Chaos Heathenism

Chaos and Mystery

...it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.

Henry David Thoreau, „Walden“


In such a union „each element achieves completeness, not directly in a seperate consummation, but by incorporation in a higher pole of consciousness in which alone it can enter into contact with all others.“ (Teilhard de Chardin) Tillich was expressing the same thought when he denied that union with the Ground of Being means a loss of self in a larger whole. „If the self participates in the power of being-itself,“ said Tillich, „it receives itself back. For the power of being acts through the power of the individual selves. It does not swollow them as every limited whole, every collectivism, and every conformism does.“

Braden, „The Private Sea – LSD and the Search for God“


There are two souls living in my breast. Goethe said that. And I often feel the same way. On the one hand there is the „Anarch“ (Ernst Jünger), the free spirit („Freigeist“), the one, who dares to live without certainty and follows his own path… …and then there is the one, who follows more systematic approches to Mystery by more experienced magicians, the one, who needs some guarantee that he’s on the right track, someone who believes that someone ‘out there’ might have THE answers. Ironically these antagonistic forces in my soul led me once into the arms of the OTO. They promise freedom of speech and individualism, but practice dogma, rigidity, hierarchies and, ultimately, the subordination of the individual under certain ‘truths’ (read DOGMA=AMGOD). The fine line where freedom of speech ends and dogma begins is not easily seen, especially when you’re a 19 years old occultist, who believes in the Great White Brotherhood (I know why cynics exist). However, when I study the magical systems of others and try to follow their approaches to the Mystery, I always get stuck at some point where I begin to question some (or all) of their basic premises. This always leads me to the same conclusion: that I’m not a follower type, that I want to create my own philosophy and that there are Masters and Magicians who can help along the way, but there are no guarantees. If I may just quote a quote that resonated deeply with my being:

„Theoretical loyalty provides clear direction but is inherently limiting; theoretical anarchy enables flexibility but also inserts uncertainty…there are no fixed and correct ideas or methods…and therefore no inherently right ways…“ 

Just think about it: Theoretical Anarchy enables flexibility but also inserts Uncertainty! Don’t we all just yearn for that absolute certainty? But with absolute certainty Mystery ceases to exist. Hasn’t the world reached that point already? The way of the world is not my way… Uncertainty means freedom, certainty means dogma.

To trust my own instincts is the hard part of the equation. I do, but not all the time. However, doubts and conflicts have always been an important part of my path. They have often created a Need-Fire (Nauthiz), which led me to new horizons beyond what any magical model can describe as every model is „a map, not the reality“ (RAW). This dynamic of ‘friction-resistence-breakthrough’ was also behind the process to go beyond Crowley’s Thelemic model that finally culminated in the termination of my OTO membership in 2006 (and that dynamic is behind many other important processes that led to inner development). I regard this step as one of my most important ones towards an independent magical path.

In Occultism there is the tendency to explain everything, to package the Mystery in a formulae. Crowley’s teachings are full of such formulas and they explain a lot, but ultimately mean nothing. They may be used, but after all they cloth the Mystery in some costume. But this costume is not the Mystery itself. The Mystery is sensed in a certain state of consciousness (usually a kind of gnosis in a CM sense) and fills the seeker with awe. (Rudolf Otto described this awe in his work about The Holy and called the two emotions of man when he encounters the Divine mysterium tremendum and mysterium fascinans.) And after such an experience the seeker tries to rationalize what he experienced by creating certain correspondences between his experience and the system he’s using. He does this by assigning certain concrete elements of his experience to certain abstract qualities of his system-in-use. Too abstract? Ok, I give you an example:

Let’s say I invoke my Genius / HGA / Augoides / Wode-Self / Fylgja (what ever you want to call it – I’m not saying it’s all the same thing; the HGA seems to represent a combination of Wode-Self and Fylgja) and I’m deeply rooted in the Kabbalistic Psychocosm. If you invoke that part of your psyche in that system you will do it with surrender and love and, maybe, with submission. After you have established a rapport with your Deep Mind a voice starts speaking (not necessarily verbally, but visually or otherwise) that seems to come out of the core of your very existence (one-dimensional, uneducated and spiritually underdeveloped primates often think they met „God“). After this mysterious experience you turn towards your Tree of Life and assign that experience to Tiphareth. This corresponds to the Sun and the Heart. This again is connected to the Anahatha-Chakra, which leads to another chain of correspondences. In modern QBL these can be connected to the Hebrew aphabet and Tarot cards, so that finally a psychocosm full of correspondences is created. Too many are obsessed with the symbols, signs, correspondences, colours etc., so that they forget what the initial intention was behind to use them in the first place. And that’s basically to allow the mind to focus and use all those tools as keys for opening the doors of perception and thus to reach higher states of conciousness. BUT, once you are there, as Isreal Regardie never stopped emphasising, throw away the ladder, because you don’t need it anymore! All too often from such correspondences predetermined routes to „enlightenment“ (also known under its mysterious name „delusion“) are created that alienate the true seeker from the goal.

So, what is the goal? In my experience the first and foremost aim is to experience reality directly, without immediately conceptualising and contexualising the experience itself. Though I don’t deny the usefulness of certain concepts I realize that it’s all to easy to take the package for the content. Honestly said, I believe that my path has often revolved around CONCEPTS (package) explaining some of my (hardly to explain and hardly to accept) mystical and/or magical experiences (content). This, I believe, is the reason why Jan Fries said in my interview that „I believe that the individual is a lot more important than any system, religion, cult or school. And if you have to stick a label to yourself to do your thing you ain’t good enough yet.“

Labels, they give certainty, don’t they? Words are more real than reality – for most of us. But in truth we’re caught in our own prison of concepts most of the time.

Ludwig Feuerbach, the first real atheist we know of (maybe the Greeks had also some examples of what we think of as ‘atheists’ today) showed how to free man from the concept of a transcendental being called „God“. He was a German philosopher, who declared that God was nothing but the projection of human qualities in their perfected form. He argued that the superhuman deities of religion are involuntary projections of the essential attributes of human nature, and this projection, in turn, is explained by him by using a theory of human consciousness that is heavily indepted to Hegel. Feuerbach is really the unrecognised father of the criticism of religion, because whatever was interesting in Feuerbach has been taken up by Marx and Freud (I’m not saying they’re right), who formulated their theses in a more logical, coherent and systematic fashion. However, Feuerbach proved that ‘God’ is just a WORD (label). But wait, words are more real than reality, right? In the beginning was the word… and the word was God. (By negating the existence of God – after his daughter has died at a very early age – Feuerbach has been prohibited to publish his works.) But those of us who experienced the Divine (content) cannot believe in the explanations of religion (package). And isn’t it strange that those Christians, who encountered the Divine in mystical experiences (like Meister Eckhart, Jacob Böhme, Paracelsus, Giordano Bruno, Blaise Pascal etc.) were doomed by the Church and that the Fathers of Dogma (who are the fathers of fear) became the patrons of this alien creed called Christianity? Before they imposed their dogmas on our forefathers and foremothers we had no conception of THE Divine (as the “One God”), but experienced that quality of reality (or consciousness – after all, I don’t know, if it has an objective reality) in different forms (thus polytheism). So, if Feuerbach is right (albeit a materialist), then he is confirming the mystical premise that the Gods live in our breasts. Thus the projections of “the superhuman deities of religion” that man has created aren’t mere illusions of human consciousness, but become an essential expression of the divine nature of Consciousness itself (Óðr).

In this way the label “God” degenerated into a concept that man has to believe in, instead of being the vision of each man realizing the core of his very existence. (I finally have to read Emerson. I know that he had a lot to say about that.) This imprisonment to labels is the hypnotising effect of language itself and due to an “evolutionary error” in our brains to ceaselessly create meaning. Zen Masters and other Masters of Meditation developed all kinds of techniques –including shock techniques, gazing at walls for hours, silence, sensory deprivation, mantras, mudras, yantras etc. – to overcome that miserable condition, also known as the conditio humana.

What I learn from this is that being a chaos mystic – doing your own research, experiments, rituals, meditations asf., and trusting your own experiences and your own perception, asking any premise and any dogma, system or preacher – is the only way to go. We can learn from those who walked the Path before us (magicians and mystics), we can learn to read their sign posts (symbol systems) and explanations (philosophies), but after everything is said and done, whom will you trust when you’re in danger or when death approaches? Your guru, your system, your God?

