Mani Calls the Elfin Boy

Boy! O child! O child wind-whipped hair in forlorn night, O boy! Sweet boy, O elfin youth, how silver-sheen your eyes, like mine! Yes, me, here up above! Hollow sounds my voice? I think in ivory on the wind, in pewter tones the moonbeam’s strings beharp into the lonely air below! With smooth and honeyed wine matured in months and months of ticking moon, with sliver sickle-turning tusk to fullest pearl, I lunar serenade, and sing the soft of evening’s glow to down below, the sleeping creatures! Yet seen you once, I’ve seen you twice, for second sight was gift of mine from long ago the crone and keeper of the hollow cavern’s well! For I have strolled and sailed the black-bay silent seas below, and know, O friend, a thing or two, a secret, something craved by you ...

You seek the up-above, a maiden spider-dew embroidered veil, with crepe-enpetalled blooms a crown atop her flaxen mane! But down-below, O child, you must go, for closing eyes of mine, I see through yours, what salt has burned upon your iris, knots and tangles thick within her amber, flowing locks, and these cannot be cut without a sharpened edge, without a sword so swift and subtle, wool thrown on the waves, and wandered towards its blade would cleave the yarny threads between! For one whose grain of headlands is a’knotted cannot love, nor see, but pine away in tangled dreams! And how to cut those knots, let loose the griping tangles, lest a sweeping swish of subtle fire-from-the-forge of ore-made-ice with tongs and hammers? How?

Clasped and locked in woody branches, viny gnarls nine-leagues thick, it lies, this wonder iron-of-the-shiny-tongue-of-silver, deep within a hollow housed beneath the hanging roots of hoary tree. They say a sorceror insidious sated blade with hate of fiery ice, and slipping starlight from the darkness, stolen shafts of light, he mallet-hammered into edge of awe the sweeping strike of thunder’s fire fast within its tortured ore! And subtle things, unlikely things, at edge of world’s horizon stalked, he caught, and fleeting, nimble, forced mercurial spirits in damascine steel upon his anvil! All his wicked, wild hate, a winter’s windstorm never sated, frost-enbreathèd sparkle blew into the blade! Till spirits chilled in fright! I lit the way in darkness, dwarves of deep reflecting subtle splendor mine upon their shields, to let the nether-king reconnoiter, and seize this banshee-besom of the iron bogs! For stout and doughty smiths beneath the earth, mere rumor of its edge upon the chilling wind, had woven clasps of living leather, thick, enwoven ring-mail, might of adamantine roots the mountains hold within their bosoms, so to hold it close and clasp it tight to tree, where none might free it, fell the world on falter of the fleet yet deadly sorceror-enwhisp’ring blade! A peril poured in steel, a whirring rush adrenaline-bemetalled! Yet, my lad, O youngish elf, a spell indeed in hilted ore! O hoard’s so secret sword might swift and once-for-all with scissor’s nip untangle locks florette of lovely maiden, slip between the gnarled knots, and win your prize!

O why with eyes of coiled vertigo wonder upwards towards me, lad? What will you say? How may a blade so deep and tied titanium to a trusty tree be won? Why, wonder not, observe this scythe I carry, shadowed! Bright its polished claw so curved. It cuts the cords of tangled fate, when tragic knots have formed, and so is ever sought by sires of the wyrdless ones, who wander, hovering, o’er abyss, the fall of fate to which their tangles tie! O wish is swiftly strong to attain this ghostly scimitar, a gift the daubing giant-crones below once yore-days gave to me for deeds of valor former days had seldom seen! A blade above, with bend of bow, that cuts the tangles down below, to give for blade below that may the tangles up above undo with flash of flourished sweep! For keepers of the clasps below have secret weep, a sorrow sad that burns their bones and churns their gnawed and gnashing bellies! The nether-king a daughter has, O maiden of the wondrous night, whose belly’s bud the sorceror enseeded with his seething, frosty hate, and what has blossomed is a son, whom second-sight reveals might follow fast the father’s fevered craze! And such a shadow son’d is sun enshadowed, so they weep behind a wall of frozen face. A’pace to whip the reins of antlered deer, my lad, and pull thy sleigh through northern caverns, winding down, and find thy prize below! For up above, thy prize awaits!

