Odin

Aum Wotan

I never really wanted to be an Odin’s man.

If I had any choice in the matter, I probably would have dedicated to Tyr ten years ago. But, I’ve never really been able to get Tyr “on the phone” as it were, and an excessive focus on Warriorhood has long since proven to be unhealthy for me.

My flirtation with Loki has proven to be rewarding in a number of ways. Loki’s opened a lot of doors for me, pointed out a lot of ideas I’d missed. Intellectually, Loki seems the perfect choice of deity for a “Discordian Heathen with Satanic Tendencies”. In the end, though, Loki feels more like a best buddy and “partner in crime” than a spiritual mentor.

While I’m at it, I probably ought to give Thor a little more credit. He’s done me a couple of solids that I really haven’t earned. Nor repaid, now that I think about it.

But, for some reason, all roads seem to lead back to Odin.

When I first began to learn about Asatru, I suppose, the idea of dedicating to Odin seem a little too obvious, too predictable. In retrospect it seems more inevitable that I would one day call myself an Odin’s man. Odin represents everything that is important to me.

Poet. Warrior. Shaman. Transhumanist.

Odin’s appeal is both primal and futurist, specific and yet universal. It’s easy to envision interstellar cults dedicated to Odin, a thousand years hence. It’s equally easy to recognize the Odinic spirit in some of the most primitive forms of Hindu Saivite Tantrism.

Odin is everywhere and yet is clearly not for everyone.

Hail Odin.

Aum.

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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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Odysseus, Odin, and Euhemerism

Clint recently made the point that we Heathens can learn a lot from the Indo-European traditions that are cousins to our own. In support of that potentially controversial claim, I intend to explain how one can deepen one’s understanding of Odin by reading the Odyssey.

The Odyssey is Greek myth, hence, like the Germanic myths, part of the Indo-European tradition. Odysseus as a figure shares many common features with Odin. Both are kings, but also vagabonds. Both are eternally in the beginning of their twilight years, though still possessed of great power.

Both are brilliant warriors, but more powerful still are their wits and wisdom, and it is for these that they are most celebrated. Both are ardent lovers, with many subtle and complex relationships with women. Both have vulnerability of feeling, and are not merely armoured caricatures of masculinity (though many of Odin’s followers seem to not understand this about him).

Both are exiled: Odysseus because Poseidon prevents his return from Troy; and Odin, according to Saxo, is exiled for a time, too.

Reading about Odysseus in Homer’s peerless writing gives one a deep and joyous appreciation of the subtleties of Odin’s character, too.

Of course, there are many differences, the foremost being that Odysseus is not a god! Clearly they are not identical figures, but they do both broadly partake of what might be loosely termed the Hermetic Current (which runs, achronologically, something like Thoth-Vishnu-Hermes-Mercury-Woden-Hermes Trismegistus, and probably includes others).

Is this shameless universalism? I think that so long as we have our faculties about us there is nothing to be lost and everything to be gained by comparing and contrasting different mythologies and figures. Surely it would be a very unimaginative and rigid dogmatism to argue against this. Just because I think the Odysseus-Odin comparison yields sweet fruit doesn’t mean I have to subscribe to some naïve idea that they are identical.

Turning to a theme that somehow feels related – though I’m not sure how – I have recently been reflecting on the Euhemeristic theories of Norse mythology, namely the theory that the gods were actually once mortals who were deified after death, and therefore that the mythology is more or less a load of empty hogwash.

This idea mainly stems from three sources: Saxo Grammaticus’s History of the Danes; and Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda and Heimskringla. There was also Sophus Bugge’s much later attempt to claim that Heathen mythology was just a really bodgy corruption of Christianity, but Bugge’s Christian agenda was blatant and his scholarship filled with implausible speculation and systematic ignoring of evidence that contradicts his ideas (yep, a great example of RAW’s “the prover proves what the thinker thinks”).

While we cannot be certain, I think there are many sound reasons to reject Euhemerism in relation to Germanic Mythology.

1) The Euhemeristic sources were written by Christians; what sources we have that seem to likely be genuinely Heathen (e.g. material in the Poetic Edda) only ever present the gods as being mythic. In other words, as far as we know, there is no continuous tradition of native Germanic Euhemerism. This suggests that the medieval and more recent Christian authors mentioned above almost certainly are the originators of the theory.

It is a purely Christian theory about Germanic mythology, conceived in isolation from actual Heathenry, and seems designed either to excuse writing about paganism at all (in the case of Snorri), or else explicitly as an attempt to undermine paganism (Saxo, Bugge).

Are we also to believe every other derogatory claim that Christians have made about other religions, particularly when there is no independent evidence for their views? I hope not.

2) The Germanic mythic corpus is very similar to the other Indo-European mythic bodies (Hinduism, Greek, Celtic, etc). It therefore seems far more likely that the Indo-European groups who became what we now call the Germanics brought the essential seeds of Germanic mythology with them into Europe. This is as opposed to the Euhemeristic theory, which says that Germanic mythology was only fabricated after they arrived, since it is based on their deeds on arrival.

