Heimlich A. Laguz

Xylem and Phloem Part Three: the Vessel and Ego

Since my previous journal update I’ve had time not only to reflect more on this idea and project of perfecting the vessel but also a fair bit of very stimulating correspondence with various insightful folk I have the pleasure to be in contact with.

There’s nothing like the sympathetic exploration of other points of view to help you develop, expand, or clarify your own. In this case, I feel might be in a position to find a point of agreement between my own rather anti-ego model of spiritual development and the more ego-focussed models of modern Satanism, Rune Gilders, etc… and also perhaps the more subtle considerations of ego made by Jung and others.

As I have previously illustrated, my spiritual philosophy boils down to a few simple propositions, informed by the old heathen worldview of memory and ørlög:

1) Everything is interconnected, yet each individual entity is unique and divine;

2) Any individual being requires nourishment from the flow of the water of life throughout the worlds (yes folks, that is a metaphor!) if it is to flourish;

3) Isolation and separation cause amnesia, confusion and death;

4) Opening to connectedness is (or can be) terrifying because it forces us to confront our finitude, no matter how good for us it might be or even how good it can feel;

5) Therefore the spiritual task is to develop one’s capacity to sustain connection to what is beyond one – to become a good vessel and conduit for the flow of the waters of life throughout the World Tree.

A corollary of point 5 might be that we need to find our right place in the order of things in order to facilitate good flow of the waters, but this is a new idea to me and I don’t yet know what it means.

Now I generally take a dim view of the ego, that is, the physical and psychological sense of being a separate will or being, a sense which can run the whole gamut from reptile brain reactivity to hyper-cerebral intellectualising. I suppose I have generally regarded the ego as armour, blockage, analogous to the hardened arteries that bad diet and poor exercise cause.

The ego on this view prevents us from being good vessels for the flow of the water of life because it occludes our connection to that flow. Rather than embrace ego magic as a model for growth or transformation, my view seems to imply that the opposite of ego magic – ego destruction – is the door to positive change or evolution.

However in the process of dismantling the ego (which is an ongoing process as the ego is very durable) we risk also destroying the integrity of our vessel, which is after all a finite being. In order to be truly connected to the whole of the Tree we need to retain some specificity, some particularity. In this way the age old philosophical problem of universal and particular is transcended in an almost Hegelian fashion.

A word at this point is called for in relation to the terms Left Hand Path and Right Hand Path. These days in the western world Left Hand Path seems to refer to spiritual practices related to ego development; where as Right Hand Path seem to refer to spiritual practices related to devotion. People like to think of the Left as ‘evil’ and the Right as ‘good’, though such Manichean ideas need have little place in heathenry or magical practice more generally.

This distinction irritates me for two reasons. Firstly, it implies that unless you are a budding ego-maniac you cannot be interested in your own spiritual (or other) growth or development. Clearly a load of rubbish! Secondly, it implies that if your spiritual focus is largely devotional then you are more of a dim-witted follower than an exciting maverick. Again, a load of rubbish.

However there is a deeper reason why the distinction irritates me – that being that these terms, Left and Right Hand Path, do not refer originally to the goal of spiritual practice, but more the journey taken.

The Left Hand Path is the quick but dangerous road to union with God; this is the road that the well-known Sufi Irena Tweedie took under the tutelage of an Indian Sufi master. The Right Hand Path is the slower, but surer, road to union with the divine.

Of course, some Left Hand Path practices involve the use of transgression in order to free the individual from slavery to their received social mores, but if anything this sort of practice is part and parcel of ego destruction – dismantling the individual’s concrete sense of identity and throwing them into a much more vast ocean of possibilities.

Coming back from my digression – how do I find a rapprochement with ego magic? David Tacey makes the point that the ego is an archetype too. Ego has its mythic patterns of manifestation and withdrawal just like any transpersonal being, deity, or indeed the tides of history or the flow of the waters.

If that is the case then a simple linear determination to shatter the ego becomes itself an egotistical project. As I’ve quoted before – “the struggle to free myself of restraints becomes my very shackles” (Meshuggah).

In order to perfect the vessel – to effect a union of universal and particular within our being – we need to have a more organic – and less egotistical – relationship to the ego.

Now my impression of most self-professed ego magicians is that they really don’t grasp this point at all. That isn’t a surprise, since I am suggesting that we need to develop the ego in non-egotistical ways!

Since we cannot do away with our particularity (not if we want to stay alive) we need to find a way to prevent it from occluding our capacity for opening to the flow of waters; but also to find a way to house it in our lives so that it might even enhance our ability to see the forest for the trees, to be good conduits for the flow of waters.

And there’s a lovely seeming contradiction for you – how to invite the ego to serve us in remembering the bigger picture of the World Tree in its full all-encompassing and connecting (and ego humbling) glory?

If anything, Woden is a master of dissolving impossible conundrums. Perhaps he has an answer to this almost alchemical conclusion that my reflections on heathen cosmology and spirituality have led to? Feel free to drop by and make some suggestions, One Eye… and in the meantime the practices outlined in my last post could all provide a good start.

Oh yeah, one final thought, a realisation I had after one of my bands (Sword Toward Self) recently shared the stage with Aleister Crowley-inspired progressive death metal act Aeon of Horus (who incidentally have just released an utterly astounding album).

Crowley on the one hand seemed an inveterate ego-magician; yet on the other hand he seemed obsessed with the fine art of dissolution. I wonder whether his method of keeping the ego groomed for maximum flow was to indulge its excesses – then shift just as dramatically to something new?

Perhaps by playing the ego up to the hilt he absolved it of its power, not unlike a paradoxical injunction in Ericksonian style psychotherapy. If so, then once again it seems we can draw yet another straight line through from Crowley to chaos magic. I have to go back and re-read the Book of Lies perhaps… here are some of Crowley’s own comments about the writing of said marvellous book:

“One of these chapters bothered me. I could not write it. I invoked Dionysus with particular fervour, but still without success. I went off in desperation to `change my luck’, by doing something entirely contrary to my inclinations. In the midst of my disgust, the spirit came over me, and I scribbled the chapter down by the light of a farthing dip.. When I read it over, I was as discontented as before, but I stuck it into the book in a sort of anger at myself as a deliberate act of spite towards my readers”.

I hate to say it… but this sort of thing reminds me of me.

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Xylem and Phloem Part Two: Perfecting the Vessel

An initial question to pose, following last week’s journal entry, is this: how might we unblock and expand our conduit to the waters of the tree? And the related question – how might we make ourselves a more fitting vessel for the waters?

Intimately connected to the task of making oneself a fit vessel is the question of how we then invite the waters to flow through us. I think there is actually some overlap between the two tasks – the task of making oneself a good vessel and the task of attracting the flow of the waters.

These are nevertheless distinct undertakings and I will therefore consider them as such, although ultimately both tasks call upon us at the same time – we might find ourselves shifting from one to the other quite smoothly. They tend to also help one another build momentum; it is very difficult to get anywhere if we focus on one of the tasks to the exclusion of the other.

For our purposes, there are three aspects to being a good vessel for the flow of the waters of life (as Bil Linzie calls them). Firstly we must be open so that the waters can enter us. Secondly we must be strong and flexible to allow them rich and full manifestation. Thirdly we must be sufficiently non-attached that they can pass away back into the Wells once more.

As with the two tasks, these three aspects of being a good vessel are interrelated; we undertake all three  simultaneously. As such, practices which engage all of these aspects are particularly useful.

A word on UPG and the question of deriving modern heathen magical techniques from historical lore is in order at this point.

As far as UPG goes, I consider the approach to Germanic spirituality I am here exploring to be well grounded in both lore and personal experience (mine and other peoples’). As such I am dispensing with further exposition/justification – if you aren’t clear on where I am coming from you need to read some of my other journal entries, such as the first Xylem & Phloem post.

While there is a sound argument that we must derive magical practices from historical lore, I personally am not so attached to this. What matters to me is the experience, not so much the method.

Of course the method used influences the kind of experience we have, but as I’ve noted before, listening to or performing black metal is just as berzerkergang inducing as biting a shield before entering combat. So let us not split hairs!

The most important thing is to be true to the spirit, the essence, of heathen magic. Plenty of material I’ve read on strict reconstructed magical technique is dry, uninspired and leaves one with the impression that the author in question has never actually practiced any of their tricks.

Right, here we go with five general things you can do to become a better vessel.

