Ziggys Cynical Summary of Heimskringla

And then Asshole King # 512 went pillaging and burning common folks homes. Yea, how glorious.

Then Asshole King #513 went pillaging and burning common folks homes. Yea, how glorious.

Then Asshole King #514 went pillaging and burning common folks homes. Yea, how glorious.

Oh, wow, lets write a poem about how marvelous the sword play was when these brute bullies were out there burning down peoples homes. Wow, how brave and glorious they were.

Wow, what a fabulous, honorable ancestry.

Then Asshole King # 515 went pillaging and burning common folks homes. Yea, how glorious.

When you read a book, and are looking back to the glory days of how interesting and edifying the Old Testament was, you know it is really bad, boring writing.

In fact, Heimskringla is only good if you use it in reverse : do the opposite of everything these kings do, and you should be fine, because the characters in these sagas lie, cheat, betray their best friends, burn down people while they are at sacred sumbles (about 50 times or more throughout the sagas), trample on the odal rights of bonders, break alliances and oaths, and burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn common folks villages.

Idiotic.


Yes, feel free to start a dialogue with me about this. I realize there are a few precious gems in Heimskringla, but overall, it is a dung heap. Feel free to educate me otherwise. Try! It might be a fun exercise. Try showing me how all this pillaging and burning is really glorious. I think its the actions of a bunch of barbaric assholes.

She Who Runs With Panthers

She who runs with the panthers
through the fields and valleys,
high mountain passes and prairies
wild woman prancing as petals fall
from her unbound, shaking hair,
an unrolling carpet of flowers follows
her every soft thump and footstep.
Then, donning wings, like a hawk,
she flies, wherever she wills,
and lovers, catching her dreamlike
from the corner of an eye, find
passion renewed, and love reflowered.
Praise this Flower Maiden of Bobcats and Beasts!
Praise Odr's Woman, sister of the great King Frodi.

Bless Beloved Sol!

Brightest incandescence spinning
like a glowing wheel smiling light
of smiles upon laughing elves. Sol
smiles the most beautiful smile;
the world is hers, every day, giving light
and life, all Alfheim dancing to her holy
pageant, their foremost Dag leading her
train across the heavenly cloak of Odin.
All darkness dispelled, she once knew
pain beyond any girl's knowing, but now
she is the light of the world, and the babes
dance in the garden, she is pure joy, wise
like a wise aunt, the beloved valkyrie,
Maiden of the Flaming Disc, streaming
orange and gold purity blanching out
any ill, anywhere she goes. Bless
Beloved Sol!

Values of the Aesir and Vanir

Aesir Values

Be assertive. Fight your fight. Stand up for yourself. Be audacious, in the service of the good. Propose peace and harmony on the basis of boldness, not weakness. Be true to your inner sense of justice, which holds the balance between retribution and clemency. Seek to see beyond the common limitations. Explore. Be strong and enjoy your strength. Keep your wits alert and ready, fresh and smart. Be true to the flock and keep it fit and upright. Keep your sense of wildness alive. Demonstrate courage where it matters. Seek honor for derring-do that serves the larger good. Demonstrate your strong and open heart through hospitality and generosity. Protect what deserves protection. Seek to learn all that you can. Give yourself over to fits of inspiration and creativity, then take the time to find the wisdom there. Learn to enjoy and ride, rather than fear, fury. Seek experience and maturity, and admire those who have attained it, learning all you can from them. Abandon not the quest, but keep your questions open. Don't hesitate to take on the predatorial and ill-minded. Give not into weakness. Set your standards high. Nothing good was ever accomplished through timidity or mediocrity. Evolve and self-overcome.

Vanir Values

Value the organic. Move at a slow, easy, rhythmical pace. Give things time to ripen. Enjoy the seasons. Keep earthy. Cultivate sensuality. Feed appetite. Work to feast. Go fishing. Enjoy the richness of life's bounty. Seek the cornucopia. Practice abundance and satiety. Be unashamed of free pleasure and proud of love's wonders. Celebrate life. See life as love. Love your kindred. Honor the nuptial bed. Foster fertility through facilitating enjoyment in all creatures. Know the soil. Honor the land. Mind the land-wights. Follow the sun and moon. Keep a sense of festive time. Remember to chew the chaw. Respect the peace of the land. Sow when it is time to sow, harvest when it is time to harvest, everything in good time. Develop a sense of rhythm. Contemplate fruit and fruiting trees. Create gardens. Nurture and nourish. Honor the Mother.