And why? Why, gracious me, to give you scythe of polished quicksilver? For what? A single hope, my hope-forlornèd elf : that you might bring this blade beclasped in leather still, yet sheathed, to homes of heaven where your maiden waits. Delay thee not, nor tarry : fast, as if the earth were fire feet might burn, escape, and flee, towards where the rain’s enshimmered ebb does bow, and there, I’ll lift you, lad, and give you lift upon my silver ship, to ride along the rainbow bridge to where your love in chests of ruby rims ensconces kisses for thy lips alone! But let the whispered sorrow of the sword’s enbladed shriek beguile thee not! For siren of the smith, the edge seduces men to vengeance seek, and if you falter, all might fall within your soul, and how you’ll reel, and who knows what this madness might engender in your latter days, O friend! The cycle of the feckless feud is fueled by foolish rashness, and, enswirled to might, becomes a cyclone, as a scythe or blade betwirled, that severs heads of many sires’ sons! Beware! And let thy feet be swift, boy! Better days beckon ; heed the haunts below, and keep my rede.

Svipdag Cries The Moon

I will never be anyone's beloved again, it feels. I'm banished from the places of true glamor and shining light. My words, long practiced, long polished, are for dung, so it seems. Hacks and mediocretins gain their multiple accolades, but wondrous beings won't even look my way. Cursed, cursed, cursed. I howl at the moon. I am tied in place by Halfdan's bonds. I rescued her for nothing. Nothing! The wind is more giving than her words! How its blue lips blow ice-kisses upon me more freely! What? What do you mean there's a sword in the underworld? And how would I, a wretch roped ‘round an oak, be concerned with such trivia?

O moon, if I could be as crazy as you, I might not go mad, but as it is, I stare, and my eyes lie the darkness before me, for even light is darkness without her immortal spark bespeaking blessings on my worthless charade of a life. Are these tears? Ice falls from my eyes in this blizzard, crashes, falling dust in the snow. Therein a multiple hundred times in fragments I see your shining face, O moon, see you, and wish I might fly so high and smooth like gliding white against the small pin-pointed-broken black. Your words fall out as snow crystals, strange letters, twisted, falling. I see strange patterns in the sentence-blizzard. Are you speaking to me, O moon? What strange adventures you call me on!

Who said I was an elf? Mine own glow seems to shade, self-swallowed by shame and grief, a mere mortal in the eyes of a swallowing world, engulfed. Why not implore me fall within the depths, O moon, why not? For I am there already. If you asked me how much lower I could go, why I could not begin to answer. Thus, indeed, I take your charge, and downwards thence shall go. A blade? What cuts more than this pain? A blade? The wind is sword the more for frozen slash! And mere suggestion that this blade delivered -- though how to heavens high above I'll heave I cannot fathom -- might enwoo me single kiss of she who holds the world's enchantments in her charm, the blossoms woven in her starlit hair of awesome might, pours magma, embers hot from smithy's forge, within these bones-made-ice and melts my stillness. A thousand blades I'd buy with track and tread of feet to win that single kiss -- if sole she would, if sole she'd give to me a single glance, most blossom-bosomed bursting lovely maiden of the heaven's hills!

Yet fetters, mere flax before, now woven, plaited into binding hands of twine that let their grip go not install me, frozen, to this tree. How shall I free myself? Yegads, what say ye, moon? What will and wish within, what say ye? Song within my breast? A song to dash the fetters? Yes! O yes, I say! Within my breast! Indeed! O sorrow had forgotten me this special spell implanted there so long ago by fallen mother! Then what shall say we? Flaxen fetters, or sorrow much the more? For sorrow, seems, was fetters more than flaxen plaited ever was! What binds or blinds me from my memoire, glade of silken, silver songs and dreams, is bondage deeper than a rope or iron manacle! I shall sing, and singing, flee! Flee this wretched place, adieu ... Exeunt.

Spirituality : Beyond the Superficial-World

The task of spirituality is to construct and maintain a doorway between the realm harbinged by dreams, and this surface-world. It is an enormously difficult task, because this surface-world has a tendency to reify itself, to declare the film that forms upon its surface as the only reality, and a narrow materialism or empiricism, which only affirms that reality which appears to the senses, rather than to the intuition and dreams, dangerously denies any depth at all to experience and the world.

