The Endless Land and the Fallen Age

The far north is calling, but I can't be there yet. Any journey worth the taking is long and burdensome. I have dropped sail, however, and with my family and Gods aside me, we have begun the long trek.

Our journey takes us through here, a landscape of endless forests and farmsteads fallen into half-abandonment and half-decay. This is the lay of our times: there was a dream once, that was America; all over the land, people gathered together in communities and believed that the dream would last forever, but it didn't. Their dreams were invested in their children, and those dreams, for the most part, grew up and left the tiny woods and broad fields on the side of the endless roads for cities and other destinations.

With the young gone, only the old were left to watch the world change, and change it did. entire hidden and downtrodden populations of people, once marginalized, gained their rights to a new freedom. The local networks of favoritism and nepotism died and broke apart and retired. Money changed in value, and then changed again. Services once needed were replaced by new technologies. Industries once prominent faded away. Now, boarded up homes and shadows alone remain, and I'm right in the middle of it all, lodging in a forest surrounded by neglect and sparsely populated dirt roads peopled by strangers.

The woods are wild; once, they were tamed by people on all sides. Once, goats ate the grass and low branches here; now, a tangle is everywhere. Once, cats climbed the rafters of the hand-made and raised wooden sheds and garages, but now, loose hunting dogs have killed them all. The goats vanished away, along with the chickens that were either killed by wild animals or their human masters, who could no longer afford to feed them. The chicken coops and roosts are rotted away and vine-covered. The fish pond has sunk into a murk, and goodness knows what lives in it now. The fence lines have vanished in huge gaps, and tangles of barbed wire are rolled up and rusted under ten year leaf piles.

But owls are here- and always have been. This lost region of forest was once named after the hooting owls that were prominent, and they have remained constant. They comfort me when they court and hunt at night. Something of my power hunts and courts with them. Their freedom and persistence is something of my own freedom.

It is a deplorable fate that made my road pass through here, but when the current waxing moon is full, and fades away, and waxes again to half, I will be gone, gone nearly to roof of the world. I have seen the mountains and forests that await there, in vision as well as with my own eyes. I have seen the snow and rivers, and felt the powers beckoning. I go with some risk behind me, but such as me and mine live in the hands of Wyrd and we fear no risk.

There are wights here, and they always have been here. They have grown wild themselves, alien to human beings, for the centuries of neglect that they have endured. They strike out and slay animals themselves at times. It is they that helped to bring waste to this community; all who ignore the spiritual powers that dwell in a place cannot expect to see their own families and legacies thrive in that place. On the hum of the hex-bridge, the mystery of the Helgrind, the mother of mysteries, I have dropped down and seen the landscape itself become only the crust covering a deeper power, and seen the wights moving across it.

Vaguely human shaped, I've seen them walking through the thick growth. I've seen how the falling buildings here have become haunted by them, as well as how the activities once carried out by people here have summoned powers- they are all creeping along unseen: they are grist and saw-meal; goat-hide and turned earth; blackened mound and holly edge, stone and sturdy beam, oak bark and pine-sap, resin fire and clay wight.

I have cut a small Ve-ditch in the earth, on cleared earth amid a grove of trees, to set apart a hallowed place for sacrifices. I have left a small way in opening to the east, and will fill the ditch with sacred spring water. When I sacrifice, it will be to these wild wights first, not so much for their friendship, but so that they will be satisfied to leave me and mine in peace, while we live and worship in their virid tangle, their pine-straw littered patch of thick wood. Then, my greatest grandfather Ing and his family will be given sacrifices, along with the high Thunderer, and of course The Master of Spirits and Sorcery- and always alongside the Disir and the mothers, and Earth, that greatest of mothers.

I have much to sacrifice for. Most people think of sacrifice in dim terms in these Godsless days, only framing it in Judeo-Christian terms, but our ancestral notion- ever more ancient- is far more sublime. It was the slaying- the sacrifice- of a great being- the mother/father of giants- at the dawn of the universe that made all things around me possible- from wights to the trees to the earth and sky: sacrifice is more than just the making holy of an offering, before it is slain and shared; sacrifice is about the creation of a new order. When I drag the bronze sacrificing knife crowned by a rough-hewn human head over the horn, symbolizing the slain ox of old, and fill a hlaut-bowl full of the dark ale that symbolizes blood, I am doing more than making a symbolic act of death and sharing; I am making a real act of creation, and it has power.

What the sacrifice blood touches is made new, in accordance with the will of the sacrificer. What place is sprinkled, what people and beings are sprinkled, they are made new. I want and need many things to be made new in my life, and the ancients have given me and mine a way to achieve that regeneration. Here, in the wight-haunted ruin of a tiny hamlet, as far from "civilization" as most people want to ever be, I will enact rites of timeless power.