Frodi's Pageant

Gripped and thralled by the paws of monstrous behemoths,
the shining lord of harvest's fresh cut glowing
'neath summer's green boughs speeding came, as shot
from stretched yew sprung from woodland bowers
held fast to the hearts of the glowering boulder's scions
to tumble down, merry down in the downing, the towered tyrants
fall from ruthless grip of hapless men
who held in hapts of fearful fetters
burdened wept, no customs called
to join the breeze's pollen song
on air incense in sweet spring's bliss
to dance the merry Mayful round, in Priap raised,
to praise the prowess of their pleasures
whence all beasts and birds do shake
the frost of wintery rime from coats
and call back in the Floral Queen, the Maiden of Our Heart's Delight,
Sweet Lady of the loins' kiss heartened.
Unknowing, unlivened, their hearts in terror toiled, or dullness
braised in fitless funk and haze,
bogged and swamped and swallowed near-whole,
they trudged and tramped on through the chain-gang.
We were once thus thralled, a state of soul, to which some still do pittance.
Bright Ing's Land's Lord slung thunked zinged shot straight
at chunky fist Damocles-raised above the folk.
Called in, "body guards", strong fists of ruthless kings
abandoned murky desert frosts for pastures green of man's land
now no-man's landed at the terror
of cruel might enraged
and holding lasso o'er the led.
Men forget. So many times, forgetting, trampled over
plains of Balder's broadly bright,
and joy so rightly succulent, ripe,
falls abandoned, bumbling, ungleaned right.
For men remember shadows of once-great lights
and beg the shadows for forgiveness
costly paid in penance ever growing
boldly strapping sinews
debts done never. Frodi filled the folk with loathing
for such wretched grasp of shadows! Boldly! rather, free thyself,
in one fell swoop rejoicing.
Thus, the trains, a trickle first, soon
cavalcades of revels riot
glory's wanton luscious bounty
dancing through the streets unbound
and burnings books of debt and fraud,
accounts of kings were kicked down dust
and kicked the feet in mid-air clicking,
harlequins and gleemen led
the folk in May-rounds uprise moving,
monsters' miser-chains undoing.
From land to land, unbound and blossom,
Zephyr's seed sown past all boundaries,
rollicking, the rise of freedom
surged and mowed down every tyrant.
Proud King Frodi! Antlered crown,
raised the charge, and summer-led the frith-charged revels.
The call of freedom's frith will not be held back
by land nor sea, flag nor forest,
lust, life luscious, surges, roils,
froths afoamy like ocean wave
or loins' sweet, fresh, unstoppable spray.
Breathe. The festival is life,
the soil's toil but sweet foreplay.
Roll in the fields, a lovers' romp ;
the work of joining hands with Nerthus
bringing forth the bosom's fruits
is made more merry by the boasts
and toasts of banquet's heartfelt oaths of love.
Frodi calls. Hear the horn, Njord's conch-shell given,
echo deep in cavern's dark thrall trogs.
Hear the clarion call.
Robin wants the sheriff's downfall.
It's time for mirth, it's time for glee.
The monster's devil schedules damned!
Break down the fortress! Revel's clan
calls, calls, calls. Would you blaspheme Frodi?
Worldwide freedom wakes from slumber
out from toil, into empires
of peace and plenty, joy and jolly, sex
and serenades.
These are the empires worth serving. All else falls
before the call.
Hail Frodi! Blessed, antlered, shining Freyr!!

Mercy and Good Judgement are the Best Heathen Qualities

I consider heathens who pooh-pooh Baldur's death to be irreligious. There. I said it. Hann er beztr, ok hann lofa allir, "He is the best, and all love him." He is called Baldr inn góða, (Gylfaginning 49) "Baldur the Good". Hann er vitrastr ásanna ok fegrst talaðr ok líknsamastr, en sú náttúra fylgir honum, at enginn má haldast dómr hans, "He is the Wisest of the Aesir, and the fairest in speech, and the most merciful, and it follows from his nature that no one may hold against his judgements." (Gylfaginning 22.) Líknsamastr, "the most merciful", may also be translated as "the greatest healer", the one who gives the greatest relief and soothing.

Concerning his judgements, the father must partake of the nature of the son in greater quantity, and of his son Forseti, it is said that svæfir allar sakar, "he puts to rest all disputes", and that En allir, er til hans koma með sakarvandræði, þá fara allir sáttir á braut, "Everyone who comes to him with troublesome quarrels leaves reconciled." There's no two words about it : Baldur and his son Forseti are powerful forces of reconciliation and peace, and their judgement is considered the best. But if such high words of praise can be said for Forseti, so much the more so for Baldur, whose powers of reconciliation and mercy must have been so much higher, for when Baldur died, Forseti was still left amongst the Aesir, and yet we are told in Gylfaginning 49 that En Óðinn bar þeim mun verst þenna skaða sem hann kunni mesta skyn, hversu mikil aftaka ok missa ásunum var í fráfalli Baldrs, "But Odin bore that scathe the worst as he knew with greater understanding than any how mighty a taking-away and loss Baldur's death was to the Aesir." This was knowing that Forseti, of whose mighty powers of reconciliation we have just spoken, was still amongst the Aesir!