The surface-world, as a reification, as a self-declaring-of-onlyness, as therefore a totalitarian superficiality, tries to domesticate spirituality, and reify it as well, to turn its symbols into something that can either merely reflect the dilly-dally offhanded mayhem of the surface-social world, or which is cleverly neutralized, either by being ignored (a strong and effective strategy), or by being, let us say, "Sunday-enacted", in such a way that it is in fact parodied as it is being oblated. In any case, the surface-world does everything in its power to keep the door shut. You can paint the door, you can sprinkle holy water on the door, you can bow down and worship the door, but the last thing the reified social-surface-world wants you to do is to actually open the door and peek through.

But genuine spirituality must maintain its doorkeeper position, and this is difficult on both sides, because it must gain a genuine footing within the social-surface-world, if it is to have any effectiveness, if it is to be listened to at all, if it is to avoid total irrelevance, and yet, it must struggle to be true to that deeper reality which wells up from the door. Yet the tangled contradiction is that in order to gain a genuine footing within the social-surface-world, it must placate that world, and speak to it on its own terms, yielding the peril of becoming neutralized in the process. Spirituality must allow the surface-world its smug sensation of having domesticated the doorkeepers, while inside maintaining the resolve to continue to struggle to domesticate the surface-world.

Spirituality knows that this surface-world is a surface world, while the surface-world does not, thinking itself the only-world. Spirituality knows that the world of the senses, with all its history, is but a welling up from the depths, that is continually refreshed from the depths, and which would be impossible without that refreshment. It trusts and stays true to the phenomena that emerge from dream and from trance. This does not mean that it declares these phenomena to be real in the same sense that the surface-reality is real, but rather, having an alternative and valid reality of their own that must not be subordinated or made derivative to, or annihilated by, the surface-world.

Spirituality comes to remind a soul that has become socialized and domesticated within a sophisticated primate tribe that it is far more than the sociological reality the tribe can affirm with its own eyes. As important as kinship is within indigenous-heathen systems, there are deeper kinships that must also be affirmed. Even your own relatives cannot exhaust in their knowledge who you are. Only dreams, trance, and the meditative place in front of the altars can speak to your marvelousness, which you came here to unfold and foster. You did not come here to be molded entirely by the imprinting process of the surface-world. You did not come here to be superficialized. There are deeper imprints which must be spoken, and must be made manifest. These manifestations of the deep and primal must then be defended against superficialization.

For example : at one point, jewelry was no doubt a connection to dream, a connection to animal-spirits, a connection to nature and the elfin world. It was a way of adorning the body that said to the tribe, look, I am more than this. Look, I belong to elfin powers. (Not in a dominated way, but in the sense of belonging.) Look, I place this sign of greater, vaster kinship upon my body, in such a way as to affirm that marvelousness which wells up from within me and is greater than my tribal self. In other words, jewelry were talismans. And yet, over time, this became superficialized. From something surreal and awe-inspiring, they became trinkets, mere "bling". Freya wears Brinsingamen as an affirmation of connection to deep, dwarvish powers, and the beauty they can create, and thus affirms the marvelousness of craft, but all Heid can see is what glitters, and its value is as a social prize of prestige, and what can be won with that glamor. Glamour, which was originally a fairy-power bespeaking the shamanically deep, is stepped-down and lessened into hollywood-style glamor, subordinated to social hierarchies, and diminished by becoming a tool of manipulation, becoming a narcissistic, rather than a spiritual, power. Fortunately, even the retaining of a doorway as a neutralized cliche is an ambivalent victory of reification, because any glamor, even a domesticated kind, can sometimes open the door for people, and enable them to sense something beneath the reality. Sometimes, the vulgar materialism of gold and glitter can suddenly open out onto the marvelous depths of golden beauty and tremendous, eerie and awe-inspiring glamour.

Jewelry, tattoos, talismans, various flourishes and embroiderings on traditional costume can be testaments to loyalties beyond the surface-world, if they do not become completely domesticated to the latter, which they often do. Once again they become subordinated to subcultural brandings, herd-markers, barcode-stampings of the cult.