Meditation

Yes, I know, there really isn’t any evidence that heathen magicians did this sort of thing. But their Indo-European cousins and ancestors did (and do) – and given how much Edred Thorrson relies on that connection in the Nine Doors of Midgard I think its safe for me to do the same (gosh, I’m so bloody open about my ‘inauthentic’ influences, don’t you think?)

Meditation is a word which gets used in many different ways. I mean it in its most basic form – stilling and focussing one’s conscious mind. I have been meditating every day for the last three or so weeks and it makes a huge difference.

My method is quite basic – I just lie down, set my alarm, and then watch my breath going in and out. Soon all kinds of thoughts, feelings, images, etc rise up and my mind begins wandering off the task. And then after a bit of that I realise I’ve lost the plot and come back to the breath again.

Simple! And after a while of practicing this you will find two things happen.

One: you find yourself going into a deep state where your conscious mind is completely quiet (though sometimes afterward you may have a hazy memory of images or colours that you cannot quite grasp).

Two: You start to experience just how random and arbitrary your everyday thoughts and feelings are. This is a great relief, it just gives that little bit of pause and perspective. The less ruled I am by the circumstances I am in, the more able I am to open a space within for the waters to flow through.

I view meditation as being like pouring water out of a pitcher so that new, fresh water can then be poured in. If we don’t empty the pitcher of the mind periodically then we can get blocked up, stuck on the same thought and feeling patterns and habits. This clogs us up and we become less able to contain, absorb and release the waters of life.

Its important to remember with this practice that it doesn’t matter if you mind wanders from the breath (or whatever else you choose to focus on). The point is just that you eventually notice what has happened. The important skill is the ability to become aware of what your consciousness is doing instead of just being swept along with it.

Spending Time in Nature

Preferably you could be walking, riding, running, swimming or similar – physical exercise combined with being in nature is a winner. The natural world is infinitely complex and easily overloads our senses – compare the sight of a forest with the sight of four straight walls and a flat roof!

Additionally, the natural world wears the ecological nature of being openly. We tend to conceal the interconnected flowing structure of reality from ourselves in the modern human built environment. Going into nature reminds us of how things really work, even if we can’t see that.

In pre-modern times I suppose folks were much more embedded in the natural world and their consciousness was shaped accordingly. There are also specific practices such as sitting out that must surely be seen as partly incorporating the practice of just being in the natural world.

I find that spending time in nature grounds me, opens me, dissolves my own internal chaos and stiffens my resolve. It encourages me to reflect and breathe and I get many of my best ideas while staring at the ocean’s horizon or at water running over rocks. I’ve spent hours in deep trance, wandering the sea rocks and beaches of the seaside near my home.

Talking

Given my professional background I’ve had many experiences of the power of speech. We can infer from the rune poems related to Ansuz that speech is divine – so too is listening; and the Havamal is filled with advice on the important of cultivating good friendships.

There is a specific kind of talking in which one can hear oneself. Sometimes I have found myself watching myself from outside my own body in these conversations, suddenly presented with the reality of my identity and being. That’s a kind of objectivity that is very hard to achieve in other ways.

We often carry a lot of stuff around in our minds and bodies, and thoughts and feelings can get stuck in vicious loops if we don’t let them out. This clogs us up and makes us poor vessels for the waters. Exchanging speech with someone who is trustworthy is a powerful tool for relieving this pressure and blockage.

I regard this as a spiritual practice, because this is no the everyday, empty or utilitarian talking we so often encounter. It is rather the kind of communication that Hegel had in mind when he spoke of the power of recognition – namely, it is communication in which we find ourselves and our other. We create ourselves literally through the act of speaking and being heard.

Nietzsche talks about a certain kind of conversation – in which one person is a midwife and the other ready to burst forth with child. I’ve been blessed with the chance to play both roles many times in my life. Both roles can serve as powerful tools for unblocking oneself and expanding one’s capacity to hold the waters.

Music

I use music to achieve all kinds of open, supple and cleared states. In particular I have written a number of finger style guitar pieces that utilise a lot of droning notes and open tuning structures. Something about droning notes is extremely trance-inducing. I can totally rewire my consciousness in this way.

I will say more on this subject in subsequent posts, but I would like to quote the marvellous folk singer Tony Eardley at this point:

If it takes you half a lifetime, don’t begrudge a single day
Just stumble back along the track that puts you on your way
You travel half the world around, through every port of call
To watch the clock rewinding to the hour before the fall

So now I try to listen, to take it as it comes
On silent cobweb mornings, through the city’s grinding hum
I try to catch the moment and hold it in the raw
To reach for the connecting thread to all that’s gone before

And sometimes I fear I’m standing here
With nothing to tell
But when the music’s flowing
Its like water from the well
Drawing water from the well

Exercise, Dance, Martial Arts, etc

Developing your physical fitness is a powerful way to unblock yourself and expand your capacity to hold the waters. Consider dance for example. The stronger and more flexible you become, the more free you become to express whatever impulse comes through your flesh.

Exercise really gets your physiology flowing, and this is a bit of a microcosm-macrocosm thing: the more flow within your body, the more flow you’ll be able to entertain from beyond your body. Insofar as I see the heart as an important part of being a vessel for the waters of life it make sense to do activities which literally strengthen and even enlarge your heart.

The stronger and more flexible you are – I find at least – the quieter the random chaos of your mind becomes. I think this is because with regular exercise you are spending more time in an embodied consciousness (assuming you practice with a bit of mindfulness of course). This in turn opens the conduit for the waters because as a vessel you become less turbulent.

Oh, and exercise entails a certain amount of pain. Getting used to pain, to being stretched to one’s limits, is very useful for breaking down the blockages that can shut us off from the flow.

Well that’s about all I have to say on this subject – suffice to say that all of this should be able to keep you going for, oh, a lifetime! I’m far from perfect, but recently I’ve become more and more resolute and active in pursuing these practices. The more I do them, the better I feel, the more free and creative I feel, which then invites me to do more. I still have my blockages and armour of course – but am I not human?

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Xylem and Phloem: Part One

Some of what I have to say here is a development on previous comments made in this journal. More needed to be said – so here it is.

I still recall from high school biology class studying the physical structure of plants and trees. Xylem and phloem are the tubes and vessels that allow liquids to move through the stem, trunk, branches and fronds of a tree or a plant. They serve a very similar purpose to the human circulatory and respiratory systems.

We know that for the original heathens the whole world was arranged upon a massive tree – known by various names such as Yggrdrasil or Laerad. At the foot of the tree were three wells.

The first of these was Mimisbrunnr, the well over which the giant Mimir presided. This is the well to which Odin sacrifices his eye in exchange for a draught of wisdom.

The second was the Urdarbrunnr, over which the Norns, who administer to the shaping and passage of time – stand watch. Urd literally means ‘past’ – so this well, like the well of Mimir, seems to represent a repository of all that has come to pass.

The third well was Hvergelmir, the source of all the rivers (and in some interpretations the primal oceans) of the world. In Gylfaginning a spring in Niflheim is called Hvergelmir and is the source of the Elivagar rivers, which feed poisoned liquid into the Ginnungagap and thus assist in the quickening of creation.

Many scholars (Jan de Vries, Paul Bauschatz, etc) have suggested that originally there was a single well, and that the split into three is a later embellishment. That could well be true, though I don’t see that anything is lost from keep the triple well distinction. There are, after all, many triplet entities in Germanic mythology – Odin-Vili-Ve being the most obvious.

So the common theme between these three wells is that they are sources of origin. Mimisbrunnr is a repository of memory – and therefore it seems wisdom. Urdabrunnr is a repository of all past action – and since the past is the earth from which the present sprout it would seem to be the origin of all change and action in the world.

Hvergelmir is a source of water (which might represent life force itself), in fact, it is the source of all the waters of the world.

Now, following Paul Bauschatz and Bil Linzie, it would seem that the basic Germanic cosmology works like this – the wells are a repository of all that has been. This water then flows up through the world tree through all the worlds until it falls back down – in manifestation. Then it drips back down into the wells, forming the next layer of ørlög.

This understanding of time could be described as ecological, rather than linear or even circular. I think that this notion of ecological time is far richer and more nuanced than other models. Linear time is simplistic and doesn’t really even save the phenomena. Circular time is an improvement, but it is still very literal and one-dimensional.

Ecological time, on the other hand, allows for complexity – which is pretty essential in a model of how time works once we consider just how infinitely complex causality is (any lay or professional students of chaotic systems in the Elhaz readership? I really recommend James Gleick’s introductory book on the subject, it will teach you a lot about wyrd).

The ecological model of time articulated in this mythic portrait of well(s) and tree requires one other element to be fully rounded out. Since every being, object, entity is nourished by water from the well, every single thing might be regarded as sacred, magical, perhaps even as conscious.

