Jesus, Buddha, and Asatru: A Comparison

In the modern world, isolation is not a luxury that anyone can afford anymore. To be honest, I don't think "isolation" is something that you can find, no matter where you look- if we believe in Wyrd, then we must admit that there's no such thing as isolation- no matter where you live, where you go, what you think or do, you affect the world, and are in turn affected by it. No man or woman is an island. We can dream of the "good old days" when our ancestors lived off on their own lonely stretches of coast or their own forests, safe with one another, helping to support one another, and living in the peace and frith of our communal ideal, but such a dream may only exist in our heads. In the "old days", people were no less bound up in each other's fate and well-being as they are now.

Even people living distantly from one another affected one another; they still do. The noble men and women who left the politics on the Scandinavian mainland for the peace of Iceland's shores found that they couldn't leave the mainland behind at all- eventually, politics and religious conversion from the mainland found them.

Since we do not and cannot live in isolation, we have to be aware of what other people in the world think and believe. Their thoughts and beliefs will affect us, just as ours will affect them. Comparative religion and religious dialogue is good for this- it helps us to situate other people in our heads, helps us to understand what they think, and by comparison and contrast, we get a clearer picture of what we think. I'm sure they get the same gift of clarity from the contrast.

For this article, I wanted to compare three religions- Christianity, Buddhism, and Asatru. The real point of this article is to demonstrate the clear differences between two of the world's largest "revealed" religions (Christianity and Buddhism) and Asatru, which is an organic faith that lacks any historical founder. It is interesting to note the "organic" seeming elements of Buddhism and how there are clear "marks" of similarity between Buddhism and Asatru- but this can't be surprising, considering Buddha himself grew up in a Polytheistic and animistic Brahmanic religious world, among Vedic peoples who were of Indo-European extraction like our ancestors in Northern Europe.

Buddha certainly would have known of the Thunder-God who slew giant monsters and defended the world with his powerful thunder-weapon; he simply wouldn't have called him "Thor" or "Thonoraz"- he would have called him "Indra". As a side note, one of Indra's names- PARJANYA, comes from the same Proto-root "PERKWAWNOS", which refers to the "divine striker"- we get our word "percussion" from this root, and the names "PERKUNAS" and "PERKONS", and PYERUN, names by which the Thunder-God was known in Northern and Eastern Europe, also come from that root. The ancient idea of the Thunder-God fighting and killing a world-threatening dragon or serpent (such as Thor fighting the Midgard Serpent) is captured in Indra's mythical defeat of a great dragon. Interestingly, all of these Thunder Gods had the oak tree as their sacred tree, and the clearly related Proto Indo-European root word *PERKWU means "oak".

Buddha may not have died a worshipper of the Gods, for he gave up worshipping them after his "enlightenment", but he was born a worshipper, born among the warrior caste to a noble family who worshipped the same Gods that the Indo-European peoples across the map worshipped.

Buddhism and Asatru have little in common on the moral level, but it is a fact that Buddhism was the brainchild of a man who was of the Arya people, a cousin Indo-European people who invaded and settled in Northern India.

Buddhism's metaphysical structure still has undeniable Indo-European mystical elements- aside from the existence of Gods in the various Buddhist heavens, (Indra, the Thunder God, is still believed to be a "Dharma protector" or a protector of Buddhism today- yes, in Buddhist belief, the Thunder God actually converted to Buddhism!) the Buddhist cosmology has a "sacred mountain" (Mount Meru) that stands at the center of the cosmos or world, with hells or underworlds at its roots, heavens on its top, and the "continents" that make up this world of humans and animals around its middle. This is easily compared to other related Indo-European ideas of a "cosmic axis", such as the World-Tree of our own ancestors.

As many of the ancient Indo-Europeans believed in the possibility of rebirth, so the Vedic Arya peoples certainly came to believe it, and Buddha believed it. Buddha pretty much departed from most of the other "central" tenets and worldview-features of his people, however. His religion and philosophy was centered around a path of great introspection and meditation, and had world-renouncing or the monastic life as an important ideal. He ditched any notion of "duty" to caste or clan or kin, and instead taught detatchment from such "vain" social ideas.

He also taught complete non-violence, which was a luxury our ancestors in Europe simply couldn't afford. Nor could they (or would they) give up their duties to their clan and kin, or do as Buddha did and decide that the Gods weren't worth praying to.

Though Buddha himself believed Gods existed, he didn't think they could help humans achieve enlightenment or lasting happiness, so it wasn't required that any Buddhist disciple believe in them. To this day, many Buddhists are non-theists, agnostics, or atheists of various stripes, and many people are attracted to Buddhism today because it doesn't require them to believe in a God or Gods.

Now I shall compare these three religions. Asatru is my specialty, so I am able to give a few more details on it, though I think my characterization of the stances of these three faiths is more than adequate. Naturally, I think that Asatru has a better balance of beliefs than either Christianity or Buddhism.

Asatru gives us a grounding in the fellowship of our fellow man, in ancestral troth with the Gods, and in the sacredness of this world, where Christianity carries a disbelief in the Gods and a palpable dislike of this world on its shoulders, and Buddhism is a bit abstract and undefined when called on to name a clear position on these matters of substance.

Asatru gives a social, religious, and mythical structure that doesn't go too far into invading people's natural freedom and creativity, like Christianity's structure certainly does, while Buddhism seems to wander as far from "structures" of thinking as it can. Asatru shares a vision of the interdependance of all things, like Buddhism does, but Buddhism fails to offer back a solid basis for human belief and life, preferring to refrain from such speech and stay with "emptiness".

This all goes back to Buddhism's lack of belief in any sort of "inherent" existance for anything, and its skeptical need to refrain from commenting on things. For many people, that's a comfort. In the most esoteric strains of Asatruar speculation- strains not agreed upon at all (or even recognized) by all Asatruar, there is something to be said for the ultimate essence of humans and other beings existing "free" from everyday labels or limitations- but this is far from an everyday focus for Asatru, as I am sure it was not for the ancestors.

Lack of inherent existence is a fine enough idea, deep enough for esotericists, but most Asatruar need more, and we aren't afraid of the fact of our belief. Maybe (if you're Buddhist) you'll think this is a sign that we are part of the "unwashed, unenlightened masses"- Barbarians in the typical sense of the word. You'd be wrong, but this isn't the place to explain why. I can only quote a great mystic from Germania's later centuries, who said it all with a simple quote that captures the spirit of our cause:

"The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it."

Now on to our comparisons.


The Cross, the Prayer-Wheel, and the Hammer

Jesus was a theist; Buddha an agnostic. Asatruar are polytheists. Jesus believed humans were creatures of God; Buddha did not speculate, and Asatruar believe that all humans are descendants of the Gods.

Jesus taught of a single world corrupted by sin, which is passing away soon to be perfected by God; Buddha taught that the natural world was neutral and indifferent to such labels as "fallen" and "sinful", and that all forces were naturally arisen without the need for any creator, and dependant on one another. Asatru accepts an animistic vision of life in which all powers and forces in existance, animate or inanimate, are sacred and interdependant on one another, and dwelling in a great "web" of relationship through which they affect one another. The outcomes and effects of the forces combining in this web is referred to as "Wyrd", and it is a very central religious and philosophical concept.

Jesus taught the reality of sin against a holy God; Buddha taught a method--the Four Noble Truths/Eightfold Path--to free people of the experience of suffering in this world. Asatru teaches of an over-arching sacred cosmic order that mankind has a place in, an order within which mankind finds his place and a duty or purpose to fulfill. violating that order and failing in those duties, which includes a universal duty to help preserve the safety and well-being of society and of fellow men and women, is wrong or evil action.

Jesus taught resurrection; Buddha taught repeated rebirth (and a way to escape it). Asatru teaches, in common with all Indo-European Paganism, of rest in various "worlds" beyond this one for the dead, including an Underworld where most of the dead go, and a belief that after the current universe-order comes to an end, it will be regenerated and all of the dead will be born again into the new world, to live again. A few spiritually adept, brave, or insightful people find another fate after death, which some believe puts them in a condition of either freedom from these cycles of life, death, and regeneration with the cosmos, or in a state of higher conscious participation with that cycle.

Many Asatruar also believe that the spiritual power and other qualities of a person can be reborn among their descendants, and some ancient lore suggests that certain people are reborn themselves, to live many times within the same universal cycle.

Jesus called people to follow him to find forgiveness and eternal life. Buddha gave the Dharma, refused worship, and never claimed any knowledge of God. He instead offered nirvana (the "blowing out" or extinguishing of delusions that caused attachment, craving, and suffering). Asatru offers the goal of "Frith", which is a powerful sense of lasting peace which comes from discovering "one's place" or "where one belongs", among friends, family, kin, and within the body of nature itself. This ideal requires that people make effort for the good of those to whom they belong, for the land upon which they live, and to endure all things that Wyrd or Fate deals out to them with courage as far as they are able. There are no rewards promised either in this world or the afterlife for virtuous behavior; virtue is seen as its own reward to the noble person.