Odin, with all his wisdom, appreciated just how big a loss this was to the Gods, even with Forseti's awesome powers of reconciliation still amongst them. Are you going to gainsay Odin in this regard?

The importance of Baldur's líkn and vitra and dómr --- his Mercy and Wise Judgements -- could not be spoken of in greater terms or with more emphasis and hyperbole. Gylfaginning 49 says of his death that hefir þat mest óhapp verit unnit með goðum ok mönnum, "That was held to be the greatest undoing of good fortune that had ever happened amongst gods and men."

I'll put this in William Shatner speech : The. Greatest. Undoing. Of Good Fortune. That had. Ever. Happened amongst. Gods. And men. And I will repeat it one more time : The greatest undoing of good fortune that had ever happened amongst Gods and men.

That is how important the qualities that Baldur represented were. And Voluspa 62 - 64 tells us for what Odin and the Einheriar were fighting so mightily at Ragnarok, for after the battle is over, Böls man alls batna, Baldr man koma;búa þeir Höðr ok Baldr Hropts sigtoptir vel valtívar....ok burir byggja brœðra tveggja vindheim víðan. Sal sér hon standa sólu fegra gulli þakðan á Gimlé; þar skulu dyggvar dróttir byggja ok um aldrdaga ynðis njóta, "All bale shall be repaired, Baldur shall come ; Hodur and Baldur, the good victory-gods, will dwell there in Hropt's Victory-Homestead ... and the sons, the two brothers, shall dwell in the Home of Winds. A hall she sees standing, fairer than the sun, thatched in gold in Gimle ; there shall the trusty, worthy folk dwell forever and ever enjoying happiness."

That's pretty unambiguous language. The return of Baldur means the repairing of all ill. The term batna, applied to bale, means the total recovery from an illness. All ill shall be repaired, when Baldur comes back to rule in the house of his father, where the folk shall enjoy eternal happiness.

I'd call that a happy ending. And it's just too bad if some creepy folks raised on Wagnerian fantasies of doom find that too cheerful. It's the way it is. It is that end, and the values it represents, towards which everything aims. It is the raison d'etre for the einheriar and their difficult training, and the entire reason that so much is staked on the battle of Ragnarok. What did Odin whisper in Baldur's ear, that no man knows? We may be told all we need to be told when Gylfaginning 49 tells us that Óðinn lagði á bálit gullhring þann, er Draupnir heitir. Honum fylgði sú náttúra, at ina níundu hverja nótt drupu af honum átta gullhringar jafnhöfgir, "Odin laid on the pyre that gold-ring which is called Draupnir. It follows from its nature that every nine nights drop from it eight gold-rings of equal weight."

Rings were extremely important in heathendom. The ring on the altar of the temple was like the Bible that people swear upon in court these days. It received all of the holy oaths on penalty of perjury. Only the gothi of the temple was allowed to wear it into the thing, and thus was an emblem not only of the holiness of all the oaths of the folk, but a sign of the authority of the gothi. To give a ring in this context is to hand over authority of the temple. But there is more packed into this symbol of Draupnir, because it produces nine generations of rings, and it took nine generations to establish an odal estate. There couldn't be a clearer symbol of Odin handing over authority of the holy steads to Baldur. And that is precisely what Voluspa tells us happens after Ragnarok is over.

Ragnarok is fought so that the Best, the Wisest, and the Most Merciful may rule in the holy heavenly homesteads, to bring eternal happiness.

I've heard irreligious, flippant, mocking heathens say that Baldur's death was "necessary", that it was part of making "the world the way it is". Sure, it's "necessary" if you like the way the world is now, with all of its endless strife and wars and bale. If you like the evil our ancestors rightfully called "illness". If you like an axe-age, a wolf-age, an age of bale. But if you are a sane human being who has not been driven mad with resentment or blood-lust, you hate these things. Let's just say it outright. Let's just say it and drive away the folks looking for blood to sate their teeth upon, looking for schadenfreude, looking to turn holy religion into a fest for jotnar.