At the same time as being utterly unique and magical, however, this flow of water and memory binds the cosmos together. At the heart of this model of Germanic cosmology – it seems to me anyway – is the classic insight that all things are interconnected and one, and yet at the same time different, separate and irreplaceably unique.

This delicate dance between interconnection and particularity runs as a motif throughout Germanic mythology. Often particular events in the myths seem at first to be isolated and particular – yet can have consequences that reach out across the worlds. Similarly, the gods play out their grand schemes through the immediate circumstances their followers must live.

This model of cosmology also offers a richer understanding of the Germanic notion of holy/unholy. The word “holy” has its origin in the notion of “wholeness”. It did not originally connate Christian separateness. It instead connoted a quality of being complete, well-rounded, healthy, fertile even. When something is bursting with life and breath it is holy.

Combining this with the notion that the waters of memory flow through all things – it would seem that what makes something holy is that it has a strong current of memory or wyrd flowing through it. Perhaps this is what having good ørlög means – or indeed what it is to have good luck or a strong hamingja.

Conversely to have poor luck, or to be unholy, simply means that a being is more or less cut off from the flow of waters. Perhaps its current is occluded or blocked or pinched. This might happen in any number of ways. By way of analogy: when we manage the environment in linear, instrumental and non-ecologically minded ways it becomes barren and lifeless.

If we adopt this interpretation of Germanic cosmology (and I have found no more complete, deep or thorough interpretation) then we are left facing a number of challenges and questions.

Most importantly, this view of Germanic cosmology forces a great deal of reassessment. Many heathens I have met in my time have adopted – to greater or lesser extent – the trappings of tradition without actually going into themselves and developing a different kind of experience of the world, a different consciousness.

As such they still see the world in a more or less linear (or sometimes circular) way. I do not consider that such individuals are truly heathen, regardless of how long their beards are or how many swords they own. They’re little better than tourists or hypocrites. Such people often seem to be very convinced of their own deep heathenry. How ironic.

I am going to spend a few journal entries exploring some dimensions of this reassessment, with an orientation towards practical things you can do to explore and experience the world through the doors of this metaphor, this myth, of well and tree.

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Will and Heart

willandheartimage1My recent reflections on the unconscious, the ego, and the place of magic and spirituality as bridges between, have been opened wider in the alchemy of fire and water.

A mysterious ally gave to me some perspective on who I am and how I function, and it bears some exploration.

I regard this and my previous post (Dissolution) as falling in some sense at more the chaos magic end of the spectrum of my interests. In truth however, there are no hard lines, only a seamless continuum.

These considerations are as much the concern of Kali, of Wotan, indeed of Hermes Trismegistus. They are Loki’s bastard children and I have felt the play and tension of my own ancestors within these insights.

So this is in a way an invitation for my reader to utilise me as a mirror. It is clear to me that “change is coming through” (Tool). I am in the cauldron, boiling away, seething like the sacrificial meat my Germanic ancestors offered to the gods. Perhaps in the bubbling surface of the water others might find themselves and profit for it.

In my life the play of passivity and activity; of control and submission; of ego-will and deep impulse; has been a powerful and recurring motif. I spent many years locked in dark and shadowy halls, the nightmarish chains of my own psychology. Those days are mostly laid to rest, but they mark the point of departure.

The heart of my struggle has been this – I am not a creature of will but of submission. Submission to wyrd, to the tides, to the impulses of gods and the fire of odrerir. Submission to imbas, berzerkergang and a thousand other imperious states of creation and destruction.

Most of my best achievements I can take little credit for, they being so significantly shaped by that which comes through me. My task in this life is to make myself as fit a vessel as possible for these forces – so that they are given as full a range of expression as possible.

As such I have for some years waged war with something that I choose to name the ego. For me this thing I call the ego is that sense of self I have which feels itself as detached and isolate from all that is around me. It is amnesiac to the infinite mystery and divinity of all things; it feels itself the sole author of its acts.

Fortunately and unfortunately for me many of my early spiritual influences – both individuals personally known and philosophies encountered – were very strongly of the view that only the ego matters! That isolation is the goal, that the ideal of the spiritual path is perfection of the self at the expense of all else.

Oddly – no one I have met who extols this path comes anywhere close to being an admirable individual. I cannot judge others who hold this philosophy whom I have not met; however it seems to me that those who spurn their egos seem to have better chances of perfecting themselves than those who make such self-perfection their goal.

Hand in hand with this ego magic approach goes something which I will here refer to as will-based living. Will-based living is an approach to life in which I seek to force things to fit with my conscious expectation and desire. I try to use myself as a source of life energy and impulse and I rapidly burn up into cinders.

Will-based living is no way for me to forge a life because as a single being I am extremely finite. There is little energy for me to draw on unless I steal it from others. But I am not a thief – I have (perhaps ironically) too much self-respect. I don’t see how ego magicians can get very far – perhaps they just don’t.

Regardless, will-based living has one very exciting advantage – it feels safe because it relies on the conscious mind to be the source of all things. The conscious mind, being far more limited than the Deep Mind, rarely presents us with anything particularly challenging, threatening, exciting or profound.

This also means that will-based living is not a very effective method for creating a life worth living. Not only does it encourage a barren horizon for one’s hopes; but one is forced to drawn one’s energy from self-destruction or theft from others. Since the latter is not an option for me, I have tended to the former, which is not healthy.

Some time ago I realised there is another way to live life – what I will here refer to as heart-based living. Heart-based living hands trust to my heart, the seat of my emotions and life force. The heart encourages circulation and transformation of the blood – our very life relies on this alchemy.

Furthermore the heart underscores our connectedness to all things. It is crucial in our use of an external substance – oxygen – to live. It also helps evacuate carbon dioxide – a chemical which other beings are able to use to live. The heart, that most individual of all parts of a person, is in the business of connection and exchange (Gebo).

Whenever I have opened my heart, made it as a cup or chalice to the water of Urd’s well, profound and positive changes have occurred. My expectations have never been fulfilled, but rather exceeded in remarkably lateral ways. I have become a pure student, an ardent lover of mystery – of Runa in its deepest sense.

Here however lies the trick – it is hard to trust in the heart, in the submission required by this agent of the gods and the Deeps. And so I lapse back into will-based living and into self-poison or mediocrity.

At various times in my life I have even sought to impose – by act of will – a more heart-based approach to life on myself. Indeed, I have been shown that this is why I talk so much about waging war on the ego – this is nothing less than my gods and ancestors attempting to awaken me to my hypocrisy.

Conversely, sometimes the amnesiac will plays at being the chalice of the heart by miring me in cold isolation. There, in the hovel of my own “mean-spirited road house” (Rumi), I curse the light and life that flows through others. But to be receptive is not to be quiescent – this is an illusion, a nightmare that the isolate will weaves.

To be receptive might be to be extremely active – but the art is to act only in accordance with the heart, without seeking to understand outcome. It is to attend to the unfolding of wyrd without presuming that Skuld can be easily tethered – or indeed, even should be tethered! I think. This is where I am very much still learning.

This kind of trust, this action without will, has served me well in my life. There are gifts it has given me that are of incalculable value. My ego will cannot make the same claim.

So now it is time for me to embrace this heart-based way of life with a new clarity – with awareness that it is not the stagnant pond of retreat that my will imagines it to be. It is time for me to have trust in the currents of water that falls throughout the words, back into Mimir’s Well, then up Laerad’s trunk again.

I would be lying if I claimed that I knew quite how to make this heart-based living the prevalent pattern of my life. But it has been given to me as a new challenge – to come into an accord between fire-will and water-reception. And to make the change without getting tangled in the illusions that my cowardly will weaves.

This is perhaps the challenge that Woden embraced on the tree; perhaps the challenge that Sigurd stumbled upon when he tasted his burned thumb.

The great goddess Kali – who I have a deep affection for – has spoken through to me a great deal recently. I invite her to shower her blessings upon me! She can have any man’s head any time she likes, and only love can still her all-conquering rage. To arm myself with great power I must disarm first it seems.

For many years the phrase “empty-handed magic” has been a star guiding the course of my ship through the mists of night. Now perhaps the phrase “open-hearted magic” must replace it.

None of this is to say I am now a rainbow-spangled hippy of course. Apart from the fact that such folk (in my experience) often have rather vile shadow-selves, my intention is informed by one of Nietzsche’s more fertile ideas – the challenge of the eternal return of the same.

