Heathenism : A Tradition of Freedom

Arminius, hailed as the "Liberator" of Germania, repeatedly calls upon the ancestral freedom of the Germanic peoples, granted and preserved by the ancestors, and explicitly states that the Roman rod, axe, and toga will never be accepted within German territory. The rod symbolizes Rome's imperial power of authority as well as their tendency to punish. Romans whipped slaves and prisoners with the rod. The axe not only symbolizes their power of capital punishment, but also the axes which would fell their great forests, and the toga the sign of Roman citizenship and colonialism. These are very clear statements. Arminius and other Germans continually becry how everywhere the Romans went, they laid waste and devastated the soil of the earth, clearing forests out of their greed, and that the Gods of the Germanic people did not support such imperious tyranny.

The people themselves made it clear that they would not accept anyone trying to rule it over them, but rather that leaders rule by example and by boldness, and indeed, the people drove out and ejected any leader who fell into arrogance. The qualities they admired in a leader was someone was a good host, who welcomed all the people regardless of any factions, to come to the sacred banquets where the Gods were toasted and meals were shared, and all discourse was put aside, and the leader would meet with all people regardless of who they were, demonstrating that he could not show preference to the nobility, but had to show a general sociability, and that the three qualities desired above all in a leader were generosity, kindness, and moderation, as positive qualities. In addition, a leader was to reject envy. This is very important given the corruption that Heid had mythologically propagated. A leader gathers the folk together so that they may go beyond any internal divisions, and discover their internal concord. The leader is thus a bold servant of the people who defends their freedom and rights.

Neither rod nor axe nor participation in empire, submitting not to rule by force, nor threat of violence and environmental degradation, nor by the toga trying to derive benefits through a rapacious empire. Again and again it is made clear that these are the values that the tribes of Germania were fighting for. They were fighting for their freedom and the integrity of their homelands, their odal lands, whose heaths and sacred groves they were to steward. They distrusted those who were used to being waited upon by slaves, and corrupted by foreign ideas of power. They hated people who thought the whole world was their jurisdiction and that there should be no other judges but them.

Literally, historically, were it not for their brave struggles and victories, the English language would not be being spoken today, nor would juries exist, nor the idea of limited governments meant to protect the rights of the people and the law of the land. Now, these customary practices may have become very watered-down in days of late, but they still contain the kernal of a great deal of popular sovereignty. Thomas Jefferson himself acknowledged that the fundamental ideals of the American Revolution --- the ideals of liberty and popular sovereignty --- stemmed in large part from the values and practices of the Germanic tribespeople, who managed to resist and ward off Rome's imperium from their homelands.

So the traditions of these folk hold a place of prominence in their particular hatred of tyrannical power, celebration of freedom, and, most pointedly, their insight that bribery and benefits taken from those in power is often more destructive to liberty than conquest by warfare itself. The tradition thus has an essential relationship to both the celebration of liberty and the defiance of arrogant authority. Leaders were chosen out of families renowned for their education, knowledge of law, keeping of the sacred songs, and proven valor in protecting the land-rights, but they were chosen nonetheless by the popular assemblies, which were not arbitrary legislatures constantly creating new laws to impose upon the people, but the gatherings of the families and clans themselves in tribal council to protect their rights from such arbitrary interventionism.

This is not to say that there have been no other tribes or traditions in history that have championed liberty and pushed off invaders. Far from it. We can find examples of this all over the world, from ancient Britons to Native Americans, and so forth. It is simply to emphasize that the tradition embodied within the English language as a mother-tongue, by all those who speak it, holds a history of dogged determination to retain rights and fiercely fight for freedom, which, while not unique, is therefore exceptional amongst many other traditions, many of which unfortunately accomodated to a much greater degree arbitrary power and class division.

The central institution or right that helped the folk to avoid such a fate was the before amentioned land redistribution customs, which as a kind of sacred lottery constitutes not only a reflection of Wyrd in all its aleatory fecundity, but also that game of chess-and-dice once played by the Gods in the beginning of time. So long as they played that game of dice, they were happy, and the world was happy, but when the three Giant maidens come and stir up a greed for gold, the downfall is set into motion, and the game-pieces are lost until the restoration. Similarly, once the Germanic people had put aside their sacred lottery that regularly redistributed the land, giving over to the love of riches and individual Roman-style private property, that gave way to severe class divisions, they lost their happiness as well. Yet even when they shed practices, they remembered, and they kept the memories alive, even if at times in fragments, for us, their descendants, to piece back together, and restore.

This is not just a spirituality, although it is that in full. It is a heritage of freedom and how to stay free. It thus holds all the veneration for nature which we so understandably admire in ancient pagan societies, but without the fall into empire that unfortunately came to characterize many of them. Notable in this regard is the fact that the taking of interest was unknown amongst the ancient Germans.

Their myths demonstrate a continual disdain for, and resistance to, imposition by brutal force, cruelty, stupidity, and avarice ; and favor wisdom, enlightenment, and the pleasures of conviviality, with the gathering of folk in consensus, be that in the festive and sacred gatherings themselves, or the popular assemblies, being the key institution of popular sovereignty and individual and tribal freedom. Since the Germanic Gods are explicitly portrayed by the prophetic sages as warning against slavery and reminding that the practices which they have taught are guardians against such servitude, and keeping in mind that the Germanic people themselves did not tolerate arbitrary leaders, it follows that the nature of their worship is not a submission to Gods seen as arbitrary authorities, but again, admiration and loyalty to those who granted estates and rights to the people through their creative powers of sharing and bold example. Our modern society has for too long faltered between a theism in subjection to divinity envisioned as a tyrant before whom one must submit, and an atheism which understandably wanting to push away such submission, throws the baby of spirituality out with the bathwater.

This is a different way of worship : a celebration of blossoming, of coming into one's own, so that one may oneself fructify one's native land and people, rounds of toasts and voluntary gifts of showing loyalty and worship to the creative powers of the cosmos. It consists neither in an anonymous, bewildering, and overwhelming mass of conflicting and often amoral deities, nor a unity which banishes diversity, but a wholeness that represents a balance of land and sky, male and female. It is neither ethically relativist, equalizing all values and abolishing the distinction between right and wrong, nor imposing a monopolistic, rigid, and monolithic set of values that does not allow for the diversity of nuances, conditions,and preferences amongst people. Divinity is neither conceived of as a quarrel of divisive powers who competitively pull us into conflict and division, nor as a monarch who holds sole and arbitrary power. It is not the institutions of civil war nor monarchy that represent divinity in this tradition, but rather the central institution of the family, of home and of elders of that beloved ancestry and circle of love stretching back into the generations to the beginning of time itself. Divinity is a family which comes together to ward off the monstrous potentials in the world, and to lead us by example. They are not tyrants who force us to do anything. There are consequences to every action, but those are natural consequences that unfold out of the nature of Wyrd or the universe itself.

They lead by example, and they tell us that if we will take their advice, it would be good for us. The telling of the stories, and the gatherings remind us of that good advice that helps us preserve our freedom and the plentiful abundance of the world. We have lost sight of those examples, and the world has to a large degree fallen into decay and tyranny, where it might, with all the creative powers which we have managed to develop and harness, be a strong circle of fellows in mutual aid. One might ask why do the Gods allow all this, and that is in a sense to ask a question of an arbitrary ruler towards his subjects, a relationship which does not apply in this tradition. Rather, all along, the Gods have been there, setting the example for us, but we have lost the poets, who, enlightened through their inspiration, had chanted and taught the stories of that bold example. This is the heritage we have to recover and with which increasingly and collectively practiced can begin to restore the world place by place, gathering by gathering, deed by deed, life by life. Such a task may seem hopeless. We may indeed seem to be surrounded by giants before whom our influence and power is dwarfed, but it must always be remembered that in this tradition, the Gods, and their example of enlightenment and freedom, is always on the side of those against the giants.

