Heimlich A. Laguz

More Song Magic

My last article on Galdor Without Runes brought to mind a number of magical experiences I have had that have involved singing and, as a further inducement to my reader to explore the magical art form of singing, I have decided to share a few of these experiences.

1) Galdor Made Me Into Road Runner

One day some years ago I was attempting to make my way to a friend’s home. It was a hot summer’s day and the train system had broken down, leaving me in the unenviable position of having to walk from Central Station to Stanmore (Sydney-siders will know what that means; the distance involved is about five kilometres). Oh, and I had something like twenty minutes to get there in time.

Despite the fact that normally I might have just called and cancelled, I felt it important at the time to connect with my friend, who had experienced a recent break up. One of my Odinnic poems came unbidden to my lips as I steeled myself to run the distance, knowing that I certainly was not fit enough to make the distance in the time available, particularly since I had a backpack with me.

As I began to chant the poem over and over, its rhythm taking a hold of me, I began to be filled with a stern vehemence. It was like a kind of berserkergang keyed to movement rather than violence. Swept up in my own roaring chant, I fairly flew the distance.

Strangely, I didn’t actually run, I just walked, albeit at a cracking pace, reciting my poem over and over. I covered the distance in exactly the time available, and not only that, but I was overflowing with energy when I arrived: not in the least bit tired. A totally bizarre display of physical power. I really should try to tap into that trick more often.

Less dramatically, I have found that I can get more energy to walk faster by simply increasing the tempo of my singing when I am out and about. Not exactly a new discovery – music has been used to synchronise rowers and marching soldiers for thousands of years – but I hadn’t realised that I could manipulate my own body into a swifter mode of action just by varying the tempo of my song.

2) Galdor on StageIronwood With Spirit Orbs

Things often get pretty intense when my band Ironwood performs: here is a photo from a gig – you can see the incredible proliferation of spirit orbs attracted by our magical music! Of course, a big part of our mojo is our vocals.

I often get possessed when I am on stage – in fact I think we all do – and my singing tends to take on a life of its own. Prior to our first gig, I had never been able to sing “extreme” vocals – the screeches, bellows, howls, and roars typical of extreme metal music. That was generally fine because mostly I sing “clean” in Ironwood, but sometimes I wished  could add just that extra layer of intensity to our performances.

On our first gig, after a while, I noticed a tremendous roaring voice coming back at me through the monitors. It seemed to sweep up the entire room and certainly drove me into total ecstasy. Then I realised: the voice was me! Presented with the immediacy and risk of performing for an audience had unleashed a wild and powerful new range of vocal expression for me, one that established a positive feedback loop with my trance states.

In recording settings I struggle to replicate these vocals, though my efforts for the next Ironwood album came out quite well in the end.

I think the magic of that first (and subsequent) gigs came from the fact that I didn’t recognise my own voice, and that dissociation sent me into a whirl of trances and altered states. Since then I’ve experimented a lot with exploring unorthodox ways of vocalising, and they can indeed send you into a huge range of worlds. Sometimes this practice will get me shivering spontaneously – classic Jan Fries-style seidh.

3) Galdor Duets

Apart from my time spent chanting within the Illawarra circle of the Jerrahi Sufis, in which I experienced an incredible array of magical states (not least because so many members of the circle were musicians and we’d really explore tonal chaos in our chanting), I’ve also spent a lot of time chanting with Donovan (which inspired this article from a while back). Donovan and I don’t get to do this together as much as we like, but it is always awesome.

I’d particularly like to share a recent, and quite bizarre, experience I had while rehearsing Ironwood vocals with my band mate Matthew. Matt and I were practicing a particularly beautiful but tricky duet passage that will be featured on the next Ironwood album. It is only a short span of music so we’d just sing it over and over again.

Something strange began to happen. I felt an intense sensation of electricity or energy moving up and down my limbs, through my body, my head, etc. It was like a powerful energetic vibration streaming through my body.

Then I had this intense impression that there was a third person in the room, forming the third point of a triangle with Matt and I, watching us as we sang. This presence seemed shadowy, hard to pin down, but benevolent. It was the most uncanny thing to be sitting there, singing with Matt, consumed by strange energetic sensations, watched by some ineffable but intense presence.

We stopped for a minute and I told Matt what I was experiencing.

First, he tells me that he is experiencing exactly the same energy sensation or whatever it was.

Then he tells me that he also can perceive the third person watching us…and that it is him! Matt’s perception, thanks to our singing, somehow has expanded beyond his body, and incredibly, I could sense the presence of his consciousness without any prompting or clue!

Neither of us can make any sense of the experience, but it was very empowering for us both. I chalk it up to the power of shared singing, the beauty of galdor and vocal-induced seidh-like consciousness. I am curious to see if we can replicate the experience: I wonder where it might lead?

Convinced yet that singing should be an essential part of most any magical practice? If not, give it a go and persevere. You’ll thank yourself for the effort.

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Galdor Without Runes

We tend to think that galdor has something to do with rune magic, in particular due to certain authors who have promulgated this view despite the lack of any historical evidence to that effect. The word’s roots run to the meaning of “magic song”, with the intimation of a birdsong. There is nothing in there about runes. Indeed, we could even refer to the vardlokkur, the magic song used to facilitate seidh working referred to in the Saga of Eirik the Red, as a type of galdor.

Indeed, the “birdy” aspect to the word brings to mind the myth of Sigurd. When Sigurd tastes the heart of the dragon Fafnir he is granted the ability to understand the speech of birds and proceeds to experience some kind of magical initiation or expansion of consciousness. Perhaps hearing the speech of birds is a convoluted way of saying he became conscious of galdor: of the presence of magic suffusing all things.

Once we realise that the term galdor is not nearly as specific as some misinforming writers would have us think, we find ourselves in a position of immense freedom. While presumably there were various specific forms of galdor in days of yore of which no records remain, it also seems likely that there was a proliferation of styles of galdor, just as the old myths, customs, and even the rune alphabets varied from place and culture to place and culture.

Presumably individuals of magical inclination back then were as idiosyncratic as they are today (myth, sagas, and folk tales all seem to imply this conclusion).Consequently it seems reasonable to propose that song-magic innovation, undertaken with sensitivity to the mythic corpus, is perfectly “authentic”, at least in the sense of recapitulating exactly what the old sorcerers were up to.

Given the poetic proclivities of the Heathen folk (and the existence of an Old Norse poetic form called galdralag) it also seems appropriate to include rhythmic speech and poetry set to magical purpose under the category of galdor.

Recently I have been experimenting with singing in public: walking down the street, on the platform at train stations, in shops, you name it. It takes a bit of courage to openly sing in public: we are programmed to suppress ourselves, to package ourselves away from visibility (or audibility, more specifically), in contemporary Western society. At first I found it rather terrifying, and indeed my mind would turn constantly around that impossible question, “are the people around me judging me?” Sometimes I would feel so anxious that I would end up silencing myself.

Then I realised that the opinions of my impromptu audience were completely irrelevant, and that they were almost certainly not going to act on them if in fact they didn’t like the idea of me singing. Occasionally children laugh, or more commonly, stare in bewilderment, when I walk past them, singing happily away. Often I am shocked by the number of people who have no idea that I am singing because they have headphones in their ears, or because the surrounding traffic is so loud. Modern life is definitely not what our ears evolved to handle.

Apart from the fact that my singing technique is improving and I am feeling more creative (since I am now exploring musical ideas every time I go walking in public), I am experiencing deeper changes as a result of my public singing practice, and this leads me to conclude that I am practicing a form of galdor, at least in my own specific sense of psychological reconstruction.

