Heimlich A. Laguz

Facing the Mystery of Death

Shortly after my thirtieth birthday I saw something new in my face: age. I have had, in some respects, a difficult life, and at times I have felt a million years old with all the burdens and psychic wounds to match. But never before have I seen the touch of time in my features, which have always made me look younger than my years.

There it was staring back at me. Two faint lines across my forehead. The lightest dusting of shadows under my eyes that will one day crease my features like dry creek beds. Granted, it was late, after a long day at work. Granted, I had a touch of conjunctivitis, which could not have helped. Nevertheless, the proof of time was revealed in that moment.

These words are not an expression of panic, nor hand wringing. And I still look young for my age. And I am not at all addicted to the cult of youth-at-all-cost: beauty and youth are not identical, and neither is essential or even necessarily desirable.

The marks of time’s seductive kisses drew my awareness to a memory that lurks all too often in my body and mind (which are really the one thing, a continuum from matter to spirit): death is my fate. Before I was born, I was ordained to die. “Like acres of wheat we’re all grown to be mown” (Beastianity).

This is not a sad thought to recover. I am not afraid of death, which of course makes me unusual as a human being. I have had a bit to do with death. It has hurt me, stolen loved ones with untimely haste, and several times almost had me before my own fair allotment of breath. Even as a child I had shed my fear, had it shriven from my bones.

The memory of my inevitable demise points me to a horizon of infinite mystery – the mystery of being a conscious being in this vast universe. Confronted with the impenetrable veil, one’s life stands out all too starkly. The small mercies for which one feels gratitude, the endless barrage of wounds, the compromises and concessions into which one drifts and atomises.

Death sends out its call, strings the beads of momentary living onto a single thread. Where chaotic experience invisibly carries us through scattered moments, death draws all into alignment. It brings us to the forest clearing and, in the thought of absence of life, the very shape of life is exposed.

And we forget, and forget, and forget. If indeed we ever remember in the first place. I believe it a poor thing to get to later life without being touched vicariously by death through the loss of loved ones. Death shocks us from the cocoon of our self-evidence. If we have not embraced it then the very foundations of our whole life may prove wanting when the unavoidable time comes and we must cope with loss, with the outrages of fortune’s arrows and slings.

Death points us to a paradox: to set our living with deep roots, so that this transient existence might be as soundly made as it may be, we must confront that same transience, the skull and scythe hovering impatiently in the wings of every stage.

Not the confrontation of aggressive emergency surgery. Not the confrontation of dogmatic faith in the hereafter. Rather, we must court death, embrace this god so that our denial of its power does not make of it a devil. Not to literally paint ourselves in its livery, but to let it draw our attention clear of the infinite hall of mirrors from which life is composed.

Facing the mystery of death is facing the mystery of life. The two are one, and though we tend to only understand them implicitly, unconsciously, we nevertheless always must encounter them together.

The mystery of death is a mystery of memory and forgetfulness. We touch the mystery and recoil, and in the icy gasp of our vulnerability we find our reptile emotionality – fear, fury, the fire of lust.

The mystery of death is a mystery of vulnerability. We carry our death with us always. It spans out before us, probing for the shape of our unfolding life. We carry our death with us, our finite nature, our helplessness before the vast eye of the cosmos, which exceeds our deepest wisdom and our subtlest science.

The conclusion is inescapable: we face the mystery of death whether we wish to or not. We face the mystery of death whether we realise it or not. It curls its tendrils around our every breath. It haunts the choices we make as much as it does the choices we decline. Therefore I ask: how best to face this mystery? Death’s precociousness is legendary: how may we make ourselves equal to the doom that we carry in our very flesh?

The mystery of death is the mystery of life, and it trades in the currency of memory and forgetfulness. It trades in the currency of vulnerability. How might we enrich the wealth of our vulnerability? How might we strike a balance between memory and forgetfulness so that we might fully embrace our demise and the riches of the life that precedes it?

My answer is simple: through memento mori. By building reminders of the elusive memory of death into our life. Yet any reminder loses its gloss in time: the amnesia of our world-encircled nature guarantees it. Thus facing the mystery requires more than a one time effort. We have to renew our memories, continually wash the soporific of daily living from our eyes and ears.

Spiritual practice offers many means for this rememorialising: doing the gardening, meditating, creating art, reflecting on myth, and others. Conversations where we ask questions to which we genuinely do not know the answers; rituals in which we truly put aside our egos and embrace the irrepressible life that binds this universe together. When we go beyond ourselves, we also go deep within ourselves.

And what of Heathen spirituality? Odin is a god of death. It is this that earns him the right to be called All Father.

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My Bookshelf

Next to my computer on my desk I keep a small selection of essential texts for my Chaos Heathen proclivities. These are the books that I find myself referring to in casual conversation about myth or history or nutrition or healing. I’m sure everyone has their favourite reference texts (and I’d love to hear what they are): here are mine.

The Art of Simple Food, Alice Waters
Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon
The Fourfold Path to Healing, Thomas Cowan

First stop: nutrition and food. I am a huge aficionado of the traditional cuisine movement. Returning to traditional cuisine has almost totally cured my once utterly crippling allergies; it has also gone a long way to improving my fitness, mental health, and immune system. It has also taught me how to love food, to really savour it, to deeply appreciate the pleasure of eating in a way that all the production line rubbish I used to eat never did.

I haven’t talked about it for a while, but I remain convinced that if you are serious about spirituality, magic, growth, healing, Heathenry, or whatever…then you have to get serious about food: its history, its ecology, the experience of eating it, the nutritional science of it. NOT out of some punitive, sin-based body-hatred or pleasure-hatred (neither of which are a part of traditional cuisine); but out of the binary joys of gustatory sensuality and making oneself more whole, more powerful, more buoyant.

This isn’t to say that I always stick to my own culinary principles, of course, but mostly I do, and I’ve never been fitter or healthier or enjoyed cooking, eating, and even the washing up so much. All of these things help me integrate myself into the flow of the waters of life (Bil Linzie) that runs throughout the roots and branches of the World Tree.

If you give a stuff about the environment or the principle that what goes around comes around then traditional cuisine is even more important…and I’d like to think that anyone interested in Chaos Heathenism would be at least curious to know what they can do to preserve the precarious equilibrium of this fragile planet.

Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales
Prose Edda, Snorri Sturluson
The Poetic Edda, trans. Lee Hollander
Dictionary of Northern Mythology, Rudolph Simek

While personal gnosis is awesome, I believe that when we closely research historical belief and practice it often turns out to be far more subtle, inventive, and just plain fun than the half-baked ideas that modern folk turn out and pass off as spiritual or magical. This is no fault of ours: traditions that have had centuries to ferment, passed from hands to hands, are almost certainly going to outstrip our raw and hastily conceived insights.

Grimm’s Tales I use for divination purposes, as I’ve previously documented. It’s a font of endless free association and symbolic hilarity, often with blatant Heathen motifs and stories writhing just below a wafer-thin veneer (and just to upset the Heathen dogmatists out there [yeah, like those jerks would ever threaten their puny minds by reading Elhaz Ablaze articles]: the Christianly ones are good too).