For Jesus, eternal life is earned through accepting one's sinful nature, asking for forgiveness, and leading an exemplary life following his example as best one can; for Buddhists, Awakening or Enlightenment is the "highest Good" for people, and leads to a lasting state of happiness, though it is a very difficult thing to attain; for Asatruar, the perpetual existence of the "soul" or a "person" is assumed, as the spirit of each being is a natural and perpetual part of the cosmos itself, like any other natural force. The "highest good" for most Asatruar is finding one's place and finding reciprocal peace and happiness with family and kin, which includes the Gods (who are seen as kin) and spirits that live in the natural environment near human beings.

There are esoteric aspects of Asatru, and paths within it which claim that mystical insights can transform a person's spirit, "sacrificing the lesser self to the greater Self" and winning for that person a new and mysterious condition of divine or perpetual being, but these and other related ideas belong to specific esoteric guilds, cults, subcultures, or mystical societies within Asatru, and is not something that most Asatruar concern themselves with.

Those who deal with the mystical or esoteric elements of Asatru might make the claim that the mystical attainments they believe in represent a hidden "highest good" for people, but few would make the claim that all people will be able to achieve these things, whereas Jesus taught that all could be saved, and Buddha's way was for all people, and could lead to enlightenment and happiness for any who accepted his teachings and sincerely practiced.

Feeling and Seeing Wyrd: The Intimate Returning

In Brian Bates' book "The Way of Wyrd", the Seidman Wulf tells his pupil Wat Brand something that can't be repeated enough. He says:

"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."


Brian Bates, speaking through his fictional character Wulf, reveals with this simple and beautiful passage one of the keys to unlocking the majesty of Wyrd. Many people seek for a "magical" cure for the false focus that their eyes keep throughout life; they seek some "sudden stroke" that will shock them into a new state of awareness, or a quick-and-easy method. Others assume that they can never "see" the world in a genuine, new way, and despair. They stop trying, and assume that the vision of Wyrd is something that only other people can have.

Both are wrong. There's no "quick" shortcut to Wyrd-vision, but pretty much anyone can see as Wulf describes above, if they are willing to make effort and lay aside what they think they know for just a moment, and accept possibilities that they have for so long mentally written off as unlikely or undesirable.

The main obstacle people face when trying to actualize the vision of Wyrd in their own lives are the stories they have learned to tell themselves about this reality we share. These stories often tell us how "time" is a great power that moves in one direction only, a great and straight arrow or "timeline", comprised of seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and years which are all absolutely separate and self-existing entities.

This is the myth of time, and I don't mean "myth" in the good sense of the word. This is a story born of half-wisdom which fractures the human mind's ability to feel and see the reality of Wyrd for what it is.

The truth is deeper, but people resist it: there are no seconds and minutes, no hours, days, nor any other division of time, apart from your mind. These names we give to something as silent and omnipresent as what we call "the passage of time" are just that- names.

If you sit still and stop letting yourself think thoughts, stop the ceaseless chatter in your head, the insistent tendency in your mind that leads you to immediately drop labels onto everything, you will discover something important- in that silent space that you may enter, you will see that "time" as you know it ceases to be. If you can hold onto this silence, what you call "past" and "present" will become what they are- the same thing, two labels you once put on an indivisible reality.

Thinking about "time" in terms of seconds and minutes and days and years is just a story we tell ourselves. I'm not saying that if you forget all that you know about seconds and minutes and days that you'll stop aging or the seasons will stop turning. No, those things will always occur; what I'm saying is that measuring "time" with words and labels and ideas of "units of duration" is a human story, and it has a danger.

We humans are forgetful creatures; we invent many things that make our lives easier, or which help us to understand our world in certain ways, then, after a time, we forget that we were the inventors of these things- they become such a normal and well-used part of our lives, that we take them for granted, almost as though they were always there.

In many cases, our creations become our masters, and the oppress us. This is a consequence of forgetfulness- you can see how this works at night in your sleep. Sometimes, you'll dream a very bad dream, a disturbing dream which distresses you greatly. When you wake up, and realize it was a dream, you will feel a great sense of relief. What few people stop to realize is that they were just victimized by the great forgetfulness that marks the reality of many dreams. Often, we are not aware that we are dreaming; we forget our "outer" life and enter into an "inner" life in the dream, which we completely believe is the full reality of our lives.

How strange! Your non-dream life is totally forgotten, completely and utterly, and the dream seems as though it is all that is real, and you feel that you've always simply been there. When terrible things happen in the dream, they impact you greatly; you feel pain, terror, panic, trauma. The relief that follows upon waking is incredible.

Many things in our waking life are not a bit different from this. We often become the sources of our own grief by setting into motion many forces and powers that come back later to haunt us, but we've forgotten what we did so long ago, and so we feel victimized. An old saying goes "it is the doom of men that they forget."

We are each victimized by the ideas that our ancestors so long ago developed about what we call "time". We take for granted that the forward march of seconds and minutes is shooting along, taking our lives from us one second at a time, bringing us closer to inevitable death. But we're wrong. Life's not linear, as much as it may appear that way to the eyes that keep false focus. Life is a great and infinite continuum that is spiralling; it isn't straight, it's round, like the motion of the seasons.

All of our endings are at the beginning, and beginnings are at the end. Look closer at your life. We don't "become" different beings when we grow or mature; we are the same being, moving through a single transformative flow of force. We may think very differently at different stages in our development, and even act differently, but "we" are one ongoing event. Life doesn't begin or end, it is one flow. We are free to divide it up however we like, but our divisions aren't absolute. They are merely relative to our way of thinking. Don't be in such a hurry to decide that your "birth" was the beginning of your life- you have always lived, always existed as a part of the web of Wyrd, and you always will.

Look again. The events of your life aren't scattered across a broad horizon; they all come together here and now. The past is part of the present, it isn't a thing that exists somehow "before" the present. How can powers exist in some "before" state? Such a state doesn't exist. The past is with us now, in the present. That's how it affects the shape of things "now".

This is how we begin to see the web of Wyrd, see and feel the reality that is "more real than real"- we can now begin to strike at the very depths of "what binds us together".

The other day, a good friend called me. She was looking for advice, relationship-type advice. She's a woman in love with a man, but that man and she aren't currently together in a relationship. They were before, but circumstances have placed them apart temporarily, and in the arms of others. But she dreams, nightly, about this man that she loves, and as is the case with many people, she called me for advice. For some reason, most people break down and contact me when their problems become so great than they invade their dream-worlds- and this is fine. When we begin dreaming about things, it is a sign that they have penetrated our inner-lives and our inner worlds to a deep level. The territory of dreams is another working world, another stage of systems and relationships for the Wyrd-wise, so seeking a Wyrd-worker for help at this point is a good move.

When we talked, I looked with my inner senses and saw the web of Wyrd that she and I were just two seemingly separate parts of- and I told her my advice, based on that. My advice was a simple statement of the truth of Wyrd: nothing is accidental. The fact that she decided to call me at that moment, along with the words that came to me to tell her at that moment in the conversation are not random things- they are tied together simultaneously in Wyrd. The power that urged her to call me and what I was telling her as we talked, they were all threads in the glittering and unseen immensity of Wyrd, all acting on both of us.

But there's more. She and I met at a rennaisance fair in Texas. I saw myself again looking at her for the first time, all those years ago, and I saw her in my mind in the many ways I've seen her in various times and places since then. I saw her sitting with her boyfriends, saw her talking to her parents, saw her leaving to go to University, saw her meeting my friends, and I saw how all these things were tied together, my life and hers, the lives of the people in life and my life.

I saw further- I saw the many times and places in which my friends and I prepared to go to that fair, and our excitement at the prospect. I saw all those days of preparation, going back 13 years, long before I ever knew this friend existed. Those days of preparation, the powers that motivated us to want to go to the fair, were tied intimately to my eventual meeting with my friend. If I could have seen with eyes of Wyrd then, I would have seen the face of my friend as an inseparable thing from the excitement I was feeling about travelling to the fair.

I saw even further- I saw myself seeing television shows as a child, and reading kid's books that kindled in me a lifetime love for things medieval and rennaisance. Those forces led me to desire to attend the rennaisance fair in my first year at university, which led to countless expenditures of money and time and travel, and much excitement among many friends of mine. My attendance led to me meeting her.

That meeting led to our friendship, and to her learning about my religion and spirituality, and that led to her calling me when she had these problems and needed advice. Things she and I had done and discussed throughout our friendship influenced her in many of the decisions she made on her own, regarding who she dated and what sorts of relationships she got into. Things I learned from her shaped how I thought and acted in some places.

I could literally sense and feel the invisible "threads" that bound us tightly together, ignoring what we normally call "time" and "space". She and I- and you and I, for you are threaded to me and my experiences just by reading this- and ALL of us, all humans, are bound tightly together in Wyrd. We all affect one another.

I saw my friend and I's past, and I saw how all our days and the events we shared arose in Wyrd. It's not a disconnected series of events; it's a river-course of power and causality, one river, not many puddles. It's a single web of Wyrd, mighty and majestic, in which these many "events" seem to arise as "separate" entities. But they aren't separate.

