Chaos Heathenism

Owls, Wasps, and Vipassana Meditation

About three and a half years ago I had a strange, early-morning encounter. It was about 7am, pitch black winter gloom, and I was walking to work. As I passed by a tree, I looked up and found two gleaming eyes looking back at me.

It was big, and white, and intense. And as the owl stared at me, as I stared at it, a word imposed itself upon my consciousness. “Minerva.”

“Oh, “ I responded, “Minerva, like Athena!”

“NO. MINERVA.”

This bit of insistence on specificity was interesting given how syncretic the Greek and Roman cults were, and given that I was receiving this message from a North American owl that surely didn’t have much of a relationship with ancient Rome.

Ok, well. We stared at each other for a bit longer (it was very close!) and then I continued on my way. Later I found out that there had been a spate of owl attacks on early morning walkers in the area, but not on me. I did spend some time after that researching Minerva, however, and discovered her to be a central goddess for the Romans, ruling over wisdom, social harmony, reflection, even healing. I was jealous of Roman reconstructionist pagans: it seemed like those Roman pagans wrote everything down.

Now. At the time I was experiencing a good bit of psychic turmoil and one day in wrestling with this turmoil it visualized itself for me as a cloud of wasps buzzing about me, stinging me with painful thoughts and feelings. “What can I do about this?” I wondered. Then, an imaginary owl came flying in. “If you do what I instruct, I will drive these wasps away from you. Deal?” Deal.

So the owl came in and swept the wasps away with flaps of her strong pinions. And thus was I obliged. I asked Odin about this odd circumstance of suddenly dealing with an ancient Roman goddess at the behest of a modern North American owl. He could have said, “well I’m an Old Norse god and you’re a modern Australian-American, so what the fuck?” Instead he said, “there is some work you need to do and she is the one to help you do it, so I am stepping back for a little while.”

The first instruction was to write a song in Minerva’s honor. I did that. It is 18 minutes long, very complex and interesting, with lyrics about healing and transformation through radical acceptance. I hope to have a good recording of it by the end of the year. It is fun to perform. People seem to like it.

The second instruction was more challenging: attend a 10-day silent Vipassana retreat as taught by S. N. Goenka. I have wanted to do this for many years, and the stars have never aligned. Now I was instructed. It was a grueling experience, and profoundly transformative. Profoundly. In ways I could never have imagined.

Goenka’s approach to lay Buddhist meditation practice could almost be called Chaos Buddhism: emphasis on traditional structure and philosophy, but only as a means to allow the individual to faithfully and safely articulate their own personal development and realization. No dogma here, just profound discipline (and a lot of physical and emotional pain, the kind that silly Westerners run away from all too readily, not realizing it is the door to healing).

I also discovered that the lyrics for my Owl Song almost exactly paraphrased teachings and technical advice offered in the course of the 10-day retreat. It was as though I had been primed to gain maximum benefit. I was also struck by the many parallels to Jung’s ideas (even though scholars dismiss Jung’s writings on Buddhism, perhaps with reason). The critical advantage of Goenka’s take on Buddhist practice over Jung’s psychology is this insight: the body is the unconscious mind.

(To be fair, I have since noticed that Jung does also say this, but he never decisively knew what to do with it. Undertake a Vipassana retreat and you will know what to do with it).

Since that time I have maintained a strong daily meditation practice. At first 2 hours a day per the course recommendation, but the realities of work, study, family, creative, community responsibilities have meant that I only do an hour a day. Even this has been profoundly beneficial. It is like clearing my path back to the Well of Wyrd each and every day.

My wasps have diminished, but more importantly, I am more indifferent to the pain they cause, yet without having to resort to denial or dissociation. With expanding powers of acceptance come expanding powers of all types. There is nothing passive about the applied technical practice of Buddhism.

Every day, no matter what else happens, I spend an hour listening to the sensations of the body. Gradually stripping more and more layers of conditioning, trauma, amnesia. This is not just “mindfulness of the present moment,” it goes much deeper (though it necessarily builds on that foundation). If you want to really understand meditation you need to go back to the Eastern sources directly. A lot of the Western adaptations, though well-intentioned, are inadequate.

I have to laugh at how I came to become a Vipassana practitioner, the unlikely confluence of influences. North American owls; Roman goddesses in some sort of alliance with Old Norse gods, all conspiring to get me to study Buddhist meditation of a specific Burmese-Indian strain. Well, ok. Chaos Heathen.

Does it work, though? It works, though. Does it distract me from loving attentiveness to the forms, traditions, and trappings of Heathenry? Not at all, it actually increases my faculties of appreciation. Is this story ridiculous or wonderful? Yes.

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The Swaying Inner Serpent

A source of minor frustration to me is how rarely I seem to write for this website. There are so many ideas to be explored, yet so few make it through into print (or pixels, or whatever).

I realized this evening that part of the problem is that, ironically, I impose a lot of rules on myself. Combine that with a very demanding, satisfying job that calls on all of my magical prowess, and other fun creative pursuits, well the written word languishes. That…and what I really want to be writing is material too demanding to be squeezed in around a job, no matter how satisfying that job may be.

When this site first started, I was slamming out the articles, yet my daily life had a lot less satisfaction in it. I never dreamed I would be doing the work I do now. Even if I work in a very mainstream environment and even if my interests and ideas don’t get to often openly show themselves, my creativity and tenacity and weirdness get enough of a workout that they aren’t begging for literary adventures as they once did.