Religion is, in the end, a very serious matter, not to be taken flippantly, for going beyond theatre, fiction, and liturgy, it is a basic declaration of allegiance to the powers and values which one testifies have worth in life. When you think about it in that way, that is something not to take lightly, and the character of those candidates placed before us by the world's religions and imagination as representatives of deity ought to be scrutinized quite carefully for the values they represent and the traditions they carry. In a very significant sense, when one chooses one's deity or deities, one is choosing those one will be judged by. There is a spectrum, of course, but at the end-points along that spectrum, we must ask ourselves : do we choose tyrants and ill-mongerers, or elders who treat us as younger peers and wish both our benefit and our blossoming?

There are many, many good traditions in the world, many beautiful ways of envisioning the cosmos and deity, just as there are many who, through human error, have fallen into servitude and unwholeness. But within the diversity of good and beautiful options which as a tradition of tolerance the Scandinavian heathen tradition always celebrates, I believe that it remains competitive in its appeal, in its breadth and reach, in its poetic profundity, in its ability to accomodate diversity, and in its no-nonsense approach to right and wrong that still allows us to be wonderfully human and celebrate our good lusts and longings in life. It is a tradition to be proud of because it supports freedom.

Gnostic Themes in Heathen Myths

Thomas Taylor, the famous English Platonist who was contemporaneous with William Blake, was one of the first in the English world to reintroduce the idea in his work on Bacchus that the descent of Persephone into Hades was in fact the descent of the Godhead into this world, which is in fact a kind of death-camp, a prison or hell, which transforms the familiar Catholic idea of the harrowing of hell whereby Jesus descends to free the good souls into a Gnostic myth, which can be paralleled by Hercules' descent into the underworld and tassling with the dog of death, Cerebus ; Odin descending into the mountain to retrieve the mead from the giants, and so forth.

The idea is one of a divine or heroic spirit descending into a world of monsters and of death to either liberate it or to retrieve something of value hidden within it. One finds a Neoplatonic and quasi-Gnostic flavor in many tribal mythologies. Indeed, a recent study of Chumash mythology, originated by the tribes along the Ventura and Santa Barbara coastlines of California, written by one of the Santa Barbara Museum's foremost experts on Chumash culture, has seen it as a largely Neoplatonic structure, and there is no inroads for even the wildest of conspiracy theories to suggest that any form of Mediterranean Neoplatonism could even potentially have ended up affecting old Chumash mythology. It is likely that a study of other tribal mythologies around the world would yield a similar Neoplatonic and quasi-Gnostic flavor as well.

We can find several examples of Gnostic-style myths in the Norse lore, the most obvious of which is Odin descending into the mountain to retrieve the mead of wisdom, but there is also prominently the descent of Freyr as Frodi into this world to help overcome the slave-system the giants had set up, and Saxo, defensively calling upon Jesus, makes reference to a narrative whereby at that time God descended into human flesh with which he clothed himself in order to bring about blessings.

We can find traces of a Gnostic-style myth when Freya's husband Odr goes astray and being led by things of this world, comes back into the strife of this world after peace has been declared by the Gods. After he has been exiled, and transformed into a beast, Freya descends into the world as she wanders about diverse lands taking on many names, searching for her lover. Since Odr is equivalent to the poetic capacity of imagination and soul in human beings, the ascent of Odr into the heavenly realm and then being dragged back down by issues of generation and strife in this world (his mortal son being endangered) definitely has a Gnostic flavor to it. There is a fall of the soul depicted there, with Freya, Love, going out to search for Soul in this world, wandering in many forms, finally discovering him in bestial form, and then bringing him back up into the heavens, after he has found his true genealogy, for he has lost knowledge of who he actually is. I don't know how we could get a more Gnostic myth than this! To find his hidden genealogy, of which he was unaware, Freya must take him down into the underworld itself, into the cavern of monsters, where She who Deludes and Hides Information will share with him the knowledge that he is related to all beings in the cosmos! The incredible genealogy reproduced in Hyndluljod shows him to be related to giants, elves, Vanir, men, and the Aesir! I don't believe there is any mention of dwarves but they may be included as well. The point is, he is related to every being in the cosmos, and when he gains this information he is able to ascend into Valhall to spend his days in Folkvang, the Meadow of the Folk in Sessrumnir, the Roomy Benches of Freya's Hall, with her.

The Gnostic themes don't end with these three very prominent examples. There is a famous story of Thor's hammer, that which gives him his might and power to fight off the monsters, being stolen, and ending up deep in the earth in the land of the monsters, and he having to feminize himself, go into the world of the monsters, and there, in a sort of comedic parody of the hieros gamos or sacred marriage, reclaim the hammer through which he has his might. There is also the story of Thor descending down into the Lair of Illusion, and having to tassle with illusions. This, again, is a very Gnostic theme. And so we have many deities of the pantheon, and major ones at that --- Odin, Thor, Freya, Frey --- participating in what the Gnostics of the Mediterranean would have found to be stunningly Gnostic myths.

Now Gnostic myths always admit of creativity, and Gnostic themselves often encouraged people to write their own variations of the Gnostic myth, but the basic essence of the Gnostic myth is that there is something corrupt about this world, a corrupt element has woven its way into its world, or that this particular world itself in fact began with corruption, and that there is an attempt on the part of the beneficent beings to themselves infiltrate this world with elements of good that can help redeem nature from its monstrous qualities. This features prominently in Norse cosmology, where in the beginning of time we find the emergence of matter as a giant, roaring monster, out of which the Gods try to make lemonade out of some lemons by killing this monster and reshaping its forms to create a living world. Now it's fairly clear that there were worlds outside of this, because both Niflheim and Muspelheim are mentioned, with a gap between them, and of course, the World-Tree has ever existed, and thus it would appear that the emergence of Ymir marks the possibility of a new world emerging on the World Tree, one quite monstrous in form, an alchemical discard of poison, fire, and ice, and that the Gods reform this monstrosity into Midgard, a realm with good chances for its beings to make good and refind the circle of life. It is by no means perfect, and full of pitfalls, its very substance being "monster corpse", as it were, but it has its possibilities. The world is fallen, but not entirely so. It is in the process of being repaired. The Gods are a part of that long repair project, and they have placed essences or gifts within us as human beings that allow us to participate in that renewal process.

Unfortunately this is a process of repeated trial and error, there having been continual falls that have followed the original fall. When many of the elves left the divine order and fell into darkness, a great deal of the forces that tend to the world of nature and allow divine essence to be infused into the monstrous matrix disappeared, allowing for darker and more monstrous forces to remain intact in this world, leaving a gap that perhaps might be filled by enlightened human beings, although we have yet, at least most of us, to find the elvish powers that would allow us to actually penetrate into the heart of nature itself with our will and song as elves do (although perhaps this is the very science after which the alchemists sought). In this find I find an intriguing parallel to the Christian myth in Revelations of the 144,000 souls of the elect who will be able to take positions of divine governance as saints over the renewed world, presumably in place of a similar number of angelic souls that fell ; the common idea here being of a split in the process of creation that can be filled by people enlightening themselves and joining the Gods in their work of repair and mending.