I told her to pay attention to the totality of her experience- really pay attention to the dreams, and what she was feeling at that moment, and to what I was saying, for these things are all appearances of Wyrd, tiny and momentary manifestations of reality that our minds are scrambling to grasp, hindered in doing so by our lack of wisdom as human beings, our lack of sight. It was no accident that she decided to call me just then, nor that she dreamed what she dreamed, nor that she and her love should be apart, nor that she should have met me. What is it all saying? It's speaking very clearly: it is literally revealing Wyrd to her in full sensory reality. We have to LOOK. We have to put aside our mental chatter and let the intutive messages from Wyrd arise, let the feelings arise, and really see. There is no greater guidance.

So she looked, and I hope she saw- I hope she saw the truth that is always available to her- You won't have peace without telling him how much you love him. This man that you are with now is a good man, but he is not meant to be yours forever; this is a side road that rejoins the main road very soon. You won't have peace until you see him again. Then you will be able to move past him, as you grow and see the world new, for he is not to be yours forever, either. You're young, new at this. There's a lot of this life-thread left. He's your age, but he's even younger, and his confusion won't end for many years.

Yes, the truth is, we must be honest to our convictions and feelings, no matter what. Being honest to how we feel is never wrong; if it somehow hurts others, this is a matter of their inability to accept the honesty offered by another, not a problem on the part of the person being honest. If more people were honest and true to themselves, well, the world would be different indeed. It may be difficult, but honesty is the best road, the road of peace.

If we examine our experiences from this perspective of systems, from this perspective of totality, we can begin to see a larger picture operating, which can contain the keys we need to unlock our enigmas. This is how you begin to "see" Wyrd- pick a starting point in your own web, and see how you relate to it, and how you came to know it, and all the forces and events that connect to it and surround it and you like a web. You can do this with people, with places, or anything. Then, endeavor to understand that these events and forces are NOT separate, nor gone- they are all here and now, still. They are all arising here and now, in the web. If you let yourself carry this exercise out to its great conclusion, you will find yourself in some startling places, and privy to a perspective that might truly help you.

How can we do this? How do we begin to see broader? The path starts here with us, in us. It can begin nowhere else. It begins with the foremost "rule" of soothsaying and Wyrd-seeing: If you know the past correctly and clearly, you can know the future correctly and clearly.

I saw a lot of this friend and I's past, but that past isn't gone. It's here, now. It's exerting so much influence on everything that's happening, here and now. She and I won't ever be apart, and, dear reader, neither will you and I.

I was able to allow my intuition to speak to me, to allow knowledge of things to come to arise in me, where concerns my friend and her situation. I saw- and still see- the dissolution of her current relationship, and her actions to come. It's not very easy, and it takes a lifetime of practice with "going open", and letting your memory reveal to you how connected you really are to so many other people and forces, before you can begin "seeing", with some certainty, the likely events that are to arise.

Sometimes, when we feel "bad" things are going to arise, we ignore it. This is a very human thing to do- we want to take refuge in our own self-doubt; we'd rather think "maybe I'm just wrong, after all, this Wyrd-web is immense and there's plenty of room for error on my part" than to admit that negative outcomes are inescapably going to arise. Even I've fallen victim to this form of denial at times. A point comes when you must stop looking to Wyrd for comfort, and only look to it for truth. And then, you must learn to find comfort in truth, for we must believe, as Heathens, that Wyrd weaves out for the greater good- all that comes to pass is moving the world to its consummation, and to the rebirth and regeneration of all things.

In this sense, you must never be afraid to let go of things- for we know, thanks to our holy myths and lores, that what is good and noble will never be lost forever. In the world that is to come, Hel opens and gives up her dead, all of the noble heroes and ideas and hopes and dreams that had fallen into her darkness, and they come into the light of day again.


I was asked recently if I "sought to transcend this world". This is a common enough question, as much modern Paganism, in line with western misunderstandings of eastern thinking, draws a strong division between "this world" and some other world or worlds that are often considered to be "better" than this one.

As a Wyrd-worker, I can assure all of you that other worlds aren't necessarily any better than this one. Other worlds still have individual beings in them, and even non-human beings have quests, emotions, problems, intrigues, and dis-satisfactions, too. If you have peace with yourself here, you'll have it in any other world. If you don't have it here, being in other worlds won't change that. Wisdom can make a bright and sunny place out of the darkest corners of any world, and this is something you can always rely on.

If we look at the reality of Wyrd, we see that ideas of "transcendence", of "rising above" this world and escaping all the "troubles" here are fundamentally flawed- because there's no way to "transcend" this world.

Why? Because we aren't "in" a world; we are a world. We don't "come into" this world at birth, nor do we "leave" this world at death- we transformed from a deeper part of this world into a human life at birth, and at death we transition back into the world in a new way: into the "Hel" way for most of us, but others attain different conditions. But all those "worlds" or conditions are part of the same reality; they are all parts of the web of Wyrd.

The division between "self" and "world" is merely perceptual- it isn't absolute. The world is not something that is temporary, and which we eventually overcome; it is eternally a part of who and what we are. It too, is part of the web of Wyrd, and we are all tied together by it.

Understanding the nature of the perceptual division that blinds so many people, trapping them in the false idea that they are "cut off" from the world that they perceive as "around" them, is the point of our lives. It's the supreme attainment of Wyrd-Wisdom.

It is the gateway of all wisdom, actually. Once you overcome that perceptual division, you no longer feel isolated, afraid, vulnerable, or alienated. You are at peace, and in a perpetual awareness of your relationship to all forms and beings, and you never feel "lost" again, or "far from home", because this world and this body, indivisible, all that is seen and unseen, IS your one and only home.

If this very Pagan ideal of "reunion with reality through overcoming faulty perception" is a "transcendence" ideal (and some crudely try to describe it that way) then there you have it. I don't consider it "transcendence". I consider it "intimate returning", coming home from a journey that you only ever took in your head. It's waking up from a dream that you had forgotten was a dream.

O God of Earth and Altar

"O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry:
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die.
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide;
Take not thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride."

-Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)
* * *

This hymn/prayer/poem is by a very gifted man, who happens to be one of the few Christians from history that I respect. I've always been partial to this particular poem, especially this verse from it, because I've always felt that it expressed a very universal longing and message.

This prayer could be prayed by Heathens, if you look at it from another angle- who is the "God of Earth and Altar"? Chesterton meant his God, the God of christianity. But Heathens also had "Gods of Earth and Altar"- and how interesting that the God in this prayer is asked not to take his "thunder" from mankind. Thunder? Perhaps Chesterton meant "thunder" in the sense of just sheer power and blessing, but it goes without saying that the Thunderer, the Thunder-God of the Heathens, was also asked for the same sorts of blessings- blessings of rain for crops, protection from destructive and evil powers, and for the protection of families and tribes. The thunder that was heard rumbling in the sky by Heathens was associated with just those things- fertility, protection, and sheer power.

The Thunder God *THONORAZ (Donar, Thunor, Thor, Taranis, etc) was always captured in what myths we have today as the strongest of the Gods, and he was very much a celestial figure, a dweller in the Gard or Enclosure-World of the Gods above. The equal-armed cross, the fire-cross, the swastika, and other similar symbols were symbols of that God's power, the perpetual order of the turning power of the sky, and these symbols are found carved on the oldest of monuments from the Stone Age. The Thunder God is inescapably tied to the earth because of his "marriage" with it, his life-giving rain, and fertilizing lightning.

You can even see how the "cross" has never left the human consciousness as a symbol of power and holiness, even as lately as hollywood- vampires and evil creatures are so often repelled by crosses, in much the same way wicked giants and wights were dispersed by Thonoraz's great hammer and the burning equal-armed solar and sky-crosses associated with him.

This prayer has other dimensions that speak to universal themes in mankind's experience: the desire for a just world, for good rulers and social justice. The God of this prayer is told "our earthly rulers falter, our people drift and die." Even though Christian rulers certainly faltered, the fact of injustice and careless leaders isn't unique to christianity. We can certainly see our earthly rulers faltering today, everyday in the news. We have seen the needless loss of life in many countries, including our own.

To turn to the Gods with our fears and hopes and desires is an activity as old as mankind, and there is a beauty in it. A Fateful and natural bond exists between humans and the Holy Kindreds of the many worlds, and if the Gods are kin to us- which the Lore certainly tells us they are- then we are well within our rights to ask them for help, to discuss our hopes and fears and dreams with them, as we would a cousin, a father, a mother, an uncle, or our friends.

There is, of course, a danger that some people will abuse the bond that exists between mankind and the Gods- that they will look to the Gods only when they have a need. Christians are certainly not exempt from this tendency. We would abuse the Gods in the same way that we would abuse kin or friends if we only spoke to them, sacrificed to them, or approached them when we needed something. Part of the religious life in the Heathen sense of the word is an ongoing relationship with the Holy Kindreds which is similar in almost every respect to the ongoing relationship you have with your human family and friends.

Because "kinship" and "family" is what this is all about. It's also one of the defining factors of humanity, a source of our greatest strength. We are kin to one another, and to the Gods, and all of our kin deserve our company and friendship outside of any idea of what they may or may not do for us.

