The Musings of a Mental Midgardian

Women In Heathenry Questionnaire

2012-01-14T17:01:00.001-08:00

Today on one of the groups I frequent, a group focused on women's Heathenry, a member made a request for us to help out one of her friends by filling in a questionnaire about the woman's experience of Heathenry. Normally, I don't bother with this kind of thing, but seeing as the guy doing the survey seems to be somewhat influential in his local area and his purported goal was '...to encourage more involvement or interest to create more of a balance in our Heathen community.' , I figured I would give my two cents. As the questions and directions the answers took me in, were interesting, I thought I would post them here for possible future discussion. I have omitted the first two questions as they're just the usual background questions about how and why one came to Heathenry.

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3.What is your view of current Heathen gender equality?

It depends on the country. I've participated in Heathen communities in 3 countries to date (England, Germany and the US), I'm a member of the German org 'Der Eldaring' and I'm also friends with numerous Danish Heathens. In my experience, in Europe, the genders are pretty much equal. However in a lot of the US Heathen communities, I've come across all kinds of misogyny. Here are a few examples that I or Heathen women in my acquaintance have come across in various US Heathen communities:

* Being ignored or cut out of participating in more scholarly conversation topics. Or an 'Ok, now the 'estrogen' has left, we can talk about serious stuff' kind of attitude

* Being subjected to personal abuse for daring to (politely) disagree with a man about a point of lore when in the same conversation, a man can express the same disagreement and in the same way and get a perfectly peaceable response.

* People addressing your husband and asking them about you when you're standing right there and obviously capable of answering for yourself. Or asking your husband if they are allowed to speak to you or friend you on Facebook.

* People mailing your husband when you disagree with them to complain about you and then wishing your husband 'luck in being married to you/that' after he tells them that they deserved what they got for their rudeness.

* Being subjected to peer pressure to have children and conform to the role of being a motherly 'peace-weaver' type.

* Unmarried women receiving messages about how they need to hurry up and get married or they'll be too old to have children and then will be therefore 'too old' to marry and what about 'breeding for your folk'?

* Judgmental comments that imply a link between childlessness and lack of worth in community. Or attacks based on physical looks when a disagreement arises in a completely unrelated point.

4.What is your view of gender roles/requirements in the time prior to the conversion of Northern Europe? Both in the scope of appropriateness and your knowledge of them – it is ok to say that you do not have wide or deep knowledge of the subject, many do not (hence why this research).

Well, it would depend very much on which society you were talking about. For example, Anglo Saxon women enjoyed a greater measure of freedom than their Icelandic counterparts. We know from records that Anglo Saxon women could rule and lead armies (see Procopius's 'Island girl' account and Aethelflaed of Mercia), that women could bring cases to court, inherit, own property and trade. We know that the weregild was the same for a woman as for a man and from stories like Judith, in which a woman killed a man that was going to rape her, that the Anglo Saxons saw nothing wrong with women stepping into those 'male' shoes and meeting all attacks with equal or greater violence when warranted. Surviving continental laws regarding women mostly show systems that took great pains to protect women from abuse (be it physical, sexual or even regarding her reputation), to give her recourse if she was abused and that respected her. She could inherit ancestral lands in most cases (the Salian Franks were a notable exception in this) and while each woman had a guardian (Mundwald), that guardian could be male or female. Among the Lombards, there were women warriors and they were treated legally more like men. For more information, see: 'Peace-Weavers and Shield-Maidens' by Kathleen Herbert and 'Germanic Women: Mundium and Property 400-1000' by Kimberly Harper Dunn.

In sharp contrast, Icelandic women (most likely because of the high number of slaves/freed slaves making up the female population) had very few of those rights. A woman had no say in who she married, her consent wasn't even required until Christianity required it. Her family had the right to physically torture her to a certain degree if she fell pregnant before they could marry her off, in order to ascertain the name of the father. Any children she had were the property of her husband, to do as he wished after birth.
She couldn't inherit and would spend her life going from the guardianship of her father, to any husbands, to any male kin left alive. Maybe when she was a widow of a certain age, would she have a measure of freedom. But that's if she didn't die in childbed after too many births or from disease somewhere along the way.
If she (a free born woman) was to serve someone in her father's hall, she would be expected to serve that man in any way he wished, regardless of how it would negatively affect her marriage chances or honour. One example of this can be seen in the account of the father that promised his daughter that she could stay with him for the duration of a visit by a suitor by the name of Hákon, so as to avoid him exercising his guest's rights with her (Viglundar Saga 14.13:87).

In many cases, women were effectively property, as shown in the Landnamabok in the case of Sigriðr, who killed herself after her husband swapped land and wife with a friend. Yes, women could hold property, but it was only under certain circumstances and yes, there were exceptional women, such as Auð the deep-minded, however even they faced societal rebuke for daring to step out of their assigned roles, as we can see from Chapter 32 of Gisla saga. An interesting paper which examines this aspect of ON society is 'Regardless of Sex: Men, Women and Power in Early Northern Europe' by Carol J Clover (available on JSTOR). For more information about the general lot of the Icelandic woman, see 'Women in Old Norse Society' by Jenny Jochens and 'Women in the Viking Age' by Judith Jesch.

Naturally, as a modern woman, I find the treatment of Icelandic women to have been barbaric and would much rather have lived in Anglo Saxon society.

5.How, if at all, do you feel they have changed?

Well, for starters a woman is her own agent in modern society, with the right to choose her own matches and marry when and who she chooses. Women have the right to hold property and inherit, women can trade, own business, become lawyers, bring cases, join the armed forces, have children without fearing that the father won't accept them and then order their deaths, lead, rule in government and basically have almost the same legal rights as men (although current politics are working very hard at eroding those rights again for women).

6.Do you support the re-establishment of traditional gender roles, as much as possible in our current state of living, in modern time? Why or why not? To what extent? How would you frame the roles?

Define 'traditional gender roles'. We often discuss the female gender role in terms of the 'Peace-weaver/Shield-maiden' dichotomy, however historical record shows that this isn't entirely accurate (except in Iceland and hopefully the examples I gave above demonstrate why that would not be an acceptable model to try and recreate) and that women simply did whatever they must, as they must, to get by and/or look after their families. I don't think that any gender roles should be established in modern Heathenry except perhaps in the ritual sense (such as the role of horn bearer at Sumbel) and that any attempts to establish these 'traditional gender roles' in modern Heathenry would only result in more Heathen women marrying non-Heathen men or withdrawing from the communities that attempt this. I know of several instances where this has already been the case.

7.How involved do you find most women to be in Heathenry in modern times?

It depends on the community. In communities where women are mostly treated as equals, in my experience, you find greater involvement by women. However because of aforementioned issues in question 3, I know a lot of women that stick to their local communities and that don't participate on a wider scale, instead preferring to limit their participation to the safety of their inner-yard.

8.In what ways do you think that women could be involved in the future? Do you think that it is necessary for this?

Women should be involved in all the ways that men are, only then will Heathenry gain some balance, maturity and become more sustainable as a movement.

9.What is your opinion with the modern focus on the Vikings and much of the warrior-centric views of the worldview?

First of all, I'm no fan of the implication that the warrior-centric view is a 'man-only' kind of deal. Being a woman doesn't exempt you from life's issues and troubles. It doesn't exempt you from having to fight attackers or wanting to take dangerous forms of employment if capable. We do a great disservice to (to name one glaring example) the many women in the armed forces that, due to the nature of modern war, are increasingly on the front lines and in combat. They are warriors too, more so than some keyboard warrior that *feels* that Odin wants him for a snowflake.

Secondly, to my way of thinking, the wannabe-viking thing is something that modern Heathenry needs to grow out of. While I'm aware that it's a great draw for many males, it gives a skewed impression of the worldview to outsiders. Heathenry is about much much more than lame wannabe-vikings. One of the ways that we could do that would be to promote education about Heathenry from the perspective of the spindle side and all that's sacred in that. There is relatively little written about the Asynjur, there is relatively written about women's rituals or hell, even the importance of traditional ritual roles like that of horn bearer during Sumbel!!! We also need to work on removing the seeming (unspoken) taboos surrounding men that worship goddesses. If there is true respect there for the goddesses, that would not exist. Anyone that has truly experienced a goddess, knows that offering to a goddess is no wuss's game and was often a bloody affair in the past.

At the same time, we also need to deepen our understanding of men's roles on both a community level and when dealing with the sacred. We've kind of gotten stuck there on some kind of superficial level that's all sound and fury that really, mostly signifies nothing. Without that depth, we have confused men trying to live up to an ideal that was never really commonplace in the first place. I believe this is endemic in modern society for males anyway. There are no guiding principles anymore for men, no definition of what a 'real man' is and so it tends to fall back on treating women as being lesser in order to feel greater. However this is not greater. If anything, the misogyny that I listed in question 3 is a symptom of weakness, of a lack of self esteem and confusion as to what they're supposed to be in order to be 'real men'. Our sons need to know that both men and women are equally valuable, that we are all our deeds and that it is ultimately a man's honor, integrity and responsibility that will define him in the minds of women as a 'real man'.

10.Any other thoughts, observations, comments or other things that you believe should be addressed in the questionnaire?

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I left the last question blank, I could have gone into more aspects of modern Heathen society that I think need to change in order to help affect change for women in Heathenry, but for the purpose of this questionnaire, I think I covered everything I wanted to say in the other answers. However what would those answers be for you? How would they differ from mine? Not just the ladies that read this, but what about the guys? How would you answer these questions about women in modern Heathenry?

In other news, I need to stop procrastinating and get back to researching some damn paper.

Loki

2012-01-05T10:14:00.000-08:00

One of the most fractious fault lines in the US Neo-Heathen community (not so much elsewhere), is that of those that offer to Loki and those that don't.

I fall very firmly in the 'Noki' camp.

When Loki is brought up in discussion, I've noticed that one of more of the following usually occurs:

*The Loki fans jump in and say how much they love him and how he's 'misunderstood'.
*'Noki' folks like myself jump in and say how much they think he's a pile of shit, often with jingoistic responses like 'May Loki be bound' or something equally as ridiculous.
*The Loki Fans claim to be persecuted and that the 'Noki' people are obviously struggling to shrug off their Judeo-Christian upbringings or have fallen prey to tainted lore.
*Things get really nasty and fraught.

Now it's all well and good and, quite frankly, a time-honoured neo-Heathen tradition to accuse those that don't agree with you of being 'Christians' or somehow less Heathen than yourself, as is screaming intolerance. But it's not very productive and quite frankly there's intolerance going on on both sides of the spectrum here.

Yes, you heard me, the Loki fans are being intolerant with their accusations that 'Noki' folks like myself are somehow hoodwinked by lore or somehow less Heathen.

So just for the record, why is it that I feel the way I do about Loki?

Firstly, if you're going to dispute how the lore portrays Loki, don't then refer to lore references in which Loki is Odin's blood brother or friend to Thor. That smacks of confirmation bias to me i.e you only believe the bits that you personally like. Just as the argument can be made that Loki turning evil is a product of Christian influence, the argument could also be made that Loki's 'good' (although self serving and to get himself out of trouble) actions, were also the product of Christian influence, after all, Satan was a fallen angel.

Secondly, if you look at social structure and law in Medieval Iceland, from the POV of a medieval Icelander, there would have been very little about Loki to recommend him and for the gods to keep him in their community. He's not kin (allegedly he's a blood brother to Odin but if you're going to dispute Ragnarok, you should definitely be disputing anything from the Lokasenna, especially with how late it was written), he merely cleans up his own messes to save his skin and although the gods do get something out of that, it could be considered a form of weregild.

Thirdly, there's no record of Loki existing anywhere outside of Scandinavia and any earlier than the conversion period. As someone that focuses on AS/Continental Germanic Heathenry, he simply doesn't feature.

***UPG Alert***

Thirdly, and the most importantly to me, it feels *wrong* with a capital W. Not in a 'I've been told not to do it.' kind of way, but in the kind of way that when I think of Loki, I think of darkness, of dank, spikey 'unhaelu'. He *feels* like the epitome of a gateway to what we don't need in our world, that which sucks out and perverts what is holy. People that say that they call upon Loki when they hit rock bottom confuse me. To me, that's like a person turning to whiskey to make their problems go away. It might feel good at the time, but eventually it's going to come with its own measure of trouble and it wouldn't just affect you. It would affect everyone around you. And believe me, I've been rock bottom a few times. I know that place. The only way out of it is to decide to change, slowly and steadily pick yourself up, brush yourself down and begin the climb up again. There are no quick fixes, there's no waving a wand. Just a slow and steady climb out, and if you haven't been too much of a dick on your way down, family and friends to help you.

Forthly, in 2007 I had about four months when I couldn't sleep properly at night. I would lie in bed trying to sleep but always end up in this awful half trance/half sleep kind of state. Every. single. night I would dream of Loki and other beings that are often collectively referred to now as 'Rokkr' and in those dreams, these beings had gained too much control in the world and the world was paying the price. I know they were just dreams, but they still left an impression.

And that's another thing. When we offer to or call to these beings that have been long dormant, we should show more care. Paganism and Heathenry have, to some extent, become 'All You Can Eat Deity/Otherworldly Buffets', but sometimes, surely it's better to let some things lay dormant? Especially when they are things that were never offered to back in the pre-Christian period? Why is it that we think we somehow know better than they did? Because that's what it boils down to. We, who have been separated from those days by over a thousand years, who think we're so clever with our iWhatevers and cars and better understanding of science.

It's one of the best jokes ever.

Lil Miss Abnormal

2011-12-29T23:12:00.000-08:00

Maybe it's the darker nights, or the howling gails that echo down our chimney. Maybe it's the weather or cold. Maybe it's none of those things, maybe it's all of them. Whatever it is though, for whate ver reason, at this time of year, my thoughts always tend to run off into more 'esoteric' directions. Scary experiences that I haven't thought of for years come to mind, snippets of stories about family members passing, pieces of folklore and traditions all float around in this noggin of mine to produce this winter ridiculousness. I'm also possibly reading way too many posts on cracked.com....

Maybe some if this is normal, I don't know. Normal and I have been in an abnormal relationship for some time now.

This week has been surreal, like something out of a movie. You know the kind...awkward situations during festivities, then crime (not me) and family scandal, followed by a present I really wished we'd never got and aren't quite sure how to dispose of.

It almost makes you think the creepy memories you have from being a kid are normal in comparison.

My mother always said I should write those stories down, make them into some kind of horror book. Make some money.

And to add to this, the UPG/MUS also comes thick and fast at this time of the year. Not only that but this time I have the hugest urge to talk about it somewhere. But where? A lot of those that would are pretty crazy (says me...'Lil Miss Abnormal' over here...) and I've learned to be guarded about this over the years with everyone else.

It's probably going to come spewing out in some.embarassing webpost at some point that I'll look back on during some Yule in the future and repeatedly berate myself with the words ' What the FUCK was I thinking posting *that*!'

A Woman's Honour

2011-12-05T10:54:00.001-08:00

So I've been trying to figure out how to make this kind of a blog post for a while. To say it's not an easy one would be an understatement.

However, over the past week or so, I've come across this phenomena twice.

Ladies pulling down ladies.

Now if your brain instantly flashed to two scantily dressed women, wrestling in a mud pit, you wouldn't be alone. I went to festivals a lot when I was younger and that was a popular entertainment.

But in all seriousness, I think it's a problem and while I normally don't really care what folks outside of my inner-yard do, I think women in Heathenry face enough crap that it really doesn't make sense for us to pull each other down, not if we want better for our daughters.

As I've mentioned before, women are treated differently in Heathenry. At best, we face social censure more often than guys do for our opinions, in some communities we are questioned/hassled about our breeding choices (as if our uteruses are anyone's business but our own and our parters), we may find ourselves excluded from any serious lore conversation and at the very worst, we're exploited sexually. But this is very much a 'mileage may vary' kind of deal. If you are a woman that's reading this blog, you may or may not have experienced any of this. We all have different communities with different histories. BUT, I will say that I have heard of all of the above happening to women in various American communities and all within the last 5 or so years.

And of course, this is not acceptable.

However adding to these issues are the issues that women create for women, to tear them down (and presumably attain some kind of status for doing so). During the course of the past week, I've heard of and/or dealt with one Heathen woman that has repeatedly made sexual advances towards the husbands and boyfriends of other Heathen women and another who basically wanted to point out how she wasn't fat but her sister was, on a group that her sister wasn't on. She even posted photos.

Both, to put it mildly, are shitty behaviours and they're really not the extent of it either. I once heard a workshop on Ravencast about gossip and how gossip was used to exert social control by women. Now that's all well and good, but seeing as we modern women live in a society in which we have more rights than our forebears did. And therefore don't NEED to rely on gossip and shaming our menfolk in order to get any amount of social control - or at least we shouldn't. My point is, shouldn't we be aiming a little higher? Instead of gossiping, or inciting others to do our dirty work, shouldn't we be taking control ourselves and going out and dealing with those that we have issues with directly? Surely that is what *should* be socially acceptable?

We often hear talk of honour within the context of men, but what of a woman's honour?

What *is* woman's honour? Is it, or should it be any different from that of a man and if it isn't, shouldn't we be judged the same as a man for doing as honour requires?

We need to talk about these topics, we need to decide how we'd deal with a lack of honour shown by women in our local communities and most importantly, we need to make sure that we stand together when one of us is treated differently because of gender. Be it when speaking out or trying to act with honour...whatever that may be.

I look forward to reading any thoughts and feelings on this.

Let's Push Things Forward

2011-11-14T17:39:00.000-08:00

During the course of this past weekend, we've had the pleasure of having Heathen friends over on both nights. After coming from living in Germany, where our nearest Heathen was almost 2 hours away and very busy with grad school, this is a complete (dare I say it?) luxury. To be able to talk about subjects that we are passionate about, with people that also get it is just incredible and not something that my husband or I would ever take for granted.

These conversations have given me much food for thought over the past day or so, nothing truly groundbreaking as I was already of the same opinion when it came to these topics, but it's kind of like the same feeling that you get when going through a cupboard and finding something you haven't used or looked at for a while.

On the first night, we discussed reconstructionist Heathenry and how there shouldn't be this distinction made between reconstructionist Heathenry and mainstream. It should just be either Heathenry or not. Let's face it, there's a lot of stuff in mainstream Heathenry that really has no place but has been there for years and years and just regurgitated to the next generation regardless of veracity or usefulness to the wider community. Something that isn't well rooted can easily float off with the fairies and it's increasingly my personal opinion that it is the rootless nature of a lot of practices or concepts that are taken for granted within the Heathen community,that has contributed to a lot of the craziness and controversies that can be found as well. A lot of it comes from the era that a lot of the first modern Heathens started out in and while we must never forget that without these folks, we probably wouldn't be around and accord them their due respect for this, we mustn't be afraid to examine and be critical of the things that have been passed down from the earlier days either. That which doesn't change and adapt, dies. That which doesn't have strong roots, will eventually wither and if our communities are to thrive and grow, we need to have those strong roots and we need to also be able to adapt.

Herein lies the problem. We're still looking for those roots, we're still examining them and trying to figure it out. The actual historical concepts that we're discovering are receiving little to no dissemination to newbies and when the newbie becomes more experienced, it's hit or miss whether they're ready to consider any other viewpoints than the ones that they initially found in the 'Asatru 101' books. Ezines like Odroerir are starting to try and address this issue, but not all newbies know about it and some might find it inaccessible if they're really 'green'. We have no equivalent of the 'Asatru 101' book that gives concepts in easy-to-swallow chunks. This is an issue. Another multifaceted issue is the issue of communication between those that identify as being reconstructionist and those that don't. The 'reconstructionists' don't always express their disagreement with prevalent views in the best way, the 'non-reconstructionists' become very defensive, the whole thing turns nasty, repeats, and a needless fault-line occurs.

Now I'm not saying everyone should just jump and change, just that people should at least know what is accurate, try and adopt the worldview behind the actual concepts that existed and acknowledge that the practices they *want* to stick to have become their tradition (and there is nothing wrong with that). As my friend said on Saturday night, we need to push things forward. Unfortunately as long as the people trying to reconstruct worldview remain in the minority, we won't manage that. We'll just become a joke like some aspects of Wicca have. I want better for Heathenry. I want something cohesive and beautiful in its simple, rooted elegance. Not weighted down with dross and clunky concepts that don't work properly even within the paradigms that spawned them. As German friend of mine once said:

'I guess at the root of things we're following a heathen path because we receive strength from the cult and that's it what it's all about for me: religion is for the people,but ours isn't opium, but a strengthening medicine to help us live our lives in the best possible way. '

Is the prevalent Heathenry really doing that for us? I don't believe the 'clunk' strengthens. It confuses. When we're in a place where we believe that some deity has selected us to be Odin's special little snowflake and that he's talking to us and going as far as to tell us how to wear our hair, how he likes his cookies and which way to walk or where to park, then something has gone drastically wrong. We're in a place of weakness (and quite possibly mentally ill). When we're in a place where we let synchronicity run our lives, we're in a place of weakness and next to no good to our communities or ourselves. Hell, to use a less insane example, even when we're in a place where we believe that a deity really gives a shit about if we behave in daily life or not and is going to punish us in some otherworldly place for transgressions, we're weak. What is the point of doing something that weakens?

However there is a lot of resistance to calling this kind of thing out, and this leads me to the conversations on Sunday night. We are Heathens, we reserve (or should) reserve the right to call judgement on those that we come across or that come into our communities. Be it about silly, faux-viking names, behaviour, generally accepted concepts or someone that believes that they are so special, that a deity takes a personal interest in their life or has even wooed them in the romantic sense. One might cry for tolerance but these seemingly harmless affectations often hide a myriad of other problems.

Ironically, it's often those that cry for tolerance in those cases that are the least tolerant and ultimately the most venomous. In my opinion, it is those people, that tend to cry for tolerance, that tend to be the ones avoiding the 'you' statements, that tend to speak of how their feelings were 'hurt' by disagreements and that throw the word 'bully' around, that are the most manipulative and ultimately the most harmful to a community. To heap on the irony, they are using more passive aggressive bullying tactics in order to try and stifle opinions that they don't like. This kind of behaviour is yet more of the 'clunk' that Heathens need to call out for what it is in their communities and censure accordingly.

Let's push things forward.

Turtle Island

2011-11-07T16:04:00.000-08:00

Leaving Europe was hard, really hard and there were several times on the flights over that I found myself hiding tears from my husband. Eventually, I took myself off to the bathroom and gave myself a stern talking to. As an Englishwoman, I have to keep something called 'stiff upper lip' and so this seemed to work.

I won't bore you with more about how much I love Europe and how much I'm going to miss it. That goes without saying. Instead I'll talk about what it's been like here so far on the huge chunk of land that lots of the Native Americans call Turtle Island.

To say it's strange and a mixed bag to be here should also go without saying. I feel rootless here, I have no ancestors buried here and there's so much I don't know about the land, the myths and hell, even basic stuff like the fact that over here, 'Entrees' on the menu means 'main course' and not 'appetisers'. Sure I've lived in places where I've had no bones in the land or cultural links before, but it was different because each time, the culture was obviously different as opposed to this deceptive feeling of similarity between American cultures and English (or indeed German).

On my second or third night here, my grandmother-in-law gave me a huge bag of knitting/crochet yarn, needles/hooks and pattern books. Some of these items came from my husband's mother, some from his grandmother and some from his great-grandmother.

This gift blew me away. There is so much history and so many stories with these knitting needles and crochet hooks. Tucked among the books are notes that the great grandmother made of all the people in her family she was going to make mittens for, their various sizes and colour preferences. This list is quite long. Other notes are dated and tell of growing children needing new mittens, mittens which she'd then knit up to keep her family warm in the frigid New England winters.

I can't crochet, but my husband's mother could and so I kind of feel pushed to learn. There is the most beautiful example of crochet I've ever seen, a fine lace doily that's already found its pair in my own grandmother's tablecloth which I've oathed to finish. Looking through these treasures, I felt a little less rootless and pulled out my grandmother's tablecloth, examining the stitches that my grandmother struggled to make until the arthritis and blindness stopped her.

These items are made with love, they're truly precious and in a weird way, I kind of feel a pressure from both my husband's female ancestors and my own to lovingly craft things for family, friends and my home. I think that would be the most perfect repayment for such a gift.

The next day, I started knitting a duckling to send to my niece. It's finished now and really very cute. I now have a baby whale on the go for another child.

This is one hell of an adjustment, but by the same measure, it's exciting. It's so pretty here and people have been very friendly so far. I'm now in a land where bears, moose and coyotes aren't just something that you see on films, they might be in your backyard! The house where we're staying at the moment is surrounded by trees, a little way up there are goats and chickens and then you have a wooded hill with the most amazing rocks on it, dumped by the slowly receding glaciers way back when. Some of them reminded me of the 'fairy rocks' from back home and being a tactile person, I ran my hands over them. At that moment, it got a little easier, I stopped feeling down about everything I'd left behind in Germany and England and decided that I want to learn about this land and thrive instead of being wary of the bears and moose and coyotes and whatever else there is that is strange to me. I want to discover this big nature.

And then probably poke it with a stick.

Just kidding :P.

London

2011-10-23T07:35:00.000-07:00

There's something of the familiar here
'Homely' as we'd say where I'm from
It's a good word
Positive word
A word of bright fairy lights against a cold winter's night
Of warm homemade blankets against snow
Maybe it's the accent
The same as family dead and gone
The 'I'll love you and leave you's
and cups of 'Rosie Lee'
My Auntie Ada's voice superimposed on my own
I grew up in the North
But I had blood here
My dad's successor was shot at the tube station down the road
Family survived the blitz here
Lived here, grew here
Until the time came for them to go North
And then it was 'Never again, London!'
'Not even for a gold watch!'

Health and Holiness

2011-10-06T11:08:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I was at a Sumbel with a local group.

One custom of the group when passing the horn from one person to the other, was the spoken exchange of 'Trink Heil' (drink hale) and 'Sei Heil' (be hale).

Unfortuantely, most people have only ever heard the word 'Heil' in reference to the nazis. Everyone has seen the old footage of Hitler and thousands of jackbooted followers giving their salute and shouting 'Sieg Heil!', but that's not all there is to this word. In fact, that does a great disservice to this word and the sacrality represented in those four, little letters.

'Heilen', the verb from which 'Heil' is derived in modern German is generally given the meaning of 'to cure', 'to heal', or is even found as 'das Heil', 'salvation'. 'Heil' can also be found in compound words such as 'Heilkunde'or 'medicine' and even 'Heilig' or 'holy. The word 'heil' can be traced back to Old High German (in which it can also mean 'safe'), after which there are two theorised proto-Germanic etymological origins of the word 'heil'.

1.
*Hailaz (parent to the OE word 'hāl' and the Frisian word ' hēl), meaning 'whole' and theoretically derived from the Proto-Indo European word *koylos, meaning 'healthy, intact, well-omened).