It seems highly implausible that, if such a Euhemeristic scenario were true, this newly created mythology, based on arbitrary historical events, would accidentally bear such incredible similarity to the other traditions that, if we are not Euhemerists, we can declare with the precision of Occam’s Razor to be organic cultural cousins.

3) Heimskringla presents the gods, such as Odin, Njordr, and Frey, as a succession of kings. Of course, we know from Tacitus that for the early Germans Odin was more of a Mercury figure than a Zeus figure, so Heimskringla’s supposedly historical portrayal of him in the style of his late Norse Heathen manifestation seems like a bit of an anachronism!

It appears likely that Tyr was a more central ruler god in the earlier mythology, but Snorri’s euhemeristic dynasty doesn’t accord him much chop at all. This suggests that even on Snorri’s account some of the gods are actually gods, since again he is caught out in anachronism by seeing Tyr only in his late Norse form as a more minor god. If Snorri is stuck with some of the gods still genuinely being gods then I’d say that starts to make the whole Euhemerist aspect of his account look pretty limp.

4) Other historical accounts: Snorri says the Aesir came from Asia (on the basis of ultra-dodgy folk etymology), and they specifically came from Troy. From memory though, there are other nutty theories that say that the Trojans founded not a Scandinavian dynasty but rather a British one!

They can’t both be true, and neither theory has any evidence other than the say-so of its promulgator. Healthy scepticism induces me to reject both until such time as they can furnish more than the opinions of their promulgators (who were writing centuries after the fact) as evidence. It seems that at various points it was fashionable to claim that any exotic northern culture was descended from Troy, and such a fad should not be confused for a sincere attempt at recounting history.

5) If the Norse gods were a historical dynasty descended from Troy then the anachronisms get even worse! That means by the time of Tacitus, Odin has lost has his power to Tyr, only to get it back just in time for Snorri to write Heimskringla. Only Heimskringla mentions nothing of these back and forth shenanigans. Another blow to the Euhemeristic thesis.

6) Euhemerism doesn’t take anything away from the gods’ divinity or specialness anyway. Many important Hindu deities were living people who were deified for their amazing spiritual achievements and no one considers them less “godly” than those Hindu gods of non-human origin. Similarly, it seems likely that Bragi actually was a deified human, and no one thinks less of him for it (actually, I’m bloody impressed by his efforts)!

7) Spiritual experience. Given the vast range of truly intense experiences I have had with Odin (and other gods), and the vast age and power of this being as I have experienced it, I just don’t see how he could be “merely” a big-noted human. That is no more substantial a piece of evidence, of course, than the opinions of Saxo or Snorri, but at least it isn’t riddled with inconsistencies, coheres with the genuinely Heathen mythological corpus, and isn’t part of a blatant religious-ideological assault. Oh, and it is way more parsimonious to suggest that the mythology is mythological in my humble opinion.

8) Finally, how can the Euhemerists counter the possibility that the gods simply chose to manifest as avatars with their actual personalities at play, but that they nevertheless predated these historical manifestations? That general sort of thing seems to happen in other mythic contexts (e.g. Hinduism, Greek myth). In other words, even if the Euhemerists were right, there is still plenty of room to suppose that they might be wrong nonetheless. Such a theory does fall afoul of Occam’s Razor, but if the Euhemerists make that criticism then they’re totally throwing stones from a glass house.

I know, that was a quick and dirty little opinion piece, and I haven’t bothered to reference my ideas (I’m 99% sure they’re all based in sound academic research and actual primary sources though, I promise)! I think we all get the point though. I might be wrong, but it seems to me that the Euhemerists have a much harder job of making their case than I do.

One thing is for sure: to understand history you have to make a bit more of an effort than just taking one or two sources at face value without trying to grasp their context. Otherwise you’ll end up subscribing to all kinds of ideas without really having informed yourself at all. If you are lucky you might still get it right, but it is a pretty shabby way to proceed.

Oh, and none of this is to say that I have any idea what the true nature of the gods actually is. Honest perplexity beats smug dogmatism any day (I just hope I don’t start believing that dogmatically).

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More on my Extremism

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

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

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

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

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

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

Acknowledging Harigast

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Being Present

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

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

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

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

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

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Seidh, Odin, Frey

I’ve not been well. I had my wisdom teeth out last week. In the last few months I’ve struggled with two flu viruses and some mind-blowing hay fever (I’ve never been physically incapacitated by allergy in anything like this kind of way before).

Not only that, my creative flow has been blocked these last few weeks. Among other things this has been impairing my ability to get my university coursework done. Not good when you have short deadlines and vast acres of work! Words have just been escaping me.

My only solace has been my improving physical fitness, though mouth surgery induced laziness for this past week has cut back into that again. Perhaps today I will clamber back on board the bodyweight bandwagon.

Recovering from wisdom teeth removal is not fun. Worst is not the pain, the inability to eat, the bleeding, or even the ridiculous swollen cheeks. It’s the abject boredom and isolation.

