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

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

-Hans Gunther

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

-Goethe

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

-Geibel

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here's an alternate translation:

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gunther writes:

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


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

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


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

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

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

Gunther goes on to say:

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


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

Gunther writes:

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

Gunther goes on to say:

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


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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

Why a Return to Indo-European Polytheism is Needed

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

We would have to pick up where we left off.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

Here's the article:

The Forged Origins of The New Testament

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Primordial Symbolism: The Key to All the Problems of the World

When we consider all of the problems that our world faces, we rightly feel overwhelmed. Is there any person alive who can tell us, simply and clearly, what the root of the world's problems truly is? It would seem that the idea of a single root for all of our woes is too optimistic- based on observing our world today, it would seem to be at least a forest worth of roots.

But even a forest can spring from a tiny handful of seeds. Can we trace the rivers of war, depression, illness, violence, the sundering of family bonds, and the rise of materialism and greed back to just a few seeds? Could those seeds in turn have fallen from one tree?

Certainly if we look at the myths of our ancestors, we find a mythical origin for the terrible things that torment us. In the sacred myths, we see two tides of forces locked in eternal struggle with one another- we see conscious forces of great finesse and wisdom struggling to move things towards order and stability, and we see dimly conscious and unconscious forces of great power struggling against order, causing things to move towards disorder and chaos, by the mere fact of their presence.

Our ancestors expressed these powers as the Tribe of the Gods and the Fomorian powers, respectively. Our Germanic ancestors honored the Gods who struggled against the Giants in the same manner, and our Greek ancestors honored the Gods who struggled against the Titans. Throughout the Indo-European Pagan tradition, we see the Gods of Indo European people appearing as monster and giant slayers, noble beings who fight to create and uphold order in the world, and the positive conditions for life.

We can look deeper and see the root-elements that began this tide of struggle between light and dark: the fire and the water, or in the Germanic myths, fire and ice. The fire is expansive and warm, and while it can be destructive (like any element) it was the single element that gave humankind the power to secure safety for themselves and their families. Water (and its destructive form, ice) is necessary for life, but it manifests the frost, snow, floods, and cold rains that can destroy life without the warmth of fire. Even cool water will take a human's life if he or she is submerged in it for too long, chilling the warm fire in the body and bringing death.

It would not be too difficult a comparison to see the Gods as aligned to fire, and the Fomorians as aligned to water- after all, the Fomorians themselves were from "under the sea", as their name implies.

The myths are quite clear; the eternal struggle between the Gods and the Fomorians is not just occuring "out there" in nature, but also "in here", inside of human nature. The idea that "out there" and "in here" are somehow ultimately separated is absurd; people who believe that these two "places" are ultimately apart from one another will never know the wisdom of wholeness, nor completion as human beings. Druidic power-working and true sorcery is not possible until one "crosses the boundary", the perceptual boundary between what we feel is "in here" and what is "out there", and by doing so, realizes wholeness. In wholeness, we realize that what we once thought were our "subjective" states are important and seamless parts of this world- and so our desires, wishes, intentions, and thoughts all affect the world in the same manner that a storm might affect it, or a fire. Reality is not divided into "two"- it is one whole thing.

At any rate, the struggle between light and dark is not merely "out there"- it is reflected in human nature, in the way we struggle in that place we call "internally", with the dark aspects of our nature. Our duty is to join with the Gods through sacrifices and worship, so that they give us the needed courage, strength, and cunning to face the destructive powers that we experience as "inside" ourselves, and triumph over them, keeping the needed balance of spiritual personhood.

This struggle is often a failed struggle, for so many people today- and why? Why do so many people allow the darkest parts of their own nature to overwhelm them? Why do they become greedy predators, thoughtless opportunists, selfish oafs, violent offenders, sociopathic monsters, all stalking the corridors of homes, towns, cities, governments, and schools?

As a religious man, I could say that the loss of the worship of the Gods is to blame; the longer people go without consciously recognizing the Gods, sacrificing to them, praying to them, and inviting them to integrate their power into our souls, the harder it will become for humans to resist the threatening natural forces that exist within us all.

As a realistic man, I realize that people aren't likely to flock to my religion in great numbers; though my religion is ancient and innate to the human spirit, the forgetfulness that has come onto the sons and daughters of the first ancestors is immense and deep. Their addiction to foreign religions and selfish beliefs is profound. Those few who have cast off the shackles of the same foreign religions that stole their ancestral ways from them have mostly not found their way to any better spiritual harbor- most of them have abandoned themselves to the soul-destroying depths of atheism and materialism.

I realize that few will join me in the worship of the Gods again, and even fewer will consciously seek the true Illumination of the Spirit that is the supreme secret desire of the human heart. So, I must seek another answer to the problems of mankind that more will be able to embrace.