My public singing is having effects that might be deemed magical in two senses. Firstly, it alters my relationship to my environment, including my relationship to other people. It modifies my experience of myself and the world around me, causing various fears to weaken, and correspondingly, causing me to feel more powerful.

Secondly, it is opening up the channel of my spirit. For example, when you sing your throat opens up. The vocal chords and neck muscles get massaged and strengthened, becoming more fluid and more definite. Normal speech becomes clearer, more compelling, and a little musical – all subtle “magical” effects. Even more importantly, this singing provokes feels of great joy and a lightening of life’s burdens. I feel very energised by my regular galdor, and unwittingly break into song in all sorts of moments – even when doing simple things like cooking.

If one of the central purposes of magic is to alter one’s consciousness (we might loosely call this seidh), and another is to bring empowerment (a purpose some see as a specific  purpose of the runes) then I think I have hit on an exceptionally potential-rich form of magical practice with my personal type of galdor.

What do I sing? Mostly improvised, wordless melodies. Sometimes I chant the names of runes or gods. Sometimes, rarely, I will sing songs from my band Ironwood, but mostly I just embrace the art of exploring my voice.You don’t necessarily have to sing to make this work for you – even just to recite poetry in a projective fashion would probably suffice.

Other advantages for this type of magic are that 1) you don’t need any special skills (since you aren’t singing to produce a “quality performance” and will in any case improve your “quality” of singing organically just by doing it a lot); 2) it doesn’t require any special preparation, memorising pages of middling-to-bad poetry, waving of obscure magical artifacts, dressing up in silly costumes, or anything else like that. All you need are a set of lungs and a throat. Magic that works in the here and now of daily reality is always preferable to me.

If you are not brave enough to sing in public straight away then I suggest starting by singing in “safe” contexts: while driving, or at home. Needless to say this will necessitate turning off your television (or better, driving a steam roller over it), and choosing to listen to music less (although I suppose you could always sing along to your favourite CDs).

When first singing in public, start off almost sub-vocalising or humming to yourself; don’t even bother with opening your mouth. There is no need to freak yourself out – just gradually increase the volume and physical obviousness of your singing as your comfort zone expands. It is perfectly alright to moderate your singing as appropriate for specific circumstances – I won’t sing as loud indoors for example.

One particular challenge is to not fall quiet or silent automatically when someone walks towards you. It might be scary, but once you can happily sing despite passers-by and the opinions of strangers you might start to feel a lot more cheerful and powerful. Certainly this is gradually unfolding in my experience.

The more I sing, the easier it feels to take other kinds of action in the world, to assert myself, and so forth. For example I have always had a strong telephone phobia, but recently it seems to have almost completey entered into remissiobn. Singing is very personal, yet also very public, and it enables one to reach a valuable equilibrium between internal and external worlds. If the philosopher’s stone is a thing of thought that can directly transform matter, then singing must surely be some alchemical agent – perhaps mercury – to help facilitate the process of transforming oneself into such a stone.

Of course, as alluded above, the names of the runes do lend themselves very nicely to song, and there is no reason why you shouldn’t apply runes to the art of galdor, even if strictly speaking rune-magic and galdor are two different things.

To my mind this sort of literally empty-handed magic is much more interesting, powerful, useful, healing, and deep than a lot of the more elaborate and effortful approaches. It draws on spontaneity rather than will and creativity rather than intellectual artifice. The old Heathens lived in a tough, often brutal, world, and from necessity I think they tended to prefer the quick and practical over the unwieldy and impractical. Hence my ancestors are reborn from the wordless song on my lips.

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Kicking Romantic Rears For Their Own Good

I’m going to turn away from my recent thread on deconditioning to have a little rant about a theme I’ve been pondering for a while now: the relationship of Heathenry to Enlightenment and Romantic values. I guess I’ve been provoked by Sweyn Plowright’s article on the subject, as well as various other reflections, readings, and interactions.

There is plenty of material arguing the connection between Romanticism and Heathenry. It is an obvious intellectual link to make, the Romantics with their back-to-nature-and-paganism ideals seem like natural precursors feeding into the evolution of modern Heathenry.

On the other hand, we are told by various pundits, the spirit of Enlightenment has brought massive cultural dislocation, the injustices and perversions of industrialisation, the destruction of localised cultures, and an age of instrumentalist technocracy where the entire world has been stripped of its sacredness.

Whoa, wait a minute. The Enlightenment did that? The ideals of free expression, rational inquiry, and faith in humanity’s ability to grow and evolve produced all of the rubbish that fills modernity to the gills? Maybe I am missing something here. That doesn’t sound like a plausible theory at all.

I should jump in before I go any further and mention that I tend to side with the Romantics and always have. That’s as good a reason as any for me to write a piece which attempts to defend the rationalist current in Western thought: why imprison oneself in a single prism?

I think it is very cheeky to blame so many of the ills of modernity on the Enlightenment. Mass monoculture, the use of technology to engender sleepwalking populations, mass environmental destruction, global economic inequality that is orders of magnitude greater than it has ever been, the systematic violation of organic cultural orders and communities by nihilistic mega-corporations: these hardly sound like the Enlightenment ideal!

I think it is fair to say that the history of the development of the present predicament is a little more complex than just dumping the blame at the door of folks like Voltaire, who was such an ardent foe of injustice and cruelty and repeatedly personally put himself on the line for those values.

I’d like to see some of the more prominent Heathen windbags put to the tests that Voltaire bravely endured: I reckon they’d be exposed, in many cases, as little more than loud-mouthed frauds. Voltaire would abhor the way that the world has evolved, the way that so much of our modern technical genius has been built on and turned to unofficial but widely pervasive slavery. All these self-righteous anti-modernists who love to bitch and moan: they’re all resting on Voltaire’s laurels!

There seem to be plenty of Radical Traditionalists and the like out there who go on an on about how bad liberalism (surely the offspring of the Enlightenment) is, and how Romanticism is a much better taproot for cultural and spiritual rejuvenation in this time of nihilistic emptiness. Well they have some good points to make, but I think they fly off the handle and carry on a little too petulantly at times: here’s why.

Ok: the whole liberalism bashing thing. Without the tradition of free speech (to which Voltaire can probably take credit) we’d still be in a situation where arguing with the dominant paradigm would get one into serious hot water.

Radical Traditionalists and Heathens who rail against liberalism forget that without its “free speech” ideal they’d probably all be imprisoned, lynched, exiled, or burned at the stake (and their writings too…writings only possible because of the intellectual and educational traditions founded by the Enlightenment and promulgated through its ideological and technological offspring).

Of course free speech doesn’t actually exist in modernity because there are all sorts of unscrupulous powers in the world hoarding knowledge and the right to speak with authority. This is a hangover from the latter days of the Roman Empire, where in 381 Theodosius outlawed all forms of Christianity and paganism but for the orthodox Nicene formulation (there is a great book on this subject called, you guessed it, AD 381).

With this law Theodosius tore apart centuries of free debate between pagans of all stripes, and also tore apart the emerging view that even Christians should be allowed to have their say so long as they allowed overs to have theirs (it is worth remembering that in the early days of Christianity the religion was very different to how it is now).

Fast forward through a few centuries of backward Christian silliness and we find that the Enlightenment struck a bold blow (however flawed) against both autocratic power-mongering (surely a practice alien to the decentralised Heathen cultures) and the Christian monopoly on truth.