The struggle of the Gods against the monstrous elements of this world were often visualized in terms of battle, which is a kind of natural image of such struggle, as well as a creative coopting for the good of those unfortunate elements of strife that often appear in human society as well as the world, and the old societies were not naive about the presence of evil in this world, and therefore the necessity to defend oneself from those ills. In fact, in the Teutonic lore, one of the foremost patriarchs, the first Judge and Jarl of the folk, and Lawgiver, was named Scyld, as well as "Borgar", which can also mean "protector" or "saviour", both concepts of protection being necessary in a world where large numbers of people have fallen into corruption and greed. This necessity to be ready for attack, and the images of warfare against powers of ill were ready at hand when Germania had to confront Rome as a "civilized" empire, but as Tacitus indicates, they had already had several tassles with the Celts in Gaul, who themselves had begun their if not ascent, at least assimilation of several aspects of empire. Caesar makes it very clear that for all the enlightenment of the Druids, the common people were treated almost as mere serfs in Gaulish society, which demonstrates at least the emergence of terrifically unfree forms of hierarchy. These were formidable enemies against which the German peoples had to defend themselves, and eventually became proud of their ability to preserve their freedom with arms. The problem is, of course, as Teutonic society became more and more militarized in its intergenerational wars with the Roman Empire, and then later, as its northern Scandinavian branches tassled with the Roman Catholic Empire, these images of warfare originally intended to invoke the Gnostic struggle were more and more transformed into vulgar glorifications of war by those who had become rigidly armored in Reichian terms. This is no surprise. Whenever there are good runes, Gullveig is quick to come up with corruptions of those into bad runes. That process seems very clear in the myths. The Hindus for their part understand very well that in the Kali Yuga, tools originally channeled by loving shamanic priests to help human beings love each other and learn their good nature themselves can become tools of domination and enslavement, and thus innovative approaches become necessary.

Now some might fear that this Gnostic approach veers heathenism dangerously close to a Christianity which they had longed to leave, but many people having come under the spell of Christianity's attempted monopoly of perennial themes do not realize that Christianity took up many, many themes of prior pagan and paganesque societies, but, like Yaldabaoth, the evil creator-god in the Mediterranean Gnostic mythos, Christianity has thought itself to be the only revelation, the one and only, and is not aware of all of its fellow divine possibilities. This exposition of heathen myth indeed enables to have interesting dialogues with Christian mythologists, and I'll put an emphasis on that last term, as that would enable them to have rational discussions with us, rather than hysterical discussions ; but in fact, it is more akin to Zoroastrianism, a clearly Gnosticized Iranian heathenism, as well as Orphism, which having a Dionysian emphasis, still clearly invokes the Greek pantheon. Zoroastrianism itself, of course, produces an offshoot, Mithraism, which again, had a very Gnostic or Mystery Religion flavor to it, was a competitor with Christianity, and indeed from which Catholicism derived many of its rituals. It would not be too farfetched to suggest that Jews at the turn of the millenium between B.C. and A.D., having been exposed to Zoroastrian ideas during their stay in Babylon and their liberation by Cyrus, the Persian hailed as a messiah in Isaiah, and then more proximately during the time of the Maccabees and thenon, being familiarized with the Dionysian mysteries, saw an opportunity to do Philo-in-reverse, as it were. Philo was the great Jewish mystic who translated Old Testament stories in terms of the Mysteries, while instead, this Jewish community sought to translate the Mysteries into a kind of Old Testament language, which was easily done by drawing on the great prophetic literature. The Jews were no strangers to perception of evil in this world, as well as hopes for redemption from that evil, and they were able to take the themes of Osiris, available to them from Egypt, and Dionysus, available in the Greek culture which surrounded them, midrash these clearly pagan and slightly Gnosticized models through Old Testament prophecies and create the Christian literature which has since become literalized. Now, we aren't prevented by any of this, by any means, in postulating a Jewish rabbi familiar with Hillel, familiar with the Essenes, familiar with Greek Mysteries, from having incorporated all of these into his teachings, although I find Earl Doherty's suggestion that there was an entire Christian community that came up with these teachings and blended pagan themes into Jewish prophetic language to be a little more exciting. The point here is that we are discussing a common language that became literalized, then monopolized, then hystericized, then shoved down everyone's throat until no variations were allowed. Heathenism always pushes off such arrogant domination.

The problem is, of course, a misperception that paganism is simply a simplistic affirmation of nature, as well as the fact that our invocation of that concept of nature is a confused and muddled idea that doesn't allow us to confront the nuances of existence or its contradictions. This can degenerate into a vulgar "what exists is good, simply because it exists" stance, which is a stance that every status quo loves to reinforce. "Nature" is one of the most pernicious, and indeed, regressive concepts, utilized by tyrants all over the world to reinforce their status quo, and those possessed by empire love to see empire reflected in nature. Now, I don't doubt that there are such corrupted elements to be found in nature, but the extent of this may be rightfully doubted. Indeed, even the idea of a "pecking order" as such has only been around for a hundred years or so, and recent studies both of wolves and of dogs, which for a long time had presumed the existence of dominance hierarchies, have now been demonstrated to be false, and to be results of captivity. It would appear in both wolf and dog societies it is the elders who are given deference, and these elders have been given the name of "alphas" by human researchers, where what we find is a simple family structure. However, we are told a hundred times daily in myriad forms in our hierarchical society that such hierarchies are natural and therefore, of course, we ought to accept them. There are those who would invoke the Lay of Rig to justify this through calling up the "three classes" of Teutonic society, but let us make this clear : the Lay of Rig makes it painfully obvious to those who read it carefully that if there is a hierarchy, it is of those who are enlightened, who have opened themselves to the mysteries of existence, and since those mysteries are primarily revealed in myths which we have already demonstrated to be Gnostic in flavor, presenting the drama of a monstrous world being struggled against by divine powers which are in process of mending it by interweaving divine elements, but which struggle against human beings who become subject to the sorceries of negative powers, we can see that this is a very different kind of hierarchy than is usually propagated.

The naive "paganism = veneration of nature" equation becomes further corrupted in modern times into a "Social Darwinist Paganism", that, seeing nature solely through Social Darwinist eyes, meaning projecting empire and tyranny's worst characteristics onto nature, then seeks to worship that sociological model that has been projected into nature, a kind of vile heresy if I may so call it.

Nature as Zoroastrians have seen it has become a battleground between Angra Mainyu and Ahura Mazda, and thus from a Zoroastrian perspective, we would expect to see a mixture of tendencies in nature, with both hierarchical and anti-hierarchical, good and evil, natures in struggle. Imperialists glorify when they find hierarchical tendencies and hypostatize them to the detriment of perceiving anti-hierarchical tendencies. The point in all this being that as pagans or heathens, we are not required to uncritically affirm everything in nature, and especially not that which our scientists, engaged in a cultural practice called "science", tell us is "nature", a highly mediated, academically sealed and approved, nature, since they are often, and I am sorry to say this, feeding back to us their own preconceptions projected into nature. Many scientists will take umbrage to this, but it has been demonstrated time and again.

But that there is an experience of sacred nature that is essential to heathenism is without question. There is a numinosity found in the deepest forests that teaches us the nature of the Gods. Here the Gods have hidden themselves, as it were, providing opportunities for revelation through epiphany. The reality of epiphanous nature does not, however, mean, that everything in the world is sacred, and that there has been nothing touched by the giants. There is in fact a great drama going on, and a drama which it is important to perceive because the true function of warriors is to defend that realm which has been reclaimed from the giants and allows the world to be an epiphany of the good Gods, and keep it from being seized back by the monstrous forces. Thus when it comes to nature, heathenism is both neither-nor and both-and. It is a very complex and subtle doctrine not easily sloganized nor understood in simplistic binary terms.

My love of heathenism stems in large part, in fact, from its ability to embrace such complexity and enfold within itself sophisticated dialectics that can encompass many other spiritual movements, such as the Gnostic tendencies I've explored here ; when we consider that it was the spirituality of an entire "civilization" as it were, if we use that word to mean the accumulated culture of a nation of interrelated tribes, this complexity should come as no surprise.

Moonlight on the 4th of July

I spent my 4th of July at a beach in Ventura with my dad and sister. Supposedly there were going to be fireworks there, but apparently they were being held in Oxnard, many miles down the coast, and so while we could see fireworks, they were very small : little tiny bursts of color.