And fortunately for me, a great mystic and psychologist from the last century did just that- moving somewhat outside of the realm of traditional religion, Carl Jung approached the relationship of human psychology to spirituality, and was able to explain the problems that bedeviled mankind in more neutral language. His impact on the modern Pagan movement as a whole has been enormous, though most Pagans do a very poor job at getting the education needed to understand what Jung was saying. Because of this, many Pseudo-Jungian absurdities have been foisted onto modern Paganism- chief among them the idea that the Gods of the ancient world were merely "Archetypes" operating in the human subconscious.

To reduce the Gods to a Jungian psychological construct isn't just absurd with respect to the ancestral tradition; it's absurd with respect to what Jung actually said regarding "archetypes". Most people don't realize that Jung believed in not only Psychic archetypes (archetypes as they exist in the individual mind) but Psychoid Archetypes- powers that existed very much independant of individual human minds, but which reflected themselves there. Jung's notion of the "collective unconscious" was also not the neat playground that so many moderns make it into- it was a great mystery, a great sea of awareness that was also very much what we call "objective".

The Collective Unconscious was not merely the sum total of human subconscious minds; it was greater, omnipresent, and eternal. It was, in fact, very close to what modern monotheists might call "God"- though it is important to realize that Jung himself, after searching for the traditional "God" in the depths of the unconscious, admitted himself that he could find no such being. He used the term "God" to refer to the massive strength of life as a whole, and sometimes as a name for the personal divine spirit or genius which he believed was connected to each individual.

Jung is the unsung champion of modern Polytheism- few realize the depths to which he accepted the true multiplicity of the Divine. In his most prophetic, mystical writing, using the pen-name Basilides, he tells the confused people of the world:

"Blessed am I, for it is granted unto me to know the multiplicity and diversity of the Gods. Woe unto you, for you have substituted the oneness of God for the diversity that cannot be resolved into one. Through this you have created the torment of incomprehension, and the mutilation of the created world, the essence and law of which is diversity. How can you be true to your nature when you attempt to make one out of the many? What you do to the Gods, that also befalls you. All of you are made thus the same, and in this way your nature also becomes mutilated."


This profound statement frames one of the roots of the problems of the world- the foisting of the concept of "one God" onto the majestic truth that mankind had known since the dawn of time- Polytheism. But as I said before, my chances of getting many people to give polytheism another fair shake aren't great. So I turn again to Jung's great wisdom to help other people and myself to understand the root and seed of the great misery of the world. And Jung answers- like a shaman returned from the Unseen world with the knowledge of the secret cause of the tribe's problems- he reveals the root of our woes: the repression of primordial symbolic systems.

What's great about this answer that Jung gave is how easy it is to explain, how organic and intuitive it is. Allow me to use what words I can to sum up the great wisdom of the master Jung, with regards to the single maladaption that one could rightly blame the deepest problems of the world on.


It was Jung's original teacher Freud that first framed, in terms that modern people could accept, the idea that the unconscious mind and the conscious mind talked to one another through symbolic language. Symbols were the way the deep, unconscious depths of a person communicated with the conscious self. Jung went one step further to draw a distinction between what he called natural symbols and cultural symbols. Natural symbols, he believed, were not "put" in the unconscious by human beings; they were natural, eternal, and always present- the root symbols of existence itself, the primordial "symbol set" that had always been deep inside us. Cultural symbols, on the other hand, were the residue of long-held cultural norms, practices, and ideas.

Jung believed that the symbols of primal, shamanic societies were precisely those "natural symbols" that were within all people. He thought that the natural symbolism known and expressed by the unconscious mind connected conscious humanity with the natural world itself, and the cosmos. These "natural symbols" were in fact a sacred language of primordial images that contained great power.

From this point, Jung was able to reveal the heart and soul of human existance and purpose. Dr. Jeannette Gagan writes:

"Jung went on to explain that built into the human psyche is a matrix of energy linking us to the life-giving, soul-quenching primordial sources. But over time, he said, we disengaged from this matrix to such an extent that we are no longer nourished by the early reservoirs of sustenance. In the pursuit of scientific mastery over matter, humanity has severed its ties to the natural world."


Jung himself wrote:

"Man feels isolated in the cosmos. He is no longer involved in nature and has lost his emotional participation in natural events, which hitherto had a symbolic meaning for him. His immediate communication with nature is gone forever, and the emotional energy it generated has sunk into the unconscious."