It's just joyful and peaceful to lift up your eyes and prayers to the Gods, and to look all around and below to see and feel the Godly powers that exist in those places, too. Pure religious bliss isn't hard to come by- it's as easy as walking in the woods and fields and letting yourself be open to the powers all around you.

"The walls of gold entomb us, the swords of scorn divide..." What a powerful line! We may not have literal walls of gold in our houses, but most of us aren't doing poorly- we have all that we need, and sometimes, that can be a tomb. It traps us in a false sense of security that leads us to neglect the awareness we need to have of our dependance on other people and on the Gods.

But this goes even further- walls of gold- or should I say money- are the prison in which the moral life of our world currently languishes. The war in Iraq is about money; those of us who have lost loved ones to that war are sentenced to a prison of grief that is built out of money.

And the swords of scorn- yes, they divide us all. From the forces that divide families and friends, to the forces that divide societies, we all have the capacity to allow our anger, grief, and scorn to divide us from our fellow man. But the Gods intend for human society to work together for a common good, and scorn for our fellows is not just dangerous, it's ungodly. Those who allow that scorn to run wild or who allow selfish, unreasoning scorn to dominate their thinking are doing the work of the giantish forces, the eternal enemies of the Gods, who exist to break down the order of the world.

Chesterton ends this verse with the answer to the problem: he feels that pride- NOT pride in the positive sense, like pride for your loved ones or ancestors or accomplishments, but pride as the power that refuses to allow us to admit our mistakes and refuses to allow us to compromise with others- is the villain.

This sort of pride is based on selfishness, which is the single worst trait that a man or woman can have, from the perspective of a tribe or a society, and it's the worst trait that a man or woman can have from the perspective of Wyrd; we are all part of the web of power that is life and reality. What we do affects the entire web, and we are affected by it. To think only of the good of the self, or to ignore the necessity of reciprocal compromise, is a path to ruin.

Can a God take away the pride of mankind? Chesterton, a christian, may have said "yes". Of course he would; in his belief, there's nothing his "God" can't do. But the truth of these matters is different for a Heathen. The Gods can't take away our pride; they can't be moral people for us, or force us to be good people. They can only set an example for us, which they certainly do with their tireless efforts on behalf of the good of the world-order. Our duty to live up as best we can to that example is what we have.

Despite the failures of people to live up to our duties at times, the Gods aren't going anywhere. There's just nowhere else to go; reality doesn't have "exit" doors. We are parts of reality- this reality, the only one there is- and so are they.

We are all parts of the Web of Wyrd, and there's no leaving that web, through life or death. The Thunderer won't take his blessings from people; despite the fact that our societies in the west once had kings who betrayed their ancestors and broke Troth with the Gods, and who passed laws which forbade the worship of the Gods, leading to a modern world in which most people now are unware of the Gods, the Gods are still with us. We are their kin, and I've always believed that the Gods understand Wyrd or Fate better than we- they understand the dark situations that have befallen us, and even if most of us never worship them again, they will continue their work on our behalf, and will protect us until the end.

Any modern Heathen who has stood in a holy stead and offered a right blot or sacrifice, or drank in a rightful and powerful Symbel, already knows that the Gods are still there. Their many blessings still pour through the body of nature for us and for all living beings. Humans may (through dark turns of events and because of dark powers) get far from the truth about the Gods and the truth about themselves, but the truth will- like the Gods- never abandon us.

Two Different Worldviews: The Arrow and the Spiral

Most people of any intelligence have already studied the various philosophical and theological differences between Christianity and Paganism- and when I say "Paganism" here, I mean Reconstructed Iron-Age Indo-European Pagan beliefs from the various cultures of Europe, especially those we know the most about- the Germanic or Teutonic, the Celtic, the Slavic, the Vedic, and the Greek. As much as Wiccans may be "pagans", they are not reconstructionists, and their religion doesn't truly encapsulate or understand the definitive authentic philosophical features of pre-Christian European civilizations.

The Wiccan "Pagan Worldview", along with most new-age pagan worldviews, accepts an enormous amount of ideas and philosophies that spring from sources other than Ancient Europe. A study of the best scholarship and literature in the field of European and Indo-European Pagan Studies reveals that the true "Pagan Worldview" is easy to understand and revive, in both a very general and even more specific sense, for people who wish it.

What follows such a survey and it's revelations is the need to compare it to the dominant Christian or Monotheistic worldview. This, I have done below.

Read these two "worldview profiles" below, which basically describe what these two worldviews think about the universe, morality, time, and other important features, and decide, carefully, which you agree with more.

For most of you, I already know the answer. In my own life I see that I embody, in every way, the second of these worldviews, the "Indo-European Pagan or Heathen worldview". So do many people I know. I also know people who embody the first of these, the Christian worldview. If you don't know where you belong, read these two broad profiles and decide which has the most features that make the most sense to you.

Every feature of each of these two worldviews can be attested to from so-called "historical" christian/pagan cultures, or religious and philosophical culture-streams that currently exist. "Indo European Pagan" covers many cultures, but the ideas given in the section on "Pagan or Heathen" below are general and common to nearly all Indo-European peoples in pre-Christian times.

No matter how strange or unfamiliar some of the ideas expressed in the "Pagan or Heathen Worldview" section below may seem to you, these were common and attested-to beliefs of countless people for untold ages. Read. Compare. Decide.

And when you decide, decide not just for yourself but for the world- which of these two worldviews is better for the world? Which represents a wiser, deeper way of seeing the world? Which one challenges us more? One of these worldviews is obviously older than the other, but don't let that be your only criteria of selection. Which seems "right" on the gut level?


THE CHRISTIAN or MONOTHEISTIC WORLDVIEW

The Universe is A unique, one-time creation, made by a single God to reveal his glory to his creation. After becoming flawed by sin, the creation awaited and recieved a savior which resolved it back to the creator, and now it awaits the "End" after which time it will be physically perfected and exist in that state forever, never changing again.

The cosmos is vast, but mankind alone are God's chosen, and made most like him. Sin is a moral flaw in man that leads mankind to become self-centered, and ignore God's laws and his will for their lives.

Actions are judged "good" or "evil" based on whether or not they are sinful. God's law, which spells out the actions that are "sinful" and the actions that are virtuous is only revealed to certain human beings of a certain tribe in the east Mediterranean, and all nations are subject to it, whether they've heard of this God or his Laws, or not.

Events that occur in this universe are totally unique; they have never occured before and will never occur again. The focus of this universe is the individual, and the individual's relationship to other human beings, but most importantly the individual's relationship to the creator. Knowing who the creator truly is and what he intends for you, and acting according to that, is wisdom. Truth is available to people only through contact with the revelations from God, which come from a few certain prophets and chosen people who lived at one point in time.

Time is linear, a timeline with past, present, and future occuring in a set and unchangeable order; the first events happened in the past; present events are happening now, and future events will lead up to the end of the world and the judgment and to the perpetual and unchanging order that will follow.

Those who believed in the correct religion and acted according to the "law of God" will be allowed to live again in the new, perfected world forever; those who did not believe in the correct religion or who acted contrary to the "Law" will either cease to exist entirely or exist in a state of suffering forever. Because of this, it is imperative that other people be converted to the truth as it was revealed.

God or the Creator is all-powerful. He made everything out of nothing, and if he desired, the entire creation could vanish back to nothing. He can change any natural law, for he is the creator of natural laws. There's nothing he can't do. Though he could stop them without any effort whatsoever, the Creator allows harmful and hurtful things and events to occur (even to his chosen, and even though the savior he sent has already suffered and redeemed the world long ago) for his own mysterious reasons. Humans either cannot understand the vastness of his godly wisdom, or they are not meant to understand the fullness of his providential plan for creation.

The perception people have that time is linear and each moment unique is based on the fact that our senses are showing us precisely what is there. The human recollection of these events is recorded, preserved, and called "History".


THE INDO-EUROPEAN PAGAN OR HEATHEN WORLDVIEW

The universe is an uncreated continuum that moves through infinite cycles. The Universe was not made by a God or Gods; the Gods are natural parts of the universe, sprung from the same underlying forces that humans and all other living beings spring from.

Being uncreated, the universe in the broadest sense has always existed and always will, though the various shapes and orders within it may change- the Gods do shape the pre-existing materials of the universe into things like living creatures and even worlds.

This particular universal cycle in which our lives and the various worlds exist is just one age, one order of the many infinite ages that have existed before and will exist again. The universe will always exist and will never stop changing.

There is no "sin", nor any way that the universe can become "flawed"; the law of Fate ordains what comes to pass, and whatever comes to pass is necessary for the unfolding of the universe at any given moment. Humans may express negative or positive behaviors at any given moment, but the measurement of the "morality" of an action is the extent to which it supports or doesn't support the well-being of a human community, family, person, or the well-being of the world as a whole.

The Gods support the well-being of all communities of life and the well-being of the whole; chaotic forces which are natural to the universe exist to strain against it and gradually break the universe-order down. The Gods resist these forces for as long as they are able, and protect conscious life from them as much as they are able.