Until yesterday I had not been outside since I got home from the surgery last Tuesday. Almost a week indoors will send even a dedicated introvert such as myself into paroxysms. I even managed to bore myself with computer games, which once were my arch-nemesis in the realm of addiction!

Knowing that I’ve been sailing through dark corridors of ill health and misery in the last, say, three weeks especially, I resolved a few days ago to go on a journey, to fare forth, and see what I could see.

As a general comment on this aspect of seidh – for me faring forth is very different to what I more generally consider to be my style of seidh (and I will describe a lovely example of the latter later in this post). It’s more introspective, calm and hazy.

Sometimes when I’m doing it I question if I’m just having myself on if my focus is week or I am unable to detach my ego from the process. With my more natural style of seidh, well, once I get there there’s no doubting.

There are lots of sophisticated thinkers about faring forth in modern Heathenry (read the backlog of posts on the Seidh Yahoo E-List to see what I mean). I however lack such subtlety. I just do it.

I don’t have a working knowledge of the distinctions between the various old terms for this sort of magic, I haven’t built my practice out of precise reconstruction (though obviously I am informed about the limited evidence available and less obviously I don’t tend to willy-nilly mix in ideas from other traditions with my faring forth work).

Anyway, so I am lying in bed, in various degrees of pain (who knew that removing teeth at the back of your mouth could make every tooth in your jaw scream with agony?) And I guess that maked it easier to abandon the ship of my body and dive into the deep blue sea of projected consciousness.

I find myself in a valley shrouded by thick grey mist. The earth is barren; it’s like I’m in an abandoned World War I battlefield before dawn. Woden has come to guide me; I see his cloaked form flitting in and out of vision, luring me along dry riverbeds. And I follow his almost spectral form.

Until I come to a cave. When the river still lived it must have here flowed underground, but now there is only dust and frost to line its floor. I shrug and enter and a strange silver luminescence in the air creates just enough light that I can make my way through the crags and shadows.

I’ve no idea where Odin is at this point – perhaps he has seen out his role as my psychopomp for this journey. Seated on a rocky outcrop, however, is a woman. She is dressed in rotting finery and a tarnished crown rests on her brow. And she is a contradiction to behold.

One half of her face, her hair, her arm – I assume her whole body – is young, pale, the perfect frigid ice-maiden beautiful bitch archetype. The other half is rotten, shrunken, shrivelled and foul. This is Helja and I know now that I am in Niflhel.

Here comes the strange thing – I cannot recall anything detailed of my conversation with Helja. I know that she is cajoling, manipulative, abusive and arch. I recall her trying to bargain with me to cure me of my ailments and my loss of spirit.

But I also recall the deals she offers are just ridiculous. I would have to offer her more than I would gain in return. No point in that!

Why did Odin lead me here? I’m not sure, but perhaps it is to give me some perspective. Maybe it’s to show me how much I take for granted. Helja and I reach an impasse and I find myself leaving the way I came, trudging through the cold and lifeless mists. I clamber up an embankment and find myself back in my room with my pain-filled mouth.

And Frey is there with me. And he is frowning. And he says to me “you know, you’re not supposed to be pursuing me as you have. It’s not good for you. You are not made to accept my gifts. There is only one who is right for you, and he is a god of wolves, not boars”. (c.f. for example this post).

(Well he didn’t say it exactly like that, but you get the drift. Sometimes I admit I polish the words that divine beings say to me when I write these journal entries. Hey, they were off the cuff, we can’t all spontaneously speak like a character on Shakespeare’s stage! Arguably Herodotus’ History is more truthfull for its fabrications).

And then he was gone. And he was right. I’ve been trying to stretch myself between the infinitely uncertain, variable, chaotic and disastrous hedge-sitting of my patron, Woden; and the vast, bountiful, fertile, stable and overwhelming hedge-sitting of Frey. I’ve been ogling that green, green grass just over the religious fence. And it’s been costing me.

I tried to call Woden then, but it just wouldn’t happen. Just no luck for me there. I realise I’ve been messing up our relationship by trying to force a relationship with another god. I realise that I just don’t really Know or understand Frey – especially when I consider the intimacy of my relationship with Woden.

It kind of reminds me of how I felt around the time I quit the Rune Gild – it’s getting close to 10 years ago! I just felt that for all the discipline of their practices, all their philosophy, all the rest of it – well, they just weren’t helping me forge any kind of personal or emotional relationship to runes or to Odin.

How can you emulate someone who is a stranger to you? My solution then was that I had to chuck out all thr intellectualism in order to find the seething wode. Anyway, enough of that digression, the point is clear to me – I don’t have the faintest idea how to forge such a connection to Frey, whereas instinct easily showed me the way to Woden.

Ok, so these faring forth experiences made me decide to perform a ritual to Odin. I needed to mend our fences, repair the channels that run between us. So last night I did it.

I arranged to have an audience of one, because the vulnerability of an audience helps with ritual as a performance. You are forced to either go there or not at all. I prepared offerings of beer, organic butter, organic sea salt, water, fire (from the candle Volksfreund and I used on our necromantic adventure), garlic, ginger and tissues soaked with my blood.