Dr. Gagan, in her book "Journeying: Where Shamanism and Psychology Meet", goes on to say that (modern) religions appear to rely more on the spoken word and rational interpretations than on immediate perceptions and symbolic experiences. She quotes Jung, who said:

"We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective consciousness that we have simply forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions. The Buddhist discards the world of unconscious fantasies as "distractions" and useless illusions; the Christian puts his Church and his Bible between himself and his unconscious; and the rationalist intellectual does not yet know that his consciousness is not his total psyche."


And finally, we arrive at the crux of the matter: When humans are no longer able to contact the primordial symbols that are deeply alive inside of all of us, when contact between the human world and the unseen world (both perceptually without and within) is broken, the "numinosity" of the primordial symbols, the energy that they emit, falls deeper into the unconscious, or withdraws into the deepest parts of us.

There, this energy that was not allowed to "come across the gap" into full awareness and consciousness weds itself to all of our unresolved issues and to the shadowy aspects of ourselves deep within, making those things powerful. This is where the "shadow", the destructive, unconscious power inside us gets its true life and motivation.

Whether we realize it or not, most of us have unresolved psychic tensions and issues, buried deep inside us. We may not consciously feel that we are prejudiced people or racist, but deep inside, that could be a very real part of us. I often am amused at how far some people go to distance themselves from other people that they accuse of being "racist"- for Jung understood well what was truly occuring in this situation. He knew that we project our own shadow-qualities onto other people, and then attack them for reflecting back to us what we unconsciously fear or hate about ourselves. I remember this everytime I see a "noble crusader" leading a witch-hunt against homosexuals, or people accused of racism, or what have you.

Whatever is unresolved deep inside us will become empowered by the numinous, lost energy that we are not allowing to "come through" and resolve itself consciously and healthily. That is the key and the secret to what is wrong with the world today. Jung said "Even tendencies that might be able to exert a beneficial influence turn into veritable demons when they are repressed."

Repression is the key. Dr. Gagan writes:

"Ignored and repressed energy formulates the shadow self- an entity which, perhaps more than any other, strengthens the grip of violence and fear in our society. Tremendous stores of energy are sapped to keep these shadow emotions in check. What's more, they expand as we mature. From birth onward, the unconscious portion of the psyche accumulates the feeling energy that parental and societal figures were not able to tolerate... A society in which individuals are barred from giving authentic expression to their innermost feelings prohibits instinctual, archetypal energy from moving into the consciousness. Disconnected, these shadow feelings appear in dreams, or are projected onto others..."


This unresolved angst deep inside us becomes an army of dark forces, that work to subvert the positive aspects of our conscious selves.

There you have it. In simple language, the key to understanding the problems of our world has been laid before you, or perhaps placed directly into your hand. One thing is absolutely certain- Pagan religions from every era (in common with native and tribal religions in the modern day) preserved and honored the Primordial Symbols inside of each person- the Gods and Goddesses of the Pagan world were honored by rites in which the powers of the primal, natural symbols within were allowed to rise to the conscious self and make it strong, healthy, balanced, and powerful.

Allow me to illustrate this with a single example: sexual forces were allowed to rise to healthy expression through the honoring of the phallic divinities, and the great fertile and sexual goddess-figures that were prominent in all Pagan cultures. What happened when Christianity destroyed the worship of these figures? What happened when it repressed the natural and normal rise and cycle of sexual energy inside the human psyche? You see what has happened, everyday, all around you: sexual degredation, increased psychosis and pathologies related to sexuality, sexual idiocy, violence against women, who are seen by their societies as embodiments of sexual lust and temptation, and countless other problems.

This can be taken further- In the worship or warrior Gods, men who were excellent fighters had a right to be proud, and express their pride and power. It was virtuous, in the Pagan world, to be good at what you did, and that included fighting, crafting, speaking, or whatever. It was okay to be proud of one's achievments. The power of these things was allowed to flow freely and to resolve itself in a healthy manner. But under Christianity's dim philosophies, Pagan virtues were called "glittering vices"- and only humbleness, chastity, and submission to God were seen as real virtues.

From top to bottom, the ancient religious systems that organically celebrated and expressed the primordial symbols of human life were destroyed by Christianity, and by Islam. The human psyche has taken a repressive beating, and the shadow inside us and inside the world has grown immensely powerful.

Where Christianity failed and finally came to an end, (being reduced to the current toothless state it now languishes in) a supremely unwise society picked up the pieces and carried on, instituting new rules of repression and absurdity. Secular societies are, in general, no better for the health of the human psyche than Christian society was- and some secular societies are downright hateful to it- such as atheist communist societies, who have actually gone further to destroy what few remaining spiritual symbols and systems were left.
What's even more perverse is the fact that Christianity contains within itself just enough primordial symbols to give the religion its feeling of power and holiness- the Tree, the Serpent, the Dove, The Fish, The Solar Cross, The Sacrificed God, and others. But the Christians themselves have become cut off from the power of these symbols, and they refuse direct contact with their deepest minds and selves.