This is a shame because my magical journeys have become richer and richer. Since I did a Vipassana retreat some 3 years ago I have had a most wonderful and potent meditation practice. My voyages into performance art have been giving me rich new opportunities for the veneration of Odin and Loki (and the runes!). I am learning about therapeutic applications of trembling (Jan Fries eat your heart out!) and might even get to study hypnotherapy under the auspices of a fellow Elhaz Ablaze book contributor.

Oh! And our book! What a journey that was. I have more books in me, but for now not the space and resources to realize them. What a conundrum.

Yes, and even as I write this I recognize submerged voices telling me that I’m doing it wrong, no one wants to read this. And that is the fundamental mistake: we must create for the inner serpent, not for the appeasement of a projected audience. So long as I am trying to contort myself into an externally determined form, I am violating the font of my power and inspiration.

“To find me, first lose me and find yourself,” admonished Zarathustra to his disciples as he dismissed them. This website, and our book, is fundamentally about the art of stripping away all the authoritarian introjects, the shoulds, musts, and oughts, so that the inner serpent may sway as she wills. A life of constriction and suppression is worthless. Anarchism is the only viable option in the long run (meant psychologically and spiritually, and who knows, perhaps one day even socially?).

I want to burn myself away in the mirror-flame, the harsh mistress called reflection. I want to know my desire, to become it, to articulate it, to nourish it, to be confronted only with the choice of whim, not the rigidity of doubt. For my only criterion of choice to be my judgment, not my fear.

How do we become strong? We nourish ourselves and we test ourselves. One or the other alone will not suffice. I must feed myself and then stretch myself. On the other side of punitive forcing and lax lassitude there dwells the discipline of kindness, which nourishes the endless thirst for mystery that captivates the swaying inner serpent.

Vipassana has taught me to abandon my fear of pain, discomfort, suffering, to embrace it, which paradoxically grants freedom. Not that there is less pain, discomfort, or suffering, but that they are no longer impediments as they were. “This is better than perfection,” to quote another of my incarnations.

Yet I am still so terribly constricted. Tentacles, inner armor, abound in my psyche, my flesh. I am learning more and more just how damaged I am, how much of a freak I am, and it is by turns exhilarating and devastating. Will you truly court Mystery, Runa? If you truly will, you must be ready to shed your skin.

As authoritarianism becomes progressively more brazen on the world stage, we are called upon to challenge its hold on our internal landscapes. Without that inner work I will never have the strength to defy the tyranny of mediocrity that is so dominating US politics (and other places too). My liberation and collective liberation are admixed. There is no separation, only different perspectives.

Do you crave to run screaming across the astral plane? Ride with the Hunt across storm-tossed skies? Tear yourself to pieces in the calling of rebirth? I want the truth of my nature to be fulfilled as fully as it may.

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Better Together: Chaos Magick and Reconstructionist Heathenry

I have noticed from various Heathen quarters a lot of anger about the very existences of Chaos Magic and Chaos Heathenry, and beneath that anger appears to lie fear. I thought it would be interesting to reflect on the nature of this anger and this fear.

To begin, it is important to emphasize that I am not a Chaos Magician. I am a Chaos Heathen. A number of angry/fearful Heathen responses to the concept of Chaos Heathenism have not been able to appreciate that we are not Chaos Magicians presuming to pontificate about Heathenry, any more than we are Heathens presuming to dictate to Chaos Magicians. We’re a standalone hybrid, proud to be products of crossbreeding.

The fear and the anger I have observed seem to boil down to two concerns: 1) Skepticism about belief means that ‘anything goes’ and that any opinion is as good as any other; 2) If effective technique is sufficient to produce a magical effect then contempt for the gods and divine powers follows automatically.

I want to address each of these concerns, and then to reflect on a third, implicit, factor that underlies each of them: the mistaken idea that rigid dogma can somehow substitute for or guarantee meaningful spiritual expression, be one Heathen or something else.

Anything Goes? Not Necessarily

It is true that Chaos Magic does some strange and interesting things with magical technique. At times I have rather enjoyed working with fictional characters (such as Elric) or made up deities (Gretchwen the goddess of environmentalism), and found that this gets results. The power of magic does not appear to flow from how venerable a deity, force, or spirit purports to be. Made up alphabets of desire can (not always or necessarily) be just as potent as working with a tradition such as the runes.

Does this mean that my made-up malarky is just as good as if I painstakingly researched the trappings of, say, Heathen magical practice and belief? Absolutely not. Effectiveness is only a partial basis for determining the worth of an idea; otherwise ‘pure’ scientific research without a pre-determined application would not prove to be as fruitful as it does.

Utilitarianism is only one index of worth. Beauty, love, and fascination are also important benefits of exploring the elements of tradition. Dogmatism destroys utilitarianism, beauty, love, and fascination.

When I spend hours contending with the profound culture shock that serious research into the ancient Heathen worldviews entails; when I spend hours trying to separate centuries of projection from the source material  itself; when I struggle to come to grips with, for example, the mind-bending possibility that the ancient Heathens did not have a modern understanding of the future (see Paul Bauschatz or Bil Linzie’s work) – these hours of struggle establish a profound relationship and bonding with the images, stories, and technologies of Heathen magic.