Because of natural chaotic forces, this universe-order, or world-age, is gradually breaking down. At one point, it will cease to exist, but only temporarily; the next cycle will begin after this one ends, and there will be a "cosmic regeneration", leading to a new age. Beings that lived in the former age will live again in the regenerated universe. In the spiritual "time" before the regeneration, the dead rest in other mental conditions and worlds such as the Underworld (called by various names) or with the Gods.

All of the events that occur in the future age will have resonance with events that occurred in the last, and they will resonate with similar events that will occur in the future age. In other words, events are not fully unique; they are manifestations of a deeper, timeless pattern which regenerates and repeats itself infinitely. The best example is the seasons. Each winter is colder, has less light and heat, and causes certain needed changes. Each year has its own winter, but each winter is a manifestation of a common underlying reality from which all winters emerge. And the seasons eternally repeat, cyclically occurring.

Everything that is happening now has, in a way, happened before and will happen again, though in different configurations of power.

The cosmos or universe-order itself also undergoes cycles, coming to order, enduring for many ages, degrading, and finally ending, before going into a "sleep" or "unmanifest" state, and then undergoing a regeneration back into a new order which is similar to that of the former age. This great pattern or cycle is Fated to occur; the Gods cannot stop this from happening or change it.

The Gods have a long-lived and powerful, transformative role to play in each world-cycle, but they cannot change the basic law of Fate that rules the cosmos. The universe, being uncreated, is eternal; it cannot vanish. The Gods cannot make it vanish; it is indestructible, and so are all its parts, including the human spirit and the spirits of all living beings.

The focus of this universe is the totality, in which individual humans are counted along with beings and powers of many kinds- animals, natural forces, spirits or Gods, and the like, but individual beings do not have the center-stage. Instead, the web of relationship that binds all beings receives the focus, and the impact of all forces and beings on the whole. Comprehending and understanding this totality, and knowing one's place in it, is Wisdom. Truth is available to all peoples equally, and anyone can discover it through meditating on the totality of things and opening themselves to the natural truths embodied in nature.

Time is not seen as "linear"; the cyclical universe is not linear, it is circular or spiraling. The fact that humans have a perception of time as being linear is explained by the fact that dominant religions, cultures, and sciences have taught that time was a linear progression for centuries, but many primal peoples untouched by those forces still have no concept of time in the "rational" or linear sense; primal peoples have a long history of rejecting the linear notion of "history".

"History" in the absolute sense does not exist; it is merely a story told by people who believe in linear time. Instead of "histories", Myths take the center role to Pagans or Heathens, because Myths describe timeless events, powers, and truths which are perpetually real, timeless events, powers, and truths that underlie every manifest "moment".

Also, the standard perception of cause-and-effect as linear is easy for human beings with limited vision to accept as a fact, when mystics who have broader access to insight can see a greater pattern, and in tribal societies, those mystics reveal and mediate the knowledge of the non-linear nature of things to other tribal members in their power-stories, tales, traditional songs, and rituals.

The Demands of Ancestral Religion

I was having a discussion with a gentleman online the other day, and I was deeply impressed with how well he summed up a current problem that I feel the Pagan world is facing. He wrote:

"New Age teachings lead to a kind of "blanket theology" of vagueness through which anyone's spiritual views can escape accountability. The expression, "I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual" reflects this desire to have a personal religion cultivated to one's own self, as if it's just another private room in your house you can decorate any way you like, which has no larger social consequences."

These two sentences say so much, and I think I should use them as an invitation to talk about what belonging to an Ancestral religion can and should mean for us in the modern day.

I believe that Heathenry, Asatru, Forn Sed, or whatever you call the Old Ways of the North are first and foremost Ancestral faiths. This does not, in any way whatsoever, mean that I think these religions are limited to people of certain ancestry. I think that it speaks to people more who tend to be of certain ancestries, but I also believe that Wyrd connects all people together, and that the Allfather who shaped the world is the Allfather of all human beings. To accept something as absurd as the idea that Odin only created Germania and Scandanavia, and only created the people who eventually came to live in those areas is not an option.

Every human being has a relationship to the Gods and their Ancestors, no matter how unconscious they may be of it. Not everyone's ancestors trace back immediately to the same place, but all people's ancestors eventually trace back to the "Clan Mothers", the hallowed group of ancient-beyond-ancient historical women from whom all genetic lines- ALL genetic lines- come. They are the true Disir, the Mothers of us all.

As a Heathen, I honor them in similar ways to how my Heathen forefathers and foremothers did- that is, after all, a large part of what it means to be a Heathen: to honor the Gods, spirits, ancestors, and to live in this world according to certain values, all following the example of how our ancestors did it, as best we can in the modern day.

This is not the time or the place to go into the arguments and proofs and details about all of the ramifications of ancestry. I do believe that at a time not so long ago, we were all far more related than most people today are prepared to believe. I can give one small example that may shock you- start by giving yourself a mother and father, which all people have. Let's assume that no one in this example has any brothers or sisters- everyone gets one mother and one father.

Now, there's you and your mother and father. That's three people. Your mom and dad need parents, too, so now, there's you, mom and dad, and their two sets of parents. That's seven people and just three generations. Again, ignoring the reality of brothers and sisters, do you know how many people will be on your chart in just 30 generations?

You would have 1,073,741,824 people. That's over a billion people. Let's say each human generation is about 20-25 years. 30 generations is 600 years. By this logic and this math, (and don't forget we are ignoring the reality of brothers and sisters) in around 1400, you have over a billion people on earth.

The problem here is that in 1400, there weren't that many people alive. There wasn't anywhere NEAR that many people alive in 1400. The world's population- the entire world- was far below a billion before Columbus made his voyage to America in 1492.

So how can that be? How can this paradox be resolved? The answer is simple, though few people ever stop to consider it, and a few people don't want to believe it- the answer is that we all shared (and still share) many relatives and ancestors in common.

So now, you can laugh at all the racists who describe themselves as "folkish" when they spin tales about their "pure" Germanic ancestry. Welcome to the real world! All human beings are far more related than most of us realize. This doesn't mean that we should ignore the reality of cultural ancestral identity- no, in fact, we HAVE to emphasize cultural identity, because in that phenomenon, we see what the people *closest* to us by blood felt was sacred and important.

The idea that our ancestors 1000 or even 2000 years ago believed certain ways is not an invitation to lead us to look down on the ways of others, though many people take it to be that way. I strongly support standing up against negative cultural legacies that some peoples on earth have advanced- the simple fact is that not all cultural legacies are worthwhile, or worthy of respect or preservation. Female circumcision is the best example of a practice that must be stamped out at any cost. That being said, it is true that many people in the modern day- and some Heathens- feel very threatened by the existence of other cultures, and the influences they have. Many people (and many Heathens) feel alienated, feel a lack of deeper identity, which drives them to seize ahold of what they consider is "their" ancestral faith and "their" culture, and defend it like mad dogs.

Sadly for them, what they are defending, aside from being largely a modern construct, is usually more fantasy than reality. I've pointed out many times before that our Germanic ancestors (and our Celtic ancestors, and our Slavic ancestors, and the list continues) didn't seem to have any problem at all marrying women from other cultures, moving away from their homelands and taking up residence in countless other places, absorbing words, concepts and even entire languages from other people which led to changes in their own "native" languages, and absorbing a variety of other cultural influences from people they met- if they found a technology that they didn't think up themselves, but which could aid them, they took it! They used it!

These ideas we have today of "racism" simply didn't exist in ancient times. The cultures who were most known for their great snooty ethnocentrism- the Greeks and the Romans- are usually the people that modern Heathens least identify with, as Rome, with all its Greek influence, conquered all of Germania and most of Celtia, and pretty well brought about an end to the tribal way of life in Celtia, and in much of Germania.

The Romans with their talk of "barbarians" and "outsiders" all their self-assured cultural righteousness did more to hurt the causes of "freedom" and "tribal identity" among the ancient Heathens than most other people. So why are so many Heathens today looking down their noses at other cultures in precisely the same way the Romans did? I guess history doesn't just like repeating itself: it also seems to have a sense of humor.

The Romans were at least wise enough to realize that their Gods were also the same Gods that they found among the "Barbarians", and were happy to pray to the Gods of other people, and to take the Gods of others into their own cities, and to assimilate what good things they found among "barbarians". For all their talk of superiority, the Romans didn't hold all these other cultures they encountered at arm's length; they didn't feel that their own culture was threatened by so-called "outside influences".

I challenge any and all of the modern "folkish" Heathens who claim to be "pure Germanic" to give up MtDNA samples so that science can reveal precisely WHO they are related to. Sure, there'll be English or German or Scandinavian blood in most European-descended people in the United States, Mexico, a lot of Central and South America, and pretty much all of Europe. But what else will be there? Studies have shown some amazing finds in the genetic trees of people who were shocked to discover what was flowing through their veins.

