Mystery Poem

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

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

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

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

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

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

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???