And that bonding is not easily replicated with made-up, homebrew magical systems. Even the marvelously rich systems of Dr. Dee or Aleister Crowley – life works of elaborate magical symbolism – are but the fruits of the work of inspired individuals. Whereas when one works through even the fragmentary record that remains of ancient Heathen magic, one is potentially more able to sift through the distortions of individual expression; there are more opportunities to find points of resonance, more “scurrilities of the unconscious” as Marie-Louise Von Franz would say.

The work of struggling with the historical material; with (often distortive) secondary and tertiary sources; with the ambiguity and weirdness of the ancient Heathen cultures – all of this can build a relationship, a level of deep emotional connection. This, in turn, can be activated in the performance of a magical or spiritual act, so that I am not only working with my in-the-moment gnosis, but also with the whole reservoir of my relationship to the errant fragments that remain of the Heathen cultures.

In other words, Chaos Magic proved that technical precision is necessary and sufficient, but that doesn’t mean that a totally shallow, made up set of magical metaphors is just as good as something with substance and complexity. Yes, in any individual case I can probably get equivalent magical results, but in the long run my connection to tradition can sink deep roots and I get to tap into more than just my own powers of gnosis when I work magic, so my efficiency is up and my ease with it.

When you look at what the Chaotes say, if you look at the founders of the Chaos Magic tradition, I don’t think they ever said that any frame of belief is as good as any other. What they said is that belief easily usurps the rightful role of technique, resulting in magical practice that amounts to unwitting and ineffectual self-parody. They said that we have to reflect on our thoughts and actions and be willing to step back, to have a sense of humble irony, a sense of humor: “banish with laughter!”

Now, if we are serious about applying reconstructionist principles to Heathenry then this advice is very relevant. Reconstructionism means that we have to make everything we do as Heathens provisional. We have to be willing to sacrifice cherished dogmas if our intellectual conscience demands it (for example, if we come across new information, evidence, or analysis of source material).

We also need a sense of humor for the things we took seriously but that we then discover we misunderstood. The lightness of thought this work entails is the same lightness of thought we find in the Chaos Magic approach; only the context and perhaps goals differ.

Chaos Magic = Spiritual Contempt? Naaaah

Chaos Magic wanted to cut through the ponderous layers of abstraction in which Western Magick entangled itself. It felt that magick was no longer rich with numinous delight, but rather belabored with litigious ponderousness. It surveyed a circumstance in which the magic had been lost beneath layers of rigidity, abstraction, and intellectual (sometimes literal) authoritarianism.

Chaos Magic wanted to occupy more than either armchair speculation or impotently complex ritual. Its reactive emphasis on technique, its ironic stance toward belief, has to be seen in the context of the problems Chaos Magic sought to redress.

In other words, Chaos Magic can be taken as an attempt to radically open the path for numinous delight to express itself, to cut through the choking constrictions of dogma and rigidity when they rear their ugly heads. It was reverence, not contempt, that impelled the early Chaos Magicians’ iconoclasm.

Again, this willingness to challenge received wisdom is essential for reconstructionist Heathen practice. We are so vulnerable to projecting modern assumptions onto historical lore (this seems to be particularly the case when Heathenry is used as an excuse to legitimate racism or totalitarianism). It is so tempting to declare “this material is ours,” and then fail to notice that in actuality the ancient traditions violate our contemporary mores and assumptions on a regular basis.

As such, serious reconstructionist Heathen work is about unlearning and relearning. It is a dynamic approach. The skills this approach requires are the very same skills that are cultivated by the Chaos Magic approach. Thus: Chaos Heathenry.

Dogma is Not a Guarantee of Anything

Iconoclasm goes in cycles. At its worst it is awful – witness the chaos of the Reformation, in which priceless Catholic art was destroyed by freshly-converted Protestants who thought that smashing the faces of saints would somehow get them closer to heaven. At its best, it is wonderful – Buddhist practice as taught by S. N. Goenka enables a radical, liberatory self-knowledge and fully testable propositions.

We want to preserve old works of art, and we don’t want to fool ourselves into thinking that preserving the old is the same as reforging the new. A tree that hardens and petrifies is not a living tree. All we have of the original Heathen cultures are fragments, broken pieces of petrified wood.

We cannot afford to let dogmatic attitudes impede our understanding and elaboration of these fragments. Similarly, we cannot fool ourselves into thinking that encyclopedic knowledge of these fragments is identical with the experience of living spiritual practice. We cannot confuse our subjective spiritual experiences with absolute truth. We must walk a complex and difficult tightrope; the minute we forget this we fall.

Chaos Heathenry is not perfect, finished, complete, or absolute. The minute it purports to be any of those things it will need to be overthrown. I believe the fear and anger it provokes is rooted in a mistake: the mistake of thinking that a perfect, finished, complete, absolute belief system is somehow possible or desirable.

Heathenry is doomed if we attempt to reduce it to such a system. Every time a claim to certainty is shed, a sigh of relief follows in its wake.

(I express my gratitude for good conversation with wise friends for the stimulus to write this article).

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Belief is Not Your Friend

Why Chaos Magic and Heathenism fused together? The guiding thread is skepticism about the importance of belief.

Christianity ushered into prominence the notion that right belief (orthodoxy) is fundamental to religious or spiritual life. This notion has profoundly shaped how most modern Westerners understand spirituality and religion. However it is not a notion that is particularly relevant to ancient paganisms.