2.
*Hailan (parent to OE word 'hael' and ON word 'heill'), noun 'heil', meaning 'luck'.

If you look at the Anglo Saxon Magico-Medical charms, the focus is much more holistic than modern medicine tends to be. The focus is on whole-making, protecting, strengthening. A break in the 'scinn' (skin - sometimes referring to the physical skin but also potentially referring to an 'astral' skin similar to the ON concept of the 'hamr') could cause a person to lose 'hǽlu'. To lose 'hǽlu' invites sickness, which back then, was either conceived to be due to invasion from an outside force (such as 'flying venom' or 'elfshot'), something that subtracted from the 'wholeness' of the person (such as a supernatural creature that fed off them) or something that disturbed the balance of the body (also attributed to elves).

Of further interest in the Anglo Saxon worldview are words connected to 'hælu', such as:
hæle2 [] m (-þes/-þ, -as) man, hero [] m (-þes/-þ, -as) man, hero

So what kind of a picture can we build of the concept of health in (at least) Anglo Saxon Heathen culture (and possibly others)?

Hælu and its cognates were linked not only to 'health' and 'wholeness, but to 'safety', 'holy', 'luck' and 'salvation'.

What though, does this have to do with us as modern day Heathens?

In our modern day world, we often tend to think of physical health as being completely separate from anything remotely 'spiritual' (for want of a better word). We've all grown up in a culture that values this thing called the 'soul', often at the expense of the physical body. We grew up in a culture that is heavily based on a religion in which mortifying the flesh or putting it through hardship was considered an admirable spiritual endeavour. Something that is still practiced by Christian sects in various parts of the world. There's a disdain for the physical, it's considered worthless. Is it then really any wonder that so many of us have such little regard for our bodies?

We live in a culture in which most of the food we buy, barely passes for actually being food. Hot Pockets, microwave burritos, Hungry Man meals, frozen pizzas, Hamburger Helper and bread that is so pumped with fake nutrients and sugar, it should come with a health warning. What's even crazier is that this non-food that is sold as food, is actually cheaper than real food. For the first time in human history, the poorest people are actually the fattest!

On Heathen sites around the internet, I read a lot about people doing 'daily devotional practices', about them 'building a personal relationship with _(insert deity name here)_' and asking about things like 'growing spiritually'.

This is plug in and play spirituality.

It's time we started to look to the physical and get over this whole mentality of a spiritual/mundane dichotomy. As I've said in this blog before, Heathenry is world accepting. We are part of this world, our bodies are part of this world. There is no separation between our 'spirituality' and our physical bodies. If we really want to grow, we should not only endeavour to grow in our physical communities, but grow our bodies well too.

Now I'm not talking about weight here or having the perfect bodies or all Heathens looking like the Asgardians from the Thor comic. I'm talking health, strength and capability. Those should be our goals. Not only for ourselves but our communities as as we become stronger and increase our capabilities, we also increase our usefulness as members of our communities.

You want to do something Heathen? Educate yourself about exercise and nutrition. Cook nourishing food for your families and friends. Gift nourishing food to people in your community that you care for and who might not be eating enough of what they need (I'm thinking mostly of older people here). Strengthen your bodies. Respect your bodies. Recognise the worth in your body and love it for what you can do with it. Enjoy your bodies. Make yourselves whole.

Waes thu hael!

Sources:

Leechcraft - Stephen Pollington

Woerterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen:
Dritter Teil: Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit - Fick, Falk & Torp

http://home.comcast.net/~modean52/oeme_dictionaries.htm

Bosworth and Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary: http://bosworth.ff.cuni.cz/051517

Germany

2011-09-25T11:54:00.000-07:00

I arrived here on the 1st of June, 2008.

I'd fallen in love with a soldier in Korea less than a year before and we'd decided to stay together by both going to Germany. Germany was our hope for two people from different worlds to stay together.

When I arrived, I was homeless, jobless and hoping for enough luck to not only survive but thrive. I had money that I'd saved in Korea, but the won to the euro is a huge leap in terms of how far your money will get you and soon, I was almost out of money too. To complicate matters, my then fiance, was scheduled to be deployed in August.

For the first month, I stayed in a tent, lined up job interviews in various places and then attended them, dictionary in hand.

Things started to get desperate but somehow, in the first week in July, I got offers for two different jobs and found a room in an apartment that I could afford.

I worked hard and so did my fiance and at some point, we started to consider marrying sooner than we'd wanted. On the 6th of August 2008, we tied the knot in a small ceremony without family and about two weeks later I saw him off to war.

To this day, it upsets me to think about that night and how it felt to say goodbye and not know if I'd see the man I love ever again.

For a year, I worked hard, resolved to grow roses from the shit I was being given and try to make my husband proud of me. I taught in about four different cities, travelled, moved house alone and tried to make a home.

I made friends, great friends that somehow brightened this time.

Around the 20th of August, I welcomed him home and we started out life together.

On the 4th of December 2009,our respective families and those true friends travelled to Denmark, to witness my husband and I marry in a Heathen wedding. The lady that introduced us in Korea performed the ceremony and an online friend that happened to live on the same island as we had our wedding became a real life friend too. It was beautiful. A couple of days later, we went on our honeymoon, travelling through Denmark and Sweden.

Now we're packing up to leave Germany and begin the next stage of our life together. Another land, another way of life.

We have had the best of times and the worst of times here in Germany, but this place feels like home to me, or the nearest thing now that I feel like a tourist when I go back to my own country.

Germans are in some ways very similar to the English, a little more skeptical by nature (unless what they're being told is in some course that they've paid for - like the 'therapy' session I used to spy on through a window in Erlangen in which people would dance round a stick in the middle of the room while banging on drums). They have a wonderful sense of humour, don't offer friendship in a fake way and I love the way the Franconians talk.

No matter how far I travel from Germany, I think my idea of heaven will now always be sitting in a beer garden, in the middle of a forest, on a hill, surrounded by elderly Franconians and enjoying spectacular beer and Schaeuferle.

I have 23 days left here.

This last weekend, we were honoured to spend Herbstfest with a local hearth by the name of Bilskirnir and attended a very moving offrung in the woods before returning to feast and sumbel. Today, my husband and I climbed the Neubuerg for the last time while we're here and made offrung there too.

Time is running out and in some ways, I'm trying to grasp onto what I can, like the sleeping dog that clings to the rug that's being pulled from underneath him. In other ways, I *know* that the next stage of life lies over the sea, in the New World and to some degree I embrace it.

So, this is to Germany, a land I love and hope to return to one day.

On Susan B Anthony and UPG

2011-07-31T08:06:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago, I read a blog post entitled 'Prayer, Indigeny and Conquest' by Galina Krasskova ( To be found here ). To summarise for those of you that don't wish to read it, Ms Krasskova contends that modern Heathens focusing on lore is a form of fetishism. That we should look more to our ancestors and reclaim what monotheism has taken from us. She even goes as far as to say:

"You come from a tribe, from something that is so much bigger and you want to trade it away for lore, lore not even written by people who practiced their ancestral traditions? From lore written by collaborators? That lore is not designed to bring you to any reality or connection. It is a product of the corporate machine. It’s a product of soul sickness and spirit sadness. We have eaten the poison of our conquerors and in some sad sort of Stockholm syndrome, we continue to deny ourselves the only antidote that matters: ancestral connection, connections with our Gods, direct experience, and a reclamation of our own indigeny. In other words, our birthright. It’s time we all wake up."

Now I have my issues with monotheism, I'm not going to deny that but did you just see what she did in that quote?!

And for someone that claims to value and respect her ancestors, she sure shows a hell of a lot of disdain for the generations of them that were monotheists and found comfort in that.

Let me tell you a story that my father told me about his mother when she was dying.

When my grandmother went, she'd battled a life of sickness, starting from the TB that she'd had while pregnant with my father to the blindness and then cancer she'd contracted later in life. During her final days, she was so upset due to an altercation that had occurred with a priest that had told her she'd go to hell because she'd not been to church or donated to the plate. My grandfather had kicked the guy out on his arse, but my grandmother was still very upset. So he went out and bought her a gold cross, then took it to another priest and asked him to bless it for his wife - which the priest did. My grandmother took a lot of comfort from that cross, the blessing and the act of love that my grandfather had performed in doing that for her, in bringing her that comfort. That cross sits on my ancestral shrine, along with her wedding ring and a photo of her and her husband that loved her so completely to the end.

My grandparents were Christians, the generations before that were also Christians, but you know what? So fucking what?! They're family and that comes first before anything or everything else. I really don't understand this whole anger against Christian ancestors because they didn't have the faith that you would prefer them to have had. We'd be angry if someone told us that we couldn't be Heathens and that we had to have certain beliefs, how the hell is this any different?!

Why be divisive against family because of something as daft as religion? I really hate to pull this one too, because this has got to be breaking some kind of internet 'law', but being divisive against family is totally a Christian thing.

To (allegedly) quote that carpenter from Galilee:

“Do not think that I came to bring peace on Earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:34-39 NASB)

Really? Are we Heathens going to ignore all Frith and allow, what I would say is the the true cost of Christianity, to continue taking its toll?

As for the lore, I would probably be classed as someone that 'fetishises' the lore due to my refusal to spew UPG wherever I go on the internet. I know a lot of Heathens that also refuse to participate in this. Does that mean that they don't have connections beyond their study of the lore or experiences or UPG?

Does it hell!

It means that for most of the people I know at least (and myself included in this), UPG is PRIVATE and personal business. Spewing it everywhere looking for points in the apparent yet unspoken 'who has the greatest relationship with (insert deity here)' contest cheapens it.

I would talk UPG with a trusted friend, but I wouldn't tell anyone and everyone like it's really that important and that they all *need* to know this stuff like it's some kind of a universal revelation.

As Susan B Anthony quote once wrote:

"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."

For much as these people would like to imagine that those gloried ancestors (you know, the ones that never knew the 'taint' of Christianity), would accept them for all their shenanigans, I think were they to somehow invent a time machine and go back in time, those self same ancestors would think them insane and either give them a wide berth or sink them in a bog.

And for all the insistence that we 'fetishise' lore, they really aren't getting it either.

Reconstructionists take a multi-disciplined approach, we look at lore, yes, but we also look at archaeological finds, outsider views of that society, laws, legal documents, contracts etc. We look at what life was like for people back then to see if what is spoken about in the lore and what is commonly believed was practical or would have tallied with their worldview.

We *care* enough about those ancestors to give them the respect of trying to figure out what they actually did as opposed to relying on some unverifiable, alleged, spiritual experience with an impossible-to-track ancestor that in all probability is really just a brain fart or wish fulfilment. Now don't get me wrong, I have strange things happen to me all the time, but you have to show a level of scepticism and stay anchored or you lose all grip on any kind of reality. If you have some kind of experience like that and research bears it out later, that's awesome. That takes your UPG from the 'Probable Brain Fart That's Interesting To Ponder' category and into the 'Way More Interesting' category.

If you really want to reclaim your indigeny, try showing it and your ancestors some real respect first!

When Reconstruction Diverges From The Personal

2011-07-17T11:28:00.000-07:00

Generally speaking, Reconstructing a worldview often reminds me of a toolkit, in which all the parts are missing. You have the plastic moulds in the box to show you roughly what tools went there, or their basic shape, but you don't really have a clue about that tool until you find it. Each piece of worldview discovered is a new tool, that can be then used to build new things.

However sometimes, you come across a tool that you can't, for some reason, use. Kind of like when a left-handed person tries to use right-handed scissors. So you must adapt the tool a little, or maybe more than one tool can fit there?

I've come to that point with my musings on the afterlife. In terms of the sources, it makes massive sense that people were non-dualist and world accepting. However, while I am absolutely world accepting and am very much concerned with what is in this world, I've come to this large sticking point of what happens after death. When I was growing up in my nominally Church of England family, I was told that after death, we all end up back with family that had passed on. We have tales of family members that saw already deceased family while on their deathbeds. The whole thing seems natural to me, that people who were tightly knit with their kith and kin in life, would also perceive it to be the case post mortem too.

This reminds me of the account of Radbod of Frisia who refused to convert to Christianity after being told that his non-Christian ancestors would be burning in Hell and that he'd rather be in Hell with his ancestors than in Heaven without. I wonder how much Christian influence is in the concept of going to your family after death if at all. Maybe for some Heathenisms, there was a 'different shaped tool' when it comes to the afterlife part of the puzzle? I don't know.

However the idea of going with family fits both my own family tradition and what feels right in my heart. Don't ask me about soul parts and stuff, because I don't know. I haven't a clue really. I still think the 'soul matrix' is a pile of crap that was invented by people no earlier than the 70s. Do I believe in something other than the physical body? Yes. Would I call it a soul? No, not in the same way. Could I explain that further? Not at all.

But you know what? I'm perfectly comfortable with that.

'Northern European'

2011-06-19T03:07:00.000-07:00

I guess I should give fair warning and say outright that this is a post that is probably going to offend a few people.

But I can't not say this anymore. It's been eating at me and pissing me off for about a week now, ever since I saw the usual claims from Folkish Heathens that they somehow have a 'right' to decide who gets to be a Heathen based on ancestry and blood.

Now it's all well and good saying that you don't understand why someone that's not of Northern European ancestry would be interested in something that is as intrinsically linked to culture and reverence for ancestors as Heathenry is. I couldn't imagine ever being Santeria, I simply don't have those cultural/linguistic/ancestral links, or an inner calling to do the requisite work to join a community. I know people though, who are involved in Santeria without those cultural and ancestral links and who did do that work and find much fulfillment in those ways. Horses for courses.

But it's quite another to deny that people of different ancestries don't have a right, like you're some kind of appointed gatekeeper who gets to judge if each person is 'Northern European' enough to qualify.

And it's quite another when those people that feel they have the right to do this judging aren't even Northern Europeans.

Yep, you heard me. Being a whitey born in America with ancestors that were from Northern Europe doesn't make you Northern European. Not in the slightest. You're American.

And let's not even kid ourselves that it is somehow about ancestry and 'having the right blood'. How many people of colour have some European ancestry? I'll give you a clue – lots of them. Some of it from intermarriage, some of it because their ancestors also came from Europe and some because at some point, somewhere, some guy of Northern European ancestry thought he had the right to rape a woman because she wasn't white and he considered her to be nothing more than a domestic animal, to be used and abused as he wished.

Yes, let's not get away from that one, especially not if there are going to be 'race traitor' allegations being thrown around. According to the typical White Supremacist view of things, their own antecedents in terms of ideology would be the biggest and first 'race traitors' in America.

Another funny thing about claiming to follow the ways of ones ancestors and the 'wrongness' of blowing off the ways of one's ancestors for something new, is that the vast majority of modern Heathens have done just that by eschewing about a thousand or so years of ancestors and their Christian/Jewish ways for Heathenry.

And really, does this judgement ever really come down to having the magical number of drops of the 'right' kind of blood? Or the 'right' ancestors? No, let's not kid ourselves here either, it's about skin colour.

Regardless of the fact that that has FUCK all to do with any kind of historical Heathenry. Yes, Scandinavians did have slaves, but a Norwegian could just as easily take a Swede for a slave as an Irish person or someone of colour.

At the end of the day, 'folk' was defined by 'us' as opposed to 'not us'. Usually this was down to kith and kin, but entry in communities could be gained through proving oneself to the community, learning the community ways and taking them for one's own.

And here we come to perhaps the most polemic point of this entire post.

This using 'Northern European' as though it's just representative of just one set of beliefs, customs and traditions, has got to stop. Northern Europe is a varied place. We are not the same culture or peoples to be lumped into some kind of a monoculture because it fits the needs of Folkish Heathenry.

Also, unless you were born and raised in Northern Europe, you're not Northern European. You can enter into the culture at a later stage through becoming a part of a community, learning the language (if it's different), learning the customs and being accepted. You still wouldn't be Northern European, but you'd be a member of the community and a part of the culture – adopted if you will. If you were born on American soil, even to parents that came from Northern Europe, you're still American. You still grew up in one of the many American cultures (which btw isn't Northern European but I will concede that some still have certain aspects).

And you know what? There is FUCK all wrong with being an American and tackling Heathenry from an American POV. Hell, I'm loving the different Heathen cultures that are springing up in different parts of the US and the geographical differences and similarities that we're seeing coming up. That's great because generations of your American ancestors have given their blood, sweat and tears to give you what you have today, their bones lie in the land of your birth, now it's time for you to continue building on that and claim that birthright instead of trying to lay claims to things that simply aren't yours but were at one point. Americans are diverse people too...just something to think on.

In 874, a new land was settled and Heathen peoples figured out ways to still be Heathen in a land that was strange and had its own beings. They learned new ways of working, stopped looking towards Norway for anything but supplies and their worldview changed, they became distinctively Icelandic Heathens.

This is a great example for American Heathens to follow and be inspired by.

Oh and to the 'gatekeepers' in the American communities, the gate/s isn't/aren't yours, so piss off!!!

Lancashire Moorland Fires

2011-05-06T15:42:00.000-07:00

I'm upset. Not on a day to day level, but a deep down level, down to my core.

I grew up in a town on the foothills of the West Pennine Moors. From a young age, I've walked that boggy moorland, learned how to walk, where to walk, how to see where I'm going in the thickest of fog and I know all this sounds easy. It's easy to walk, right? One foot in front of the other, yeah? Not on this kind of moorland. It's a peat bog/moorland. The landscape alternates between quagmire and tussocks. You learn to move, to spring, to judge the grasses, the lay of the land. You learn to judge the clouds, the wind, the fog. You learn not only to survive but thrive and enjoy one of the most inhospitable and barren places on the earth. Not only that, but you crave it, it becomes a part of you. You want to see it, to be in those uplands, that wild, barren space and the only place in the whole wide world where you truly feel like you can breathe.

Now that area I love, those places, are burning and have been burning for the past seven days. It's peat, the fire doesn't extinguish easily -if they get it to extinguish. Sometimes peat fires can continue to burn underground, working their way through the underground peat layer, until some poor soul (or the ground becomes weak enough on its own) causes a fall in. Then oxygen meets smouldering peat, someone/something gets incinerated and a fire is sparked anew. Don't believe me? There are peat fires in Indonesia that have been smouldering since 1997. Sometimes fire services *can't* put peat out.

The average moorland fire is fast, very fast. Like orange, red and yellow tongues devouring entire masses of land at breakneck speed. When I was younger, I learned that if I were to be caught in a moorland fire, to put on all of my survival clothes (waterproofs), hoods up, to douse myself in my entire water supply and to dig into the land. Don't leave any skin/flammable surface undowsed and to just let it pass overhead. I know people who have done this. They've dowsed, dug in, survived and continued to walk the charred moor left in the wake. In spite of how easy they are to survive, I resolved never to get in one of those. The one time I nearly was, I ran as fast as I could to the nearest body of water.

But these fires aren't as quick, as surface. These fires are igniting the earth itself.

And I have an impending move to another continent coming up. One I am very apprehensive about. One of my biggest draws back to my homeland is that land. That barren highland where I feel like I can breathe. When I was younger and going through a lot of issues, that was where I laid my troubles. I'd walk until I wept and then I'd continue to walk until I'd found my peace and happiness again. I feel like it's been torn away from me. People are saying that it'll take about 30 years for it to be what it was again. I just wanted one more chance to walk those hills before I left again.No matter how far or how long I roam, that land is what I still crave. The place where land meets sky.

More on Gandr and the bare basics of Heathenry (IMO)

2011-04-18T10:07:00.000-07:00

In my previous post, I talked about the gandr/gandus as being something akin to the hamr as opposed to being some kind of spirit helper in the neo-shamanic sense. Well, a rereading of Eldar Heid's paper 'Spinning Seidr' has shown me that I wasn't too far off the mark in this assessment. He however, most excitingly for me, links the gandr to spinning too!

My studies on gandr have been a gateway to this view. In several sources, gandr is a designation of such a mind-in-shape emissary that the seiðr performer could send forth. This is evident in the description of the Saami noaidi séance in Historia Norwegie (60–63), and is the most reasonable interpretation also in Fóstbrœðra saga (243), Þiðriks saga (303–04) and Þorsteins þáttr bœjarmagns (76). Several of the early eighteenth-century sources for Saami religion also support this view (Heide 2002:77ff). The word gandr is still in use in Norwegian and Icelandic, and modern Icelandic also has retained the derivative gondull, as göndull. Some of the meanings of these words connect them with spinning. In Modern Icelandic, göndull may mean ‘coarse yarn’ and other twisted items (Sigfús Blöndal 920:282). Gand in modern Northern Norwegian may mean ‘spinning top propelled by a string’ (Aasen 873:207), which closely resembles a spindle twirling on the floor (using a certain spinning technique). These or related meanings of gandr/gand and g ̨ndull/göndull probably existed in Old Norse, as there was not much contact between Northern Norway and Iceland after the Middle Ages.If so, the “spinning” or “twisting” meanings of gand/göndull suggest that the mind emissary that the seiðr performer could send forth could be conceived as something spun or spinning.

Source: Spinning Seidr

So yet again, we're back to spinning. It's perhaps worth noting that the type of spinning in this instance is the supported spindle, in which the spindle, rather than left to drop, is set spinning on a surface while the spinner drafts and spins the fibers before winding. Perhaps this link between the spindle touching the floor/earth and the act of turning creation of a 'mind emissary' is significant? This also makes me wonder if any of the current spinning supersitions about spinning clockwise or anticlockwise were known/had their roots in earlier magical practice involving spinning.

On another note, a friend of mine has recently decided that she's now a Heathen and this got me thinking about what I consider to be the basics and my personal golden rules of Heathenry.

For me, the Heathen worldview boils down to a few, very easy to understand key concepts.

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS JUST HOW I SEE IT, OTHERS *WILL* DISAGREE,THAT'S JUST THE WAY IT IS, WE'RE HEATHENS.

Firstly, the most important concept is that the Heathen worldview is WORLD-ACCEPTING. This can be quite difficult for us when we first become Heathens, because we generally grow up within world-rejecting religions, in which adherents are taught that salvation exists outside of the physical world. The physical world is bad and 'sinful'. Adherents are taught to care more about their souls than their physical bodies and more about what happens post-mortem than what happens in life.

In a world-accepting worldview, the here, the now and the mundane are what is important.In fact, there is no separation between mundane and 'spiritual'. We live in the now and we *cherish* our days on Midgard. From another POV, nothing is ever truly supernatural either. Everything is a part of this world, some things just happen to be largely unseen. All the same, it's natural and all fits into the hierarchy as we do. As an interesting sidenote - door courts used to be called to banish hauntings. The dead were considered to be under the rule of law just as much as the living lol.

Then there are the concepts of of innangard vs utangard, or in plain English, 'inner-yard' and 'outer-yard'. But what do we mean by these?

Basically, on a human level, your 'inner-yard' is your kith and kin. Those that you would bleed for and who would bleed for you. Their falls and failures hurt you and vice versa. The 'outer-yard' is basically everyone else. You have obligations to your inner-yard, to defend and do your best by, but absolutely none to the outer-yard, unless you choose to.

On a religious level, the inner-yard/outer-yard dichotomy can also be applied to religion itself. 'Religion' as a word and concept did not exist in Germanic languages before Christianity came. The word, 'Religion', is itself a loan word from Latin. There are no Germanic cognates. But what we do have are words referring to tribal custom (these words are Thew/Thau and Ewa) and that is entirely the point. There never was one, unified Heathenism. But many, as different and varied as the communities that practiced them. Yes, there were commonalities, but a person's 'religion' was basically the custom of his or her people/tribal group/community.

On another level, the 'inner-yard'/'outer-yard can refer to the cultivated land/human places vs the wild/liminal places. Neo-Paganism has the natural world as some kind of loving, non-harmful environment, full of beings that are just waiting to be your friend as you dance gaily through the fields while wearing green and being all floaty and spiritual. Nature isn't like that, nature can also harm and any cursory glance at folklore can tell you that not all beings that could be come across out there, are friendly (incidentally enough, in a few folktales, when people are being pursued by unfriendly beings from the wild, just the act of crossing back onto cultivated land can be enough to shake the pursuit).

Lastly, you have the importance of reciprocal relationships. The most succinct and beautiful expression of this concept that I've found is the phrase said at rituals at ECT (East Coast Thing):

From the Gods, to the Earth, to us. From us, to the Earth, to the Gods.

Ok, so it's not perfect in its explanation, but it's very, very poignant. Basically, as I mentioned in the part about world acceptance, we and the animals that can be seen are not the only things on this earth. As well as us, there are the wights (land-spirits) and the Gods. The wights can be like our neighbours, or people that we share our homes and land with. If we keep them happy, they'll keep us happy. We might find that nicer things happen to us, that plants grow well on our land and that we have happy homes to live in. If we don't, well...The wights are more immediate to us, as are our ancestors. On a day to day basis, the wights and ancestors are the unseen that Heathens interact with the most (be it an offering of a cup of ale, flowers, homemade bread etc). It's much rarer to go to the Gods (or at least it *should* be) and generally we go as a community.

If we ask for things, we have to pay for them. As the Havamal says, 'a gift deserves a gift'. And it'd better be a good enough gift for what you're asking too!

I've tried reading some of the Heathenry 101 books that are on the market, and the one thing that strikes me every time I pick one of these books up is just how much they complicate Heathenry. It's crazy!

When I first came to Heathenry, I spent much of my time being very, very confused by various explanations of different concepts that, in the end, on deeper examination, didn't really have anything to do with Heathenry in any kind of a historical sense. Reconstructionism has been a sanity saver for me. Concepts like 'the soul complex' or conflated ideas of wyrd and orlog do nothing to help the beginner and yet they're to be found in every, single Heathen 101 book.

This brings me to my two, personal, golden rules of Heathenry:

* Very few concepts are fixed. Heathenry is still in a state of flux and we're all still just trying to figure it out. What's accepted as a theory now, might not be in a few years.

* When you get down to it, what we *know* of historical Heathenry is often devastatingly beautiful in its simplicity. In other words, if a concept is too complex, the chances are that it's probably a new-age invention.

Gandr/Gandus, Horses Wolves and Trees.

2011-04-11T15:33:00.000-07:00

Reconstruction is a very, careful process, in which we have to be careful with everything. From the validity of the evidence we're presented with, to the way in which we interpret that evidence and how our interpretations of that evidence may be affected by long held ideas or beliefs about certain things that we've not yet been able to deconstruct.

I find myself in this interpretation quandary when it comes to looking at an old paper from the 2006 International Saga Conference entitled 'Riding the Tree' by an Yvonne S Bonnetain. In what seems to be an (admittedly on the author's part) attempt to put too much information and too many angles in too short a piece, a few points can be gleaned.