The two Eddas are of course extremely valuable. Dipping randomly into the Poetic Edda is always fun and rewarding – not unlike the Bible, it’s actually a really weird collection of tales. When I read these texts I can’t help but think that once upon a time the only kind of Heathen around was the Chaos Heathen kind.

And finally, Simek. I bless a trillion times the day I bought this book. What an indispensable gem! Getting nastily out of date now, but still the ultimate starting place when you want to know anything about Northern mythology (and much more besides).

People think the Internet has made knowledge much more accessible, but only someone who doesn’t read books could possibly be convinced of this mediocrity-inducing illusion, which merely panders to our laziness and our vanity. If you are even marginally interested in anything even vaguely related to Heathenry…then go buy Simek right now.

Visual Magick, Jan Fries
The Rune Primer, Sweyn Plowright

Visual Magick is Jan’s first book, and I swear by it. It is so fun, inspiring, profound, playful, self-satirical…just what magic should be. It’s a slender volume, yet it contains ten to the power of infinity more wisdom and knowledge than just about any other book on magic ever written (I don’t know how he crammed it all in there, but he did). If you want to know about anything related to anything to do with the stuff we talk about on Elhaz Ablaze then this is the book.

That said…I actually like his Seidways even more, but it’s a little more specific; and his Helrunar is the best book on esoteric runes ever. No contest. I know lots of Heathens don’t like him because he isn’t Heathen, but that just underscores the point: this guy understands runes better than the best esoteric Heathen authorities and he isn’t even a Heathen. Sock that to the ideologues, dogmatists, and Master-of-the-Universe-type cult leader blow-hards.

Sweyn is of course part of the Elhaz Fellowship, so in celebrating his book I’m completely guilty of nepotism and all the rest. But the fact is, this is the best point of departure there is. His translations of the rune poems are absolutely perfect (much better, I must say, than Thorsson’s or Fries’), and the supporting documentation is extremely valuable for getting your brain sorted out before you do anything runic. Indispensable reference? Tick!

Everyday Tao, Deng Ming-Dao
The Places That Scare You, Pema Chodron

Many Westerners don’t know anything about Eastern religion except that “uh, isn’t it, like, life-denying?” No, actually it isn’t: if you bothered to actually pay attention you’d realise it is all about being radically present, and the otherworldly stuff circles back into that.

Take Buddhism, for example. What’s the highest deed you can do? Escape Samsara, achieve oneness…then become a Bodhisattva and come back to the physical world even though you don’t have to in order to help the healing of others. It’s easy to be world-affirming when your dogma doesn’t really give you a choice anyway, but these guys want to be here even once they’ve overcome the bloody place!

And when we all get to Nirvana? Holy cow, who even knows how hilarious that’ll be?! One thing is for sure, and this is presaged by some recent comments on other Elhaz posts: Woden is one of those utterly furious Bodhisattva types, I’m almost certain of it.

Uh, anyway, so yeah. Pema’s book is all about having the courage to do the things that scare you, to commit to your integrity, your spirit. It’s a great tonic and soul-nourisher. Enough said.

Everyday Tao is a book that has saved my brain many times. When I am stuck, blocked, down, whatever, I open it at a random page and invariably it blows away all fetters. Deng Ming-Dao is a genius. And there are patterns in the things I get; I can’t tell you how many times that book has told me in moments of self-doubt: “we have to stick to our perceptions and our feelings.” I dare you, go on, be stupid enough to call that sentiment life-denying.

So there you have it – the indispensable books I always keep in easy reach. What are yours?

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Walking in the Footsteps of the Sacred

(All photos in this article by Donovan)

One of the simplest ways to make for a powerful ritual experience is also one of the most seemingly trivial: incorporate walking into the process.

Picture this: you drive to someone’s house. Everyone wanders in, and it feels like just any other kind of occasion. There isn’t an opportunity to gradually shift gears, and so when the proceedings start it really doesn’t feel that special, because the immediately surrounding activities and setting are so familiar, so everyday.

After the ritual, which never really takes off and feels sort of…ill fitting…you all hunker down for nibbles and chats. Maybe beer or coffee, depending on your predilection. Talk about (gods forbid) TV shows or other trivia ensues. No one is brave enough to break out of the social scripts implied by the situation to talk about anything spiritual, personal, or magical. The external observer wouldn’t have much to go on if asked to distinguish this from any other typical, slightly boring, dinner party.

It is hard to shift one’s consciousness into a liminal, reverent state when all the trappings of the moment are completely everyday.

Ok, now picture this:

In the darkness of early morning you arrive at the edge of the forest. Waiting for your fellow participant you count the twinkling stars and grin with delight when a huge falling star pierces the sky. Distantly down the hill, through the trees, you see headlights approach. It has to be the friend you intend to do this with…and indeed it is.

Perfunctory greetings done, you equip yourselves with torches and bags and plunge into the forest, hiking up rugged paths through the gnarled trees. To the right is a cliff face and the vast, moon-kissed majesty of the ocean, the infinite patterns of the waves as hypnotic as the sound of its perpetual assault on the rocks and cliffs. To the right, ancient trees, doughty boulders, the hidden movement of nocturnal beasts.

You move at a cracking pace, legs pumping, arms swaying. It feels really good to use your flesh in this way, to feel the bones and muscles working together just as they were made to. Then the forest opens out, and you flit through more open terrain, no other humans within miles. You marvel at the evocative shapes of the trees, the way that the nightside forest opens vast portals into your imagination. Eons of ancestral conditioning – pre-human instincts – well up in this primal environment, your senses drinking in each moment, seeing personality and intention and spirit in every branch, the sway of every leaf.

And as you walk – twenty minutes, then thirty, then an hour –  the two of you talk. About your hopes, your struggles, your victories and set backs. And always these word-songs are set in the key of the purpose of the blot that awaits. This time – a rite for Spring and Victory. Words become your door out of the circuits and mazes of mun-daily thinking patterns and habits. The blows of life’s stressors drain away as your recover your sense of horizon, creativity, hope.

All too soon the first hint of daylight is creeping up as you come to the sacred place. It is marked by two trees – from the correct angle, they form an Elhaz rune shape – concealing and revealing the site all at once. You plunge off the path, and soon stand on a vast flat boulder that perches on a cliff face. Below you – thick forest. Beyond – endless ocean, as far as you can see from north to south. The horizon is rimmed with morning cloud and the faintest hint of gold is beginning to spill over the edge of the world.

You sit and sing and chant Sowilo – the sun rune – to honour her as she spreads her shimmering majesty out across the billowing silk of the sea. Her rays soak into your flesh and your senses are swarmed with scintillating colour; the raucous celebration of bird song; the fresh cool scents of earth, moss, and dew.

Somehow the ritual urge slowly takes hold. First – food and drink offered in a hollow. Then your companion disappears, returning to your amazement with a rescued ritual artefact thrown wildly off the cliff and into the trees last time you came here.

Then…gradually speech turns from casual laughter to serious laughter, as gods and good tidings are invoked. Sweet, sweet home-brewed mead is poured. Oaths and prayers are made good in the drafts that are downed. Spells spoken for yourselves and for others and for the very place itself. Loaded phrases swirl and coalesce: “bottoms up” becomes the seed of the day, a meme loaded with meaning ineluctable. When finally the tide of the magic is spent mead is poured to the ground, offered freely and with deep gratitude.