Therefore it is important for anyone who wants to explore Heathenry or other reconstructed spiritual approaches to develop a sense of irony about the importance of belief that modern Western culture still seems fettered by. Otherwise any attempt to re-enter old spiritual-historical currents will be hiddenly and thoroughly warped by the ubiquitous notion that spirituality entails the holding of beliefs.

One of the reasons that Christianity jived so poorly with Roman paganism is that the latter didn’t place much emphasis on belief. Individuals were able to have whatever theories about the metaphysics of divinity that they wanted. The important thing was not right thinking, it was participation. It was knowing the right way to make spiritual (and cultural) contributions and observations.

This is a really, really radical idea for anyone in the modern Western world. Spirituality for pagan peoples had little, perhaps nothing, to do with right belief and everything to do with what we might term ‘right participation.’

One consequence of this attitude is that syncretism was a common religious phenomenon in ancient times. Everywhere one looks, one finds cross-cultural hybrid deities. Apparently no one thought this to be problematic, perhaps because they had a sense of irony about belief and recognized that praxis was the more important thing.

(Or maybe they had no sense of irony about belief at all and never even pondered the vexing, burdensome dilemmas of early Christian moral philosophy, where for example the thought is as ‘bad’ as the deed, and the abstraction of ‘purity’ is elevated above all else).

When we review Havamal there is a section that appears to be referring to magical or spiritual (perhaps runic?) practice, here is what it says (Hollander translation):

Know’st how to write,                   know’st know to read,
know’st how to stain,                    how to understand,
know’st how to ask,                       how’st to offer,
knows’st how to supplicate,       know’st how to sacrifice?

Observe that the knowledges here referenced are not about dogma or belief, but rather about the practical dimensions of spiritual or magical activity. It might shock many modern Heathens, but there is no rider along the lines of “and if you don’t believe that Loki is anathema then I’ll never let your magic work!” It seems like anyone with the technical knowledge could participate. Right belief? Whatever, pal.

Ok, so this brings us to Chaos Magic because the stanza quoted above could be straight out of a modern Chaos Magic grimoire. Chaos Magic is the first Western occult or spiritual tradition in many centuries to openly express contempt for right belief in favor of a focus on correct technical practice. Chaos Magic is ridiculed for inventing deities or using pop culture figures as spirits, yet its methods are effective, and they are effective for the same reason that ancient pagan religions were satisfying to their adherents – the emphasis is on praxis, not belief.

Modern Heathenry is so bound up in obsession with orthodoxy. I do not believe Heathenry could be used to justify racism and other bigotries if it were not polluted by the Christian obsession with ‘pure,’ binary thought processes. The more we look at ancient paganisms, the more we find they had their moments of outrageous free-for-all. Even the runes, supposedly the unique spiritual DNA of the Germanic peoples, appear to have been cribbed almost wholesale from the Etruscans (or Romans, depending on your biases).

Chaos Magic offers a useful model (the map is not the territory!), a way out of unconscious adherence to orthodoxic thinking. Combined with the grounding of a Heathen perspective that takes reconstructionism seriously yet playfully, the yield is a model of Heathen spirituality that has at least a small chance of recapturing the character of the ancient ways (which is about as good an outcome as is likely possible, given the gulf of time and the lack of information).

It won’t be perfect, and many mistakes will be made, but that’s why we have to keep trying to keep up with the academics and the archaeologists, a problem that all Heathens, whether they have achieved a sense of irony about belief or not, must face. Better to be honest with ourselves than boxing with our own shadows.

Naturally, Chaos Heathenry is subject to any number of uninformed criticisms, often based on the notion that it professes or promotes false beliefs. Oops. We can only say that we never claimed to be anything other than what we claimed to be. There’s no shame in syncretism when it is embraced consciously, in an informed way. That’s what the ancients did, and we are reconstructing that.

This statement should not be understood as an attempt to excuse sloppy thinking or new agism. We have our own particular kind of discipline, and Loki is only as subversive as the dominant culture is repressive. Belief is in various respects an epiphenomenon, the cart put before the horse. Let’s set it back into its appropriate place, and restore playful, open-minded, and fumbling-toward-rigor praxis to its rightful role.

*

(Don’t forget, our first ever book is out and available!)
Print edition available at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0692984712
Ebook edition available at: https://www.amazon.com/Elhaz-Ablaze-Compendium-Chaos-Heathenry-ebook/dp/B079WCH3RK

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Elhaz Ablaze Book is Now Available!

Long awaited, finally here: the very first official Elhaz Ablaze publication, available in both print and ebook editions. You can order the book on Amazon:

Print edition available at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0692984712

Ebook edition available at: https://www.amazon.com/Elhaz-Ablaze-Compendium-Chaos-Heathenry-ebook/dp/B079WCH3RK

Our back-of-title screed:

There are those who hear the phrase “Chaos Heathen” and instinctively know what it means. This book is for you.

There are those who hear the phrase “Chaos Heathen” and do not know what that could mean. This book is for you.

There are those who hear the phrase “Chaos Heathen” and get upset, confused, or angry. This book is for you.