First of all is the emphasis on the role of the 'utangard' in magic and with reference to personages from the Eddas and sagas being linked to the 'utangard'. Examples of this that Bonnetain gives are:

1. Odin's speech in Harbardsliod

44.
Nam ec at mönnum
þeim inom aldrœnom,
er búa í heimis scógom.

(I learned from the people,
from the old ones,
who abide in the forests of the homeland).

45.

Þó gefr þú gott nafn dysiom,
er þú kallar þat heimis scóga.
(Neckel, 1983, 85)

(So you give the mounds of stone (over the dead) a good name,
by naming them forests of the homeland).

2.In Hyndluliod, Hyndla is referred to as 'forest dweller' in stanza 48.

This concept of the wild (green) world as the sort of gateway to the supernatural/unknown vs the man-ordered and cultivated world of the mundane is not a new one (for further exploration of the liminal character of the colour green,see Anna Zanchi's paper 'The Colour Green in Medieval Icelandic Literature: Natural, Supernatural, Symbolic?'). In the Eddas, we have the story of the trip to Utgard, in which the normal rules do not apply, nothing is as it seems and death is a character that seems too close for comfort. Fairy tales across Northern Europe, emphasise escape from supernatural entities (found in the natural world beyond the reach of cultivated land) by either jumping over a flowing body of water or by getting back onto cultivated (i.e 'taken') land. In many tales, Seidhworkers live in these liminal places, firmly cementing their characters as 'threshold' dwellers.

Other elements/places seem to play a role as ways across the 'threshold' too. From the vast array of bog offering finds, cultic places linked to various beings and folklore about water being an entry point into another world (i.e Grimm's story 'Mutter Holle') or a dwelling place for otherworldly beings, it would be a reasonable assumption to say that water was considered to be 'threshold'. In the Eddas, we have the examples of Odin and Skirnir having special horses that can withstand the journey through the 'vafrlogi' (wavering fire)to either Helheim or Jotunheim respectively. Not to mention the accounts of burning the dead. Possibly fire was also considered to be one of these threshold elements? Seen in this way, the thrice burning of Heid in the Voluspa must only have served to reinforce her status as one with mastery of the threshold (and her prowess as a witch) in the eyes of the Aesir.

Bonnetain then goes on to lightly touch on staffs and the possible symbolism/use of the staff for the Volva and then, interestingly, she mentions the Gandr. To quote Bonnetain herself:

It is also possible to understand gandr as a staff, which is attributed with phallic significance. Thus, göndull in Bósa saga (11) is used in the sense of ‘penis’. Accordingly, the term gandreið – by which we have another intersection of means of travel, seiðr and the other world – can also be read with a sexual undertone.4 The most extensive discourse on the connection between völur and seiðr, sexuality and gandir has been conducted by Neil Price (2002), to whose work I may only make reference in the framework of this presentation.

It is also notable in this context that this meaning variant of gandr is not reflected in translations of Jörmungandr and Vánargandr. On the contrary, here gandr is frequently translated as ‘monster’, which actually forestalls interpretation. Vánargandr is found only in Skáldskaparmál (23), in which Vánargandr is used as a synonym for Fenrir:

Hvernig skal kenna Loka? Svá, at kalla hann ... föður Vánargands, þat er Fenrisúlfr, ok Jörmungands, þat er Miðgarðsormr... (Guðni Jónsson, 1954, III, 126f.)
‘How shall Loki be called? So, that he may be called… father of Vánargandr, that is the Fenris wolf, and of Jörmungandr, that is the Midgard serpent...’).

Confirmation of the meaning ‘monster’ cannot be inferred from this passage, in which Vánargandr is used parallel to Jörmungandr.

Ursula Dronke (1997: 12ff.) translates gandr in Völuspá as ‘spirit’. With this, she follows the argument already put forward by Cleasby/Vigfússon (1874: 188) and Johan Fritzner (1877, 166-170) based on a well-known passage from the Historia Norvegiae. 5 Maybe such a gandr is also the reason for the switch between the first and third person singular on the part of the völva when referring to herself in the Völuspá (McKinnell, 2001, 394-417). Apart from the interpretation as two seers, one could also assume that there is a third figure in the form of a helpful spirit,6 comparable to the usage of gandr in Fóstbrœðra saga (9):

Víða hefi ek göndum rennt í nótt, ok em ek nú vís orðin þeira hluta, er ek vissa ekki áðr. (Björn Karel Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson, 1943, 234)
‘Far did I run with gandir into the night. Now I know things I knew not before.’

Cleasby/Vigfússon (1874: 188), too, had already point to the possibility of interpreting gandr in gandreið as a spirit. Moreover, attention is drawn to the meaning of ‘wolf’.

So far from reading that passage, the word gandr, can mean/or is linked to either 'staff', 'penis' (the penile aspect is further explored by Eldar Heide in his paper, 'Spinning and Seidr'), 'a spirit', 'wolf spirit'. Which is it to be? The author draws no conclusions in her paper, however in a paper by Clive Tolley, entitled 'The Historia Norwegiae as a Shamanic Source', we are given a translation of an excerpt from the Historia Norwegiae:

Moreover their intolerable paganism, and the amount of devilish superstition they practise in their magic, will seem credible to almost no one. For there are some of them who are venerated as prophets by the ignorant populace, since by means of an unclean spirit that they call a gandus they predict many things to many people, both as they are happening, and when delayed; and they draw desirable things to themselves from far off regions in a wondrous way, and amazingly, though themselves far away, they produce hidden treasures. By some chance while some Christians were sitting at the table amongst the Sámi for the sake of trade their hostess suddenly bowed over and died; hence the Christians mourned greatly, but were told by the Sámi, who were not at all distressed, that she was not dead but stolen away by the gandi of rivals, and they would soon get her back. Then a magician stretched out a cloth, under which he prepared himself for impious magic incantations, and with arms stretched up lifted a vessel like a tambourine, covered in diagrams of whales and deer with bridles and snow-shoes and even a ship with oars, vehicles which that devilish gandus uses to go across the depths of snow and slopes of mountains or the deep waters.

He chanted a long time and jumped about with this piece of equipment, but then was laid flat on the ground, black all over like an Ethiopian, and foaming from the mouth as if wearing a bit. His stomach was ripped open and with the loudest roaring ever he gave up the ghost. Then they consulted the other one who was versed in magic about what had happened to them both. He performed his job in a similar way but not with the same outcome – for the hostess rose up hale – and indicated that the deceased sorcerer had perished by the following sort of accident: his gandus, transformed into the shape of a water beast, had by ill luck struck against an enemy’s gandus changed into sharpened stakes as it was rushing across a lake, for the stakes lying set up in the depths of that same lake had pierced his stomach, as appeared on the dead magician at home.

In this passage, we meet the term 'Gandus', which, according to a comment made by John McKinnell (2003: 115) who works from the perspective of Norse (rather than shamanic) scholarship: ‘This passage probably represents Norse beliefs about Saami magic rather than the reality of it, for the word gandr does not exist in the Saami language.’

Now this is one key area where any examination of Seidh becomes tricky.We know from various sources, that there were (or it was believed that there were) cultural exchanges when it came to Seidr. There is mention of 'Lappish' characters or characters that spent time among the Sami, learning their witchcraft (Queen Gunnhildr being the best known example here). However there is, to my mind, a HUGE sticking point in then applying aspects of what we know of Sami worldview to Seidh. For starters, we have a lot of evidence that the Sami are/were dualist in belief, but we have no definitive evidence that the Norse were. Thomas Du Bois does a great job of examining the intercultural dimensions of the Seidh sceance from Erik the Red's saga, however the whole issue is far from clear.

We also have to remember that while the term 'Gandus' is included in the above quote from the Historia, it was written very much post conversion (and dualist), and so the events that are described (if real), would have been written from that POV. However there is one point that I find interesting and worth further investigation:

*In the ON sources, the gandus is potentially a kind of spirit helper or not dissimilar to ( or even the same as?!) the hamr . Could it then be possible that travelling with your 'gandr' might not refer to having something to travel with, but a means for your hamr to travel by? Hence the link with wolves and horses as being potential shapes to shift your hamr into?

* In the account from the Historia, the drawings on the drum are interpreted by the Christians as being 'vehicles' by which the gandus can travel. It would be interesting to read a Sami interpretation of drum symbols and just what the 'gandus' could have been referring to from a Sami POV.

And this is where my quandary lies when it comes to interpretation. I'm non-dualist. Seidr in the actual lore-based sense makes absolutely NO sense to me from a dualist perspective. Because of this, I'm very aware that I'm always looking for ways to interpret evidence from a non-dualist perspective and I worry that sometimes that's not the right way to go and that I may just be as 'guilty' as I consider others to be in the Seidr-community.

So, no conclusions, just more reading....anyone anything to add/new directions to go in to all of that 'written too late at night' posting?

Edit

I've just been reminded of Gna's horse, Hofvarpnir and its ability to 'fly' through the air and run on the sea. Gylfaginning 35:

The fourteenth is Gná: her Frigg sends into divers lands on her errands; she has that horse which runs over sky and sea and is called Hoof-Tosser. Once when she was riding, certain of the Vanir saw her course in the air; then one spake:

What flieth there? | What fareth there,
Or glideth in the air?

She made answer:

I fly not, | though I fare
And in the air glide
On Hoof-Tosser, | him that Hamskerpir
Gat with Gardrofa.

Links

'Riding the Tree'

'The Colour Green in Medieval Icelandic Literature: Natural, Supernatural, Symbolic?'

'The Historia Norwegiae as a Shamanic Source

Frau Holle Teich

2011-03-07T05:23:00.000-08:00

It's probably no surprise to those of you that read this blog that I love the process of reconstruction. Because I do. The oft-cited argument for reconstructionism, is that of Christopher Parkening and his study of medieval tapestries in order to better reconstruct lute playing in a more efficient manner. As reconstructionists, there's often the assumption that it's just all an academic exercise or that we're trying to make like it's 699AD or something. This is simply not true.

Most reconstructionists, are the most respectful and genuine Heathens with the 'faith' aspects of Heathenry that I know.

In a conversation with a recon friend last night, we discussed the whole respect thing and if a lot of people that fall under the Heathen banner actually believe or are using it as some form of self-help. It sounds harsh, but hear me out. The world was not a nice place back then, life was harsh and it's no surprise that the gods themselves could be harsh too. And yet, as a modern Heathen, it's so common to come across people that talk about having personal relationships with deity in a really 'chummy' way. Occasionally people will make jokes/not-jokes about Odin screwing people over but I often wonder if the sentiment behind it is real. If there is any real fear there. Some folks seem to be of the opinion that the gods are at their beck and call, to do anything they want in exchange for the burning of a cheap joss stick or splashing mead on the ground. Again, to me, this shows a lack of real respect or belief. A recon is more prepared to give the best they can or even shed blood. Not because a book says so, or because it was 'how it was done back then', but because they believe in that exchange of gifts. This doesn't mean to say that I don't think others don't have any real belief, just that I think as a movement, we've got a hell of a long way to go.

It's perhaps to be expected though, we all mostly come to Heathenry from a faith that emphasises its adherents having a 'personal relationship' with Jesus and that demands adherence to certain rules in exchange for whatever. For us, it's about the gifting process. A gift for a gift.

This conversation with my friend about real respect was timely because on Saturday, I got a kick up the arse.

Ever since taking up handspinning, I've been interested in spindle lore and as I live in Bavaria, this led to looking into Perchta. Then I found a folktale from my local area about Frau Hulle (translated in an earlier post in this blog) and the interest in all things Holle grew from there. A friend recommended a book by a chap called Garden Stone. His book, 'Goettin Holle' is impressive (and I would recommend it to anyone reading this - there's an English translation coming soon), I really like his approach. The first chapter is a little like a guidebook and encourages people to travel to the places that are linked with Frau Holle. Other chapters cover plants associated with her in folklore, an impressive collection of folklore and sayings about Holle and much more.

Last Saturday, we decided to take a trip to a place called the Frau Holle Teich. It's a pond, with a small piece of land at one end with a statue of Frau Holle on it. According to the local lore, it's a place where people have been offering to Holle for years. So, deciding to make this into an adventure for our small family, my husband and I packed the dog into the car and set off for the Meissner-Kaufunger Wald area of Hessen. In total, we drove for around six to seven hours on Saturday. When we arrived there, we parked up at the side of the road (where google maps told us to - hubby had his iphone) and walked up the hill. Well, what we thought would be short, turned out to be a slightly longer trek up hill and down icy paths. Still, the scenery was absolutely beautiful, really really gorgeous. When we finally made it to the Teich, it was stunning. The Teich was completely frozen over, and the statue looked ethereal in the middle of it all. Especially with the way the warm air was hitting the icy ground and producing this lovely, white mist.

We walked around the pond to get closer to the statue and I realised that I didn't have an offering. So I decided to offer one of my silver pendants and so after a bit of deliberation with the husband and determining that the pond was frozen enough to walk on, I walked over to the statue to place my offering.

It.was.terrifying.

Not the ice walk, although I wasn't happy about that - ponds rarely freeze enough in Britain to walk on and so it's drummed into your head from being small that you don't walk on iced up lakes/ponds/rivers. No, it was the sense of presence around that statue. I found myself bowing my head deferentially as I buried my offering in the snow and ice at the foot of the statue, hoping that in the melt, mud and spring rains, it would find its way into the Teich itself. In my 30 years, I have never felt that mixture of fear/awe that I got when I stood before her statue.

Once I made my offering, I left quickly across the ice, as I touched solid ground again, I realised I'd heard something on my way over, this strange sound that my husband hadn't heard at all. We stood on the banks of the Teich a little and this gorgeous sunshine burst out from behind the trees and it was definitely a sense of 'offering accepted'. My husband and I kissed in what was now the bright sunlight before thanking Frau Holle and making our way back to the car.

Once we left the Teich, we realised that google maps had really led us wrong and that had we just driven another kilometer down the road, we would have been parked right outside the Teich.

Still, we didn't mind and spent most of that kilometer walk along the road back to the car laughing our heads off about it.

So yes, the talk I had with my friend was timely, because that brush with Frau Holle has definitely changed my views somewhat on a level I'm still trying to sort out.

Envy

2011-02-27T13:46:00.000-08:00

I'm envious.

For weeks, I've been looking at certain people that I really shouldn't be envious of and finding myself a little envious of them.

If you know what I'm talking about and you're still reading, I'll explain why.

There are a couple of reasons, first of all, they have people with the same focus that they can talk to, I'm not talking about the sicko stuff, but the weird stuff that can get a person ostracised from mainstream community. Of course, they have found a community of weird people where they can talk about weird stuff but still...on some level I wish I had that. I used to be more open about this stuff, but increasingly I don't feel able to talk about this anymore. It's a lonely place to be in.

Secondly, they don't ever seem to question their sanity. I do, all the damn time. I know that maybe makes me sane(r) and maybe that's a good thing, but I wish I had the freedom of truly not giving a fuck about that. I hate the questioning that comes a day after something messed up happening and that feeling like the world has somehow pulled the carpet out from underneath me and that everything is somehow less 'real'. Paradoxically, I hate having witnesses even more, because most of the time, I convince myself that nothing really happened and if there are witnesses, I can't do that.

So yeah...

Law and Spirituality

2011-01-06T00:54:00.001-08:00

I had a dream last night (staring Odin) that was pretty interesting. Now I'm not saying that this was Odin or that I'm Odin's little snowflake, because I'm not. My brain simply churns things over when I dream and makes connections that I don't see when I'm awake.

My husband, Odin and I were going from court to court to court, all at different levels (as you do...). From a 'door court' to a modern high court, to a magistrates court and again and again, we were told that 'this is how it must work with the Holy Powers too'.

When I woke up this morning, I couldn't help but consider the role of law in Heathen society, how they considered law to apply to the living as well as the dead (as evidenced by the 'door courts' held to resolve hauntings in properties) and the possible parallels between how we conduct ritual, how court was conducted and also how we view/deal with gods in the equation.

Heathen society was 'world accepting' in that a person wasn't looking for some otherworldly salvation or goal. Spiritual growth wasn't about getting closer to a deity, it was about community and growing in your community. So surely it would make sense that one of the ways in which a person could do that was through the Allthing ? How he or she represented herself at the Thing would invariably affect how his or her community would see him/her and ergo the amount of regard that person was given.

However it does also bring up what we as Heathens should consider to be the law and, in line with another debate that's occurring at the moment, what do we do when we feel it's violated.

Discuss?

Lost on the Moors

2011-01-03T17:32:00.000-08:00

This is a short story about a folkloric being from my local area that we all used to tell each other about as kids and one fictitious man's encounter with that being. When we were children, we were told not to go in certain bodies of water to swim because of this being. Her folklore has fascinated me for a long time and I wanted to write a short story about her. I'm aiming to do this for a few other beings from folklore in future. For those of you that know all about her already, I know I took a bit of artistic license with some bits of this story - especially the ham but I wasn't sure how else to extricate my character from his situation. The dialect is just my interpretation of how it sounds like it should be written to me and is based on the strong dialect of a guy that used to live down my road. You lot know there are no spelling rules for Lanky Twang :P. This story isn't really set in any time and the photo is of a place where we were told was one of this being's favourite hangouts.

*****
It was getting dark by the time the man was making his way home across the boggy moors and he was getting nervous. The moors are a wild place, full of ghosts and boggarts. He'd heard the stories many a time about people that hadn't made it home or who had seen the large, black, demon dog with flaming eyes only to die a few days later.

Why was he on the moors at night again? He'd been warned against that since he was a child.

It had been market day in town of course, no getting out of that if he and his family wanted to eat and the moors were the quickest way home. He should have been over them by now though. He should be home with his family, stretched out in front of the hearth and eating his wife's bread and broth.

The paths were treacherous though and easily mistaken for sheep paths;maybe he'd taken a sheep path? Maybe that's why he wasn't home yet?

He didn't want to think about being lost, not up here and certainly not at night.

There was a bloke that used to live down his street called Fred Thistlethwaite who didn't believe in the old superstitions, and would go hunting with his old wolfhound at night. 'Tis allus t'best time' he used to say as he headed out into the twilight with his snares in hand and dog following close behind. One day though, he hadn't come back but his dog had, shaking and whimpering down the street until someone took it in. A search party had gone out and found him dead, his face frozen in terror and hands clawed as if trying to fend off something ghastly.

He didn't want that to happen to him but he was most certainly lost and not even sure he was on a sheep path anymore. Not knowing where he was, he carried on walking as he seemed to be going slightly downhill. Downhill's a good thing, right? There was also no mist and he was thankful for that too. There were all kinds of nasty things that could come in the mist.

Suddenly the moon exited the cloud cover and he spotted the sparkle of a tarn in the distance. He knew tarn water wasn't good but he was just so thirsty and so he headed towards it.

As he drew closer, he fancied he could hear singing, there couldn't be anyone still up here could there? Before his death, Fred Thistlethwaite might have been up here so it could be possible! Even so, he approached with caution.

It was a woman, reclining on a rock at the side of the tarn and combing her long, straggly hair with her fingers as she basked in the moonlight.

'Excuse me please!' the man said, 'Could tha be suh kind as t'tell mi how ah con get back to Brinscall?'

The woman looked at him fixedly and in the next moment she was at his side, smiling a toothy smile with teeth that looked like they were made from small, sharpened, alge-covered rocks. The man was afraid, nothing natural could move like that.

'Er...'

He stopped as the woman came to stand before him. The hair she had been finger combing now looked like pond weeds and she had a distinctively inhuman quality. Almost as though her skin was shimmering water.

'Brinscall...'

Her voice sounded watery too, as though she had no breath in her body and he gasped as a memory surfaced of childhood and the older children warning him about certain watery places and a 'Granny' that haunted them. It had been a favourite story in his group of friends. His eyes widened and she smiled her sharp, green, smile again.

'Tha's too owd fer my tastes lad!'

Frozen in place, the man waited as she walked around him, a cold draft passing as she did. He shuddered. What could he do? His mind began to race and go through the stories, all of them were about children and how she took her pleasure from drowning little boys and girls. There was nothing about adults! How could he get out of this? It's not like he could throw salt on her – he had none and wasn't even sure it was going to work! Getting a grip on himself, he decided to try talking to her again, it's not like it could do any more harm than had already been done, right?

'Ah'm er...very glad t'hear that mi lad-'

'Call me 'Granny'!', the woman said quickly.

'Ahh, reet, yes....ah'm very glad t'hear that 'Granny'. Ah'm sorry to be botherin yer though, ah got mysel' lost 'ere on't moors...'

'Granny' eyed him more closely and smirked cruely, 'Followed a sheep path did yer? Ah'v ad a few that way....that there algae is reyt slippy under certain circumstances'

She came closer, meeting him eye to eye and breathed, 'Ah keyps the algae wet on purpose...'

The man nearly gagged on the smell of stagnant pond.

'Ok, er..like ah sed, ah'm glad am t'owd fer thi....ah really need t'be getting back t'Brinscall, so ah must bi off!'

Bravely he turned as thought to march away from her but as he did, he found her standing before him as though he'd never moved.

'Hast tha geet owt for me? Ah do so like gifts.'

Not taking his eyes of her, he took his pack from his shoulder and searched through it for something he could maybe give her. In the end, all he could find was his last crust of bread, some hard cheese and a small piece of ham.

'Ah'm sorry, ah'v nowt else.,' he said as he handed the gifts over to her, 'It'd be different if ah'd come across yer before ah'd gone t'market...'

'Granny' smiled genuinely and reached out to take the gifts. She seemed especially delighted with the ham.

'There was a time, when folk would gi me this stuff wi'owt avin t'ask...'

The man didn't know what that meant but she had almost sounded wistful.

Slowly she walked past him, staring at the ham and taking her time to inhale it, her sport with the man almost forgotten.
'Yer path is o'er there, follow it t'trees, tha'll see a barn on yer right, go past it, t'road'll get bigger after that and you'll end up back in Brinscall.'

Thankfully the man picked up his pack and headed off, not entirely sure if he should shout a quick thank you to the 'Granny' or if it was best to stay forgotten and disappear into the night.

He opted for the latter and found the path as 'Granny' had described it. When he got home, he hugged them gratefully and slurped up his broth with enthusiasm before sitting them all down to tell his tale of Granny Greenteeth.

Traditions: Mourning The Passing Of The Old And Celebrating The Birth Of The New

2011-01-01T08:15:00.000-08:00

I've come to the conclusion that all the celebrations around the new year make me homesick. Every year back home there are certain traditions that are observed on new year's eve that really make the night for me. The being with friends and family, the standing with crossed arms and holding hands with everyone you're celebrating with in a circle to sing 'Auld Lang Syne' at the stroke of midnight before going round hugging and kissing each other with best wishes for the new year, the newer tradition of fireworks in our too-small gardens,the old tradition of going knocking on your neighbours' doors with a bottle of whatever's handy to wish them a happy new year. I miss all of that. I don't even think it would be possible in other places because people don't live close enough to each other. Growing up on a row of terraced houses, you're never really alone. Everyone knows what's going on with everyone else. If it rains and you have washing drying on the line in the yard, your neighbours either knock on your window to let you know or they'll take it in for you if you're out. In summer we stand in our yards and talk to each other over the fences. When I was younger, homebrew kept in sheds would be shared too. There were street parties, we would sit on the street and talk to each other.

I don't think I'm really homesick for any place at new year's eve but rather a time. I see those old traditions disappearing even back home and it makes me sad in the same way that my dialect and the decreasing numbers of speakers of that dialect does. And I really believe in keeping traditions, they're our link to our ancestors but sometimes they're just not possible.

So you sometimes have to create anew and I think last night, we finally came up with something nice.

Being outside in the falling snow, with a background of fireworks, dancing our own dance and singing 'Auld Lang Syne' was really nice. A bottle of whisky tucked in my bag kept us warm and when we got home, I kept an old tradition that I could keep in its entirety: opening the door to let the old year out and the new year in.

Today more new traditions were created. We cleaned the house, then we cleaned ourselves and our clothes before I blessed the house with mugwort again and said a short prayer to Frija and Holda.

These new traditions feel good, even though I still mourn the old ones that are passing into memory and I hope they help bring us luck.

So, happy new year people and I wish you all the best for this coming year.

May it be a lucky one for us all!

Frau Hulle

2010-12-29T14:32:00.001-08:00

On the Schellenberg between Heimbuchenthal and Wintersbach there used to stand a stately castle. In the courtyard of this castle there grew a beautiful linden tree. The tree was very tall and the saying went that as long as the linden stood and stayed green, the castle would also bloom. Woe betide though if the linden were to be destroyed for then the castle and its inhabitants would also meet the same fate.

In this castle, there once lived a great lord and his two sons. The eldest son was tall and handsome and the youngest was short and ugly who, in childhood sadly broke his leg and was from then on known as 'Twisted Jakob'.

The lord of the castle was old and sick. Sensing his end was near, he called his sons to his bedside. It was not easy for him to speak, his voice was weak and shook with each word:
'My firstborn, from this day forth, I give you my castle and this wooden coffer filled with gold. Swear to me though that you will always keep our dear Jakob by your side and that you will always be a good brother to him. Make sure all his needs are taken care of!'

With an earnest face, the eldest son gave his word that he would take care of his brother and on that self same day, their father began his eternal sleep.

The old lord was hardly in the ground before the eldest brother broke his word and increasingly came to treat Jakob worse than the day labourers did. No longer would Jakob be allowed to sit at his table to eat nor live in his castle. Instead, the poor Jakob was cast out to sleep in the stall with the horses and eat with the dogs from a bowl.

It didn't take long for Jakob to decide that it would be best to leave his hardhearted brother as soon as he could and so one morning, Jakob went to his brother and said:
'Give me my share of our inheritance, I want to go into the wider world and try my luck elsewhere.'

The new lord of the castle however gave him nothing and just had Jakob thrown out of the castle.

Defeated, Jakob wandered into the surrounding forests and came to rest completely exhausted under a tree, where resting his head on his knees he cried bitterly. When he finally looked up, he caught a glimpse of an old woman on a spinning wheel. Strange. Jakob had heard no sound of her coming. With the nodding of her head, the greyhaired woman peddled the spinning wheel. Jakob had no idea that it was Frau Hulle that was approaching him.

The good hearted old lady wanted to know why Jakob had been crying so bitterly.
'What do you care of my fate. You can't help me.'

Frau Hulle replied:
'You're 'Twisted Jakob' from the Schellenberg castle, aren't you? I know you and your wicked brother. I can help you if you trust me.'

Her words went straight to twisted Jakob's heart as they were the first kind words he'd heard since his father had passed away.
'My brother forced me to eat with the dogs from their feeding bowl! And when I went to ask for my portion of the inheritance, he threw me like a beggar from my father's castle!'

The old lady comforted him:
'Come with me, after exactly three years, we'll go to see your brother again. Perhaps he'll repent in the meantime and give you what's rightfully yours.'