Without that assault: no attempt to clear a ground for freedom of expression. Without that attempt – and really it was always going to be deformed and lamed – the anti-Enlightenment, anti-liberalism complainers would all be dead or imprisoned or outlawed. Not that they would even have had the wherewithal to articulate their dissent in the first place, most likely. So a little gratitude where it is due, folks.

Romanticism: oh nature! Oh, poetry! Oh, feeling! Oh, the folk-of-the-land! Let’s all put on tights! Great, what a fantastic thing. I love it. I love Beethoven and Rilke and all that jazz. Well, maybe not the tights. How did they get in there anyway?

Then again, let’s face it: Romanticism is utterly obsessed with the notion of the Singular Genius who is going to save the day, the Ultimate Cultural Hero. At the same time it indulges all the most stupid excesses of human emotionality (Beethoven stands out as a particularly preposterous personality, go ahead, do some research) and loses the ability to distinguish between the base and the sublime. It all gets so bloody tasteless and pompous so easily.

Do we really need a bunch of Ultimate Cultural Heroes running around to save us? I consider that to be just as disempowering as the notion that we need Enlightenment-inspired “experts” to tell us what to eat or how to think (when anyone who is paying attention will have noticed that, for example, mainstream Nutrition Science seems to constantly have egg on its face as “certainty” after “certainty” of the last five decades of research gets torn to shreds…to reveal that traditional cuisines and cultures had it right all along – check out Michael Pollan’s great book In Defense of Food and prepare to get your mind blown).

I intensely dislike the idea of Ultimate Cultural Heroes, just as I dislike furrowed brows and grandiose misery. Have I indulged in this sort of silliness myself? Absolutely. But I was very young and stupid (as opposed to what I am now, young and stupid). The more I learn the more I realise that a furrowed brow is just…well, a furrowed brow. I’d rather be making silly faces because of how perplexed I am than because of how full of Romantic Genius I think I am.

Needless to say this sort of grandstanding is pretty alien to the old Heathen values, but it seems to animate certain modern Heathens with a puffed up silliness that the arch-Heathens would have howled in laughter at. I mean, really folks. I’m not going to name any names, but it doesn’t take a lot of effort to figure out the kind of notorious characters I have in mind if you are familiar with the Heathen scene.

The other problem with Romanticism is that it used history for its own, decidedly anachronistic, ends. Rousseau’s image of humanity’s original nature, for example, is a terrible piece of speculative anthropology (and incidentally, feeds nicely into liberalism, which just goes to show that you can’t always make hard and fast distinctions between schools of thought anyway).

Similarly, it is all very well to go on about how great the agrarian olden days were, but at the same time there was plenty of brutality, war, destruction, rapine, and all the rest. We haven’t solved those problems in modern times – quite the contrary in fact – but nor were they invented in modern times.  Heathens love to go on about worshipping the ancestors, but you know what? A lot of my ancestors were utter jerks. It’s true, I’ve learned about my family history and/or known these characters personally and/or seen the effects of their actions on more immediate family. I’m not going to pretend my ancestors were all champs when they weren’t.

To me ancestor-worshipping is as much about settling the debts of wyrd they ran up and then dumped on their descendants as anything else. For those of us in this circumstance we can either use their nasty orlog as a crucible or we can drown like cowards. Read this book if you want to more know about that idea. Oh, and this applies just as much to mimetic ancestors – philosophers, artists, leaders, etc – as it does to actual relatives.

Look, none of this is to say we shouldn’t draw inspiration from Romanticism or any other cultural current in our attempts to make sense of this whole crazy Heathen gig we’ve got going. It is to say, however, that we’d look a lot less foolish if we declined to wallow in adolescent sentimentality. And if, in the case of liberalism, we had the good taste not to so self-righteously bite the lumpy and deformed appendage that feeds us.

Hmm…which inspires the image of Fenris munching on Tyr’s hand. I better stop now before someone accuses me of accusing other people of being giant-loving, Ragnarok-provoking so-and-sos. Which of course, they probably are without realising it. That’s usually how it goes, right?

Oh yeah, despite all this I still love John Ralston Sauls’ critiques of Rationalism and the like…but I think his perspective is probably more true to the Enlightenment than most of its actual offspring anyway…and probably a more useful expansion and development of Romanticism than any other, too.

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Deconditioning Redux

Well I’ve been busy folks and have been learning a great deal since my first post on Deconditioning.

Firstly, I’ve been singing in public a lot. So much that I don’t even notice if I am doing it or not. At first it found it very threatening. Then I pushed through that and I realised that often no one else is even paying attention anyway. We think we’re exposing ourselves and then when we make the vulnerable step we discover it was totally safe after all! It is pretty hilarious to be a human being.

The singing has caused me to have a much better baseline mood, too. We’re made to sing, it is what our bodies are for, so to sing as much as I have been is really good. I’ve come up with various interesting musical ideas, and my singing skill is increasing a lot too.

I’ve found that singing in public causes me to feel more present, and I seem to naturally have more interactions with people, too. Short conversations, whatever. I’m not always the initiator either. Simply singing has already made me much more present in the world around me as my own true self it seems. Or something along those lines.

Seeing as how I am looking for a job I decided, purely as an experimental exercise, to go to a local shopping centre with a bunch of resumes and try to get rid of them all by going into shops and enquiring for work. I’m not actually looking for retail work, but I decided this is a lot more demanding than the usual thing of writing job applications.

I’ve done this sort of thing before, but always viewed it as an onerous misery to be gotten done as soon as possible. This time I decided to take it as an experiment and try to detach from outcomes.

Before I started I spent quite a while journaling in a café, trying to uncover and counter all of the protective but unhelpful thought processes that might interfere with the task. The biggest one was fear of failure or fear of success – and I had to work hard to dismantle this with the view that the whole exercise was an experiment in trying out proactive behaviour without reticence: outcome was irrelevant. In fact, I decided that my objective would be to fail to get anywhere.

Even with this armoury, I still felt myself assailed by fear when I started – fear of failure. I found that it was easier to consider approaching shops that sold things I was interested in than not, despite the “aim to fail” attitude which meant I wasn’t planning on getting a job at any of these places anyway. I decide to work with my resistance, and let it steer me towards places that seemed more interesting. After a few of those I was more able to approach places I was less interested in.

I also worked hard to not have the attitude of “I have to tough this out”, as that has been my attitude in the past and it doesn’t help me. Armoured will power is a finite thing. I wanted to sufficiently jam my beliefs about proactive behaviour that I would not feel threatened by it. Oh, and I found a mantra of Elhaz, Ehwaz, Gebo, Sowilo to be helpful too.

As it happened it did take a bit of willpower to get started, as well as repeating the “aim to fail” objective to myself over and over like a mantra. But once the flow got going I didn’t need willpower, my natural spontaneity took over. Not without some fetters still, but mostly free. That was awesome.

So after all this prevarication, self-debate, and the rest, I nerve myself up to walk into a shop, a health food store. I walk in, say “do you have any jobs?” “Yes”, comes the reply, “got a resume?” I did and I handed it over. Voila. Instant job in a context that I’d actually enjoy: talking to customers all day about why they should have cod liver oil or organic sea salt or half a hundred other cool things that I’m interested in anyway. And the staff discounts are very generous too.

I still canvassed a bunch of other places. Most didn’t have anything, but one place took my resume.

As you can imagine, though, the smashing success of the experiment really bolstered me. In fact I was on a total high. It felt so good to “put myself out there” as it were, to take an experimental course of action like that. My new job is just one day a week, but that actually suits me as I can get a full time job as well, using my health store job as a tool to learn more about food, nutrition, and natural remedies…as well as generate more much needed cash after a year of being an impoverished student.