Now, I have offered you some ideas to pick apart. I end by praising my Gods and Goddesses, and my Ancestors, and feeling the great power that streams clear and strong from the deepest part of me, emerging into my mind and my world, endowing me with the joy and love that I feel everyday of my life.

Through the symbols that are the sacred language of my Pagan religion, the primordial symbols from the spiral to the horns, the beasts, the cup-and-ring marks, the circles, and the elements themselves, a true power of psychic health and regeneration is allowed to appear. That is what my religion offers all who declare their loyalty to it. The Gods allow the deepest, greatest powers in nature to emerge and integrate in a healthy way through all of us, who give ourselves in courage and love to their ancient ways. There is no more repression and no more "internal" war with a shadow that is only ourselves buried in the pain of repression.

I have not seen this same psychic health or abundance appearing in the mindstreams of Christians, and I was born into a Christian household. I've seen the lack buried at the heart of the religion itself. Only Catholic Christianity, with its Goddess Mary, has a few symbols- chiefly the symbol of the Compassionate Mother/Virgin- that allows them to access a measure of psychic health. Jung himself remarked that his Catholic patients showed far more internal health than his protestant ones, and for just that reason- the presence of the divine feminine that still persisted, albeit in a dumbed-down form, in Catholicism.

Protestants, in their pernicious crusade to cut out what few good symbols Christianity still had living within it, destroyed the worship of the Virgin Mary, as well as other mystical symbols and practices in the heart of Christianity. They did this in the grip of their own detestable ignorance, framed as a quest to "purify" Christianity of "heathenish" Catholic qualities. As a result, to this day their countless sects are in the grip of non-stop sectarian disputes and fights, and their leaders and preachers are known as the epitome of intolerance, hatred and stupidity.

Anyone who has encountered Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Fred Phelps, or even the average local Baptist minister, will already know what I am talking about. The fierce masculine one-sidedness and farsical over-simplicity of most forms of Protestantism is matched in the minds of these church-goers by fanaticism and the savage species of closed-mindedness for which they are known. Deep down, they are victimized by the shadow that casts its long and destructive gaze over all that they do.

Two Bits of Advice

"I have two things I feel the need to tell you. First, for the sake of your own well-being, I ask you to believe in the "all-around goodness" of things in the cosmos, including yourself. This is no invitation to be naive about the dark or dangerous things in the world, but a call for you to embrace trust- you have to trust that the heart of life is not pain or darkness, but freedom and vibrancy, and that all things work out under the direction of a mysterious yet wise unfolding.

Secondly, I ask you to speak to the great Land and Sky as though they were great beings that can hear you- for indeed, They are. You need to pour out your heart to them as though they were cups that could receive every drop of water in the world without overflowing. Some people call this "prayer". Address the Land and the Sky, as well as every spiritual power that you discover in any urge of your soul, or in any awesome display of Nature, in prayer.

Speak also to those you love and who still live, or who have passed into the unseen. This, my friend, is religion in the best sense of the word; through it, you are brought together again with your true family. When you pray, don't hold back; say whatever comes to you, and ask whatever you most need to ask, no matter how silly you think it sounds. The Great Ones enjoy that sort of honesty. Open yourself up to them and keep speaking, daily.

All you need is these two things to get to the next place you are going. Once you get there, these things will continue to help you."

Requiem for Brad Dement

A few days ago, a gentleman that I had been corresponding with via email passed away. He was in his early 40's, and from my letters back and forth with him, he seemed vibrant and enthusiastic about his spiritual life. He was a fellow Pagan, and a fellow man of British Heritage- both Germanic and Celtic. He used the religious names "Ethelwulf" and "MacAlbion".

I understand that quite well, as I live a dual-traditioned life, honoring both sides of my own heritage, Germanic and Celtic, as Ule and as Cuan. It's demanding, but the Germanic and Celtic ancestral streams come together in the Holy Isles of Britain. Brad understood this; he was respectful to the people of Britain, both those alive today and those of his own family that had gone before.

Brad's guardian spirit must have been happy that his Fate called for his death now, in the Beltaine season- like Samhain or the time of the Wolf's Nights, it is an easy time for any living creature to make their transition, their journey across the dividing line between the living and the dead. I know that he may have carried some regrets or attachments with him, like nearly all of the living who are called to make that journey, but I also know that things went well for him, and are going well for him.

I didn't know him well, but I know one thing about him, one thing that might be as important as anything else: he was brave enough to resist the dominant streams of modern social pressure, reflected in the dominant Christian religion, and embrace the old ways of his Ancestors. As I have pointed out elsewhere, that takes boldness and bravery. He was brave and he died a Pagan.