Overflowing with joy, you linger at the site, gnawing on fresh, whole foods and marvelling at the profound beauty of this place. In no hurry, bags are packed, thanks are said, synchronicities are noted (the arrival of a giant dragonfly, a novelty in these parts, seems a direct symbolic answer to at least one of the incantations sung).

You walk back again at pace, through the white-gold early morning light, the forest only just edging into a hint of wakefulness. Renewed, you feel your place in the scheme of wyrd reforged, hearts and minds restored. Spring has been found and marked and wondered at and invoked without greed into the unfolding tale of each of your lives.

Tell me – which one of these scenarios do you prefer? Because to me there is something magic about celebrating one’s spirituality in places – natural places – you can only get to on foot. Something perfect about releasing all the trappings into which daily life compresses us by turning over to the rhythm of footsteps. Of having the time and space to use conversation to pour out all the gunk in which life smothers us. Of being immersed in nature, in places where imagination is active, alive, sovereign.

It doesn’t seem accidental that the early Heathens built no temples, but held their religious observances in groves and clearings and deep in the woods. In elder times people perhaps understood far more consciously the power and practical need of deep spiritual experiences, and perhaps their choices of location for making their offerings and prayers reflected this understanding.

The luxury of such adventures as the one described here is not always available – Donovan and I don’t get to do this sort of thing nearly as much as we’d like. But hands down our little celebrations are to me far more spiritual, powerful, compelling, than even the most grandiose group gatherings I’ve attended, and it’s because we give ourselves over to the task at hand so completely. We take ourselves right outside of the comfortable bounds of life and belief and self-concept and the usual places in which our lives are lived. We go beyond all that in order to touch the sacred, to bring it back with us, to sprout into new life. And isn’t that what devotion – reverence – is all about?

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You Are Not Elite

This is an open letter to all the pompous fools in the Heathen and occult scenes who insist on clogging the airwaves with fatuous rubbish, thus preventing themselves and everyone else from benefiting from the riches of these worlds.

2,500 years ago Socrates established that he was the wisest man in Athens. How did he know? Because whereas everyone else claimed to have some knowledge of the world – yet in the face of his questions proved to be thoroughly confused and ignorant – Socrates made no such claims. He might have only known one thing – his own lack of knowledge – but this modest achievement was nevertheless more than anything that anyone else had managed.

Nothing has changed in 2,500 years. People insist on spouting off on all manner of subjects they are utterly ignorant about. You can pretty much apply the following formula: as stridence and certainty increases, intelligence and knowledge decreases.

For example currently doing the rounds of the Heathen presence on Facebook is a healthy done of Islamophobia. How can people whose religion suffered near destruction at the hands of religious intolerance proceed to adopt exactly the same kind of intolerance?! Invariably the characters involved reveal their utter ignorance of Islam as a historical, cultural, or religious force. If this is really such an evil religion, how come hundreds of millions of Muslims all over the world manage to live perfectly peaceful, sedate lives? Are you really telling me that it wasn’t ok for the Christians to burn down the Heathen groves and temples, but that it is ok for you to want to burn copies of the Koran?

Of course any major organised religion, Islam included, is riddled with tremendous flaws, but that isn’t the point I’m debating here. The point is that these sorts of ignorant people, by indulging in shallow stereotypes and self-congratulatory hubris, have found a fantastic way to make themselves feel elite without having to lift a single finger or make the slightest effort. In fact, the more stupid, shallow, and pathetic they make themselves, the more elite they feel. What a perversely brilliant achievement.

On the other hand there are the spiritual demagogues who claim to be elitists, to be above the herd. Jung dismissed such silliness as an “inflation” – the sign of an ego that doesn’t have the maturity to handle cosmic forces. Invariably, however, such characters are of staggeringly modest achievements. Scratching at the fringes of society, looking over the threshold with envious resentment, these characters tend to become pickled in their own vile spite.

Or worse, they manage to fool enough hangers on that they get a reputation as some kind of guru. Their modest abilities and powers are diverted almost entirely into grandstanding, self-promotion, and self-congratulation. Either way, it’s an easy way to make yourself feel elite without having to make any kind of real effort…let alone actually be elite.

Well, to all these sorts of people, I am here to say: You Are Not Elite.

Want to know how I know? Cause the truly elite people don’t need to project all their hatred and fear onto an absent Other in a welter of hypocrisy and wilful ignorance. Cause the truly elite people don’t go on and on about how wonderful they are, don’t complain about how the world is out to get them, and don’t bother trying to attract slavish followers.

So the next time you feel the slightest bit of a delusion of bigotry or grandeur coming on, I invite you to reflect on the following examples of what “elite” actually means.

Carl Jung had a major hand in inventing modern psychotherapy. He healed thousands of lives personally, and maybe millions through his art and writing. He wrote 20+ HUGE volumes of earth-shatteringly profound writing, and was an insanely gifted painter. He opened the modern world to the question of spiritual life amid the mechanised horrors of two world wars. Carl Jung was elite.

Milton Erickson overcame the paralysis of childhood polio to become one of the most important figures in the history of psychiatry. Resurrecting hypnosis from the junk yard of stage show chicanery, he pioneered therapeutic techniques of such power, humanity, and sheer joy that it is hard to imagine his equal. Erickson could cure stroke-induced paralysis with a few minutes of (very intense) conversation. He could, while giving a speech, hypnotise just one person in the audience and give them a post-hypnotic suggestion and no one else in the room would even know. Erickson’s work and writing has transformed and healed potentially millions of lives, not least because other cool stuff like NLP evolved from his work. Milton Erickson was elite.

Beethoven composed the Ode to Joy when he was stone deaf. Carl Lewis won eight Olympic gold medals. Mozart wrote more music in his scant decades than most people could in a thousand lifetimes. Eugen Sandow was so strong he could wrap himself in chains and then shatter them just by flexing his torso. And 2,500 years later Socrates’ afore-mentioned analysis of the human predicament is still 100% accurate.

Get the picture? Unless you have these kinds of personal, professional, artistic, and spiritual accomplishments under your belt to back up your talk, you are not elite. You are just gas bagging. And the more empty bullsh*t you spout in the public spaces of the spiritual communities you inhabit, the more you prevent the actual magic and beauty of this vast and brilliant cosmos from manifesting in those communities, thus utterly defeating their purpose.

I am not elite either. But I am like Socrates: I know that I am not elite, and therefore instead of resting on self-satisfied, idiotic laurels, I strive to improve myself. Everything I do, whether I succeed or not, is aimed towards healing, growing, evolving, creating. I am no “better” than the morons I am here criticising: I will fall vastly short of the example of people like Jung or Erickson. And yet by acknowledging my limitations I will fly so much higher, humbly inspired by their example.

The next time you feel tempted to ignorantly attack an absent, excluded Other; or puff yourself up with a lot of victim talk or arrogant strutting, please instead come and read this little article. Think about what the people you admire (really admire, not just sort of admire) did with their lives.

And never forget: you are not elite. Keep that in mind and you, ironically, might give yourself a better chance of becoming so.

Transmission complete.

Harigast out.