There was a dogshow at the Ventura Fairgrounds, and thus people in RVs and tents, and families had assembled by the hundreds down by the beach to watch the fireworks.

Since they didn't actually hold fireworks at the beach anywhere in Ventura, it was needless to say anticlimactic if you like fireworks.

Since I generally am not too fond of fireworks myself, this wasn't really a problem, and actually quite a bonus, for me. I got to enjoy some of the color, but without all the loud sounds of explosions. (I know, you're saying, hey, Ziggy, for someone who doesn't like explosions, you chose a strange religion, it being a "warrior" religion and all. You must be weird. First of all, yes, I am weird ; secondly, it's not a "warrior" religion ; thirdly, I chose it because it was the only religion on the planet that specifically talks about Wyrd as something Good!)

On the other hand, the moon was almost full, and its light was shimmering on the waves iridescent like dancing nymphs in white linen negligees, or like Odin writing runes in wavering Arabic script with Mani's light upon the waters. It was just gorgeous and awe-inspiring.

The appearance it gave, with the anticlimactic, diminutive, and only occasional fireworks in the distance, was of flocks of families converging on the shores to watch the moonlight on the water.

Wow.

That was a powerful impression.

I thought to myself, wouldn't it be awesome to live in a culture where without the pretext of fireworks, families would assemble to come and watch the moonlight?

Really no ritual is necessary at all. There is something about having that gathering of families to witness a natural epiphany of beauty and wonder that is itself religious. Liturgy would almost make the cake too sweet. If I were to add any liturgy, it would be only as window dressing, only as merest framework to set the tone and then leave it alone. (Perhaps the problem with much of organized religion is that it does not know when to leave well enough alone.) Both Saxo's tale of Odin's undoing of ritual complications, as well as Havamal's invocation of not overgiving or oversacrificing suggest that in heathenism there has always been a sense of sacred simplicity.

The fact of the matter is you don't have to do much. When you've got moonlight on the water, and families gathered, it's an event, and it speaks.

Visions of a heathen revival flooded my imagination. Simple. Beautiful. Elegant. Powerful.

Best 4th of July I've had in years.

An Epiphany of Frigga

It's about 6 in the morning. I'm standing in front of a tree on my walk in someone's front yard. It's filled with blossoms, and the first thing you hear when approaching the tree is the buzzing of bees. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of bees in this tree, buzzing about. It is as if the entire tree is a hive. I approach very gingerly and carefully this tree. It is an awe, it is a wonder, it is as if you can hear the tree itself singing through its bee organs. There is a reality where tree and blossom and bee are not separate, but connected.

You can hear the song of the Earth coming up through the tree and expressing itself in the buzzing of these very busy and delightfully dancing bees. It is a wonder one approaches with caution ; with that many bees, one doesn't want to disturb them. There is a certain mild kind of danger that requires a form of respect. It is thus that I would consider this to be a religious epiphany, right here in the middle of suburbia. A religious epiphany, because there is an awe that has a certain danger connected with it that brings a requisite level of respect, and a feeling of reverence that speaks beyond itself to a real felt connection with the Earth and with life, and that is religious!

It is as if I am at an altar of Frigga set up by the Earth itself, merely allowed by the suburban residence. I can stand in front of this and hear that droning, that buzzing, and can feel the living connection to the Earth.

There are certain creatures that sing that song even better than our own song-smiths : bees, cicadas, crickets, even locusts. These beings enable you to hear the landscape, and are therefore very sacred. Poets ought listen to their song and see if their rhythms might grant that awe that is magic itself to our hymns, for here the Earth speaks, through its crawling creatures.

Athelings and Odal

The atheling was the champion of the odal. That's clear in the etymological relationship of the words. In other words, a person who is part of the jarl class, of the noble class, gains their nobility via the fact that they champion odal rights. To simply call them an "upper class" or a "noble class" as if they were equivalent to any aristocracy is not only a misunderstanding but a turning of things upside-down. Their value and excellence lies in what they are championing, and it is through what they are championing that they achieve their status of nobility. When we examine the behavior of aristocracies historically, we realize that what is being gotten at here in the ancient lore is something quite different. Aristocracies rarely champion odal rights.

Kropotkin makes it clear that the foundation of the nobility in terms of their legitimacy was their original holding of the knowledge of the law. They were the educated class, the ones who memorized the laws and the stories, and therefore, their preservation of the rights, both in memory, to preserve them from amnesia, misunderstanding, and disinformation, as well as in the real world, to shield them from invading tyrants that would try to take them away, was what made people give the nobility such worth. These were people and families who took on responsibilities above and beyond the average living of a life. They educated themselves to levels of excellence in the interests of the common folk. Because of their willingness to take on extraordinary responsibilities above and beyond that which most people would want to attempt to, there were certain privileges that accrued to them, as recognition and reward for their fulfillment of responsibility in the defense of rights, reward and recognition granted by the people. A so-called nobility that is not championing the odal rights of the common people is no nobility at all in the eyes of Teutonic lore.

The athelings are the jarls, a word which I have demonstrated was used synonymously with gothi, the poetic priesthood, the shamanic song-smiths who sang the songs of the land. Now why this should be is connected with the fact that the odal rights had a spirituality of their own that underlay them. There is no legitimate land-holding without connection to the land-spirits who nourish that land, and the Gods who rule over them, and so a connection to the land-spirits and to the Gods who themselves govern those land-spirits is a necessary part of holding land.

Now whoever heard of that in the modern world, where property is an abstraction guaranteed solely through possession of money? To our modern ears, the idea of religious requirements for the holding of land sounds theocratic. But a slight twist of the ears allows us to see that what's being talked about is the necessity for ecological spirituality and responsibility as requisites for land-holding ; in other words, sacred stewardship.

The jarls as the living libraries of the songs that sing the spirits of the land are necessary parts of protecting the rights of that land.

Religion, Abstraction, and True Worthship

Religion is the trickiest, most treacherous, most perilous adventure, because of the ability to get caught up in the symbols rather than what the symbols are speaking, worshipping the words we speak rather than utilizing it as a language to express that which is most important in life. The peril of religion is leading people into subordinating themselves before abstractions.I don't want to worship an abstraction. I don't want to bow down before some statue, of, for example, a character named "Frey". That has no interest to me, and I am 100% in alignment with critiques of idolatry in that form. I want to experience genuine liberty, which itself is a "God", worthy of worth-ship, and which is itself fertile and productive of genuine festivity.

I have no interest in bowing down before human concepts. No, and ancient tribes of Germania didn't either! Tacitus states that very clearly. They knew that the numinous forces of life, which they worshipped, could not be contained in an image or a character, even within a myth, which is useful and wonderful, wonderful for storytelling, but it is not the all of things.

So, in a sense, "Frey" is a social contract, a set of symbols in a social contract whereby we can communicate about something existential that really matters to us : a source of passion, a sense of freedom in love, a feeling of fertility in lust.

And let us stop trying to literalize fertility all the time as simply meaning the increase of herds or human babies. Yes, that power is in the fertility that Frey and Freya represent. There's no doubt about that. But it's more fundamental than that! If you focus on that, you're focusing on a surface expression of a deeper sense of fertility, of life resplendant, and things being able to grow through joy. My Gods, if we forget that in this world, what have we come to? What kind of shallow lives are we living if we aren't from time to time able to come together and affirm that?

Now how do you do that without a set of symbols? There has to be a way of coordinating a human gathering to reaffirm that which is of value in life. The last thing I want to get involved in is a fight over the symbols, over names that are being used. These are a set of conventions that allow us to speak to and affirm very real, important feelings in life that hardly can be expressed at all in language! That's not my way of saying that "Frey" does not exist. It's my way of saying, Look at the moon, not at the finger pointing at it.