My answer is: “No, I will trust mySelf.”

This Self, I believe, is part of the Divine energy of godhead that creates and maintains the universe, who is the Alföðr and whom the Einherjar called Óðinn.

Persistence is all. Search continues…

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Spiritual and Philosophical Development

I sat down this morning with the intention of updating my bio in honor of the new website. What I’ve come up with is perhaps a little too long to be appropriate on the bio page, so I think I’ll post it here instead. I hope this helps put a few things in perspective.

 

I consider myself an Occult Philosopher rather than a religious man. I love learning, I love reading and I love thinking for myself. As a result, my ideas and opinions are constantly changing, growing and evolving. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

My primary philosophical influences to date come from three major sources.

  1. Western Mythology
  2. Eastern Mysticism
  3. Neo-Pagan Occultism

Christianity was never a major part of my upbringing. I was raised on primarily on myths and fairy tales, with just a few Bible fables thrown in. As I learned to read, I ravenously devoured the Hellenic and Arthurian classics. I did not have the great pleasure of discovering the Norse myths until my early twenties, but they instantly became an important part of my life and inner psychological landscape.

I might add that I have also always been a total sci-fi geek. I consider science fiction to be modern mythology and I consider classical mythology to be primal sci-fi.

From the East, I have absorbed much of the Mystic Philosophy. Buddhism and Taoism, I first encountered through the Martial Arts. Hindu philosophy became a part of my life much more recently, but I now consider Hinduism to be the ideal living role model for Heathenism and Neo-Paganism.

From within the Neo-Pagan scene, my influences can also be traced to three primary sources.

  1. Reconstructionist Heathenism / Asatru
  2. Chaos Magic / Discordianism
  3. Satanism / Luciferianism

I was introduced to both Heathenism and Chaos Magic by my spiritual brother Henry almost ten years ago. My predilection for the Left Hand Path, however, seems to come from somewhere much more basic and instinctual.

Politically, I identify as a Libertarian and a Transhumanist.

I’ve come to refer to myself as a Pagan or Heathen as a shorthand way of explaining that I believe in a whole mess of weird, unpopular and apparently crazy ideas. Barbarian or Savage would probably get the point across just as well.

Deciding on a more specific label is difficult for someone who changes his mind as often as I do, but there are two which seem loose enough to fit me for some time to come.

Indo-European Pagan describes the philosophical milieu from which my Path has been born.

Chaos Heathen describes the only fellowship I need. We are an odd group, but we are true to our selves and that is what makes all the difference.

 

Hail Chaos

Viva Loki

Aum Wotan

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Interview with Jan Fries

I’ve been busy with my studies at university, so that little time remained for this blog. Lastly I’ve been very involved with a paper on Seidhr (unfortunately in German). In this context I have interviewed three people involved in these practices of our ancestors. One of them has been Jan Fries (the two others were Diana L. Paxson and Freya Aswynn [Elizabeth Hooijschuur]). He’s not the main  influence to my approach to Rune Work, but his general approach to magick is of relevance and his books Visual Magick: A Manual of Freestyle Shamanism and Helrunar: A Manual of Rune Magick have opened important doors in my mind and soul.

However, the occultnik should become familiar with the objective facts concerning Runology first before engaging in esoteric Work, regardless of how ‘dry’ or ‘boring’ the academic study seems to be to him or her. The objective study of the Runes (academic Runology) should precede subjective study. Otherwise totally subjective systems of the Runes will be the result that must remain without any meaning to others. To put it in other words: you should become familiar with that which is known (exoteric) before you engage in the quest for that which is unknown (esoteric) – not the other way around ;). This approach has been called the Polarian Method by Dr. Flowers / Edred Thorsson formulated.

It’s obvious that Jan Fries’ postmodernistic, relativistic approach supports basically the development of a subjectivistic system. (Even if I don’t know if it’s possible to establish an objective system. But we can at least study what is known.) His refusal of the value of solid academic research and an intellectually ambitious approach to the Runes doesn’t make his work more individualistic, as he somehow seems to believe (at least in my interpretation of our private correspondence). But his “practical pantheism” is very inspiring nevertheless. A certain knowledge of the way our ancestors thought and what they believed could be helpful. The sagas and Hilda Ellis Davidson’s books come to my mind. The dedicated German speaking seeker should study Jan de Vries’ Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte. (I think Jan has used that work too.) First then the esoteric works should be taken into account. Subjective meanings will appear at this stage and they will very likely contradict with (some of) the interpretations of other magical authors. Here Jan is absolutely right: follow your intuition! Noone can help you here except your ‘Deep Mind’ (Jan Fries) or, to say it in a more traditional way, your Fylgja. The only rule is: don’t universalise your own intuitive realisations. (Here Jan’s take on the Runes is again creditable as he always emphasizes that his Rune interpretations are subjective and only of personal meaning.) It is this subjective stage most of us are engaged in. Some say, there is no other stage to reach (than a subjective one), others are convinced that there is a level of meaning that is reflecting a traditional, objective knowledge. It’s not for me here to decide for you what take is the right one, but consider that there exist Vitkis and Rune Masters who have been studying this magical tradition for decades and could possibly teach you a lot, if your mind is open to it. There’s no disgrace in being a beginner. We all remain Learners all life long. Hasn’t once a wise old man said that he knows that he knows nothing? For Socrates all wisdom began with wondering, thus one must begin with admitting one’s ignorance. This certainly applies to the Runic seeker. His search will begin with an irrational, mysterious flash of inspiration, which will cause him / her to seek after the Runes and/or other Mysteries. Jan Fries’ work has its place in the renaissance of Runic Wisdom and will be of use to the practioner of modern magical techniques. I consider Jan’s techniques are worth studying and can be applied in the process of subjective synthesis, when the ancestral Runic wisdom in the seeker’s Soul is reawakening and the life waters are returning to the ancient and dry riverbeds of our forefathers and foremothers.

But get a picture of Jan Fries’ approach and ideas on the magical practices of our ancestors yourself by reading his own words. Though we talked about (postmodern, neo-shamanistic [!]) “Seidhr” you can apply these statements to his take on the Runes, too. Ok, I think I said enough for an introduction to this interview. Here are Jan’s answers to my questions:

Matt Anon: This interview is part of an academic investigation of the practices of Seidhr in the postmodern world. Could you tell me a little bit about your background in the area of magic(k) and/or Neo-Paganism and how you came to practice Seidhr?

Jan Fries: Magic is central to my life. I had my first dreams of Kâlî, Medusa, Lilith etc when I was a child (they usualyy scared me out of my head), learned basic self hypnosis, breathing exercises and vowel singing at the age of eleven from a friend of my grandmother, Dr. Gisela Eberlein, started to meditate in various ways around the age of fifteen, began with Yijing divination, astrology and martial arts at sixteen, rituals at eighteen and so on. My orientation has always been eclectic, I do not believe or subscribe to any tradition apart from ‘find out for yourself’. I respect and appreciate aspects of a number religious, shamanic or magical systems, such as Huang Lao Daoism, early Chinese Wu shamanism, Tantric Kaula, Krama, Mahâcina, Haitian Voudou, non-Crowleyan Thelema, Ma’at Magick and reinterpret the local European pagan religions as I like. If forced to define the whole thing I would call it practical pantheism. However, I believe that the individual is a lot more important than any system, religion, cult or school. And if you have to stick a label to yourself to do your thing you ain’t good enough yet.

As to getting into seidhr, well, I never did think about it. I simply noted that in a number of interesting trance- or obsession states, boddy tends to shudder, sway and shake. More so, it turned out that excitement increases the shaking and shaking can increase excitement. Both of them improve visualisation and produce a state of mind that may look uncontrolled or strange from the outside, but is actually quite focused and lucid from within. As I researched shaking trances worldwide, I found examples in Siberian, Napalese, Chinese, Korean and Japanese ‘shamanism’, in Indian Kaula, the Vedic vipra-seers, Haitian Voudou, a lot of African sorcery, the Mesmeric movement, the medieval Welsh seers and so on. And in one of the trances I had the insight that body is the cauldron while awareness is the seething fluid within. By changing the ‘heat’ (the excitement induced by imagination), the ‘seething’ of awareness can be controlled. It connected neatly with Simrock’s translation od seidhr as Sudkunst, so I began researching ‘shamanic’ elements (or really techniques) in Viking literature. There are some very close parallels.