He lives now, on his new journey- still a Pagan, who is ever more open to the regenerating influences and the appearances of the after-world than any Christian could be or will be. While Christians are longing for the appearance of their savior and their deliverance, they will only face the long journey, and the appearance of spirits, most of which they will believe are demons. Those peaceful few who can accept them as "angels" may have a better time of it, and to them, and to all who must die, I extend a wish for peace and success.

Death is a time for the settling of accounts and for the quenching of the fire of hateful emotions or disturbing attitudes. I hold no grudge against any of this world's dead, even those I disliked. In death, we all pay our debts back and we become justified.

I know Brad is doing well because a brave person always does well when they have to face the unknown. Being brave is about being fully aware of whatever presents itself to you, no matter how unexpected, difficult or frightening it might be, and keeping your sense of self intact, along with your moral reasoning, your dignity and your poise. A brave person may suffer from fear, but they never lose themselves to it; they never become its victims.

Brad has no choice but to make a journey now, and I know that he'll face what he has to face in a brave manner. He faced this life with a brave will to do what he felt was right, even though most people in the society around him discouraged his choice of religious lifestyle.

It's not easy to go against the great religious current that sweeps nearly everyone along, unthinking, into the fate created for them by organized faiths. Those who can face the weight of 2000 years of social pressure are going a long way towards preparing themselves to face the immense forces that meet us in our death-transitions, and which may try to urge us in directions that we might not wish to take. The life-journey takes bravery; the death-journey also takes bravery.

The virtues we create in ourselves in this life are each person's true companions on the death-journey, and they are the things that we all "take with us". You can forget about making deals for an easy afterlife; the cost of a good afterlife is paid here and now, in our daily activities and personal development.

I have had many disturbing and powerful dream visions in the last 5 days, coinciding not only with this holy season, but I believe with Brad's death. I can come up with no other explanation. These dream visions are causing changes in my life and in my spiritual life which I am soon to implement, as I will explain in my next post to this blog.

But until then, Brad is journeying and must be given a proper requiem. I have one here, "reclaimed" from Carmina Gadelica, for a cousin that I never knew well, but to whom I wish I had written more. Where he has gone, I will go one day, and so will you, so read this requiem for him, and mean it in your heart. What you do for him will be done for you.


The Death Song

You are going home this night to your home of winter,
To your home of fall, of spring, of summer,
You are going this night to the home of all,
To your perfect rest, to a lasting bed beyond what is
seen.

Sleep you, sleep, and away with your sorrow,
Rest in the visions that will come, peaceful, without
sorrow,
Rest you, rest, and away with any sorrow,
Be at peace, dear one, in the lap of the Mother.

Sleep this night in the breast of your Mother,
Sleep, dear one, She herself soothing you;
Rest you this night on the Great Mother's arm,
Rest you, dear one, She herself kissing you.

This rest is beyond earthly sleep,
Hurt and grief pass away, and onward go you,
This is the sleep of youth, an awakening to the
young-land,
The healing sleep of the Lord of Light.

The peace of the seven lights be yours, friend,
The peace of the seven joys be yours, friend,
The peace of the seven sleeps be yours, friend,
On the arm of the Shining One, who has defeated
darkness.

The shadow of death is on your face, friend,
But the Shining King has his arm around you;
Go now to the Three Mothers, and bid farewell to pain,
Your beloved is standing in front of you, with peace
in her mind.

Be now in the calm of all calm,
Recieve the guidance of all guidance,
Be now in the love of all loves,
Go now, our dear one, with the Lord of Life;
Rest now, our dear one, in the God of Life.

The Two Trees: A Heathen's Take on the War Between Creationism and Evolution

We've all had a chance to see long and furious debates between the people who literally believe in religious and mythical stories regarding the origin of man and the world, and people who only accept scientific theories about the same. Certainly if you are an American, you've been embarrased like the rest of us by the medieval-style thinking and voting of the state of Kansas regarding the matter.

On one hand, we have the people who believe that their God literally created anatomically modern humans in the blink of an eye, and not so long ago. They believe that he created the world, and all the animals in it, in the space of seven days. On the other side, you have the scientific-minded crowd who believe that billions of years passed and a gradual process of evolution took place, straight from the primordial sludge, resulting eventually in all that you see around you, including your own mind and body.

In the "middle" of this somewhat silly debate are the theists and God-believers, like the Catholic church, who believe in what they call "theistic evolution"- the idea that God created everything using natural laws like evolution; they believe that evolution is not a blind, random, materialistic process, but a divinely created and guided process.