Jakob agreed immediately and Frau Hulle took him with her to her house and Jakob quickly became her indispensable helper. In the summer he cultivated her flax field, cut fence posts in the winter for the vineyard farmers and sail masts for boatmen. Frau Hulle was occupied for the entire time with her spinning wheel.

In the spring, the pair brought their wares to the Main to sell. If Jakob found it became too difficult to carry the fence posts and sail masts because of his lameness, then the good Frau Hulle would take them from him with her scrawny arms and throw them into her shoulder basket as though they were little more than bails of straw. Between Hasloch and Faulbach there was a stone on the way where they would stop to rest each time and in the place where Frau Hulle would lay down her shoulder basket, there are indents in the path from the weight of that load that are still there to see to this day.

Jakob did all he could for Frau Hulle and she taught him everything that there was to know about farming, so that in the end, he understood the land better than one who was born a farmer.

When the three years were up, Frau Hulle told him that they were going to see his brother that day and immediately picked up her distaff, put on her shoulder basket and together they set off for the castle.

When they arrived, they found the wicked brother sitting lazily under the linden tree. Seeing their approach, he asked them what they wanted. Frau Hulle's voice was authorative as she spoke:
'You know exactly what you are guilty of when it comes to your brother. Today we want you to finally give him his rightful inheritance!'

The firstborn brother arrogantly replied:
'If you don't leave and go back to where you came from, I'll rip your wobbly head off and as for 'Twisted Jakob', I'll lame his other leg!'

The old lady was so angry, she took her distaff and stabbed it into the linden tree. At that moment the birds flew away and from the roots to the highest branches the tree began to tremble – from the roots to the branches, the life's blood of the old tree began to drip onto the floor. Soon, the leaves turned brown and fell off.

Frau Hulle shouted:
'Unspeakable one! As with the linden tree, so shall it be for you and the castle too!! You will whither and nevermore know luck!'

With those words, she and Jakob turned and left the castle.

As predicted, so it happened and the castle began to wither away little by little as the linden tree had. Every storm brought the fall of a tower or wall, the rain soaked the roof tiles away and soon the roof trusses became dilapidated. The servants no longer wanted to live in the castle and in the end, only the lord was left living in the cellar where he would sit on his wooden coffer keeping a jealous watch.
At midnight, on the feast of St Martin (11/11) there was a great storm and the withered linden tree finally fell – exactly on the cellar door, blocking the exit. The wicked brother pushed with all his might but the door would not move even the smallest amount. As the the Schellenberg had already been abandoned by all who had lived there, there was noone left to hear his cries for help and so he was left to starve to death on his chest of gold.

Frau Hulle however, knew exactly what had happened and the day after the death of the firstborn son, she went into the courtyard, cleared away the linden tree and opened the gold chest. She divided the brothers' inheritance exactly and put what was rightfully Jakobs into her large purse. At the exact moment when she left the cellar, it collapsed in on itself and she went back to her house.

There, she spoke with Jakob:
'Now, each person has what is his, just as your father decreed. Take what is yours, however being a nobleman no longer has meaning for you. Become a farmer and you will be blessed with yet more luck. Live well and you will never see me again.'

Jakob took his leave and from the money, built a beautiful farm on the Hunsrueck mountain range near Altenbuch. He married a nice lady and fathered many sons and daughters. His barn saw no pestilence and his fruit trees stayed free from caterpillars. Nor did a single hailstorm come over his fields. At harvest time, sometimes Jakob would find that the work had already been done when he came to his fields early in the morning. The sheaves would already be cut, bound and put into piles. His neighbours would then puzzle over who had done such a good thing for him but only Jakob knew that it was Frau Hulle that she was still by his side.

When his first son was born, the happy Jakob decided he should try to find Frau Hulle to tell her of his luck and so he took to the road. He searched the whole day but could find neither the little house where she had lived, nor valley where the little house had been. In the evening, tired he set out for his farm again.

In the end, Jakob died at a very good age. His farm and courtyard still stand to this day and are owned by a farmer by the name of Hunruecks-Philipp.

From the book 'Es Spukt in Franken' by Michael Proettel,
Translation by Catherine Heath

Introduction To The Anglo Saxon Magico-Medical Healing Traditions

2010-12-29T14:21:00.000-08:00

(This is something I wrote after a member of a forum I'm on PMed me and said he didn't understand a lot of my references)

Foreword
Britain in the early 5th century was a very uncertain place to be. The Roman legions were returning to Rome and the Pax Romana that the Romano-Britons had lived by for around five hundred years began to crumble. Civil wars broke out and the Picts, long held at the northern borders of the Roman empire, began to pose a significant security threat. In light of this, the British invited warriors from the peoples that would come to be known as Anglo Saxons to defend them. Mostly the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes. They were to be the ‘foedorati’, or paid muscle for the Britons, a practice they had learned from the Romans.

This would turn out to be a fateful decision on the part of the Britons. According to the British cleric Gildas, these ‘foedorati’ mutinied in 442AD due to lack of payment and after much fighting, eventually went on to invade and settle the area that came to be known as England.

England was a rich land for the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, it was good land for growing crops and they sorely needed that. Due to climate change in the 5th century, their homelands had become wetter, flooding often and it had become increasingly difficult to grow crops.

How much the culture of the Germanic invaders was to supersede the culture of the Britons is still a matter of intense debate with the ‘traditional’ view leaning towards the Anglo Saxons annihilating the Britons and driving them to the Western and Northern areas of the island and the newer theories based on genetic evidence, grave evidence and linguistics take the view that it wasn’t so much of a complete annihilation of the Britons. Rather a merging of cultures.

However regardless of the various theories surrounding the Anglo Saxon migration and settlement of England, the Anglo Saxon period was to be significant in many ways. This essay will focus on one of those ways – that of the Anglo Saxon magico-medical healing traditions.

I would like to stress to the reader that this essay is merely what it says it is, an introduction. It is by no means exhaustive and it is written by a person with a love and a passion for the topic as opposed to a scholar. Having said that, I hope you find this subject just as interesting as I do and if you spot any errors or you can think of something that it would behoove me to add, please don’t hesitate to contact me and let me know.

What is meant by the term ‘Magico-Medical’?

In the modern western world, we tend to have a fixed idea of illness as being a physical thing and therefore only treatable by medical means. When we fall sick, we go to the doctors, the doctor may do some physical tests and then prescribe a form of treatment .

This is a drastically different view from what we know of how the Anglo Saxons saw illness and the treatment thereof. For the Anglo-Saxon without modern medical knowledge, medicine revolved not only around the use of herbs, but also tended to include a magical component.

This magical component, is quite surprisingly found not only in cures believed to have originated in the Heathen period, but also in very overtly Christian cures as well. The Anglo Saxon Christians really did not seem to have a problem with the concept of magical healing charms when they called upon the Christian god or used Christian sacraments.

Why focus on the Anglo Saxon healing traditions?

One of the things that some scholars believe the Anglo Saxons to have adopted from the Britons was the idea of a literary tradition. The tribes that made up the Anglo Saxons are believed to have had an oral tradition whereas the Britons had a very developed literary tradition. This was something that the Anglo Saxons adopted and took to like ducks to water. They went from an oral culture to one that wrote pretty much everything down. They were quite unique among the Germanic peoples as well because they were the only ones to record their healing practices in detail and not only that, but they recorded them in an instructional fashion so that people might benefit from what they believed to be good cures.

Were they good cures? Can I try them out at home?

The writers of the various Anglo Saxon healing manuals obviously thought so however as with all old herbals, it is best to be very cautious in trying out the treatments. Some herbs that were recommended for various illnesses are now known to be dangerous, some are best as ‘wound herbs’, some have unpleasant side effects and some are abortive. It is best to only use herbs that you know and have researched however that’s not to say that the charms cannot be adapted if you so wish.

How did the Anglo Saxons see sickness?

Well we know that the Anglo Saxon Leeches (medics) didn’t just work from northern European lore, we know that books such as Pliny’s ‘Natural History’ and Old English translations of Apuleius’s ‘Herbarium Apulet’ and the ‘Medicina de Quadrupedibus’ were known in Anglo Saxon England and so we have to assume that the Anglo Saxons would have been aware of the four ‘humours’ theory.

The theory of the Four humours centres around the idea that a person is made up of four ‘humours’ or liquids of the body (blood, phlegm, red/yellow bile and black bile) and that balance has to be sought between those humours in order to maintain good health.

The second influence on the way that the Anglo Saxons saw sickness were Judeo-Christian sources that basically gives the interpretation that all human suffering was attributable to human evil and was a way for god to test a person’s faith or punish them for previous sins. This school of thought held that prayer, intercession of the saints and sometimes pilgrimage was all that should be needed for a cure. In the very strictest form of this view, even herbs were to be shunned in the search for relief. Obviously judging by the amount of material that was written about healing charms, not everybody took this view.

The third influence was naturally that of the healing traditions that were native to the Anglo Saxons. From what we can tell from the sources, the Anglo Saxons recognized three kinds of cause for illness.

The first is invasion of the body from an outside source. This could be anything from a wound from a weapon or a serpent bite to being ‘elfshot’ (elves were believed to shoot darts or arrows at people) or hit by ‘flying venom’ loose in the land(infectious disease).

The second cause was believed to be anything that subtracted from the ‘wholeness’ of a person. This could be a supernatural being that would attack a person, poison them but feed off their vital force at the same time thus leaving them sick. It is worth noting that there are links between the Old English words for ‘whole’ and ‘health’. To heal someone is quite simply to make them whole again.

The third cause of illness was believed to be a disturbance in the balance of the body. This could be treated by taking steps to restore and re-affirm the true balance. Some of these conditions were linked to ‘deoflas’ (Christian devils) or ‘ylfe’ (elves).

What are the key points of Anglo Saxon magico-medicine?

Anglo Saxon magico-medicine tended to mix an extensive use of herbs with magical aspects such as narrative charms (another word for a verbal charm is ‘galdor’). These charms are called ‘narrative’ because quite simply, they tell a story of wounding/sickness and cure. One excellent example of this is the charm ‘Wið Fæstice’ (against a sudden stitch – elfshot):

Against a sudden stitch: feverfew and the red nettle which grows in through a building and waybread; boil in butter:
“Loud were they, lo loud, when they rode over the mound,
they were fierce when they rode over the land.
Shield yourself now that you may escape this evil.
Out, little spear, if herein you be!
Stood under linden, under a light shield,
where the mighty women readied their power,
and they screaming spears sent.
I back to them again will send another,
a flying dart against them in return.
Out, little spear, if herein it be!
Sat a smith, forged he a knife,
little iron strong wound.
Out, little spear, if herein it be!
Six smiths sat, war-spears they made.
Out, spear, not in, spear!
If herin be a bit of iron,
hag's [haegtesse] work, it shall melt.
If you were in the skin shot, or were in flesh shot,
or were in the blood shot, or were in bone shot,
or were in limb shot, may your life never be torn apart.
If it were ’sir shot, or it were elves' shot,
or it were hag's shot, now I will help you.
This your remedy for ’sir shot, this your remedy for Elves' shot;
This your remedy for hag's shot; I will help you.
It fled there into the mountains. . . . no rest had it.
Whole be you now! Lord help you!”

Then take the knife, dip in liquid.
- Lacnunga 134-135

Some of the charms in the various Old English texts include acts of a clearly magical nature but don’t have an accompanying verbal formula. One such example of this is to be found in Bald’s Leechbook – Book III:

‘2. For swollen eyes, take a living raven, take the eyes out of it and, still living, bring it into water, and put the eyes on the neck of the man to whom they are needful, he will soon be hale.’

Taking the eyes of the raven in order to cure the eyes of a person has absolutely no medical benefit however when one considers how reputedly sharp-eyed ravens are, it becomes obvious that this section of the second charm in book III of Bald’s Leechbook is a form of sympathetic magic.

In certain charms, repetition of certain acts and prayers is an important factor. The most common numbers that I have found for repetition in any kind of discernible pattern seem to be the numbers three, four, seven and nine.

Three seems to be ‘the magic number’, from a survey of the Lacnunga text, out of the one hundred and ninety-four charms contained within, twenty-nine of them have the number three included. Seven of those charms pertain to the dosage of the herbal substances, one of those charms recommends that the treatment last three days. The rest recommend that the galdor or prayers used be chanted three times. Sometimes, this is three different prayers chanted three times.

The number four is found in two charms in the Lacnunga and both involve curing infectious diseases, or ‘flying poison’.

The number seven occurs twice in the Lacnunga and is linked to purification and holiness. Charm number ninety-three recommends that seven sacramental wafers be inscribed with the names of the Seven Sleepers from Christian legend. As the charm is against dwarves and the Seven Sleepers were said to have slept in a cave without aging, it would make sense that those in fear of dwarves would call upon what they perceive to be holiness that was untouched in the dwarves’ domain. The second mention of the number seven pertains to purifying an infection. The word ‘dwarf’ seems to have been polysemous for the Anglo Saxons and could also refer to forms of illness.

The number nine occurs fifteen times in the text. In nine of those examples, the number nine is used in conjunction with treating skin growths or inflammations. In one of the examples, it’s part of a blessing used before drinking, sometimes the number nine also refers to the length of time that a treatment should be carried out for. One of the most interesting charms in which the number nine is significant is charm number one hundred and sixty-two which involves counting down from nine as a way to symbolize the shrinking process.

‘Against a swelling: “Nine were the sisters of noðþ; then the nine became eight, and the eight to seven, and the seven to six, and the six to five, and the five to four, and the four to three, and the three to two and the two to one, and the one to none”; this shall be the treatment of a swelling and of scrofula, and of a worm and of every evil; sing “ benedicite” nine times.” ’

One of the most striking things about a lot of the charms in the various Anglo Saxon texts is the use of various Christian sacraments and prayers as the magical component in the charms. There are mentions of sacramental wafer, the housel-dish, blessed wine, holy water, chanting the ‘Pater Noster’ a certain number of times, the ‘Benedicite’. Some charms such as the three prayers given in charms sixty-four, sixty-five and sixty-six are to be sung three times over a drink ‘and the man’s breath shall go wholly into the liquid while he sings it’.

One charm that demonstrates the use of Christian sacrament and tradition in an Anglo Saxon magico-medical context is charm number ninety-three:

‘Against a dwarf: one must take seven small sacramental wafers such as one offers mass with, and write those names on each wafer. Maximianus Malchus Johannes Martinianus Dioysius Constantinius Serafion. Then again the charm that is stated hereafter must be sung, first into the left ear, then into the right, then above the man’s pate; then have a virgin go to him and hang it about his neck, and do likewise for three days, soon it shall be better for him.

In came a spider creature/he had his mantle in his hand, said that you were his steed/laid his thong on your neck and they began to travel out of the land/as soon as they came away from the land, then their limbs began to cool/ then came in [?]’s sister/then she finished and swore oaths/that this should never ail the sick/nor whomever might understand this charm/nor whoever might intone this charm. Amen, let it be. Here are leechdoms against eruptions and swellings and deadly illnesses of every kind. Twenty-Eight.’

What can we learn about Anglo Saxon Heathenry and magic from the magico-medical traditions?

Anglo Saxon charms may seem quite Christian in nature however we can maybe extrapolate and piece together some of the methods and beliefs that the Heathen Anglo Saxons had from other Germanic sources. Some of the correlations, such as the use of numbers for certain purposes may be indicative of previous significance and associations to the Heathen Anglo Saxons. Some of the charms are quite explicit in their Heathen content too, especially the Nine Herbs Charm’ or the charm that counts down in order to shrink a swelling or the famous Acerbot (Field-Remedy) invocation:
“Erce, Erce, Erce,
Earthen Mother.
May the all-powerful, eternal ruler
grant thee
acres fruitful
and flourishing,
increasing
and strengthening,
in high condition,
in bright abundance,
and the broad
barleycrops,
and the white
corncrops,
and all
earthly abundance.
Grant to him,
eternal ruler
(and his holy ones
who in heaven are),
that his ploughing be protected
against any and all enemies
and it be guarded
against each and every evil,
against those spells
sown through the land.
Now I bid the ruler
who shaped this world,
that neither the conjuring woman
nor the cunning man should
make any changes
to the words thus spoken.
Hale be you, earth,
mortals’ mother!
Be you growing
in the god[dess]’s grasp,
filled with food,
useful for folk. “

When examining these examples from Anglo Saxon charms, one good way of ascertaining how much is Christian and how much comes from older material, is to try and see if there are any other sources that back up the concept or ritual as being older.

One example of another text backing up this idea of worshipping an earth mother is Tacitus’s ‘Germania’:

‘There follow in order the Reudignians, and Aviones, and Angles, and Varinians, and Eudoses, and Suardones and Nuithones; all defended by rivers or forests. Nor in one of these nations does aught remarkable occur, only that they universally join in the worship of Herthum; that is to say, the Mother Earth.’

Another thing to keep in mind when examining sources, is who you are reading. This can be really important because nothing is infallible. Authors have biases and spin really isn’t a new thing.

Of course, the sources don’t always back each other up. For example, in Nordic mythology there are nine worlds on the world tree, however the ‘Nine Herbs Charm’ tells us that there are seven:

‘Chervil and fennel, two of great might
The wise Lord shaped these plants
While he was hanging ,holy in the heavens
He set them and sent them into the seven worlds’

Just as a matter of casual interest, this area of disagreement between the numbers seven and nine seems to have continued to the present day between German speakers and(quite confusingly) English speakers. For example, in Germany a cat is considered to have seven lives, whereas in England it has nine. A German speaker might say that they are on ‘cloud seven’, whereas an English speaker would say ‘cloud nine’.

What is the ‘Nine Herbs Charm’?

The charm that came to be known as the ‘Nine Herbs Charm’ is made up of verses 8o and 80 of the Lacnunga. It is a narrative charm that addresses each of the ‘power’ plants in turn giving their attributes and the story behind their power.

“Remember, Mugwort, what you made known,
What you arranged at the Great proclamation.
You were called Una, the oldest of herbs,
you have power against three and against thirty,
you have power against poison and against infection,
you have power against the loathsome foe roving through the land.

And you, Plantain, mother of herbs,
Open from the east, mighty inside.
over you chariots creaked, over you queens rode,
over you brides cried out, over you bulls snorted.
You withstood all of them, you dashed against them.
May you likewise withstand poison and infection
and the loathsome foe roving through the land.
'Stune' is the name of this herb, it grew on a stone,
it stands up against poison, it dashes against poison,
it drives out the hostile one, it casts out poison.
This is the herb that fought against the snake,
it has power against poison, it has power against infection,
it has power against the loathsome foe roving through the land.
Put to flight now, Venom-loather, the greater poisons,
though you are the lesser,
you the mightier, conquer the lesser poisons, until he is cured of both.
Remember, Chamomile, what you made known,
what you accomplished at Alorford,
that never a man should lose his life from infection
after Chamomile was prepared for his food.
This is the herb that is called 'Wergulu'.
A seal sent it across the sea-right,
a vexation to poison, a help to others.
it stands against pain, it dashes against poison,
it has power against three and against thirty,
against the hand of a fiend and against mighty devices,
against the spell of mean creatures.
There the Apple accomplished it against poison
that she [the loathsome serpent] would never dwell in the house.
Chervil and Fennell, two very mighty one.
They were created by the wise Lord,
holy in heaven as He hung;
He set and sent them to the seven worlds,
to the wretched and the fortunate, as a help to all.
These nine have power against nine poisons.
A worm came crawling, it killed nothing.
For Woden took nine glory-twigs,
he smote the the adder that it flew apart into nine parts.

Now there nine herbs have power against nine evil spirits,
against nine poisons and against nine infections:
Against the red poison, against the foul poison.
against the yellow poison, against the green poison,
against the black poison, against the blue poison,
against the brown poison, against the crimson poison.
Against worm-blister, against water-blister,
against thorn-blister, against thistle-blister,
against ice-blister, against poison-blister.
Against harmfulness of the air, against harmfulness of the ground,
agaist harmfulness of the sea.
If any poison comes flying from the east,
or any from the north, [or any from the south,]
or any from the west among the people.
Christ stood over diseases of every kind.
I alone know a running stream,
and the nine adders beware of it.
May all the weeds spring up from their roots,
the seas slip apart, all salt water,
when I blow this poison from you.

Mugwort, plantain open form the east, lamb's cress, venom-loather, camomile, nettle, crab-apple, chevil and fennel, old soap; pound the herbs to a powder, mix them with the soap and the juice oaf the apple.
Then prepare a paste of water and of ashes, take fennel, boil it with the paste and wash it with a beaten egg when you apply the salve, both before and after.

Sing this charm three times on each of the herbs before you (he) prepare them, and likewise on the apple. And sing the same charm into the mouth of the man and into both his ears, and on the wound, before you (he) apply the salve.”

What is récels?

Récels is simply the Anglo Saxon word for incense (vb. récelsian – to perfume/fumigate with incense).

Many people associate incense and especially fumigating a person as a form of healing ritual more with the new age movement than with any kind of Germanic practice. There are however a few references to incense, appropriate incense for different purposes and fumigating a patient as part of the healing in book III of Bald’s Leechbook.

Charm number sixty-two recommends this kind of practice as part of a treatment for ‘Elfsickness’.
When it comes to the patient, we are advised 'geréc þone man mid þám wyrtum' (smoke that man with the herbs).

Herbs that were generally used depending on purpose were fennel, wormwood, mugwort, hops, vervain, bilberry shoots, betony, leeks, garlic, enchanter's nightshade, and burdock.

There's also advice given in the same charm on how to prepare the incense”

‘do aelcre handfulle . bebind ealle þa wyrta on claþe bedyp on fontwaetre gehalgodum þriwa . Eft wit þon, lege under weofod þas wyrte laet gesingan ofer,’ . (Take a handful of each, bind all of the herbs in cloth, dip into hallowed spring-water three times. After this, against that (illness), lay these herbs under an altar and let them be sung over.)

There is further advice which some in the new age community might find a little familiar-sounding in some ways:

‘7 þonne he restan wille haebbe gleda þaerinne lege stor 7 alfþonan on ta gleda . 7 rec hine mid þaet he swaete 7 þaet hus geond rec.’ (And when he wishes to rest, have coals brought in there and lay incense and elfthon on the coals, and fumigate him with that so he sweats and fumigate around the house.)

What are the modern uses for Anglo Saxon magico-medical lore?

To put it simply, it’s up to you but again, I would advise caution when using herbs if you do not know what you are doing. Personally I tend to pay attention to things like how a charm is written and use them as models with which I can write my own. I pay attention to the numbers, to the things that may seem kind of quirky but that have similarities with other magical traditions and folklore that I know such as purification through running water. I sing over my herbs, I make herbal mixes that I sing over and then mop them into the floors of the house as a form of purification. I periodically use certain herbs as recels when needed. I look at existing charms and try to figure out new uses and applications.

Tradition has power and the first time you sing or chant a charm that’s over a thousand years old in a tongue that hasn’t been spoken for so long, you feel it. It’s different and it’s familiar all at the same time.

Afterword

This essay has now come to an end and there is perhaps nothing left to say but that I hope you found this interesting, that maybe you feel it’s interesting enough to start looking into this for yourself and to leave you with the traditional Anglo Saxon greeting/wish.

Wæs þu hæl!/Be whole!

Labyrinths

2010-11-28T13:33:00.000-08:00

'Im Labyrinth, verliert man sich nicht (You don't lose yourself in the Labyrinth)
Im Labyrinth, findet man sich (You find yourself)
Im Labyrinth begegnet man nicht dem Minotaurus (You don't face the minotaur in the labyrinth)
Im Labyrinth begegnet man sich selbst' (You face yourself)

-Hermann Kern

This is what is written on a sign outside the Labyrinth at the Erloeserkirche here in Bamberg. It's a simple labyrinth in church grounds that noone ever seems to walk. The words that you read before you go in hold one of the deepest truths about labyrinths and hints at the confusing nature of the legend of the minotaur in the labyrinth. There is no puzzle to entering and leaving a labyrinth, it is not a maze, there is only one way in and one way out. You cannot get lost physically. There would be no need for string to mark the way and a labyrinth certainly wouldn't trap a minotaur. So one has to really wonder what the myth was hinting at (or if the author was just confusing terminology).

Labyrinths are one of those things that have existed in so many cultures throughout the ages and in so many contexts. In Scandinavia, there are literally hundreds of labyrinths in coastal areas that people would walk before going to sea to 'rid themselves of trolls' or bad luck. There are tales of games played in labyrinths in which involve boys trying to rescue a girl from the middle of the labyrinth.

When people walk a labyrinth, they do it in any number of ways. Some folks like to be complex, build chants, hold hands, do it in a group, others like to read while walking but for me, this misses the point of what the labyrinth is about.

For me, the labyrinth is about silence and what you might face in the silence. When we become silent, even if it is only for long enough to walk a hypnotic pattern in the earth, we open ourselves up to ourselves. It's one of those times when we actually listen to ourselves, confront our thoughts and feelings. For me, the pattern, the hypnotic twists and turns is like a 'fast track' to clarity. Solutions we may not have thought of before may become clear, things that burdened us might suddenly have a resolution and you may leave the labyrinth feeling lighter or having come to some conclusion for how to deal with what it is that is bothering you.

People find silence scary. Today when I walked the labyrinth, my friend came with and experienced a labyrinth for the first time. Afterwards when we were in the cafe warming up, she told me that she'd felt a little reticent to walk it because of the silence and that she never got into meditation because the idea of silence is daunting - you never know what might come out of that silence.

And that's an interesting point, from nothing there is always something. It's not so much an emptiness as potential. Unbidden thoughts, dredged up feelings from the past and sometimes, just sometimes, voices that aren't your own and can't quite be explained.

Today it was a certain song for me. A song I sing for home ringing clear and glorious in the silence of my mind, an internal soundtrack providing peace.

Reconstructionism and Seidhr

2010-10-18T11:48:00.000-07:00

During my 15 or so years firstly as a proto-Heathen and then eventually as a Heathen, I've seen a lot of change come about. For me, first it was looking for the tiniest mentions of Northern European lore in my hometown's rather...*ahem*...backwoods library and then came the internet. Now the internet opened so much up, especially for those of us that came from places that hadn't really progressed from being Victorian mill towns. For some reason at this point, more or less all the Heathens online seemed to have names that included the names of gods or goddesses and almost everything was on an angelfire or geocities site. Things were terribly fluffy.

At the time, there really wasn't that much information out there about Seidhr and what there was had very little connection to anything in the lore or worldview of the Heathen period. It's my belief that this particular issue has plagued Seidhr ever since.

Now I'll lay it out there, I'm one of those freaky, deaky people that does nutty things like mound sitting or spending the night in bronze age burial chambers, however about three years ago, my view of these magical practices began to change and I started to look at Seidhr from a reconstructionist angle. And so began an area of study that I'm probably going to be digging into for at least the next twenty years. From my studies in Seidhr from a reconstructionist point of view, I've come to certain conclusions when it comes to the role of Seidhr in communities and how Seidhr is often practiced today.