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Thor Says: Invoke With Laughter

Donovan and I celebrated a truly marvellous Thorrablot yesterday. One of the most brilliant ritual experiences I’ve ever had – we’re on such a strong shared wavelength and what an honour it is to know him.

I arose early. I packed a delicious organic lunch of red beans in pasta/tomato sauce, chopped carrot, almonds, and sauerkraut. We ended up mixing these together with surprisingly delicious results when lunch time arrived.

I drove out to Donovan’s place. That morning, suddenly inspired, he had made a beautifully carved Mjolnir from wood, a hefty hammer, an offering for us to give. Armed with mead and drinking horn, we drove to a National Park by the sea.

We spent the drive talking about our hopes, desires, lives, people we know; about our creative, health, spiritual, hobby, and financial goals.

We walked for an hour or more through exquisite forest, over dizzying ocean cliffs, the sea vast and majestic, the trees all wise and all wit.

We came to our secret location, a gigantic flat rock which perches, secluded and stolidly precarious, on the cliff face, overlooking vast ocean vistas. How to find this rock? The almost-hidden trail is marked from the main path by two trees which, if seen from the correct angle, one behind the other, form an Elhaz stave shape. Elhaz: perhaps it invokes the sacred space which is open and closed all at once.

We meditated, bare feet; let the distant, epic sea song wash away our petty conscious thoughts. We knew what we wanted this ritual to be from our conversations in car and forest. To invite Thor to help us renew the momentum of spirit in our lives, to drive out the frosty barbs of negativity and boredom and renew the membrane of magic. We let this hope flow through our beings, through the rocks, the trees, the clouds, the sea.

When it felt right the ritual began, in such a way that we scarcely even noticed that we were in it. We joked and played, laughing (with compassion) about the stiffness and artificiality that some folk fall into on ceremonial occasions – so anxious to get it “right” that they cramp up and lose the spirit of the thing. Not us; we called and hollered, half serious, half in parody, but we could feel that our deities were warmly inclined to our spirit of joy.

I sang and screeched and howled and Donovan roared. We told snappy tales about Thor’s many fine qualities, of his travelling companions, of our desire to uncover the magic in our lives that makes us joyous even amid the imperfect drudgery that seems always ready to swamp our days.

Three brilliant phrases emerged as we seethed and celebrated.

Wyrd trumps Will

This gem came to me in my meditation. I have in the past (and well after I should have known better) had this idea that if I fill myself with enough magic then with my power-bloated ego I can blast the hard things in my life into halcyon dream-perfection. Clearly a notion that can lead to disappointment!

What crystallised as I meditated was something I’ve explored several times recently with brilliant people in my life – that we don’t get to live a richly magical, spirited life only after we’ve cleared away all the sources of drudge and struggle.

No, the best way is to call on the magic in the midst of life’s hard work, to have the courage and creativity and humour to find magic even amidst the awesome mundanity of dealing with the ignorant, foolish, and petty (at some level that means all of us); in dealing with the unrelenting challenges of work and money and stale repetition and I-never-have-enough-time.

So go with wyrd, don’t try to fill your will up with numinous force, you’ll just waste it in exhausting struggle. Instead work with wind, tide, and wit. Cut with the grain, dance when you are tempted to stomp grumpily. Empty yourself and you cannot be drained – be a conduit, there’s an endless supply of magic that just desperately wants to be tapped into idiosyncratic human channels. It might or might not produce what you think you need, but there is a good chance it will produce what you actually need. Let yourself be curious. Radically curious. Let yourself be bewildered and surprised.

Then in our ritual playfulness a second phrase emerged.

Invoke with Laughter

Chaos magicians tend to think that laughter is the best way to banish magical moments, spirits, spells, states of mind, anything. Yet in certain senses (not all) this could actually be a very dry, grey, boring, ugly idea. Could it potentially imply that magic has to be pompous, serious, over-stuffed, strained, redundantly effortful – in a word, insincere, in a word, dishonest – in order to be summoned? What an awful notion seems to potentially coil implicit in the notion of banish with laughter!

We, on the other hand, we invoked with laughter. We joked about ourselves, people we know, about our gods, and they joked with us and on us, and it was exquisite. Cascading joy flooded the mounting force of our ritual, which had no distinct beginning but just came into tide when it wanted, as we gave it space to do so (a nice example of wyrd trumps will in action). And Thor is one of the most mirthful figures I can think of, a truly joyous force in the world: who better to call with hilarity?

We talked about Thurisaz, its recent recurring wyrd appearances in Donovan’s life. We agreed that we like this rune, with its scary reputation and its heart of gold. Thurisaz is like Hagalaz or Nauthiz – it invites a reality check and people are afraid of that and avoid – to their cost, or more accurately, to their loss.

And Laguz kept appearing in syncronicitous ways throughout the day, the sea rune, the rune of hidden riches and mystery! Of terror, and fury, and utter confusion, and yet also of “silk and gold and reveries of graciousness” (Nietzsche).

And goats! Thor has a close connection to goats. We celebrated how knowing, collected, assured, adaptable, tricky, durable, flexible, and just plain weird goats are. Nobody messes with Goat. Goat is low key. Goat doesn’t gab his mouth when he should be silent. Goat doesn’t give away his full abilities, doesn’t show his hand out of narcissism or insecurity. Goat keeps it real. Goat is permanently, impeccably unflappable. Goat keeps the magic of its membrane in flourishing order. Goat knows that horns are to be worn, not goofily tooted. What a truly awesome role model.

Ritual, not Routine

Then the third phrase came, and it was a verbal crack of thunder as it sprang from Donovan’s lips: Ritual, not Routine. Yes! Let’s not have lives of routine: numb, stupid, clanking, ornery, dogmatic. Repetition can also be playful, flowing, artful, even creative. It can have rhythm and flow and wit. We can move through all the “must do this” tasks of life with hang-dog heads, or with halos of fire and supple limbs (in a casual/subtle/low key way if you want of course).

It’s all in how you let yourself attach meaning to the things that unfold. Change the meaning, change yourself…well, who knows what sort of brilliant consequences that might have (you might not even notice them)?

Ritual, not Routine applies literally to the art of doing ritual observance – and we were doing ritual, not empty rote motions! It was sacred play. And this goes beyond into all of life. The whole of life is potentially a ritual: improvised, filled with joy, serendipity, learning, healing, growth, courage, and patience in the face of challenge. We forget this at our peril, falling into the factory farm of our own dullness. Yet it takes so little to stay – in the dance, in the joyous.

“Love life” is not an item to be checked off on some to-do list, some roster of accomplishments. And it has nothing to do with the arbitrary turning of events. In this we aligned ourselves with a tradition that stretches from Lao Tzu (and earlier) to Cicero and even to Nietzsche, yet without any self-consciousness or reflective pomposity: that to love this life is wonder, is its own reward, is nourishment complete. That we find love for life when we give love, not when we churlishly try to force life into the shape that we ignorantly think is best for us. After all, in an infinitely complex universe, who can really be sure of what is best for them anyway?

And to those who disapprove of our light feet: perhaps you need a dose of Nietzsche’s fröhliche wissenschaft, his gay science, his dancing seriousness and courageous frivolity. Being ponderous and heavy has nothing to do with being profound. Let yourself embrace the vulnerability and power of dedication and play admixed!