Suppose, says Nietzsche, that time is a great circle, a great snake that coils about itself, birthing and devouring itself forever. And suppose that this life we have is destined to repeat, exactly the same every time, for all eternity.

Here is the challenge – can you face the prospect of living out your life, exactly as it is, repeatedly, over and over, forever, and declare “YES!” with all your being? Can you affirm and celebrate even your deepest miseries, failures, wounds and betrayals? Can you look upon all of the mountains and ravines of your life with equal delight?

It doesn’t matter whether time really does circle around itself like this or not. The point is to set this attitude before oneself as a challenge.

Not many of us have the strength or stomach for such an outlook on life. It is certainly not the kind of perspective that the blind optimist – or the blind pessimist – would adopt. But somehow I feel this is the door, the lock and the key to my task of cultivating a heart-based approach to life.

So onward we go, and I invite my gods and ancestors to offer whatever aid they may in this holy task.

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Dissolution

What is magic but the destruction of what is and has been? The execution of present tendencies and patterns – performed by manipulating and turning those very same forces.

If I can convince myself of one belief one moment – then its inverse the next, what have I achieved? Twisting in the wind, belly slit, guts dangling around our ankles – this is the essence of performing magic.

I’ve seen myself shorn of flesh, or stripped of bones. I’ve seen myself torn limb from limb, thrown into a boiling cauldron, and utterly annihilated. I’ve seen myself rise anew, steaming and pink, from the seething broth. I’ve seen myself re-clad with flesh, my white bones gleaming from heat exposure. I’ve had Woden as a skeleton crawl into my dissolving muscle and fat and give it a new, familiar form.

I’ve faced the shadows of my own hypocrisy – without resolution or result. I’ve faced the shadows of my own fear – without resolution or result. I’ve faced the nightfall of my hope – without resolution or result. I’ve fought the armour of my limitations – without resolution or result.

I’ve faced the ragged end of all action: that every victory passes immediately into the past. What once was idolised as a distant future – as soon as I’ve won it I can no longer imagine how I survived with out it… and onward to the next impossible peak and precipice.

Screaming, crying, raging, rotting, I’ve hauled my blood-soaked ego through endless hells; through valleys where even shadows fear to tread; into the heart of dragon dens and the halls of slavering beasts. We’ve walked through fire, flood, war and the hell of boredom, crutches for one another, dizzy, concussed, lost, confused, dying – making life worth living.

I’ve stared into a mirror for hours without recognising the man in the reflection. Confounded by his gaze, the question mark of that face, that flesh, that spark of consciousness. Who? And Who? And Who? Dances endlessly through my being, this strange presence before me.

“Step by step, past all paths, slowly he approached the surface – the mirrors mocked him on the way” (Emperor).

Meaning is woven from story, from the fragments of our relationship to wyrd and the fabric of orlog. We struggle, play, dance, choke, and die in the arms of the question, the end question – this enigmatic horizon of the unknown, this mystery that crouches on the shoulder like a hook-nosed gargoyle, a sly serpent.

And I have sat with joy and misery, I have sat with ecstasy and hate; I have sat with loneliness and flamboyance; I have howled the wind into submission and crushed even the stars with my feverish rage. I have crawled through the mud of my silence and my weakness like a broken child, and found myself at the end of the struggle laughing with all the rich delights of mockery.

All these voyages beyond the limits of my own finite being, these struggles with my own boundaries, these transgressions of my habitual nature, to what end? Am I not still rough-formed, bewildered, lost, amnesiac? Certainly there is no end to the secrets that confound me, the dreams which my waking consciousness cannot fathom.

Even the faith I have in my own unconscious, the conscious faith I have in my own unconscious, my ego’s faith in my own unconscious – is a trap. Don’t relax and let the Deep Mind do its work; don’t listen to your intuition; don’t embrace the invisible and entrust yourself to the will of the divine. These too are easily subverted, these too can easily become vessels for the ego to expand the arcing shelter of its illusory control and its illusory terror.

“The struggle to free myself of restraints becomes my very shackles” (Meshuggah).

So easily we spring from precarious equilibrium to plunging collapse. So easily we find ecstatic release in the death of our own impeccable dance. So easily we murder what we think we know, what we know we know, and, to paraphrase a famous chimpanzee, even the unknown unknowns that we don’t know. Crows are smarter than chimps any day.

I saw two dead crows today, lying on the sand of the beach, their necks wringed by, I suppose, a cat. Their once glossy feathers now stark like wire brush. Their once noble gimlet eyes now dissolved into the air. Their breasts torn open and empty, where once hearts sung with the pleasure of flight.

And consciously? Consciously I thought “there is no meaning in such a sight”. Were it a pleasant image that had confronted me you can bet I would have thought “look, the gods love me! The world loves me!” – such is the nature of hypocrisy.

The tide came in and claimed my dishevelled friends, their clever crow heads never again to marvel at the stupidity of humans. Out to sea, dissolved in the vast reaches of the unknown, abandoned to the hand of mystery. I watched them go, engulfed and lost, as though they had never been, the sand beneath them swept clean.

How can any of us embrace this inevitable fate? How many deaths do each of us die in this life? How many times do we step up to Yggr’s gallows – knowing what we do or not – and embrace the caress of the noose? And yet we forget, and life blooms, and again and again death is necessary if we are to survive.

“I must crucify the ego before it’s far too late; I pray the light lifts me out before I pine away” (Tool).

And therein lies the beating heart of it. When ego flowers, ego begins to kill itself, like some beast whose tusks, if unused, grow backwards into its own skull. Even to express these sentiments is another dance of the ego, to force shape, to seduce meaning, from the chaos of experience, the tides, the songs to which all of being vibrates.

The serpent seeks its tail; the harbinger of chaos comes to us like a stranger at the gates.

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Reading the Runes

readingtherunesimage1It seemed inevitable that I would put up a post here on doing rune readings. It’s such a stock piece of Heathen subject matter, but I feel that my approach is sufficiently odd to be worth documenting.

The way I do rune readings is significantly influenced by the work of a good friend and professional reader, Kerstin Fehn – even though our styles are actually very different.

Incidentally, Kerstin does “remote” readings as well as in-person, so wherever in the world you are you can take advantage of her services and I strongly recommend that you do.

I can heartily say that she is the absolute master of this stuff, and certainly is far beyond anything I can do as a reader. Her vision and insight is deeply inspiring – and deeply scary at times because she gets right to the heart of things.

Ok, having said that, what is so particular about my approach to rune readings? Well the answer is simple: unlike Kerstin, I am about as psychic as a brick. That makes doing rune readings rather tricky and I’ve had to evolve my own method of doing them because insights and intuitions seem to love avoiding me.

As such my approach might be useful for those of you who, like me, don’t get any message at all from staring at a few arcane characters scratched onto bone or wood.

There are two basic elements to my approach as a rune reader: 1) I work in a client-centred way; and 2) I rely heavily on the rune poems and other lore.

What do I mean by client-centred? In psychotherapy the client-centred approach assumes that human beings are filled with potential and creativity; therefore the therapist’s job is to assist them in accessing their own powers to solve their problems.

This philosophy stands in contrast to the unfortunately still-prevalent model of being the “all-knowing expert” telling the client what to do (and in the process stripping them of their own creativity, initiative and agency, as well not efficiently drawing on the resources the client already has at their disposal).

In my work as a psychotherapist I have learned again and again that this philosophy is true, although sometimes it takes a bit of proactivity on the therapist’s part to help create a fertile environment for the client’s resources to manifest themselves.

Therefore when I do a reading I am trying to use the runes to help my client access their own channel to wisdom. I keep my ideas and interpretations in check and try very hard to fit in with the client’s own ways of understanding things. I want to keep out of the way so that they can have as direct an experience of the runes as possible.

When I do a reading I first give the client my runes in the bag. I invite them to let their thoughts and feelings flow into the runes while we discuss the topic of the reading. I will spend up to 15 minutes just talking about the topic, teasing out important themes and trying to get a sense of what the client’s concerns are.

Some readers can just psychically pick all that up, but I can’t, so I have to talk it out. Luckily talking it out can really help the client refine their question(s), and help them clarify what they think they know, what they need to know, and what they actually need to find out.

My approach to this discussion is to ask many questions, be as curious as possible, and occasionally pause to reflect or sum up what has been said so that we can keep a clear sense of the themes at stake.

I make no bones that my training as a therapist influences this part of the reading, although I was doing this sort of thing before I became a therapist, so there you go!

The other reason behind starting things this way is that it emphasises the collaborative nature of the reading. I want my client to take an active role in the reading, rather than be passive and disempowered as I, the runic pundit, tell them how it is.