As I keep emphasising, my identification of seidhr with shaking or trembling trances is hypothetical.

Nor do I claim to teach seidhr, for the simple reason that I don’t know what seidhr really is. After all, Nordic literature on the topic was composed by people who were usually Christian, badly informed or even hostile to the art. And the sources contradict each other. There is not a single statement by anyone who actually practiced seidhr. While we all may guess what seidhr was really all about by emphasising one source and ignoring another, I believe the main thing is not the word seidhr but how people can change their consciousness. The Nordic mystique is just one frame of reference, a useful metaphor if you like. The fact is that seers and healers have used shaking, swaying and rhythmic body motions at least since the Rig Veda was compiled, and regardless whether we call it seidhr or anything else, it happens work.

Matt: Where does Seidhr come from? What was Seidhr in the past and what is Seidhr today?

Jan: Where my impression of seidhr comes from was outlined above. Historically, Viking seidhr seems to have counterparts in the skohsl dances of the Goths and the ‘shamanism’ of the Sami. Not to mention a number of ecstatic trance elements in medieval Island Celtic lore, such as Theo awenyddion which Giraldus Cambrensis daw in Wales, or the frenzied bards at king Maelgwynn’s court (according to Gildas). Such matters are discussed at length in Seidways.

What seidhr is today? I have no idea. All I know is that a number of people do things they call seidhr. You better ask them.

Matt: Why do you think Seidhr should be practiced? What does result from practicing Seidhr?

Jan: Why I think seidhr should be practiced? I don’t. Do you think mountaineering should be practiced? Do you think everybody should go diving?

Look, trancing is not suited to everyone. I don’t know about seidhr, as I don’t know what reidhr really is, but I do know that some people get along perfectly with shaking trances and others don’t. It’s an advanced trance requiring good health and sanity and I would suggest before anyone went into it, a couple of years of regular meditation and daily physical exercise are wise. Nor do I think that shaking trances are a must. There are so many ways of changing consciousness. People do it all Theo time. They get excited or angry, they fall in love, worry or feel sad. The human nervous system has an enormous abilitx for developing and maintaining highly unique consciousness states. You can use ‘shamanic’ methoda, including dancing, shaking, drumming, chanting etc., or maybe Yoga, using posture, breathing, mantra, visualisation, or you could just sit down, induce a deep trance and change your brain rhythms, chemistry and the flow of energy in your body. It’s easy. All of these are conveniences. They produce different states of consciousness, but what happens in them, and how you use (or abuse) them depends entirely on you.

The only thing which I would recommend for other people is to learn how to think and make good feeling. We could do with more happy feelings in this world. When you are happy you make better decisions, and that leads to being even happier. Fellings don’t just happen, they can be learned and made.

Matt: What sources have inspired you to take up the practice of Seidhr? What sources have you studied / read?

Jan: The sources that inspired me can all be looked up in my bibliographies provided one isn’t too lazy.

Matt: Do you think one has to speak Old Norse or has to study the original sources to be able to practice Seidhr?

Jan: I don’t think one has to learn specific languages to practice any sort of magic or consciousness changing. A couple of hundred words of special terminology, sure. Learning languages is fun, but not essential. It’s different when the literature happens to be untranslated. I learned bronze age Chinese as most of the inscriptions have not been translated into European languages. Now some people need old languages for the feeling. Others dress up in costumes, or redecorate their homes. Well and good. Anything that works is fine.

As to the practice of ‘old seidhr’ well, even with Old Norse you won’t be sure what thaz really was about.

Matt: Despite the fact that the term ‘shamanism’ is itself controversial outside the context of Siberian shamanism, do you believe that Seidhr is a kind of ‘Northern Shamanism’? Does Seidhr feature shamanistic elements?

Jan: If we use ‘shamanism’ in the common, Eliade-type definition (which I am not too happy about) as a loose term for ecstatic consciousness changing healing trance ritualism, sure, there are parallels. Read them up in my books. Personally, I am not too fond of the term as it was used in such a sloppy way by a few anthropologists and a lot of fakes. So if we have to use it, then only in want for a better term. I prefer to speak of shamanic techniques, which you find in many cultures, than of shamanism, which is such a wide (or narrow) field of cultural activity that I wouldn’t like to define it at all. Instead of looking for what people call themselves (or others) I prefer to learn what they do, how they do it, how it works and what it is good for.

Matt: What are the differences between shamanism and Seidhr? What are the specifics of Seidhr?

Jan: We had these questions earlier. You tell me what these two things are. What is ‘shamanism’ and what is ‘seidhr’? One term is too vague and the other refers to a phenomenon we don’t know much about, and that is questionable. So please tell me. When you’ve done that you can look for differences and similarities. Or do something worthwhile for a change.

Matt: Do you consider Seidhr as part of the ‘Northern Tradition’ / Teutonic-Germanic Religion?

Jan: I don’t know what you or anybody else understands as ‘Northern Tradition / Teutonic-Germanic religion. In my opinion there are wide differences between the beliefs of various Vikings (about which we know far too little), the prehistoric so-called Germans (about which we know even less) let alone whatever you consider ‘Teutonic’. As I recall the Teutons spoke a Celtic language. So just what are you talking about?

Matt: What is the role of women in Seidhr? Is Seidhr somehow more connected to women?

Jan: Yes, we all read that bit about Odin teaching seidhr to Freya and Theo goddesses. So what? There are a number of seidhrwomen in Theo sagas, just as there are women in many forms of ‘shamanism’. And sure, Tacitus also had his say. Well and good, but I really don’t care. I don’t believe in gender or race, I believe in individuals. As far as I’m concerned, souls don’t have a gender. They get one when they are born, but may have a different one in Theo next life. So Theo only thing I can say is that when it comes to shaking (which may or may not be part of seidhr), in my experience women tend to learn it faster. Simply because of gender roles. Males usually learn to freeze their hisps (to use a metaphor courtesy of Wilhelm Reich) in western cultures, and this can make shaking more difficult. But what does this amount to? Tension can be relaxed and shaking is possible regardless of gender. Just like any other trance state.

Matt: Is it ‘unmanly’ to practice Seidhr? What does that say about the role of men and women in (ancient) Germanic culture? How is this seen in (post)modern Neo-Paganism / Ásatrú?

Jan: I don’t know anything about modern, postmodern or postmortal Asatru, as I don’t belong to any such organisation. I know that some people got quite excited discussing the meaning of argr-, you can find my interpretation in Seidways and Helrunar. And I’ve heard people mixing the matter with trans-sexual behaviour and getting carried away discussing whether homosexuals could be pagans or whatever. Frankly, I don’t care. For me, the whole issue isn’t what any organisation says. It’s about you, on your own, experience in your contact with the divine, whatever you call it and however you contact it. And how it improves your life. Cults, organisations, churches, dogmas etc. only get in the way of true experience.

Matt: Germanic Neo-Heathenism has been often accused of being racist / right-wing? Why do you think that is the case? Can descendents of non-European cultures be part of Ásatrú?

Jan: I believe that (at least some people) get reborn (unless they don’t want to), and that any capable sorcerer should live in several distinct cultures. I don’t believe that the concept ‘race’ means anything. ‘Culture’ or ‘subculture’ may be slightly more meaningful, as you can join or leave them as you like. We are talking categories here. This is a long way from real life. And regarding politics, I cannot say anything about groups I don’t belong to. I can only say that politics and religion are usually a bad combination, as they make people even more stupid than they already are.

Matt: Why do you think so many people feel attracted to Neo-Paganism today (including Wicca, Druidry & Ásatrú)?

Jan: One major reason for the increase of new faiths is that people are not satisfied with the old ones any more. But then, it has always been that way. There has always been an urge to commune or unite with the divine (no matter how you call it), and whenever people organised to do so they defined themselves, they included some and excluded others, and as we happen to inhabit mammalian bodies, they also organised group behaviour in terms of territory, hierarchy and finally power poltics and money. By then, other people got fed up and invented their own faiths. It happens all the time.

Matt: Finally, what answers does Heathenism / Paganism have to the condition of the modern world (including modern challenges like climate change, overpopulation, financial crisis etc.)? In which way does it help to improve the conditio humana? (I would also like to ask in this context: Why is it ‘better’ than the monotheistic cults?)