They don't want to hear it. It doesn't match their image of a "Viking religion". They can't stand the fact that Baldur's place in the Old Religion indicates a place for Mercy, Goodness, and Reconciliation that rivals the best values of Christianity. It seems to me these nidings, and I'll freely call them that, have rejected Christianity not because of its authoritarianism, or its rejection of the holiness of nature, or its anti-sexual attitudes --- all good reasons to hold it at arm's length --- but because they can't stand the fact that it speaks so heavily of love and mercy.

Well, I'm sorry to tell those folks in no uncertain terms that Mercy and Reconciliation were the highest values of heathendom for which all battles were fought, even the greatest of all battles. I won't waver on this, nor cater to jotnar-thralls. These facts aren't infiltrations from Christianity. They are one hundred per cent heathen. In fact, if anything, our appreciation of these facts is diminished by the fact that they presented good competition to the Christian faith and thus were under-preserved. All of the world wept for Baldur. The living, the dead, the very earth and trees and metals. Snorri, perhaps exaggerating, says that even some of the giants attended his funeral. Perhaps they were those judged who by his hand had received mercy.

We would do good to reemphasize these values and reclaim them as authentically heathen.

It's true that one of the things the story is telling us is that as the Golden Age was lost and men became more and more corrupted, these things were progressively lost, as the axe-and-wolf age progressed. It is no wonder, then, that we find so little emphasis upon this in our records, at least on the surface, and yet if you examine those records more closely, how prominently frith and grith feature.

I'm aiming at a Baldur-centered heathenism, one that knows where its true values lie. That doesn't mean that Baldur is the only God. It doesn't mean that we are to only exercise mercy, and that there is no place for the other energies the Gods represent. This isn't a monotheism of Baldur. It's simply acknowledging what was once acknowledged : that amongst the Holy Powers, Baldur is the best. And we ought to accord his spirit of Wise Judgement and Merciful Reconciliation the place in the high seat it deserves.



All translations copyright 2008 by Siegfried Goodfellow

Mother's Blessing

main, mother's strength, bliss, blessing be upon her always!
hael, holy kin's matron, kiss upon her feet, and welcome!
all the ve'd maegth of yore rising up flower-vine to garland-arches
deciduous august flutterings of gold and beech rooted, strong,
soil-standing up to hold the heaven's heights, tree after tree,
as all the trees in long line of kin backward tending meet,
mother, in thy blessed bosom's heart-treasures. love holds you
relentless against all seasons in undying devotions and affection.
main, mother's strength, bliss, blessing be upon her always!
hael, holy kin's matron, kiss upon her feet, and welcome!
roots' reared trunks soil-standing up to hold the heaven's heights,
tree after tree, as all the trees in long line of kin backward tending meet,
mother, in thy blessed bosom's heart-treasures, where undying devotions
and affections await your welcome return, holy kin's matron!

Mother Jord

bosom of the broad swathes' lap, a matron's apron
with flowers' garland grass and sedge and tree woven,
might's mother, mother of all wights great and small,
rides, Audhumla's daughters driven, across the bumbling plains
where peace and joy town-fest meet her all ways, outwards ranging.
rust in trees' shed flutters, oil painted broad yellow and gold sunset-dripped
across the lonely, wondrous waves of woodland, oceanic.
And all ways meet, every road on petal-strewn soil she walks out onto,
neighbors and old grudges nodding, now is the time to bow, the Lady,
put away all feuds in broken bread with barley dust shaking soft
on white, linen cloths beneath the ale-frothed horns toasting,
boasting oaths to frith and grith, sworn in by thunder's main
called down goat-chariot to bow, his hand extended invite
escorting blessed mother across the wide and long laid lands.
There the golden twins smile, in lustrous, libidinal distribution
handing fruits of ripe and eager shape, sensual, to matrons
and fathers, children, old men and grandmothers spry now dancing!
bosom of the broad swathes' lap, the matron's apron
opens out blessings for all kin, cornucopia, to come and eat,
juicy the succulent fruits of peace. Hail the Mother!
Bless her footways safe and sky-sailed forever,
till milk-deer lands soft foot-fall near the swans' song
reed and heron, by the fens, where lake-bathed, she dips
and sinks to fair elfland, there to walk the rainbow bridge
back into the skies where broad-rimmed father waits.
Hail the Mother! bosom of the broad swathes' lap, a matron's blessing
be here now and forever upon this holy aurr-blended soil.
Hail the Mother! whose deep loins hold and nourish all
with wet sacraments of caverns' bliss drip-bubbling up from deepest wells.
bosom of the broad swathes' lap, mother matron's earthy feet
touch this land forever, bright blessed heaven-queen of old.