Curse the "axial age" sages who decided that the ways of the ancestors were no longer "good enough" for the people- the axial age was the downfall of humanity, not the birth of a new humanity. From that cursed time came the scourge of Zoroastrianism, and from it, Judaism, with her two thrice-more accursed offspring Christianity and Islam. From it came Aristotle and Plato, who destroyed the true mystical and polytheistic heritage of Southern Europe, with their condescending "re-reading" and "reinterpretations" of the sacred myths of their people, and their scorn for the "superstitions", which were in fact luminous truths that their minds could not grasp. Our Greek cousins gave us the roots of the devastating "rationalism" that led to unqualified skepticism, atheism and corruption, and left many vulnerable to the rot of Christian missionaries.

In the east, world-hating religions arose, religions teaching how the world was suffering, fallen, and "transcendence" was needed, or the death of "ego", and the overcoming of desires, passions, and bodily hungers. From east to west the stink spread; in all these places, women were marginalized, packed into harems, under veils, and forced into submission and silence. Women were blamed for sin and death, and for being the seductresses that held men back from virtue.

The great civilizations of the pre-axial age accorded women their proper, sacred, and equal place; my own ancestors, I am proud to say, were such people. But the axial age was the turning of humans against the world and against women, out of fear and disgust and sorrow. They say humans in this era had become more aware of their mortality and frailty than ever before; from this fear was born what we call "religion" today.

The five regions that gave us the axial age- Iran, Greece, Palestine, India, and China, really did a fine job wrecking the world for the rest of us to be born later- but that is how curses work. They echo down through the generations of man like screams echo through canyons. By the time these screams fade, I fear, the ruin of the world will be upon us.

Why humanity waited until this particular "axial" period (800-200 BCE) to "break" and start turning like madmen against the primordial sanity of their ancestors, I don't know. But it did happen. It was a sign of the coming of the Wolf Age, the waning of the world. I have never succumbed to the madness; something strong in me- the love of the Hamingja-maiden who follows me through this life- sheltered me.

My senses were never lost; never did the wildness of nature or the spectacle of violence and death turn my stomach in fear and weaken my spirit. I am not afraid of death; as a living man, I am a part of this world, as a dead man, I will be part of it in another, more mysterious way, and I look forward to it. What sacredness now surrounds me is what always was and always will be, in countless forms. This is my life and my afterlife, and that is as Fate has woven. My Gods expected humans not to fear death, and anyone who knows the sacredness of nature and this world cannot fear death.

I lament the ruin wrought by the axial age madness, and it is more in focus for me now as I sit in a forest of waned hopes, dreams, and ruins. But a Wyrd-worker like me doesn't lament it long. Like the afternoon that falls high sun-tide, it had to happen. We can't change the world back, but each individual one of us can still live in the peace and sanity of the pre-axial age, in fellowship with the Gods and spirits. There is no greater peace, despite what the world-haters may say.

They claim that the axial-age religions and philosophies taught a revolutionary notion that people needed to "find truth" within themselves and break free of calcified traditions; they claim that the axial age was the birth-time of real virtue, as people finally reached a point where they had to look "within" to find compassion and virtue- but this is nonsense.

Virtue has always existed, and the terms "within" and "without" are shallow distinctions. There is no true "within" and "without"- all of the weave of Wyrd is one. Whatever you believe you are finding "within" yourself, is really a part of the whole, a part of this world, just as much "outside" you as it is perceptually "inside", and the same goes for whatever you believe is "outside" you. Humans started playing with their minds in new ways during the axial age, but virtue was not born. It is where it always was, in the wholeness. It lives as we live, as much a part of us and this world as anything else, for all time. The axial age was not an upward evolution; it was a disaster.

The world didn't have a spiritual revolution; humans had a narcissistic attack of "inwardness", mingled with potent fear and confusion, and we have all burned for it. The way people "found" truth and virtue before the axial age has an advantage over the new narcissism: it didn't destroy the world and hate women, and it didn't birth monstrous, judgmental, institutionalized religions that have corrupted society all the way to the level of government and spawned wars and destructive technologies beyond number.

They have crushed the remnants of the primal world, and taken a big shite on traditional wisdom, calling it (just like the Greek atheists) "superstition" and "marginal knowledge". They turned the word "myth" into a thing of stupidity and shame, but this is all only their perception. It is their curse. And it drinks the blood from us all.

I reject fully all of the "religions" and "spiritual paths" that teach that this world is bad or unsatisfactory; that men or women are corrupt, naturally and innately, on any level; that men or women must deny the body and senses to "rise above" earthly things, or any of that hogwash.