Before I stop belaboring this point, I should say- the idea of "Folksoul" is baseless. The arguments against it- which I will sum up in a later post- are too many and too good; the "pro-folksoul" people have never satisfactorily responded to those arguments. What it boils down to is this: people have a construct that they have created, something that they dearly want to believe in, because they draw "identity" and solidarity from it- a modern construct of the "Germanic Folksoul", and they have their own contrived metaphysics which bestow upon them the power to determine "who is Germanic". Naturally, it's all bunk, but this minority of modern Heathens exerts a noticeable and negative influence on Heathenry as a whole.

Why? Because they aren't practicing religion as much as they are making up what they want to believe, and giving it a status that the True Gods and Ancestors deserve.

And this leads me back to the point of this short letter. Modern Paganism is tainted with powerful strains of "Me-ism"- the idea that you can believe "whatever you like" without needing accountability or justification.

So many people want to reject "religious authority" and "spiritual authority" without ever once considering the value inherent in such things. While it is true that our Ancestors had no such "hard authorities" in their religions of old, there are still many other Pagans who did, and still do- and certainly Christianity always did. What's the value in such things? Religious authorities, so long as they are not corrupt, have a way of preserving a spirit in a religious complex that keeps the people honest- because no matter what you may think, or what you have heard people say, even organic religions, religions without revealed dogma and beliefs, still make demands on the peoples who believe in them.

Demands? Maybe you don't like the word. Maybe you came to Heathenry hoping to get away from all the rules and dogmas and power-trippers you found in other religions. I have two lots of news for you, then: the first is a congratulations, because you will find that healthy, sane modern Heathenry has no genuine "dogmas" and "rules"- it has customs which have more or less grown up in the modern day, customs and traditions that some or all Heathens will tend to share, but that's about it. The second bit of news is not as happy: Heathenry still has power-trippers and it still expects things of you.

What does it expect? It expects that you will put its Nine Noble Virtues first, and your desire to behave however you like second. Any Kindred worth it's name will expect that of its members. It expects that you will put its Gods first in your life, first before any other Gods you may care to worship, if any. Some Kindreds and groups won't let their members worship ANY Gods but the Gods of the Northlands, but I draw the line on that sort of talk- that moves people into dangerous, cultish ground. But Asatru or Heathenry as a whole WILL expect your loyalty to the Gods and Ancestors of the North, before any other spiritual icon or idea.

You will be expected to defend your fellow Heathens. You will be expected to honor the Ancestors. There may be many ways of doing all these things, but when called upon, you will have to do them, will have to say, with assurance and honesty, "Yes, I believe those things. Yes, I will do those things. Yes, I am proud to believe and do those things."

That means that even if you meet a girl or a guy that you get tight with, who happens to belong to a non-Heathen religion, and even if they really badly want you to convert to their faith, you can't. I don't care if it costs you the relationship; you shouldn't be in a relationship like that anyway, if those sorts of strings are attached. Real Love, the last time I checked, didn't limit itself to whether or not you could get your partner converted. I don't care if it costs you getting laid; Heathenry makes demands.

Heathenry is not just a religious way of seeing the world; it is an identity, and it stands for something. It stands for honoring the men and women that we call "Ancestors" and telling their spirits, with our every Blot and Symbel, these words: "We know that you were wise, and that you weren't praying to false Gods. We know your Gods were real and we know those same Gods are with us now. We know that you exist, and that we will be with you one day. We will not ignore your words and we will look to your example, because we honor you and your wisdom."

Heathenry stands for family. It stands for unbreakable bonds of love and loyalty between husbands and wives and children and brothers and sisters and all Kindred members. We watch out for our own, because that's what community does. Commmunity in the best sense of the word is a team of humans banding together to fight and help one another through an often hostile world. I don't care if *your* personal life demands this thing or that; if your Kindred or family really needs you, then your personal life will have to stand aside for a time. That's just part of what Heathenry demands.

Heathenry may not have a bible, but it does have Gods in common, and it does have certain models of belief and theology, and models of cosmology and eschatology born from common surviving sources. These things are excellent models of belief and they provide a good basis for understanding the world in ways that our Ancestors may also have understood it. You can't believe *just anything* and consider yourself a Heathen; a certain amount of familiarity with the surviving lore of old will be required, if you want serious recognition from the "Heathen community" at large. But this goes beyond just recognition- these older models of belief do contain powerful seeds of Truth. You don't just help yourself with respect to others by reading them and accepting them as the basis of your religious life; you also help yourself, on the deepest level.

From top to bottom, true "Heathenry" is not a "believe what you want, do what you want" religion or culture. It is not well suited to the people who want to wander in the vague country of "their own spirituality", which is normally a watered-down version of whatever religion they were raised, with a dash of New-Age spirituality tossed in.

Heathenry is not well suited to the people who want to mix in modern day politics and seek justification for their modern ideas and ideals in the ancient Lore.

Ancient Pagans were not "politically correct"; their societies did not allow for unrestrained, consequence-free sexual behavior between anyone and everyone who got an itch; they didn't just all smilingly accept homosexual behavior without putting bans or restrictions on it, if they allowed it openly at all. (Note: I personally believe homosexuality to be a natural, normal thing on the part of a small minority of human beings, and I think that homosexuals should be accepted and allowed to live their lives in peace. I am merely making another point with this reference about what the past was like.)

Ancient societies didn't sit around encouraging their women to terminate pregnancies, or turning a blind eye to it when they did, either; even infanticide that was done on babies outside of the womb was apparently heavily controlled or restricted in most Germanic societies, though their societies were such that these matters couldn't be controlled or restricted like they can be today.

The point is that they still had laws and rules which restrained infanticide, though "exposing" babies and children still happened in ancient times. It still happens in India and China and Africa and in other places- like right up the street in any American city. There's always some idiot girl who wants to leave her baby in a dumpster. Unless you're the sort of person who thinks that parents should be allowed to throw away their infants, you probably understand why our ancestors tried to curb this practice, and why so many myths from other Indo-European Pagans show the Gods or other beings rescuing exposed children, and harm or misfortune coming onto the parent who did the exposing.

The modern "liberal" neo-Pagans who wish they could "go back to the old days" might find themselves horrified to drop into an ancient Pagan European society- they'd find slavery being an everyday part of life, and they'd find that the local "witch" up the block isn't being treated like a hero by the local population, and they'd find that the "orgies" they imagine Pagans had all the time were in short supply.

I'm not saying we should just "transfer" ourselves back to their times and do things "just like they did"- far from it. I'm pointing out that the justifications that many modern liberal Pagans seek for their beliefs will have to come from the present day, the here and now and not from the past. You can't come to Heathenry expecting it (or its Ancestors) to stand up and accept with open arms your every modern belief, and accord you the right to "believe however you want". That's not what Heathenry is about. If Heathenry is to survive and be worth its salt, it will have to make demands on people, make people question and reconsider what they believe. And it will always demand that people put their own beliefs second to the good of the Kindred or the greater good.


My true and final point is that Heathenry isn't a free-for-all, and it makes demands. Just living by the Nine Noble Virtues- really living them- is not always easy. We often balk against "rules" without even stopping to consider why rules are there. It's true that "rules" are sometimes tools of oppression. But they aren't always.

Rules make us struggle against something, put limits on us, but for our own good, and for the causes of a greater freedom. Sound odd?

A good example to explain this is a piano or a musical instrument. If you just bang on a Piano or blow into a trumpet, you make noise. If you discipline yourself by learning the rules of playing the instrument- which is hard on you- one day, you find that instead of only being able to make noise, you can make beautiful music. It's not "freedom" to just bang on a piano all wild-like; it's just chaos and anarchy. And it doesn't make the best sound. A master player has learned the rules, and by learning the rules, they have, ironically found their way to a greater freedom- the power to make music.

Another good example is language. Babies babble away all day; they are unrestrained in the noises they can or will make. But until they restrict and limit the sounds they make, they can't make words and intelligible phrases. Once we discipline ourselves enough to learn the rules of language, we can express ourselves, and like the piano player, we find a new freedom- the power of sharing our subjective thoughts and experiences with others through words.

People who balk at the idea of rules and restrictions in religious culture and life are people who lack the maturity to understand what I am saying here- they'd rather be spiritual babies babbling than to join the company of spiritually mature adults who can form words, and with those words, form communities and make their lives better and more complete.

I understand that many people have had bad experiences with the demands of other religions, but Heathenry doesn't offer the "free for all" that so many people swing towards in their pendelum-like reaction to their experiences with the dogmatic powers. Everything we do and believe- whether or not we are Heathen- has consequences, and we *will* be held accountable for them. People are free to ignore their responsibility to considering what they believe and why, but they are still going to be held to the debt they owe to life and their fellow man, one way or the other.

It may be more comfortable for the vaguely-defined "spiritual but not religious" people to be what they are, but they will never find the beauty and power that is found in accepting the standards and insights and liberating restrictions of a community and a creed that wasn't invented by them. There is something noble to be said about people who can make the sacrifice of self and put others before themselves, and put the Gods of the North before their other desires, and put the Nine Noble Virtues before their other behaviors. These people show a real wisdom, and in my own experience, they are happy, vibrant people.