Odr's Blessing

mother-tomb tending, tears, grief upon a boy's surly brow, snowdriven.
man-raised, silver eyes blue beneath white gold wisps of elvish hair,
he calls, mound-deep, mother, rise, rise, give me rede, and aid-ail
fresh for parched soul bereft of all understanding on arctic paths.
that ale-mistress, father's whore, would exile me, wretched, upon the ice,
there to seek a dream-maiden marvel whose smile no man has seen.
mind swirls with lies and half-truths spoken tribe after tribe,
wars no one even remembers beginning, captives and cages
of woven ice-strands cold and fogging brains with frost-thorns
Dainn drove deep in the coldest of nights, again and again.
No one knew why, and now, this? this witch to ward me off?
Mother, tell me what to do! Mother, speak as you said you would!
sat he, shivered, the biting whisper of wind, lonely by the mound ;
then rose, whispers, swirling, surrounding, gales of soft shrieks
till ghostly, Groa came before him, words tinkling like chimes of twilight,
and spake, spraece, spreading blessings, and nine knots of scild untied,
morning gifts of boy's birth lullabied, returned, roiling in blood and breath,
powers, sight, words of wisdom rolling off lips naive, surprised,
ancient parables and proverbs known, now known as if always,
forever-etched in deepest forests' mind-stuff, now moving into meadow
of man's becoming, elvish passage to adulthood in songs of sael and hael.
Shoulders broadened, kneeling standing tall with brightened eyes, knowing.
And maybe she was real! For mother, ghost-smoke recels draining
fog-sucked back to mounds, had spoken of this Lady, one blessed.
And he might, she said, Urd-spoken be, the one to bring her back.
Pride and terror mixed in bone cold-driven now to quest, come what may.
Over hill, over dale, through deepest valleys dark and caverns-down to nowhere,
what may find, monsters, treasures, swords and sorcerors. He rose,
buckskin boot crunching snow packed earth with firmness, he would go.
He would go!

Sif's Spell

brewing, barley-hair writhing rise like snakes' lair raining
dew of deepest venom dipped in marked chalice,
brewing, Ullr's matron, mother potions thick and foggy,
filled with trance chants shrill and elvish,
Thor's bride-to-be witch-sings marvel, power into stew
for son's far faring ride 'cross winter 'scapes
where Lady Syrra lies forlorn in frozen towers,
Corn King brother bound on throne by Beli's rough howlers.
brewing, calm queen-dreams of mother earth, peace-weave
to ripen spring songs of winter's reconciliation, circle restored.

brewing, barley-hair writhing rise like snakes' lair raining
silver whispers' charms like snowflakes across brothers' mares of night.
calling, up-calling, hoping Gods of heaven hear her words so whispered
that weather's warfare might cease, and harvest come.
Elvish son so young, eager, proud, watcher of woods and wood-ways,
smiling reminisce this mistress of deer-play days boy blended in,
birches and cottonwood, still as mountain leaves, just to touch velvet fur.
calling, reaching, steam suck grasping strength, wit, will, wiles even
against the glaciers' blade-thralls looming, thundrous, all through Alfheim.
He will return ; brewing ; he must return ; steam and musk ; the Lady,
The Eldar must see her face again to rise to service of Gods once more.

brewing, barley-hair writhing rise like snakes' lair raining
drops of summoned clouds, river's might, beak and claw,
white swan-feather's wisps sunk drop seethe-cauldron.
conjure, ancient yore-day sitharin, daylings' dawn wisdom
packed, boiled, tight in the stew, potent smells and oils,
a drink to man the boy whose quest has come, and then,
placed, the half-brother feigning, mankind's poet, tastes the stew
in taking boiled birth-right of brother, brewed so love-like;
but Sif, frith sailing smooth in fay veins, merely squints, letting
breath fall like a slow canopy descending softly onto dewy lawns,
then with strength, admonishment, charges the poet to care
for tracker's kin whose wit he shortly swallowed single-gulp.
He would have the Lady, said he, but loving eyes of Ullr she saw,
and wished all well, the fates would have it, Gods bless their return.