So far, then, I’ve been very successful with the deconditioning process. Curiously, though, the list of tasks I set myself has not proved helpful other than as a tool to get me started. For example some of the tasks, such as having interactions with people, being a difficult customer, and so forth, have been just happening naturally as my public singing unlocks my courage to be in the world. Since I am spending a lot of time asserting my identity in public space I just don’t think it anything special to do so in specific interpersonal contexts.

I am now actively looking for a job in sales, too. The dare of being able, as someone who used to be so damn shy and socially anxious, to make a living out of sales is just too enticing. It is a bit of a digression in the map of my career perhaps, but as Clint pointed out, sales skills are relevant to anything. For me, though, this is about discovering just how much I can expand the field of actions that I believe I can succeed at.

I’ve never applied the whole chaos magic deconditioning thing to my life in such an organised way (the closest example I can think of would be the way in which I learned to ride a bike), but it is really bearing fruit. It is important for me not to get lazy or rest on my laurels though, I have to keep upping the challenge level: hence seeking a sales job.

I really hope this experiment inspires others to get off their rears and challenge their limitations. I’m feeling very positive about life: my success in breaking down self-imposed limitations so quickly is making me feel a lot more capable and able to direct my own life. I’m not sure what happens next, but I am confident I am equal to the challenge. A-Viking we go! As I explore further experiments in this vein you can be sure to read about them right here…

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Deconditioning

I have decided that I want to engage in some deconditioning, to eliminate some specific limits within my personality that really bother me. I’ve been researching the psychological technique of systematic desensitisation, but that doesn’t seem quite right for what I need (and tends to rely far too much on teamwork and imagination for what I intend).

Trawling through my limited selection of chaos magic books, and through the web, proved similarly unhelpful. Folks love to talk about the subject of transgressing one’s boundaries from an armchair, and they love telling lurid stories of (mostly other people’s) weird misadventures when doing so, but I cannot seem to find a decent template or framework for doing this myself.

So of course I am going to invent one.

One of the great things about having a blog is that it can be used as a tool: specifically, a tool for compelling honesty with myself, since if I publicly announce something I intend to do in this journal and then do not do it…well, yes, I can lie on the internet, but I will know that I am lying. That in and of itself is a powerful stimulus for honesty.

Ok, so first I am going to outline a very simple deconditioning methodology which borrows from half a dozen magical and psychological techniques. Then I am going to plan out the use of this method with some specific aspects of my own life. Then I am going to apply that method.

Before I get started though, I would like to indicate that all of this involves a lot of fear. Why? Well, transgressing one’s limitations is scary. Anything could happen. Especially when they involve other people, as my specific focus does.

Ok, so here is how the system works.

First of all, you need to define exactly what it is that you want to ‘decondition’. In my case it is a set of rules I impose on myself about my behaviour, but it could be anything. You might want to decondition your emotional reactivity to a given trigger (something I’ve been working on this year); you might want to decondition a tendency to leap to a negative interpretations of events; you might want to decondition a story you live out such as ‘I will always be poor’; you might want to decondition even a physical mannerism that might arise in response to some situations.

The thing(s) you are seeking to decondition might be quite superficial or they might have deep roots. It is impossible to know exactly until you start messing with them – sometimes serious problems prove to be largely due to habit, other times trivial problems turn out to be deeply rooted in the psyche.

I suggest that avoiding entertaining too many expectations is helpful, since these are basically empirical questions and if you presuppose an answer then you risk getting into trouble.

Also, often our theories for our negative aspects are quite thin and one-dimensional and very easily obscure our ability to notice all the other possible interpretations that could also be true. Human beings are very vulnerable to confirmation bias – we tend to notice evidence for what we already believe and ignore evidence that contradicts our beliefs.

Hence it might be safer to uproot and avoid an particular explanation for the psychological pattern you intend to shift and just get on with shifting it.

So how do we do that? First of all, you need to work out a hierarchy of intensity. Brainstorm a whole bunch of situations that might set off the pattern that you wish to decondition. They might be actual experiences you have had, or imagined ones that could happen. Try to sort them into a ranking of extremity. You’re going to work through these so the ranking is reasonably important. I will give you an example in a moment.

Once you have your hierarchy of conditioned thoughts/feelings/behaviours, you need to work out some alternative responses to what you’d normally do. So if a particular provocation would normally throw you into a rage, you might prepare a plan involving slapping yourself in the face to break the anger circuit. The idea is simply to transgress whatever your habitual response is (it might take a bit of reflection to work out what the habit is that you are trying to break).

Of course, remembering to do this interrupter might take a few tries and a bit of effort. And it needn’t be dramatic – even just consciously reminding yourself that your response is arbitrary and open to transformation might be enough.

Once you have managed to master the first rung on the hierarchy – that is, you have exposed yourself to the provocation enough that you can reliably exercise choice in your response – you can proceed to the second, third, fourth, etc. With luck you’ll soon have shed a whole load of psychological armour and be much less encumbered.

Be wary of doing harm to yourself, however. The objective is not to force yourself. You need to be able to do the new response without discomfort or displeasure. Otherwise all you are doing is pitting conscious will against unconscious habit, and we all know where that battle usually ends up.

I’m not sure how well I have explained the idea (and bear in mind that this may well be a load of rubbish that won’t work, not even for me), but here is my example of me.

What I would like to be is less concerned about taking social risks. I would love to be so confident that I could be a sales guy, specifically. Not that I ever want to ‘go into sales’, but I would love to have that much social confidence. I would love to talk to strangers in the street without fear. I would love to happily make a fool out of myself, cause offence, or stick my nose into business where it might not belong. I would love to see strangers as potential new friends rather than anonymous robots.

This is all the more relevant because right now I am looking for a job. So these kinds of social confidence skills would be very handy. My reclusive nature has flared up however (predictably) and so I find the process much more stressful than really I would like it to be.

I realise that looking for work is not fun for most people most of the time, but I would like to think that if I am any sort of well-adjusted person then I should be able to learn to handle the process with aplomb.  Instead I find it rather anxiety provoking, and that really has to go.

Oh yes, things are not totally one dimensional. I have started to get into a habit of singing reasonably loudly to myself when in public. It utterly terrifies me to do this (what a transgression of public robot-space)! But I think I might gradually be learning that if you sing in public people just ignore you and nothing bad happens at all…and this might be a nice little microcosm for the whole process that I intend to explore.

Ok, my personal list of exercises (not quite in a hierarchical order) for reducing social fear:

Singing in Public

This is where I am currently working. I will know I have it mastered when I spontaneously sing in public and don’t even think about it.

Greeting People

I would like to walk down a street (preferably a reasonably busy one) and happily greet each person as I walk by them. This is quite a transgression, it seems, in a built up urban environment (whereas when I lived in a more rural setting it became much more habitual). I might even be singing between greetings!

Striking up Conversations

At this stage I would like to feel so confident that any time I am standing in someone’s proximity for any length of time (e.g. waiting for a pedestrian light to change) I try to start up a conversation. Woah, scary! It doesn’t matter if they are not interested (I do not have to try to force them or anything silly). The point is just to discover that I will survive the experience.

Asking for a Favour

At this point I have to be able to approach someone and ask them to help me, say, ask them directions to something, making it a bit difficult for them (that is, I have to play a bit dumb). Then I have to try to get them into a conversation. Sort of an elaboration on Stage Three, but one with more artifice and more of an attempt to irritate the other person a bit (not too much, I hope).