Heathenry's virtue-codes and ancient source-lores do put limitations on us, but those limitations make us better people, people who are worthy to be around our loved ones in this world, and who are going to be worthy enough one day to rejoin our ancestors in the Unseen world. In those days, after our Fated time here in the middle-world is done, our Ancestors themselves will praise us for being good people and making them proud, if we held to our oaths and behaved as proper Heathens (and human beings) should. We should consider our Ancestors in everything we do- all of our lives, right this moment, are their gifts to us.

The Wyrd of the Hunt

Even though many city-dwelling folk don't realize it, there is, in fact, a quiet war raging between groups that oppose small and big game hunting, and those who wish to see it remain free, protected and legal. Most urban people see this very much as an issue that belongs to the rural segment of our population. There is a select group of urban people who do leave their cities to go on vacation hunting trips, but they tend to come from wealthier backgrounds.

Ironically, what the wealthy lawyer or doctor may consider his yearly or seasonal vacation- a good trip out to the wilderness to gun down an elk or a moose or deer- is a way of life to many rural folk, many of whom (male and female) grow up hunting, or around hunters. My own father and grandfather were avid hunters, and my father still is. In the small country town where he comes from, everyone hunts, or knows hunters.

Today, I'm going to write about the sacred dimension of hunting. I'm going to write about the moral implications of hunting, and I'm going to voice my opinion on many matters that relate to hunting in the modern day. Before I begin, I think I should give a fair warning: I don't think it is right to hunt and kill animals, when there is no need to hunt and kill them.

Yes, I have come under fire from many "Pagans" and "Heathens" in the past for this stance of mine, this stance (among many of my stances) which runs contrary to the "status quo" of the Heathen and Pagan world. That's the way "opinions" work- everyone has a right to their own. I am a Wyrd-worker. I have an increased sensitivity to the web of life, the web of power and force that binds us all together. My opinions on events, on things I see, on things I hear, are ruled, influenced, and shaped by that sensitivity. If I could so easily ignore it, then I would be a very bad Wyrd-worker or Seidman.

Unlike many of my contemporaries, who talk a good deal about "spirituality" and "Wyrd", I live a life where my opinions and actions are directly affected and influenced by what I experience because of my religious beliefs and spiritual activities. I never tire of pointing out (as you may have noticed) that many of my "fellow Heathens" love to claim to believe one way, to believe in the Gods, in Wyrd, in the animistic worldview, but all of that doesn't seem to alter, in any way, how they think and act in the world.

I call this "convenient Heathenry". It's the sort of Heathenry that lets people profess a complete and total belief in animism, a belief that wights or spirits fill the body of nature, and yet, lets them ignore environmental damage, or lets them dump their garbage on the ground when they go camping. It lets them claim how strongly they believe in "personal responsibility for one's actions" and how their children are their "ancestors reborn", but at the same time support completely unrestricted rights to abortion, or abortion as birth control. It's the same heathenry that leads people to declare that "all life is sacred", and yet, they believe in "sport hunting".

And this is precisely where I am going to enter this stream: the so-called activity of "sport hunting".

I'd like to make a strong statement, and I have a very hard time seeing how any so-called "heathen" who believed in Wyrd and the sacredness of life could ever disagree with it. This is a statement that I have been preaching for years. You'd be surprised at how often people become angry when I say it, and how many people reject it, without being able to give a reason for their rejection.

"Death is never a sport."

Oh my! There it is- the great radical statement that you'd think decent, civilized people anywhere should agree on. Death is never a sport.

Many people- especially rural people- love to hunt. I'm going to take a step, for a moment, into the world of stereotypes: the vast majority of hunters are ill-educated, ill-spoken and ill-favored rednecks. They are nasty, rude, smelly, ignorant, cruel, and disrespectful to the Land itself, and to the poor beasts that they glut their need for blood and "sport" on, and kill. Behind it all, behind this so-called "sport", there is an even darker psychology operating, of which I will speak later. Not all hunters will fit the bill I described here- some are otherwise intelligent, well-mannered people who mean well. This latter type probably hunts because they are thoughtlessly fulfilling the conditioning given to them by their upbringing, or because they simply don't think animal life is as valuable as human life, and they enjoy hunting.

There is a reason why I can step into the world of stereotypes; I have physically been in the world of "hunters". My father, hoping I would make a "great white hunter", tried to take me with him and his friends when I was a boy to their hunting camp, and out for their hunting trips.

On this point, I disappointed my father; I am not a hunter. I was nothing like his friends, and I knew, even then, that I would never grow up to be. Why don't I hunt? Because I don't need to. There is no reason for me to kill an animal when so many die already to be packaged into meat for us to eat, and get delivered to us at markets and stores. I'm in touch with nature in many profound ways- I canoe, hike, camp, and know a good deal about wortcunning and herbology. I am a naturalist when it comes to owls and large raptors and birds of prey. I simply don't need to kill animals to feel in touch with nature.

If my family, community, or friends relied on me to get them food in the form of meat from animals, I would hunt it or butcher it. But not a single person I know relies on hunters or hunting to supplement their diet with needed meat. Not a single one.

If I were to meet people who DID need meat that only hunters could provide, I would welcome them to it. I have no qualms with those people or the practices of the hunters that they rely on. I do, however, have issues with modern "sport" hunters, and modern Heathens who kill beasts thinking that they are fulfilling some sort of spiritual duty. I will discuss both below.


The Sacred Dimension of Hunting Among Primal Peoples

Native Americans of the Sioux nations relied on the hunting of Buffalo and deer and other game. Their traditions of hunting run back to the foundations of mankind, back to pre-history, and they were deeply aware of the spiritual dimension involved in the act of hunting. Sioux hunters were taught this about hunting:

"Shoot your four-legged brother in the hind area, slowing it down but not killing it. Then, take the four-legged’s head in your hands, and look into his eyes. The eyes are where all the suffering is. Look into your brother’s eyes and feel his pain. Then, take your knife and cut the four-legged under the chin, here, on his neck, so that he dies quickly. And as you do, ask your brother, the four-legged, for forgiveness for what you do. Offer also a prayer of thanks to your four-legged kin for offering his body to you just now, when you need food to eat and clothing to wear. And promise the four-legged that you will put yourself back into the earth when you die, to become the nourishment of the earth, and for the sister flowers, and for the brother deer. It is appropriate that you should offer this blessing for the four-legged and, in due time, reciprocate in turn with your body in this way, as the four-legged gives life to you for your survival."


This sort of talk touches the heart of any person who is Wyrd-aware, any person who is aware of the deep bonds that exist between humans, beasts, and the Land that we both live upon. This sort of talk is evidence that the Sioux people understood, with great clarity, the reality of their interconnectedness with life and all forms of life. The Native Americans also hunted because they needed to hunt, needing the bodies of animals for food and for clothing and other tools.

Can modern "sport" hunters claim to have such a respect for their victims? I can tell you now, the vast majority of them, if they are religious, are Christians who don't think animals even have souls. They believe, as the bible tells them, that animals were "put here for the use of human beings". This, of course, is a pernicious lie, one of many found in the bible. It also reflects the loss of the animistic worldview on the part of the ancient Hebrews who invented the notion that everything was put "here for their use" by their "god". That same loss of the animistic worldview was passed onto Europeans by the bible and the Christian tradition that embraced it. To this day, it has done immeasurable harm to our populations of beasts, and to the Land itself.

So no, modern "sport" hunters who are Christian cannot claim to have the proper and needed respect for these slain animals. Even hunters who aren't overly religious tend to be very nasty and disrespectful, for the simple reason that they simply don't think about the fact that they are sending pain and terror and death onto another living creature. I don't know which is worse, to be honest.

The vast majority of "Sport" hunters are just men (and some women) who are doing nothing in the woods or wilderness with their penis-replacement Rifles than seeking violence for pleasure. They are seeking the false sense of power they get when they destroy the life of a majestically powerful animal. It is true that they may enjoy the taste of deer meat, or perhaps they enjoy boasting over the big stuffed bear they put in their homes, in a further display of barbarity; but a Wyrd-worker such as myself doesn't give a rat's arse what people enjoy; I care only what is true, helpful, and proper with respect to Wyrd, which is the interconnected nature of all life.

Hunters like to claim that without them, "animals would overpopulate". This is a proven lie; in fact, many states where hunting is extremely lucrative artificially create large populations of deer and other animals just so hunters can hunt. What most people fail to realize is that hunting is a major industry in the United States.

Long before there were human hunters, animal populations were governed in size by natural laws, laws that are still in effect, despite human stupidity. People try to claim that humans have "destroyed all the natural predators" for things like deer, but this too, is a flimsy claim. It is true that fewer predators exist in the wild because of humans, but it doesn't take predators to cull populations. Availability of food and other factors will also do it.

Hunters then try to claim that they are being "merciful" by killing deer or other animals that would otherwise "starve". This is absurd; I would rather see those animals starve naturally than have to be dishonored in their deaths by the hands and bullets of violence-for-pleasure-seeking thugs. It was humans who were unwise, and destructively out-of-touch with the reality of Wyrd that murdered large populations of predators who were keeping other populations in check.