Without a strong spirituality standing up to domestication and struggling with it, so as to hold the line for the doorway, culture too often degenerates into cult, in all of the twisted, Jim Jonesian, Mansonian connotations that word has taken on in the modern world. Family can become a cult. The cultural "supposed-to's" can become a cult. Yet remember in relation to these superficial-should's that Skuld is a Norn, and not a subordinate official of a primate hierarchy. Her job is to scold the surface-social-world with shoulds that emerge from far deeper places. There are obligations you have that you don't even know you have, because you aren't paying attention to the message from the depths. These imperatives are the pressure of the future reaching back to demand its roots in the potential of the past, through the critical importance of your loyalty to commit to blooming that potential into blossom. You are not here just to ape the spectacle of the superficial, to find your place in the army of the social hierarchy and march lockstep to its monotonous beat. Rather, there is an imperative to attend to what is unmanifest and make it manifest. This is spirituality.

A culture where spirituality has succeeded in its diplomatic but dogged struggle of domesticating culture becomes a deep and spiritual culture, where the doorway is kept open. A culture where spirituality itself has become domesticated has closed all the doors, even though it may have painted them in dazzling colors. In the first kind of culture, the social will be able, with a little application and a little struggle, to find a place for your marvelousness, because generations of dedicated adepts have worked hard to forge understandings that allow for recognition of the value of the surreal, the wyrd, and give it a place. You will be able to discover yourself in the social world as a being who transcends the surface-world's definitions, and thus, the skein of the surface-world is pierced by the bubbling effervescence of the seething deep, and, at least to some degree, the surface-social-world recognizes itself as a surface, as the waves upon a deeper ocean. But in the second kind of culture, you will have to work hard just to keep that sense of sacredness and calling within you from being annihilated by the outside world. These cultures create polarized opposition between inside and outside, with a demand that the inside subordinate itself to the outside. They are thus cultures of conformity rather than cultures of spirituality. In cultures of conformity, you must struggle hard and fiercely, and must continue to struggle, because the battle is not yet won, to stand up for the marvelousness within you. You may have to maintain offices or vocations which seem "merely imaginary" to those around you, while persisting in your diplomacy, knowing you are not "just" a dreamer, but profoundly a dreamer, an ambassador from another realm harbinged by the imagination, but not subordinated to the imagination as it is imagined in bad faith by a culture of conformity and superficiality as "mere fantasy". Blake's genius, for which he suffered immensely, was to hold out as a warrior, in an almost singularly brave manner, in an outpost of conformity that had long lost its deeper, bardic connections, for the reality of the imagination, a position that would earn him little more than the scorn of being an eccentric, if not mad ; but Blake responded, with the kind of iron determination that only a benevolent tyrant can (and let the superficial 'democrats' of the reified surface-social-world be aware that sometimes this kind of tyranny is refreshingly necessary to break through the imposition of reification --- in other words, sometimes imposition is necessary to counter imposition), with a supremacism of the imagination to counter and indeed lord it over the supremacism of the superficial. He did this, because he understood that the superficial was but the welling up from the depths of that which was accessible to the mind through what we call the imagination.

When you wake up from dream, you are unwrapping a gift crafted for you by lower powers, granted to you by your fylgia, fairy-wrapped by norns and beloved hamingja who reveal the deeper prayers of the Gods through their dwarf-smithed dream-symbols. Weaving, as all norns do, from the intricate neural net of your mind, the detritus of the day is caught and spun up into something more marvelous, utilized as an alphabet to detourne the sensory impressions of the day, and allow them to speak something deeper. In fact, the sensory impressions themselves are implicit and weighty with far deeper impressions than our conscious minds notice. This is due to several reasons : a) the conscious mind is far less clever than it would like to give itself credit, b) the conscious mind can only attend to so many details in life, and c) the superficial-social-world does not give us the cues and signs by which we might recognize and consciously take-up these deeper impressions. For the world itself is deep. It is only our superficial-empirical attitudes that transform it into "only" surface. The phenomena themselves are true to their depths if we know how to listen to them. The deeper powers do, and wrap their messages within the warp of our neural net, and deliver us dream. These are gifts, and the uncanny feelings of awe and dread which emerge from dream, and which can influence us the entire day, are strong indicators from our soul of the importance of these messages. They are confusing, because it is difficult to find a way to relate them to the world. Often as we attempt to do so, they seem to fade like cobwebs in the sun, and may be accompanied by a faint sense of embarrassment that we ever put such importance on them. The more conformist and less spiritual the culture, the stronger that sense of embarrassment will be. Only "eccentrics" persist in inserting their dream-sensings and dream-imagery into everyday life. And yet such surrealism is the heart of genuine spirituality.