Elhaz Ablaze: A Compendium of Chaos Heathenry dives into the fractal spirals of contemporary magic from a Heathen perspective. Ranging from the bizarrely philosophical to the vigorously practical, the book’s contributors – artistic and literary – dare to dismantle Chaos Magic, Heathenry, and themselves…just in time to serendipitously discover ever more novel, playful, and artful modes of magical and spiritual being.

The book explores diverse themes including rune magic; meditation; mystical interpretation of Norse mythology and deities (Odin, Thor, etc.); sigil magic; trance work; alchemy; the ideas of Aleister Crowley, C. G. Jung, and others; historical martial arts and fitness; and the philosophy of the occult.

Created by authors and friends of the notorious Elhaz Ablaze website, and lavishly illustrated, Elhaz Ablaze: A Compendium of Chaos Heathenry promises to smash a Mandelbrot set’s worth of paradigms, all the while artfully romancing the mysteries of Heathen spirituality.

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Dreaming into Valhalla

I had a dream last night that a red-bearded former friend, who has a reputation for destroying his relationships through paranoia, contacted me. He told me that he was in touch with a major record label who wanted to re-release the Ein Skopudhr Galdra/Mistsorrow split CD that I did with Dan Nahum and Chris Gaydon (available at  http://einskopudhrgaldra.bandcamp.com/ ).

He said that for this to happen, however, I would need to get permission from the lyricist, but my ex-friend informed me that he and the lyricist had a big falling out, so I would have to contact this person myself, although we’d never met before (how I got to use this person’s lyrics in the first place is a little mysterious, but I think the implication was that my ex-friend had served as the go-between).

I found out the lyricist lived near me, so I walked to his house. I discovered it was in fact a Kung Fu school, and he was the founder and head instructor. The school was housed in a giant, purpose-built long hall atop a very high hill. I had to climb over a wall around it to get in.

At the door I was greeted by the sight of a large room where a class was being held. The teacher was a rather warlike woman who paused to ask me what I wanted. I explained the situation, making it clear that I was a little lost due to the strange circumstances.

I was escorted off into the building, past dormitories where live-in trainees and instructors dwelt. They had a lot of people training in the arts of war. Finally I was led into a throne room – the lyricist-Kung Fu master’s throne room.

And then I woke up.

In my waking state I was perplexed by the suggestion that I had used someone else’s lyrics for my contribution to the Ein Skopudhr Galdra/Mistsorrow split release. Then I remembered that I did borrow some lyrics for that release, and suddenly the imagery of the dream made perfect sense.

For those who know, here are the lyrics that I borrowed:

Veit ek, at ek hekk
vindga meiði á
nætr allar níu,
geiri undaðr
ok gefinn Óðni,
sjalfr sjalfum mér,
á þeim meiði,
er manngi veit
hvers af rótum renn.

Við hleifi mik sældu
né við hornigi;
nýsta ek niðr,
nam ek upp rúnar,
æpandi nam,
fell ek aftr þaðan.

Fimbulljóð níu
nam ek af inum frægja syni
Bölþorns, Bestlu föður,
ok ek drykk of gat
ins dýra mjaðar,
ausinn Óðreri.

Þá nam ek frævask
ok fróðr vera
ok vaxa ok vel hafask,
orð mér af orði
orðs leitaði,
verk mér af verki
verks leitaði.

.-)

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The Elhaz Ablaze Phoenix Rises

Walhalla (1896) by Max Brückner

It has been three years since Elhaz Ablaze’s contributors last produced content for the site. We’ve continued to be active in other domains, but it was necessary for this website to lie fallow for a while. Even so, we still garner hundreds of visits each month, so clearly someone out there is enjoying the body of writings that we have compiled.

However, this silence is ripe now to be broken. Not only will we again be producing articles for this website, but the Elhaz Ablaze crew has  been quietly collaborating on an Elhaz Ablaze book! In addition to ourselves, we’ve also managed to recruit some marvelous guest contributors, and the book will not only feature some mind-bending essays, but some seriously intense, mythic artwork will accompany it!

We’re just beginning to embark on the editing process, and not all submissions are in yet. We don’t even have a title for the book! But nevertheless, the process has begun. Stay tuned, there’s plenty more to come.

Meanwhile, we’ve also entered the world of Facebook. Find us at http://facebook.com/elhazablaze/.

 

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Death and Dagaz

I recently declared that I wanted to embrace the idea of memento mori. The universe obliged. An old ring from childhood reappeared, a skull that I can carry on my hand, a silent and implacable reminder of mortality and perhaps the freedom that comes when one is released from the illusion of eternal existence.

It is important not to trivialise mortality in the name of spiritual or philosophical reflection of course. There are others far more qualified to write about the subject than I. Nevertheless, mortality has been a leit-motif throughout my life and it is a theme that figures importantly for me. Thus I am moved to write.

Death provokes fear. Fear provokes the desire to escape the threat of death. Since we are unavoidably mortal, fear therefore resorts to the deployment of belief as a bulwark against our inevitable demise. This is the essence of what in psychology is known as Terror Management Theory. In order to manage our terror in the face of the awful dark horizon we construct beliefs which simplify the world for our brains, reduce it to digestible symbols that paper over the screaming horror of our infinitesimal powerlessness before the frightful majesty of creation.

Hence, when we make the commitment to live a spiritual life and embrace the horizon of the unknown, we offer ourselves up to a state of tremendous vulnerability. It is here that the double nature of mythology, on one hand door, on the other refuge, is revealed.