Heathenry gives us a creation myth, too. It talks at length about the origins of the world and of the first men and women. In fact, if you read our sacred stories, you'll see that Heathens- long before Christians- believed that an "intelligent designer" created the world, the green growing things, animals, other orders of life, and finally, human beings. Not unlike what Christians believe, the Heathen world-shaper- the Allfather himself- also breathed a sacred spirit into the first men and women, eternally binding them to himself as kin, and his brothers, who aided him in the creation of humans, even bestowed on them the form or image of the Gods.

If you study pre-Christian creation mythology, you see that this idea is nearly universal. It appears in the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian original upon which the account of Genesis is based. In the Enuma Elish, the Gods create human beings in their own image, and even set them up in a paradisal garden, called the Garden of Eridu. Though there were many Greek Myths of Creation, they all agree on one thing- either the Earth Mother herself gave birth to men and women, allowing them to spring up from the ground, or a Godly shaper (like Prometheus), working with clay and earth and other natural materials from the ground, shaped humans in the image of the Gods and gave them life.

The ancient Iranian human-origin myth has the first man and woman growing from the ground as a plant, before the creator calls them forth to be man and woman, bestows a soul on them, and bids them to multiply and increase themselves. The Egyptian potter-God created men and women on his wheel, true masterworks of his Godly creativity. Ivan Hudec gives a wonderful Slavic creation myth in which the clay-people receive the spirit of the Gods as a gift, to counter the dark forces of chaos that were stirring in their clay, and they become human beings.

The reason why I'm writing this letter is to give a response to the people who scoff at these myths as "superstition" and "nonsense". Heathen and Pagan mythology is deeper than the great oceans, and they contain much wisdom, all of which is readily available if people would read them with the sense of openness, humility, and wonder which they call for.

These sacred stories are records of experiences, living experiences that human beings had while in direct communion with Nature and the unseen world. There are timeless truths encoded in mythology, truths about the world and about men and women, who are each of them a full and complete manifestation of the world and offspring of the Gods who shaped it.

Must these myths conflict with science? I would say that it didn't matter if they did- the Mythical Truth is the Whole Truth. When I say that, what I mean is, the myth captures the essence of the reality- it captures the eternal pattern and meaning; in light of this, it need not capture the physical form. The physical process of human evolution is an important aspect of reality; in the natural processes that brought human beings into the shape they currently manifest, we see the completion of the "Mannaz" mystery. Humans, ever fated to be a part of this world, through natural processes came to be a part of it. That's a fact that all can see.

From this point of agreement, we have the perspective of the myth, and the perspective of modern empirical sciences. From the mythical dimension, a revelation about the truth of man's existence has come to us from the souls, minds and tongues of our ancestors. From the dimension of empirical thinking, which is very much a thing of this world, and which is only concerned with surface-level phenomenon, theories about how the physical process occured have been created.

Both are important, but considering the shifting and insubstantial nature of the physical world, I would say that the eternal pattern and truth revealed by the myth is by far the more important of the two, at least for true human understanding. When I say "true human understanding", I'm not talking about the sort of understanding that leads a person to be good at math, or helps them to understand how genes might evolve. I'm talking about spiritual understanding, the only kind of understanding that can lead humans to lasting peace and happiness. In spiritual understanding is found the underlying purpose and meaning of life which is necessary for any true happiness.

Now, I've given my opinion that the Mythical Truth is more important from the perspective of human spiritual understanding and peace. This does not mean that we should scoff at science or ignore the good theories that scientists have worked hard to come up with.

There are many uses for theories like evolution; understanding our biology better in the scientific sense of the word means that we can create better medical treatments and medicines, which will no doubt enhance the length (though not necessarily the quality) of our lives. And we all know how important it is to live a long time! Joking aside, I do think it is a blessing when Fate allots a person many long years- they have a chance to know generations of their family that they might not have known, and they get to see and experience many happy things, alongside the sorrowful things that we must all endure.

But length of life is not the same as quality of life. Quality of life, in the true sense, is a matter of how peaceful and happy a person is. And people are only at peace and truly happy when they know who and what they really are. People are only peaceful and happy when they know the whole truth about themselves as human beings, and how they relate to one another and this world. Finally, lasting peace and happiness comes from knowing the Gods and ancestors as true and living spiritual presences- every bit as "real" as we- and joining with them and their kin in this world, as one community.

If a person could live 30 years under the influence of such wholeness, that would be a quality life. In my never-so-humble opinion, it would certainly beat 80 years of living in a rat-race world where family bonds are broken, where materialistic science convinces us all that we are just decaying flesh randomly evolving in the service of selfish genetics, and war-mongering military-corporate-industrial complexes grind hundreds of human lives to dust on the news everyday for us. There's no quality in such a world; in that world, all that matters is what you can get before you die, other human beings be damned... except for those human beings that you keep around for your own selfish amusement or benefit.