I reject fully any notion that people must shelter in some concept called "reason" or "rationality" in the face of obscurity and uncertainty and I further reject the notion that traditional pre-axial religions were superstitious, brutal savage attempts to grasp reality with made-up stories and bloody rites. This world and this existence is far beyond anything we can understand or believe, and the day the world-hating idiots recognize that, is the day that we may have a chance to breathe clean air until we all die. This story isn't over, and now, people are beginning to realize it. We can't lead the world back to sanity, but individual sanity is still a possibility.

Our cousins in Russia have heard the call as well, it seems:

Russian Pagans joyfully worship while the Orthodox Christians get pissed off

May Kupalo and Yarilo bless them powerfully. May old Volos be there as well, to shelter and protect them, with Perun alongside him. Welcome back, cousins. We are few but we are strong.

The Sacred Tree

All life is figured by them as a Tree. Igdrasil, the Ash-tree of existence, has its roots deep-down in the kingdoms of Death: its trunk reaches up heaven-high, spreads its boughs over the whole Universe: it is the Tree of Existence. At the foot of it, in the Death-Kingdom, sit the three Fates... watering its roots from the Sacred Well. It's "bough," with their buddings and disleafings, - events, things suffered, things done, catastrophes, - stretch through all lands and times. Is not every leaf of it a biography, every fiber there an act or word? Its boughs are the Histories of Nations. The rustle of it is the noise of Human Existence, onwards from of old. I find no similitude so true as this of a Tree. Beautiful; altogether beautiful and great.

-Thomas Carlyle

Commanding People to Love: Revealed Religious Morality as an Insult to the Human Spirit

"Morality was not brought down from Mount Sinai carved on tablets- moral is a function of the human soul, as old as mankind itself."

-Carl Jung

* * *

The other day, a friend and I were eating in a Vietnamese restaurant (a small place, and the only one we have in our one-horse town) when we encountered one of those nightmare situations that Heathens have to endure from time to time: the annoying table of Christian pastors that love to talk at the top of their lungs in a small, enclosed dining area.

No one in the room could help but overhearing what the younger of the two pastors was saying: he was talking about designing new programs for their church, to encourage people to take a more active role in community and worship. His main complaint was phrased by him just like this: "How can you love your neighbor if you don't know them?" His idea was to move the "worship" service up to a common table, upon which "thanksgiving" offerings would be spread and people would have an opportunity to gather around it and really talk. If they could know each other more, he reasoned, they would learn to love one another.

Now, I hate hearing the loud sermonizing of the revealed religionists as much as the next thinking person. I was considering asking the management to give me five dollars back for having to listen to this nonsense throughout the entire course of my meal. But after I left, it started me thinking down the course that led to my letter here today.

Our president Obama gave a big speech today, aimed at the Muslim world, from the city of Cairo. In that well-crafted (but ultimately, I think, futile) speech, he quoted revealed religious scriptures from the Koran to the Torah and the Bible, and those quotes were all around themes of treating others as you'd like to be treated, and other things like how people were created to "know" one another, and love one another, and be nice, and all of the usual blah blah snore quotes. I don't mean to sound overly dismissive, but I have little choice, because something that I've always felt became very clear to me today.

I strongly feel that revealed religions- religions that lay down "laws" from "God" to man, that command people to love, to behave in this way or that, are very insulting to the human spirit. I didn't know what bothered me so much about the obnoxious younger pastor in the restaurant until later: it was the fact that he was looking for ways to manipulate people into "love" for one another.

* * *

Here is my thinking on the subject: by the time you have to command someone to love, or use, as a justification for why people should behave decently to others a "holy book" that has "God" as its author, you are already too far removed from the source of true decency to be able to do any good. By the time you have to tell people "love one another", people have already forgotten how to love, and why.

Organic religions- natural religions born in the primal experiences of ancient cultures, (such as Native American religions, Asatru, Shinto, and the like) have no "sacred books". There are no "scriptures" that are believed to be the words of a God, sent straight from God's desk to humankind, containing rules for human behavior. This is true for all organic religions, and these organic cultures lived for countless millenia, doing quite well for themselves, and expressing a powerful family and community-oriented ethic and morality which was pure and strong.

These cultures- including my own religious culture- naturally expressed loving, respectful, and supportive bonds between kin and clan and family which required no "commands" from the Gods to do so. The fact that revealed religions actually feel the need to "command" (or say that their God commands) people to behave well is an insult to humanity- the revealed religious worldview begins with the assumption that humans do not naturally know how to behave, that we need "do" and "do not" orders, or we'll be wild beasts.

But this is not true, not by a long shot. Humans naturally do know how to behave, how to care for others and protect others. They know how to love, make bonds, nurture, and live. At least, they used to- perhaps it is a reality now that the "civilized world", after many generations of organized, revealed religious influence, has become reduced to a massive kindergarten class that needs a ruler-wielding teacher standing over them telling them that they should behave this way or that, but this was not always the case.