We drank toasts of delicious mead, charged with lashings of chanted Thurisaz runes. We laughed and prayed and affirmed and quaffed. We drenched the hammer and offered it up, our sacrifice. We splashed mead on rock, tree, sky, sea, cloud, every hidden delight of that sacred place. We offered our gratitude liberally.

We ate our lunch happily. We talked to spirits of stone and wood on our walk back through the forest, the mead sending us into buoyant clairvoyance and exuberant inspiration.

We talked and ate into the night, and sang, and played music, and warmed ourselves in the glow of family and dogs and the full moon, and laughed at the limp literalism that sometimes haunts folk that call themselves Heathens, and marvelled at the privilege we’ve been given to flow so easily into the spirit of things (and vice versa).

And I have to re-emphasise – nothing said here takes away the reality of the challenge and difficulty that life presents. If we try to force spirituality into being a magic bullet for the ease of our burdens then chances are good it will not long tolerate our presumptuousness, our pandering to our ego’s fear of suffering (which is not a trivial thing, but nonetheless which need not be made the maxim of our actions).

The trick might be to get beyond the mole-vision of bean-counting one’s entire life into allotments of effort (lots) and ease (never enough). There is no guarantee that any of us will see out our journey in the way we’d consciously most prefer, but with our eyes fixed on the horizon (and not on our feet) our chances are that much improved, and the toil of the path might be somewhat lessened (and if not then so be it – we are here to learn, so let’s not miss whatever opportunities we are given).

All such caveats aside, I want to express my profound gratitude for these fine gifts, these three principles of religious/magical/cultural practice…and for living life, too:

Wyrd trumps Will
Invoke with Laughter
Ritual, not Routine

I pray I remember, and keep living out my remembrance, of these terrible, wonderful thoughts.

Hail Thor!

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Become What You Are

One of the central elements of spiritual living is the pursuit of self-improvement. Even if one’s goal is simply to be able to accept things precisely as they are, this already constitutes some kind of improvement of oneself.

Why? Why should spiritual pursuits encompass the nebulous idea of “self-improvement.” Why does spirituality often imply a journey, a transformative adventure? How can this be distinguished from simple greed for power or the shallow acquisitive lust that is celebrated in mainstream culture? I wouldn’t dare to hazard an answer – all the obvious and/or usual ones are far too glib to be acceptable.

Instead I’d like to present three fragmentary sketches of the spiritual journey of this life. There might be others, but these three seem to be reasonably common, and one person can be living out several of these stories simultaneously, though for most people one main theme will dominate at any one time (I suspect). Many of us get stuck somewhere along the way; impotent self-congratulation tends to follow in short order.

1) Spirituality as Building Oneself Up

First we have the notion that, from humble origins, one must create oneself, must set high ideals and then orchestrate one’s own evolution in order to achieve them. This is a very ego driven, (personal) will driven process. It assumes that one can know what is best for one; it assumes that the path will be more or less logical.

When I was younger and lacked trust in my basic capacities – since I had not felt myself to be proved in the world – this approach appealed to me. It made me feel good about myself because it enabled me to think that my life was in my control, that my spiritual and worldly destiny was mine to create. These were comforting illusions for someone who was relatively powerless. Indeed, they comfort even the most seemingly powerful.

Over time it became apparent to me that this model of spiritual development was inadequate. It tended to occlude my imagination, and to me imagination is one of the pillars of personal evolution.

I also found that it did not work very well. The effort of ego-will required to make changes leads to strain in the personality and the body itself. This straining and heaving makes progress difficult – it is as though one forges forward and resists oneself at the same time. Feeling constantly caught in this state, I began to question the whole model of “building oneself up” as a spiritual mode.

Ultimately I began to find that while going through the disciplined process of a regimented “magical curriculum” put out by a popular organisation I was not learning much from my “building myself up” work. Rather, what was educating me was a wildfire of spiritual experience, transforming me spontaneously and unpredictably and quite independently of my supposedly spiritual “training.”

When I was younger I struggled a lot with depression and anxiety and careened from crisis to crisis (many of which solely existed in my own mind). I began to realise that really I had no ability to fathom the true depths of the world’s mysteries. Consequently, the simple “build yourself up” model came to seem both superficial and moronic.

To achieve deep spiritual shifts it might be helpful to live a disciplined life, but on the other hand the discipline is not the source of the growth one seeks – at best it merely makes one more able to survive and integrate the mysteries of spontaneity when they strike.

Oh, and too much of that ego/will driven stuff will occlude one’s openness to mystery, and many proponents of this model of spirituality that I have met have turned out to be spiritually constipated, if not mentally deranged, by the disjointed artifice of their attempts at spiritual expression.

2) Spirituality as Passive Acceptance

Disillusioned with the Build Yourself Up model, I drifted in the clutches of my depression, my sense of alienation, my struggle to feel I could even exist in this unhomely world at all. I felt as though there was nothing else for me, for even with the periodic and intense lessons in personal gnosis that I underwent, I simply did not have the wherewithal to find my way.

Or so I thought. With hindsight I believe that I was instinctively walking the right path in my alienated disillusion, my mournful and directionless gloom. Despair, loss, and fear are all potent teachers if one is able to transmute them, or perhaps more accurately, if one is able to clear out of the way so that they can use one as a vessel for their own spontaneous transmutation.

Somewhere out of my sense of living defeat – punctuated by futile regression into trying to Build Myself Up – a rich spiritual vein opened in my life: reverence.

Reverence had always been a part of my life. I define it as admiration of the sheer majesty of existence. Of its unfathomable mystery. Of its vast complexity and simultaneous terrifying simplicity. Its shining brutality and its unending compassion.

From reverence I recovered something I had always known, yet often forgotten: that all is one, even though each thing is unique. The sacred oneness and difference of all thing(s) is a tricky mystery, and few are able to make sense of it, wanting to either dissolve the universe into a shallow unity or else pretend that it is utterly fragmented and compartmentalised.

And from this sense I found my gradual discovery that striving and achieving does not necessarily mean anything. That it can easily reduce one into a caricature of a human being.

When we think we can conquer ourselves and the reality in which we find ourselves, we no longer give ourselves the chance to let the beauty of Being sing for itself. We are so untrusting of the magic that binds reality together that we risk shutting ourselves from it. We get “cramp” as Jan Fries put it. As Princess Leia put it in Star Wars: “the more you tighten your fist, the more planets will slip through your fingers.”

So while I felt utterly defeated and barely clung to this existence, I was at least learning the full reality of just how infertile a field “Build Yourself Up” is.

Yet nothing is static, and gradually a new way opened for me. It is the way that I still wander, and I suspect that it is going to be the Way of the rest of my life.

3) Spirituality as Becoming What You Are

I discovered that when I am vulnerable and open and curious and willing to be surprised – well at those moments I discover I am capable of far more than I could have ever consciously believed.

For example when I was first playing in Sword Toward Self, learning the material, I constantly exceeded my self belief. Again and again I’d be presented with some ridiculously technical material to perform and again and again I’d find that I could play it immediately, even though I would not be able to believe my own ears as my fingers found their way across the fretboard of my bass.