Most believers in the theories of evolution believe that life's ultimate purpose is to pass on genetics, and to hope that you (and your population group) are "fit" enough endure the random mutations and changes that must occur to any grouping of beings. Well, as a Heathen mystic and believer in a deeper truth about things, I must disagree; life is not merely or ultimately a matter of transmission of genetics. In the minds of the eager believers in "hard core" evolution, it seems that one of the consequences of life is often confused with cause of life.

Let me now give a proper Heathen response, which I believe solves the seemingly endless conflict between the myths of the ancients and the myths of science.

The Heathen myths don’t discuss “evolution” as we know it now, with the same scientific language that some use now, but the ancient myths discuss the origins of mankind as being quite natural- and indeed, how could it be otherwise? Whatever appears, whatever comes to be, whatever exists, whether Gods, Goddesses, spirits, humans, trees, or stones, must be natural. "Natural", "born of nature", is a rather all-inclusive term in Heathenry. Sure, there are very natural and normal reaches of reality that humans have a very difficult time sensing or experiencing, but this doesn't make them "supernatural" in some way.

Most people fail to understand this simple fact, but it remains: "nature" isn't just "trees and water and stuff around us that we can see." Nature, in the broadest sense, is everything that exists. In my writings, I often use "Nature" and "Reality" as synonymous. In Heathen thinking, there are other "worlds" full of divine beings, and there is a difference between human beings and the Gods- but that doesn't make "other" worlds or the Gods into alien places and beings that "appear" in the natural world and exert some sort of "supernatural" influence over it.

If the Gods were truly and radically "above" nature as we normally experience it, truly separate in nature and power, there would be no way they could interact with it, or with us. If they were so alien and different, how could their substance have interacted with so-called "natural" substances, and thus, done as our stories tell us, and shaped us?

The answer to this problem is simpler than simple: the Gods are not alien nor distant nor "supernatural". They exist in a continuum of reality which is every bit as natural and normal as the world you are currently experiencing. They are part of the same web of Wyrd, the same web of life and power, that we are, and which all things are.

It is true that the unseen worlds are full of strange powers and wonders. It is true that when the normal human's mind has just a taste of the power of Wyrd or the power of the unseen, they often experience it as though it were the most supernatural, utterly alien thing they ever felt or saw. That is a consequence of the average human mind being unprepared for the utter intensity, power, and awe that this reality has in store. It has nothing to do with naive notions of "supernaturalism".

Like so many things in life, the answer to the debate between Evolution and Mythical Origins is found not on one side or the other, but between. Humans are creations of the Gods, but if you read the myths, you will see that it isn't that easy. I say that humans are "creations" of the Gods, but that doesn't mean that the Gods created us out of nothing.

This is the most important statement I can make- the Gods didn't create us out of nothing. Such an idea is absurd, and simply not in the realm of possibility. It has nothing to do with a lack of power on the parts of the Gods; the reason why they can't make something out of nothing is because "nothing" doesn't exist.

Even in the "Beginning", our Heathen myth tells us that there was a void, called Ginnungagap- which it describes as a "yawning gap", or chasm, which is precisely how some Greek myths describe it. The "yawning gap" from which all creation was to arise wasn't "nothing"- it was charged with the power of Wyrd, and in it slept all the potentials- the Mysteries- that were to arise. There was "something" from the very beginning, like a universal well of hidden seed-potentials, and now, as Fate has woven out, all of the worlds seen and unseen have appeared. Whether the universe is veiled in potential, or expressed in the nine worlds of Ygdrasil, "nothing" never exists. There's always "something" existing. The notion of "nothingness" cannot exist except as an abstract construction in human heads.

The Gods have their origin, just like everything else, from that primordial beginning, this well of being. The Gods, after shaping the worlds, shaped the first men and women. Notice I am saying "shaped"- not "created". The Gods didn't create the earth or the water or the materials from which all things were shaped; those things were there long before the Gods. Here's the great secret that resolves the war between theories of evolution and our myths: the Gods shaped pre-existing materials into all that you see.

Nature, as a whole, is "always there". It doesn't need a creator. One of the greatest differences between Pre-Christian philosophies and mythologies and Christian thinking is that the Pagans didn't think that nature had a creator. They did think that various natural orders, worlds, and beings were shaped by the Gods, that the Gods had a role to play in how and why certain places and beings existed the way they did, but the Gods didn't create nature. Nature had no creator and it didn't need one. Nature was perpetual, eternal. Nature might have gone through cycles, but it was always there, and the circle of nature had no beginning or end. From nature, which was often enough deified itself, came the Gods, and through Godly creativity, through the Godly shaping of natural elements, came mankind, and many other living beings.