When you eat the menu rather than utilizing it to get the meal, you have come under the power of alienation. Your enslavement to abstractions has alienated you from your own life and your own power. Our myths tell us of Giant powers capable of the most convincing illusions, illusions capable of fooling not only Thor, but even Loki, the fooler himself! Chew on this for a while and digest it. The myths suggest that Giant powers are capable of illusion that can fool us so deeply we are drawn into thinking that something is something else, and where else would they exploit this the most but in human activity aimed at aligning itself with that which is good and vibrant in life, and therefore feeds the Gods and the world they tend? You'll know if your worship is illusory or authentic by its yield of either alienation or deep connection. If it hands your life back to you in ways that empower you, your fellows, and the planet, you've tapped into the real McCoy. But if you find yourself getting more and more confused, separated from your real self, asked to do things that make no sense for you, and more and more alienated from everything that is truly good in life, consider whether Utgard-Loki has enchanted you into a set of Giant illusions.

In the Golden Age of Rig and the Silver Age of Scyld, religious ritual effectively connected people to the Gods, but for that very reason, is certainly not something that would be left untouched by forces of degeneration. We have every reason to suspect that in the Axe Age, we must be very careful with religion, making sure to stay as close to our real and primal experience as possible. In Hinduism, this degeneration of religious ritual into alienation by those who themselves have become corrupted is expressed in the idea that tantra, a spiritual form that stays close to bodily experience, is necessary in the Kali Yuga, their cognate form of our Axe Age. "Lastly Tantra was specially allotted for Kaliyug. They say in Kali Yuga, it is not possible to adhere to the elaborate rituals and austerities prescribed by the Vedas, but it is possible to practice Tantra which leads to the same goal and at the same time contributes to man's physical needs." (L.R. Chawdri, Secrets of Yantra, Mantra, and Tantra, New Dawn Press Group, Elgin, IL, 1992/2005/2006, p. 137.) "Eliade (1969) says : ["] The syndrome of Kali Yuga is marked by the fact that it is the only age in which property alone confers social rank, wealth becomes the only motive of the virtues, passion and lust the only bonds between the married, falsehood and deception the first condition of success in life, sexuality the sole means of enjoyment, while external, merely ritualistic religion is confused with spirituality. For several thousand years, be it understood, we have been living in Kali Yuga. ["] The appropriate methodology for persons suffering in these ways begins directly with their bodily experience of life, utilizing the passions of sexuality in a yogic discipline, like tantric yoga. The materialism of the age, that "degeneration of symbolism" (Eliade, 1962) once expressed in the maxim, "If you can't eat it, screw it, or sell it, what is it?" is also met by special forms of yoga." (Eric Greenleaf, The Problem of Evil, Zeig, Tucker & Theisen, Inc., Phoenix, Arizona, 2000, p. 245.) "Tantric thought assumes that we live in a dark age (kali yuga) and, therefore, must use every method possible to boost our spirituality." (Joan Budilovsky, Eve Adamson, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Yoga, Penguin Putnam Inc., New York / Indianapolis, 2003, p. 56.) So we have to be very careful with symbolism in an age of alienation and degeneration, lest our symbols turn back against us, rather than leading us into the deepest and most primal parts of our own experience.

I am not going to bow down before some cosmic comic-book bureaucrat that the rational mind sets up, literalizing its own symbols, making them hypostatic and reifying them. "This comic book character who exists in the myths had this domain, and this is what he rules, and this is what he's like, and so we have to conform ourselves to this."

What are you talking about?! That's not what we're supposed to be doing here! We're supposed to be connecting to deep sources of Life! In the planet! In the skies above us! In our loins! In our deepest impulses and our strongest longings! And finding a way to connect those deepest impulses and strongest longings to other people so that we can come together as a community to affirm what is important, and to do some healing, because every community has backslidings and makes mistakes. We're imperfect animals! We're animals on this earth. We're imperfect. We make mistakes, so we need to heal those mistakes. How do we heal those mistakes but through the reaffirmation of what has value in life, not through bowing down to some symbols. No, through coming together to say, these powerful expressions of life have value to us!

They have worth.

That is true worthship.

I Am A Heathen

Someone remembers the fields of pumpkin and corn beneath the paved streets and houses.

I am a heathen.

Someone remembers the wild grass meadows and oaks along the creeksides beneath the fields of pumpkin and corn.

I am a heathen.

Someone remembers the mammoths that once walked, and the tides that once claimed beneath the wild grass meadows and oaks along creeksides.

I am a heathen.

Someone remembers the mountains that moved and the foundations of bedrock forged in the fires of ancient creation, beneath the mammoths that walked and the tides that once claimed.

I am a heathen.

Someone remembers the dark matter roaring and floating midst fire and ice, its body of chaos slaughtered and shaped by ancient Gods, far beneath the mountains that moved and the foundations of bedrock forged in the fires of ancient creation.

I am a heathen.

Memory goes that far back, beneath the cities, beyond all colonization, even to the foundings of the very planet, and all the gifts of benefaction, fathers and mothers of flowers, meadows, forests and flocks of every wild fish and fowl and beast upon the roaming plains spilling out tumble-bumble from the rent body of Ymir as Frigga spread her emerald garment rippling around the spinning globe.

For I am a heathen.

Soul's Geography and Journeys

The geography of the soul is immense. The unbelievably wide expanses we will traverse in a lifetime can only be described through the medium of painstaking and adventurous travelogues, like Dante's Divine Comedy, or The Odyssey, or like ... the Travels of Odr.

Let's take Dante for beginners. Dante travels down into the pit, gradually spiralling down from worse to worst, and then ascends back up, hiking up Mount Purgatory, and then finally gets to go up into the highest, celestial realms. He sees the lowest and the highest, and in order to get to the highest, he must first plumb the depths. This is an archetypal journey, and we will see it in Odr's journey as well, where he must first go down into the Underworld and navigate its perils and wonders before he will be able to ascend into Asgard to finally wed Freya. Odysseus never ascends Mount Olympus, but his return to his homeland represents for him the attainment of bliss, and he, too, in order to get back must first descend into the Underworld.

The thing about the soul's journey is that no one else can tell us what course we will chart (not unless they are capable of seeing into such things, and even then can only give us helpful hints). Each of us will chart a different course through at times treacherously perilous, often densely intricate, and vastly extensive territory.

It may sound somewhat of a cliche these days to speak of the soul's journey, and once something has become cliche, we often are dulled to the power of the metaphor and fail to be affected by it in its fullness and power. When I speak of the "geography" of the soul, I am not speaking in cliches, but suggesting that only the vastness and tremendous contrasts of the world's geography can supply imagery that even begins to do justice to the kinds of inner journeys we will be called upon to trek in this life time.

Similarly, only those who can peer into the inner geography of another soul's journeys can possibly evaluate their worth and work, because we don't know the kinds of ells and leagues they have had to travel to get where they are. One can begin at a height early in life only to take a fall which one spends the next twenty years painstakingly trying to re-ascend. I would recommend accompanying the reading of that sentence without abstractions and with the intense imagery of actual geographic places, because, I suggest, the soul actually experiences them that way.

This is why Odr, who represents the soul in all of us, is called Vidforli in Icelandic and Widsith in Anglo-Saxon, "Widely-Travelled", because for the soul, our experiences and trials are experienced as wide, wide travels, even if we are not moving at all for some periods. The proverbial Norse caution against the heimsk, the homebody, is that without actually experiencing some of that larger geography, our poetic imagination will lack the raw material of soul meeting world to obtain the imagery necessary to encompass the actual soul-travels we are trekking. Travel and terrain give us those resources.

But this is not a matter of "resource extraction" in a one-way, colonial flow, but rather a sensuous exchange of love where soul meets world, and is meant to inspire our love and loyalty towards world itself. Earth, after all, is the Mother of Love.