Complaining

This is a tricky one, something I have often struggled with in more benign forms. The idea is to go to a café or restaurant, make an order, and then when it comes say that I have been served the wrong thing. Holy cow, this is getting scary. The complaining is not to be done in an aggressive, jerk kind of way, and I am allowed to let them off the hook (that is, I don’t have to make them take it back). I am sure I could think of other situations where complaining is warranted too…

Cold Job Lead Hunting

Since I am looking for a job, what about cold calling a few companies and asking if they have jobs going, if I could have an interview anyway, and all that sort of thing? Likewise dropping in resumes off the street. Oh, scary. I mean, I have done this sort of thing before, but how cool would it be to be able to do it all day, every day, without raising a sweat?

Selling Stuff on the Phone

What about inuring myself to cold calling random people and trying to sell them stuff? That’s got to be close to the ultimate in scary for me. Maybe I could sell copies of my Ein Skopudhr Galdra CD, which I would love to shift a few copies of (hint, hint, dear reader).

Selling Stuff in Person

Same as above…except doing it door to door or on the street like those charity collector folks. I’d love to actually get, and thrive in, a sales job like that…just because it would represent a total victory over my social fears and anxieties.

These items are more or less in a hierarchy, although I struggle to get it into a perfect linear structure. Maybe it does not matter so long as the general hierarchy holds. Some of them I have actually done before, but not enough that I feel at all comfortable with them.

What sort of time frame should I adopt for this experiment? Well, that really depends on the number of opportunities I have (a lot of this relies on me wandering around in public), how brave I am, and how long it takes for me to acclimatise.

Setting a definite deadline is no good, therefore, and there’s no point hurting myself with unrealistic expectations. By the same token, I need to be honest with myself so that I am not, as we say in Australia, just ‘copping out’. I will have to refine this aspect of the process as I go.

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Reiki and Runa

This article dates back to March 2004. Its a classic piece of Chaos Heathenism, well before we here at Elhaz Ablaze actually coined the term: extremely syncretic but a) not pretending to be otherwise; and b) nonetheless remaining true to the Heathen spirit (if not its form). As always when I post dated stuff, I make an extra disclaimer that my views have probably evolved a lot since this was written…

Reiki & Runa
I recently completed Level I and Level II training in Reiki, an energy healing art developed in Japan in the 19th Century.I have also practiced runic magic for years.Naturally I began to wonder whether some fusion of these techniques could be possible.

For years I have mouthed the attitude that one should not ‘mix up’ different magical traditions until one is well grounded in both.I believe I have this grounding.It will be interesting to see whether this experiment is still attacked as a ‘watering-down’ of both traditions.I would guess that any such accusations would be driven by an aggressive and idiotic spiritual isolationism, and not a genuine desire to preserve the integrity of the traditions at stake.

Without wanting to give away its ‘secrets’, Reiki is the skill of inviting ‘universal energy’ through oneself, into one’s hands, and then into the body of the patient. I found this to be a fresh and amazing approach to energy transfer, having only encountered the onerous notion that one MUST sacrifice one’s own energy to heal others. In Reiki, the practitioner is merely a conduit for the essential energy of the universe – a force which I believe corresponds in some ways to the Old Norse Önd, the divine breath that moves within all things (more on that below).

More advanced Reiki techniques utilise sigils and magic phrases to further empower the basic energy transfer process, and in particular enable transfer of energy to the past, future, or other locations. Transfers to the past are generally for a healing purpose; to the future and to distant locations are like any other spell cast to steer causality, and are not limited to healing purposes.

However, Reiki is bounded by an ethos of healing and non-violence, and it is argued that using this energy to harm others is dangerous (a common story, but not one that I feel the need to test). My Reiki teacher recommended that at the end of any kind of Reiki session, one should blow on the palms and rub them together to close the energy flow, and then declare “to the highest good and harm none.”

It is also central to Reiki ethos that one ask for permission before providing healing energy. A person should always have the right to decline energy gifts, no matter how sure you are that they should have it.

When I learnt these more advanced techniques I felt great difficulty in connecting to the sigils. I was already steeped in rune lore, and it seemed that runes, as symbol-word-sound complexes, could easily be used instead of the Reiki symbols. I am therefore talking about bringing the runes to bear on a form of magic that combines energy work, channelling, and visualisation. While Reiki is billed as a healing technique first and foremost, the runes open up limitless possibilities. Perhaps the Reiki Master training emphasises more options in technique (I believe it teaches more sigils), but even so I feel much more at home with Runa.

Of course, writers have talked about ‘signing and sending’ the runes for years, and techniques such as runic hallowing rites employ energy transfer, visualisation, and sigils (the runes). What discovery would I really be bringing to bear here?

I think there are some subtle touches to the Reiki approach which command respect – in particular, the very simple but powerful method of making oneself an energetic channel or vessel. I believe that Reiki techniques are refined and perfected for energy projection and channelling; authors on rune magic, on the other hand, are covering a wide array of disparate techniques and in my experience don’t provide comparable advice on runic energy work.

In particular I tried to work with some of Edred Thorsson’s Rune Guild energy techniques for years, and found most of them disappointing.

As such, I came to the point of feeling it necessary to experiment with fusing runic force to Reiki technique. More detailed outlines for how to try these techniques, along with the question of Reiki initiation, are discussed below.

Experiment One

The first experiment was very simple. I am informed that the word Reiki implies all energy, both horizontal and vertical. I immediately associated this with Jera – the runic map of horizontal or cyclic causality and energy; and with Eihwaz, the runic map of the world-column, the channel of vertical or linear causality and energy (incidentally, when combined, Jera and Eihwaz energies form the spiral, the whole and original energy structure of the Northern Tradition in my opinion).

OK, so I have correlated the idea of Jera-Eihwaz and the basic Reiki energy. I therefore attempted a simple healing energy channelling as is the basis of Reiki practice. However, instead of internally calling and visualising ‘Reiki’, I invoked Jera and Eihwaz. I then laid on hands as normal. This method is at least as effective as invoking Reiki energy, plus I find it easier to perform. Ultimately, I can see it being a much more effective basic energy healing method for myself and other rune wielders.

Experiment Two

I attempted to adapt the Reiki technique of sending energy into the future. This technique basically entails cupping your hands, visualising the desired outcome in the future, making the relevant sigils, and then channelling away.

All that I needed to modify was to channel runes relevant to my intent for the future.

As it happens, I was having some money difficulties (‘cash flow problems’) at the time. So I let Fehu be the rune of choice, letting it symbolise my receipt of money in the near future with no harm done to anybody for it.

Voila! An email 3 days later and a verbal discussion three days after that produced a situation in which unexpected benefactors came forth with monies that had been lying in stasis for me. Suddenly I found more than a thousand dollars winging its way to me. In both cases the benefactors contacted after I pondered these monies and more or less decided that they either might not come through or that I would forget about pursuing them.

In both cases the money had come from stagnant stores out of my immediate reach – , in one case held by the Rental Bond Board. From these sources the wealth was converted into, Fehu-style wealth – cash. One could joke that Sigurd was a Reiki master and Fafnir a particularly difficult patient.

Authors on magic often use wealth winning spells as an example of why one needs to take care in framing one’s magical intention. I like Phil Hine’s example best – the magician who enchants for money without specifying a possible source and without specifying that the winning of this money not harm others. The spell works alright – when an older relative of the magician drops dead and wills them the cash desired! I doubt this is a true story, but the point is well made.

The Reiki approach of saying “to highest good and harm none” at the end of the ritual therefore seemed a simple and elegant insurance policy against accidentally causing trouble from the main statement of intention. It is cheesy I know, but it seems like a useful safety catch if you aren’t in fact looking to cause harm! Of course, I’m sure these techniques would also effectively convey aggressive or so called negative intentions.