So the Gods are our elder kin in the most literal sense of the word; they "came to be" out of the body of nature before mankind did, and they played a role in "bringing us to be" in the form we are now in.

If you look at the Heathen creation myth, you see that the Allfather and his two brothers found the trunks of two trees on the shore of a primordial ocean, and from those genetic materials, they created the first men and women. Allfather and his brothers didn't create the earth or the seas; the primordial materials from which the earth was lifted and the seas were run- the body of the giant Ymir- was around before the Gods. The Gods, through their actions, saw to it that the primordial "natural body" of Ymir was "divided" and torn apart, and placed into the order that we call "the world".

This is why humans are part God, part Giant. The physical "stuff" of our bodies is born straight out of nature; our flesh and blood is the product of the body of a Giant. The Earth Mother, herself a giantess who came into existence after Ymir, gave birth to those two trees from which human beings were "shaped" by the Gods. She is as much our mother as the Allfather is our father, shaper, and teacher.

So there you have it- natural materials are subjected to Godly creativity, and humans came to be, as we are now. If you (for some reason) want to see this story through the lens of scientific materialism, you can think of the Gods as hidden realities of whatever natural processes guided the evolution of humans from very natural materials, materials that had coalesced in the oceans of the primordial planet earth.

In my way of seeing, these Heathen beliefs do not run contrary to evolution- the reality is that nature is constantly sending forth countless streams of life, and nature is constantly in flux, always changing, always adapting, growing, living, dying- and every form that Nature births is undergoing great change. That's how Wyrd, the interconnected web of life, works. Evolution is a scientific expression of the fact of change.

Humans, like every other creature or thing- were “born” from the web of Wyrd, the body of nature, from ground and the waters.

It took the Gods, nature’s earlier and very powerful children, to create the causes for humankind to arise- and to bestow a special gift on us: the gift of divine imagination and spirit. Allfather shaped those two trees- masses of living matter- into a human form; you could say that he (thinking metaphorically) “guided” the process of growth and Fate, helped shape the natural process, and bestowed Spirit onto the finished product, thus “shaping” humans into their finished form.

I don't personally know any Heathens who think that the Gods shaped the two trees into men and women in the space of a few seconds or minutes- and indeed, the element of "time" is left out of the myth completely. Maybe their godly spell of shaping took billions of years to be "completed"; who knows? That is up to the individual who reads the myth. The point here is that the myth doesn't express itself in temporal terms- it is truly timeless, and speaking not only about what we might describe in later ages as a "physical, temporal process", but also a timeless reality. Regardless of how long it took or what mechanics went into the process, the myth's point is made: humans owe their existence partly to Godly artifice. THAT is the great truth of the story, which helps us to understand the dignity and value of human life (and all life), and helps orient us towards those who are our great-grandparents and holy kin: the Gods.

It cannot be repeated enough- the Allfather, in common with all the other Gods, did not “make” humans out of nothing- Wyrd, expressing itself in natural processes, simply organically birthed all things, all primordial elements, and the Gods added some guidance and further shaping to that, to make perfect the world order. We, as parts of that world-order, happen to be fortunate recipients of Godly tampering; with our special Godly endowments, we too can come to know the mysteries, know the timeless, and come to be like the Gods. We can certainly shape our world and create like them, though to a different degree.

Evolution is a natural reality. All beings, including humans, are changing over time- everything changes. Humans are “children of Earth and Starry Heaven”, as the ancient Mysteries said- in other words, born BOTH of natural processes, and of Godly hands. But we were not “created” in the sense that Christians think humans were “created”- we were not created out of the clay of an earth which was itself "created out of nothing" by the power of some God. The idea of "Creatio ex Nihilo", or Creation out of nothing, a doctrine that Christianity dearly holds onto, is by far one of the greatest absurdities to be found in their beliefs.

Being mortals means that the “earthly” aspect of our nature has to continue to flow with nature- death is a reality; our earthy and watery bodies have to keep changing under the influence of natural forces- and die. But our “starry” nature, our Godly nature, (our spirit or the Gift of Odin) does not and cannot “die” utterly. It moves on to halls beyond this world at death, and moves on to another destiny in accord with Wyrd.

In much the same manner that you could “create” a statue by carving it out of stone, you could say the Gods “created” us; you don’t really “create” the statue except in the most poetic sense of the word- the reality is that a sculptor “shapes” his or her creation out of the materials that were already there, or which nature herself has birthed.

Heathenry would never deny the scientific realities of change, nor the fact that humans are made of earth, water, and elemental matter. But Heathenry (at least in my neck of the woods) does accept that the reality of human shaping, evolution, and existence, has an "inner" side, which we gain access to through sacred mythology. In that mythical truth, the whole truth is found.