Jan: In a world which is steadily becoming more integrated regarding communication, travel, trade, work, culture, art etc., poly- and pantheism make communication with other faiths and cultures easier than a monotheistic attitude does. Especially a narrow-minded monotheistic attitude, as in the first commandment. But that’s really all. I don’t believe ‘Heathenism / Paganism’ have any answers to anything. There ain’t such thing. It’s just two words you put together as if they were meaningful. Words, words, words. We are not talking churches or politics, we are talking people. And we don’t talk them either. They all have their own answers. Ask them. And listen.

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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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Hinduism, Heathenism, and Indo-European Paganism

Hinduism and Heathenism are closely related. I argue the point on three levels…

1. Hinduism and Pre-Christian Heathenism (along with Druidism, Greek Paganism, Zoroastrianism etc.) evolved from the same basic source, Proto Indo-European Paganism.

2. Hindu and Buddhist philosophy has been hugely influential in the Neo-Pagan movement from which Recon Heathenism was born. (And for anyone who’d like to argue that Recon Heathenism is NOT a form of Neo-Paganism, all I can say is “grow up and stop kidding yourself”.)

3. The connection just makes a lot of sense to me personally, on an intuitive level. I’ve learned a lot from studying the eastern religions and clearly I’m not alone among Heathens in feeling this way.

So where does that leave us? Actually it gives us a fantastic new tool, an idea we can use.

The ordinary conception of Heathen history is as a broken line. If we accept the influences of Hinduism and Neo-Paganism on contemporary Heathenism, we can mend the break. Consider this…

We trace our history backwards from Pre-Christian Heathenism to Proto Indo-European Paganism.

We then trace our history forward from Proto Indo-European Paganism to Hinduism and then Buddhism.

From Hinduism and Buddhism, we again trace forward to Neo-Paganism.

From Neo-Paganism we trace forward to Reconstructionist Heathenism at which point we reconnect with our ancestors and realize our religious history is no longer a broken line. It has now been revealed as a circle.

Our tradition is a very ancient one. I find great comfort in that fact.

And, this idea can be used in other ways. Let’s see how we can apply this new knowledge to a common uncomfortable scenario. Someone from work asks you if you’re religious. You have a few different options. You could…

1. Lie.

2. Refuse to discuss the issue.

3. Explain to them honestly that you practice the reconstructed polytheistic religion of pre-Christian northern Europe (and deal with the fact that they now think you’re a raving loony).

4. Say something clever.

What I usually say in this kind of situation goes something like this…

“I feel a lot closer to Hinduism and Buddhism than I do to Christianity, though I’m not really a Hindu or a Buddhist. (Or, I am and I’m not.) I feel I get a lot out of studying philosophy, psychology, history and mythology. Personally, I really get a lot out of mythology, even more than academic philosophy.”

How’s that for magic? Just few simple words, nothing but the truth, and I’ve transformed myself from “potentially dangerous psycho” into “sensitive, intelligent and obviously well read”. This routine probably would not work if delivered to a Christian fundamentalist, but living in Southern California it tends to go over pretty damn well.

Let’s face it. Being part of a new minority religion sucks. Regular people think we’re crazy. They put our books next to the reptilian conspiracy theorists instead of in the religious section and we’re classified as “miscellaneous” on the census. Buddhism and Hinduism, however, are big. They’re old. By accepting ourselves as part of that family we gain a very healthy measure of social acceptance and respectability. And the best part is you don’t need to convert! You don’t need to change a thing! Heathenism is a form of Indo-European Paganism. It is a western variant of Sanatana Dharma. Our tradition is ancient and we are a part of a great and proud religious family.

Hail Chaos!

Viva Loki!

Aum Siva-Wodinaz Aum

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Why Be a Chaos Heathen?


The Elhaz Ablaze Sign, designed by Donovan

The following article was intended as my first one for Elhaz Ablaze. Somehow I never finished it. But as Elhaz Ablaze has had its birthday a few days ago, I think it makes sense to write my own story how I came to call myself a Chaos Heathen. The first time I read about Chaos Heathenism and the explanation of it written by Heimlich I felt that it resonated with my being very strongly. Though I personally think that one-word descriptions (or two words in that case) cannot really express who I am and how I feel, I still think that the term Chaos Heathenism is really a gem.

„Why Chaos? Why Heathenism? And what is Heathenism anyway?“, I heard some of my friends ask. Friends of mine – most of them – don’t call themselves anything and, if they are religious (or spiritual, as most of them would prefer that term), they don’t like the idea of belonging to some kind of philosophy and/or religion. So, what is Heathenism? (I know that most readers of Elhaz Ablaze already have a very clear conception of what Heathenism is.) Basically, I think that Heathenism is the ‘religion’ of our ancestors. But it’s not really a religion, it’s more a way of life, or to be even more accurate, a ‘way of doing’. However, this way of doing is based on certain philosophical / ‘religious’ concepts that imply powerful truths about the nature of reality and consciousness. To me personally Heathenry is really about roots (RE-connecting with your ancestors & the ancestral, primal root of consciousness – ANSUZ), the interconnectedness of everything (Wyrd) and about a living, ‘ensouled’ universe/multiverse with which humans can communicate by interacting with ‘beings’ that are imagined as gods, elves, dwarfs & other mythical beings (Esoteric Runology). And, of course, Heathenry is about values (like honour & loyalty), where one’s deeds & words count for something.

But the values of our ancestors implied also a very different approach to the Divine. I’ve been raised as a Catholic and to me God has always been associated with fear (to some degree). Heathenry is very different from such an attitude. The arch-heathen would be able to argue, laugh & talk with his / her Gods. There were also Heathens that only believed in their own ‘might and main’ – rather than in any Gods. But the difference between such an arch-heathen and a modern atheist would be the basic feeling about the universe. The modern atheist basically feels that the world around him is without any meaning (except the one attatched to it by the individual), while the arch-heathen felt a mystical ‘web’ of mystery surrounding him/her and carrying the very fabric of his/her existence (cp. Jan de Vries: Die geistige Welt der Germanen). This is the huge difference, from which very different attitudes towards life and its possibilities arise. This includes a very different attitude towards death, too.

I’d argue (like Edred Thorsson in his brilliant The Northern Dawn – a must-read for anyone, who believes that the heathen worldview is somehow lost and not accessible to us anymore) that modern atheism and its most intelligent and sensitive articulation, existentialism, is a consequence of the monotheistic cult, Christianity. The Kristjan (old way of spelling Christian) worldview NEVER suited to the European ‘soul’ – our ways of thinking & feeling, fighting & loving, doing & being – and it was only a matter of time until it deconstructed itself. Further, what appears Kristjan on the surface is often Heathen beneath its appearance (Yul / Xmass, the Xmass Tree, Easter, Easter Eggs etc. etc.). And many early Kristjan ideas have been ‘germanized’ just to fit to the Heathen mind! Otherwise many Kristjan ideas wouldn’t have been even understood by our Heathen ancestors. Consider how brutal and cunning the Kristjans have been just to realize, why they have converted to a creed that has been totally alien to them. After these important considerations have been ‘digested’, it doesn’t appear so weird anymore (though it’s certainly Wyrd), why being a Heathen in these modern times is like ‘coming home’ or ‘becoming who you are’, rather than just following another foreign cult and/or religion. So, to put it in plain view: when (young) people feel the sacredness of nature, or feel drawn to magic(k) or the Runes or pagan deities asf., I consider all these manifestations as authentic expressions of Self – our Heathen ‘soul’.

But then, why Chaos? First of all, the Chaos perspective just admits that the world has changed dramatically since our Heathen forebears lived on this planet and we cannot (and do not want to) turn back the clock. Our ancestors have been so succesful, because they were pragmatic and knew how to adapt to new challenges. Otherwise they wouldn’t have survived and we woulden’t BE HERE NOW (this being a mantra to achieve a state of real wakefulness :-). The chaos perspective allows us to draw new inspirations from different contexts as we are able today to connect with and elect from many ideas, philosophies, magics, techniques & cultures that surround us materially and virtually. So I don’t consider it as ‘untrue’, when I find myself ‘working with’ Ganesha or Kali (or any other deity I feel drawn to) and/or when I am exploring magical paradigms/techniques/ideas that are not part of the Heathen Lore. (Though, honestly said, I’m beginning to become very sceptical of ‘working with’ Gods from different cultures as this approach of ‘working with Gods’ seems to be disrespectful to other cultures and to the deities themselves. However, this is a topic for another article…) But there is another aspect: the chaos magickal or freestyle ‘shamanic’ approach just suits to many of us rather than a strict, ceremonial way of doing magick (though I tend to like both & lean a little bit more towards a strict way of doing rituals). I’d argue with Freya Aswynn that the Northern Tradition is far more in harmony with chaos magick than a Western ‘Ritual Magic’ approach.