The more I considered it, the more I realized how sharply insulting it is that these "big boy" revealed religions walk around chanting "commandments" and "rules for life". By the time you have to command people to live in a certain way, the natural sanity of your people is all but lost.

Or should I say, it is sleeping, waiting to be trusted enough again to re-emerge. Organic religions don't have "commands from the Gods" because no commands are needed. Humans are not naturally fallen, evil, or wicked. They can and will look after one another within their communities and families, and may the realities of our modern day which interfere with this natural caring be cursed! One of the most profound realities today which I feel interrupts that natural goodness is the constant teaching, on the parts of revealed religions, that we are NOT naturally good.

If you teach this to people long enough, they will begin to believe it, and they will look to natural good behavior as an exception to the rule, not the norm. They will begin to believe that it was only by the grace of a supernatural being that they were able to be loving and good, when it was in them all along. People will look upon what is normal and natural as an expression of willed virtue, and as some extraordinary duty that they have fulfilled and are therefore deserving of some great praise or recognition for. So you loved your neighbor? Great! You don't deserve the title "godly" or "righteous"- you deserve the title "human".

If you ask people today about the natural goodness of humanity, most of them will laugh at you and point to this atrocity or that war, as proof that anyone who believes in our "natural goodness" is just being naive. But this, too, is a function of the dominant myth that people have been taught to believe. Many will ignore all of the natural wonders and goodness that we are capable of, in favor of the horror that we are capable of, and use that one-sided perspective as their guideline for defining what is "human". That situation is, to me, intolerable.

* * *

What a terrible pain it is to see these revealed religionists thinking that cute little phrases like "love one another" and "do unto others" and the like are so profound, when in reality, they are insults. People who thrill to these sorts of statements are like the spiritual children of this world, forever having to be told to be decent and good, when in reality, decency and goodness spring from us naturally, without a word being spoken. Tribal people around the world to this day live in loving connection with their families and with the land without a single "commandment" from their Gods being given them from some authoritative "text" or scripture.

How can the revealed religionists explain this away? These are people who have never heard of Jehovah, Allah, or Jesus- they've never been tormented, as we have been, by the sheer insulting obnoxiousness of people popping along and waving "the book" in their faces and telling them how they aren't doing this or that right, or how they aren't living or believing right. Yet there they are- getting along as well now as their ancestors did since the dawn of cultural time. Do they have fights? Wars? Disharmony in ways? Of course! But then, so do the Christian and Muslim worlds- and war and stupidity at a pitch much higher than ever before in history.

What the organic cultures have that the modern "big boy religion" world doesn't, is an expression of natural goodness which needs no "instruction book". They also don't have a divine decree- either one that is there, or misunderstood as being there- to convert, harm, dislike, judge, or hate others who don't believe as they do. When they fight, it is over natural causes of conflict- resource competition, mostly. And I'd rather kill or die over resource competition- over things my people and others need to survive- than I would over religious insanity.

My ancestors didn't attack other people because those others didn't worship Odhinn and Thorr. My ancestors didn't have priests or imams wandering around with them, preaching crusade or jihad. My ancestors never would have been so insanely warped. That such cruel twists of Fate could have entangled us is a sobering lesson about what happens when people give way to massive group assimilation and fear.

By the time you have to flip open this or that book- books written by other humans long ago- and point to a passage and justify your contention that people need to "love" one another, you and your audience have forgotten how to love, and why. And no amount of pointing at your scripture passages will ever convince them to love, or make them love. If the love doesn't come naturally, it will not come through contrivance. Feelings of this nature cannot be forced, or taught.

Nothing the young pastor can do will make his congregation members actualize the ideal of love that he clearly believes in. He believes it, but does he really feel it? Does he love because he is loving, or because he learned early on that his God expected it of him? Is love for him his ticket to heaven, or is it an expression of his most authentic nature? These are hard, but important questions.

* * *

The more I study my own religious culture, the more I love the organic approach to religion- the fact that we are not burdened by these so-called "revelations" and "sacred texts" is such a powerful and precious part of our way of living and thinking. I always liked the fact that we had no such dead weight in our spiritual culture; now I understand even more why it is so powerful and important.

We are free of these shackles, and our humanity is allowed to be as it was intended to be. Our benevolence, love, caring, and concerns are allowed to emerge naturally. We are allowed to be spiritual, mental, and moral adults, not children scolded and commanded to love or "do good". We do not believe that humans come forth from the womb flawed or morally stupid. As Jung said "Morality was not brought down from Mount Sinai carved on tablets- moral is a function of the human soul, as old as mankind itself."

Obama was able to justify, using scriptures, a morality that his audience was able to understand. What a terrible pity that he had to refer to a book to get the crowd to applaud. What a terrible, terrible pity. May the Ancestral Gods preserve us in the face of such a darkness, and give their blessings to us and our families, during this strange exile of humanity.