I set the atmosphere by putting on some ambient Odinnic music of my own (which, gods willing, should eventually see release [yes gods, that’s a hint!]) I opened the ritual by singing the singular rune Ansuz, getting progressively louder and more aggressive until I was purely screeching and screaming my guts out.

I also banged a hammer and my wooden “Daoist priest” sword (see again the necromancy posts on my journal) and used these rhythms to build the intensity of the moment.

Then I called Woden in all his dark aspects, as god of bloodshed, war, hate, fear, betrayal, violence, destruction and all that fun stuff. Then called him as god of poetry, song, sex, wisdom, hospitality, healing and all of that fun stuff.

I called him by many of his old names.. and a few new ones spilled from my lips too, like Elric of Melnibone, and The Raven King, and Saint Nick, and even Satan (who Goethe describes as blue cloaked, one eyed and raven-friendly in Faust, after all!) Yes folks, warning: Chaos Heathen At Work.

While all this was happening I was involuntarily writhing, staggering, thrashing, shuddering, shaking – “real” seidh, at least as I experience it as a Jan Fries-loving seidhmadr. My body was plunging into wild paroxysms of its own, my consciousness going right on with it.

Until I calmed a little. Then I just called “Woden” quite softly over and over. A most tremendous sensation, like stable lightning bolts, spread through my scalp and from my hands up my arms. It spilled down over my brow like a helm – I wonder if this was one meaning of “Helm of Awe”.

It’s very rare for me to get such a dramatic energetic and physiological response from my possession work. Such experiences are so beyond my ego and the domain of its power and they’re so reassuring, healing and humbling. I cried a little with joy that my patron would impose himself on me so strongly that I would feel it right there in my nervous system.

And then I was his.

I won’t say to much about what happened because it’s all very vague, but he accepted the gifts and gave my audience a bit of a freak out. My cat didn’t recognise me when He was in charge and avoided us. I changed in appearance. Things were made good between us. The rift, healed.

He cast some runes for me too – funnily the first rune to come out was Ansuz, His rune! And they portended lovely things – healing, positive change, hard work rewarded, blockages destroyed.

And – well, that is all I really want to say, except that I am feeling vastly better today, though still taking it easily and carefully. None of this is at all intended as a disrespect to Frey, either – it’s just that you’ve got to go with the course of the river you are.

I was made for Woden it seems, and while his inconsistencies and chaos sometimes cause me fear or frustration – well I have to accept it. The other option is slow withering.

He said something, I vaguely recall, about an irony of my personality. Namely that I give myself an awful hard time for not being perfect (and therefore a better agent for him.) Yet my imperfections arise because Woden is himself imperfect, and thus make me closer to him in nature. I love irony.

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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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Fearless Honesty

fearlesshonestyimage1Before all that necromantic chaos erupted I was using this blog to explore the notion of fear in my life. And I had concluded that in addition to my patron Woden I needed some other kind of help – for example, from Frey, the Worldly God.

I’ve been doing a bit of reading, and Frey is a fascinating character. The comments made here are mostly based in historical evidence though I’ve extrapolated from the sources in some cases (and resorted to blatant speculation in others).

In some sources he is presented as the chief god; and he is the ancestor of at least one royal dynasty. One of the Vanir, he rules over fertility, peace, growth, and organic strength.

Frey is also arguably a god of the sea, being the captain of Skidbladnir, a ship which he can fold up and put into his pocket. And his boar Gullinborsti draws his chariot freely over water and sky, as well as being a potent symbol of new life and fertility in his own right.

As a god therefore of the land, the sea and the sky Frey seems to rule over the three-fold order of the becoming of aletheia in Martin Heidegger’s philosophy; he seems to be the Lord of our fundamental embeddedness within and reverence for the world.

No wonder that the arch-heathens called him the Worldly God, for his domain seems to spread over all of being and throughout all out all the infinite relationships that thread being together.

fearlesshonestyimage2Frey is also an incredibly masculine, phallic god – towards all existence he turns his giant and unquenchable cock. His is an unfettered manifestation of eros – his way is that of immense and unending lust for life. Whatever comes before him excites his erection – his thirst for union with all of being can never be slaked. Truly he is a super-abundant god.

It takes incredibly courage and fertility to adopt such an attitude to life. To embrace all that life might bring us is no easy feat – Frey is quite the Nietzschean figure in his intense desire to affirm all that comes before him, no matter how painful, repugnant or rotten. Through his lust he beautifies even the most hideous and wretched. What unspeakable power flows through his veins!

Frey is a god of peace, though it seems he’s a powerful warrior when called for. For the most part, however, his way is that of frith – the fruitful and evolving bounty of right relations between humanity, gods, spirits and the natural cycles. He represents a different kind of masculine power to the cliché of the rigid warrior; his power is deeply peaceful, organic and rich, yet not in the least to be trifled with.