“The magical arts of the Northern peoples covered a wide spectrum of activity, all of which was purely practical. There was none of the Qabalists’ occupation with building a stairway to the Deity, no Golden Dawn mysticism. It was, as the poet T. S. Eliot so aptly put it, ‘designed to produce definite results, such as getting a cow out of a bog’. If it bears a resemblance to any modern magical system then the most likely candidate is Chaos Magic…“ (F. Aswynn: The Northern Magical Tradition. In: The Fenris Wolf, Issue No. 3 (1993), ed. Carl Abrahamsson, Psychick Release Production Cerebrum & Press, Stockholm.)

I personally like the idea that Galdor represents a more ‘strict’ way of working magick and that Seidhr equals the chaos magick approach. However, a Chaos Heathen is someone who doesn’t deny his/her many ‘selves’ and will move on to new horizons of understanding. This should be reflected in one’s own magickal practice. For example, if one still uses the same approach to sorcery after some years of practice, this would reflect that no real progress has taken place. For me Chaos Heathenry just expresses an attitude that allows for more experimentation, free exploration and an undogmatic, fresh perspective. A chaos heathen won’t bother too much about debates that ‘it isn’t historically proven’ to use Runes or Seidhr in such-and-such a way. S/he knows also that it’s not much that we know and that the way historical information is interpreted & presented always reflects the individual agendas of the persons using them. That doesn’t mean that I as a Chaos Heathen dismiss Tradition, but that I believe that one of the cornerstones of that Tradition has been innovation and a creative spirit – not orthodoxy (being a rather Kristjan obsession). Of course we have to avoid New Age nonsense. But we don’t want to fall into the trap of dogmatism either. There is no ‘one right way’ of walking the Runic Path. The Lord of Light & the Drighten of Darkness HimSelf was/is a couragous, creative, innovative explorer & shape-shifter, wandering restlessly between the worlds, always ready to look behind the curtain and to find a new secret. I think that to emulate this spirit in the here-and-now is more noble than to try to live in the distant path of our ancestors. If Othinn was alive as a human being today, he would be a Chaos Heathen. May His Power be Mighty amongst us!

Hail Chaos! Viva Loki! Aum Wotan!

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Elhaz Ablaze – Happy One Year Anniversary!

One year ago we started Elhaz Ablaze. The idea to have a website where we could express and explore our idiosyncratic and potent brands of mystical Heathenism had been pressing on us for a long time.

Finally our empty talk reached critical mass and, with my discovery of the crappy but easy-to-use Weebly blog system, Elhaz Ablaze was born. It was (and is) an ugly site to look at, but we hoped that we could fill it with enough worthwhile content that readers would not mind.

Of course, we had absolutely no idea who would be interested in what we had to say. As far as we knew, the notions that we have come to refer to under the rubric of Chaos Heathenism would fall on dead (as opposed to deaf) ears.

Actually I have to admit that I hoped to provoke hate mail for the controversial opinions we and our guests have presented. But to date we have gone unscathed (much to my Loko chagrin).

Instead we have discovered that people actually seem to like our stuff – and moreover we seem to have some kind of readership, at least guessing from the Google Analytics thingy I set up in early January.

Since January 4, 2009 we’ve had some 1,238 unique visitors, 2,763 visits and 8,693 page views. Not bad for what must be one of the weirdest Heathen/magic/martial arts sites on the ‘Net! I have no idea what the patronage was like prior to that unfortunately.

I don’t know whether we are preaching to the converted (perverted?) or whether we are actually opening folk to new perspectives – I’d like to hope for a bit of both.

Certainly we felt terribly unrepresented by the bulk of Heathen writings out there and we hoped that we weren’t the only ones. Consequently, one of the joys of Elhaz Ablaze is that it has put us in touch with folk on similar wavelengths to ourselves. It’s a relief to know that we’re not alone.

I’m also pleased that we could invite Matt Anon to join our group. I’ve known Matt electronically for years and we are like cosmic siblings (despite having never met), so to have his ideas presented alongside mine is a deep privilege.

One of the fundamental principles of Elhaz Ablaze is our commitment to the notion that there is only OPINION in Heathenism: there is no orthodoxy and anyone who claims a monopoly on truth in such a sketchy cultural manifestation as ours is a fraud.

Hence, I love that we contradict ourselves and disagree with one another. Nietzsche says that the more permissive a culture is, the stronger it is; the more restrictive it is, the more brittle and weak it is. We want Heathenism to be strong, and therefore it must be pluralistic. I’m proud that Elhaz Ablaze has become a model for this ideal.

That extends also to our guest writers, who do a great job of both agreeing with and contradicting both us and each other! I might not entirely agree with, say, Sweyn’s views about modernity (see his articles in the guest section), but I’m proud to offer them a home, to defy the widespread anti-modernity Heathen attitude that I myself tend to adopt.

For myself, I settled into a regular writing discipline from day one of the site and maintaining my journal has really assisted my spiritual development. Keeping a public diary, writing short monographs on magical subjects, etc, has enabled me to objectify the sometimes all-too-ephemeral unfolding of my spiritual experience.

This in turn has helped me to integrate the various facets of my existence to a much better degree than I have ever achieved – Elhaz Ablaze for me has been a powerful alchemical vessel. Although, of course, there is a great deal more work to come, and many a loose end yet to be brought to roost in Wyrd’s weave.

When I am lost to myself I can turn to my writings on this site and they anchor and reintegrate me into Mimir’s gift of memory, so essential to the nourishment of my personal microcosmic Yggdrasil.

Indeed, writing my journal has been like mapping out a vast and unknowable continent. Every entry I write feels utterly essential to my being once it is done. Some time soon I will read over everything I’ve done – it will be fascinating to retrace my steps over the last year (and the earlier essays I posted in particular).

This journal has been a profound anchor and way-station for my evolution (and in the last year I can barely start to express how much my life has changed, mostly for the better, though certainly not without great struggle and suffering).

Given it is our first birthday I feel it is high time to explain the name Elhaz Ablaze.

Elhaz is a rune of polarities – consider the Old English Rune Poem (this translation by the inestimable Sweyn Plowright):

Elk-sedge is native most often to the fen,
It grows in water; it wounds grimly,
Burning with blood any warrior
Who, in any way, grabs at it.

The fen, the marsh, the swamp, is a liminal place between land and sea. We know these were holy places to the arch-Heathens – the bog offerings archaeologists have found alone confirm this. Yet for all of its liminal openness, the marsh is warded by the elk-sedge – sharp grass, the points of the elk’s antlers, the reach of a deadly blade.

Elhaz represents, therefore, all the beauty and magic of vulnerability and mystery; but also the strength and integrity of the wild beast that dwells within the wetlands. It represents our desire to deal only with those on the ‘level’. This isn’t a question of elitism or anything silly like that, more a question of taste and time management.

Why Elhaz Ablaze? The fire to me represents the overflowing flames of inspiration, magic, possession, enlightenment, purification, celebration, Life itself. The two words in combination to me suggest the meeting of frost and flame, fire and water: in Elhaz Ablaze all oppositions are subsumed into a greater and dynamic whole.

In a sense, then, Elhaz Ablaze is the necessary conceptual twin to Chaos Heathenism. Chaos Heathenism is a philosophy built on the notion of Elhaz Ablaze – the Chaos offers us liminality and magic, the Heathenism offers structure and integrity. In combination they create a synergistic conflagration.

Where to from here? Speaking for myself – I am about to go travelling for six weeks and this journal will likely be fallow in that time. However I will soon post up my voluminous (circa 13,000 word) essay in response to Alain de Benoist’s book On Being a Pagan.

This essay was written originally for Heathen Harvest, where it will also soon appear, but they have graciously let me present it here on Elhaz Ablaze too. I figure it should offer plenty of mind-meat in my absence for those that care to read it!