We may have to travel through thick and tangled jungles that no one else can see, or across deserts where we are parched and challenged but also awed by the Zion-like beauty of the stone monuments, or across salty oceans into ports few at home can understand. The Gods see these journeys, which is why they, and only they, are qualified to judge and evaluate the soul in that doomstead near the Well of Wyrd. If we seek to evaluate another, understanding that it will always be only partial and imperfect given our imperfect mortal understanding, we must try to sense and grasp the kinds of inner geographies they have had to traverse in their travels and trials. We must attempt to visualize the terrain they've had to climb, walk, hike, schlep, and drag themselves across.

Soul has vast vistas it must cross.

I Know Not What I Become

I know not what I become, laying gifts of faith upon Wyrd's altars. Where she leads, I do not know, yet every one has a special task found only in the following of the unfolding inward, outward led into fullest blossom, and so I go, though the path is strange and the road unfamiliar, for Wyrd's bonds hold me snug and safe. Uncharted can be best, for unknown lands still speak the ancient mysteries. Off the roads I go, paths deer go and bush grow, for many feral flowers flourish in these unknown forests.

Out From Walls and Into Woodlands, Come

And nations said, we shall live in iron woodlands as our queen doth live, and there to hoard and stack and pile the gold stories high. And they tore apart mountains, and they ripped up forests, and they crowded out nations, and made mothers weep. And they plundered kingdoms, and clawed open animals, and they wrenched apart meadows, and walled up rivers, all to gild the precious walls of their tomb-like cities. They colonized the heaths, they seized inheritances, and laid tribes in chains, beating down fowls and fauna, all to do homage to what the eye can see. Bleeding lands and clans and shoals and flocks of spirit. Wherefore many cried out, Plunder the city, and freely share out its riches to those who are free, whilst others cried, burn it down, burn it down, burn it to the ground.

For it is not a shame that folk might dress in fancy, but that world should be stooped and prostate with a boot at its head and a sword at its womb for trifles, while the best things in life are bled, and left to rot in the wastelands. Indeed, the beloved ocean-foam's flower-clad daughter delights in well-crafted ornamentation, and gifts were meant to be sent across tribes, but that all should bow down before the monuments of commerce is an abomination. Ruins and outlying lands judge the precincts of the towns, and ask, are you eternal, or shall ye too crumble and fall? Asking, which has greater worth, that which falls, or that which twists and turns throughout?

So the Spirit of the Wilderness cries out and judges the cities, calling the city into judgement, invokes memories from the tombs beneath the pavement, ancestral voices paved over, long roaming and bounding spirits' descendants led in chains to serve the great temples of commerce. For the land beneath the pavement wills a deeper memory, and earth underneath foundations longs to return to weeded, flowered lushness. They say Lord of Nymph's Widely-Wanted Sister of Wildflowers cries out for songs of love, spells of night and wild wight to push back the reign of stealer-of-sense and caster-of-trance upon gold-entranced masses, back to simple things like flesh and soil's delight which steals from no one, but bounty brings from bosoms full of love. So shall curses come to naught if love shall cleave to heart, for Love's Puma-Pulled Beauty of Grace and Wildness evening sings songs of liberation, out from walls and into woodlands, come.

Sing the Secret Songs of Creation (A Gnostic Tale of Heathenism)

God hung out beneath the living tree and heard the whispering winds in its branches, speaking syllables of eternal form and spirit, and falling, he too spoke these precious mysteries hard won. Songs spun from these secret syllables were sent out on many ways, and as the wights galdered, singing hymns and praise, the forming world was filled with spirit. Elves were taught to sing the songs that kept the woods and pastures lively, lyrical, pulsing, vibrant.

But She Who Glittered, with jealousy in her heart for this world emerging beautiful and lovely from the remains of her forebears, who were bearers of chaos and dark matter, set strife into the still-forming world of nature, twisting mysteries meant to enrich life with spirit, and instead, said to strife : conquer and distribute, and make all things through your activity. And all was set at war with each other. Strife gave birth to rank as creatures drowned in the strife and scrambled on top of each other, and there was hardly any glory, even for those on top, who always feared those below might shake them off. Everywhere this spirit of contention wormed its way into the world, its poison attracted goblins and chased out the elves who sang the songs of creation, keeping spirit alive in the world, and there matter became corrupted, until the coils of that great serpent wrapped around a great deal of the earth itself.

And the Gods, taking pity, sent forth a pure soul, one taken from the purest fire, and given the drink of Mimir's blood, Earth's strength, and the Cold, cool sea. This soul travelled on the waves in a barque pulled by swans till it landed on the shores of Midgard, and inside were gifts of knowledge, tools and artifacts not understood by early men, yet taken in as curiosity. The spirit from the pure fire stayed amongst men, teaching them to cast the need-fire, and there find warmth and light, awakening dormant gifts, and redirecting the strife let loose in the world so that it might reach upwards towards Spirit through excellence. And so truth moved to counter the lie, and ever the flame of knowledge must battle against delusion which gained a strong foothold in those early days and still rules much of the earth.

The Pure Spirit from the Fire, who came with a Sheaf of grain and other tools in his barque, later toured the kingdom to see who had grown from the truth sent out to undo the lies. And he found to his sadness that many had given themselves over to the strife, and whole peoples were slaves to the darkness, and cast curses on others, extending the realm of hatred and spite, ill and illusion, and because they had made themselves slaves to the darkness, Sheaf, as he was called, made them do penance by being servants to the light and those who served it. Yet many had remained free of this illness, and kept the dignity of ancient promises, living honest lives, and remaining free. These he blessed as the bulk of the folk that through their assemblies and feasts they might nourish the spirit of truth and keep it alive, remaining free throughout time. Alas, the hordes given over to darkness were many, and surrounding the free folk, often did war upon them, and the light was at times in danger of giving forth to the lie of the darkness. So Sheaf, the great Teacher, called a King or Rig of Lore, knew the land would need protectors, those who might rise above a normal life, teaching and warding the folk, for both teachers and protectors were needed. And those who would be teachers he set up as jarls, and gave them power to train men in the arts of defense, and let them know, when ill nations attacked and they must go into war, any captives made must not be allowed to come into the folk until they too had done penance and purged the illness of strife from their being, and learned the ways of free folk.

This was not the best that could be, but alas, ill had already spread its tendrils far and wide, and so the best for now being no longer reachable, the Gods aimed for good, as good as might be had. Strife had already made many slaves, setting the worst over the best, and Rig aimed at tipping this over so the truly noble, taking on responsibilities and concerns beyond that of normal men, might teach the folk and keep them pure. But arts of battle sadly needed to be taught to the militias that served the teachers, for while Thor and Hodur fought hard to keep monsters out of Midgard, men, given immortal spirit and mind to speak, could call in spirits of ill by invitation, and curse their own kind by bringing bondage into the land.

Today these free ways barely linger, Angst's Power setting gold over virtue, with every man his price, and often the best serving the worst, with deep servitude of those who ought be free.

Who will return to the Ancient Law? Who will claim to be a Child of Heimdall, and not a Slave of Gullveig? Who will hear the call? Show forth with your deeds, for such faith is needed to keep hope alive in a world that ever strangles under the serpent, and those who love gasp for breath in the smoky air that more and more seems to turn this once-green land into a parody of Niflhel's City of the Damned. Who will stand up and be counted amongst the True? We need you. We need your voice, for many of the elves in ancient times joined themselves to the lies of darkness, and ceased singing the songs that keeps creation vibrant. Those places are waiting to be filled by people who will sing the ancient songs. Let me hear your harmonies.

