A Warrior Defends the Last Bastions of Soul in this World

Soulfulness : fibred, threaded, textured, world woven-in irregular with grit and bone, tooth and ochre, quirk and turning verse, vibrant, full of color, wood's grain of one's unique experience sewn sinew by sinew into the texture of one's being, kneaded, worked in, threshed, strong-willed, animal, deep-hearted, deep-thinking, weather and landscape stitched in to dreaming-powers which give no ground to ancient work-of-giant's encroachment, warrior-energy of not just being shaped, but shaping back from deep within. One who is passively shaped, trained, inculcated in how to fight, and sent off to war is no warrior, and but a soldier, for a warrior fights, and the first to be fought are those who give orders, who would dare to tell a willful being what to do. Defiance is the first call of a healthy soul, for any living contract is conceived out of the negotiation of two beings with equal power asserted in encounter. Soulful being is willful being, willful and thoughtful and colorful, true to the earth-tones of one's own being, true to deep ecological, evolutionary impulses woven helix and spinning wind right up through the thread of one's cells, and not giving in, meeting world proudly, with defiance, liking the ground one stands upon, gaining respect through will meeting will, not passive submission. Soul talks back to world that has become too tame, reminds the old work of giants of earth, of oak, of root, of blood, of sap, of the hollow sounds of elves etherial breathy upon the wooden winds. Warrior at heart is Bear, come in to settlements to bash and break the beds of Procrustes, deliver us from wordloc, the manacles of square, return the winding rivers and squirming protoplasm of wyrd from lying right angles and the rulers of rulers who know not the deep loyalties soulful connection brings that has no need of codes and directives. A heathen does not press obedience upon the will, leaves the will intact and alone as holy. A heathen utters gutteral songs of being, earthen songs, songs of love, and lets love knit loyalties like vines intertwined, natural. A heathen attends to letting soul, bold, burst out into world, where grand, it never fails to impress, and strength being sexy, the hearty are hearkened to as naturally as one bows to the thousand year old oak whose majesty commands without commanding.

I have seen the battle of souls in this world. I have seen the terrible attrition of souls picked apart, torn asunder, refused love, deprived, starved, left in conditions of famine until capitulate, beings robbed of tribal hands and embrace until and unless they gave up soul and marched in goose-step. I have seen normality raised to an idol to which masses bowed down, soulless. Not bad people, yet such sinfulness to abandon what is most of heart, the pitiful, pathetic shame of it all, gestures inspiring contempt more than compassion even when it is sad. Look around and know truly, most people are terribly uninteresting, and I do not mean from the standards of thrill-seekers who are themselves the greatest of the uninteresting seeking to overcompensate for their utter lack of substance with artificial stimulations, zombies with defibrillators. Color has been drained, bleached, parched. Lockstep is rampant. Step in line, step in line, eventually you will step in line. One way or other, if you want love, if you want candy, you will give in, you will give in. This wicked galdur is sung and spun a thousand times weekly in ways wrapped around each other, and the sound is sick without redemption except to let loose of lockstep and reaffirm soul. Some prison camps you cannot see because they surround you. Some starvation regimes are imposed on those surrounded by ample meals. Let a fairy spirit dare to walk into a womb these days and the struggle is on not merely to tame it to the rigors of this hard and fibrous world, but to break it, and I know no other word for this than sin, deep, irredeemable wickedness.

I call on a coalition of the defiant who are fidelitous to the rippling rivers and wind in canyons, oak scrub on a full-moon summer night, and ice cooled by the bones in winter. Our symbols bubble up from these depths, for ancestors who knew how to transform into hares and falcons, mice and bears, foxes and wild puma bewilded words so landscape and time spoke poetry through human lips worshipping through glossolalia shaped by on-pressing sense. When you feel these things in your bones, when the sunlight and stars surge through your veins and passing meadows and snowflakes stir your lymph and spark your vital spark, then say, I am a heathen. I am a heathen, and I will take up the spear to ward this, wherever Beloved Mother Earth lies wild, landscapes inner and outer, for when I encounter soul, there is Earth landscaping herself through flesh and vein and nerve, briars and tangles of nerve, thickets of nerve in inner ecosystems as wild and beautiful as outer wildernesses, and all these deserve the warrior to stand guard with spear and shield. There must be a place in the world for this. If all becomes tamed and flattened, if the old work-of-giant is allowed to colonize everything, if every single being is forced to sleep in Procrustean beds, then this planet, barren, will soon become the ancient abode of giants, and already, look around, Jotunheim has reclaimed so much already, and have ye no loyalty towards Midgard? You cannot fight for the Earth without fighting for soul ; you cannot fight for the soul without fighting for Earth. They are intertwined and inextricable.