Why was Obama's speech ultimately futile? Because his appeal to "human decency" was framed in the center of an enormous, paradoxical flaw: it was framed as though it takes a God's written command to give us all a reason to be decent. If people truly believe such a thing, they can never be truly decent- they can only put on a good act. Deep, authentic decency has to emerge previous to any rule or command, and especially previous to any rule or command that carries with it a torturous penalty for breaking it. Are we children? Are we dogs to be threatened into obedience, or horses to be broken?

I'm not a child, a dog, or a horse; and I don't need a document from the desk of Jehovah (or any being) to inspire, encourage, or justify my love, or my decency. If a person needs to flip through a book to find the "right" way to live, they have already lost the path, and I sincerely doubt that they will ever find it again easily.

Urd's Vision

"Who knows the truth? Who can tell whence and how arose this universe? The Gods are later than its beginning: who knows therefore whence comes this creation? Only that God who sees in highest heaven; he only knows whence came this universe, and whether it was made or uncreated. He only knows, or perhaps he knows not."

-Rig Veda X

* * *

Urd, the chief Norn- the supreme "Fate weaver" of ancient and modern Heathen religions, may be loosely described in terms of a "being" or an entity, a nigh-incomprehensible entity whose name gives us the word "Wyrd", and whose power, along with her two lesser sisters, weaves the web of Wyrd.

The web they weave contains all possible realities; it contains all forces, all states, all conditions, and from it, arise all entities. In it, are sustained all entities. The term "Wyrd" can be used as the name of an entity, but also as the name of a process.

Today, as in the ancestral past (so far as we can tell) Wyrd was always understood more as a process. If the most ancient peoples, long previous to our historical ancestral cultures, saw Wyrd as an entity primarily, and saw all of the causal events of the world as the will of a supremely mysterious conscious entity, that we may never know. I am not against such a notion, of course; I have entertained it at times; and so long as people understand that there is more than one way to religiously or philosophically view this question, then it is an interesting perspective, to say the least.

I do view Urd herself as an entity, naturally; and, as with the other two Norns, Urd is of a great and incomprehensible nature. Is she the web of Wyrd itself? Or is the web of Wyrd something she and her sisters weave, and thus, apart from them?

I would answer that it depends on the situation, on the moment of examining the question. In one sense, Urd is Urd, The Norns are the Norns, and the Web of Wyrd is the Web of Wyrd. But in another sense, the notion of absolute "separation" is not sustainable, especially in a spiritual/interactional worldview of wholeness. A spiritual aesthetic of wholeness stops any absolute "separation" from existing, while leaving room for relative, perceptual separation, to allow for consciousness to exist and for linear experience, growth and learning and wisdom to exist.

I believe that the term "Urd" refers to an entity, but not an entity in the same manner that the Gods are entities, or human beings are entities. I believe that the Nornic reality is a non-corporeal reality beyond our ken, beyond our understanding. I can see that our mythological symbols and stories shed some indirect light on these vast and awe-filled realities, and I appreciate these gifts from the past.

I believe that Urd wove the web of Wyrd- and, indeed, perpetually weaves it- in line with a vision She had- a vast, deep, and mysterious experience on her part- and humans have a similar experience when they have what they call an "intuitive realization".

The personal reality of an intuitive realization is the closest we as humans may come to what I am discussing: and what I am discussing is nothing short of the deep reason why things "became" as they did, why things fall as they do, pass away as they do, and are regenerated as they always are. This is Urd's reality-vision, the reality-vision of Wyrd.

It may be speculation, but it is in line with what my soul tells me; for too long, people have wondered what "inspired" or "motivated" the "creator" to create; I don't believe in a "creator" in the typical sense, but beyond that, for me, nothing makes more sense than the idea that the ultimate "source" of things was motivated not by some hot and fierce idea, but by a cool, wordless intuition, a vision of unfathomable beauty or mystery. Perhaps not even the "creator" (to use more mainstream language) knows why it created, or what creation is- and what an idea! This is the birth of an organic way of seeing the highest speculative spiritual realities.

Each sentient being within the web of Wyrd which possesses the sort of consciousness which allows for high-level abstraction, reason, and self-awareness- from the mighty Gods to human beings- are called to emulate Wyrd, in a sense, by seeking a way of living that leads to creativity and to the discovery of their destiny, and the fulfillment of it.

How do we do know the right way to do this? All discrete parts of a web "emulate" the web, in a sense; they all partake of the web's whole nature; sentient beings "emulate Wyrd" through the same sacred visionary process or experience of intuition that existed/exists in the deep- they emulate Wyrd by seeking an intuitive vision of guidance.