By starting with a conversation like this I can establish for the client an experience of how they can get the most from their reading. Hopefully the experience will also help them become more confident with magic and runes (if they aren’t already) so that they can develop their own magical and spiritual practices further.

Once we have established very strongly what the reading is to be about, I invite the client to throw the runes – all of them. I don’t use preset lay outs or other such innovations, I prefer to let total chaos (or wyrd) reign. So down go the runes, scattered wildly on the table or ground.

Some of the runes will land face up and some face down. Sometimes I only read the ones face up; sometimes I read the face up ones first, then flip the face down runes and flesh out the story; sometimes I flip them all face up and go from there.

I’ve never tried this, but you could also flip the face up ones down and vice versa and do the reading that way!

For me there are two main considerations in reading the whole lot of runes at once. Firstly, you need to look at how they are positioned relative to one another because that gives you an idea of how the themes intersect. I don’t really bother with the whole bright/murk rune dichotomy, I find it gets in the way, and the historical basis for it is pretty sketchy anyway.

Secondly you need to look for nodal points – or the lack thereof. Sometimes the runes will fall in one or more clumps and you can pick out a “key note” rune, with your knowledge of the question informing that judgment too. Or else it might be there is no focal point, everything is scattered, and this is useful information too.

I pay careful attention to my client’s initial comments at this point because where they feel drawn is probably where the reading needs to go. They might be especially curious about one or other stave, or if they are conversant with the runes then they might be drawn to a rune that they already have an affinity for.

I also try to draw in a sense of the whole pattern, the shape of how the runes have fallen. It’s hard to explain how I do this – it’s as close to “psychic” as I get, although there’s no secret or magic to it.

In a way it is just assigning arbitrary significance to the way the runes fall – keeping in mind that I might have to revise my initial impression as more information, and the client’s feedback, comes to light. You just have to be willing to get it wrong and take a punt – often I find that it works out anyway.

We are also both guided by a sense of the themes that emerged from our initial conversation about the reading.  Sometimes a rune will jump out straight away as obvious.

If a person’s central concern were creative expression or performance, for example, then I might find myself naturally attending to a conspicuously placed Ansuz rune as “the chieftain of all speech”.

Once we have a sense of where in the shape of the runes to start, I will usually draw on my knowledge of the rune  poems. Those little poems are very ambiguous. They touch lots of psychological connection points with their symbolism, and the metaphor can be opened up in any number of different ways.

So once I have a sense of where to start I will usually tell a short story about the rune in question, often inspired by a relevant rune poem; and I will tell it with a slant or emphasis that hopefully binds it to the subject of the reading in some way. I won’t necessarily even say “this rune means X”. Indirect methods are just fine.

Then I shut the hell up.

By this point most clients are gagging at the bit to start talking. This is partly because metaphor is a great tool. The reason is that metaphor is ambiguous, so people find whatever it was they needed to find within it.

Sometimes I might tell a story or anecdote not directly related to the rune poem but thematically linked. It might even be abridged from or inspired by myth, or it might be some other proverb or helpful saying I’ve picked up along the way.

I can’t know what this person before me needs to hear, but their unconscious does and it can find it in the metaphor the runes inspire. You don’t even have to believe there is anything more than random chance in how the runes fall for this to work – my method of rune reading works equally well in materialist and mystical worldviews.

Once we are off and running I don’t need to say much. The client will usually draw their own connections and significances – and because we’ve already discussed the question at the start of the reading the field has already been turned, as it were, and is ready for seeds.

I am free to toss in additional reflections about how other runes in the spread relate to the issue, particularly if we hit an impasse or if the initial metaphor misses the mark. There might be a bit of experimentation to find the right starting point, and sometimes several rune stories are needed in combination to get the right starting place.

People often make all kinds of connections as we work through the reading. It can have that feeling of seeing things suddenly as though they were obvious, even though before the reading they might have been very opaque or obscured.

I try to let the client’s unconscious and conscious minds lead the way and play the role of support crew rather than mystic authority figure. I will give my opinion if asked or if it seems very relevant of course – but generally I find that with runic inspiration most clients come up with better ideas than I would have anyway.

An incidental bonus of this way of doing rune readings is that it builds the rune poems into the practice. This is important because it binds a historical root to the practice. I believe that this way of working serves to demonstrate the power of grounding oneself in the historical lore – when set to work, those poems really open up new horizons.

We therefore don’t have to be stuck in worlds of academic abstraction in order to incorporate the lore into our work. Nor do we need to be locked in a “you can’t do that” mentality as some “lore hogs” are.

I don’t know how the rune poems were originally used (I don’t think anyone does), but the way I use them works very nicely, and serves well as a fusion of ancient and modern.

This way of drawing on the rune poems also serves to undermine the ‘anything-goes’ mentality of rune authors like Blum and his ilk, who just make it up as they go.

I believe that my method, which builds respect for historical lore into its foundation, produces deeper and more helpful readings than the wild speculation that Blum’s approach (and others like him) seems to encourage.

Coming out of the reading I work hard to ensure that the client has a feel for what sorts of future action might be called for. Often readings of whatever persuasion don’t do this – if anything they can sap our sense of personal agency and initiative because we start to look at the patterns as inevitable and out of our hands.

But I prefer to use them as tools for empowering the client – if, of course, that is appropriate to the topic of the reading and their own agenda of what counts as helpful.

My readings don’t elucidate much about the future, but they do help elucidate new connections and understandings about the past and present, and to me that is possibly even more valuable. They can also help give ideas for what future action or concerns might be in the wings of wyrd’s stage.

So there you have it! Minimal psychic ability is required to do competent readings if you 1) respect the powers of your client; 2) know your runic and historical lore.

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Soft Monotheism

“The Rune-gilder does not “believe” in the Gods and Goddesses in the same way Trothers do (or might). The underlying “reason” for this is made clear by what is implied by the Germanic Epistemology presented in Section II. Gilders may begin with a faithful approach to the nature of the reality of the divinities – but they eventually learn that such a belief is a fetter which must be loosened if they are to progress further.”

“All the Gods and Goddesses are real in a practical sense. But ultimately they are creations of the threefold All-Father. The only (apparent) exception to this is Freyja – who is the only deity who teaches him anything he did not already know, that is, the mysteries of seid”.

Both quotes from Gildisbok by Edred Thorsson.

After Clint’s recent and very rousing posting on the subject of so called “hard polytheism” I somehow felt the urge to make a perpendicular response – by reflecting on the words of Edred Thorsson in the Gildisbok, the Rune Gild’s members-only handbook. Note that I haven’t been in the Gild for years so my copy might be dated.

Regular Elhaz Ablaze readers know that I’m not a huge Thorsson fan, considerable though his contributions have been. I particularly take exception to his goal of attaining a state of immortal, isolate intelligence – this notion seems to fly in the face of both Heathen and specifically Odinnic cosmology and philosophy.

Given this goal is directly inspired by Temple of Set philosophy – which seems little more than a hilariously confused manifestation of late modern nihilism – it is no surprise that I am not Thorsson’s only critic. But I digress.

The two quotes above are fascinating launch pads for reflection on the nature of the Northern divinities – not least because they appear on the same page in the Gildisbok. With the first quote I find myself (mostly) cheering. With the second quote I find myself shaking my head in disbelief.

In the first quote I think Edred is saying that we need to get beyond the trappings of form. I think he is saying that we need to recognise that there is a lot more to Heathenry than memorising lists of facts or aping what we would like to think is old-fashioned behaviour (but may reflect more our own insecurities). I could be wrong in my reading of course.

He also seems to be saying that when we are talking about divine beings we will be well served if we avoid being too literal about who and what they are, and how they might interact with us.

After all, how can we really know? Whether they are ideas, myths, archetypes, or fully existent and independent conscious beings, they’re way beyond our limited perspective.

However, I do note one little discordant note in this first quote. It suggests that Edred has a monopoly on this point of view, or less strongly that somehow it’s an insight very specific to his philosophy or knowledge.

This is obviously absurd – I’ve known plenty of Gilders and plenty of non-Gilders, and if anything it’s the latter that have tended to be much less literal and simplistic in their grasp of matters divine.

That isn’t intended to be an absolute claim of course, and I know there are many, many exceptions in every category. I’m just speaking from my own direct and personal experience of specific individuals.

So it seems either the Rune Gild is not proving too good at promulgating Edred’s point of view (which in this instance is a point of view I broadly agree with), or else something odd is going on – who knows what the answer to this is, I guess it ultimately doesn’t matter.