Myth is a door. What is a door? A door is an opening in a wall through which we may pass. The door is an invitation into a larger world beyond the limits of the walls we immediately perceive. Even when closed, it is a constant reminder to us of a bigger picture: there is more to be experienced than just our immediate existence.

What lies through the door? It could be anything. A larger world, a different perspective. It could be dark or light, joyous or miserable. It could be a cul de sac or a road that ever ends. Likely enough all of these things await those that step through the door that is called myth.

For where the myth itself is done, safe, secure in its form, recognisable in its character, shaped and regulated by convention, the world that awaits us on its other side is wild, unpredictable, untameable. It is one thing to read about the fury and ecstasy that Odin inspires; another to be swept into a tide of poetic frenzy. It is one thing to praise Jord’s bounty; another to sink your hands into the soil, to plant a tree, to be lost in wild country, to be tossed by storm or tremor.

How does myth open itself? How do we step through? It opens itself when we slow down, when we listen to our heart beating, when we give space for its secrets to give themselves. When we open ourselves to uncertainty, when we put aside our fear of death and the need for control and faith that this fear impels.

Myth is by itself mere words. It can be justified only by the worlds into which it opens. Myth is not property, cultural, intellectual, or otherwise. Myth is a seduction, a lover, an agent provocateur set on unsettling our settled, death denying articles of faith. Myth is always in motion. It is a verb, an action carried out endlessly by the horizon of mystery – Runa – herself.

And so those that want to control myth, to make it dead, predictable, to make it into property, to make it into a rigid template for the construction of stale identity – these we accuse of impiety. If we use myth as nothing more than a vehicle for mere belief – and not as an opportunity to open our spirits to the unknown – then we blaspheme.

I am not afraid, therefore, to declare that it appears that many Heathens blaspheme against their own professed faith without so much as realising it. Yet such folk should not be blamed, unless of course they know better but are too cowardly to embrace the dare of the door. Unless of course, though knowing better, they bar the door up and declare that it is the thing to be worshipped, not the infinite magic that glowers beyond it.

Yet myth is also a refuge. For if we were to stand, naked and purged, before the raw intensity of this mystery-woven universe without any railing to grasp then we would be swept away in the torrent. The universe is so incredibly vast, and often as cruel and arbitrary as she is loving and rational, at least from the narrow glimpse of her secrets that we mere mortals are afforded.

How then are we to cope with true piety – with steeling ourselves against our fear of death and stepping through the door of myth? What protection might we give ourselves?

Myth is redolent with symbolism, with endless layers of associations, connections, refractions, reflections. We find ourselves making sense of the world in the truisms of Havamal, or putting words to the ineffable art of creation when we invoke the subterranean skulduggery of Bolverkr. In the rune poems we find endless fractional images of reality, metaphors which offer moments of order and sense in this vast chaotic carnival of life.

Thus myth invites us to shed all form and embrace the pure unknown, and myth provides language and sense for us to recover and integrate the experiences we find beyond the mythic door. When too distilled our experience becomes, myth offers a refuge, a stable retreat and ward. It helps us to recover from the shock of being finite in this infinite cosmic passion play.

And thus is the art of the alchemist, the magician, the saint, the shaman: to move back and forth across the very threshold of myth. To step out into the unknown, to drink its thick, roaring waters; and then to step back into the warm embrace of mythic refuge, to clothe oneself in the images and metaphor, the traces and patterns which are ultimately inspired by the Unknown and which help us to integrate the Unknown into our finite forms.

In other words, the spiritual art, the art of stepping back and forth through the doors of myth, is the art of living on the threshold of death, which is the ever-present spectre of the Unknown in life. We can only taste the gush of our lifeblood if we are willing to shed it.

Yet we continually lose ourselves in the small doings of daily life, the invisible but compelling stories we tell ourselves: lose ourselves in a futile attempt to avoid facing death’s gaze. Therefore, to surround oneself with memento mori, with reminders of death, is to continually draw oneself back to the door of myth, and the Beyond, and to the refuge of myth, and the need to care for one’s finitude even amid infinity.

To those who dare to remember myth:
Drink deep of the Well!

To those who dare to remember death:
Dance joyous on the threshold!

To those who have ears to hear:

Carpe Diem!

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Primordial Reflections

I’ve been listening to Irish metal band Primordial today. Wow, those guys never cease to blow me away with their atmosphere and seething passion. Vocalist A. A. Nemtheanga has more than his fair share of imbas, that’s for sure.

Their last few albums have partly grappled with the question of identity from a European perspective – their combination of Heathen and Pagan spiritual influences and their sense of history as coming from Ireland gives them a unique perspective.

Nemtheanga is given to dark, apocalyptic vision of worlds crumbling these days, and in the face of the dark portraits his lyrics paint, the grandeur of the music really ignites. There is a truly powerful sense of resolution in this music, and part of that comes from a notion of identity as European, one which Primordial articulates with subtlety, complexity, and little in the way of self-righteousness or arrogance, which is rather welcome for a change!

I am often quite critical of the use of Heathenry simply as a source of solid sense of identity, because it seems to stem from weakness or fear, and because ironically it often seems to impair curiosity and reverence for history and tradition. Yet I feel I need to balance the scales a little, and reflect on my own limitations.