By living their own vision, the Gods constructed the Worlds, defeated the malevolent powers, and helped to give rise to human beings and countless other living beings. By living our vision, as humans, we continued the work of Wyrd, the unfolding of things, as conscious co-creators with the Gods and Wyrd.

From the incomprehensible, down to the level of what we see everyday, conscious life and reality appears to be guided intuitively, through vision, through something sacred and sublime. We emulate Wyrd by seeking an intuitive vision for living, and living by what we experience.

The task of "creation"- or should I say "weaving"- is therefore ongoing, and it is a privilege that Gods and Human Beings should be able to take conscious part. There is no fulfillment for us if we do not. Subtle emanations of Wyrd- spirits- individual manifestations of the intangible realities- have also come into being, and some come into our lives, for many reasons.

There is a spiritual ecology here, for every part of this world has these subtle emanations attached to it- the "wights" of the ancestral lore. There are also wights or spirit-entities that seem to come from pure mystery, and play mysterious roles. There is no limit to their variety, or the helpful situations or dangers they can present, but the Wyrd-wise can seek the visionary guidance needed to deal with them successfully. The Gods can be a part of that precious schooling needed.

But in the end, it is each individual being and their own visionary intuition that forms the core of guidance. Our deaths are the arrival of another sort of vision, another chapter of guidance onward into the intangible realities, thus the "death-vision" becomes an important part of Wyrd.

We experience Wyrd typically in terms of process, interaction, and the synchronistic combination of forces that create the patterns of our lives. This is a part of Wyrd. But Wyrd as a sacred field of reality, containing all things, a fertile pool or pond or well of possibilities, is another aspect, another perspective. Wyrd as Weaver, as entity, is another.

We and the Gods are within Wyrd together, part of a greater vision of reality than we could comprehend- but which we participate in. May the Gods help us find the wisdom to participate well, as brave and honorable people, and as people who can open the intuitive eyes needed to know our way.

Man of Odhinn

Duty is important; perhaps all important, because "duty", while it is a word with many levels of meaning, finally resolves back to what is expected of us as human beings, living in the world of Wyrd which we are always going to be a part of. "Duty" means recognizing what is not optional in our lives. True duties are never really "accepted" by us, taken on by us, or decided by us.

My duty is to the Ancestral way, and to the people that Wyrd has bonded me to in that way. I must strive, in the future, to do as I have spoken of so much in the past, and remember that the way of those True to the Gods is not found in national organizations or umbrella groups; it is found in day-to-day life with family and friends.

I was confused as to what "Asatru" meant and who could use the term, but now the confusion is gone. The term belongs to no one. I know what it means to be "Asatru" in my life, and I have a duty to it. One can't deny their nature; I have seen the darkness in my own nature, the cunning and the unerring ability I have to get into trouble and conflict, and now, I see the hands of the Allfather in it. I'm a man of Odhinn, and nothing in any of the nine worlds can change that.

"Do not fear your destiny; use it!"

Soon, I will be posting an essay regarding the conclusions of H.R. Ellis Davidson about Celtic and Norse religions in old Europe, and the "pattern" that lies behind them all. There is, as she saw, a pattern- and in that discovery, the Old Ways can find a new lease on life. They were never really threatened; but now, they can be understood again, fresh, clear, powerful.

The Wish-Fulfilling Horn

If I could find the wish-fulfilling horn
And drink the draught of miracles
This is what I would wish for myself:
That I would always act in such a way
That I regretted nothing later.
If I could wish something for you,
I would wish that you lived in a world
Where only things that mattered upset you.

If the horn were generous,
And I could wish again,
I would wish for myself a quiet home
On a quiet meadow, near a sheltering forest,
A place where my family would be safe
And have what they needed.
For you, I would wish that you would know
The path you should take through life.
That you would recognize your place in life,
Your task, your quest, and seize it.

If the horn's bounty were so great
That a third wish was offered,
I would wish to die knowing
That my family would be well always.
For you, I would wish
That you could know the wholeness
That is the truth about you.
I would wish that you accorded yourself
The same worth that I see in you.

When I had returned the horn
To the hands of the sacred folk who keep it,
I would go, without regrets, to my home
In the meadow, on the side of the forest,
I would be in joy with my family;
And there I would take you as my teacher
And learn all that I could from you.
I would need nothing else, ever again.

In the Dark Forests of our Deepest Minds

"In the dark woodland of the Northern European consciousness, a figure waits: an old man, wrapped in a blue-black cloak. His broad-brimmed hat hangs low, hiding one eye; a sharp metal point glints at the tip of his staff, and two ravens croak from the branches of the ash-tree above him. He beckons: in his hand he holds an ancient drinking-horn, and the scent that rises from it is honey and alcohol, strong enough to set the head spinning with a single whiff. He is a grim one, this old man; his spear is streaked with blood, and the hounds that crouch at his side look more like wolves than dogs. Yet the gift he offers is enough to overcome fear, for the brave . . . for those who are not afraid to die."