The first conclusion is that magic and the supernatural were part of the Heathen period worldview. How many occurrences of magic and supernatural are there in the Eddas, Sagas and contemporary accounts? And how many occurrences are there of people saying 'What a load of bollocks! Piss off and stop chatting shit!' (or words to that effect)? No, they generally took it seriously, even if it was just to put a sealskin bag over its head and clobber it to death with rocks (as in the Eyrbyggja Saga). So if we really are to reconstruct a Heathen worldview, surely it then follows that magic and the supernatural would be a part of that?

The second conclusion is that each person had a role(s) and a function(s) in their community, i.e each person had skills that they could bring to the table that made them useful and valuable. Survival from winter to winter wasn't a guaranteed thing and people would utilize the skills that got them through.Seidhworkers were no different. In the lore, magic isn't done out of a sense of altruism but for some kind of reward (1), revenge(2), to protect family or oneself(3). It's a commodity that can be traded just like any other. It wasn't some higher calling, it didn't mean that the practitioner was going to be 'closer to the Gods' or whatever. It was just that some folks had the knack for it, kind of like some folks have the knack for playing the piano or brewing the best beer or mead. In the words of Tyler Durden from Chuck Palahniuk's 1996 book Fight Club:

'You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile.'

The third conclusion is that, while mostly liminal characters, people that were known to be skilled in Seidr, *were* able to form parts of the communities they inhabited(4) although not all of them chose to do so and in some cases, are believed to have formed their own communities(5).

The forth conclusion is that the Heathen period worldview was world-accepting, rather than world-rejecting and therefore any magical system that is a part of that worldview must also be world-accepting. Modern ideas about travelling off to different worlds and going gallivanting with the gods or after some concept of enlightenment are not world-accepting in nature (or at least accepting of this world right here) and therefore could not have been a part of the Heathen period worldview.

So now that we've cheerfully ruled out big chunks of what constitutes modern Seidhr practice (e.g altruistically 'seeing for the people', trance journeys to the gates of Hel, going to natter with the gods etc), what's left? And how can Reconstructionism and Seidhr be combined?

There are certain aspects of modern Seidhr practice that do stick quite close to the lore but this does vary from group to group. Some groups try to reconstruct the high seat ritual as described in Erik the Red's Saga, even down to the clothes the seer wears and the description of the staff. Other groups only do this to a point and substitute what they feel has been lost in the sands of time with other techniques. That these techniques are usually of the world-rejecting variety doesn't seem to be an issue to the groups that employ them. While I am the first to admit that we don't have enough detail to reconstruct Seidhr in its entirety with any degree of accuracy and that some aspects would need to be created anew, I do believe that it is imperative to try and reconstruct as much of the period worldview as possible, and then create anew the aspects of Seidhr that are lost through the medium of that worldview.

Now this may seem a rather strange concept that Reconstructionism can also work for Seidhr, but why should it be? Some groups already reconstruct to a point, but why not take it further than what the Volva wore or how her staff looked? Why not look to what was actually considered Seidhr in the lore, find examples and study the recorded charms we do have in depth? Why not look at the way they were written, at any meters and language used and why not try to write your own? Why not go through those charms with a fine tooth comb and try and see if you can find shreds of Heathen worldview and then try to back it up with other examples? Why not look at the different theories that scholars are bringing forward about Seidhr, such as Eldar Heide's theory about Seidhr as a form spinning magic? Why not take it a bit further and pick up a drop spindle and learn to spin, go into that trance and try the theory out? Why not experiment?

And yes, it is a very subjective game. However how is it any different from Heathens standing at blot and 'feeling the presence' of the gods or that their offerings have been accepted? Do we have scientific proof of those things either? Do we have scientific proof that killing that animal there as an offering to the gods and splashing its blood on the congregation will ensure that our luck as a community will grow, that the gods wanted some rabbit or whatever in the first place or getting splashed with blood will mean that we're blessed?

Of course we don't have any proof for that,but that's where we cross into the domain of faith and UPG (Unverified Personal Gnosis). In my opinion, this is a key part of Reconstructionism in general. We do the research, we reconstruct, we experiment and see if it works out to our satisfaction.

Why should Seidhr be any different?

References/Examples:

1. Thorbjorg, 'Erik The Red's Saga' chapter 4, offered her services in exchange for hospitality during the winter in a time of famine.
2. Thurid, 'Grettis Saga' chapter 78, cursed Grettir after he threw a huge stone at the boat that she was in and it broke her thigh. Gunnhildr, 'The Saga of Egil Skallagrimson' chapter 59, brings Egil to York by Seid spell, argues for his death and then changes into a sparrow and twitters incessantly to spoil his concentration when trying to write his 'Head Ransom Poem'.
3. Katla, 'Eyrbyggja Saga' chapter 20, manipulates the perceptions of Arnkel and Thorarin to hide her son, Odd.
4. Thordis from 'Vatnsdaela Saga' uses her seership skills to help out at legal cases and then uses Seidr to get both parties to accept the solutions she gives them.
5. See 'Gods and Worshippers' pages 110 - 126 by Thor Ewing. Also references in Lokasenna to Volvas on Samsey. 'King Olaf Trygvason's Saga Part II' chapter 69, Olaf goes to Tunsberg to wipe out male Seidhmenn, of which there seems to be a high number living in the area.

Balance Series 1: Gender Roles in Heathenry

2010-10-06T08:19:00.001-07:00

A few years ago, I did security for a Pagan event in England called Pagancon. Now in England, there doesn't seem to be the same divide between Pagans and Heathens as there does elsewhere. We all tend to socialize together but do our rituals and have our study groups separately and so there was a good mix of different Pagan 'paths' at this event. It was the second day of the event and after a rather stressful morning that involved stopping an impending altercation between a man in a cape and about twenty, large, rugby lads, I'd managed to get hold of a rather nice drinking horn. I went to the bathroom to clean it out and I came across this lady in there, who, on seeing the hammer, first asked me if I was an Odinist.

'Nay lass' said I. 'I prefer the term Heathen.'

Then she looked at me awkwardly, almost as though she was uncomfortable with what she was going to ask next.

'But...but...isn't that a terribly sexist path for a woman to be in?'

At the time, I defended Heathenry. I told her about strong goddesses and strong women, about women in Northern Europe having more rights than their counterparts elsewhere and about modern Heathen women being respected by Heathen men. For her part, she looked at me with pity, as if I was somehow deluded.

But now I'm not so sure if I was or not. Looking at the wider Heathen community, I see so many ideas and so much bad behaviour from Heathen men towards the women in the community that just scream 'imbalance'.

For me, the biggest imbalance for Heathen women is the overall lack of knowledge that Heathens have about the roles, rituals and rights of women during the Heathen period. People just tend to leave it at 'women had the babies or did the Seidr and they're cool' and leave it at that. Conversely, there is so much discussion out there about the various roles that men held - especially when it comes to the role of warrior (and shock horror, the Viking), so much so that it's become our stereotype. When outsiders think of Heathenry, they tend to think of it only in terms of being a warrior religion, but what of the farmers, the craftsmen, the traders, the fishermen, the businessmen and women, the travellers, the thinkers, the wives, the husbands, the poets, the writers, the children and every other role/s that a person can hold in a society?

Thankfully, farmers are receiving more of a mention nowadays, but still, that the gender roles only seem to boil down to warrior/farmer or mother/Seidkona as far as the wider community is concerned seems a little myopic to me. We need to look much deeper.

And we're already seeing the effects of these ideas, especially when it comes to women and some of the behaviours I've heard of being used against women to get them to conform to the ideas that each particular community has about what women should be and how we should behave. The following is a list of examples that I or Heathen women that I know have come across:

* Being ignored or cut out of participating in more scholarly conversation topics. Or a 'Ok, now the 'estrogen' has left, we can talk about serious stuff' kind of attitude

* Being subjected to personal abuse for daring to (politely) disagree with a man about a point of lore when in the same conversation, a man can express the same disagreement and in the same way and get a perfectly peaceable response.

* People addressing your husband and asking them about you when you're standing right there and obviously capable of answering for yourself. Or asking your husband if they are allowed to speak to you or friend you on Facebook (well after all...we're the property of our men, right? Duh!).

* People mailing your husband when you disagree with them to complain about you and then wishing your husband 'luck in being married to you/that' after he tells them that they deserved what they got for their rudeness.

* Being subjected to peer pressure to have children and conform to this role of being a motherly 'peace-weaver' type.

* Unmarried women receiving messages about how they need to hurry up and get married or they'll be too old to have children and then will be therefore 'too old' to marry and what about 'breeding for your folk'?

* Judgmental comments that imply a link between childlessness and lack of worth in community.

And of course, most of the people that display these behaviours and communities in which these behaviours are prevalent also usually claim to respect women and sometimes will even wax lyrical about how great Heathen women are (within the confines of the aforementioned gender roles, of course).

One typical example of this kind of thing is this note.

The author probably thought he was being complimentary in writing this but there are so many flaws, so much that is based around the idea that the woman is the 'helpmeet' of the man and it's scarily very much focused on the idea of the woman as a mother. In fact the author refers to the woman's role as childbearer in relation to no less than five of the 'Nine Noble Virtues'(as he has written them 'for women'). And yes, while it cannot be disputed that childbearing did play a huge part in a woman's life back then, was that her only role? Nothing more than a baby-machine with no views of her own that can only find freedom in widowhood or death in the childbed, always ready to lay back and think of Freyja whenever her big, hunky, viking comes by wanting to spill some seed?

Is our view of Heathen women really so one-dimensional?

Can a woman not be more than some compliant baby-machine that basically cleans and cooks for her man's comfort? And more to the point, what is the remedy for this imbalance?

As I have previously mentioned, Heathens in general are woefully ignorant of the 'Spindle side' when it comes to Heathenry and the rituals, history and roles that that entails. The current views that are prevalent when it comes to the roles of women are simply a symptom of this ignorance. I think it is also telling that these views are generally not held among Reconstructionist Heathens who are more concerned with building up a picture of community as a whole rather than just one particular, favoured role.

So, as with many other issues that we face, the key is education. The problem is how to encourage more people to look at the 'Spindle side' in any kind of depth.

Jinx Houses

2010-09-28T11:43:00.000-07:00

When I was growing up, I grew up with the concept of something called the 'jinx house'. Certain houses in my local area were known to be unlucky for people to live there. Bad things would happen to everyone that lived in those buildings and strangely enough, they seemed to always follow a theme. The house next door to my parent's house was one such house and people would quite literally stop taking care of themselves and destroy themselves unless someone stepped in. Another house in the locality is known for everyone who lives there getting into either messed up love affairs that mess them up or losing their relationships. Divorce after divorce after divorce.

As a child growing up with quite an acute awareness of the seen and the unseen worlds, this presented quite a unique set of challenges for my parents. I would see people in my room at night all the time and would scream the house down. I hated everything about those things, I hated the way the room would look different and then the cold that would sweep in and then the glimpses of things starting to appear (if I hadn't already ran out by then). Even worse was when something would just be there when I turned round. Things got so bad that I couldn't sleep without the dog in the room because I was just too scared. As I've previously mentioned, my father's family background has a strong spiritualist vein and he would try to explain things to me, tell me not to be afraid, that nothing could hurt me and that nothing bad could stay in our house because of all the love that our family had.

And it's true. I'm not trying to paint a picture of some kind of halcyon childhood but my parents did their utmost to do their best for me. They still do and I love them dearly. We still had a lot of ups and downs during my childhood, well that's just life, isn't it? But our family was very loving and our house was a very loving and happy environment. It's still the kind of house where you walk in and you're instantly comfortable, feeling safe and welcome.

When I was younger, I thought my dad's explanation about love being the key to keeping out horrible things was simplistic and 'fluffy', but during my time moving around and now, living in Army accommodation, I've found he was absolutely right.I live in a place of soul-less buildings, where transitory people, some with very little love in their lives, some with extreme psychological and emotional disturbances, some with horrible circumstances and some with all of the above live. Sometimes it feels as though the walls may as well be made from tears and anger.

Needless to say I have to work hard to keep our apartment cocooned from this. A lot of the things I do now are ingrained into my house cleaning routine and practices and done as a matter of course. My husband and I also have a very strong relationship but I think these buildings will be spoiled for years. I think if we were to live here for the next 50 years, it would still feel the same as now.

Naturally these places attract wights that aren't so nice and unfortunately they stick because there's nothing to prevent them from sticking. This seems to be worse in the barracks where the single soldiers live. These buildings are 'jinx houses', all of them. If you add someone in there with any level of sensitivity or openness to things beyond the mundane world, things really get crazy.

One of my husband's friends is going through this at the moment and it looks like we'll be going round to take a look and clear whatever it is.

I've cleared a few houses in my time and advised on plenty more, it's something people seem to come to me for and have done for years. Each case is different, with different origins, different factors, different behaviours and different 'cures'. I've come across everything from the terrifying to the tragic, to the almost comical in a really unintended way.

When a clearing has been successful, it's a wonderful feeling. The air feels so light, like you can breath again and it's like this 'lifting' that happens and continues to happen as the effects of the nastiness wear off over the course of a few days and peace is restored.

Unfortunately, because of the way these buildings are, if I were to get rid of the wights(using the word in the 'being with movement' sense) that are scaring him, the chances are that the best outcome I could hope for in this case would be a sense of emptiness.

Tracing Back The Strands

2010-07-10T01:08:00.000-07:00

I stand at the tree in the place
and I weave
The wind whips up, the rain comes down
Yet still I weave

I watch the weave grow, I chant
My fingers work
I'm wet and I'm cold
Yet I still work

It seems dark there in that high place
As I call out my wishes to the wind
I take the magic, gather it up
Then weave it all in

When it's done I take the cord
Apple tree to hand
The wind drops, the rain calms
We give our thanks to the land

Weeks later I found
What I wove had come to pass
It didn't work out how I'd wanted
I should have wove better than that

Instead of a panicked attempt
Of weaving on a train
When I made everything all the worse for me
To keep what could not be saved

I should have known better
But the stakes were too high for me
I'd tried to work against wyrd
But had I not, what kind of a mother would I have been?

Remember, Mugwort!!!

2010-07-09T15:46:00.001-07:00

I'm walking around a place called the Druidenhain. It may or may not have been a place where the druids worshipped but it's special all the same. There's an energy here, a vibe that you don't often find outside of the British Isles. It's never truly 'clear' here. It's hazy in a way that even my 'ignore everything possibly spooky' husband can't deny and things move around you.

You're never truly alone here but it's comfortable all the same.

The forest is welcoming in parts and forbidding in others. A mixture of 'good neighbourhoods' and 'bad'. The trees move here too, come to recline on rocks and if you look for long enough, sometimes you catch their faces in the bark. Most of them are nice but others are not so but I hold my ground all the same, sit on a rock and tell them that I'm not going to be a problem to them. I've come a long way.

People come here too, to do things not so dissimilar to what I do. They bend birch trees into living archways, leave offerings and write runes in the moss. So I tread with caution. These things are familiar and so I make sure I'm protected because who knows what I could trip off in a moment of carelessness? I use the archways as viewing places, I sit on a rock and sit so I can see both through an archway and normally too. Sometimes I see figures moving quickly. Small, some transparent and only able to be seen by the distortion of 'pixels' that they produce when they move, others strangely blue and others are small, black, shadow beings. It doesn't surprise me that they are there, those things are drawn to power. The blue one I'm not so sure of, but the others, yes.

I walk around and find nine different sticks, these are going to be used later.

I go to the place where I drummed the last time I came to the Druidenhain. When the song of my drum rang out loud and clear over the thudding of the beats. It'd been such a long time since I'd played my drum, I'd forgotten how beautiful a song he has.

I sit down and I mentally pull at the surrounding area. They're shy but soon my head begins to swim as I chant silently in German. I tell them I have nothing but respect for them and to please show themselves. I need more time but I don't have it. My friend's dog is getting restless and the others want to leave the place in which I could quite happily stay a whole day and so I take what I have and we make offerings to the land spirits of the forest.

After the blot, I take some private time and turn to go to a hidden place but not before a stick stops me. My husband says he hasn't a clue where it came from because it wasn't there before but it's just the right height for me and so I pick it up. I then bury the past. That particular past with a bit of work could help the area and the wights. What was my mistake could be their help.

We leave and I take my new stick. At home I notice carvings on the length of the staff and I'm not sure because of what others may have done and so I brew up mugwort just in case. I tell the herb to remember its words at the council and to use its power to help me, I sing the words onto the staff and make sure to breathe them onto the wood to give them life and then I sing runes. I guess only time will tell.

The Neubuerg Myth

2010-03-25T14:11:00.000-07:00

From 'Es Spukt in Franken' by Michael Prottel:

Neubürg was once known as the Home of Wotan. The nordic Allfather used to hold a council of the Gods every year between the twelve holy nights between Christmas and Epithany. There, all the Gods of the Germans would come together on Neubürg. They would sit on the mountain in golden thrones and were adorned with stars that they had brought down from the heavens. If the Gods had need of entertainment, then they would go hunting in Wotan's woods. As serving-folk, Wotan had twelve dwarves that lived inside the mountain. Aside from those dwarves, there were also twelve fiery men and twelve flower spirits that would stand at the side of his throne.

Every year at the Summer solstice, the Germans would make a pilgrimage there and would camp all the way round the base of the mountain. Only the priestess of Wotan alone lived upon the mountain. During the cultic festivals she would stand above them all upon the plateau and pray with raised hands to the father of the Gods. The Germans would then make a long procession in silence past the priestess. She would wander around the Neubürg seven times and invoke the blessing of the God. When they heard the roar of a storm, then it was believed that Wotan was approaching and everyone would throw themselves to the ground. They used to also believe that Wotan had buried his treasure inside the mountain however not one of the German Heathens would put touch spade to holy earth in search of those riches.

The last priestess of Wotan at Neuburg was called Wonnefried and she was a very devout woman. In her youth she had taken a vow of chastity in spite of being a very attractive woman. Every day at sunrise, she would pray to the heavens and at night she was the last person to make a circuit of Neuburg.

One year at the solstice festival, a man called Edron arrived at Wotan's mountain and almost as soon as the proud warrior saw Wonnefried, he fell in love with the priestess. After the festival, instead of moving off with the other tribespeople, he set up camp in a forest at the foot of the mountain. Each day the suitor would try and win the favour of Wonnefried. Wonnefried prayed to Wotan who wanted to give her the the strength to overcome this temptation. However she also came to be moved by Edron and so eventually allowed him to stay at her side if he also made a pledge of abstinence. Edron did so willingly and so the former warrior became priest at the side of the priestess. Often would they sit hand in hand at Wotan's altar worshipping the Allfather together.

Unfortunately this was not to last.

One day the first Christians came from the West trying through either words or other means of coercion to force the Germans to renounce their Gods. When the priestess heard that a tribe had sworn loyalty to the opponent of Wotan, she wanted to crush them at their heart and so convinced her friend Edron to lead an army of faithful against the Christians. Because of the circumstances, Wotan allowed them to give up their vows of chastity.

Edron strapped on his sword and hastily gathered the devotees of the old religion. However the Christians were already more numerous and the battle was already lost. Wonnefried and Edron mourned the many fallen, most of whom were followers of the old ways.

Then a rumour reached the priests of the old ways that the Christians would be coming in the following days to destroy the great altar of Wotan. In response, Wonnefried carried out the holy rites for the last time before embracing Edron and going with him to the highest stone on the highest side of the mountain. There the lovers kissed for the final time, entrusted their souls to Wotan and threw themselves off the mountain. The next morning, the Christians came and found their opponents lying dead on a rock, crowned with flowers placed there covertly during the night by followers of the old ways. Unmoved, the Christian priests destroyed Wotan's altar in the bright sunshine, throwing down the stones of the mountain.

Neubuerg: Autumn and Ostara

2010-03-25T13:53:00.000-07:00

Ostara

2010-03-23T07:32:00.001-07:00

On Sunday, my husband and I packed the dog into the car and took off to Neubuerg, partly to celebrate Ostara but mostly to just go back to the place and make offerings there because it's become a very spiritual place for J and I.

Neubuerg is a hill, a rather large 'tabletop' hill that overlooks villages, farmland and forests. Dotted throughout the landscape are the type of rock formations that seem to epitomise Franconian Switzerland. Naturally, as with all these hills, Neubuerg is steeped in folklore and its stories speak of a time when the tribes used to come from miles around to worship at what was then, a place of council for the Gods. There upon the mighty Neubuerg would the high priestess of Woden make her devotions to the God on behalf of the tribes and according to the local myths, it was like this year and and year out until the Christians came.

Neubuerg is a place where I feel such belonging and connection, there is such peace to be had there, such a sense of life and vibrancy. Admittedly not something normally connected with Woden but through Neubuerg I'm learning new aspects of a God that has inspired me for years.

On Sunday it was raining up there, but we didn't care because we had come prepared for it and it meant that the Christians were more likely to stay at home. You see, this is the interesting thing about Neubuerg - one of the ways the high priestess used to worship Woden was by making a circuit of the top of the hill. Nowadays there is art up there that is suspiciously Odin/Woden oriented and it's a popular walking spot. Christians come to Neubuerg and walk the circuit around the top without knowing that they're following the tradition of those Pagan priestesses many years ago.

We were alone on Neubuerg, gloriously alone, only us and the dog and so we went to the place where we make offerings to the Allfather - a wonderfully atmospheric apple tree. J and I made offerings and then I tied a ribbon on the tree to honour the spirit, offered amber and then wove a spell upon the tree. While I was weaving the threads and singing, the wind rose. It was primal, it was wild and it was like being listened to. After I finished the wind calmed and we went to the second place to make offerings before heading back down the hill and home.

Seidr and Soul

2010-02-25T02:24:00.001-08:00

Imagine you're standing on the surface of the moon, looking across at the earth, all seas, continents and clouds. Imagine that you'd arrived from a distant world and your impressions of this world were based on the Voyager golden records from 1977 that you'd found floating aimlessly beyond the reaches of the solar system. Those impressions, while purporting to depict life on earth, are the product of one culture. Kind of like their version of life on earth as seen through their unique cultural lens.

You decide to look closer and start with the continent that's the most featured in the records - America. There is differentiation and some confusion because of that. Then you decide to look to the other cultures of the earth and find more differentiation - not everything is as uniform as it initially seemed. Some places are more interesting to you and so you decide to look closer and get subculture upon subculture upon subculture. You think of the records you found in that poor, rickety,aimless satellite and in some ways you feel sad that that's all others will see. In other ways though, you feel deceived.

That's how I feel about the Heathen community and especially Seidr. You have all your well-known folk, the people that make names for each other and write all the books - the Voyager golden records - if you will. Some of these are better than others. People flock to these, they flock to the Hrafnar method as if it's the only way of doing things and these people and the people they endorse are the only people that are capable of doing it.

But if only they would look further, they would find something much more interesting.

It's not a secret how I feel about the Hrafnar method. It goes something along these lines - cool if it works for you but please just own up and admit that it's basically Michael Harner 'core Shamanism' techniques with Northern European trappings overlaid rather uncomfortably on top.

This is the loud, this is the Voyager golden record of Seidr.

Out there, there are many Seidrfolk. Some have vaguely similar methods, others have vastly different methods. Like tiny lights in the darkness as seen from an aeroplane window at night. On different continents, with different cultures, backgrounds and speaking different languages.

My Seidr cannot be like the Seidr practised by an American or a Dane or a Norwegian simply because we are not the same. We do not come from the same land, the same blood, the same background or the same culture. It makes me sad that there's almost this kind of 'standardised' Seidr out there. What then of the real training of Seidr? That of walking the land, of dealing with the dead and the wights, of honouring tradition, of feeling things 'shift' and seeing where that shift will take you, of ecstasy and fear and sacrifice and joy? What then? Is it all to be swallowed up by the High seat? I'd take the mysteries of the burial mound anyday!

That brings me onto the soul. Another part of this 'Voyager golden record version' of Seidr is this idea of a 'soul complex', of a soul made up of many different parts when there is nothing to suggest that that idea is any older than the 70s. This wouldn't be a problem were it not for people acting as though it was some kind of divinely revealed truth and 'how dare you question it?'

Now I don't claim to know what the soul is or have a special handle on the truth. I was very convinced by non-dualism for a while but that doesn't fit with all the experiences I've had in the past - if anything it restricted me. If there is one 'truth' that Seidrworkers must accept, it's that the world is created by mind or what would be the point of doing any magic in the first place?

Belief is so important, belief opens doors but society makes us afraid to walk through them. We're constantly fed the importance of being 'normal' and having a grip on 'reality'. But you know what? While I'm the first person to laugh at someone saying that they saw the goddess Hela hanging out during the Black Death in a former life, I also keep in mind all the things that people believed to be true, were considered insane but were proven to exist by science years later. I guess it's a fine line - isn't everything?

I've mentioned it before but there is an interesting link between sanity and Woden/Odin, the God that constantly searches for Truth. We know the word 'Wodnesdaeg' in modern English as 'Wednesday'. Originally it was 'Woden's Day'. A word for insanity in Old English was 'Wodnes'. I found that interesting. It reminds me of something a Greek woman once told me about crazy people being those that were shown the door to the Truth ™ and were too afraid to step through. Instead of being made whole, they were driven crazy by what they knew and saw. They lost the 'middle-wise' ability to live a happy life.

But anyway - back to the soul and how I don't really know how to consider it anymore. No theory I've come across fits for me. I can't bring myself to believe in reincarnation, or soul parts and I absolutely don't believe that a person can be possessed unless they are complicit in that possession. I suppose it's just something that I can't name that goes along with my hamr (astral skin) and physical body as part of the package that is 'me'.

Thankfully for the extraterrestrial visitor, there will be commonalities to find across the board and in Seidr that commonality is trance. The ability to go into various types of trances.

For me, music has always been an important part of that and chanting combined with an Anglo Saxon narrative style charm usually sends me off. Music is magical. When I was studying psychology at college, we learned that brain scans had revealed that more parts of the brain were engaged while listening to music than during any other activity...period. Music can anger, bring peace or joy, can depress or lift a soul (whatever that is ) to the highest heights. Music takes us to memories, feelings and deities. Hell, according to string theory the universe itself is like some kind of gigantic orchestra of strings all oscillating at different frequencies.

If then that is the case, does it not make complete sense that so many forms of magic are linked to music in some form? Follow the theory through at its most basic level and you come to the startling idea that if you somehow can change the oscillation frequency of the particles then you can change the object itself.

Pure magic.