Worthship as Practical Living in the World

The heathen principle of pragmatism impels us to look at worth-ship as a practical matter so that the idea of Gods do not become vain abstractions with no real meaning in the world, equal to any other set of abstractions and just as meaningless. To see Freyr's effect in the world, for example, all you need do is look at the fact that seeds are still fertile and still come to fruition in stalk and harvest of grain, and the flowers of the earth still bloom, and that there is greenery. If Freyr and his worthship were to be withdrawn from this world, those things would disappear. If those are things are important to you, then you show their importance by honoring that power that helps bring that about in the world. Similarly, Freya is no abstraction. The power of love to bring people together and bind them together, indeed to bind them together in unions that ultimately can produce families of lasting sustainability, is a real effect that, without her power of love, would wane, and would not be able to draw people together at all, nor to create lasting unions that could result potentially in offspring that allow the family to sustain the generations. If that is of importance to you in this world, then honor Freya. By the same token, Njord is not just an abstraction, but the bounty of the ocean and seas, of the fish in the waters. Without Njord, the oceans would have no living soul, would not produce its varied fish. There would be nothing to bring home in nets. And so on and so forth for each of the Gods or benefactors as we might call them.

Now that brings it down to earth, but to bring it even further down to earth, if it is our everyday practices of how we go about things in the world, and the rights through which we go about things in the world, that constitutes the major form of worthship, and not liturgical gatherings, then we can directly look at just precisely who we are worthshipping through their effects on those very functions which we have just outlined. So, if the way we go about doing things in the world with our economics and our politics tend towards a situation whereby the fish are lessening in the waters, and indeed fish are dying off in the oceans, then we are not worthshipping Njord, plain and simple. We are not acting as trustees for that domain which he watches over and has placed into our partial trusteeship. If our way of going about things in the world means that pollinators, who enable seeds to be fertile, are dying off, like the bees, then we are not engaged in worthship of Freyr, and in the trusteeship which he has placed partially into our hands as a trust. Indeed, if we are modifying genetics of crops which have been given into our hands as gifts, we are not engaged in the worthship of what Freyr has placed in our hands. If the way we have structured everyday life tears apart unions of love and tends to make them fleeting rather than sustainable, then we are not worthshipping Freya, and by definition we are worthshipping principles foreign to the Holy Gods.

We may indeed adapt Kant's law of the Categorical Imperative, replacing it with a Multiplicative or Iterative Imperative through which we may measure our worthship. The Multiplicative Imperative asks us this : if our actions were to be multiplied millions of times over, would those actions tend to advance or degrade the domains of those Gods we claim to worthship? It is a matter of examining and weighing our actions in terms of allegiance, of critically determining whether our deeds demonstrate loyalty to those powers we claim to find worthy. It is through such worthy deeds that we are enfranchised to participate in the liturgical ceremonies, which are merely symbolical affirmations of the principles governing those domains which are the benefactions of those powers we find holy, meaning wholesome to our lives. According to Teutonic principles, it is the federation of a thousand small kingdoms that brings about prosperity and might, not the huge top-down unitive organization that swallows up the small. Thus the Multiplicative or Iterative Imperative looks at the thousand actions of our lives to see what they add up to.

Worthship is not all or nothing. It is progressive. As we worthship, through slow, gradual immersion, our deeds increasingly align with those principles which we claim to honor. But we do no worthship at all, and therefore are incapable of gradual progression if we are not engaged in that dialectical process of aligning our deeds with those principles.

Those principles are not laid out a priori and deductively, in advance for us to merely step into line and follow with conformity, but rather to be determined inductively, experimentally, as we go along in life. The broad principles are there. Their application we must discover on our own. This is why in Teutonic law, law is always discovered, not determined in advance. Its inductive nature means it is open to empirical observation and confirmation and disconfirmation. If our practices tend to destroy the oceans, then we are clearly not following the principles that advance the domain of Njord, and we must induce the principles that are destructive in our actions (such as usury and fraudulent adhesion contracts), and thereby experiment with principles other than those destructive principles which will bring us back into alignment with that which we find of value.

A heathen following a traditional heathen pantheon must affirm the value of the oceans and their fertility, the integrity of seeds and harvest, the importance of love and the abolition of any sorts of institutional structures that might impede its bonding and sustainable power, the significance of the vitality of the air itself, and its ability to bring us through inspiration the wisdom of All-Father, and the inviolability of the Earth itself, except through limited ritual invocations of plowing and digging customs that are sustainable. This limits mining and tillage operations to ritual zones regulated by an awareness of ecological awareness. We must modify our conception of what a priest is. A priest of Jord, therefore, might look more like a game warden, who stays aware through empirical and intuitive observations of what the seasons require and what is sustainable and sets out rules for harvesting. A priest of Njord might do work akin to that of Greenpeace in its heyday, and so on and so forth. We tend to see priests as liturgical officers of separated ecclesiastical spaces, rather than administrators and ministers of a diverse quasi-State (but voluntary and non-coercive) apparatus. In general we tend to see ritual as a separated domain of irrelevance, having little more effectiveness than the theatre, and with all due respect for the theatre, the theatre tends to have little pragmatic effectiveness in the real world, but we would be closer to the mark if we began to see the ritual domain as akin to the legislative : the charting of domains and the laying out of differential fields of activity, each of which is vital to the functioning of a healthy and wholesome community.

If juridical and legislative action is the main way in which we perform religion, then the next step is a principle of separatism, separation from those juridical and legislative organizations that do not affirm primary heathen principles of law and rights. Of course, such separatism would have to be balanced on a case-by-case and local basis with the other important heathen principle of pragmatism, but while pragmatism may bend principles to meet the changing winds of circumstance, it cannot break them. It must stay true to heathen principles of organization, primary of which is the popular assembly.

The popular assemblies ("Things", "Folkmoots") do not "enact laws" : they affirm rights, they adjucate the expression of those rights in specific cases, and they better the expression of those rights, as they come to be better understood through time and through digestion of the accumulative case material. They thus do not come together to order anyone around, but to affirm and adjucate the rights of its standing members, those being households and clans, and establish forms of trusteeship whereby they may engage in mutual, free benefaction. The annual reallotment of factors of production, primarily land, is apportioned by the folkmoot, often through its Gothis and Kings.

Such organization is essential to heathen worthship, which is not the modern hypocrisy of giving liturgical lip-service to one set of principles while living according to an entirely different set of laws. The restoration of true heathen worthship involves at its very heart the restoration of those forms of polity which were essential and original to the Teutonic peoples, and through which they worthshipped their Gods. The organization of the Roman Empire, constituting a coercive, paternalistic form, was a foreign set of principles to the heathen worthship, and indeed was said by native seers and prophets to represent a foreign form of worthship which would bring about slavery, and which was contrary to the principles set down by the heathen Gods themselves. Thus organization which is Roman in form is contrary to heathen spirituality and religious ethical living. The heathen spiritual foundations began to crumble the moment that the Roman Empire began to set up and support client-kings who would exercise authoritarian rather than titular office, acting as coercive powers and in the image of giants, rather than as trustees of the popular assemblies, as they were natively meant to function. People would voluntarily give to their leaders who would redistribute that surplus wealth as needed, and thus became known as "gold haters" for the fact that they would not stingily hoard it, but act as charitable trustees of the tribal treasure-hoard.

The function of a kindred or heathen free-church, therefore, is the distribution of charity in variable forms throughout a community that is separated from the secular civil society, and forms its own polity. It thus operates as a fully functioning tribe ; or at least, its purpose is to build up to such fully functioning autonomy in free association with other such polities and tribes. Its purpose is to facilitate charity or mutual help through free, rather than coercive, association. Many apply to paternalistic slavemasters for benefits but thereby enthrall themselves. A free-church is an attempt to provide mutual benefit through free activity and free association, and a heathen free-church (or "kindred" commonly called, although it is more akin to a guild of thingmenn from various authentic kindreds) does this through heathen principles and worthshipping in very practical ways those powers we find Holy in the world.