A word on the creative process of this essay. I took extensive notes on the book as I read it, until my brain was super-saturated. Because the book provoked me emotionally as well as intellectually it put me into an intense fervour over the fortnight or so that I read it.

Then, the day before my current university course started, I sat down with all my notes and wrote the whole thing out in one sitting. Since then I’ve been tweaking a little bit and getting a little bit of feedback from a few trusted readers (Volksfreund deserves particular praise in this regard).

In short, the writing of the essay was itself an act of applied seidh. I utilised extended altered states of consciousness, full activation of my deep mind, variegated forms of trance and seething, runic incantations and the riding of my Wode – my personal River of Fire – into the arms of inspired creation.

I could not have written it with cold blood, but thankfully I did not have to. So when you read it, please see it for what it is – an exercise in poetry as much as philosophical discussion.

Now – what next? I really cannot predict what I’ll do once I get back from my adventures (or what I hope amount to adventures), and I’ll be very busy with my studies as soon as I get back. But I’m sure that wherever the creative impulse leads me, you’ll read about it right here.

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Storytelling as the Weaving of the Self

We moderns have nothing whatsoever of our own; only by replenishing and cramming ourselves with the ages, customs, arts, philosophies, religions, discoveries of others do we become anything worthy of notice.
Friederich Nietzsche

Exit all legends, enter the laws of magick.
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge

“You got no love in your heart. When you got no dreaming, no story, you got nothing”, an Aborigine says to the hero in a movie called ‘Australia’ (the movie is crap, but I’m used to look for gold in shit). The aborigines have a very mysterious concept that they call dream time, this is the mythical & magical time, where the ancestors still live & sing and every thing has a ‘song’ attached to it: rocks, trees, bushes asf. – all have a ‘song’. And the initiated sorcerer of the Australian natives can communicate with these ‘things’ by singing their songs (a form of verbal magic, in Norse magic represented by Galdor). Here we are once again confronted with the holistic vision of a sacred landscape, where everything is interconnected & alive – a worldview that was also common to our European ancestors (or wherever your ancestors come from). This vision is contrary to the modern myths created by the visions of Descartes & ‘Newton’s sleep‘ (William Blake). Both of them had literally visions. Descartes’ thinking has been influenced, for example, by his dreams & Newton has been an occultist, who has received his vision of the mechanistic ‘clockwork universe’ from an ‘Angel’ of the Enochian system of magick ‘invented’ by Dr. John Dee.

Their visions are the stories about the universe we are brought up with. (If you have really bad karma you have been brought up with Kristjan stories about the universe :-). They do not stem from dream time, but from the modern myth of linear time. (‘Our enemies are material. Our enemies are direction and fact. Our enemies are Because.’ GP-O)

Anyway, what really strikes me is the idea how much power a story has over our lives and that – since nobody owes the absolute truth, if such a mysterious thing exists at all – all religions, philosophies, myths, histories, fictions and movies are essentially stories, stories we tell ourselves or that are told to us. Of course, this is a postmodern attitude that I am extremely wary of as it includes the risk of fundamentalist relativism and an ‘epistemological hypochondria’ (Geertz), where ‘anything goes’ and thus real knowledge becomes impossible anymore. But everything has two faces and there are also great advantages, when one uses POMO thought in a critical & self-conscious fashion.

“Post-modern research … embodies a critique of the conventional logical positivist discourse derived from rationalist Enlightenment philosophy, which privileges the European, male, individual subject and the indisputable authority of scientific explanatory frameworks.” (Robert J. Wallis 2003: Shamans/Neo-Shamans: Ecstasies, Alternative Archaeologies and Contemporary Pagans, p. 2).

I think this critique is a necessary step, if one really wants to understand the local knowledge of a native people, like the Aboriginal tradition (or our Heathen tradition). This means, too, that to select carefully a few essential tenets of postmodern philosophy can bring about changes in attitudes, values, perceptions, and worldviews that help us to heal the wounds between ‘whites’ and the peoples we have hurt (see Henry’s article Culture, Genocide and Whingers). More generally speaking, such a ‘paradaigm shift’ on a grand scale can help us to heal the wounds between humanity and the Earth Spirit (Anima Mundi).

Further, the positive effects of postmodernism can be, if used wisely, that we deny to follow ‘universal rules’ (of life, art, philosophy, or anything else). And those who have the will and determination can choose pathways to individual fulfilment & self-empowerment based on the story (‘paradigm’) chosen or created by themselves, instead of following the universal appeal or supposed authority of a story they were told to believe (be it religious metaphysics or scientific materialism, or whatever your favourite mental prison is). If something feels internally authentic & right, it’s the way to go. For us Chaos Heathens / Pagans this attitude makes it possible to liberate us to return to the trú traditions of our ancestors in new, exciting, and creative ways, in ways that adapt and apply the ancient wisdom to the circumstances and the Need – in the sense of :ᚾ: – of our times.

However, to me storytelling is a form of magick and a form of knowledge. Imagine a tribe 10,000 years ago in a dark forest at night. You can hear the wolves howl, and you hear the strange sounds of other dangerous animals, above you the stars and a full moon. Only a little bonfire enlightens the night and you sit there in a circle with your comrades, the shaman of your tribe – a miraculous man with special powers, who is treated with awe by all men of the tribe – sits with you there and tells wyrd stories of cosmic, uncontrollable and daunting forces, of Fire and Ice generating the events that created the universe. He tells you about Ymir, the bipolar Giant, dismembered by the mighty Gods, Odhinn (Master of Ecstasy), Vili (Sacred Will) & Vé (Hollowed Space), who made order (Futhark) out of the totality of existence (Ginnung) and shaped the first man & woman, Askr and Embla, out of trees (!), giving them the triple Gift (Gebo) of human shape (Lík), life-breath (Önd = Prana, Chi, Libido) and (divine) consciousness (Ódhr). His stories tell you about the adventurous journeys and brave deeds of heroes that are your direct ancestors, whom maybe your dead great-grandfather met personally, when he was a child. These journeys of those heroes turn into ordeals & initiations, where they gain insights into the mysteries and cycles of birth, life, death & rebirth. These stories are strange allegories that illumine your understanding of the world surrounding you. They give you heroic models of behaviour that help you to live in an honourable way. Our shaman from 10,000 years ago is a storyteller. He creates a sense of self, of who and where you are. He gives codes of meaning & an intelligence to your life that makes you aware of the interconnectedness that the Web (Wyrd) woven by the Three Norns originates. Magick is possible here – you are not alone, disconnected and alienated from the world!

But 10,000 years later these stories of old are not told to us anymore. They became myths in a negative sense, fantasies of stupid, uneducated, brutish barbarians. The modern stories describe such states of consciousness (as mentioned above) as being ‘primitive’, ‘infantile’ and ‘wishful thinking’. They are something that must be ‘overcome’ by logical & scientific thinking. The French ethnologist Lévy-Bruhl interprets such a healing and wholesome state of unitary consciousness in a negative sense as participation mystique and the Austrian psychoanalyst Freud called this ‘magical thinking’ (based on his idea of primary narcissism). ‘Magical thinking’ is the belief that a person can impact reality by wishing or willpower. Such a belief demonstrates a belief in the self as powerful and able to change external realities. To put it shortly, magical thinking is in many ways what I strive for! For many years now, I try to decondition myself from this vision of ‘flatland’ logic by psychedelic drugs, meditation and magick (more or less successfully until now :-). Though in the long run POMO thinking is not at all ‘magic-friendly’ and, though the whole POMO current has created in many areas a body of knowledge of rather dubious value, I still believe that on a philosophical level some POMO ideas are useful to regain ‘magical thinking’ in a positive, ‘enlightened’ way, namely by creating new stories. Don’t get me wrong, science is invaluable! But the scientific story – if not balanced by wisdom, if not shown where its authority ends, and if not shown where it failed (!) – has not much (interesting) to say about the most important questions of life: What is the purpose of life? What happens after death? What is wisdom? Or, if I may quote again my ‘Aboriginal friend’ (from Hollywood:-), his answer to science would be the same as to the white man: “You got no love in your heart. When you got no dreaming, no story, you got nothing”. This is not completely true, of course. Science has a story: it dreams of ‘eternal progress’ and a condition where all disease, probably even death, is cured. For those who haven’t been so optimistic, it has created nihilism. And what is the story of nihilism? It goes: “The story is pointless. It all makes no sense. End of story.” But we Need a story. A brighter story, a greater story, a hopeful story!