It seems that perhaps the way to growth is not to build myself up, but to get out of my own way. My conscious expectations, even at their loftiest, where pathetic compared to what my unrehearsed spontaneity could invite. I began to realise how shallow and irrelevant the conscious thinking ego mind is. So much of its place is to offer distraction and chatter. The quieter this noise becomes, the more the gates open, the more the flow of the waters of life is free to gush through my being.

The tension and struggle of the ego magician is a product of wasted effort. It is possible to act without effort, but one needs to unlearn the habit of tension and striving. We move swiftest by aligning ourselves with the tides or the winds of wyrd: at full sail the ship of my soul will outrun any ego-galley’s oar-chained slave crew.

Of course, this impels us to have to learn how to trust. We have to trust mystery, uncertainty, the endless not-knowing. We have to know when to bide our time, to recognise the difference between prudent hesitation and cowardice or self-deception.

The more I strip away the false layers of my being, the more I am able to do this. Rather than waste endless energy trying to control the infinite unpredictability of the cosmos, I would prefer to embrace my personal oneness and separateness within the matrix of the universe.

I have learned that my Deep Mind is far wiser, more creative, and more spontaneous than my conscious mind will ever be. So I seek to turn myself over to its wisdom, to the wisdom of my heart and guts. And strangely, this seems in turn to produce the kinds of successes that my old attempts to build myself up sought and achieved only superficially (if at all).

In light of these reflections, Odin hanging on the tree as an image of spiritual transfiguration is a powerful refutation of the “build yourself up” mentality. It is good to have goals, to have discipline, to seek out and create a vision of the future. But if one is not rooted in oneself as a conduit of the flow of wyrd then one risks being little more than a vortex of wasted breath.

Discipline is best used not as a tool to build up but rather to dismantle the tyranny of conscious prejudice so that the true will, the rich and heady sap of the world tree which gives life to all, may flow through freely and without end. When we unlearn the ego’s addiction to strain we free our strength for creation, action, and reflection.

None of these reflections are original, even though it seems such sentiments need to be repeated endlessly for the sake of those who need them. In presenting them I can only do so as one who is a “work in progress.” Yet are we not all in such a predicament? The one who lays claim to any kind of perfection is a buffoon.

Becoming What You Are is not an easy task. You must sacrifice all your comforting illusions about who you think you should be. You have to cease imposing artbitrary standards of judgement and instead carefully uncover the deep logic of your life. You are a rock which does not require gaudy decoration (and hence be lost in an ocean of bad taste and stupidity). No: you need only let the tides of your life polish you into your innate beauty. It takes courage to bare oneself in this way, far more courage than anything else I can imagine.

Ass usual, Uncle Al was perhaps the most articulate of all who have touched on these themes:

“The Hawk and the Blindworm

This book would translate Beyond-Reason into the words of Reason.
Explain thou snow to them of Andaman.
The slaves of reason call this book Abuse-of-Language: they are right.
Language was made for men to eat and drink, make love, do barter, die.  The wealth of a language consists in its Abstracts; the poorest tongues have a wealth of Concretes.
Therefore have Adepts praised silence; at least it does not mislead as speech does.
Also, Speech is a symptom of Thought.
Yet, silence is but the negative side of Truth; the positive side is beyond even silence.
Nevertheless, One True God crieth hriliu!
And the laughter of the Death-rattle is akin.”

“The Sorcerer

A Sorcerer by the power of his magick had subdued all things to himself.
Would he travel? He could fly through space more swiftly than the stars.
Would he eat, drink, and take his pleasure?  There was none that did not instantly obey his bidding.
In the whole system of ten million times ten million spheres upon the two and twenty million planes he had his desire.
And with all this he was but himself.
Alas!”

“The Mountaineer

Consciousness is a symptom of disease.
All that moves well moves without will.
All skilfulness, all strain, all intention is contrary to ease.
Practice a thousand times, and it becomes difficult; a thousand thousand, and it becomes easy; a thousand thousand times a thousand thousand, and it is no longer Thou that doeth it, but It that doeth itself through thee.  Not until then is that which is done well done.
Thus spoke FRATER PERDURABO as he leapt from rock to rock of the moraine without ever casting his eyes upon the ground.”

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Sweyn Joins Elhaz Ablaze

Greetings folks,

Sweyn has been contributing some fantastic writings to Elhaz Ablaze for a while now as a guest author.

We decided it was time to invite him to be a member of the Elhaz crew and he has graciously accepted.

We’re honoured to have him on board!

Feel free to check out his bio on the bio page.

Prost!

Henry for the Elhaz Fellowship

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The Joy of…Fermentation

Tonight I came home from work, ate dinner, and then got busy preparing some traditional foods – a bucket of salsa, a jug of beet kvass, and three buckets of sauerkraut! The more I explore the art of making food from scratch the more joyous it becomes and I wanted to share some reflections that came to me tonight.

First of all, getting into more traditional cooking is easier than it seems. At first having to work from raw ingredients, putting it all together by hand, seems intimidating for anyone used to pre-made supermarket convenience. But traditional cooking is like meditation – the effort invested quickly pays itself off and then starts raking in the interest on very favourable terms.

After only a little experience you begin to realise just how fun it is to make salsa or kvass or sauerkraut or whey & cream cheese. I feel deeply energised even though I worked all day and then spent more than a couple of hours in the kitchen.

I spent my time cooking listening to the music of Ironwood, which always makes me happy, and preparing food from raw ingredients involves a lot of repetition – cutting, and pounding the cabbage for the sauerkraut. This work provides brilliant doors for trance!

Everyone knows that repetitive rhythms can induce trance and in the process of my cooking tonight I drifted into some lovely and quite blessed states. I wandered through different worlds and I could literally feel the small wounds of daily life healing throughout my body from the altered consciousness into which I had drifted. What a bonus!

And of course it makes my soul happy to know that I am making fermented foods, which are super-nutritious and super-delicious and fun to make. My kind of traditionalism (small t used on purpose folks) is not ideological – I am neither against nor for the modern world, though I have many criticisms to make of it.

Rather, my kind of traditionalism is empirical in basis – for there is extensive and very sound science for the view that premodern approaches to cuisine are far superior to the high calorie, low nutrient rubbish so prevalent these days.

The fact that making food as healthy as sauerkraut (a far superior source of Vit C than any pill), or beet kvass (which cures allergy attacks, mouth ulcers, and jet lag with casual alacrity in my personal experience, as well as tasting divine) also connects me with the living experiences that shaped the mythic worldviews of old Europe is just beautiful, elegant even.

I really think that exploring such practices and ways is just as essential – perhaps more so – than even delving into mythology or runic artefacts or whatever. These simple domestic practices were and still can be the bricks and mortar which nourished the pre-Christian Heathen imagination.

You’ll notice that all the foods I made tonight – salsa, sauerkraut, beet kvass – are fermented foods. Fermentation is a fascinating thing. Before we had fridges we used fermentation to make food last – and it just so happens that fermentation (of which making alcohol is only a very small part) also loads up the food with nutrients and makes them super-easy to digest. A nice little bonus which we in our fridge-age unfortunately no longer reap.

Fermentation is essentially the art of letting food rot into something tastier, healthier, and longer-lasting than what it would be straight out of the ground. There’s something brilliant about the way this simple practice marshals the vast chemical complexity of food molecules.