Prosperity, not Exploitation

It must be emphasized again and again regarding diatribes against Gullveig that we are not lambasting prosperity or the desire for abundance. That's not the issue. The issue is exploitation, which is why Gullveig can be glossed as Usura, as a greed that goes beyond satiety, beyond enoughness, and that fails to take care of its own prosperity and therefore lusts after others' goods, and is even willing to go to war to do so, not to mention other mechanisms for exploitation of others. So prosperity and abundance are Vanir values, and very much a part of the good of the world. It is the going beyond enoughness into exploitation that is the problem to be avoided. There is no ill-will against wanting to be comfortable and have enough enough, but that is the very issue at heart : being able to have enough. The problem with the Western spirit of expansion is that there has never been a point of enoughness, of satiety, and so we are always reaching to exploit other people's kingdoms in order to enrich our own sense of inadequacy and not-enoughness. Vanir values would situate us in abundance, but also situate us in being able to enjoy that abundance so that we are so full that we do not need any more.

Mission : To Put A Stop to Torture and Atrocity in This World

If there are no solutions to the problems of atrocities and traumas, I see no reason to worship Gods at all, nor to do anything but declare that we live in a savage, Jotunn-dominated existence. There is, of course, the Gnostic way of approaching heathen theology, which I actually think is a genuine heathen theology, and that is to posit that in particular ages, the world is dominated by savage Jotnar forces. The Gods are there as forces to inspire our minds and our hearts to evolution so we may use our wits to outwit those forces which would set us in division, violence, atrocity, and trauma.

To me, there would seem to be no point in being alive at all if we cannot grapple with and come closer to solutions to the most basic problems of atrocities, rapes, tortures, abuse of children, preventable famine, the evil that human beings do to other human beings. I really can't see the point of enjoying anything or living in denial if we can't dedicate some portion of this time that we are alive to using the intelligence that we were given by the Gods to try to come up with some way of eliminating this from the planet. Without it, I hardly see the point of even being here at all, because otherwise all life amounts to is living in a torture camp and doing the best we can to look aside and get what pleasures we can get in that context, and that is the approach of a slavish mentality, not of a warrior who would fight against that which must be fought against.

Warriors that have become so grizzled by warfare that they conclude that these things are not possible to solve are like teachers who have become burnt-out : they need to retire, and lick their wounds, and receive whatever honor and compassion is due to them for their merits.

I should like most people to be deeply troubled by the prevalence of atrocity and the history of torture, rape, and abuse on this planet. I should like people to be less than despicably cowardly than to suggest that all of this is "natural" simply because it is so prevalent, and yes, I am calling those who lay out this contemptuously easy solution as despicably cowardly. I believe, and the sources support me, that there is a review of one's life by the Gods, and every single one of us is going to have to explain what we did or didn't do to address these most basic issues. It's not as if we have to take the troubles of the entire world on our shoulders, but then again, the question of "Why didn't you do anything with your intelligence or strength to address these issues?" might be a rather condemning statement in open court, and the excuse that "I just took all this as inevitable" might be seen as a rather laughable excuse worthy of ridicule.

The issue is not whether others in the past or others in the present take such things for granted. The issue is whether you, right now, with your intelligence, and with your empathy, can stand for a planet to have such characteristics, and if you cannot, then to use your intelligence, your empathy, your valor, and your strength, to strategize how one might push out the Jotnar forces. Let's not mince words : that's exactly the kinds of forces they are. In Book Five of Saxo Grammaticus' History of the Danes, the childhood of Freyr as King Frodi is described, as he sits on his throne in Alfheim, and giants, described there as berzerkers of immense stature, come in and torture, rape, and abuse men, women, and children. Those behaviors are explicitly connected with the Jotnar, brought in by them, and King Frodi, when he is triumphant over them, specifically enacts laws to prevent such things from happening. We here have an example from the God of Freedom himself of exactly what our imperatives must be, and we know therefore precisely where the Gods stand in this matter, and they stand against these atrocities, and any evidence to the contrary is the result of warped minds who have been degraded and perverted by Jotnar energies.

We cannot take such things for granted. We must challenge them with all of our might, wit, and will. The Gods do not condone these, for they cannot, as Gods cannot be good if they cannot even condemn what a good human being would! Other peoples may be content to worship Jotnar and call them their "gods", but as for us, Gods and Goods are connected. We worship those beings in the world who bring about collective good, not those who tend towards tearing up the world and the bringing about of mass pain and degradation. Even disruption and fighting must always be for a creative purpose, an evolutionary purpose. If we do not accept the good gifts the Gods have given us, such as law, such as the capacity for mercy, such as intelligence and planning, including family planning, such as inventory of resources relative to need, such as redistribution customs, and instead take up, exhibit, and multiply gifts given by Jotnar and their children, such as the charging of interest, such as greed, such as the spreading of fear and anxiety, such as deceit and fraud, such as coveting what other people have, such as wolfishness in war, such as trying to strangle out the life in others out of envy, such as allowing famine and the disease it brings to have sway in our kingdoms, then it is clear who we worship, in Gnostic terms : the Gods of Empire, the Jotnar forces. Indeed, we have invited in and contracted with, through acquiescence to terms that no free men would ever acquiesce to. Whenever we consent to immoderate, out-of-control destructiveness, we are sending the Gods a signed letter under penalty of perjury that we are worth-shipping their enemies, and that might very well be taken as a statement of treason.

It is true that the Christians have been too dualistic in emphasizing a black-and-white separation of good and evil, and that heathenism is much more moderate, opening up the grey areas, and recognizing that there are many ways of being good in the world, but heathenism has always been realistic about evil in the world. In accord with Voluspa, as the ages of degenerated, evil has grown considerably, and it must be faced square on. With great power comes great responsibility, and one might say, liability. The same is true of great privilege and progress. So again, while we are not responsible for the entirety of the world, it must be asked in this lifetime allotted to us, what are we doing to address it at all? Are we opening up the dialogue in how we may at least create even a small kingdom free of such ills, where such things are not "unthinkable", but rather quite thought out, and forbidden, and bound up in such a way that they cannot come back to haunt men until the end of days, when they shall be finally cleansed from the earth. What kind of legal and moral bonds are we putting on these things to control them, and keep them from raging out of control? These are the questions we must ask ourselves : the questions on which hinge a meaningful life.

War is outrage and unowned aggression externalized, oppression turned outward. Therefore, Tyr is the answer to lessening externalization of warfare, by acknowledging our anger in life by standing up for ourselves, refusing to be oppressed by anyone around us, by being true to our anger in the moment, rather than letting it store up. Because it is when we let it store up in savings accounts in banks with interest that it can be dislodged upon others with such ferocity and with such inhumanity, because it is the inhumane storing up of undischarged resentment and anger about life that gets transformed into the capacity to do hateful things to an enemy in wartime. Thus it is our duty to Tyr to stay close to our anger, to not allow it to be repressed, to stay with it and to moderate it, and to create arenas where it can be expressed without destroying the community, either external or internal. It means staying tough with those around us, not tolerating any arrogance or bullshit, and not giving way to any kind of disrespectful behavior or aggression upon us that violates us. Doing so consistently and firmly, with a sense of standing upon our rights that does not make us desperate and want to lash out, but rather strong and entrenched.

It also means not tolerating Lokis in our own midst, traitors who dress themselves up in patriotism and try to scare us with forebodings of terrorism, snarling in their constipated angst about the supposed "need" for torture camps to "protect" us. If we let such an enemy have sway even within our own borders, it shall surely eat us up alive, and our refusal to live up to our principles, because we have given in to someone else's cynical realism and machiavellian realpolitik, will be our own undoing. As a nation we have tolerated those Greps who have tortured and raped men, women, and children, making Frodi weep, and have refused to bring them to justice where they may be tried for high treason. When Frodi returns as Robin Hood, the folk shall have their justice, for atrocity is not to be tolerated in any form for any reason. Not while the Gods are on watch.

And they are always on watch.


See for example, http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/h_cat39.htm