Embracing the Wódnes, Soul-ful Musings, Folkways and Fighting the Lyme

2010-02-01T12:27:00.000-08:00

Sickness is never an easy thing to accept, especially when it looks like it won't be a quick fix and might leave you with lasting issues that could ultimately make you a burden on your friends and loved ones. Goodness knows I don't want that, I've always been so independent, the wild woman that would have probably never settled down had it not been for meeting a man that I feel such a connection with, that life without him is now not only unthinkable but unimaginable.

A couple of weeks ago, I was officially diagnosed with Lyme disease and it looks like I've had it for a while. By my calculations, my lovely man first noticed the mark on the 27th of September. I really wouldn't normally remember were it not in the same week as a particularly traumatic medical appointment. It was at my friend's house when we were getting dressed one morning that he noticed it and at the time, I just thought it was a bruise - after all, I had walked into a dresser the previous day in a furniture showroom, hadn't I? But over time, it began to spread and spread and then my breathing became difficult and I spent a lot of time with my right hip in pain. Then my right elbow, then my right shoulder and right knee. I finished my first course of treatment last week but need to go back for more but I'm not going to just be one of those folks that lets the disease take everything away from them. I've started a program of 'FUCK THE LYME'. The plan is simple, do stuff. Exercise, go to the gym, do yoga, just get off the sofa and get one over on the disease that would keep you there! I will make roses from this shit, just watch me!

As for the more mental/spiritual aspect of Lyme that I was worrying about, I'm going to embrace it. I don't know that the things I see and hear aren't hallucinations caused by possible late stage disease but who cares if they are! If it becomes distressing then I might reconsider my position but if it doesn't then what is the harm?

Incidentally enough, there is a word in Old English - 'Wodnes' and it means 'madness' or 'frenzy', it's also the possessive form of the name 'Woden'. For example, take the original version of the word 'Wednesday', it was 'Wodnesdaeg', literally 'Woden's day'. Woden is a god of truth, or at least searching for the truth and in many cultures the link between a form of madness and then enlightenment is unquestionable. Who knows, through embracing any Lymey Wodnes, maybe I'll learn something of use? Or maybe I'll just go crazy but at least it'll be interesting.

So in light of this, I'd like to share my potential Lymey brain wank from last night with you. Part of my FTL program is meditation and sometimes chanting motivational affirmations with Buddhist prayer beads to try and brainwash myself into doing everything I want to do. Last night I ended up talking to my dead Grandmother again. I haven't done this for a couple of years and it was great, very interesting. I've had a non-dualist standpoint for a while now but now I'm not so sure. I think there's a degree of choice involved in where we go when we die. If we want to be non-dualist, we will be. If we want to go somewhere else or think we have to spend eternity in some big, burning pit then that's also what will happen. It's not reconstructionist but it's what I'm coming to believe.

Which brings me to the matter of belief and folkways.

There's been talk of the existence of some kind of 'over-arching Northern European folkway', you may be wondering what this is - I know I was. Basically, it's the idea that "our Northern European ancestors shared a common over-arching world view, common language root, common gods, a common focus on ancestors and land spirits, and other commonalities" and that that is our link or something to the ancestors. We should follow those older ways to honour the ancestors.

This concept is problematic for me in a few ways. First is my definition of who I consider to be 'my' folk. For me, my folk are people in my community that have proven themselves to be valuable and trustworthy members of our community and nothing to do with their ethnic origins. Actions and deeds, not amount of melanin. Also just a quick note on the word 'folk'. I come from a place where it's used in common, everyday parlance with no racist overtones. It just means people - any people. People in a different country might be called 't'folk frum o'er thee'r' (the people from over there, meaning the sea).

Secondly, the biggest issue I have with the 'folkway' thing, is that this whole idea of an overarching folkway for a group of peoples as diverse as those of Northern Europe confuses the hell out of me. If there is just one big over-arching folkway with the Gods, ancestors and vaettir then what would it be? We're all kind of mixed in Northern Europe and you have all these different layers of different folk that intermarried and shared ideas with each other. For starters in England, there would be the Celtic gods and then the Romano-British gods, then the Roman gods and genus loci that are still knocking around, then there are the sets of gods that came with the various tribes collectively known as Anglo-Saxons and then there are the gods that came with the Vikings (but only really predominantly in the Northern areas). Now we're still discovering gods and goddesses from the Celtic and Romano-British period - we really have no idea how many there were but I once read a study that said that in Europe, evidence of more than 400 Celtic deities had been found to date. Just from the gods and beings that I know from my local area and upbringing (because it really is surprising how much has survived and just been absorbed into the church and local lore and customs) what I would consider to be my folkway would probably be very different to what others would consider theirs to be. My husband, an American Heathen and I see this all the time. I have different traditions that I follow and have followed for years that people from my area have followed before me. That to me is my folkway. That is the heritage of my folk passed down to me and kept alive by following all the different traditions. Sometimes I have to adapt those traditions because they're linked to a place in my local area but they are still kept.

So do I believe in an 'over-arching Northern European folkway'? No, I haven't a clue what that would be in any kind of real terms. However I do think that there is a folkway, a kind of 'universal language' of folkways that is the product of a few Northern European folkways that tends to be used by US Heathens. Kind of like how a bastardised form of wicca became the kind of universal format for a lot of Pagans and 'ecumenical' Pagan gatherings. Not saying this newer folkway is wrong or lesser, just that I think it's a product of, rather than an expression of some common thing.

Ok, I'm going to stop there. When I start using the word 'thing' when I *know* there's a perfectly good word for that concept and that normally I would know it, that is a signal to go to bed.

Lymie Madness

2010-01-06T12:05:00.000-08:00

So today I went to see the doctor. Over the past few months, I've had breathing problems, a rash and aches and pains. I've been treated for asthma, given antibiotics for the rash which was judged to be a skin infection and none of it got better - really.

And I wouldn't have gone back either, were it not for the rash actually spreading. It started on my hipbone,an angry-looking purple/red circle and then turned into an angry-looking purple/red circle with a red borderline circle around it that widened and widened until it had made it's way to my spine. Between the purple/red circle and the red borderline is now more or less skin-coloured.

The doctor took one look at it and asked if I'd been bitten by a tick at any point. I told him it was highly possible with all the camping and walking through woodlands I've done. I even knew the term that described that rash - erythema migrans. Most doctors diagnose on that alone but my doctor sent me for a blood test to test for Lyme disease.

Now the thing with Lyme disease is that hallucinations and hearing voices can be a part of it. As well as wondering if I've got it, I'm also wondering how long I've had it, how many of my experiences can be put down to it and how I could distinguish in the future between genuine experiences and Lymie madness.

It's been an interesting day.

Varðlokkur

2010-01-03T22:41:00.000-08:00

I chant, I call them out
Disir, vættir, family long gone
I hold my staff close
Tap out the beat
I reach out and pull

This has happened to me for years. I've 'pulled' consciously and subconsciously. Once my father sat me down and told me that those with the gift are like beacons of light in a world of darkness to the dead. A very benign explanation and for years I believed it but now I don't. Now I know the truth - we bring them to us.

The cold comes, the dog leaves
I stop the beat
A tear on my cheek, he sits next to me
And I feel it, 'Well done!'

Another time, another reality - dream reality. We're walking in a place back home. Vast moorland, rugged, brown, green and purple. A great gap lies cleaved into the earth. A place known to locals as 'Devil's Ditch'. Archaeologists call it an 'earthwork'. In the distance I hear screaming of a long dead woman. Locals had known her for a witch.

'Don't you want to go there?' he asks.

I shake my head no. Only crazy people go to Old Rachel's at night. He asks why I'm afraid, what it is that I fear and I tell him that I fear the madness that comes from seeing too much. But I know deep down I'll never be 'middle-wise' again.

The barrier's broken, there's no going back
I've graduated to the next class

And I feel fine.

Then what was pulled, must be pushed back
What was woken must be laid to rest
The room warms, the dog returns
I feel blessed

A Bloody Inheritance

2010-01-02T13:45:00.000-08:00

I come from a place where there is still a high incidence of domestic violence. It's more even-handed in that the wives fight back but it's still a part of everyday life for too many women.

Men that don't beat their wives are proud of that fact, they should be, but it's sad that it's seen as an achievement in my area when it should be ordinary life. It's still a really real concern of parents when their daughters marry. I remember the only time my parents seemed to be proud of my ability to fight and gobbiness was during a conversation with a neighbour who had remarked about how I'd 'never allow herself to be beaten by a husband'. I was though, once, by a man that I had been seeing. I would never have been stupid enough to have married him if it had ever come to that. He was much larger than me, 6'4" but I gave it everything I had to fight him off and held my own until help arrived. The next day I took a hockey stick to his head. I very nearly did too, until the boss talked me down. I grew up being told never to marry a man from a certain nearby town because they're all wife-beaters there.

I've heard the sounds of a neighbour and his wife going hell for leather at each other late at night, the sounds of her screaming, wondering if you should call the police when you know for a fact that she'd be fighting him too and it was probably a pretty even fight. I've helped friends patch themselves up after being beaten by boyfriends and husbands. But then I travelled, met a wonderful man and forgot all that exists.

Until tonight when talking to an old school friend. She's recently had a broken finger. It was broken so badly that she had to have surgery on it and wear a metal frame. She'd just said it was a fight when drunk, which led me to believe that it was just the average out and about kind of fight that are common in my home region but no.

Tonight she told me that her fiance did it after she hit him in the face with a metal bar. I think she did this because he cheated on her and yet she is still marrying him.

It's been a nasty reminder. I'm worried for her, for them. Why are they marrying?

I'd forgotten how common this kind of thing is back home.

Bread Men and Songs

2010-01-01T11:57:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I baked some bread.

It's really not easy to knead dough when you have arthritis in your hands but I did it anyway. A small sacrifice to add to our small sacrifice of a bread man. Where I come from, there are certain places where people leave flowers and other offerings like home-made bread. Certain trees, certain stones and certain watery places. With other trees, it's common to tie ribbons to the branches either as a wish or an offering.

And so I've started to make my bread men offerings here. Last night, before I went to bed, I gave the first bread man to the Nisse and sang him a song of offering under my breath as I did so. Then I sang to the ancestors honoured at our shrine. This evening I walked the dog with me to the lake. This lake and surrounding woodlands have many vættir in spite of how new and man-made the place is. I wonder if it's because there are no church bells here that they congregate. From what I've seen, they don't seem to like the bells. I've been coming to this place for about a year now, making my offerings, singing my songs of enticement to the vættir and working for acceptance for myself and my husband in this land. Tonight was no different. Tonight I stood on the banks of a lake that looked iced over in the dark and I called to the wights in German before giving my offering. Another bread man, tucked into the base of a tree.

On my way walking around to the other side of the lake I sang once more to the wights. When I sing, it's never a song that I plan but it just seems to work anyway. A tune or a rhythm will enter my head and words will form at my lips and before I know it, I'm singing to the place or the spirits. Sometimes it sounds like a song and other times it sounds like a joik but it works.

There is magic in bread and music, on the most basic level they're about creation. Bread must have seemed almost magical to our ancestors and when you think about it, it is pretty interesting how bread is made. I once read that one of the Grimm brothers wrote a piece about the various types of German breads and how they had all originated and how they linked to folklore and religious belief. I'd like to read that some day. As for music...did you know that scientists found while doing brain scans that more of the human brain is occupied while listening to music than in any other activity? Music can move us, it can make us angry, happy, tearful, lustful, contemplative, depressed and many more emotions. Music can be spiritual, it can lift us up from our mundane world and just give us that taste of something greater.

Bread men and songs. Simple magic.

New Year

2009-12-31T15:38:00.000-08:00

It comes like a whisper, so silent an entity in of itself. We are the ones that mark it with our fire and noise, alcohol and drunken sex.

This is fitting.

After all, we are the ones that decided that the end of the old year would be on December 31st as opposed to any other day in the year. We humans, yes, we did this.

And we've done this for years.

Every year about two hours before the end of the year, I feel that strange shifting of the old dying and the new coming and no matter how bad a year it's been, I always think that it's happening too fast and wish I could tread water a little until I can get my head around the fact that yet another year will have passed. On the threshold between the years and for maybe about a minute either way, I get emotional as I feel this quiet whisper of a shift that makes the world feel special and new again. We've made such a big thing of new year celebrations for years now that I'm almost surprised that it's not louder, stronger, clearer...more tangible. But no, the entity known as 'New Year' doesn't need to be loud.

Back home, we would cross our arms and join hands in a circle to sing 'Auld Lang Syne'. This would be done with family and friends. This is our way in participating in the change, warding in the new year and trying to bring in luck by singing a song of frith. At the conclusion, we all move in to the centre of the circle while our hands are still joined before breaking the circle to go round hugging each other and wishing each other happy new year. This always makes me tear up.

Not long after that is when friends from other homes will knock on the door with a bottle of alcohol and they are invited in and we share before taking some of our alcohol and going to theirs and other people's houses. We wish each other luck and renew the bonds of frith with each other. The street comes to life as we mill around outside and in and out of each others houses. Friends of mine more recently started fire dancing on the green space across road from my parents' house. We'd also set off fireworks in our too-small gardens and not caring about the safety advice about things like 'safe distance'. The whole night would be a cacophony of bangs and sparkles and life.

This year this didn't happen. This year I was a spectator, watching with my cup of Glühwein clutched in one hand and my other arm around my husband, watching other people's fireworks. I'm glad to have my husband home this year. So very very glad. Last new year's eve, I dreamed about seeing in the New Year with my husband, of him being home from Iraq safe and sound and now I have that I dream of seeing in many many more with him but I also dream of doing that while still observing the old traditions that I grew up with.

Since moving to this army base in Germany, I've noticed that around the Americans, I don't seem to have as much space and time for the traditions I grew up with, their traditions take precedence and mine just seem as though they'd be considered 'quaint' or just plain weird by them. In Denmark, I went to a friend's house that was full of traditions observed and I realised that I've missed that. I've missed having traditions in my life because I have traditions too, I come from a place full of them and I need to stop letting them slide. I need to keep them alive as a link to my land and my family.

So that is my first resolution for the coming year, I'm going to try and observe traditions that I was too lazy or too shy to observe last year.

My second resolution is that I'm going to try and improve myself in all things.

2009-12-31T06:08:00.000-08:00

I stand on the 'string' in that place that is so simple it almost defies understanding. There is a splendid nothingness here and that in itself is so complex for modern minds that are used to space and time being filled with a myriad of various distractions. I don't know that it is the ginnungagap but it does fit the description of a yawning nothingness. Well, except for the 'strings'

The 'string' I'm standing on isn't the only 'string' here either and I just *know* that I'm looking at different times and different realities running parallel. To travel in time is as simple as finding the right 'string' and picking it up. 'Stepping' into it. Somehow it is hard for us to think about time as being like this and I'm reminded of L.P Hartley's famous quote that 'The past is a different country:they do things differently there'. We have no problem thinking about millions of people in different countries all living their lives parallel and unseen by us, maybe we should think that way about time too.

It's time to decide where to go and I think about the much debated scene in Eiriks saga rauða in which the people of the farmstead invite the Seiðkona to come and tell them their fortunes. I walk along the 'strings', careful not to step on one that I do not want. When I find the one I want, a time before the arrival of the 'white christ' in the North, I pick it up and then 'see' myself somehow stepping into it.

The hall is long and glowing with light from fire, I'm jostled and look at the people around me. They are all gathered to see the Seiðkona and all are washed clean and dressed as tidily as they can manage. They do not wish to offend. They are expectant - both excited and afraid at what they might find out. They are afraid of the Seiðkona too and talk about her in hushed voices. She is but a woman but she has skills that can either harm or heal. This time, it's her words that they fear.

I try to see over the man in front of me, try to look at where I think the 'high' seat is but it's not as high as I thought it would have been. The door creaks and a hush falls over the people. The atmosphere becomes charged. She's small and carries herself with both tired resignation and pride to equal that of a king. Our crowd parts to allow her through. She walks as though she does not see us, as if she's unaware of all the eyes that stare at her or how much of an outsider she is.

From elsewhere in the room a rattling noise is made, accompanying the Seiðkona on her walk to the seat, the atmosphere becomes familiar. I've felt this before and look around, trying to see what is there, waiting - I only see the energy in the air beginning to buzz. Like the preliminary stages of a ghost manifestation.

The Seiðkona arrives at the seat and women that have offered to serve as her singers do something I cannot see because of the man in front of me. I'm being jostled and only see her again when she climbs into the seat because the man in front suddenly cares that I cannot see. Either that or he had tired of his previous position. The women stand around the Seiðkona in her seat and face her as they sing. It's a simple song and people in the audience join in. The women at the front begin to go into something of a trance state, stamping their feet and moving as their song grows in power. The energy shifts in the room again and the Seiðkona, her head bowed and eyes closed in concentration also sings but her song is different somehow.

Then finally there is a 'shift' and everyone falls silent now. Lifting her head, the Seiðkona looks to the audience with eyes that no longer see only one reality, glassy.

'We are ready now'

At first no one steps forward, no one asks but then what starts like a trickle almost turns into a flood until the Seiðkona can answer no more.

I leave that 'string' step back out into the nothingness and decide where I'd like to go next but it's late and I need to sleep at some point during the night and so I reach out for my body. When I feel it, I'm yet again shocked at how 'dead' my body becomes when I go into trance. I shouldn't be shocked any more, it's always been like this for me. It's just a little disconcerting to not feel your limbs and have a body that's barely breathing. Slowly I resurrect myself before sending myself off to the slightly different state of sleep.

The next day I take out my penny whistle and play the song I heard the Völva's helpers sing. My words are different because my language is different but the tune is the same. I draw a stave and I write it down, mentally remarking on the numerical values of the notes. Three. It all comes down to the number three and this makes sense to me.

Fire and Britannia

2009-12-28T16:05:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time over 29 years ago, I was born on an island of myths and legends between the North and Irish seas. When the Romans came to settle Britain, they hated it. It was wet and cold and according to some of their legends, it was where their dead went. It was a haunted island full of tribespeople that painted their faces and bodies and lived among the mists and the shadows. Those tribespeople had their myths and Gods, as did the Romans

The groups of peoples that have come to be known as the Anglo Saxons saw a fertile land that was conveniently undefended and inviting them in. They brought their myths and Gods too.

Then came the desert god, the crucified one that so many look to today and left his imprint on the land. But somehow that imprint is less indellible than the others.

And then the Vikings came and settled the Northern part of England and brought their Gods and their myths.

Over the years, different spiritual heritages have come to the land and added another layer to the 'spiritual onion' as I call it.

At some point in all of this, fire, dance and ecstasy became a part of it. So much so that it's the bit that everyone has gone for again in the revival of Paganism.

Before I moved to Korea and Germany, I would go to the fires at Beltane, I would go to the fires at Lammas and enjoy the fires of Bonfire night (not ancient but I think the method of celebration is). No gathering is complete without a fire, or music or beer or dance or people enjoying themselves together and getting increasingly more and more ecstatic as the night goes on. I miss the feeling in the air and the passion of it all. I miss hearing the drumbeat that beats in my blood regardless of where I am.

Mors

2009-12-28T10:50:00.000-08:00

The beach is long and I look out at the sea
The water of this beautiful fjord
Answers in blue back at me
I stand at the edge
On sea-rounded stones
And imagine I could, with just enough magic,
Walk across the salty foam

The sky grows dark and I walk a little more
Leaving my cares along the shore
Where the gentle fjord will wash all clean
Leaving me spare minutes to just sit and be me

I wonder about the tide,
If it's like the sea back home
Where within 20minutes lives are lost
And the beach is gone
Where stormy clouds rise over an inclement sea
And heading to warmth and safety we flee

Mors means 'Mothers' and I feel nurtured here
I wonder if this place will make me a mother too
I think of my man, my family and friends
I think of hospitality and warm meals
I think of the vaettir,
And wish I had more time to know them and their ways
I feel them at the edges - curious
But I don't have enough time in this place

The sun is now down and I head up the hill
I look for the road I was on before
I think about the day that is yet to come
And my wedding on this beautiful isle called Mors

Primal

2009-12-21T01:53:00.000-08:00

In a cave far away
Up a mountain in an unknown place
Where dark trees gather in a shroud
Sits a lady upon the ground.

Her eyes are closed
As if she sleeps
And sometimes she smiles
But mostly she weeps

She's older than us all
Her years etched upon her face
Her skin is like leather
But still with beauty and grace

She's dreaming of us, her children
and how we live now
Each dream a live news report
To a mother disappointed and proud

She fears for the unborn
That sleeps within her womb
Who only waits to be born
Into a race bent on doom

Even in the winter of the world
And the winter of her life
She still gives and dreams
And watches her children die

Sitting in the past of the human race
She dreams her dreams and watches our ways
Sometimes blessing and sometimes cursing
The dreadful/wonderful day she pushed one of us out

Standing At The Crossroads

2009-12-20T11:33:00.001-08:00

Throughout human history, certain places in the physical landscape have been considered to be meeting points between this world and the other. Usually these places involve water, such as bogs, marshlands and wells but there is almost always something final about these kinds of places, they are almost always synonymous with death.

Not so the crossroads.

Crossroads are liminal places, meeting points between life and death, the mundane and the supernatural. But they are also places of potential, of decisions and new directions. At the crossroads everything can change.

And that is how I'm feeling right now, as though I'm standing at a giant crossroads in life. Maybe it's the yuletide season that's making me feel this way but I'm feeling very much that things are changing, that a new phase is starting and that decisions have to be made or I'll miss out. So there's a lot to think about, a lot to take stock of, to change and a lot of bitterness to lose. Because I do that a lot, I store bitterness up inside and trap myself in modes of behaviour that do nothing for me and just haunt my future until a time when I can find the peace, honesty and courage to let them go. I'm feeling such a time coming up right now.

So I'm going to use this yuletide to take stock of my life and decide which road on the crossroads I should take and to lay down the magic in the earth of my life so that it can manifest later on. The method I'm going to use would be labelled as being 'fluffy' and I would concur but it's not about getting 'cool points'. It just so happens that having a set list of questions to consider and meditate on is a damn good framework for this kind of thing. I want a direction, I don't want to be that woman whose dreams are dead anymore because people can sense that about a person I think. I notice it in the way people deal with my husband as opposed to myself and it's beginning to feel like my identity is being eclipsed by his. I'm becoming the forgotten one instead of the co-partner in my husband's life. Not by him, no, my husband would never do that, he's not that kind of person. It's other people you see and ours is a religion of community. I've whined enough about this situation, it's time to make changes.

A large part of doing this kind of thing is looking at where you've been, your history, the history of your family, in effect, your saga! We have to hear the voices of our ancestors in order to correctly plan our futures. That is what I'm going to focus on today - hearing those voices and revisiting that past. I need to reconnect with things that I've lost, reintegrate them into myself and then move forward.

Huntress

2009-05-03T10:46:00.001-07:00

I go where I'm pulled and when I give up control I'm running naked through woodland, a bow in my hand.

'The high places aren't for hunting, they're to watch' the voice says. I nod and continue to run until the animal comes into sight. Mid-run and with more skill than I know I have, I shoot the animal, a beautiful white deer down.

It falls, bloodied and breathing heavily as it pants out it's last breaths.

Acting on instinct, I unsheath a knife that was carried around my waist and put the animal out of it's misery. I stab it in the heart, I gut it and I mark myself, my breast with the blood.

'There is always a price' the voice says. 'A vision doesn't come for free'

I go to the high seat, a place in a tree used to watch the animals and I look at the cloak and headdress.

But then I'm in a clearing and it's suddenly night, primal drums beating to firelight. I'm being confronted, told what is, told what I must do next. Things are explained. An offering is demanded, a gift for the vision and I agree.

'Go' she says 'this is a vision within a vision and you are still to collect, the rest of what you seek will come later. Things are going to happen much faster now'. I go back to the high seat, don the cloak and headdress and climb up.

The height dizzies me and I look over the land again,the animal trails crisscrossing down below. A map for the hunter. I see people, lands and places, things I've already seen and things I'm yet to come across. I know when it's my time to part. I leave the high seat and run back through the forest the way I came, this time in hunt of my own body.

Smithy

2009-04-06T02:41:00.000-07:00

We huddle by candlelight
The ceiling is low
My friend reaches for her drum
She drums for energy
She drums for trance
She drums to bid the spirits to come
In this land of the dead
It won't be long
Chants fill my head
And I sway along

But there's a nagging there
In the back of my head
Of the past week's dreams
And a sense of dread

For nights before
My dreams have been
Of this time
This place
This warm candlelight
For nights before
My dreams have been
Of terror
Of menace
And a hasty flight

I think on the positive
Forget all fear
Wait for the spirits to come
I chant and I wait
I sway to the beat
Though my legs go numb

The ceiling is so low
But what do you expect?
It's not a place for the living
It was built for the dead

I hear a woman talking
Look around
Only my friends in the chamber
Making no sound
I listen closer and that's when I know
That the language she's speaking
Is a language of old
I see her then
Auburn hair
Brown clothes
She talks quickly
Then she's gone

I look to my friend
Sitting by the door
I look at his face
But it's no longer his own
It's a face of cruelty
Of menace
Of evil intent
A scar across his cheek
And a hate for women

My friend fights for himself
A battle he'll lose
The man will take over
He'll block the door
Attack us in this crouched hole
Then everythings shifts
We're on their ground now
My friend has no protection
We have to get out

So we bully our friend
The half-possessed one
Out of the chamber
While we still can
Outside is a little better
His head begins to clear
We quickly clean up
Prepare to get away from here

The ancient trees in the dark
They stand in a line
And I think I can see
hooded figures too
Standing there silently
Unmoving shadows
Watching us, watching me
We leave but we're followed
My friend is knocked over
As the man from before
Has another go
I pull him back
And block up the way
Stang-made mark in the dirt

I call for help
To the Gods
My ancesters
My disir
I yell
Into the night sky I let the hammers fly
My energy
My heart
My fury aswell
I'm sick of this bastard that won't let us be
And at some point someone must have heard me
The man came no further
His face was anger
That he couldn't follow us more

And as we drove away in the car
Down that dark road
Some hearts changed
And some hardened even more

Burrowing Under

2009-04-06T02:28:00.000-07:00

'We don't want no burrowing under'
He says as he draws a rune of salt upon the floor
His cockney voice holding a menace
I really don't like
Who is this guy?
Where did he come from?
Something isn't right

He looks like a thug from London's East end
All shaved head and attitude
My alarm bells ring
'Who the hell are you'
I say to this 'man'
No longer wishing to be sealed in

He stops the ritual, puts down the jar of salt
Turns to face me and I make ready
Something tells me I should be scared
But strangely I'm not
For protection isn't protection
When you're locked in with the devil

'I'm here to help you' he says but I've heard that one before
I'm no debutante to this game
So I do the only thing I can
'Hold out your hands!' I say
And he holds them out
Eyes meeting my own
As I pour out the salt

I half expect him to scream in pain
Writhe his agony out on the floor
I remember lore, turn my coat inside out
He flickers and stretches but no more
A poem in my head gets louder
Distracts me with a song of Norway
As I tell him 'no way' and make my escape.