Because you see I cannot imagine the men of Primordial giving into their fear for anything or anyone. The strength that flows through their music flows precisely through a powerful sense of self-possession, of being rooted in history and myth. And part of that strength is tied up in “identity politics” if you want to call it that, yet the way that Primordial do it seems like a really positive force, neither brittle nor shallow.

This gets me pondering whether there isn’t more to this whole “well, I just am Heathen” (and therefore insolubly worthwhile regardless of any evidence there may be to the contrary) attitude that I often see.

Sure, it can make people reductionist in their sense of self, amputating or ignoring their full range of character and their full ability to perceive the world around them. But Primordial seem to demonstrate that it doesn’t have to be this way.

Maybe, then, the more shallow and rigid applications of identity politics in Heathenry are aiming at a more valid and valuable goal. Perhaps I owe those that I find irritating in this regard a little more respect – perhaps, as fallibly as all humans, they are nevertheless driving at something which could be both positive and healing.

What leads me to reflect on this further is my sense that I struggle greatly to stay connected to my own spiritual grounding. I am someone that needs to drink from the well of memory on a regular basis, but I often avoid doing it. I am someone who carries around a lot of self-critical impulses (don’t we all, though?), and while in some respects this is helpful, it is often gratuitously hurtful.

So I find myself wondering – would someone who seems as spiritually self-assured as A. A. Nemtheanga put himself down in his own mind? Would he have those bastard voices that most of us carry around (which I certainly do), which love to stick hot pokers into our brains at the least provocation? I just can’t imagine he does.

Of course the flip side of total self-assurance is the temptation to blame everything on everyone else, and I’ve recently had some very miserable experiences with someone I’ve been very close to but who works in this way. Well I certainly don’t want to be projecting my shadow onto the Other, to paraphrase good old Jung, but nonetheless a bit less gratuitous self assault and a bit more default self-assurance would be nice.

These reflections are all relative of course. In many domains I do feel completely capable and self assured. I’m also known to have a poker face under pressure, never letting on that I’m finding a challenge hard until after it is beaten. The problem is more to do with what goes on in my head. I don’t want to live a life where I am grinding myself down. Because over time that can affect one’s freedom to be and do in the world.

So perhaps what I am circulating around is the possibility that I tend to dismiss the “I want an identity” motivation for being Heathen precisely because it offers something I need. And perhaps I am too quick to dismiss this motivation as brittle, aggressive, and shallow: Primordial seem to be showing that a deeper form of it is possible.

It is pretty absurd that someone who has invested so much of their life into spiritual pursuits and personal growth (and admittedly out of brutal necessity) nevertheless has a habit of refusing the nourishment offered by the divine and then crying about starving to death.

That reminds me, actually, of one of my favourite poems by Rumi. It’s about depression – disconnection from God, the divine in all things. There’s a bit where it says something like: “you decline to enter the open door of the road house; later you curse the hardship of the road.”

Part of the reason I am hesitant to be a “loud and proud” – or perhaps more in my style, “silent but resolute” – Heathen is because I dislike the way that many Heathens present their Heathenry, and to be honest I’m wary of being painted in the same colours. But then again, Heathenry is what we make of it, so maybe I should be just being myself under that banner so that I can ensure that the definition of “Heathen” is sufficiently wide to include me.

I’m not really sure how any of this applies in daily life. And I know that when I sing a sense of connection and assurance certainly flows through me – perhaps Primordial are at their best in performance, and like the rest of us as people are not equal to the art that the divine inspires them to create.

But imagine living every moment of one’s life with the sense of confidence and spirit that can come in moments of rapturous possession while singing? Imagine that power that flows through the body just always being there?

One thing is for sure, this ideal would require the ability to separate one’s self-worth from the world around. The Daoists say we should worship the 10,000 Things, the infinite gods, but not get too attached, and there’s wisdom in this being in the world but also having a touch of reserve, or more specifically, of circumspection.

This is also the Jungian Way – the path to individuation, to having achieved one’s own Lapis, the unchanging, perfected core that dwells eternally amid the chaos of the world.

Well I want my own philosopher’s stone. I invoke Fire and Water here and now and every time anyone reads this to flood and inflame my life! It is time to dismantle my sordid affair with amnesia and start afresh with memory.

Well and good, these metaphors. I need reminders. The magic of memento mori. Let these words be one such. Let there be many more.

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What I Learned from Shinto

Recently I was lucky enough to attend a Konkokyo Shinto ceremony. Shinto is sort of the Japanese equivalent of Heathenry: a folk religion (note the small f, people) with lashings of animism, ancestor worship, and polytheism. It was a really beautiful experience and I’m grateful for it.

I learned a few things about tradition and spirituality that day, and I thought I’d share some of what I learned.

Firstly, the ceremonial elements themselves. The priestesses (what a luxury, a mainstream world religion that has priestesses!) wore exquisite traditional costumes and everyone was dressed quite formally. The altar was bedecked with mountains of food offerings to Kami (spirit/god/anima mundi). The ceremony included extensive chanting and although it was challenging to keep up, my Sufi chanting experience helped, and I really appreciated the extent of “audience participation.”

Everything ran smoothly, the priestesses were confident and appreciated the sense in which performing ritual is just that – a performance that needs to be treated as such if it is to have power.

All this stood in contrast to many of the Heathen rituals I have attended or heard about. For example people turning up in the most informal costume (I have been guilty of this too) where adherents of any other religion would show their respect by dressing at least a little formally (some Heathens are into historical dress, of course, which is fine by me even if I don’t do it personally).