If you trust your dreams, you will know that you are more than this. Of course the flesh will doubt, because the flesh is a vulnerable creature in this jungle of a world, and it feels its peril. But its peril is in fact not its superficiality as a mere epiphenomenon of a material momentum, that is washed away as dust by the breeze (though it shall be washed away, and restored to its place in the Tree), but the risk that it, the flesh, shall not enflesh the dreams it came to live. Lest this seem like an opposition where only the dream-realm matters, manifestation itself is marvelous, if it stays true to itself as manifestation. We come into the alchemy of this world not only to bless the world, but to be blessed by it. The conditions of this world, with all its peril, are such that they may allow us to create a soul. As Keats said, "Call the world, if you please, the vale of soul-making", and his understanding, though he does not state it as such, is that the world is a kind of crucible or forge where the ore that was picked from the tree, a fruit of stars, a star-sliver, our soul-in-potential, is heated, pounded, and shaped into a genuine and realized soul. Our tradition tells us that the odr is a traveller, and only through travelling through this world does it find its true vocation. The odr or soul stands in the middle, between the purely spiritual realms of the heavens (the ond-realms) and the purely physical realms of the manifest-world (the la and laeti), partaking of both, shuttling between both. To fully realize itself, it must go beneath and above the manifest-world. It must stretch and reach for the heights, and there find its love, and it must go below to find its treasure.

It must be emphasized again and again, as a mantra, and even as a droning imperative, that Odin has one eye on the manifest world, and one eye in the depths. If we would be true to him and his troop, we must imitate him in this regard. We are more than this which we can see. Our eyes of dream invite us to be true to that beyond within us.

Elegy for Arthur Evans

Arthur Evans, 1942 - 2011, author of 'The God of Ecstasy' and 'Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture', gay activist, and scholar.

Arthur Evans, Radical Faery, English'd lyric-lover of Euripides, fallen bard! Alas, the last days of Castro's gadfly-stinging praise-bestower! Bold bestowing scrolls of yellowed scratch their spell-endowing grimoire-might, to sight the air-enfleeing maids of broom-shaft swift, the midnight's minions, man to man in maidens' liv'ry long-enchanting kisses on the incantated winds! O horned and holy linen-of-the-lass enwraptured gasp divine in sips of wine enswooning sage! O age of flowered love-restored that flaming folk might kiss with whistful bliss again! Hail hero of the horned and Pentheus-enflaming freedom-lord! Alas!

May he sip champagne with the vine-entwined, dressed-in-petals patron of the over-ripe grape, giddy salon-sache'ing in beneath-the-feet caverned colonnade-halled lyceums, soothed by Socrates' lashing, long-enspirited tongue! Let wreathe the still-singing feathered flock of morn about his now-boa'd neck with soft and wind-tossed tufted garland! And welcomed, warm, with brim on lips of purple bubbled goblet-on-the-gold in gilded etch of hex's sweet hexameters, singing home beneath the waters, home adored beneath the sands and soil, where the sons of sons of heroes gather and converse, and there partake the honey-harvest lip-dipped luscious of their full communion. Boons! The earth hath husk, but deep beneath, a grain hath sprouted! Seek, O sprout, thy underworlded sun and let thy song, unfolded, echo wide in wishful plains, where fragrance air becomes, and meadows waves of torch's tribes on bended stalk enmock with reverent kiss the passing wheels of fire's escort! Held, within the hollow, hall engnarled root and vine, beneath the hallowed, arms-are-limbs of stellar-spiralled foilage trunk of old! Behold and hold thy limbs-of-Laerad cradled wisdom! And take rest with ribald, dithyramb-strumming spiral-dancers, rose and morning-glory mazes strolling, lilt and skip with hands entwined like tendriled limbs of Dionysos! Frith, and fullness of the bursting, lavender-fermented fruit be thine!