He is a cyclical, seasonal god, who dies but can never really be killed (At least until Ragnarok); who fades away and bursts forth once more with blazing laughter. Who both conquers and submits to the feminine in the world, forming an ecstatic and mutually pleasurable equilibrium with his various female counterparts.

Yet Frey is not just the god of this world. He is also master of Alfheim, which was given to him as a tooth-gift. As the lord of the elves it seems Frey is comfortable as the master of many domains and faces of reality. Here is a primal god of this-worldliness who is also a primal god of other-worldliness!

(As a side point, Frey’s very nature seems to violate the notion that heathen culture can be neatly divided into innangard and utangard, insiders and outsiders).

So with Frey it seems we have a god who can do it all. He is a lover and a fighter; a master of fertility, sexuality, and lust; a ruler of both this world and others. To his eyes, ears, tongue, skin and nose the world must seem endlessly loaded with riches, with abundant wealth even where our limited human perspective sees only misery or emptiness.

In reflecting on Frey I cannot help but ponder the question of whether it is not lust and sexual fire that binds the whole universe together. Nature has a determination and power that is truly awesome: one way or another, the sap always rises. Even in this modern ecological crisis – well perhaps humanity will wipe itself out, but nature will fight on and again flourish I am sure, no matter how dreadful the damage we inflict.

But perhaps we can dream into this metaphysics of sex still further – for what do the stars shine, dark matter sing, planets explode? Perhaps space is not a vast vacuum but rather aglow with the post-coital joy of the big bang.

Given the concertina theory of universal history it seems sooner or later that post-coital bliss will turn to foreplay, cosmic sex, and another big crunch and big bang, over and over. Perhaps this unimaginably vast cosmic orgy is all part and parcel of Frey’s incredible lust for life?

I have had at least one foot in Alfheim all my life, and struggled to be here in this world. I have been calling on Frey to teach me how to embrace this world and this life. Woven through this process has been the act of getting my first tattoos.

The tattoos are cryptographic bind runes. First I took the seed words. I used the aett/rune number coding system (see E. Thorsson’s Runelore) to determine a pattern of branches and then turned them into radial designs – one built on a Hagal shape, one modelled on a Helm of Awe.

The Hagal design spells out the word Honesty; the Helm of Awe design spells out Fearless. This formula – Fearless Honesty – has two aspects, inner and outer.

Within me they are an exhortation to be honest with myself, to take the time to listen to my own emotions and thoughts, my needs and desires. To hold myself with a little reserve so that I do not entirely lose myself in the world around me but retain my grasp on my own perspective and needs.

Beyond me they are an exhortation not to think I can or should hide away; that I can and should bring my whole being to bear on the world around me. That I do not need to compromise my being for the sake of the other person’s equilibrium or what I think they want.

These tattoos have become sentient it seems. Their voices rise up my arms into the back of my head and shove me forward when I am hesitant to be true to their meaning. Or if I slip into an old habitual pattern then I cannot avoid being aware of it, remembering it so that I know to change next time.

They’re harsh task masters, not at all gentle with me, but I need this militant attitude – it is good for me. Sometimes, paradoxically, being true to Fearless Honesty means admitting my fear, worry or uncertainty; sometimes it means not saying everything I could because that is the best way to be true to my internal compass.

Having these deeply personal symbols on my arms, clearly visible, really helps make objective my subjective desire and determination. And people notice them! Since I had them done any number of strangers have been drawn to me, curious, wanting to know what they mean.

Folk see immediately that they’re symbolic, and get very intrigued. It is good magic and gives me yet another opportunity to stand in the world, redeeming my inner and outer natures into the original inter-subjective wholeness of the world (the bridge over which perhaps Frey and Woden hold sway).

Using these bind rune tattoos as magical expressions of my desire has so far proved extremely fruitful; I feel deeply proud of them and in some respects feel more myself than I have in my entire life. It is even better that they’ve gone from being sigils to being conscious beings – I call that animism in action! I have a feeling that eventually I’ll be able to project them to work magic in the world; that’d sure be useful!

Oh, and I realise I’m becoming more attuned to other people too – to their attitudes, to the meaning of their words, to the things they are thinking but not saying but which they unwittingly betray in their non-verbal communication. I’m getting faster in my ability to analyse an understand exchanges where there is subtext and ambiguity.

Of course no tattoo can completely transform you, and I have to keep strong my commitment to these principles – just getting marks put into your skin doesn’t take away the effort that transformation always involves. But that said, in some ways I can now never go back.

Fearless and Honesty have become doors and conduits for this desire of mine to fuse Woden and Frey in my being. Bring it on!

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Necromancy Part Four

necromancypartfourimage1So I’ve been watched by Odin pretty closely these last few days. Everywhere, crows, crows, crows. They follow me like they haven’t for years. Its just ridiculous. And they’re shameless too, sometimes they just sit there, cawing maniacally – then when I move on they just fly right on after me. Shameless, like I say. You’d think they thought I was dead and ready for the munching or something.

Finally on Wednesday I realised I needed to do a séance with that ouija board I received. I’d been sick pretty consistently since Volksfreund and my adventures with the ghosts – it really took it out of me. Plus I’ve been super busy and keeping on top of everything has been a real challenge.