-Kveldúlf Gundarsson, from Wotan: The Road to Valhalla


I've been involved in the modern Pagan movement for the last 15 years of my life. I've seen a lot of people come and go through the harvest of those years: some people I knew to be good or even great; some people I considered pretty worthless, and a lot of people in-between- the bored and the indifferent.

At first, I didn't stop to consider what it was we were all doing; I don't know where it came from that I should have become a Pagan, or been drawn to these things. It was just what I did; I didn't like what I had seen before that passed as "religion", and I was drawn to the vibrant imagery and ideas of the mythologies that came from parts of the world that didn't include Palestine. There were strange figures alive in my imagination that needed to be more than just characters in fiction books; they needed to be worshiped for who and what they were before they were washed down the drain of "fiction". It was very mysterious to me, but I didn't question it.

Now I know that our lives and our desires to worship the old Gods and to resurrect the practices and beliefs of a very old way had little to do with us and more to do with the legacy that we are all a part of. At the beginning, when this legacy began to express itself through us, it was one that we were largely unconscious of.

We are all the sons and daughters of an ancient cultural tradition. No matter who we are, behind us stand older powers and tendencies than we can normally realize. The impact of the ancient layers of experience that stand behind our bloodlines are far from done with us, even today- we are still our Ancestor's offspring, affected and shaped by their holy rites, their sacred words, and their hopes and dreams.

Cultures don't vanish just because rapid changes in the world result in the transformation of the religious ideals or social structure of a people. Most people may think so: what is a "culture" if not a "cult" of people who all hold the same things up as sacred and valuable, and who practice similar and related life-ways? I used to keep that shallow definition of culture before I understood the spiritual dimension of culture, and how deep and persistent it is.

Many people today say that culture is determined largely by language. Others look to archaeological scraps dug out of the ground. I look deeper. I say that true culture is determined chiefly by the sacred powers that came together to create the root from which all of the branches of the culture grew from. Those sacred powers are timeless and resistant to age and death.

Later on down the road, it makes no difference what language the descendants of the original culture" begin to speak; it makes no difference what religion they all start to practice. It makes no difference if they leave small villages and move into big cities and become shallow, materialistic people, almost totally forgetful of their Ancestors' ways. Deep inside them, in the "dark woodland of their consciousness"- the unconscious layers of their minds- still live the originating powers. And these living powers influence them, even without their conscious knowledge.

These powers cannot be escaped. We do not have a choice over who and what we will be internally; we are born to an Orlog that was established in the time of the first Ancestors, and we'll die entwined in that Orlog. The cosmetic changes made by the vicissitudes of history are small matters compared to the sacred forces that fed the roots of each human tree.


I've seen a lot of people come and go over the years, and watched them try many things to satisfy the longing inside themselves to uncover their authentic spiritual roots. Many flashy and inviting paths exist today- but not a single one can ever satisfy a person if it does not bring them back to their own beginning.

And I'm not talking about the hospital room that we were in when most of us came screaming into the world; I'm talking about something that I can't find the words for, but which I can feel. I'm talking about the numinous "space" of origins wherein still live the potencies that our Ancestors rightly called "Gods" and where the Ancestral Women of every bloodline still work at their looms, weaving out the Fate of each individual and each family.

The experience of ultimate origins puts us back in touch with a community of sentience that includes not just Ancestors, but formative powers and layers of causality that make us who we were "then" and who we are "now".

As familiar as the various forms of modern Christianity may be, they cannot take us back the full distance; Christianity only goes back as far as the first time it ever collided with our grandmothers and grandfathers, when missionaries first wandered onto their far green shores and set about trying to destroy our foreparents' access to their true origins. All we find when we take the "Christian ride" back is a foreign institution coming and obscuring the sacred power of our origins, and trying to replace it with the strange, foreign symbols and myths of a new sort of worldview.

Many people, driven by the new unconscious patterns of long-term social programming, may take refuge in Christianity's promises and hopes, but at the end of the day (or the end of their lives) I am very confident that most people will feel the warm glow of those expectations fall cold; they will feel alienated or dis-satisfied on some level- a crisis that Christianity as a whole has always been familiar with, and which it has played off as "a crisis of faith." Worse yet, it has traditionally taken a "blame the victim" mentality, accusing people who can't explain their discomfort of lacking faith- and using guilt to keep them right where they are.

Always longing to find "home", as I believe all people do, some of these Christian folk will hope that the final promise of Christianity- that of "heaven"- will be a realization and fulfillment of that longing.