More generally there is both a lack of formality and reverence in much of the Heathen ritual I’ve experienced…and simultaneously a lack of play and humour as well! Heathens seem a bit stuck in the “dispassionate church attendance” mentality, whereas the Konkokyo folks were not at all awkward in their spiritual practice.

And audience participation! What a wonderful thing it is. Not just something generic thing like “ok folks, repeat after me,” but some pretty intense group chanting and individual involvement in making offerings. It gives a lot more investment in the ritual when shared, group activity of this kind is involved.

Second thing I learned: folk religions in the real world (because really, Heathenry often lives in a world of total make believe) don’t need to obsess about ethnic inclusion and exclusion. I was made welcome at this gathering, which is specifically held annually as an opportunity for the general public to attend. It is clear that these guys have a strong and healthy tradition which they are living. They know who they are and what they are doing. So they really aren’t concerned about having foreigners come. In fact they are so quietly self-assured that they invite us in!

What struck me about this in contrast is the relatively immature Heathen attitude to these issues. Heathens carry on so much about who is or isn’t “allowed” to be Heathen on the basis of ethnicity (who appointed anyone to be the arbiter of such questions anyway?), and sometimes this seems more important than the actual practice of Heathenism itself. I think if Heathens had a little more depth in their own connection to tradition, ancestry, and spirituality then they’d no longer be so touchy about the identity politics gig.

If Konkokyo Shinto is like a capable, self-aware adult, Heathenry often seems like a teenager who acts tough to hide their insecurities. I really enjoyed being around a mature folk tradition, but it did highlight to me the shallowness of much of contemporary Heathenry, I hate to say.

To go deep requires much work: both theoretical and practical. It involves learning about history and archaeology and the small details of premodern consciousness. To me it means looking into everyday living, imbuing it with a reverential or animistic attitude. It requires a lot of personal introspection, sorting through and discarding the on-lay of one’s previous faith(s) or values where there is an inconsistency.

I suspect that many Heathens are very hesitant to undertake this work, but especially the personal, psychological aspect of the process. This is unfortunate. I’d like to hope that it changes. I know I need to do a lot more work on this myself, though I console myself with the thought that at least I can recognise and admit it!

The Shinto folk I met, of course, don’t have to do a lot of this sort of work because theirs is a living tradition, whereas ours is a kind of pseudo-historical shibboleth (sorry folks, but that is the hard truth of the matter, no matter how thorough one’s reconstructionist tendencies).

The most important message I took from the day, though, was a point made while watching a couple of short anime films about Konkokyo Shinto – yes I am serious, and I have to say both films were awesome!

The point made related to spiritual practice. Namely that what matters is not whom one prays to, but rather the spirit in which one prays. Honest reverence and sincere supplication are what make spiritual tradition potent. If one holds back or has mixed motives then it doesn’t matter who one worships – that worship will be empty.

It often appears that Heathens lack a genuinely unguarded reverence in their spiritual practice. For all the hard and brittle talk about ancestors and Aesir, there seems little in the way of open, liminal, vulnerable interaction with the divine. Without which, all the trappings and forms are completely hollow.

So I received a good reminder that spiritual forms – myth, story, tradition, specific practices, whatever – are doors and we’re supposed to step through into personal spiritual experience. We aren’t supposed to board these doors and turn them into empty idols. I felt that the Konkokyo folks opened up a place into which a very powerful, beautiful presence of Kami came. Its pretty amazing for a formal spiritual tradition to express these insights and I’d like to experience more of that in the Heathen world.

Perhaps the immediately preceding comments are a little obscure, so allow me to give an example of how the spiritual forms are doors into experience. A few years back at a Christmas lunch (I was the only Heathen present among Christians, agnostics, and atheists) it was somehow decided that we should offer toasts.

There were two toasts that changed the atmosphere. They made everyone fall silent, no, made the world fall silent, as though it were holding its breath, watching with palpable fascination, like we were on the threshold of the universe being born (I’ve also felt this atmosphere working as a counsellor when a client has really entered deeply into insight and begun to make big healing or transformative steps).

The first toast that invoked this sacred atmosphere, this temenos, was a recitation of the Lords Prayer in Arabic by a Lebanese Christian gentleman. In the beautiful cadences of Arabic, this prayer, which I usually find grating and shallow, resonated with power and grace. His performance touched all of us.

The second toast was my own. I started by saying that any gathering of warmth such as this is joyous. And then I recited:

Joy is had by the one who knows
Few troubles, pains and sorrows
And by him who has
Power and blessedness
And a good enough house

The shining stillness of the moment made the wine sweet and many an enigmatic smile appeared on the lips of those gathered. We all sat for a little while, unable to speak but not needing to, either. That moment I feel we stepped through the door of a rune poem into what Heidegger perhaps would have called aletheia – the moment of truth, the primal truth, when all Being is gathered into its sacred, secret perfection.

The experience taught me that both Christian and Heathen forms can be doors into something greater: what makes the difference is our attitude and intention.

The Konkokyo Shinto folks seem to be getting close to this kind of power every time they hold spiritual observance. They made me feel both humble and inspired, which is a pretty awesome combination. We Heathens have a lot to learn, and, I hope, a lot to be excited about.

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