Experiment Three

What about sending rune energy to the past? When I was taught how to send Reiki to the past, it was framed in terms of healing the memory of past wounds. Practicing this skill was for me at the time quite emotionally fraught, as I have a few old but still rather open wounds from my childhood.

The method is similar to sending energy to the future. We cup our hands and visualise the past situation to which we desire to send the healing energy. When I have done this it has become a totally immersive experience – even entering the scenario as a magical persona or projection to personally deliver the goods.

I suppose it might be appropriate just to send Jera-Eihwaz energy for this technique. However I have also experimented with sending a runic formula tailored to a specific and very sad incident in my earlier life. Clearly great care should be taken to send the Well of Mimir (Memory) the right forces.

We can also use Reiki techniques to send energy to a person or place in the present – for example, for distant healing. The method is essentially the same as for sending energy to the future or the past.

For general purpose healing one could just send Jera-Eihwaz energy. If one has a more specific will, one could determine a statement of intention and encode it in runes to be sent. I must confess to not having actually tried this experiment, however extrapolating from the other experiments I do not see how it could fail.

So we can see that Reiki techniques can easily provide new options for applying runic power. There is one difficulty worth discussing however: Reiki initiation. Part of each stage of Reiki training involves an energetic initiation by a Master. Now, maybe this is just a device to keep people shelling out for the training, and maybe it actually does help one channel the energies. I don’t know – perhaps both theories are correct. With luck I will eventually become a Master and be able to find out for sure – in the meantime I can only speculate. Certainly, I find channelling runic energy to work better despite any comparable initiation. Then again, I have years of working with runic energy, so you would expect that something would rub off!

The other issue I feel I should address before turning to more useful technique outlines for runic channelling is that of runic stances. These have an odd history – as far as I can tell they were developed by rune magicians in the early 20th century who were as much interested in yoga and hermetic traditions as they were runes.

These days the Rune Guild is their most ardent promoter, arguing that they are a good method for channelling runic energy (as opposed to using galdor to project it). I believe the techniques discussed in this paper are a better alternative. They are no more anachronistic or historically implausible than the runic stances, which are after all a bad parody of yoga. However, these techniques are practical, don’t require you to stand in stupid looking postures, can be applied anywhere, and won’t hurt your back like some of Edred Thorsson’s recommended stances hurt mine. While it is clear that some postures are relevant to rune magic – notably the Elhaz stance for invocation of gods and other beings – others seem arbitrary, and from my experience none are that effectual compared to meditating, singing, or energetically channelling runic force.

Below I have provided practical discussion of the techniques in this paper. I hope you find some use for them. I recommend undertaking training in Reiki as a useful experience – even if you use runic energies exclusively once the training is done. I’d love to know what your experiences using these techniques have revealed.

1. Basic rune energy channelling (via hands).

a)Find yourself a patient (or yourself). Make sure you have permission to apply the energy.

b)Unless you intend to apply undifferentiated Jera-Eihwaz energy, you will need to work out and appropriate statement of intention and the appropriately corresponding runes. This can be accomplished by a few means – talking with the recipient to find out what they feel they need; divining with rune staves; meditating; or otherwise listening to your intuition. You might like to experiment with bind rune visualisations or melding several rune names into one to focus your concentration.

c)Touch the recipient. State in your mind “Jera-Eihwaz” three times, visualising the might of all the worlds’ energies – horizontal and vertical – streaming down into your head and up from your feet, into the vortexes of your hands and then into the recipient.

d)Once this connection has been established, call each rune in the same way, visualising and feeling its energy also. I also visualise the rune shapes and ‘hear’ the rune sounds.

e)Remember, you are just a conduit. Reiki practitioners claim that sometimes they experience clairvoyant insight about the recipient while providing the energy. I recommend circumspection about such insights – it has been found that some are true, and some are very false. The longer you apply your hands, the stronger the effect – an hour’s energy can be great, 15 minutes may well suffice however.

f)That’s about it for the technique! Don’t forget to rub your hands together and make a closing statement of will and the end of the session (e.g. the statement mentioned above, “to the highest good and harm none”, or another).

2. Sending rune energy elsewhere in time or space.

a)Again, you will need to determine the appropriate statement of intention and runes to be used and gain permission to send the energy if appropriate.

b)Cup your hands so that inside is a closed space. Visualise the target situation, time, place, or whatever, inside your hands. It may help you to let your visualisation become totally immersive.

c)State in your mind “Jera-Eihwaz” three times, visualising the might of all the worlds’ energies – horizontal and vertical – streaming down into your head and up from your feet, into the vortexes of your hands and then into the visualised scenario. I also visualise the rune shapes and ‘hear’ the rune sounds.

d)Once this connection has been established, call each rune in the same way, visualising and feeling its energy also. The longer you apply your will, the stronger the effect – an hour’s energy can be great, 15 minutes may well suffice however.

e)That’s about it for the technique! Don’t forget to rub your hands together and make a closing statement of will and the end of the session (e.g. the statement mentioned above, “to the highest good and harm none”, or another).

This paper won’t give you everything you need to start providing energy healing sessions to folk on the street – I have glossed over a lot of practical details that a good Reiki course should fill you in on. However, in day to day life you might just find these techniques bring a little more edge to your magic.

Finally, you may find that each hand seems to key to a different energy – in my case, my left hand keys to ice and my right hand to fire. This seems to be a normal thing, but I wonder how it could be used to make these techniques more effective still. Nothing about this kind of differentiation seems to be noted in normal Reiki lore.

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What Does "Heathen" Mean?

Here are nine definitions of “Heathen” that go together. Anyone out there have any other good one’s they’d like to add?

Heathen: literally a “heath dweller”. A person who lives with a sense of roots, reverence for nature, curiosity for the past, appreciation of depth, and love of mystery.

Heathen: a way of doing, feeling, thinking, acting, and being – which can be characteristic of philosophies, spiritualities, religions, traditions, cultural milieux, and more besides.

Heathen: the whole-grain way of life in a world of sugar-soaked white bread.

Heathen: one who prizes courage, generosity, and good humour.

Heathen: one who can bear suffering without slandering the reputation of life.

Heathen: one who celebrates the sacredness and the interweaving of all things.

Heathen: an ideal that we cannot own, but from which we can borrow on very generous terms to the enrichment of our whole lives.

Heathen: a well which offers abundant nourishment to those who tend it with love.

Heathen: once a term of narrow-minded abuse; now being reclaimed by those who are intrigued and nourished by the histories and heritages of Old Europe.

Folks, my good friend and regular Elhaz Ablaze commenter Volksfreund has undergone a major – near death – health emergency. Anyone who cares to, please send him good thoughts and healing spells. He needs it!

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How to Meditate Effectively

Since I returned from my travels I’ve meditated almost every day. It’s a fantastic practice and I thought I’d describe what I do and how it helps.

The practice is simple enough. I set a timer for 20 minutes. I lie down in a secluded space – under the shade of trees is good, or if it is cold then I just get under the covers of my bed.

I try to focus on my breath. I turn my attention to the physical sensation of inhaling… and then the physical sensation of exhaling. I let my breathing slow down and become more regular. It can be helpful to think the word “in” as I inhale and “out” as I exhale.

Now the thing about trying to focus your attention on one place is that if your mind is undisciplined – well you’ll be all over the shop. All sorts of thoughts are likely to flood your mind – about your shopping list, the book you are reading, the arguments your friends are having, your plans for the day.

These thoughts will pull your attention away from attending to your breathing. So here comes the key to effective meditation.