But on Thursday I was booked in to get my first tattoos done and since they’re all about manifesting in Midgard I decided I had to clear the otherworldly or necromantic stuff first, no matter that I still felt pretty lousy on Wednesday.

I get home at about 8.30pm, having been thinking about the séance, the ouija board, all day, focussing my intention on using it. I’m home alone, which is a blessing. I did some research and a lot of people report experiences of mischievous or malignant spirits using ouija boards to harass or scare inexperienced or frivolous seekers. At first I dismissed this as childish fears, but on the other hand some folk I respect hold similar views too.

Well I’m sitting at my computer and it just wont go online. Then I hear strange noises, movement. And I know I’m not alone. There are spirits here, they’ve heard my thoughts about the ouija board.

Before I do anything about them I quickly call Volksfreund to discuss the situation. He agrees there some weird business going on, but he doesn’t think these spirits have anything to do with the Old One or the sacred site spirits. And my instincts concur. He wishes me luck and I get ready to do this thing.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Earlier I showed the board to Volksfreund. We were a bit drunk. He opened the board and bang – this dark vortex opened. I told him to close it right away and he did. So this was coming, this crazy thing. For a week or so.

So when I realise I’m not alone, and that these beings don’t seem all too friendly, something strange happens. Bolts of trembling and electrical fire course through me and I leap up, possessed to the gills by WODANAZ and let out an almighty roar.

I was listening to “River of Fire” from our (Ironwood) album :Fire:Water:Ash:, an Odinnic possession song, and hearing myself on the recording recite the lyrics from Odin’s point of view really quickened the possession. Later I think Volksfreund said the spirits might have also been attracted by the music, I’m not sure if that’s true though.

Then Wodan and I pick up this old toy sword I own and suddenly a whole bunch of threads of wyrd are revealed. This old wooden sword was made for me by my grandfather (the one who left me his pocket watch, see my article on my altar) because as a kid I was obsessed with medieval weapons (hmm, can anyone detect some patterns in my interests?)

Later my father and I painted the sword silver and gold and sharpened the blade. It’s the only toy sword I ever kept; all the others are long gone, but something made me unable to part with it and I’ve carted around from household to household for years, it looking neglected and reproachful.

Well there I am on Wednesday (Woden’s Day) night, this sword in hand, possessed by Woden, and this almost ancestral sword is just about scintillating. Then I grab my rune carver/antique screw driver (again, see my altar journal entry) and carve a Teiwaz rune on the blade.

My mind shoots to of an article I recently read about Daoist ghost hunters, who use enchanted wooden swords, and a comment Volksfreund made about Odinnic-Daoist similarities. It all fits – and as a teenager I loved Hong Kong supernatural martial arts flicks like Mr Vampire!

I know, this is sort of syncretist, but it makes so much sense for my own personal history and nature. And really, I’m not pretending to be a Daoist, it’s just a (fruitful) analogy people! That sword also has a powerful ancestral resonance – how much more Heathen can you get than that?

Well Woden is coming through me and I invoke Elhaz to open a magical space. We set up the ouija board and I use a coin as the indicating device. I’m sitting by my computer to record what comes out. So I tell the spirits (or Woden does) that I’m not to be messed with. Then I ask them their business.

I find I don’t need to spell out whole words. My hand flies to the first letter and then the whole thought of the spirits appears complete in my mind for me. So our exchange is short and sharp. Here is the transcript”:

Me/Woden: Who are you and what is your business.

Them: Don’t you dare threaten us.

Me/Woden: Why not?

Them: We don’t fear you.

Me/Woden: That makes no sense.

Them: Fuck off.

Me/Woden: Why are you here?

Them: Everyone always wants to know that. Yes we know you don’t fear us.

Me/Woden: How many are you?

Them: Four.

Me/Woden: If you have no purpose here then leave.

Them: We have a purpose.

I asked them to state it, because that last thing they said was pretty nasty in tone. They refused to state it and I got sick of being jerked around. So I hit ‘bye’ on the ouija board and invoked Odin again.

That didn’t get rid of them – these buggers were much tougher than the spirits I’m used to dealing with. Then one of them said in a very eerie, threatening tone, “I am the Prince of Lies”.

I burst into laughter at that – did they really think I would take such silliness seriously? I demanded to know what they wanted and forced them to tell me – they had come because they sensed my desire to use the board, in fact they claimed to follow the copies of the album that the board came with and harass anyone who used it. Their only interest was feeding off fear or other emotions. Parasite ghosts you might say.

I drove them back, closed the board, and grabbed the coin. I visualised a sun wheel like a shield radiating from the coin in my closed fist and was shocked to find this produced an intense kinaesthetic and energetic response in my shoulder, arm and hand. In fact I could feel the shield as though it were a part of my body.

necromancypartfourimage2I later offered the coin to a Balinese cat we have that I regard as an effigy of Freya.