One of the reservations I have about untrammelled technologisation is that it invites us into simplistic understandings of the world, since we begin to focus on what we understand and tend to forget that things are way more complex than we might like to think (a common problem that has been studied extensively in experimental psychology, and to which it seems even the most brilliant scientists have been found to be susceptible to).

But fermentation elegantly marshals the vast chemical complexities of food with a dead simple strategy – chop it up and let it sit at room temperature for a few days. Brilliant! I see fermentation as a brilliant analogy for various alchemical processes, and so as I make my fermented foods I experience it as a spiritual analogy, just as alchemists use the quest for gold as a physical metaphor for their spiritual quest for the philosopher’s stone, for enlightenment or healing.

This is one of those things that really illustrates the fact that spiritual life and everyday mundane life are not qualitatively different. They exist on a continuum and if we are imaginative, curious, and a little bit industrious we can shorten that continuum so that the spiritual permeates the everyday and the everyday permeates the spiritual. To me that is nothing more or less than animism in action, the gods living at one with our every breath. And isn’t that the whole goal of premodern spiritual paths such as Heathenry?

Incidentally, for those wondering, I’ve been doing more research on premodern lifespans and health. The only sound and genuinely empirical, quantitative study I found (other than Weston Prices’s work) looked extensively at fossils and human remains from before the current age, and also at contemporary premodern cultures (mostly hunter gatherers).

They found that the average lifespan under these conditions is in the mid 70’s. They also made some other surprising discoveries – for example it appears that infant mortality rates were not through the roof in these cultures!

From other archaeology material I’ve read – Barbarians to Angels provides some low key but very clear examples – it is clear that the premodern lifestyle produced good health generally, including good dental health. Monty Python’s mud-eating, snaggle-tooth peasants are hilarious, but they’ve maybe unduly prejudiced our ability to understand the lifestyles of premodern times.

This is all in line with Weston Price’s work on nutrition. His theory was that the premodern diets of many cultures were and are superior to modern processed diets because they are super-dense in nutrients and relatively low in calories – just the opposite of McDonalds, really.

Can anyone really argue with such a view? Certainly from reading Michael Pollan and Nina Planck it seems to me that rigorous research (and sadly much nutritional research isn’t) strongly supports this view.

So eating traditionally accords nicely with the modern scientific method, a perfect example of why “going back” to the past for inspiration can sometimes actually be much more scientifically sound than the reckless technical “innovation” to which we in the West are unfortunately quite invisibly addicted to.

Incidentally if you think you can’t afford to eat organic or small-farm grown you might like to look at what you do spend your money on…do we need cable TV, three cars per household member, 10,000 inch televisions, etc, etc? There’s more room in your budget for good food than you realise.

Raw ingredients, even organic or small-farm grown, have two other advantages – making food from scratch generally works out more economically than processed premade foods anyway, and also such foods (in Australia at least) are largely GST exempt, so its cheaper than you think.

Plus you can explore food co-ops, growing your own, etc, etc. If you are willing to use your imagination you can do it. That said, please don’t take my comments in a finger-pointing or moralising way. I’m hoping to inspire rather than harangue. Did I mention how fun and easy it is to make  fermented foods?

Incidentally, from what I’ve read it also seems clear that premodern cultures traded food with one another extensively. The poisonous monoculture that lurks in this modern world is not a product of cross-cultural food munching, despite what some more ideologically based traditionalists might like to think.

Multiculturalism is not monoculturalism, and premodern peoples, from what I have read at least, loved to chow down on each others’ specialties.

Sauerkraut, that quintessential German dish, arrived in Europe with the Mongols. That doesn’t take away its special Germanic-ness, which has accrued quite legitimately over some nine centuries, it just reminds us that there’s a difference between cultural purity (which pretty much doesn’t exist and never did and is purely a modern fabrication) and cultural specificity (which clearly did and does exist since we can talk about distinctly unique and different groups, but which included intercultural exchange as one of its elements).

In other words, the isolationist tendencies of ideologically-based traditionalists are anachronistic and untrue to the ancestral ways – and do not in fact do much to safeguard the old traditions. How ironic.

As often is the case my writing jumbles together politics, philosophy, history, spirituality, mythology, domesticity, health sciences, psychology, and eating! We divide the world into neat categories but in doing so we lose our ability to understand it. As Mr Heinlein said, “specialisation is for insects.” My thoughts keep rotting up into more and more complexity and richness, and fermentation is a great metaphor for both the creative and the intellectual processes…

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Review: Georgia Through its Folktales (Michael Berman)

Georgia Through Its Folktales by Michael Berman, with translations by Ketevan Kalandadze and illustrations by Miranda Gray
2010, O Books, 153 pages

This book is unlike most compendiums of folktales for two reasons: firstly, the relative obscurity (in the English language at any rate) of the subject matter; and secondly, the unique and fascinating reflective threads with which the stories on offer are bound together.

Georgia Through Its Folktales is part travelogue, part folk tale anthology, part cultural history lesson, and part spiritual exploration. It is neither fiction, nor is it not fiction; it is neither non-fiction nor is it not non-fiction. Berman and his collaborators have created something odd-ball and unique and characterful in this exploration of Georgian folk traditions.

Georgia is an Eastern European region which hosts a range of related cultures, many of which to this day maintain pagan customs and beliefs in one form or another. Berman waxes lyrical about the rich traditions that persist in this land, the complex and subtle ways in which its people have woven incredibly disparate influences from east and west into a truly unique whole.

In order to enable his (presumably) Western reader to appreciate the stories, Berman goes to great lengths to explain the history and character of the region. Whether the subject is diet, agriculture, or the whimsy of children, Berman approaches his subject matter with warmth and gusto, and it is hard not to be swayed by his obvious love for the Georgian peoples and their traditions.

Yet this book is much more than a kind of travelogue. Berman contends that stories are doors into trance, both in the telling and in the content of the tales themselves. With a background in shamanism, it is no wonder that he turns his attention to the traces of shamanic influence that course through the stories recounted in this book. Characteristic Georgian folk tale conventions – such as vagueness about time and even whether the events recounted are real or not, as well as recurring numerological and symbolic patterns – are analysed by Berman as markers of shamanic experience, suggesting that these stories are rooted in deep spiritual experience and not merely in flights of fancy.

By Juxtaposing such reflections against the folktales presented in the book Berman draws our attention to the complex relationships between spiritual experience, cultural forms, and history. Berman sees folktales and mythology as being more than just the glue or rationale for a culture – he sees them as doors into the divine, and as such as the means for a people to deepen their connection to the beauty and numinosity of the world around them. This aspect of the role of myth is all too often overlooked by more or less atheistic modern commentators.

Without being seduced by simplistic romanticism, Berman skilfully elucidates the relationship between culture and personal spiritual experience in traditional / pre-modern culture. As such this book educates us not only about Georgian culture and myth, but also equips us to explore a fresh appreciation for almost any cultural or spiritual tradition.

One of the motifs of this book is the necessarily hybrid nature of Georgian culture, located as it is near so many other strong cultural groups. Somehow, rather than become a monocultural mishmash, the Georgians have woven a unique and very special identity from the array of influences to which they were and are exposed. I think there is an important point to be made here, namely that the integrity of a culture depends not on isolationism (though of course some separation of identity is necessary) but rather on the creativity and spirit (or otherwise) of its people.