Your only task when your mind wanders is to notice that your mind has wandered and tell yourself “back to the breath” and return your focus. That’s all. The thing is, it is totally ok for your mind to wander: that gives you the opportunities you need to practice noticing your own thoughts and redirecting them.

In other words, effective meditation doesn’t make some lofty goal of stillness or oneness the goal – though my method certainly enables me to achieve such a state sometimes. Rather, the goal is just to notice that your mind has wandered and return to the breath.

Sometimes, often, you won’t stay focussed for more than a breath or two before you get distracted, no matter how experienced you are; or sometimes thoughts will quietly worm away under your breath focus. This is good – you are learning the landscape of your mind at the same time as you train the beast. Sometimes valuable insights might even come from this, though the time to dwell on them is after your 20 minutes is done.

There are various Zen stories about the important of coming back to your focus point no matter where your mind goes: “Master, I was meditating and the Buddha appeared and told me that I am the anointed saviour of mankind”, says the student. “That’s nothing to worry about. Keep returning to your breath and it will go away”, replies the master.

This is a good attitude to have. If you really must, you can still entertain your megalomania later. But when you are meditating, meditate.

You don’t have to focus on your breath for this general principle to work. Sweyn Plowright, in his book True Helm, offers a very effective meditation practice utilising the rune Isa, with a similar approach to the one I’ve outlined here. I recommend it, in fact. It’s very classy.

I should also add that I didn’t invent the meditation method described here. It is loosely adapted from various different traditions and modified by my experimentation.

Now, you might be wondering how I know that the meditation method outlined here is effective.

Well it definitely takes a while to get the more dramatic results, but here are some of the benefits I have been experiencing since I renewed my daily meditation practice a month ago:

I am more alert; I think clearer, I’m more able to understand things around me and even my sensory perception seems clearer and more detailed;

I need less sleep; sometimes I can use a meditation session to totally recharge my batteries during a busy day;

I feel much less anxious – more confident and relaxed;

I pay much less attention to the kinds of unconstructive self-critical voices most of us fall prey to at times;

I have become less dogmatic, more open to different points of view, and much less emotionally provoked when I encounter views that contrast strongly with my own (this has been a goal for a little while now, as discussed elsewhere in this journal);

I am more focussed – when I really need to get something done, I can do it;

I’m becoming more disciplined but also less up-tight about maintaining my discipline – I’m more comfortable with resting and taking time out yet I think I’m just as productive.

The real litmus test came over this last weekend, when I recorded all the bass for the next Ironwood album. I usually find recording to be stressful, unpleasant, emotionally taxing and, all in all, something to be feared.

This time around though I felt so calm and relaxed. When my emotions started to get away from me I could see it immediately and respond. I noticed that I tend to hold my breath when I’m feeling under pressure and that if I consciously let go of that armour then I become both more relaxed and more competent.

The consequence was that despite this being the most complex and technical material I’ve ever recorded I finished up right on schedule, didn’t rush, pulled out the best studio performances of my life, was totally chill and relaxed, and basically had a monstrously enjoyable time.

Instead of an onerous task, recording was a pure joy. I particularly enjoyed watching myself skilfully manage my own behaviour, thoughts and feelings, gently steering myself along the path.

And folks, that is after only a month of meditating daily, 20 minutes a day. I’m really, really hooked now. I’ve written before in this journal about the distinction between heart and will based living; how the former is so much more powerful yet is so hard to access for those of us raised in a more or less nihilistic modern context. Well meditation is really opening the gates of my heart and unleashing some serious power.

Oh, and to top it all off, on the weekend I also wrote a really cool poem about Odin and my ancestors.

It can be hard, of course, to get into a groove with meditation, but really to do it effectively you need to keep up the practice. Sometimes you might have to skip a day, but believe me, it gets easier to discipline yourself the longer you do it.

If you think you don’t have time – trust me, you’ll start to function so much better after a while that those 20 minutes spent meditating will end up saving you at least that much, maybe a lot more, out of the rest of your day.

And I’ll say again – it doesn’t matter how much your mind wanderes. It doesn’t matter if you don’t reach some transcendental state. Just keep doing it and you’ll find it hard to stop yourself from deriving benefit from the practice.

I’m laying down the challenge folks. Meditation – get into it!

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More on my Extremism

Following on from my last post I had a curious realisation. You see, at various points I’ve felt that the myths of Siegfried/Sigurd provide for me some important clues into my personal evolution. Yet I’ve never been able to find my way into applying them in my life.

Certainly Jan Fries’ interpretation of the myth of Sigurd in Seidways has been a helpful stepping stone. Fries sees Sigurd’s discovery of the speech of birds after tasting the heart of Fafnir as symbolic of an attainment of expanded consciousness, a kind of enlightenment, an initiation into the Big Picture. I find this a very helpful interpretation, and relevant to many of my own interests and concerns, but somehow until now I’ve stopped at that point.

Recently the next step opened, however: I noticed that the meaning of the name Siegfried is “Victorious Peace” or more specifically, “Victorious Frith”. Sigurd means “Victory Guard” – presumably a guardian of the peace. This seems inescapably parallel to the Sufi moniker Ali Salaam that I wrote about in my last post: a fusion of fury and tranquillity. Rather Odinnic actually.

The old word frith bears some consideration: frith is a time of fruitful, ordered and harmonious activity. It is bountiful. It is a very active, creative peace. There might even be some conflict mixed into it, however it’s a constructive conflict rather than a gratuitous one. The idea of such a state being victorious in my life is very enticing.

So, hilariously, I find my Sufi interests providing the perspective I needed to advance in my understanding of my Heathen path. I love the fact that the tapestry of wyrd is always more subtle and complex than we expect or might like to think!

What does this ideal of Victorious Peace mean for my life? I’m taking it in two directions – and folks, really this article provides a model for how we can use mythology as a tool and vessel for our own growth so please take what you read here and put it to good use … and feel free to tell me about how that goes for you, too.

Acknowledging Harigast

Harigast is one of the names of Odin and means something like “Ruler of the Host”. It goes deeper than this, actually – Harigast is a provoker and inciter, spurring the war band up into paroxysms of berserk fury. As such he is capable of achieving tremendous things, but potentially also capable of causing terrible things. To me this is a very primal aspect of Odin.

In my reflections I’ve come to see this aspect of Odin as coming through me when I get on my furious, self-righteous high horse. I find something about which to feel outraged, something about which I am free to adopt a self-justifying posture, and then I scythe contemptuously through any and all dissent. Yet as I explained in my last post, allowing myself to give fuller vent to this tendency has not been nearly as satisfying or helpful as I expected. You need more than just brute force to make your way in the world.

Yet it would be false of me to deny this part of myself too. I cannot just repress this Righteous Destroyer – as Phil Hine says, “a god denied is a devil created”. I think that this Odinnic force causes all kinds of problems when repressed into ugly, twisted shapes – indeed, one of the problems of Christianity is that it encourages us to ignore this aspect of our Heathen heritage, allowing it to become subverted and twisted and vile.

To that end I have decided to adopt the name Harigast as a creative pseudonym. The purpose of doing this is not to conceal my identity (I’m happy to publicly declare that Harigast is a literary vehicle). However in doing this I can (when appropriate) explicitly disclaim responsibility for the opinions expressed and/or the manner of their expression. I can allow Harigast expression in a contained, safe form by doing this. This allows me to cleanly acknowledge this aspect of my nature without causing monumental trouble.