There’s also something odd about the appropriation of the more ‘sophisticated’ view on the gods that is evident in the first quote. Why shouldn’t mere “Trothers” have understandings of the gods every bit as complex, contradictory and weird as the supposedly elite Rune Gilders?

The notion that simple dogma is good enough for the (implied) less discerning masses is obnoxious to a Chaos Heathen such as myself.

I’m sure Edred has copped flack from dogmatic types over the years, but you’d think the Yrmin-Drighten would be a little more thick-skinned. But hey, what do I know?

Maybe indirectly bagging out his more literal-minded critics in a book like the Gildisbok, a book to which they can’t respond, is the best way of dealing with the problem. Far be it from me to throw the first stone from the doorstep of my glass house.

It is the second quote that really floors me. All the gods and goddesses (save Freyja) are really Manifestations of Odin? If nothing else, isn’t this very definite and concrete claim substituting one dogma about the nature of the gods for another? The two quotes seem contradictory to my addled mind.

Putting aside the way that Edred very forcefully presents a flamboyant piece of UPG as though it were written “just so in the Edda”, this second quote really makes me wonder: just what is going on in his mind?

(I’ll put aside the comment about Freyja in this post because it really opens up a huge can of worms that needs separate attention).

The local Hindu temple near where I live has occasionally put out the following slogan: “God Is One, Though The Wise Call Him By Various Names”. Now that’s a subtle and very interesting point of view to hold. Viva the pan-Indo-European connection!

This slogan recognises the ultimate interconnectedness of everything (which is the spiritual truth of monotheism at its best), but also the significance of individual beings’ unique spirit (which is the spiritual truth of polytheism and animism at their best).

But to say that Odin – who really doesn’t strike me as being at all like the One, or Brahma, or whatever – is the secret source of all the other divine beings? Well that surely wouldn’t make sense under a comparative mythological lens. And intuitively it just seems like putting the cart before the horse.

I would have thought that the work of people like Paul Bauschatz and Bil Linzie resoundingly demonstrates that the closest cognate to the Totality of Existence (that is, God) in the Heathen myths would have to be some combination of Yggrdrassil, the various wells of memory and time, Wyrd, and possibly the surface of the Ginnung.

Conversely, Odin is surely best seen as somewhere between Mercury and Zeus, a definite divine entity of some kind but not a representation of the Totality.

Personally I lean towards seeing him as being more Mercurial, since Mercury is very similar to Odin; and Tacitus certainly glossed Wodan as Mercury. And also since the whole “king of the gods” thing only came on in late Dark Ages times and almost certainly isn’t representative of the whole spectrum of Heathenism.

Odin’s biography is maddeningly complex and with so few sources available there is a lot we just cannot know (and you can’t even ask him because he’s a bloody liar, so UPG isn’t much help either).

I get that Odin has a starring mythic role in shaping the cosmos, but even as Odin-Vili-Ve there was a whole lot of life and creation going on prior to his arrival.

This “Odin is behind all the gods” point of view just seems bizarre. It doesn’t square with the mythological evidence and as a speculative opinion it seems extremely left-field. It also seems rather disrespectful to a whole bunch of beings that I personally at least think have plenty of their own stuff going on.

Surely it would be prudent to refrain from making very strong, unusual and textually unjustifiable claims about Odin’s nature with no more authority than that old faithful “because I say so”. I mean speculate away (I know I do), but a bit of honesty about it please! What is lost from admitting the limits of one’s perspective?

Furthermore, it seems like a weird crypto-monotheism to reduce all the other gods to guises of Odin. If we are going to do that then why not just adopt monotheism for real? Or for those feeling the need to be contrary and ‘tough’, the Satanic road is there in its various absurd forms. Although Edred also walks that path, so who knows?

Hence the title of this post – “Soft Monotheism”. Just as Catholicism sneaks in all kinds of gods and goddesses through the back door of the Saints, one could be forgiven for thinking that Thorsson wants to sneak monotheism in through the back door of the endless hordes of divine beings that crowd out the old Germanic myths.

He is entitled to whatever opinion he wants of course. It just seems odd for someone who built their career on being so well grounded in actual historical evidence and research to then leap off into such a wild opinion and present it as though it were a matter of objective fact.

Maybe the New Age influence on Heathenry affects Edred more than he realises. Again – that isn’t a criticism, though given his marketing angle I imagine he might take it as one.

I for one have no idea what the gods and goddesses are; nor what the ultimate nature of reality is. I do have lots of personal experience with these things, but personal experience and rational discussion don’t necessarily like to hold hands.

I do know this though – every time I think I have it figured out, I find out there’s more mystery still. Silent, awe-struck, in the face of the infinite reaches of Runa – that’s where the truth lies. And I suspect the horizon of mystery is always going to foil any attempt at expressing it (though of course it might be possible to invoke…)

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Chant Like a Heathen

While we know little about archaic Germanic musical and magical practices, we can be pretty sure that they were into their singing and/or chanting.

Old Norse Galdr means “magic”, and alludes to the crowing of a raven. In the Saga of Erik the Red the seidkona (loosely speaking, “seeress”) has a singer perform songs called Vardlokkur as part of helping her enter trance and have clairvoyant visions. And in the poem “Runatal Thattr Odinns” (part of “Havamal” in the Poetic Edda) we are told that Odin fell “screaming” or “roaring” from the tree once he won the runes.

We also know that our ancestors thought rhythmic speech – that is, poetry – was powerful and magical. The ability to speak well was highly regarded. Modern Heathens like to say that “we are our deeds”, but the truth is that our ancestors demanded more than deeds and believed that words and speech had great power.

There are few specific singing or chanting techniques recorded, although following the hints in the Saga of Erik the Red we can guess that anything which helps to induce an altered state of consciousness, a trance of some sort, is fair game.

I’m also told that in battle warriors would get themselves into the right head-space with repetitive chants of phrases like Antanantan – which sounds like a runic formula to me. In any case, this seems like a good bit of evidence for seeing the kind of trippy, repetitive chanting that I so enjoy as being continuous with the magical traditions of old Heathen Europe.

The main factor to remember if you want to explore something that approximates galdr or vardlokkur is that you need rhythmic repetition to get yourself tranced. Also, chants that make it hard to catch your breath are helpful because oxygen deprivation will trip you out nice and proper. Perhaps this is part of why Odin hangs himself to perform the rune-winning rite.

You can chant just about anything. The names of runes is one option (but be careful if you aren’t too familiar with the runes’ meanings); but I also like calling on the power of mythological beings or even phrases from archaeological finds. Chanting names like Yggrdrassil, Runa, Wodanaz and so on can be quite an education.

Your chanting could be rhythmic speaking, singing, droning, vibrating sound through your chest and throat, screeching, shouting, whispering, or even silent. If you can get some good momentum you might find yourself emitting noises you didn’t know you could make. Just keep going and going and ride the wave to wherever it wants to go.

We experimented at Yule this year with a chant of Wihailagaz, which comes more or less from an archaeological find (the Pietroassa Ring) and means something like otherworldy/sacrosanct/forbidden/set apart (Wih-) and whole, hail, healthy, holy (-hailagaz).

I think that it sort of brings you into a relationship with both the sacred uniqueness of who you are, and simultaneously into awareness of the grand interconnectedness of the web of Wyrd. In other words, a kind of neither-neither/all-all state where anything is possible. This is also a great one to chant because it offers some good rhythmic possibilities to wrap your mouth around.

Oh, and you needn’t just be sitting there when you chant. I involuntarily move my body; sometimes swaying, head-banging, through to bodily hurtling about the place. Sometimes when I am dancing I involuntarily sing or chant runes or names of gods or spirits.

I sometimes beat myself rhythmically (body percussion) and get some good bruises. When hitting myself I tend to move the ‘one’ of the bar around relative to the singing and this can create different kinds of momentum and intensity – if you are a rhythmically confident person you should try this.

Chanting can turn into the recitation of poetry, too. It might be something stored in your memory, or if you reach a suitably inspired state of consciousness then you might find yourself spouting words free-form.

I found myself doing this just the other day while celebrating Ostara with Donovan – we watched the sun rise over the ocean (see photo) and after spending a little time just listening to the environment around us and watching the sun I discovered that the words came easily and just wanted to be said.

Not only that but they came out in perfect form, with all manner of rhyme, rhythmic structures and patterns, etc. I doubt you would have known I was improvising if you’d been listening – I stood there, seething lightly, senses overloaded with sunlight and sea, and out came the poetry.