The Waters Beneath the Lowest Roots (Urdabrunnr)

the waters beneath the lowest roots, speak, sounds never heard by mortal men.
the waters beneath the lowest roots, dance, phantasm tapestries, upon the rippling membrane.
the waters beneath the lowest roots, down, down, down the cup dipped, dipping deep.
the waters beneath the lowest roots, silt, white as bone, soft as Frodi's meal, ages' law and laws.

the waters beneath the lowest roots, skein strand stretched slowly across in eager, wondrous webs.
the waters beneath the lowest roots, three dark hovering maids, blazing eyes, watch all, everything.
the waters beneath the lowest roots, cleanse, beyond all shame or soil, all the purest gauze silken.
the waters beneath the lowest roots, bubbling, up bubbling, forgotten dreams rise and surface.

there in those waters i will see, ancestors faces new as dawn, nodding, smiles of encouragement.
there in those waters i will see, the paths woven, wondrous ways which, for my web of luck.
there in those waters i will see, the high one, hat's brim, downy cotton-tail beard, winking, wisdom.
there in those waters i will see, the homes of all i have loved, home forever, patient, kind, green and beckon.

there in those waters i will see, schemes, tragedies, washed away, unforeseen surprises.
there in those waters i will see, patterns of lives fulfilled, fragile choices, opportunities missed and taken.
there in those waters i will see, what could be, what nearby lies, what has already been.
there in those waters i will see, reflections, the court of doom, all the gods assembled, sentence, and smiles.

In Whose Branches (Yggdrasil)

in whose branches, dawn, the night mists down to leaf-litter floor, renewal.
in whose branches, darkness holds, the bright and fiery orbs in the azure sea.
in whose branches, life spoke primeval, far beyond any death or tragic loss.
in whose branches, awe, sprinkling, gave birth to first gasps of breath.
in whose branches, children, fairies gathered sparks, to bring to mothers' wombs.

in whose branches, craving, moved from beginnings, sap rose in swirls to canopies.
in whose branches, lady, white gauze, moves without a whisper, washing smooth bark walls.
in whose branches, ages past, brush softly over, ages yet to come in gentle seedlings.
in whose branches, sex originated, long ago, in ocean spray dashing up onto the boughs.
in whose branches, I learned, once upon a time, how to breathe and grow.

in those branches, I will soar,
in those branches, Gods scintillate atop the highest boughs.
in those branches, the sun sails through the skies.
in those branches, we are held, surrounded, bound together.
in those branches, peace beyond measure.

Heathenism is Cosmocentric, not Theocentric

Heathenism is not theocentric but cosmocentric: action-oriented and reality-centered. The Gods help shape reality, guide our actions, and grant blessings and inspiration --- and are worthy of our highest honors and friendship --- but we are centered on doing our work, and the doing of that work that only we can do, which is our true religious duty. We are Wyrd-centric, not theocentric.

Monotheism is theocentric because it collapses categories into one reification. Heathenism is neither fragmented nor artificially unified. It is, rather, dynamic and responsive.

The Gods are not the center of our existence. They are our glorious circumference. Wyrd is the center of our existence, and the circumferential blessed Holy Powers bless us in the pursuit of our wyrd.

Brian Bates has his finger on the pulse better than most : authentic heathenism must be Wyrd-centric. The point is not asa-tru, but wyrd-tru. Theological religions have made us god-centric but the real sign of a heathen is orientation to wyrd, and I would take that so far as to say that an atheist who is truly attuned to wyrd and its Ur-Thank is more of a heathen than one who worships the Gods but has no relationship to wyrd whatsoever.

The Gods are powerful shapers of wyrd, who committed great deeds that laid down laws for becoming that have affected the world ever since. In this sense, they are creators. They are also immensely wise, knowing how to work with the way things happen, to magical effect, because they have such long experience with how things have happened.

The Gods themselves are subject to Wyrd. Wyrd is universal law that cannot be abrogated. It can only be learned and surfed. The Gods are excellent surfers of Wyrd, somewhat akin in this respect to the Taoist Immortals.

The Gods are holders of Offices of Trust and Protection delegated by Wyrd for their merit and abilities. We therefore might say that our mission is "To Serve Wyrd and Her Gods." The Gods are entrusted to the care of the cosmos (The World Tree). The Well and the Tree -- Source and Manifestation, Implicate and Explicate, the Unconscious and the Conscious -- is the process of Wyrd. The Gods are entrusted with Stewarding the Well and the Tree. We serve the Gods in order to serve Wyrd.

In that way, we orient ourselves to Immanent Source, from which we cannot be separated (but which transcends us), and which we access through creativity and dream. Nature -- (physis) -- this world (The Tree) and the Afterlife -- the Otherworld (The Well) are interconnected in one process. Wyrd is the eternal recycling of noteworthy deeds.

Again, this makes us not theocentric but cosmocentric : centered in this world and the larger process of reality, and we let the Gods handle their own realm. We appeal to them for Friendship and Wisdom, but orient ourselves towards wholemaking in this world. We serve the Gods, but as Trustees of Wyrd. They are Penultimates, not Ultimates. They are worthy of our highest praise and love, but ultimately we worship the world itself -- or the world-generating power, in other words, Wyrd. Through Wyrd, we are pantheists, and we serve our Gods because they themselves serve the pantheism of hte world. This is the proper orientation.