Sometimes permitting something you have struggled with causes the need to express it to abate. Giving oneself permission to transgress one’s ego is sometimes so satisfying that the need to transgress subsides. I’m not sure if this will happen with Harigast, but I certainly feel more at home with myself since I prepared his portrait and wrote him a short bio:

harigastHarigast is fury incarnate, a self-righteous proclaimer of violent truths and armoured dogmas, usually provoked by, and in opposition to, self-righteous proclaimers of violent truths and armoured dogmas. Self-appointed avenger of wrong-doing,

Harigast all too easily becomes the very breed of monster he seeks to demolish. His seething outbursts can be beautiful, but also disastrous – as much to Harigast as to his intended victim!

Harigast is a very forceful character and often sneaks hiddenly into Henry’s words… so while many opinions are expressed in his articles Henry, even if he wrote them, does not necessarily agree with them!

Harigast wrote a piece that will appear, Gods willing, in the next issue of Hex Magazine. I’m also making him my co-blogger for this journal; hence we now both have a little bio.

Being Present

While away travelling I realised that I rush terribly. I am rarely focussed on being where I am; I’m always running off into the arms of one thing or other. Extreme emotional trips – such as fury or vulnerability – can be a trick I use to avoid facing the realities of my actions and circumstances.

I’ve therefore started meditating regularly after not doing so for a long time. I’m working with Buddhist techniques of mindfulness to attend more to the automatic assumptions and attributions I make about myself and others (particularly the crappy negative ones).

And I’m trying to hold onto the notion that you have to “go slow to go fast”, as an old mentor used to tell me repeatedly. This last bit of wisdom is really potent. I think it is an essential ingredient for feeding frith. Holding to it is part of achieving victory in the task of building and guarding a victorious frith-stead.

It’s a slow process, bringing about this change. Nevertheless I am whole-heartedly committed to this ideal.

Sometimes I find myself writing about matters spiritual in order to avoid having to actually live in the endless ordinary dilemmas of the present moment (in fact a little bit of that is happening right now as I type this). Consequently it might be that in future I will put less energy into this journal and more into spiritual practice itself. I invite my readers to get more active with their commentary in order to make up the shortfall ;-)

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My Extremism

Well – I’m back from my travels. More to come on that soon I’m sure – and on the many reflections I’ve been gifted with while away. In the meantime, here is a piece I wrote while away:

***

I have two quite different, competing tendencies, two incredible extremes of personality.

One is reflective, compassionate, curious, gentle and calm. It tends towards a kind of oceanic rationality which is clear and logical without being alienated or over-abstract. This mode is also a source of great vulnerability and at times fear. It does not tolerate uncertainty, pain or the threat of suffering well. It is childlike and deeply mortal. It deals in the stock of uncertainty, complexity and ecology.

The other extreme I’ve come to refer to as my Righteous Destroyer. It’s distilled fury, rage, destructiveness and brutality but always through a lens of moral absolutism. It is convinced of its own point of view and no matter whether my point of view is sensible or not I lose access to my reason when this mode dominates.

I just want to tear apart all those I disagree with, refute them with a violence that does me no credit. I also see this extreme in many other people and hate them for it. I disown my violence and project it onto anyone I disagree with. This mode is overwhelming and transpersonal – a kind of raging blind deity pulsing through me.

This second mode does not activate in response to every issue or circumstance. It has specific triggers, usually in relation to my recurring feeling of being excluded or unrepresented in the communities to which I gravitate. Or else it reacts out of my perception of injustice, wrong-doing, ignorance, or poisonousness.

For example I’ve allowed it to show very slightly in my writings about the Rune Gild, Alain de Benoist and on matters political. But I work hard to tone my rants down because the seething, righteous hate that rises up in me translates very badly into articulated opinions.

I’ve come to be troubled by the rigid dichotomy I experience between these two modes. I’ve come to be troubled by how violently, destructively reactive I become, often in quite arbitrary situations.

In the last year I’ve experimented with holding back my rage less in various inter-personal situations because I felt I was wimping out by restraining myself. The results have been much less satisfying and productive than I thought they’d be, however.

I am learning that while Alexander cutting the Gordian Knot is one thing, in real life a measure of subtlety, wit, self-control and patience is necessary and not just a cop out.

Often the fury comes over so quickly that I don’t actually bother to check if my chosen target is actually promulgating a perspective I object to or not. I just decide they’re wrong and go for the jugular.

Of course the irony is that I hate those who adopt similarly absolutist and violent postures. And I’m troubled by my extremity. Even if I totally disagree with another opinion, my fury almost completely disables my ability to apply reason and reflection and hence disrupts my ability to challenge or oppose in any constructive or effective fashion.

Or at the very least, the fury overshadows the reasoned and considered aspects of my thoughts and words so that these are diluted in their impact. And I risk coming across like a jerk. All in all: not good!

My fury is a deep ego attachment and, hilariously, it’s an attachment I often unleash in the name of ego destruction! Somehow I doubt this is even the sort of thing ego-oriented magicians have in mind.

When I was initiated into the Al-Jerrahi Sufi Order I was given the magical name Ali Salaam by the then circle leader. I don’t know if she was conscious of the full aptness of the name when she selected it, but it seems highly relevant to this schizoid furious/gentle split.

Ali was one of Muhammad’s generals and really the Islamic version of a berserker; he was much feared. One day he found himself in battle with a foe. He disarmed his enemy but before he could manage the coup de grace his foe spat in his face. Ali stopped, stunned by the epiphany that he was consumed utterly by hatred.

So disgusted then was he with his own actions that he threw his sword aside and stalked from the battlefield. I don’t think that was the end of his military career, but it was the end of his use of linear, brutal fury to further his ends. He resolved to be more respectful of the nature of violence, to act from a more holistic point of view.

Hence the name Ali Salaam – a peaceful warrior or a warrior of peace. I think this name captures my divorced extremities and also articulates a way by which I might yet be able to negotiate a healthier relationship between them. Kalima sure had me figured out when she named me.

That I would mention this point about Sufism should underscore the fact that, for me, these extreme modes are a psychological and spiritual conundrum. I am less and less able to tolerate these contradictions and hypocrisies, the way that they limit me.

When I am in my gentle mode I risk becoming ineffectual and paralytic. When I’m furious I am not fit for human engagement. Insofar as I tend to suppress the latter I also sap my will, passion and courage. I need to bring the two tendencies into communication so that I can freely move between them, weave them together, become whole.

How to achieve this goal? There are several aspects to the challenge:

1) Not letting my Righteous Destroyer run away with me;
2) Not slipping into the shadows of my gentle self;
3) Bringing the two modes into communication and connection.

I’ve decided to try to expose myself more to things that might normally drive me mad, but with a mindful attitude, a determination to stay present and not be swept away. Both gentle, retiring passivity and all-destroying fury are means of avoiding being present.

Perhaps by making more of an effort to be present, to go beyond only seeking out evidence that supports what I already believe (a universal human failing), by choosing to act on my beliefs out of wisdom and confidence and not fury or fear – perhaps I can come closer to reaching a détente between my two extreme modes of being.

I want to emphasis that these comments only apply to me. They do not imply a criticism of how anyone else conducts themselves. I recognise in myself a limitation, a disjunct in my nature, along certain lines. These motifs might have very different meanings for others.

In a sense both gentleness and fury are expressions of my transpersonal channel and my ego. I’m coming into a more nuanced experience of these phenomena as I get beyond hard dichotomies around self and other. I believe reality emerges out of the middle; subjective and objective are post hoc abstractions we derive after the fact.

So around another rung of the crazy spiral of Being and Mystery we go. I hope I can detach from my attachments and reintegrate into a healthier way of relating to myself and to the world around me.

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