My eyes open to the dark
The calm of my room
I take a quick look around
No sign of the man
No menacing sound
Nothing but sweet holy ground.

Follow The Wind

2009-04-05T04:32:00.000-07:00

This poem was inspired by a dream I had in which I was sitting on top of a burial mound with an older version of myself.

'Stop.' she says as I reach for my drum
I look up in surprise
Her hand on my wrist makes me dumb
Around us the wind blows
As she looks in my eyes
Blue eyes to blue
Old eyes to new
Vision obscured by hair in face

The sun beats down on us
As I look into those eyes
Blue shining with warmth at my confusion
We sit on the mound
On that windswept moor
Our clothes are ancient

Hair dressed with feathers and bones
In a place beyond time
Where we came to reach out
Look for an ancestral line.

We came across the moor
And I carried the load
As all good apprentices do
We climbed the mound
green against gold
Ancient footprints to new.

I look to her again,
My teacher,
Myself in years to come
And I ask her why.

'Follow the wind' she says
'Let it carry you where you need
Drums are for those that sit indoors
But the wind is a gift to such as we.'

So closing my eyes I do as I'm bid
The wind a pain in my ears
Then comes a song as pure as the drum
I yawn deep
then I'm gone.

2009-04-04T15:41:00.000-07:00

Sigr - The Cost Of Victory

2009-04-03T04:04:00.000-07:00

As Signy laid in bed
And made her final plan
She thought of the body next to her
And her hate for that cursed man

She remembers how he killed her family
As soon as they were wed
How he broke the bonds of Frith
Then joyfully took her off to bed

She remembers how she wanted to weep
As his weight was upon her
But no matter how hard he tried
He got no cries from her

'Take it Volsung bitch
Your family is dead but it won't be so easy for you
You're my prize, bitch
You'll bear my sons too!'

She remembers how she lay
Emotionless while he finished
Blessed relief as he rolled off
Fixing her gaze on the ceiling

These sons he spoke of
Would be her revenge
Her soldiers to sacrifice
Her victory in this world of men

So she'll lie in this bed
Dreaming of her plan
No longer minding his body
Or the attentions of that cursed man

Mystery Poem

2009-04-03T03:55:00.000-07:00

Life given through cord
taken away through cord
Therein lies the mystery
A release to life or a release to death
Bog bodies discovered from thousands of years before
Bodies bound and naked
Necks bound with cord
Package neatly tied
Sent down below
A gift for a gift
To the bountiful one

Follow the trail of Skjalf
To the northern court
Where she bound Agnar's neck by lace
Necklace, took his life by cord

Follow the kenning for the name Skjalf
There you find the Vanadis herself
A princess of the Finns
A new story begins
Of noaide, siede and seidhr
And of people made of trees
Esk and Embla and the circle is complete
Back to the birth, the death and the Brisings cord
Life giver, life taker.
Blessed Holy one.

Freyja Call/Poem/Thing

2009-03-31T13:56:00.000-07:00

Freyja is joy
Freyja is life
Freyja is the hope that shines in the dark

Freyja is sadness
Freyja is pain
Freyja is lost love once more regained

Freyja is magic
Worked on dark nights
Freyja is the key to secrets that hide

Freyja is freedom
Freyja is peace
Freyja is peace found in release

Freyja is green
New life on the trees
Freyja is the sap
That rises within

Freyja is death
Life stolen by cord
Bodies sunk with birch
In cold northern bog

Freyja is ancient
Much older than we know
A Goddess without boundaries
Slandered by lore

Freyja is much more
Than any of us think
Great shining Goddess
She is in everything

Hail to thee Freyja!
Blessed Vanadis!

Hammer Campaign and Freyja

2009-03-31T13:53:00.000-07:00

The hammer campaign is going well, the facebook group now has 100 members only about 3 days after setting up. Many thanks to all of you that have supported the campaign.

A new website/blog is on the way from Judy Floyd of the AFA for the Hammer campaign and will be under

hammerproject.org

At the moment there isn't much really there but hopefully that will change soon.

Yesterday Josh and I finished the feedback to Diana Paxson for the military heathen handbook she's writing (finally...lol after like 4 weeks). It's really good. I'm very impressed at the level of improvement between the first draft and the revision. Diana has listened to us about everything because she recognises that she doesn't really know much about the army (well she knows a lot more now because she's been learning). I'm seriously impressed.

She's also asked if we have any articles or writings about the more 'niche' topics in Asatru, like army wives or how it is for soldiers being away from their families and so last night I sent her a piece I wrote for submission to Idunna (the magazine of The Troth) entitled 'Keeping The Homefires Burning:War and Asatru from the point of view of one of those left behind'. I also sent her one of the segments of the booklet that I'm writing that's going to be called something like 'Listening to the Asynjur: Lessons for the army wife'...or something like that...

The segment I sent was about Freyja and that leads me to my next segment.

Before I went to America, Freyja had been making herself felt more and more in my life after a while away. In America, her presence was also felt, when Josh and I went for our wedding band tattoos, the man that did it was a Freyjasman through and through. His whole tattooing room was dedicated to Freyja. Freyja was the first of the Heathen deities that I started to work with when I was about 14/15 and her influence was felt through most of my teen years when I spent lots of time doing Witchcraft, hexing school bullies, travelling and learning other bodily pleasures tongue.gif

At some point during university though, she was gone for a while, well not so much gone but not so immediate as she had been. Well she's back and back with a vengeance! Before I went to America, she turned up and now she has a full on altar only to her in my room. Something has changed, I get her better than ever now and it feels...liberating. It feels like I'm on the verge of some big discovery about her true nature and origin and I'm only going to say one word about that ...Skjalf wink.gif

Well Skjalf isn't the origin but she is the clue.

Probably no surprise that the joiking has been happening more and more really.

Of course this is all UPG but you know how certain things seem to click together when you go through these phases? Well they are clicking.

Well things are clicking and I'm feeling that 'pull' again to go on otherworldly adventures, something that I haven't done since J went to Iraq.

I'm also feeling pulled to dance again (which I haven't done for so long and was one of the things I did in honour of Freyja). I just wish there was a class round here.

Spring

2009-03-22T09:38:00.000-07:00

Today has been one of content. I have enjoyed the spring equinox immensely.

It's also been a day of reflection and thinking about you know...well...stuff.

This morning I got up early and went into town to pick up some food for a picnic because at some point this morning while lying in bed and considering what to do today, I'd decided to take a picnic in the little pine wood by the lake on post. I'd already marked winter there and so it just kind of made sense to me. So I went into town and bought food, went to the Asian supermarket and shocked them with finding my way round without help (and being able to read the labels), picked up some sandwich stuff and grabbed a coffee to go from the bakery before heading back.

Traditional offerings for me tend to be bread rolls and local beer and it always seems to go down well. I'd decided to write down some wishes on a piece of paper in German and in runes and had figured out how to say what I wanted to to the wights of the place. I found pretty early on that there is generally nothing if you speak English but if you speak German, then the fun begins ;)

Getting to the lake it was stunning, that lovely spring smell in the air, sunshine and new growth on the trees. I made my way to my place - a little place where a sapling grows that just kind of called me over when I first went there. Sitting there, surrounded by trees I started talking to the land wights in German. I told them who I was and asked once again that they accept me and my family here, I asked them to look upon my family with kindness and told them that I had offerings for them. Then I made my offerings, sliding my wishes into a bread roll, seeds for new plans and beer. With every toast I made, it seemed as though I was being listened to and that's when I heard it. The rhythm of the place. I know that sounds kind of weird but for me, if a place accepts me, I hear the rhythm of that place and it's then like a key to me. A way of talking to the place and getting the beings there to hear me. So I chanted the rhythm in a half joik style that seems to be becoming more common with me and everything in the woods just stopped and suddenly it was as though the sun was shining down just on me and all the trees were surrounded by this golden glow. The chant was a hard one to do, but like Germany itself, it was very very satisfying. Unsure of what I wanted to do next and wishing I had a blanket so I could stay longer and follow whatever it was that was pulling at me, I stopped.

I really could have laughed at that point because that was when I realised that Germany is absolutely my home now and how far I've come in the past nine months since I moved here. I have been to hell and back. I have hurt so much in the past year and feared so much and been so angry.

As grim as things were then though, I worked my arse off and improved my situation and finally met friends. As hard as it was to do it alone, I made this place my home. I now have a place that I'm fixing up for J and myself when he gets back, work is ok, I have a damn good group of friends, people are finally hearing us about military Heathens and to a large extent, today sitting in that woodland I feel like I have made peace with everything. I feel proud of how far I've come and what I've survived and now I only feel excitement for my husband's return, the summer and trying for babies in Autumn.

When I came back, I did a huge spring clean and that also felt good. Very very cathartic :D

Musings on Hamfarir and Mound Sitting

2009-01-20T01:49:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid and bored in class at school, I used to daydream. Well not just daydream because it wasn't just mindlessly staring off into space. I was really gone. I had such a great desire to be outside (especially in Religious class)that I would find myself running around in the woods outside of school, my body left sitting in class and staring off into space.

I guess that was the beginning of it really.

Then came the phase of physical affectations, where my sense of smell would go ridiculously senstive. There was this one time in France where the smell of mint was driving me mad and I had to look for it - in the end I found this tiny plant about five metres away. Another time it was the smell of sand that sent me bonkers - until I figured out what it was. Then there was the sight thing where all colour except blue would go. Everything was a shade of bluey-grey and I know this sounds fluffy as fuck but I felt very wolverine.

It didn't take long before I was trying to push it a step further and actually take my hamr for walks. It takes extreme effort and it makes me really tired. The feeling of that squashing sensation from having my arms, my front paws so close to my heart and lungs is just bizarre.

I once made it half the way up the street in this form before I was really exhausted and had to come back to my body.

A bird seems easier, though not as connected for me. I don't feel the same connection, nor do my senses change in the same way as they do when I am a wolf.
I don't always take another form, sometimes I stay as I am. Another form is a handy disguise when dealing with folks that know what they are doing. I always travel in Midgard and cannot understand why anyone would try or want to go off round the nine worlds. There is already so much here!

For me now, it either takes extreme effort or extreme need and sometimes anger to do this. I need that push. Just like I need to go the extra mile for mound sitting usually and go inside the mound (if possible). I never get nearly as close just sitting on the mound. Things don't shift the same when outside. There is this moment when moundsitting, especially inside, when a 'shift' occurs. When things go from being the realm of the living to being the realm of the dead, where they have the power and when you can understand the caution that folks had for the practice and for the howe dwellers.

Most of the time I don't do this kind of stuff and rarely plan it, but there are times when instinct just takes over and before I know it, the crazy is happening. A few months ago, I posted about choosing between Seidhr and the path of a wife and mother but now I see there is no choice. I am both, I can be both and need to be both for myself and for my community.

Spinning and Weaving in Myths and Magic

2008-11-04T16:22:00.001-08:00

Weaving and spinning, once basic household tasks for every woman, have more links to magic, myth and lore than any other craft.

Nornir and Babies
In Northern European Mythology it was the Nornir that spun the Wyrd of Gods and Men (in this context, the word Wyrd is more accurately translated as 'doom' or 'death') and as such, there are many folk traditions concerned with ensuring a good fate for the child. Some even go as far as to keep the woman from all spinning and weaving activities so as not to inadvertantly affect the fate of the child in anyway. One custom practiced by Swedish women is particularly of note:

This belief led to rituals performed by Swedish women, who in the seventh month of pregnancy drew blood from their finger with a sewing needle, and used it to mark a strip of wood with protective symbols. Then she spun three lengths of linen thread, which were dyed red, black, and one left white. The wooden strip was burned, and its ashes mixed with mead or beer. A burning twig from the fire was used to burn apart seven inch lengths from each of the linen threads, which were then boiled in salted water and left to dry in the forest on the limb of a tree for three days. These were then wrapped in clean linen and saved until the day of birth. The white cord was used to tie off the umbilical cord of the newborn. The red was tied around the baby's wrist as a protective amulet, sometimes strung with a bead to repel the evil eye. And the black , symbolic of death and ill-luck, was burned to ash and the ashes buried. Often the afterbirth was buried beneath the tree on which the linen threads had dried.

For magical purposes, spindles were made out of different materials so as to add to the magical properties of the thread being spun. Some spindles have been found made of rock crystals and others, have been found made of amber and jet (otherwise known back then as black amber).

Battle Magic and Causing Death
Given the life and death importance linked to spinning, maybe it comes as no surprise that weaving, the usual goal of spinning was used in battle magic among the Northern Europeans. There are two very well known examples of weaving as battle magic to be found in the sagas. Perhaps the most famous is that of the Raven Banner which was described in the Orkneyingarsaga as:

One summer it happened that a Scottish earl called Finnleik challenged Sigurðr to fight him on a particular day at Skitten. Sigurðr's mother was a sorceress so he went to consult her, telling her that the odds against him were heavy, at least seven to one.

'Had I thought you might live forever,' she said, 'I'd have reared you in my wool-basket. But lifetimes are shaped by what will be, not by where you are. Now, take this banner. I've made it for you with all the skill I have, and my belief is this: that it will bring victory to the man it's carried before, but death to the one who carries it.' It was a finely made banner, very cleverly embroidered with the figure of a raven, and when the banner fluttered in the breeze, the raven seemed to be flying ahead.

Earl Sigurðr lost his temper at his mother's words. He got the support of the Orkney farmers by giving them back their land-rights, then set out for Skittern to confront Earl Finnleik. The two sides formed up, but the moment they clashed Sigurðr's standard-bearer was struck dead. The Earl told another man to pick up the banner but before long he'd been killed too. The Earl lost three standard bearers, but he won the battle and the farmers of Orkney got back their land rights.

Also in the Orkneyingarsaga is the account of a shirt that was woven with either poison or killing magic:

...the sisters pulled off their bonnets, tore their hair and said that if he put on the garment his life would be at risk. Though they were both in tears he didn't let that stop him, but no sooner was the garment upon his back than his flesh started to quiver and he began to suffer terrible agony. He had to go to bed and not long after that he died.

So fundamental is the connection between weaving, death and fate in this worldview that not only is weaving oft used as a metaphor for fate but it was also used as part of a description of Valkyries on the battlefield and their craft.

Blood rains from the cloudy web
On the broad loom of slaughter.
The web of man grey as armor
Is now being woven; the Valkyries
Will cross it with a crimson weft.

The warp is made of human entrails;
Human heads are used as heddle-weights;
The heddle rods are blood-wet spears;
The shafts are iron-bound and arrows are the shuttles.
With swords we will weave this web of battle.

The Valkyries go weaving with drawn swords,
Hild and Hjorthrimul, Sanngrid and Svipul.
Spears will shatter shields will splinter,
Swords will gnaw like wolves through armor.

Let us now wind the web of war
Which the young king once waged.
Let us advance and wade through the ranks,
Where friends of ours are exchanging blows.

Let us now wind the web of war
And then follow the king to battle
Gunn and Gondul can see there
The blood-spattered shields that guarded the king.

Let us now wind the web of war
Where the warrior banners are forging forward
Let his life not be taken;
Only the Valkyries can choose the slain.

Lands will be ruled by new peoples
Who once inhabited outlying headlands.
We pronounce a great king destined to die;
Now an earl is felled by spears.

The men of Ireland will suffer a grief
That will never grow old in the minds of men.
The web is now woven and the battlefield reddened;
The news of disaster will spread through lands.

It is horrible now to look around
As a blood-red cloud darkens the sky.
The heavens are stained with the blood of men,
As the Valyries sing their song.

We sang well victory songs
For the young king; hail to our singing!
Let him who listens to our Valkyrie song
Learn it well and tell it to others.

Let us ride our horses hard on bare backs,
With swords unsheathed away from here!

And then they tore the woven cloth from the loom and ripped it to pieces, each keeping the shred she held in her hands... The women mounted their horses and rode away, six to the south and six to the north.

Weaving was also used in protective and healing magic and there are two accounts of women weaving protective shirts for their loved ones.

Spinning, Weaving and the Law

During and after the conversion period, women were encouraged not to:

name other unfortunate persons either at the loom, or in dyeing, or in any kind of work with textiles
-Elgius of Noyon

While Corrector of Burchard of Worms, ca. 1010, set the following penance for magical weaving:

Have you been present at or consented to the vanities which women practice in their woollen work, in their weaving, who when they begin their weaving hope to be able to bring it about that with incantations and with their actions that the threads of the warp and the woof become so intertwined that unless someone makes use of these other diabolical counter-incantations, he will perish totally? If you have been present or consented, you must do penance for thirty days on bread and water

Non-Dualism

2008-11-04T16:13:00.001-08:00

The soul and afterlife - Recon Heathen stylee
Here's something that's been buzzing around in my head a fair bit recently thanks to reading stuff by a certain Bil Linzie. The concept of non-dualism and the probability that the concept of soul (in the sense that contemporary culture be it secular or Heathen understands it) has absolutely bugger all to do with the actual Heathen worldview pre-conversion.

What do I mean by non-dualism in this sense? Well I'll leave it to Simek to explain because he does a much better job than me in his Dictionary of Northern European Mythology

'Detailed investigations since the beginning of the 20th Century have led to the insight that it is extremely unlikely, at least for the late heathen period, that the North-European peoples had a dualistic belief i.e distinct division between the decomposing body of the dead person and the further existence of his soul. The extant sources suggest that the concept was rather that of the 'living corpse' which lived on the gravemound. Although the saga literature(written 200-500 years after Christianization) is otherwise extremely unreliable for Heathen beliefs, these sources do show unanimity, particularly with regard to these concepts, so widely divergent from Christian thought. Admittedly they may be strongly influenced by the folklore of Mediaeval Iceland. Nevertheless, we may assume that the concept does indeed reflect Heathen beliefs.'

Now this sounds pretty horrendous, right?

Especially when you compare it with the other ideas about a Heathen afterlife flying around that are mostly all filled with more hope than the idea of going to rot in the earth with your ancestors(if it's a family mound) and gravegoods.

Then there's the question of just where does the Draugr come in? Well, it's obvious that not every corpse will become a Draugr and then there's always the Hamr to consider...but more about that further down.

According to Eric Christiansen there are 7 possiblities for the dead Heathen

1.Living with the Gods -a concept not seen until the 10th century and thought to have been brought in as a poetic device.
2. Valhalla -believed to have originally referred to as an actual physical place - a mountain where the dead were interred.
3. Hel -no kennings for Hel as a goddess of the land of the dead until the 10th and 11th centuries - definitely conversion era. However as Lindow points out in his Handbook of Northern Mythology "The place Hel (or the noun hel) originally probably just meant 'grave.'". Simek agrees with this saying that the word Hel was used for hundreds of years to refer to the gravemound.
4. Under the sea (with Ran)
5. An earthly land of the dead.
6 With the poor over the stream.
7. Reincarnation - There are some mentions of reincarnation in the Lay of Helgi Hundingsbani however there are no more in an entire corpus of literature. Also one has to consider the possible leakage of early Christian reincarnation belief into Northern European belief. The concept of 'Aftrborinn' would be the nearest thing in North European culture to reincarnation. Aftrborinn is the passing on of traits, qualities and in some cases duties to your offspring.

Out of all of the possibilities listed above, neither Christiansen or Simek are convinced that the Heathen worldview in pre-Christian times in terms of death went beyond the concepts of Hel or the gravemound.

Another thing that's pretty prevelent in modern Heathenry is the concept of the soul complex with its 9 soul parts. I'm yet to find any evidence or any mentions in any of the original sources that back up the idea that this concept is any older than 30 or so years.

Maybe you're wondering how someone with Seidhr leanings could buy into this...after all, I've sat mounds, I've had countless run ins with the dead and dealings with landvaettir and I have a habit of disappearing off through the worlds(or at least projecting my hamr or dreaming my way).

If anything a non-dualist belief clears up some of the confusion - it's also sort of reassuring in that you will always get back to your body because it cannot be separated from you. What is really going about would be your Hamr (skin) that you're projecting. I also don't see why the dead cannot project their Hamr in this way - as long as they're strong enough....maybe that's why ghosts are reported to fade over time? This kind of clears a lot of stuff up.

I'm having one of the most exciting headblags of my life....can you tell???

Poem transfered from LJ

2008-11-04T16:10:00.001-08:00

The Birch Lady and the Wounded Patch
(just something I've been wanting to write about for a while)

There are eyes upon me
In this wood of mists
This wood of birch

I look around
Try to seek them out
My friend watches me
Unsure

That's when I see her
Pale, slender and full of grace
She moves among the birches
And I follow

As fast as I dare
I run through the bracken
heather
and rocks
To the birches where I saw her
Then I stop

A fleeting glimpse
And I'm chasing again

She leads me to birch
where three grow in a triangle
where branches hang with brooms
And the grass grows dark within

This is her place
I feel her once more as
I open myself to the forest
And bitter Yuletide cold

She's not happy about the people
That meet by the oak tree
So I promise her action
And no harm from me

The trees seem to relax
The winter seems less cold
As I make my way back up
To the wound tree

When we leave the woods, we're followed
Sometimes you see it and sometimes you don't
A large black hare that shifts in our wake.

A week later we come back
Our minds fixed on surprise attack

First we stop by
The birch lady's place
Make goodwill offerings
Of bread men, cider and cake

Then we wend our way
Up the twisted path
To the wounded tree
In its wounded patch

One by one I hammer them in
And my friend walks the ground
As I sing their runes
She carries incense around

I sing to cleanse
I sing of strength
I sing of fury and storms
I curse
I protect

Then comes the point
When the place is taken back
The forest swells up
Reabsorbs this wounded patch

This time we when leave
Nothing follows us on
As we make our way to seas of grass
And circles of ancient stone

Weirdness - the fini

2008-11-02T05:38:00.000-08:00

LOL Yet more unbelievable shit from Cat.

Today I went for a walk to take out the food and wine that I had put out in a kind of a mini Dumb Supper. My original aim was to walk to the Hain and that lovely clearing I found last week and then leave them somewhere private.

However what really happened was way cooler. I didn't even make it to the woods. I was walking along the canal bank below the court house and I noticed this raven hopping around. He spotted me and hopped off away from me and I stopped. Thinking I would try my luck and how perfect it would be to feed those offerings to a raven after the weirdness of Friday, I turned my MP3 player off and crouched down. I opened the bag of cake and the cheeky chappy looked interested. I threw some cake down a little distance away and waited. After looking at it and me for a few seconds, he hopped up and took it in his beak before hopping over to some grass and hiding it under a leaf. While he was doing that, I took the opportunity to sprinkle some crumbs a little closer to me. He came and started to eat and so I decided to pull out some more cake. This time, he took it from my hand and ate it. Some more people started to come along the canal bank and so he flew away. Thinking he was gone, I got up and started to leave. The people passed and so I went back. Crouching again, I pulled out my bag and started to make a clicking noise that I hoped would coax him out. I spoke to him in English and told him how beautiful he was and he came back. I fed him the rest of the bag and it was amazing. Ravens are such beautiful, intelligent and comical birds. At times I could have sworn he was laughing. I am so going to go back, this time with my camera, and try to get some pics of him because he really was a fine looking bird.

Halloween Weirdness

2008-11-01T13:24:00.000-07:00

Being as I am from the landmass surrounded by water in Northern Europe known as Britain, there is often some crossover between beliefs and practices that are straight up Heathen, stuff that is Celtic and things that come from the folk traditions of my native area. I don't see this as a bad thing. Balances are important to me and so is the number three. For me, balancing between two things is when I go wrong, however balancing between three is fine. It's like the number three makes a lot of sense in my head.

Halloween is a time where all three of these factors in my practice come together. Winternights was celebrated earlier but that was in Iceland where things are colder faster in the year. By Halloween, the British Isles have usually seen some cold temperatures that signal the start of winter and so it often makes sense for me to celebrate that at the same time as Halloween.

I never do anything too crazy at Halloween in terms of ritual. Or at least that's not the aim. I rather like having a no-shit celebration and then getting to settle down and relax with a movie and a glass of wine or two. Usually I light some candles for dead family members and make offerings to the Gods and Disir. I also leave food and drink for them. When I have my own house, I will probably make a meal for my family and set a place for those that have passed before. There is something beautiful about the Dumb Supper. Slightly chilling but beautiful all the same.

Normally I don't get decked out in anything. The only reason I usually wear a costume is to scare kids that come trick or treating and that consists of a lot of black, a witches hat and a skull attached to a stick. That tends to do it!

This year was different though. I didn't get decked out in any special clothes but I felt really sort of like I had to put my raven feathers in my hair. I don't do that unless I am going to do some serious Seidhr. However this year, it was not so much an urge but a sense of not having a choice in the matter. So I did. I also put on my ritual amber necklace (never usually cracked out unless doing some crazies). Putting this stuff on was just bizarre. But once it was on, I thought to myself 'eeeh, Josh hasn't seen me like this before, I'll take some pics'. And so I did. I then got on with my blot and even though I felt the pull to do some Seidhr at the end, I stopped myself because I really wanted that movie night and Seidhr is something you cannot just do in five minutes. It takes some commitment in terms of time and potential shit scariness. Especially when it comes to dealing with the dead.

After the ritual, I took out the feathers and the amber and then checked the pics to see which to send to Josh. One photo really stood out. I need to give you a little backstory on this so you understand. During the time that I thought that Seidhr was all about trance journeying, I went on a journey. Like all of these journeys, they are pretty realistic to the person experiencing them. In this one, I came across Old One Eye and ended up being asked to sacrifice something in exchange for a gift. At this point, I felt this pain in my right eye, as if it was being ripped out. Being very wary of him, I told him I wanted time to think about it because I didn't trust him as far as I could throw him. He told me that he would allow me that but that I wouldn't have too long. 2-3 months later, on my way home from work for 3 days straight, I was met by two huge ravens(real ones) on the path to the bus stop (which is in the middle of nowhere). They would sit on the fence and let me get within 2 metres of them before flying across my path and leaving a feather in their wake. Ravens aren't rare in my area but crows are much more common and I was leaving work at different times of the day for those three days. I decided to take it that my time to decide was up. So I decided to say yes and see what happened. As soon as I agreed, I felt like I had the most horrendous pain in my right eye that lasted for about half an hour. Eventually it subsided and I went to go and look in the mirror. When I did, for a split second it looked like my right eye was gone.

All the trance journeys I did after that were only with one eye.

I don't do trance journeys really anymore. My idea of Seidhr has changed a hell of a lot. I'm not even sure how to regard the story above. My 3 raven feathers are still packed away at home in England and I get lots of irritation in my right eye before anything of significance happens in my life. And yet I really don't know what happened. I am also not adverse to thinking that I had some kind of delusion because quite frankly that is the better option to making a deal with One Eye.