Monotheistic faiths confuse the Penultimate and Ultimate. Reality is ultimately atheistic and uncanny, but it is served and managed by theistic beings who have shaped the world into its present incarnation for us.

We give our Ultimate Worthship, therefore, to Wyrd, and only Penultimate Worthship to the Gods. Because Wyrd is worthy of our ultimate worthship, we can be weird and give worthship to those dreamfigures of the larger reality we call Gods --- Sources of Good. (That which is a Source of God puts things in their place and gives them a proper home, a place of power and prosperity. It assigns, orders, deems, distributes.)

The Gods are a Board of Trustees who distribute the gifts of the Grantor, Wyrd, to the Beneficiaries -- us and the world. What Wyrd in turn gives to the Trust are our fully digested actions, and thus there is a feedback loop between Beneficiaries, the Grantor, and the Board of Trustees.

Because Wyrd is dreamlike, so the stories of the Gods have a mythical quality about them, meant to be raed like a dream rather than a literal quality. Just because it is not literal, however, and therefore not to be bowed down before like an idol, does not mean it is not real. You have to come at it from both angles --- the Gods created us, but we, in the process of unfolding our Wyrd, created the Gods as expressions of our sense of higher powers working in the world.

Our orientation, therefore, is not towards a distant celestial realm, inhabited by abstractions of our imaginations, but towards this world, this holy world where every one of our actions matters. A bear fishing, a spider weaving its web, or a bird song reveal wyrd just as well as any story or scripture. Scriptures are commentaries on reality --- not vice-versa. Wyrd overpowers word.

We serve, therefore, not abstractions, but Reality itself, understanding, however, reality to be far more magical than our prosaic mind often reckons. We direct ourselves to the Holy Creative Powers who shape reality and are the Sources of Good in the world, but in order to serve, and have a richer experience of Reality itself.

We ought not to be ideologically heathen. What do I mean by that? I mean that our first obligation is to study wyrd and seek wisdom, and wisdom transcends position-statements and adherence to policy. We always have our heathen values (thews) to guide us, but reality is always complex and refuses to fit neatly into any ideological schema. To borrow a metaphor from our Indo-European cousins the Greeks, we are not to construct Procrustean beds hacking off or stretching reality to fit our theories, but to attend, rather, to the real, concrete texture of the world. That means in any debate attending to the kernal of truth our opponents speak, and being true to it. Seldom is anyone 100% right or 100% wrong. Wisdom involves sorting and sifting, weighing and evaluating, beyond any easy or lazy ideological dogmas.

Heathenism is not about make-believe. It is about relationship to reality. True, it is a reality that includes more than our senses show, and it is true that our imagination can be utilized to orient ourselves towards this larger mysterious order of reality, but the basic orientation is towards reality rather than mental constructs.

Many people worship their own mental constructs and call it religion. Some have called it idolatry. We just call it silliness and foolishness. Heathenism should be about restoring people to a healthy relationship with the mysteries, joys, and challenges of our real, collective and individual, everyday lives.

Minnis and Significance

Now it may be that only deeds well-lived and lived deeply enough touch the level of significance to affect and cohere in the level of dynamic eternity that is Wyrd. Wyrd is a process of memory, and not every minutiae is remembered, per se, but that, rather, which is significant, although significance is holographic, and thus details can at times be caught there as well.

Deeds not deeply etched do not disappear, but become part of the drone, the background chorus of event-reverberations and resonance, blending into the mix, while those that make their mark have stronger individual subtones in the choral polyphony.

Shimmering on the well are the images of those eternal moments --- holding hands at the beach, giving vows to each other, making love, laughing with each other. They are not "over", they are "done", meaning a part of things. They are real. There is no erasure. They are ready to be remembered. They were well-lived moments and thus take on significance. What takes on significance does not fade. But significant deeds long to be told, to be shared in the story. They do not wish to remain in the background, but to receive affirmation, to be honored, to be toasted over the holy ale.

Those are the moments when we have dipped into the depths of the well, and so when we dip our ladles into the mead to fill our horns, it is right that we should honor those moments. Our culture says "get over it" to those deeds that are done. I say, how can I get over what has become eternal? I don't want to get over it. Those were good times and good deeds. They will live forever. They are now a part of the real history of the world, etched into the flow-patterns of wyrd, and I will recall them with pride, with strong mirth, and with hearty remembrance. What is a minni for if not for hearty remembrance?