In some senses all speech is magical. The reason is simply that speech is a tool we use to make sense of, and communicate about, the world around us. As such it helps us to take things by the scruff of the neck, to establish a relationship between ourselves and the object of our focus.

So the objective with some forms of chanting might be to open a conduit between our wyrd and the wyrd of the thing we are focused on. On this approach, the words we use become the conduit – and the repetition of the phrases is analogous to a wheel turning on its axis. The words repeat, the wheel turns seemingly without getting anywhere – yet the car itself can travel great distances as a result.

While a lot more needs to be written on this subject, if you are interested in the magic of chanting and speech you might like to do some research on the great psychiatrist and hypnotist Milton Erickson – whose ability to use speech was almost unbelievable. He had a flair that can only be described as Odinnic.

One other thought on all this – regular chanting is good for you. It strengthens your lungs, strengthens your voice, improves your singing skills and it is great for relaxation and stress reduction! It can also get your body really pumping, energetically speaking, and that can’t be a bad thing.

Well I hope you try to experiment with some chanting! I am sure that with only a little effort you can invent ways of chanting much more magical and fun than what I have described here.

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Green Heathenry

Heathens like to say that they love nature, but I’ve met more than a few heathens who lack what I would call an “environmental consciousness”.

That’s not some kind of moralising criticism, but it is an invitation to change. So I want to offer up a few little factoids I’ve run across in recent times to give heathens some perspective.

Did you know that the number of ocean “dead zones”, where no life will grow due to pollution, is constantly increasing? Did you know that here in Australia we are sooner or later going to have so much salt in the earth from bad farming practices that there will be no fertility left?

Did you know that here in the west we consume so much power and so many disposable items that although we aren’t the majority of the world population we consume the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of world resources? I know people get upset about world overpopulation but I think its world resource consumption that’s the real problem, and that fault lies by and large at the feet of the developed nations.

And I won’t even get into human-caused climate change – one of the most scientifically substantiated phenomena ever, but you wouldn’t think so from all the gas-bag denialist loonies out there.

Here in Australia we elected a new Government last year that was supposed to ban plastic bags (a terrible plague on our ecosystems); act strongly on the climate change issue; protect whales from illegal Japanese hunting; and intervene to end the culture of disposability and waste. Well they’ve turned out to be hypocrites and idiots. Back to the drawing board!

Let’s examine the basic problem underlying the mass extinction that our species is currently inflicting on all the others. If you read much heathen lore you quickly notice that a key theme is “what goes around comes around”. Wyrd is cyclic and all actions have consequences. You simply cannot get away from that. You simply cannot.

Not only that but in “ye olden days” heathens recognised that nature works in cycles as well – seasons, moons, days. What happens now sets the stage for what happens next; what happened before set the stage for what happens now. In the present moment we act more or less freely by taking the raw material of past events and moulding them toward something that might approximate our vision of the future.

Furthermore, you get the distinct sense from heathen lore that these folk knew the limits of their knowledge and respected the uncertainty beyond those limits. That might sound obvious, but it isn’t.

For example, with technology developing faster and faster under the watchful eye of the stock market (though the latter is rather miserable these days), we’ve generally not worried so much about long term consequences.

When such consequences do surface down the track – as with DDT, CFC use, the cigarette-induced health epidemic, climate change, etc – we find that those responsible do everything they can to muddy the issue and avoid their responsibilities.

I’m pretty sure these irresponsible characters would say in their defence “we didn’t know this would happen”. In other words they weren’t aware of the limits of their knowledge and had no respect for the horizon of mystery beyond. The price paid for these people’s blindness is in some cases horrific (lung cancer is, for example, an awful way to die). Ignorance is not actually much of an excuse.

I daresay you can see where this is headed. If we continue to mindlessly pollute; continue to pretend that disposable objects just disappear (rather than producing land fill); and continue to avoid thinking about the problem, then we are simply not behaving like heathens in the slightest.

If, on the other hand, we want to be true to our heathen convictions then acting individually and collectively to change our relationship to the natural world is vital.

My wife and I pay extra (but it isn’t that much more) to consume electrical energy entirely sourced from certified wind power; we compost our organic waste; we grow some of our own food; we recycle and reuse water; we buy carbon offsets for our car (again, surprisingly cheap); we have sought out the most environmentally friendly products for cleaning and the like; we’ve gone “back in the day” to rely heavily on old-school less destructive cleaning chemicals like Borax; we use energy efficient light bulbs; we ride our bikes as much as we can; we buy local organic produce as much as possible; at various points we’ve donated money or time to wilderness conservation groups; we write angry letters to stupid politicians; and of course we recycle as much as we can.

How hard is it to do any of this? Well we aren’t rolling in money exactly but we can still meet the slight extra expenses for green power and carbon offsetting the car. And we save a lot on cleaning products because all the old school ones – soda water, lemon juice, Borax – are damn cheap.

It really isn’t hard to reduce the impact you have on the environment – and consequently there aren’t any good excuses.

However I’m not here to be a doom merchant or lay guilt trips on anyone. I’m here to suggest that if you are a heathen then changing how you live to be more environmentally responsible is an opportunity to think and act like the “olden” heathens did, even if you are living very differently to them. That’s right folks, good old psychological reconstruction rears its head again.

You don’t have to “go back in time” to do all of this. Just make an effort to be aware of the cyclic nature of wyrd or consequence; just make an effort to educate yourself so that you are aware of the limits of your knowledge and act with the appropriate prudence that entails.

You can even use modern technology to help you achieve a more environmentally conscious – and therefore heathen – way of life. Hence the beauty of alternative energy sources, energy efficient dwelling design, etc, etc, etc.

Some folk think it’s already too late and we’ve already stuffed the planet. That’s probably true, but the more we act now the less severe the damage will be. And anyway, I’m arguing for the cultivation of an environmental consciousness because it’s true to heathen ideals, not just for the sake of instrumental consequences.

Really the only people getting in the way of all this are politicians in the pocket of polluting corporations who are too short-sighted to see that in the long run climate change and environmental destruction are going to be way more expensive (and not just in dollars, but in animal lives, human lives and ecosystems) than cleaning up their act now.

You might like to get involved in political or consumer action – I’m sure you can find plenty of suitable organisations to help you do this on the web. The world’s environmental woes present a great opportunity for modern heathens to recycle the old school heathen relationship to nature and consequence – so let’s not waste it!

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Huginn and Muninn

I recently read an article from the National Geographic website about research into the intelligence of crows. I highly recommend you read it before reading this journal update.

Ok – so now that you’ve read it you know that crows are shockingly smart – smarter than some primate species which we humans are only a few genetic clicks away from. Anyone that didn’t have mucho respect for these beasts before better start cultivating some right away!

I must admit, the crows I see always seem to have a kind of knowing self-possession, like they are in on a joke that I cannot fathom. Perhaps it is just that they are scavengers who live by their wits. Perhaps it is because as scavengers crows have probably eaten a lot more humans than humans have crows.

Seeing as I am a bit of a Woden-lover I tend to also love crows. They’re beautiful as well as smart.

I particularly love Australian crows’ song – which is quite different to Northern Hemisphere crows’ song. Sounding like they’ve been abusing beer and cigarettes for decades, their ragged cries of “MAAAAAAAATE” seems infinitely more Australian than any Aussie yobbo could ever be.

I’ve also been told that crows actually evolved in Australia before spreading out over the world, though the source wasn’t too reputable so I cannot be sure if this is true or not.

Anyway, I have this love of crows, and they often pop up at meaningful moments – omens or portents if you like.

As Woden-inspired crow lover I have a particular love of Huginn and Muninn – Thought and Memory, Odin’s spies, who soar across the worlds to bring him the divine version of a breakfast news show (hopefully with less bias and oversimplification, though).

A few years ago I devised and regularly practiced a little magical ritual to deepen my connection to Thought and Memory. I haven’t performed it for a while but the National Geographic article reminded me of it and I felt it high time to update and share this little practice in a broader forum (it original appeared on the Rune Net email list some years ago).

Huginn & Muninn I

Much of what I have to say below comes from my own personal experience and/or extrapolation from what little mythological evidence there is on Thought and Memory. So don’t go around thinking that it is some kind of matter of fact.

The two ravens, Huginn and Muninn, Thought and Memory, seem to be related to conscious[H]/unconscious[M], ‘enlightenment'[H]/ psychological awareness-integration[M]. Thought is to surface awareness and active construction of reality; Memory is to depth awareness and active
integration of reality.

I began to ponder the character of these themes out of a broader sense that, just for a lark, you can divide mystical practice into two general goals or projects.