But what can a story do on an individual level? Isn’t a story just a story? Well, yes and no. For example, what is the ego? From a meditative point of view, my ego is just the stories I tell myself about myself. But some stories are charged with a very high emotive energy. So, before my ego would give up its ‘core’ stories, it would probably run mad & defend them from extinction like a religious fundamentalist would protect his belief in God, just because the ego consists of these stories. Probably that’s why it’s so hard to ‘Cross the Abyss’, as Crowley has put it. Probably that’s why most humans fear death! Probably that’s why it’s hard to change at all! Because, you know, ‘that’s just the way I am!’, so I won’t give up this-or-that habit or such-and-such a way of thinking or repetitive emotional pattern, even if it’s bad for ‘me’. Because ‘that’s me’! You get the picture… The ego will all-ways convince you with its stories, why you shouldn’t change, why meditating is boring, or why you have the right to behave angry, feel depressed or be xenophobic. So, in a fundamental way, it’s of great importance what story dominates you, what story you tell yourself about yourself. This, probably, is the reason, why meditative systems of the East have only little use for ‘developing a strong personality’ etc. and focus very much on developing ‘egolessness’, developing equanimity towards life, pain & death and fostering devotion towards the God/dess or the guru, who represents the God/dess and, ideally, works as a ‘mirror’ for the apprentice. Our Northern Tradition fosters instead the development of a strong Hamingja (cp. Sweyn’s True Helm) and of courage towards life, pain and death (cp. Dave Lee’s Bright from the Well: Northern Tales in the Modern World).

On a more profane level just consider what psychotherapy basically does to people. It just gives them a story, a meta-narrative, that makes sense out of all the shit that went wrong and by explaining why this shit has led the individual to feel ‘so-and-so’ about himself. By giving sense to that which seems senseless, by explaining the pain and giving it a meaning, and by telling the person that s/he is not defined by its past and that s/he can now choose to do better. Basically, it creates a better story and thus a better ‘self’ – the stories, of which the ego consits, are changed! (‘Change all memory. And change your ways to perceive.’ TOPY proverb) In a way, the therapist is a modern echo of the storyteller, as is, of course, the priest. But finally that’s not enough, because today, if you are a genuine member of the holiest of all holy orders, the COT (= Club Of Truth-seekers :-), the truth of someone else won’t suffice. The shamanic storyteller from 10,000 years ago is dead and gone. The only one who can ‘replace’ him today is not a politician, priest, psychotherapist or some self-proclaimed guru, but it is you. 

Remember You Are Made Of Star Dust

So creating your own story is a good starting point. The chaos magician Andrieh Vitimus suggests:

“The imagination is more powerful than merely the facts. An idea backed by emotional responses can be seductive enough to enslave many to its cause, whether the idea is a spirit, a piece of art, a cause, or a concept. The majority of people seem content to give away their imagination and creative power. Often, this manifests in letting other forces (advertising, religion, ideas, spirits, whatever) decide what they should do and what they can have and be. This is the power of imagination. It can free us or be our worst prison.” (Andrieh Vitimus 2009: Hands-On Chaos Magic , p. 365, my accentuation)

In days of yore Imagination was a natural part of daily life and regarded as valid as any other human faculty. Walliam Blake, whose Poetic Genius has created a unique poetry (see ‘The Proverbs of Hell’), embraced Imagination as ‘the Body of God’. Today our Imagination, our visualising asf., is ‘stolen’ by the story-sellers, who created the ‘Body of (Pavlov’s) Dog‘.  Advertising is a good example. It sells ‘imagination’. So you buy the ‘myth’ surrounding the package, not the content itself. You don’t buy a perfume, but the ‘imagination’ that it makes you more erotic, attractive, seductive asf. Today we have no genuine storyteller except, probably, the artist. For example, artists who sing about the way they experience truth, like this one: “Waking sleep, cocooned within a veil of fog, Sight no further than my hand, Tearing at this web spun through reality … Through the sacred dance I Awaken, Through faith in myself and my rhythm, Conscious for the first time…” (Ironwood – here’s a fantastic German review). But today such artists are rare. Because in these modern days even the artist has become a whore of capitalism and thus he turned from a genuine storyteller to a storyseller – a faker, a peacock, a good-for-nothing. Mehr Schein als Sein (‘More Appearance than Being’). And stories they sell, packaged in a ‘consumer-friendly’ form, devoid of meaning and any real depth. A true storyteller, shaman & madman, Jhonn Balance (now dead dead dead – may he be blessed by all horned animals!), has warned our culture by proclaiming that Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil! The German artist and shaman (of sorts), Joseph Beuys, has said once: Every human is an artist. I would like to add: …and a storyteller. At least s/he should be. POMO theory started out when it proclaimed that there is no ‘grand narrative’ anymore (that the ‘scientific myth’ of modernity of eternal progress & secularization has kind of come to an end – that’s why post-modern). So, after Nietztsche proclaimed that ‘God is dead’, now the ‘grand narrative’ is dead, too. But I believe that we, as individuals and as a folk, need a narrative again, a story. And, in this globalized world, we need also a story for the earth community – a story that makes us aware of the interconnectedness of everything on this green-blue and fragile planet. Because when I poison the air over here in Europe, your air will be finally poised over there in Australia, too. So what could this story be about? Well, I’m not wise enough to answer this question, but we can silence our minds and listen to what the voice of our hearts has to say (what our ancestors called ‘High Rede’). And surely we can look with confidence to the wisdom of our ancestors and apply it. If the climate catastrophe shall be anticipated in time, science must be part of the solution, I believe. As the Permaculture slogan goes: ‘The problem is the solution.’ Mid-gard – Middle-Earth must be guarded, and it can only be guarded by us humans.


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Baum Und Teufel

1. The Devil Is A Jerk

So if everything is one, a single manifold consciousness of pure benevolent love, a single infinitely recursive web of time, causality and spirit, well that’s pretty good, right? Sure there is death and destruction, but change is a gift: from fallow fields rise fertile crops. And, luckily, from fertile crops fall fallow fields.

It works in both microcosm and macrocosm. The totality of Being is a vast interconnected tree, water coursing up from the wells at its foot, spilling from its branches, back down again – thus time unfolds ecologically, spraying out in simultaneous yet mutually exclusive patterns of probability. Everything is and is not.

Likewise, down the scale a bit, earth’s weather patterns work like this: an endlessly referential and super-complicated web of matrices which are infinitely predictable after the fact; but utterly mysterious when viewed from the eternal crest of the present horizon.

Because of the absolutely uniqueness of every abstracted moment in the matrix we find that the whole system is simultaneously perfect/ideal and imperfect/debased. In the absolute individuality of each moment and phenomenon (which is derived from the absolute dissolving interconnecting oneness of the whole system) consciousness emerges.

Every cloud is spirit; every drop of rain a quicksilver thought in the mind of God (or whatever you choose to call Him/Her/It).

So it goes – fractal geometry replicates down and up infinitely from a set of finite premises – a kind of mathematical, cosmic perpetual motion machine. As we approach nothingness or as we approach Being the ratios contract or expand exponentially.

This is why, as Heidegger says, Being conceals itself. The closer we get to the big picture the harder it is to get close to it. This is why he teaches us to stand back and listen and shelter and think and dwell. Only in this way can we come to Being as a whole: by realising we always already start there.

If I understand correctly (which is unlikely), an analogy can be drawn to Einstein’s point about light speed – the closer we get our spaceship to light speed, the harder it will be to get there because of the geometric ratios at play. But if we could start ourselves off faster than light speed (which might possible?) – well, no problem!

Thus we find ourselves in the gorgeous voluptuousness of the oneness and difference of all things. I am every other being that exists by virtue of the fact that every other being is shaped by its relationship to me just as I am shaped by my relationship to every other being.

The preceding sentence can recurse forever, like the two serpents of a Caduceus; like DNA.

Difference and non-identicalness are real but are also the necessary conditions for the absolute non-difference and identicalness of all Being. There is no “synthesis” of these seeming contradictions that can be expressed in a linear logical way. Only poetry does the job. Thus Rumi teaches: “sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment”.