Doom on the Deeds and Final Worth

That which has fully become -- however far it was able to become -- has achieved its final worth, a worth it co-creates through its deeds and efforts and which may be deemed upon it when it is done, and thus doomed. Doomed merely means completed and declared. fully worthed, done and doomed events or entities become inherent properties of the universe, exerting ongoing influence. That which is "dead" is literally "do-ed", in other words, done, a completed deed ; "deed", "did", and "dead" are cognate, meaning that negation of existence is not part of the heathen conception of death, otherwise the word would be "undeed" or "undone", but in fact the word denotes completion, and inclusion in all that is.

"Death" -- that which has been done -- and "Wyrd" -- that which has become -- are therefore coterminous (1), and what must be remarked here is that there is nothing morbid about the concept whatsoever. What is dead, in fact, in a sense lives more than the living, although not in as active a tense, but rather, in a way, transitively. It is not an undoing, but -- to use a somewhat grotesque image -- a swallowing by existence, in which one's unique pattern is assimilated by and into the whole, woven into the very fabric of the nature of things, which is why it is said that Wyrd weaves. We may say that the dead do not exist -- ek-sist, stand out -- but sub-sist, stand beneath and within, existence. As the subsistence, the standing-beneath, they form literally the ground of our understanding, and as subsistence, they have a felt connection to nutriment and the crops that grow from beneath the soil.

The present is but the integument of a vast organism, of which the dead form the blood and bones. They become part of the unconscious functioning of existence, although whether more unconscious from their side or our own side only seers know. They are not gone, therefore, but right here, even though their matter has been eaten up by the ongoing uptake of material by life itself. One's life lived becomes a hidden testament, a textual marrow, an infrastratum. We might contrast the living and the dead by speaking of the manifest and the unmanifest, but far better it would be to speak of the manifest and the inframanifest. These are only terms, inadequate but approximate.

Hence from this angle there is no escape --- neither a nowhere nor a somewhere else, but ever and only a multidimensional here, of whom we the living are but diminutive dimensional folds of the larger multiplex, around and through which larger dimensional currents may run circles around us, passing both "through" and "beyond", yet forever "here", in both the interstices, the macrostices, and the infrastices --- our barely four-dimensional subjective reality can hardly cope with such higher mathematics. Suffice it to say that some of the descriptions from the book Flatland are apropo in these considerations.

The dead are not "gone", they are interwoven, woven into the fabric of existence.



1 A proof in itself that Viktor Rydberg's suggestion that Wyrd was originally Hel, and that Snorri, ignorant after 200 years of conversion, mistakenly applied the term to Loki's daughter, is correct. Wyrd was the original Goddess of Death, in the sense we have developed it here, of setting dooms on all those whose Deeds of life are Done. Gylfaginning 15 says, Þriðja rót asksins stendr á himni, ok undir þeiri rót er brunnr sá er mjök er heilagr er heitir Urðarbrunnr. Þar eiga goðin dómstað sinn. Hvern dag ríða æsir þangat upp um Bifröst, "The third root of the Ash Tree leans towards heaven, and under that root is the well that is mightily holy and called "Urd's Well". There the gods have their Doomstead. Each day the Aesir ride thither upon Bifrost." What is clear here is that daily the gods conduct dooms at Wyrd's Well, which stands in the Underworld (Hel) beneath the third root of Yggdrasil, angled towards the heavens. This is a Court that meets daily, to pass dooms upon the dead. Odin says in Havamal 76 that everything dies except for the reputation of a man that has had a judgement or decree passed upon it (orðstírr, a law-verdict or decree passed upon one's renown or reputation), and then to clarify, in Havamal 77, says that what never dies is the dómr um dauðan hvern, "judgement/decree/sentence on every one of the dead." Havamal 76 and 77 obviously converge upon Gylfaginning 15 : the gods are assembled in Wyrd's court helping to pass judgement on each of the dead, as they come each day into Hel. That this is done right by Wyrd's Well proves that Wyrd has special jurisdiction when it comes to the dead ; since "dead" in heathenism means simply a done set of deeds awaiting dooming, this makes perfect sense, as Urd rules over that which has already become. It may be that this court, this dómstað meets in that "fair hall" that stands --Þar stendr salr einn fagr undir askinum við brunninn, ok ór þeim sal koma þrjár meyjar, þær er svá heita: Urðr, Verðandi, Skuld -- beneath the Ash near the Well, out of which the three Norns come. The Gods may sit on the court, but the court takes place on Urd's jurisdiction. We can guess who has the final word.