Giving the Devil His Due

Even the devil, as the old folk saying goes, probably incorporating archaic, heathen understandings about Loki, must be given his due. Loki and Heid are the sacred carriers of the baed, that which is not quite good, but not yet quite evil. Not yet …

Of course, the problem is that Loki and Heid, particularly when put together, tend to go too far. Evil is nothing but that which goes overboard and for too long, undoing the good proportions of life. Being too baed is not a good thing.

But on the other hand … not being baed enough can also be a problem, too. A little mischief is good for the soul.

We’ve all met those people who are just a little too goody-good. Such does no justice to the defiance inherent in our souls, the overwelling will-force native to wild beings like ourselves. There’s times you need to step outside the rules, and see how life is beyond the well-beaten paths,

Loki can be an excellent psychopomp in this regard, the bad-boy troublemaker who can entice those so stuck on doing things right that they lose the fun in life. And look how popular he was amongst the Goddesses! Everyone loves a bad-boy! In Volundarkvida, he is the only one who can entice Idunn, Sif, and Alveig back from the wolf-spell Volund and his brothers have cast over them.

And indeed, in Lokatattur, it is Loki, and not Odin nor Hoenir, who ends up really helping the boy chased and threatened by the giant. Oh, Odin and Hoenir help, but in the end, it is Loki who finishes the job. We all know that Loki is a favorite of little children, who have a little bit of the devil in them, and this is needed. You don’t want to invite Loki and Heid home with you, but you just might enjoy watching them … from a distance.

Odin is the protégé of Mimir, who lives in the space between Wyrd’s Well and Hvergelmir, between Muspelheim and Niflhel. He occupies and runs the dynamic engine that collides and integrates the opposites. Hot and cold intermix and create something good. But if we were to equate good with either the hot or the cold, we would miss out on what good actually is. Those who try to be too “good”, in the relatively new Christian sense, have lost the balance of hot and cold within themselves. They need a little baed to evoke that ambivalence that can get life moving again. Under Odin’s wing, Loki can serve wod, the dynamic force of evolution.

The mischief in us, if it goes too far, can sabotage us. This is clearly told in the myths. There is a time when Loki’s trouble-making is in balance, yet that soon spirals out of control. There is a reason both he and Heid are assigned ultimately to the jotnar, and this is because they are indeed untamed forces, despite the incessant work of the Aesir and Vanir to tame them with their firm and loving friendship. All this must be understood in its proper balance if we are not to fall into an overly moralistic stance. Loki and Heid ultimately are dangerous, and frankly, their seeds planted too firmly within us for us to allow the plant to grow rampant, because we are each, if we are honest with ourselves, already too much the liar, too much the cheat, too much the hypnotized drones of greed and dupes of fearmongering. Playing with them is like playing with fire.

But a little pyromania never hurt anyone … too much. One man’s poison is another man’s medicine. Dosage is everything. Some people, impulsive, unable to control themselves, liable to fall right into trouble, need to avoid Loki and Heid like the plague. For these folk, a good portion of humanity, they live up to the name of Saboteurs.

But there is a remnant of humanity who became too domesticated, too closed off, who are just a little bit too kneejerk “law and order”. It’s not that Loki and Heid are needed per se once one has been opened up beyond the mask of domestication. No, no, then the other Gods, quite wild in a wonderfully beneficent way, take over. Yet sometimes an initiation is needed, and under these circumstances, those who bring mischief may bring valuable gifts. Anyone who has read the stories of Loki, whose madcap shenanigans, as much as we must ultimately condemn them, delight us, knows that.

Ambition on its own, as part of a well-balanced life, is something encouraged and implanted by the Gods as part of our evolutionary imperative. Heid, on the other hand, takes this to the point of “the devil take the hindmost”. This part of ourselves wants to get ahead so badly, wants to get rich so quickly, wants to be surrounded by jewels and gold and maybe even servants, that we will do anything in our power to do so, and step on anyone necessary to climb the ladder. And it ultimately is not governed by a healthy impulse, but rather a fear of scarcity, a kind of primal anxiety driving us onward to consume, like the cursed Erisichthon of Greek myths.