Having disoriented these unwanted spirits so, I wandered the house. I felt a really strong ancestral presence, both from my sister and some other female ancestor, this one from my mother’s side I think. That was lovely. They’d come to support me in driving out these very persistent and unwanted spectral interlopers.

Then Odin took me a third time. Staring into a mirror, we had a conversation.

I told him that the next day I would be getting two tattoos, two powerful visual oaths. I asked him to help me with fulfilling my oaths and he promised to do so.

I asked him what this whole psychopomp business was about, in particular about this talk that “arrangements” would be made for me so I could do it all the time, almost like a professional. He replied that there are no arrangements, but that all will be as it must be. He asked me if I understood. I can’t explain what he meant, but I did understand and responded as such.

The ghosts were gathering their strength now and I asked if he could drive them off. He said he could, but he also said that I could defeat them too, even though so far all I’d succeeded in was holding them at bay. He told me to chant Ansuz three times. I did. Then he told me to use that to find the right song to destroy them.

I didn’t know what he meant. Then it came to me, a poem of mine called “The Noose Song”. It’s about (funnily enough) being possessed by Odin. So I recite this song, which induces a powerful ecstatic fury if you do it with aggression and vehemence.

The ghosts were somehow forced into presence – no more hiding – so they attacked! And I slashed them to pieces with my sword. The last one I threw the sword at – and it stopped in flight when it hit the ghost, hung there for a moment in the air, then dropped as though it had collided with something solid as the ghost dissolved. Very weird thing to see I must say!

I called Volksfreund back to check in and let him know how it went. Its good to have a human point of support with this sort of crazy business I am finding. Oh yes, and my computer stopped malfunctioning as soon as the ghosts were gone.

Odin has been around a lot since, in fact I had a really dramatic possession just last night, but it’s all too personal to be writing about here. Sorry folks!

One lesson from this – even if you are focussed solely on working with the Northern Traditions, there are plenty of beings in the world you might encounter who aren’t from that particular idiom. In this case I don’t know what these spirits were, but the fact they thought they could scare me with a Satanic reference tells me that they’d not dealt with Woden before.

No matter how hard a reconstructionist you are, this sort of thing is going to happen – at least potentially – and I think the lesson is not to let one’s ideology or philosophy blind one to what is right in front of one. I might generally choose to work with the northern mythological forces, but I’m not going to ignore other entities just because that isn’t their preferred framework. That’d just be stupid.

What next in this front? I don’t know. The séance was pretty boring really, though hopefully those spirits won’t bother anyone else. And I learned some handy things, too. Plus, it’s always very pleasant to be ridden by my patron. Who knows what wyrd yet holds in store…

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Necromancy Part Three

necromancypartthreeimage1After the first round of spiritual pyrotechnics we decided it was high time to have dinner. So we did.

Behind where we were sleeping for the night was a series of carved stone steps leading up a rise and off into bush. You used to be able to follow these steps to the second cemetery but that area was now completely overgrown and inaccessible. That was a shame because I felt that the Old One – the ancient being that called me here – dwelled in that second cemetery.

We had come with the intention of performing a ritual and we decided to use one of the stone steps as our altar. Hence the photos with our various ritual tools and offerings.

We spent some time discussing the purpose of the ritual. The area we were staying in is considered very haunted and normally no one is brave enough to sleep there. We noticed at least one electrical device switched on spontaneously, classic poltergeist behaviour.

I know parapsychologists say that poltergeist activity is really due to overactive psychic powers in children – but we were totally alone, and neither of us normally produces such effects.

As we discussed our plans the air became more and more oppressive. It was clear that while we had done some good there was a lot more work ahead.

The basic intention of the ritual was to invite learning and healing for both us and the spirits. I carved Mannaz and Eihwaz runes on a candle as these are to my mind classic death runes. We brought some very good red wine as our blot drink.

As we planned our magic something extremely strange happened. A rat appeared and ran under Volksfreund’s seat. It was as far as I could see a totally normal, three dimensional, living rat, seen with my eyes and optic nerves. Yet it did not come out from under his seat again!

Unnerved I asked him to get up and move the seat to look under it. Nothing. I scoured the whole area, unable to believe my eyes. It just disappeared! The floor was a totally clear and hard surface, there was nowhere for it to go.

It must have been a ghost or spirit, that’s the only explanation I have. I was seriously freaked out. This wasn’t just having another being use my imagination without my control to appear before me; this thing actually appeared 100% physical and real! I’ve never seen anything of such a degree of weirdness. It wasn’t a big, dramatic thing, but believe me, if you’d been there… well, it was extremely bizarre.

To clear the space we burned recels, dried herbs. It was raining heavily and very windy but somehow we got them going and Volksfreund smudged the area as much as the weather allowed.

I commenced the ritual by calling on Draugadrottin to come and to send us his wisdom, power and blessings, improvising a string of invocations. Satisfied that the right atmosphere was established we both offered our intentions – that our magic bring healing and learning all around (strictly speaking this had already started occurring!)

We lit the candle then and began chanting Mannaz and Eihwaz to power the spell. This went on for quite a while. Eventually the fever of the chanting quelled and I held out the candle into the rain to put it out.