So anyway back to the photos. I took two of them. One after the other, sitting in the same place. The first one is freaky. My right eye is messed up to fuck, the lighting is somehow different and quite frankly, I look at this picture and I know it is me but I see someone or something else there instead. I don't look like me. The second pic was taken seconds after and is completely different.

First picture:
Second picture:
So, what do you lot think? Something funky with whatever being? Subconscious Hamr distortion?

Brigantia, Trees and Heathens

2008-10-19T08:30:00.000-07:00

Last night, I dreamed. Usually when I dream, it's about nonsensical stuff however last night was another deity dream. I was in a market and kept getting drawn to a stall where this lady was selling a pendant with a miniature of the Brigantia statue on it made out of porcelain but labelled as 'Brigid'. There was also a gold/bronze Brigid pendant.

The porcelain one was 25quid and the gold/bronze one was 35. Every time I tried to walk out of the shop, an alarm would sound and would only stop when I came back in and picked up the Brigantia pendant. In my dream, I bought it.

It was odd.

Today I went for a walk and found a really pretty park in Bamberg. Really pretty. It had the most gorgeous European Larch tree in it. One of the few bits of green left in the blazes of yellows, reds, oranges and browns around it. When I saw the tree, I didn't know what it was as it only grows in Alpine regions and I'd never seen one before. I guess Bamberg is close enough to Frankonian Switzerland for this tree to grow here. So I took a piece of it back home with me for identification and also because I'm a terrible hoarder when it comes to nature. I also brought back rowan wood and holly. I was going to get some Belladonna (because you never know when you might need it) but a big gang of nuns disturbed me and so I had to give up collecting the poisonous berries. But nevermind, I know where yew grows and I know other places I can find Belladonna here.

Not that I am planning anything - those who know me know that I tend to assemble something approaching a botanica in every home where I live. I'm usually the most likely candidate to ask if you happen to need to get your hands on bones, poisonous snake skin or magpie wings.

On the way back, I walked on a different section of the path and had the sensation of walking over a lay line. This was a really powerful one, like made my feet tingle powerful and not too far from where I saw the wight the last time I was there. Grinning, I carried on towards home until I came across an elder tree (I think it was elder...I didn't have my glasses on to look at the leaves properly). This tree had four trunks coming out of it's base and on three of those trunks there were runes painted on in spray paint.

From left to right they were Thurisaz, Nauthiz and Ansuz.

There be magic practising Heathens out there hidden among the Catholicism of Bamberg me thinks!

Fare thi e'er well

2008-09-17T15:45:00.000-07:00

Fare Thi E'er Well

The first day I met you, it was already cold
The snow crunching under my feet
I had never come across someone like you before
With so many needs

We bathed you and dressed you
We fed you and loved you
We took you for wheelchair races
And delighted in your laugh

But as time passed, you began to waste away
And I will never forget that day or the tears we shed
When your bones came clear through your skin
For we all knew full well what that meant

Your limbs began to seize up, breathing became hard
You could not walk or speak
But you could always smile and let us know
That you were not yet ready to go

Then one day, there came a man in black.
Officious and tall
You were to be moved from this place
He just had to do the paperwork - that's all.

As he sat and began to write, the wasting fell away
You regained your speech, could walk again
You could eat and you could play
But soon the paperwork was done, and it was time to go

And so you went with the man, walked out of the door
And got into the car that had not been there before
You gave a goodbye and he started to drive
I waved you off then went back inside

These times are sad, I was sorry to see you go
And you go with the love of many of us from 'the Hall'
Wherever you end up, I wish you well.
Rest in peace Rachel Bennett, fare thi'e'er well.

Regnitz

2008-08-27T00:12:00.000-07:00

During my first month here in Germany, while I was looking for somewhere to live, I lived in a tent that was pitched on the banks of the Regnitz river.

It wasn't an ideal situation but it was much better than sleeping at the barracks with Josh and having to get up at 4am every morning. The army doesn't recognise unmarried couples and so I would have to leave for 5am and then spend 2-3 hours wandering around with nowhere to go until cafes opened. The campsite was a much better option.

Actually it was really quite nice.

The weather was good and I'd actually missed living outside.

Yes that's right, I'd actually missed living outside. There is so much about living outside that I love. I love waking up all snug in my sleeping bag, the air cool around my face and taking in a breath of really nice fresh air. I love the little green lights of fireflies settling on my tent at night just as I am going to sleep and I love sitting out(obviously covered in DEET) as darkness falls. Solid walls, while I wouldn't ever want to forgo them in winter shelter us from so much. Most of all a feeling of just being a part of it all.

Nothing compares to being in a tent during a really huge thunderstorm.

It exhilarates and yet calms all at the same time.

The only downside to living in a tent that I can think of is the lack of security and feeling of being exposed.

One night I woke to hear footsteps outside my tent. You learn to sleep light in a tent, especially during high season on a campsite because you just never know who is knocking about and torches make really good clubs. Quietly I reached for the torch, trying not to give away the fact that I was awake so as not to lose the advantage of surprise should anything untoward happen and that's when I saw it.

Unbelievably there was a girl stood in the middle of my tent. She was dressed in clothing from the 20s/30s and dripping wet. I didn't see her head. My tent is only a dome tent and she was too tall. One can only assume that her head was sticking out of the top if there at all!

At that point I did the only thing I could be bothered to do. I swore, turned over, did my best to ignore her and tried to go back to sleep despite the constant feeling of someone walking over my grave.

Eventually she went and I went back to sleep wondering if I could shift my pitch from the riverside to under the nice oak tree further inland.

Seidhr and Choices

2008-06-19T04:59:00.000-07:00

In all the accounts, save one, all Seidrworkers are single and itinerant. They have no relationships except for the one Seidrkona that has a son.

Yngona Desmond's book 'Voluspa - Seidr as Wyrd Consciousness' agrees with this, further stating that Seidhworkers involved in relationships don't have the same amount of focus to take things as far.

A while back, before I met Josh, this idea of being alone, of living on the outskirts of the community and using my particular scary talents didn't bother me. It was something I strived for. I wanted to become adept and earn the title of Seidhrworker.

Now I've become aware of a choice that's been creeping up on me but has remained unnoticed for quite a while for one reason or another.

The choice between my love and an art.

To be honest, if it came down to it and perhaps this is a sign, I'd choose my relationship, my love.

I don't know what that would make me - I will always have this extra 'awareness' about the worlds, knowledge and experiences. I cannot change that anymore than I can the colour of my eyes or skin. I would use that as needs be for the benefit of my family and community. I just won't be on a dedicated path to learn about Seidr anymore. I know it would be kind of foolish to throw away the chance to learn more and take things further but I think it would be more foolish to throw away the kind of love that I have found with my lovely man.

This relationship and the love we have has its own mysteries, as does motherhood and even though this is often overlooked for its mundanity, I think I would be happy just stopping here( if I could). I'm not prepared to sacrifice this in order to take things further with Seidr.

Maybe its not my role to, maybe my role is to use my skills to build community(unlikely with my lack of diplomacy I know but I think I'm getting better and I want to) and raise Heathen children and maybe point any fledgling Seidus in the right direction?

There will always be the rituals and different magics, that's typical of a Heathen woman full stop. Women were always the ones that did this stuff in the past. I just won't be getting my Seidr on unless necessary. I won't be going out of my way to take that stuff further.

Luck

2008-05-12T00:04:00.000-07:00

Given the crazy events that have transpired in my life since last year, I've been thinking a lot about luck recently. Both my personal luck and shared luck.

This year has quite possibly been the luckiest of my life.

I got a job I mostly enjoy in Korea, I've managed to get mostly out of debt and I met the love of my life.

In England, I was pretty much forced out of living there. My job prospects went to shit, I had no personal safety and I couldn't see much of a future for myself there. It was clear that my time to move on was overdue. I really wish I'd moved on when I'd first gotten the hint too...

When I finally accepted that I had to move, I walked into a job in Korea within days of starting to look - it was handed to me on a plate with rent free living thrown into the deal. So I came out here and within about a month I met one of the four other Heathens in Korea - my Josh. What are the chances?

7000miles from anything, in Pyeongtaek city I met the love of my life.

And you know what? Even then I knew it!

Now you're probably thinking 'yeah yeah you lucky cow' but you know what else I believe? I believe that I damn well earned that luck.

Oh yes....I think those three years I spent working with people with learning disability, getting chased round, assaulted, wiping bottoms and whatnot earned me luck because of how people began to see me and consequently my family then.

I don't know this for sure of course - UPG all the way.

I'm still not entirely sure how luck is earnt however I'm pretty sure that it's got a lot to do with how you reflect on your family and how you are with your family.

We prove ourselves in different ways.

Newbies, Christians and Heathenry

2008-04-25T00:46:00.000-07:00

When I was a newbie to all this non-Christian lark - back in the early/mid-nineties, I used to search for any and every bit of 'proof' that Christianity was wrong and that I'd picked the right path.

I used to care what Christians thought of me and yet went around spelling the word Christian with an 'x' in a very childish attempt to show my disdain for them. Then again, at that point the word 'magic' had umpteen number of spellings and everyone's online name either included the name of a deity or the word 'Lady' or 'Lord'.

Over the years, I came to care less and less about what Christians thought of me and as the polytheistic mindset really sunk in - I was no longer threatened by the existence of the God of Abraham whereas previously I tried to find ways to prove that everyone was deluded and that he wasn't real. I developed a taste for Catholic art and at one point even considered getting a tattoo of the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe. I was a languages major and through my studies of Spanish and consequently Latin American culture, I grew to love the aesthetic. One Pagan housemate was shocked and disgusted. She hated my tacky plastic pictures of the Virgin Mary, she hated my Fatima pin that I used to wear on my punky jacket with the pink flames on and she definitely hated the Virgin of Guadalupe patch that I had stitched to my excessively baggy jeans for a while.

'Why the fuck do you wear/have that shit if you're a Heathen?'

'Because it's fucking cool and it's not like it means anything to me. I just like the way it looks'

She was rather new to it all and very anti-Christian and I think that is something that we all go through in the process of conversion.

People seem to think that conversion is just a matter of a ritual or just deciding but it's not. It takes years and years for that change to happen - especially if you were raised in a religious family.

My family aren't particularly. They'll show up at church for 'hatches, matches and dispatches' but other than that - they don't really see the point of churches. My father has quite a recent habit of changing his religion(one day he's announcing he's a spiritualist, the next a shaman and the next a traditional Christian!). My mother just thinks that it doesn't really matter what anyone is as long as they're good people although I would say my mother is a bit of a Pagan type but doesn't really know it yet. And my brother....well.....to say he's completely unreligious is a bit of an understatement. Gideon bible?? Smoked it.

Yet in spite of growing up in a family that thought it was funny that they buried the last pope in a dress with shoes that didn't quite match - it was still a bit of a process to get to where I am now because I read a fair chunk of the bible, I went to church for a while (less than a year - stuck to that one, didn't I?! LOL). And really, we underestimate all the Christian stuff that exists in our society and ideas regardless of your upbringing. For example - I opted out of the Religious Education course at school but they still made us do modules entitled 'Caring, a Christian perspective' and 'Marriage,a Christian perspective' and sent us to do community service activities for good measure.

My first community service activity involved having to pull cancerous skin from a senile old lady's leg before covering it with cream.

Nice.

Anyway, back to the point. It takes years for you to change and part of making that change is being rabidly anti-Christian - guess it's the only way of dealing with the cognitive dissonance. But eventually the change comes when none of it matters anymore and you go into a church service and haven't got a clue what's going on, hungover and wishing the fucker that keeps ringing the bell would fuck off. You find yourself having to have Christian concepts explained to you and you might as well be having Hinduism explained because it's just that foreign to you. Bible stories end up being 'fucked up' but highly entertaining costume dramas and you figure you might as well take the local Christians that are offering freebies for everything you can get.

There is so much Christian baggage in modern Heathenry - not that it's not to be expected or anything. But I think give it a few years, let the first generation of children born to Heathen parents come through, let folks come to terms with the conversion process or even admit that there is a process to get over it.

It's only when Heathens stop giving a shit about how they're seen or about what they're doing and how it relates to every other bugger that we'll start to become credible.

Er...yeah...not really a point to any of that but nevermind.

It's my blog and I'll post if I want to :P

Warning

2008-04-22T21:07:00.000-07:00

Once a lady walked the heath
The fallen dead to find
And as the mists curled round
She sang a lullaby

The dead, they heard
That beauteous song
And gathered all around
And as she sang
The dead came out
Entranced by the sound

The more she sang
The more the mist
It grew all around
The more she sang
The colder it got
Frost forming on the ground

The dead they liked her oh so much
Decided then and there
That they would steal her clean away
From this middle earth

Now the lady is with the dead
Singing her lullaby
Trapped deep in a mound
Forced to sing
That cursed lullaby.

Let this be a lesson for all you here
Be careful what you sing
For even a children's lullaby
Can be a harmful thing.

Cat Houghton, April 22nd 2008

This was something that sort of came to me this morning before class....maybe my subconscious telling me not to make anything I write too good? *snigger*

I even got a tune with it but luckily no reality/dead calling effects that I can ascertain as of yet.

P.S This is not my Vardlokur chant....

On Writing Vardlokur

2008-04-22T03:36:00.000-07:00

This my fiends is going to be one of those dirty, UPG and woo-filled posts.

I'm leaving Korea in about three weeks and I'll be going back to Europe. A place where I can interact with the landvaettir and where they don't so much mind me doing crazy Seidhr type stuff. Being here in Korea has been so restrictive. The land spirits are just not used to immigration yet and aren't very accepting of other cultures and peoples. From the get-go, it became very apparent to me that practising any kind of Seidhr was a no-no. This isn't my turf, I am foreign and no matter how much I come to understand the lore of this place, what I might encounter and what I might do in order to placate the things I might encounter - that still doesn't mean that they would accept that placation.

The impending move back to Europe, to land and spirits that aren't completely alien to me must be having an effect and I'm being rather seriously nudged to take a slightly different path and to do a form of oracular Seidhr ritual.

Most people have only ever heard of the oracular Seidhr ritual in conjunction with the Hrafnar group and like the Hrafnar group, I'm looking at Eirik's Saga Rauda for my recon clues.

However I differ from Hrafnar on one rather key point. I don't believe that the Vardlokur are sung with the intention of singing the Seidkona or anyone else on a journey. I believe they are songs for enticing in the spirits. For pulling/enticing them in.

Why do I think this?

In the past I have come across songs which, when played alter reality, they facilitate that 'shift' between normalcy and that state in which the dead come through. Certain combinations of notes, certain 'feels' of music.

I know from personal experience that it is possible to 'pull' them in however I would much prefer that they come willingly.

There is also this section from Eirikssagaraudr:

But on the morrow, in the latter part of the day, she was fitted out with the apparatus she needed to perform her spells. She asked too to procure her such women as knew the lore which was necessary for performing the spell, and bore the name Varblokur, Spirit-locks. But no such women were to be found, so there was a search made right through the house to find whether anyone was versed in these matters.'I am unversed in magic,' was Gudrid's reply, 'neither am I a prophetess, yet Halldis my foster-mother taught me in Iceland the lore which she called Varblokur.' 'Then you are wiser than I dared hope,' said Thorbjorg. 'But this is a kind of lore and proceeding I feel I cannot assist in,' said Gudrid, 'for I am a Christian woman.' 'Yet it might happen,' said Thorbjorg, 'that you could prove helpful to people in this affair, and still be no worse a woman than before. Still, I leave it to Thorkel to procure me the things I need here.'Thorkel now pressed Gudrid hard, till she said she would do as he wished. The women now formed a circle all round, while Thorbjorg took her seat up on the spell-platform. Gudrid recited the chant so beautifully and well that no one present could say he had ever heard the chant recited by a lovelier voice. The seeress thanked her for the chant, saying that she had attracted many spirits there who thought it lovely to lend ear to the chant-- spirits 'who before wished to hold aloof from us, and pay us no heed. And now many things stand revealed to me which earlier were hidden from me as from others.

As you can see for yourself in the above excerpt from Chapter 4 of the aforementioned saga - Thorbjorg categorically states that the chant had attracted many spirits.

Unfortunately we don't know exactly what Gudrid chanted/sung and so logically, the would be practitioner of oracular Seidhr is left with two choices.

a. Give up and forget the idea
b. Use the information that can be deduced as to the nature of the chant in order to write a new one that can be used.

From the above excerpt, we can easily surmise that the Vardlokur had several characteristics.

* It had a rhythm to it. All chants have a rhythm.
* For a chant to be a successful and memorable chant, it had to be quite short and have repetition. This can still be seen in most chants from folklore. Another possible aspect of such a chant could be 'counting' as can be seen in chants such as the 'Magpie chant' (one for sorrow, two for joy etc etc).

From these two facts we can possibly also surmise that the Vardlokur is something that is at once hypnotic and yet builds into something a little more ecstatic.

Another thing to take into account is that some children's chants have a tune to them. From personal experience I know that certain tones and rhythms have different effects and that some indeed attract the dead.

One interesting angle that I have considered in writing new Vardlokur comes from a couple of things that the Viking Answer Lady says in her essay 'Women and Magic in the Sagas:Seidhr and Spae' (http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/seidhr.shtml)

Where a Saami or Siberian shaman would rely upon the beat of a drum to achieve the ecstatic trance, the völva requires a special type of chant, the Varðlokur. No words have been preserved of this chant, but since the Varðlokur had been used by Guðríðr's foster-mother as a lullaby, it seems likely that the chant was repetitive and soothing in character.

and also her references to the law codes in Anglo-Saxon England that suggest that Spae-craft was not necessarily a dead art during and after the conversion period:

The spae-wife is not absent in Saxon England, either, for a Christian penitential states:
Si qua mulier divinationes vel incantationes diabolicas fecerit, I annum poeniteat, vel 3 XLmas, XL dies, juxta qualitem culpae poenitentis.
"If a woman makes prophecies and incantations by diabolic means, she is punished for one year, or 40 masses, 40 days, with the punishment being proportional to the guilt" (Crawford, 107).

Could it be possible that somewhere, floating around there is an early folk song/ballad/chant that holds remnants of an Anglo-Saxon variant of the Vardlokur? In the same way that some Heathen lore was preserved for the Christian audience by Grimm's fairy tales, could it be possible that there is knocking around out there, a really old folk song that in some way preserves parts of the Vardlokur or derived from it? Although I am unsure as to where the Viking Answer Lady comes up with the 'lullaby' link (I can only think it was something expressed in the untranslated text as opposed to the translation that she herself gives on the site), if it is the kind of song that could have been used as a lullaby, it may have been quite an innocuous chant of the kind that can still be spotted in English folk chants to this day.

Chants along the lines of

'Jenny Wren fell sick upon a merry time,
In came robin redbreast and fed her cakes and wine'

seem innocuous though they contain fragments of folk belief that, although not ancient, refer to a form of Pagan belief.

So I have been searching not only for possible chants/folk songs/ballads that could have been referencing enticing the dead (even in an abstract manner) but chants/folk songs or ballads that could possibly (either from their tunes or subject matter) be used in such a way. There is a power in tradition and it would be good to use it.

So far I have come up with nothing except a great liking for a folk song called 'Three Ravens' - but being an Odinic type, what do you expect ;)

I do have a form of chant/song that needs refining and that I think could do the job but I'll have to try it out properly when I get back to England so all is not lost if my dreams of finding something older don't come through ;)

The saga continues....

To Join Or Not To Join...

2008-04-17T17:35:00.000-07:00

That be the question.

You see, I'm a bit of a walking contradiction because on the one hand I want to be involved in the wider community and do something of service to the Heathen community- I've sort of considered joining some kind of org and doing some kind of clergy training - I mean, around ten years experience as a Heatheny type person has to count for something, right? And I do know that the training in itself does not a gythja make - acceptance by your community in that role does.

However on the other hand, I make enemies faster than Don Giovanni due to my inability to be subtle...I'm as subtle as an airraid. I also kind of enjoy taking the piss out of some members of the Heathen community. If it makes folks feel better, I do it to members of the Pagan community too. Well, it's not my fault if they dress up all funny and come out with daft shit! They're asking for it.

And you see, it's this complete lack of tolerance that keeps me in this quandary. As soon as I hear any shit, it's like these alarms go off in my head and before I know it, my gob is open and I'm giving out about whatever that person is talking about.

Well.....

There's a reason why my friends gave me the nickname 'Human marmite'.

There is simply no middle ground with me. You either love me or hate me.

And I do try to be diplomatic. Mr Josh - my lovely man is a very diplomatic chappie but I have a lot of trouble with that. It's ok on the internet because I can take a step back, think about what I'm going to say and edit anything too inflammatory out of my posts. In real life it's different. I don't think I'll ever master face to face diplomacy and I just know that were I to join an org, something would happen - I wouldn't be able to sit there with a straight face/without making an outburst/without making enemies with well known people and it'd all go down the pan.

Oh hum.....

Lancashire and Lancastrians

2008-04-16T21:02:00.000-07:00

I come from a part of England called Lancashire which is made up of working-class mill towns, woodland, moorland and the occasional 'posh' place where the toffs live.

But to me, Lancashire means so much more.

I think of Lancashire and I think of vast seas of grassy, peaty moors. Windswept and desolate. Beautiful in their own way. I think of the way the land feels and the wights I know. Their places - the mounds, ruins and groves. I think of places that buzz beneath my feet, places where the air sometimes crackles with energy and that stay warm even when everywhere else is cold.

I think of the trees and what herbs grow where. I think of how close I feel to my Gods there. I think of Brigantia - the Goddess linked to the land itself and I think of the people that once walked buried in the hills.

People with whom I have little in common except the land. Ancient Britain or British bitsa, we both came from the same land. We both belong there. Those hills will never be foreign to me no matter how far or how long I travel.

In the 1700s, Lancashire was described as a 'wild and lawless county full of Catholics'.

But Lancashire is the reason why I'm a Heathen. I was lucky enough to grow up somewhere where the wights still live and that still has presence. Walking those hills I learned most of what I know now.

Well not just in walking those hills - growing up in my family too.

Put it simply - Lancashire is a place where people are often brutally honest. It's a trait I have too and even though the county has been at least nominally Christian for over a thousand years, old concepts still remain. The concepts of luck and familial luck - of gaining luck. The ideas about community and being prepared to go to the wall for your family and friends. After all - blood is thicker than water.

As children - we told stories about 'Granny Greenteeth' who drowns children that swim in her ponds, about 'hungry' rivers and moorland ghosts. We told stories about things that usually couldn't be seen but we knew to be there and without really thinking I found myself leaving offerings at certain places.

This post is my tribute to Lancashire - the land I really want to see. My land. Just for a little while at least before I go off to Germany.

Heathen men

2008-04-16T01:05:00.000-07:00

I would like, if I may, to introduce you to a rather strange and varied species.

The species I am talking about is the Heathen male. There are many different types of Heathen male and as a longterm observer of the species, I have noticed several types emerge.

The Wannabe Viking

This first type is perhaps the most prolific and easiest to recognise. The Wannabe Viking is usually has the biggest Thor's hammer you've ever seen and then just in case you don't quite get it - a t-shirt - also with a huge Thor's hammer. The Wannabe Viking will talk tough...and very loudly. He probably doesn't realise that Vikings weren't the be all and end all of Viking age Scandinavian culture. He also probably doesn't think much about women - except in terms of 'loot' and 'booty' or even.. 'wench'. The more respectable among them may even think along the lines of 'Valkyrie' but only because of the serving drinks angle.

The Wannabe Viking can most often be found at Heathen events, mouthing off loudly, mead horn in hand and talking absolute bollocks. But hey...as long as he looks tough, what's the problem??

The Theodish King

The Theodish 'King' likes social hierarchy - especially one where he gets to be at the top of it without having to work hard to get there. People obviously don't recognise his greatness though and except from a few sycophants that would be better off roleplaying or just being honest with themselves and taking that step to being an S&M slave - everyone else will probably think he's a jerk.

These types can come in all shapes and sizes. Some may even look normal...ok, I said 'some'....They're not so easy to spot but look out for the sycophants asking dumb questions like 'Does this _____please you my lord?'

The Theodish King's greatest fear is for people to find out the truth - that he's really covering up rather dramatically for his inferiority complex which comes out rather magnificently if challenged about anything.

The Lokean

These are usually the chaps that look like they *still* wet the bed. They usually dress quite gothic and if you ask them why they play with Loki, they get all whiny and bang on about discrimination. They also blame Loki for anything they fuck up usually saying 'Loki made me do it!' so as to avoid accepting any personal responsability for their actions.

Having said that - I've come across Lokeans that don't fit this mold and although I still personally don't get the 'Why Loki' thing, I don't mind them.

I still have my reservations about being in a blot/faining with Loki involved though....

The Great And Knowledgable One

This variety sits on forums and seems to talk down to anyone with a pair of tits and vagina - of course - a woman couldn't possibly know more than he.....and of course he would only ever have consulted research put together by a woman when he was a 'beginner'.

Of course the thing he dreads most is it getting out that he's actually still probably a beginner and he's trying to cover up his lack of knowledge instead of doing what he should and asking questions and learning.

The 'Godslave'

These are often the most stoic of all. They are only alive because Odin lets them be...or whatever.

They do not question anything and often can be spotted because they're speaking in some bad version of 'Olde Englishe' (They go to the 'shoppe' instead of the shop)

The Anacronist

This boy is easily spotted because he's still living like it was 699AD baby!!!

It's just a pity that the police/fire department/hospital/his neighbours can't understand that.

The Lesser Spotted Lovely Decent Heathen Man

These are very difficult to spot and if you do happen to come across one - snap him up!! He lives in the now, he treats you like an equal (but still has enough of the traditional about him to make you go weak at the knees), he has a good sense of humour and often makes you laugh. He doesn't take himself too seriously and has a sense of honour that makes you feel safe.

Like I said ladies- snap them up if you find them!

A New Day, A New Blog!

2008-04-15T22:14:00.000-07:00

For years I've been a Livejournal chick. In fact I was on there when you had to get a code from a friend in order to be able to join. Well, either that or pay....

This blog isn't moving on - not really. This blog is going to be my exclusively Heathen blog for all my Heathen related blurbs. Of course daily life will get in there somewhere - that can't be helped because being a Heathen isn't a weekend activity or something I turn on or off or even can turn on or off. This is for recording my perspective on things, my UPG and my ideas so that I can look back and see how I've changed.

I change a lot. My life is a constant state of flux- especially emotionally. I think Goethe described it best when he said 'On top of the world yet in the depths of despair'. One day I'm flying high on dreams for the future and the next I come crashing down as I worry about the coming challenges and some of the harsh realities of my situation.

My ideas change a lot too, especially about Heathenry as I question and learn and question and learn.

That's all going to go here.

Some days I may not post and others I may post a lot.

Oh well - I have a class to teach.

Toodle pip!