As manifest fragments of cosmic consciousness (can I really say that with a straight face?), human beings lose perspective all the time on the Big Picture. It doesn’t help that modernity tends to efface all the reminders that pre-modern cultures build into daily life, either.

For the old Germanic tribes lineage was important because one’s descent runs back all the way to the Wells at the foot of the Tree. Cut off the connection and you die. Separation is inevitably fatal, even if total dissolution all the time is a bit pointless.

We need to ride the crest of Verdandi, the present: as individual beings which are non-separate from wyrd. Otherwise? Well, otherwise we become parched vessels, cracked and crumbling in the desert of our ignorance and amnesia.

The devil is a jerk.

Why is the devil a jerk?

The devil is a jerk because he is the agent of amnesia. The devil wants you to forget that everything is One. The devil wants you to think that you alone own your existence, your actions, your will. He wants you to thumb your nose to the infinity of creation that you owe your whole existence to.

The devil tells you that you are isolate, absolute, self-created, a source of meaning which manifests ex nihilo – from nothing. The devil says that reality is fundamentally disconnected, discontinuous.

The natural state of being is not the cycle of life-death-rebirth as in the cosmic tree. No, the devil reckons that the natural state of being is kill or be killed. You can be immortal and moreover you should want it and you should want it at the expense of all other beings.

Sure, some weak-kneed apologists for the devil have proposed the notion of enlightened self-interest – namely that if I help people out they’ll help me out. That if I do my bit to make the world a better place I’ll benefit in unpredictable, rich, non-linear ways.

But implicit in this idea is the notion that the rule of Being is the oneness as well as the difference of all things and a real devil-worshipper will have no truck with this.

The devil says that your actions are your own, your ego is the only thing of value, that you can control anything and everything, that allowing things to be what they are (instead of what you will) is weak and contemptible.

Ironically many people under the devil’s sway are unequal to this dare and challenge and become depressed, lost, confused, somnambulant, pathetic, lonely, powerless, numb, etc, etc, etc.

Only by recovering their connectedness to the horizon of Verdandi, the present (which is to say: the horizon of mystery [which is to say, RUNA]) can such folk be healed.

By giving ourselves to the infinity of the unknowable grandeur of Being we are given back to ourselves as finite but unbounded, as individuated and interconnected. Whole, as the old Germanic tribes would say. Heilige. Holy.

The devil does not want this; he wants us to fight our true nature, to use force of will no matter how much it poisons us and those around us and leaves us, ultimately, empty and cauterised. The devil is a jerk.

2. The Devil is a Champ

The sum total of your domain ends at the surface of your skin; at the limit to which your voice is audible; at the limit to which your words can expand; at the limit to which you can use violence to achieve your ends; at the limit to which you can impose order on the infinite chaos of existence.

Sure, give in to chaos. You’ll be torn to utter shreds. How will you cope if you dare to gaze into the infinite reaches of Being? You won’t. Like the cosmic lamb to the cosmic wolf, you’ll be ripped to pieces, bleating like the pathetic domestic beast that you are.

The chaos doesn’t hate you (although it might) and it certainly doesn’t love you. It has no intentions toward you, no will. It is chaos. As soon as you start to talk about it in coherent language you are projecting human (all too human) characteristics onto something so fundamentally alien that you’ll never even begin to understand. Fall silent!

Ahh, but can you endure being enslaved to ignorance of the true nature of things? We flee into the cloying smell of wool and lamb shit, bleating like wimps. This is it folks – this is all the existence you’ve been given, will you squander it like a chump?

God is the Law of utter Chaos, and he lives inside you and is telling you to bow down and shut up and blunder through the meaningless Brownian motion of your existence. You think it means something? You’re ignorant and blind and stupid and even death is too good for you.

Nothing is connected, coincidence is purely random, the stars haven’t been talking to one another since the big bang and meaning is an illusion created by dumb-ass ape-like mammals that are far too convinced of their own importance. Wake up, you bleaters: we will come and go in the blink of the eye from the point of view of Chaos!

Only the brave win. Only the evil, the cruel, the self-obsessed, the masterful, the bloody, the vicious, the conniving. Only those who instinctively steal from the sheep around them, the wolves in sheep’s clothing, will ever get anywhere.

You think there is meaning? Unless you personally made it, it doesn’t exist. ME is the only important bit of the word MEaning. Well, not quite. MEAN is also pretty damn important.

This is not an easy challenge, to do battle as the isolate being you are with the endless tides of ignorance and ultimately of the contemptuous and mediocritising gravity of the Law of Chaos. The Law of Chaos wants you to be small and weak. You must fight it, you, alone against the cosmos. Alone against the cosmos, you, the true hero.

Not a hero for the people, not a saviour, not a healer or helper. But a hero for villains, liars, betrayers, murderers – all those with guts in this world of cowards. You must steal power from everything you encounter, stuff yourself with it, bloat yourself with it, create of yourself such mass that you exert a gravitational pull on the chaos, until your will orders the space around you.

Then the sheep will flock to your cause, your side, to serve, safe in the harbour of will and gravity that your iron-fisted desire has created. The more that flock to your banner, the more powerful your momentum. You are becoming a god.

The Law of Chaos – the ultimate cosmic deity – will try to stop you with misfortune, conflict, struggle. And others like you, other wolves in the land of sheep, will fear and hate you and try to steal from you to feed themselves.

But you love it, you love crushing your foes. You love crushing anything precious, powerful, beautiful, gravitational. Why? Because it feels good. Power is its own end.

The devil teaches the way. Reject the status quo (except the one you seek to forge yourself, of course). Reject the pathetic order that the Law of chaos has bequeathed you.

He leaps forth recklessly, one flickering spark against the entire ocean of chaos, to declare his will and desire and determination and fire. He smashes the illusion of interconnection, which is actually the armature of psychic bondage, which keeps the lambs bleating and stupid.

You don’t worship the devil. Why would you? Then you’d be placing something above yourself. Sure, you might pretend to worship the devil or any other being, but you don’t really.

You don’t worship the devil but you have to respect the old bastard, even if you’d happily destroy him and take his place at any moment. You copy his way of being, his mastery of fear, violence, theft and isolated arrogance. The devil is a champion of your cause, even though you’d happily knife him to get a leg up the ladder of your will.

3. The Devil Needs A Noose (The Devil Is A Noose?)

Secretly you hate mystery (that is, Being [that is, Runa]) because it refuses itself, and you seek to dominate it at every turn. In a way you love its endless new mysteries because this ensures you never run out of territory to conquer.

But the more you conquer, the more you secretly face how vast it is. Ever more desperate, caught in a vicious, inwardly tightening spiral, you lash out.

Mystery is mystery however. Mystery always wins.

Mystery always wins.

Mystery always wins.

Once, in an altered state, I declared:

RUNA, I give myself to you completely. Take me! I’m yours!

Runa responded:

But my dear boy, I already own you and always have. And you are a part of me and always have been. And so you seek to give yourself to myself, sjalf sjalfum mer as dear Yggr declared on his steed, the Tree. You give yourself to me but you always have been part of me. Give yourself to me and you give yourself also to yourself. Give your isolation to me and I will give you a lineage.

That’s what Runa said as she gently laughed at my expense and loved me all the more for it.

Mystery always wins. I have written two stories about the devil. Is the devil a champ or a jerk?

My experience tells me he is a jerk, but I love him anyway. I love his reckless hilarity, his passion and fury. His simultaneous hatred of injustice and perpetuation of injustice. What audacity to be so unevenly even-handed! What courage to tilt at the marvellous cosmic windmill!

If the devil did not make me forget the wonder of Being then I would not get to endlessly re-experience the ecstasy of remembering it again.

Therefore: thank you, Mr Devil, for my dark valleys – they are the necessary condition for my mountain tops and blessed isles, for my eagle and my serpent. If only Nietzsche had possessed the good taste to worship the natural majesty that nourished him without so much as a please or thank you!

But to those who emulate the devil, those provincial misers of spirit, those who never squander themselves as Nietzsche implores us to do, who erect crumbling towers for their empty egos – to these I say: you would settle for so little and think yourselves so rich.

Thus I declare: tie yourself a noose and break on the tree.

On the tree called by men Laerad and gods Yggrdrassil.

On the tree called by some Ash and others Yew.

On the tree that ever is destroyed and ever renewed.

Break on the tree, friends.

Break and become whole.

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