I think this point is very important in this modern age where on the one hand we have those who fear exposure to any kind of difference for fear of losing themselves…and on the other hand those who fear any kind of specificity of identity for fear that they will lose their sense of (perhaps illusory) self-creation. Bubbling through this book is a deeper perspective, perhaps one held by many polytheistic and animistic folk traditions – namely that culture arises not through our narcissism (be it isolationist or dissolute), but through our attempt to find our place in the world in all its animistic glory. It is our means of making ourselves at home in a universe of infinite mystery, and we require all of our creative powers if we are to make it serve that purpose well.

This thought reverberates throughout the widespread continuation of pagan practices and beliefs in Georgia, which often persist in hybrid form together with Christian practices. The Georgian peoples as presented by Berman have found a happy accommodation between polytheism and monotheism, not unlike the followers of Voudoun in South America. While some of us will prefer to have little or nothing to do with Christianity, one cannot deny the spiritual fertility attested to in Georgian folktales and customs, a fertility that appears to have aggressively thrived through fusion of pre-Christian and Christian influences.

It would seem, then, that the Georgian peoples enjoy some unique combinations of cultural and spiritual influences, and indeed draw their particularities of character precisely from these combinations. This may in fact be true of all cultures in some fashion or other, but judging from Berman’s account Georgia is a paragon of such richness.

In case these reflections are misleading, I should also point out that this book never gets lost in the abstract indulgence that mainstream academia often stumbles into. Berman writes with subtlety and draws the recurring motifs of the book together with care and lightness. Rather than spew heavy handed injunctions, he invites one to reflect, think, and drawn one’s own conclusions.

If there are any limitations to this book they lie in peripheral issues – namely, that the proof reading and editing is somewhat lax, and at times this makes the book less readable and enjoyable than it could be. I hope that on subsequent printings the publisher will see fit to correct the various errors that cloud the text so that this gem may shine more fully.

The playful spirit that suffuses this book – both the stories and Berman’s discussions thereof – is its greatest strength. It is a sincere and joyous celebration of tradition, spiritual exploration, culture, history, and story telling. The translated stories are marvellous, and the artwork, which peppers the text freely, is resplendent. I would recommend this book for anyone interested in history, culture, folk traditions, shamanism, and especially, in the peoples and customs of Eastern Europe and the Near East.

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Review: Runic Amulets & Magic Objects (Mindy MacLeod & Bernard Mees)

Runic Amulets and Magic Objects by Mindy MacLeod and Bernard Mees
The Boydell Press, 2006
278 pages

This book is essential reading for anyone interested in runes or indeed European cultural history. Macleod and Mees decline to adopt the recent fashion in academic circles for dismissing the idea that the runes had any kind of magical significance, just as they refuse to pretend that different regions were hermetically sealed from one another. They steer a balanced path between emphasising the many mundane applications of the runes and their magical function, and indeed the book focuses on the latter, as may be inferred from the title.

The authors document and interpret scores of inscriptions from amulets, artefacts, monuments, and written texts, bringing incredible breadth and depth of learning to the task. Their vibrant enthusiasm for the subject matter is infectious, and consequently the book is anything but dry or boring. Indeed, there are even moments of high humour, such as a hilarious passage that recounts some of the more ribald love magic charms of the runic era!

The interpretations and explanations of the inscriptions are fleshed out with background perspective on cultural history and a real empathy for folk long dead, and this make the book much more than just a study of dusty museum pieces to be nit-picked and quarrelled over. The endlessly unfolding cultural and political evolution of Northern Europe over the centuries is explored through the angular scratchings of the runes, and the reality of Europe’s convoluted history is graphically exposed in the inscriptions that remain.

One of the most striking things that emerges from this book is the incredible diversity of runic writings. Although we talk about, say, “the Elder Futhark” as though it were a defined and uniform 24 character alphabet, the reality is that rune carvers modified the characters ceaselessly, obeying all manner of personal whims as to the orientation, style, and variety of ways of carving the runes. There is an almost aggressive outpouring of creative invention in the way that the rune carvers improvised on the basic themes of these archaic characters, a phenomena that we in our age of standardised spelling and formatting might struggle to grasp.

The book goes deep into the patterns and structures by which magical runic inscriptions on charms and amulets were composed. Indeed, their analysis of the five-fold structure of these inscriptions is elegant and brilliant, as is their discussion o the significance of terms like “alu.” Anyone interested in making their own modern rune carvings would benefit greatly from this book, which inadvertently serves as a detailed and clear “how to” manual.

In the course this analysis of the structure of runic amulet inscriptions the authors also underscore how indebted the Germanic runic tradition was to the Etruscans – for the fundamental magical structure used in the rune inscriptions was adopted wholesale from Etruscan/Rhaetic traditions. This is a fine illustration of the point that cultural exchange and mixing can sometimes strengthen the cultures involved and help them become more unique and distinct: this non-Germanic influence surely seeded one of the most distinctive aspects of Germanic culture. The tendency of some academics to only focus on specific regions (say, England) therefore risks grossly distorting our understanding of both history and the runes.

The book also makes the point that the runes were heavily used for Christian as well as Heathen purposes in later centuries, that they were combined with various other magical traditions, sometimes quite elegantly and even seamlessly, though it is clear that their place as a magical tool eroded by the middle ages and their usage became progressively more trivialised. This in turn underscores the complex cultural dynamics unleashed by the coming of Christianity, and the durability of Heathen cultural practices and aesthetics post-conversion, although the magical tradition of the runes seems to have ultimately declined into ignorance and ignominy.

The authors express some very valid criticisms of the use of the Icelandic sagas as sources for understanding rune lore, but their analysis of the Eddic poems “Havamal” and “Sigrdrifumal” concludes that these sources do provide valuable insights for understanding rune magic, again making the point that in the past some academics have been perhaps sceptical of these sources to an unjustifiable extent. This is very useful information, particularly as the mistake of seeing the sagas as a faithful representation of Dark Age Scandinavian culture seems very common.

I find myself disagreeing with the authors’ view that the various rune poems were merely mnemonics for remembering the rune alphabet orders, however. From personal experience I can assure the reader that memorising these poems for the most part) is far more arduous than merely memorising the Futhark alphabet(s) – indeed, I have forgotten my verbatim memory of the poems (though the substance remains), but remembering the correct Futhark order is easy and was, I found, almost a prerequisite for being able to absorb the rune poems into memory. An intelligent young child could happily memorise the rune names and order, but almost certainly not the poems.

Furthermore, the poems themselves seem to echo many aspects of Heathen culture and worldview and paint incredibly evocative images that, at least in my opinion, resonate much further than any putative modern mnemonic equivalent (“the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” comes to mind). There are various other criticisms that could be made of the book, too, although ultimately it survives its flaws admirably.

On the whole this book is a revelatory window into the free-wheeling, anarchic, and bracing world of rune magic as attested by primary sources (as opposed to wishful thinking in either too-fanciful or too-cynical directions). It is fun, fascinating, and inspiring, and strongly, strongly recommended. The price tag is rather high, and this may dissuade some from making the purchase – but please, take the plunge, Runic Amulets and Magic Objects is worth every penny.

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