If hunters think that they can replace natural predators with their own "sport", they are mistaken; over-hunting is a reality in all parts of the US, despite "laws" intended to protect game. The only way out of this issue is to re-introduce predators. It is well known that the predators that were killed (and to this day still are killed) like wolves and coyotes and the like, pose no real danger to human beings.

Heathens and other modern "people of the Land" who hunt love to consider themselves to be following in the footsteps of their great "hunter" fore-fathers. But are they? Our ancient forebears hunted for survival. In fact, it wasn't the poor man and woman of the land who hunted for enjoyment, but nobles, rich people, and other aristocrats who considered it leisurely. Roman nobles hunted for that reason, and to the late 1800's, it was aristocrats who mostly rode about hunting animals like deer and foxes. They hunted for sport and pleasure, while the common people hunted for food. There is a massive difference.


The Call of the Wild Past

Today, there are many people inside and outside of the Heathen community that look to hunting as a way of "reconnecting" with some primal aspect of themselves. Some- a very small minority within the Heathen community- have embraced hunting as a means of calling forth some forgotten form of spiritual bonding with the land and the hunted beasts.

You might think that this would be a noble venture, and on the surface, it would seem to be- until you realize that it is the same tired story, told in a new form. We all know about "safari hunts" in Africa and in Australia where the idle rich pay a LOT of money to have big animals released from cages in front of them, so that they can shoot them to death. Heathen "spiritual hunting" is about three steps removed from that same thing- it's a bunch of modern people- mostly guys, but you do get the occassional "tough woman" who wants to get involved- who want to get big spears and stab animals to death.

Okay, let's leave Dr. Freud out of this. The idea that a bunch of guys would like to thrust huge spears into the sides and backs of beasts, and call it "spirituality" is already a stretch. Like the non-Heathen "sport" hunter, these people think that they are "bonding" somehow with the beasts they are killing. They imagine that it must have "been this way" in the past. They imagine, in an even more outrageous stretch of modern juvenile imagination, that they are "testing themselves" by "pitting themselves" against the "beast".

For me, this is yet another sign of why our society needs man-making rituals that young men can engage in, to prove their worth to be counted among the "men" of their society. The fact that guys would get together and actually put on "rituals" in which they imagine they are either becoming animals or speaking to the spirit of animals, make sacrifices or blots to various Gods or spirits, and then run out and cruelly stab an animals to death, and then do Gods know what with the blood and body parts, all to fulfill their strange pseudo-Heathen machismo and fulfill their need to feel like the "tough yet spiritual man of the land" is a sad example of what happens when you have displaced masculine aggression and lack of opportunities to "prove" one's manhood.

These same men (and that occassional woman) will eat fast-food, drive around in cars, play computer games, eat steaks bought from grocery stores, order crap from the internet, and keep massive CD and DVD collections- and then, in an incredible show of their great "connection" to the wild and the Gods and beasts, go onto a campground somewhere, get spears and bows and other weapons, and play "ancient iron-age hunter" for a weekend.

Let me just say it, so that you can be completely clear on what I know to be the case:

I think that hunting animals should only be done out of true necessity. You don't have the moral or spiritual right to kill animals because you feel the need to "be connected again" to a time when people DID hunt out of necessity. You don't have to kill animals to make yourself feel powerful, spiritual, manly, or cool.

I know that none of my words here will sink in to certain people, but as a Wyrd-worker, I have to say them anyway. Here is the harsh reality, that no human being can escape, no matter how much they want to deny it:

Life does not belong to us. Life arises from the mighty web of Wyrd, from a billion divine forces that interact and ceaselessly pour forth form and power. Not a single one of us here reading this post wove our own lives, and parents are also not the sole giver of life to the child- they are only two links in a mighty chain that extends back to the ultimate mystery. Not being the authors of life, either our own, or the great life of the Land and the world, we have a perilous responsibility to consider carefully how and when we disrupt life. This is the simple logic, the inescapable conclusion, of the animistic worldview.

In addition to this, there's more bad news for the "sport" hunters or the macho "killer" Heathens:

We are all connected. Because of this connection, there is a cost for how we live our lives. I'm not just talking an immediate social and environmental cost. I mean that our actions shake the web of reality itself, and that reverberation, that echo, sounds into eternity. A wiser man than myself has said it as clearly as it can be said: What we do to this web of life, we do to ourselves. Skuld, our debt that we build for how we live our life, is a reality that cannot be ignored.

Yes, there is a cost for the taking of life, a cost that will be paid one way or the other. The Vanir-lords, Frey and Freya, will not take people into their blessed realms who dishonored and stained the forests and plains of the natural world with lawless blood. And doing blots to Frey or Freya and asking their permission doesn't cut it- they won't be saying "yes" unless you actually need to hunt. They won't be giving permission for your farsical "sacred hunt" which is essentially a form of sport-hunting, pleasure killing, macho killing, dressed in Heathen garb.

Gold must answer gold, and silver must answer silver. If you take a life, you had better have had a good reason- not merely a reason of "pleasure" or a misguided attempt to prove your "manhood" to people in a modern context, where such things are no longer appropriate. The cost of a life is another life. If you take a life to spare your own or the lives of others, such a thing is spiritually and morally justified. Nothing else justifies killing- whether it be humans or animals.

Let me re-state my position once more before I finish this letter: People who have to hunt, who hunt for survival, are morally justified to do so. The "hunting industry" and the "sport" hunters are certainly not justified. Despite their desire to present themselves as great and noble outdoorsmen and environmentalists, they are in fact needlessly taking life. Why are they doing it? What's the real cause? I hate to sound like a broken record (because I say this a lot) but the cause is the loss of Wyrd-wisdom, which leads to a very dark psychology.


Dark Psychology

There is a deep and dark psychology involved in the taking of life in needless hunting, as you might imagine. There is a sense of "power over", a re-affirmation of a fraudulent sense of power and ability, based on what the human imagination believes about animals and beasts, especially beasts that are famed for their virility and danger, like lions or boars. To kill the king of beasts, or the king stag, or the king boar MUST mean that a man is greater than the beast, stronger, faster, more powerful.

There is a destructive psychology which is based firmly on the false distinctions drawn by the mind, which place walls between the "human being" and the "world he or she inhabits". This false distinction-making faculty causes a new, hallucinatory dimension of negative morality to appear; sadly, that same dimension has been the one that we have based all of our "moral thinking" on for many a century.

There is a sheer, giantish, dark and darwinian beastial side to this sort of "sport killing"; the death of other living beings answers to an atavism that sleeps in the deep brain of most creatures who occupy high areas on the predatory food-chain. It may be fine for animals to indulge in it, held in balance as they are by massive instincts, but for humans, cut loose from the bonds of instincts and dominated by confusion and the loss of primal wisdom, the pleasure generated from this wild portion of our nature becomes an instrument for anti-social and dangerous forces that we as a society all recognize as being harmful.

Of course, many will defend these behaviors as "tradition"- but slavery was also a tradition, as was lynching black men, and so was the systematic patriarchal social mistreatment of women- just calling something a "tradition" doesn't mean that it's proper or appropriate anymore. Some will say that they are taking part in a "sport" (though as I have said, death is no sport, and they will understand the consequences of their needless taking of life when they are plunged into the depths of Hel) and they even try to defend them as some form of "right". "We have the right to hunt", they say, not unlike the laughable objections of smokers who screech that the government is taking away their "right to smoke", when they outlaw smoking in public places or restaurants.

No one has these "rights". "Rights" are fictional constructs if ever there were any. "Rights" don't fall from the sky, pre-written on divine tablets; they are social constructs, ideas, ideals, created and granted and enforced by large groups of human beings. The group-mind changes over time; new ideas arise; people screaming about their "rights" are usually desperately grasping on to some anachronistic habits and ways of life that are simply no longer supportable by the way of the present.

I have read our Constitution. I failed to see a "right to hunt" drafted inside it or the Bill of Rights. Hunting is a part of our past that we largely do not need anymore, and no, I don't think preserving it in a controlled way is positive in any manner. If you want to bond with your son or family or friends out in the woods, you don't need to kill a beast to do it. You can find other ways of challenging and bonding with each other without destroying life.

A person who is aware of the interconnected nature of life already has peace and understanding where concerns life and death, but they also know that death is no sport, and is not something we need to bring to other creatures when there is no necessity to do so. And since I can't say it enough, I'll say it again: you don't need to kill something to get the attention of the Gods, or to feel "spiritual" again. If you do find that you need to spill blood to feel those things, you have a far more ominous problem than you can probably realize.

Most people who grow up around hunting and hunters, and who have family who hunt, have a hard time "getting into" all that I have said- most laugh it off. Those people also usually aren't Wyrd-workers or Seidfolk, and do not understand, on a deep and essential level, how connected they are to all other life. They may CLAIM to understand it, but their understanding is only mind-deep; it is not heart-deep. If they could feel the connection, feel the great sacredness of life, then they would modify how they think, to come into conformity with it. They would stop looking the other way and laughing off the issue of "sport" hunting. To be wise means to re-appraise how we look at the world and how we treat it. Wisdom demands no less.