The first relates to what I call ‘being-capable’ – being able to surf the force of wyrd or causal patterns; being
conscious of oneself and the world; being able to act on that consciousness. It has an ‘active’ aspect, but is interlinked with ‘being-whole’ so that it also acquires a ‘receptive’ aspect. I tie Huginn to this aspect.

The second I refer to as ‘being-whole’, which relates to psychological integration with oneself and one’s world. It has a more receptive aspect in that it involves being open to oneself, one’s unconscious, and the world around (including other people).

However, this opening up enables much more conscious action and informs its shape with wisdom. As such it is never truly independent of ‘being-capable’. I tie Muninn to this aspect.

Odin says in the Grimnismal that he dreads that Huginn will fall in flight, but fears more for Muninn. In other words, as terrible as a loss of consciousness is, a loss of psychological health and balanced organic systems is much worse.

There are deeper secrets about memory here too, which Bil Linzie has explored in his wonderful free ebook Drinking At The Well of Mimir, which you can get from his website.

The two ravens are interdependent, and each contains a part of the other (there is some receptivity in Thought and some activity in Memory). Fire and Ice are similar in this respect – so too are the Aesir and Vanir. As such, these dichotomies are not definite, the lines blur.

The point is to focus on the general shape of the trend – insistence on rigidity in these things is likely to lead one astray.

I think some paths of ‘initiation’ (used in an extremely broad sense) are imbalanced towards the being-capable/conscious end of the spectrum.

I also think that some people, too afraid to face their demons and achieve a healthier relationship to themselves and the world, try to compensate by attaining an insane amount of ‘being-capable’.

But the imbalance never goes away, and ultimately they risk trapping themselves in what amounts to a mentality present in some Thursar – reactive, unconscious, anxious, and angry. This also might relate to the difference between Adler’s psychology of inferiority/superiority and Jung’s psychology of submission/transformation.

Huginn and Muninn II

There are three sections to this part of this update. The first is a list of crude dichotomies, either directly from or tied to the Northern Traditions. They are neither absolute nor unambiguous. They seem relevant to the theme of Huginn and Muninn, but there is a lot of meditation and research hidden here.

Then I have listed the ‘features’ of the two modes Thought and Memory. You will find that the bleed-over from one to the other is subtle but important. This is because they are interlinked into a perfect whole when all is as it should be.

Each can be understood on its own terms, but ultimately has meaning only in context of its place with the other.

Finally I include the very simple Huginn-Muninn working I mentioned in the introduction to this post. This working certainly made me more intuitive and I seemed to become a crow magnet for a while.

Indeed, in regard to the latter: during the first period that I was practicing this ritual regularly I used to have a friend who lived near my home who was quite psychically tuned in.

I would often drop by her place unannounced. She told me one day that she never felt intruded because flocks of crows would invariably descend on her front yard in advance of my arrival, regardless of the weather or time of day. I have lots of other similar stories to this, some more dramatic too.

Since I’ve slacked off on the ritual, however, crows don’t give me as much attention.

Crude Dichotomies.

The two columns below are organised in terms of affinities. For example, Fire, Aesir, and Being-Capable could arguably be placed in the same category (I re-emphasise that all this is arbitrary and of use only insofar as it helps us expand our potential for numinous
experience).

Please note also that I am not implying that the items grouped together under a particular column are the ‘same thing’ – they simply seem to echo certain parallels. I also believe each extreme contains its opposite, so the neat dividing lines that the table implies are to be taken with a grain of salt.

Fire Ice
Being-Capable Being-Whole
Aesir Vanir
Huginn Muninn
Masculinity (as a cultural stereotype) Femininity (as a cultural stereotype)
Proactive Receptive
Dynamic Paradigmatic

Aspects of Huginn and Muninn.

As with the crude dichotomies these characteristics are not absolutes.

Huginn: Thought.

* conscious or at least cognitive;
* logical/mathematical;
* structured. At the extreme, ‘a priori’ or formal (in the sense of formal logic or mathematics);
* tends towards analysis and particularity;
* Imposes order upon (or at least reshapes) the world – able to transmute the course of wyrd. As such, tends towards Being-Capable;
* Powerless, or at least open to disaster, without emotions as a ground (can act as the guardian of
Memory);
* when perverted, leads to repression, denial, psychological dysfunction, totalitarianism and paranoia. Also leads to entrenched patterns of destruction.

Muninn: Memory.

* unconscious or at least non-discursive(not in language);
* more related to art than to science;
* poetic and metaphorical;
* intuitive, potentially ‘chaotic’ and unclarified;
* tends towards synthesis and universality;
* Responsive to organic patterns, able to anticipate the course of wyrd; as such, tends towards being-whole;
* keyed to emotion – thought is helpless or risks disaster without thought.
* when weak or perverted, can lose self because of a lack of distance and perspective – confusing image
for substance;
* when weak or perverted, can lead to madness – especially if repressed or taken too literally.

Each of these themes deserves a lot more reflection and exploration, but I am sure you can do a much better job of that than I – so I won’t spoil your fun!

Huginn and Muninn Working.

This working is best done in the morning, prior to your having ‘begun the day’. This is just a matter of
expedience, since it seems to work until one’s day ends, so doing it before you go to bed may be a little pointless (but in the world of dreams? Who knows?)…

It involves two runes, Dagaz and Mannaz, with Ehwaz as a (according to some views) ‘marriage’ rune to bind them. You could of course devise your own runic combinations for the ritual; it isn’t exactly carved in stone.

Dagaz is (in my arbitrary but somewhat evidence-based opinion) the rune of synthesis, the ‘clearing of Being’, the moment where equilibrium is reached. It is the point where dichotomies are gathered together and raised into a new expression. As such, this rune is invoked to draw the forces of Huginn and Muninn into a comfortable harmony within the self.

Mannaz is (in my arbitrary but somewhat evidence-based opinion) the rune of the fully integrated self, a being that has equilibrium. It is connected to itself and the world (Being-Whole, Muninn), but is able to distance itself, get perspective, and transform the self and the world (Being-Capable, Huginn).

Now to the ritual itself:

1) Stand still, with legs together and arms flat to your sides (or up in the air like wings, or whatever takes your fancy. Maybe you might quiver, shake, hop or dance). Your direction of facing is purely a matter of personal preference, mine being north (all others are equal).

Relax your muscles. In particular, tense and relax your shoulders a few times. You might be moved to let your mind settle. For atmosphere-setting purposes you might like to put on The Raven Song which will feature on our forthcoming Ironwood album :Fire:Water:Ash:. Yes, that is a shameless plug. Get over it.

2) Imagine that perched on each shoulder is a raven. On your left shoulder stands Huginn; on your right, Muninn. Imagine that each raven radiates a quiet knowledge, as well as a sense of mirth which you aren’t quite sure that you are in on.

3) Sing/vibrate “Huginn”, feeling and visualising the raven’s energies flowing into your body, awakening within your body.

4) Sing/vibrate “Muninn”, feeling and visualising the raven’s energies flowing into your body, awakening within your body.

5) Holding this image, intone the following:

Huginn and Muninn
Thought and Memory
Fly with me!
Soar in tandem!
Help me be capable!
Help me be whole!
Help me become what I am!

You’ll probably want to customise this to your own liking. You might additionally consider memorising the stanza from Grimnismal that mentions Huginn and Muninn flying over the earth and speaking this before or after the above statement of intent.

6) Visualise the Dagaz rune through your head, so that the centre point is focused on the energy centre in your forehead and the bottom corners are at your shoulders (so that the ravens stand on them). I imagine the rune as being blue. Then sing/vibrate “Dagaz”, feeling and visualising the rune’s energies flowing into your body, awakening within your body.

7) Visualise the Ehwaz rune. To do this, hold the ravens and Dagaz rune in place, then imagine the two staves that support the Ehwaz rune-shape extending from the bottom of the Dagaz rune. Then sing/vibrate “Ehwaz”, feeling and visualising the rune’s energies flowing into your body, awakening within your body.

8) Visualise the Mannaz rune. To do this, hold the ravens and Dagaz rune in place, then imagine the Mannaz rune superimposed over the Dagaz and Ehwaz (these two runes make a Mannaz shape when superimposed anyway). Sing/vibrate “Mannaz”, feeling and visualising the rune’s energies flowing into your body, awakening within your body.

9) Take a few deep breathes, and feel happy!

Ok, so that is about it really. I’d love to hear from anyone game to get into this as a regular practice. It doesn’t take long, though you could expand it exponentially by repeating the chanting/singing bits as much as you like. Enjoy!

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