secret heart of hidden seeds begin to radiate warmth. I'm not talking about just the seeds in the ground; I mean the seeds in our minds, whose every moment of growth and bloom is what we call our "thoughts" and our "feelings" and our "ideas" and our "urges".

I hope that the Good Lord of the World will warm the ground within each of you with good life-force, so that nourishing and helpful fruits grow, and I hope that the Disir will protect you. While you sit safely in your dreams, I hope they will come and serve you the mead of inspiration.

May our bonds with the Gods and one another never fail, no matter how cold it becomes. In the dark land is the hidden seed of life, which can sleep for ages before rising in strength.