The "heaven" they really want isn't a sunny, sandy "New Jerusalem" with the Big Jehovah and choirs of angels; it is a green land of mountains, forests, and fields and blue rivers and oceans, full of game and fish and longhouses and roundhouses, villages with warm hearth-fires and sweet mead, wherein walk beautiful women and strong men, safe, happy, together with their own children and families. It isn't full of camels and ancient Iranian Magi draped in silk; it is full of horses and deer, of wolves and ravens and mystics draped in hide and fur.

Heaven is not a return to the paradise of another people, or to another people's myth of a great future; it is a return to our own origins. And in the Underworld of our Ancestors, in the Godly Realms of our Ancestors- sacred and powerful and totally unrelated to the "hell" of the Christians- that sort of completion awaits us. It is a long-sought homecoming, a long-awaited rest among our true kin.

This is not just a matter of the preferential aesthetics that we want to see for this life or even for our afterlives. I once let myself entertain the notion that the afterlife was something beyond our understanding, and only "dressed up" in symbols and words for our limited minds to grasp- but today, I know that this is wrong. The "afterlife" is no more beyond our understanding than this life is- or this room, this morning light, this music we hear today, these people we talk to and interact with now.

I'm not saying that we can understand the true roots of all reality in the way we usually understand things; I'm saying that we can understand as well as humans can who and what the things of this world are, and what the things of the afterlife are.

What we will "see" when we die isn't so different from what we "see" here- the emblems of the afterlife journey- the Hel-Road, the Ship that Crosses the Waters, the "Field of the Folk"- all of these things aren't just cheap descriptions born of a poverty of language; they are telling us what our minds will experience. The "language of the mind" doesn't suddenly change just because it can't use the eyes of the head to see- if that were the case, we'd never dream in the concrete terms of this world: we'd never dream about animals, houses, people, or places.

There are primordial forms of experience that dwell both in the mind and in this world- for these two things aren't so different after all. Having a "language for the mind" isn't a sign of some primitive limitation; it is a sign that these things are part and parcel of the deepest universal expressions.

And the primordial forms of experience- the forest, the mountain, the sea, the ship, the dwelling-place, the fire, the wandering God, the Rune, the spear, the sword, the witch, the warrior, all of these ancient forms that encapsulate so many cultural realities- they are not "romanticized" symbols of an over-imaginative former time; they are universal emblems of primal power. They were with us before; they are with us now, and will be with us again.

We lost a lot when we decided to shrug off the "trappings" of culture and tried to find some abstract "deeper meaning" for things that excluded the primordial forms. Those of us who attempted to do so were trying to conform to the ridiculous notions of some new "transcendental" learning or philosophy, trying to escape our roots in the soil and the earth, trying to transcend our ancient cultures. We were encouraged to believe that "progress" demanded such transcendence.

The call to betray the ancient root-cultures and the sacred originating powers came first from Christianity, and still continues in some ways in academia- academia, whose memory for some of the most important things of our past is either lost, or always in doubt, always non-committal, always serving the politics of the new world, and not the souls of human beings.

The call to be a "modern" person is still strong in many sectors- "modernity" apparently means getting excited about celebrity gossip, the drug-riddled lives and broken marriages of pop stars, getting the handbag of the season, and watching reality TV, and not getting too excited about what the "primitive" people of the distant past were doing or saying.

The call to be "modern" seems to be a call to give up on ever finding our unique identity, and instead submerging ourselves in a great pool of human flesh and blood in which identity is lost. It seems to ask that we accept that everyone's ancestors were all "trying to say the same thing" with their Gods and myths- and (somehow) the god of just one people was always the "real" one, and we should pray to it instead.

Of course, the religious complex that has sprung up around that particular "god" not only justifies being ignorant of our true origins, but continually upholds every sort of abuse of power, every orthodoxic invasion of other people's freedom of mind and will, every prudish distrust of the body and sexuality, every condescension towards womanhood and the feminine side of human life, and every sort of tyranny that still murders people today- it upholds regimes overseas that murder and oppress in the name of the Old Testament, just as surely as it upholds the local minister who oppresses the souls and freedoms of people in the name of the exact same book and its sequel.

We can ill afford to go on washing away our own originating traditions of sacredness into a pit of abstraction, safely removing these things from our concern so that we can comfortably replace them with new trends; our Gods are not just more "symbols of human longing for the divine"; they are more than just "archetypes"- they are Gods. They are some of those originating forces that live forever in the deep forests of our true selves, and that is where they will always be.

And until we find our way back to those woodlands within, back to the originating powers (of whom the Gods are some among many) we will never know who or what we are, and we won't ever have real peace.

We can chant like Buddhists, pray like Christians, drum like Native Americans, dance like Wiccans, or scoff at others like bitter atheists, but none of these things will bring us to the lasting peace, knowledge, and wisdom that we are naturally heirs to, and which we are naturally, fatefully inspired to seek out. We won't have peace until we resolve ourselves to the Ancestral powers that still live in us and work from the deepest places.