But on the other hand, for those women who are just a little too demure, a little too submissive, who fail to put one foot forward for too much courtesy, Heid might prove a good fire-starter. Her strong bitch-energy (one of her names is Hyndla, the Bitch) could knock one out of her complacency. She was, after all, always the favorite of ill women. This can lead to trouble, as Loki can, but on the other hand, there is always something attractive about these kinds of wicked women. They know exactly what they want, and they go for it, and nothing is going to stop them. Their charm is endless. Who can’t help but be tempted by such a woman? There is a strong feminist thrust to such, and if the impulse can be tempered, the initiate will discover that the Goddesses and Gods want such strength for all women (and men). Heid’s magic is, after all, but a perversion of Freya’s witchcraft, and the Goddesses are strong, and will always foster the strength of women (and men).

I distrust anyone who doesn’t have a little Loki and Heid in them. It’s where we begin, and their archetypal perspective allows us to gain a little salacious glee out of the terrible malarkey human beings are capable of, particularly in a decaying age. By staying true to the Gods, we refine them, and complete their journey to transcendence within ourselves. For Loki and Heid stumbled, and then committed to that error, until it undid them, and threatened to undo the world. But we recreate their story within ourselves, and can complete their integration into the realm of the Gods inside our own souls, if we will listen to the strong advice and discipline of the Holy Gods.

I don’t recommend too much playing with fire. But being a friend of Burning Man folks and other freaks, who doesn’t like a little fire twirling?

Just don’t get burned. It’s all too easy.

Shipping Out

Sweet pine, callous hands caress your curves, carved to upsweep rough, then polished smooth, to prows with fierce faces ... Floorboards, the dipping deck, the swaying sea in dock ... A ship, shoresmen-built to meet the other side, to dare the waves, to touch the long expanse of solitude and find oneself, alive, alien, in the cold breeze. A heart scarred on land cured in the cut of cold upon the waters. I am shipping out. The fleet may take me. This sailor's livery asks embrace of the wide open, the brine, let me skim and dip above the fishes' bed. For I would fiercely ribbon o'er the rolling roads the whales ride. I have need. Love came out the sea, I return to sea, to find my source in alien hands, strange creatures, fins, unknown coastlines. The sea seemed better than suicide : a venture, a dare, the great beyond. One might be swallowed. And yet ... one might find precisely what one was looking for, in strange form. Do I escape? The sea is merciful, his masculine arms welcome my human impulse, full of rough love and beckoning. I hear the call. Some kiss of a forbidden woman, beyond my tribe, strange eyes, a soothing hand, a never-seen port, perhaps never to see again. Spices uncanny, hidden sacks of gold, customs uncouth from my cruel kithsmen. Smooth bosom of wood, knotted, gnarled beams within you, many man-hands made, manhandled, thrown upon the salt and drear, made to ride. Sweet whale of woody oak and pine, be mine, extend thy cotton, billowed hands, and give me leave to come on board. The soles of these shoes shall kiss you with every step. Eyes long so lacrymal to bold behold how far beyond horizons rolling fountains, briny, fall. They say you are stormy, sea, yet no more so than those held icy in breast-coffers, the sour treasures false hearts share. Allure my saline-burnéd eyes with prizes true and unexpected : full is the hoard-heap of the deep. Let me give vow to my mates and be crew-collected : my rough and vulgar brothers, sons of ocean's lure, shall be my kin upon this billowed, wind-blown house. A better house than most. Fine, for trees have never had a better grave, an honored tombstone made of very own woodflesh, formed to float and taste the wild bracken of the shark-yards. I have heard their teeth are sharp, the sharks. A sailor showed me once a polished one. O let me twine the retted fibre, writhed from flax and unsmooth jute, to web the twisted strands whose hands shall grasp and hold the fish below. I'll pull it up to harvest us the cheese-like flesh of fish for breakfast. Oil painting on the waves : the dash of hurled hue of flame upon the all-surrounding, warbling mirror : sunrise. Have you seen her golden hands stretch out above the waves as rise to slow-ascend the glassy bridge above? A thousand thank-you's shimmer smiles of light upon the dancing waters. These far-away eyes say I am yours, O sea, for I belong alone where no one e'er belongs, the long and lonely tossing track of starfish. Steed of stocky fir, accept this sailor's saddle, I have need for hooves that touch the gentle, stirréd foam. I have need for home beyond the shores, where floors are shaking looking glasses showing me the skies and sparkling stars beyond. O merciful lord of Noah's town, the fluid, lovely flood, alive me wake upon thy decks of holy ark. I'm shipping out.