Only it didn’t go out. I held it there in direct and quite heavy rain and wind. Still aflame. At first it struggled a bit, but then if anything the light got stronger. We started silently at it, in total awe, for five or ten minutes as it happily broke a number of the basic laws of physics.

necromancypartthreeimage2Eventually my arm got really tired from holding it out so I put it down on our makeshift altar. It kept burning for longer again! If you look carefully in the photo you can see the water glistening on the rock and the roses.

This we took as a dramatic and positive sign from the spirits. We raised the wine to honour the spirits and to honour Draugadrottin, making sure to give plenty back to the earth. The wild weather calmed as our work ended. It was certainly dramatic!

We saw various shadows and lights moving in the area after that. Sometimes we would see a person’s shadow moving along – but no person to shed it! Curious, no?

A really sweet and warm atmosphere spread over the whole area after our ritual. The remaining sense of malevolence dissolved completely. Indeed, we felt profoundly welcome.

We went back to the area where I served as a psychopomp for the spirits and both spontaneously went into extremely deep trances of communion with the beings there. Given that this was in the most haunted part of a place that many people fear to sleep in I think that was no small feat!

The rest of the night we felt a strong atmosphere of joy and even love. No one had given these spirits the healing or attention they desired in a long time or so it seemed. We explored the whole area again and it all seemed similarly whole and hale.

Finally at some horrible hour I went to sleep. Volksfreund stayed up and took some photos of things that might be ghosts.

The next morning thing still felt really good and we finally left at about midday. I was sad to go. One thing that didn’t happen was a meeting with the Old One. I felt that the learning it told me I would receive had occurred, but I had also hoped to have a more direct experience of it.

On our return I really wanted to have more weird experiences but none were forthcoming. And we both fell sick – in fact I’m not quite recovered.

But after a few days of feeling that I’d been invited into the most profound universe and then kicked out I got a message or clue for the next step. A new CD I had ordered arrived. I didn’t realise when I ordered it but it is concept album about communicating with the dead! And guess what – instead of a booklet it has a poster that folds out into an ouija board!

I know, that’s kinda cheesy, but I’m thinking that I have to try it at least once. It really felt like I was born to do this whole spirit expedition stuff, this psychopomping business. So now I’m just hopeful and curious about what happens next.

Hail Draugadrottin! Hail The Lord Of The Dead!

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Necromancy

I’ve just recently on this little journal been declaring how similar I am to Woden. So of course, time to put your cash where your teeth live, Henry. And events, strange events, have been afoot.

The thing with chaos magic is that when you read about in books it tends to come across that the universe is like a computer game – a serious of push-button scenarios that only get provoked by the magician’s actions. If the magician never entered the griffin’s secret cave then that griffin would just sit there, bored out of its brain for all eternity, doing its nails and reading the TV guide.

But in reality all kinds of wild stuff goes on, and while I’m off making crazy magical plans, the world it seems has plans for me.

Mr Volksfreund, who is often kind enough to lend his comments to these journal entries, is a friend in real life too (as though the internet were all just a fantasy!) He’s also a hellishly good medium and provoker of magic. I mean, when I hang around him I tend to get spontaneously possessed by Woden. Which is fun, but dangerous of course. But fun. I like fun.

So Volksfreund recently spent a few days at a famous haunted location here in New South Wales. I can’t tell you what it is called or where it is for reasons which aren’t worth explaining (due to being intensely prosaic). He recorded all kinds of evidence of ghostly activity, conversed with spirits, you name it.

On his return we had dinner – which turned into something of a bar crawl I admit – and he told me all about his otherworldly adventures. His tales are pretty damn out there, but I’ve seen and heard his recorded evidence too – very impressive. What neither of us quite expected, however, was that some of the beings he encountered could use him as a bridge to get out into the wider world! And so things began to get odd, because I copped some of these visitors.

It first started at night. I was alone in the house and my intuitive hackles got rubbed right on up. I don’t like being watched by entities that I cannot otherwise detect. I’m not conventionally psychic, but I know when there is magic going on around me. I pulled out my standard Thor magic artillery and that cleared the space… but whereas usually that settles the matter, on this night it did not. My visitors returned later.

So I’m lying in bed, sleeping happily away, and then I’m awake and a young ghostly woman is standing in front of me. She’s the one I sent packing earlier in the night, only to return. As I say, they don’t usually do that, so I’m a little intimidated. Lucky for me, all she wants is to talk.

She says her name is Abigail and she died when quite young. Her dress is very much turn of the century, and her eyes are wide and innocent. She seems to be one of those ghosts that haven’t really developed much perspective since they died. Still wrapped up in and identifying with her lost human form.

I ask her how she managed to come back after the magic I performed; similarly I ask her how she managed to use Volksfreund as a bridge to come to visit me. She doesn’t know the answers; she’s just as confused by it as I am. Reaching an impasse I ask her – well, why are you here ruining my night’s sleep?

Incidentally – why do ghosts have to do that? I mean, I’m a morning person, if they come in at 5.30 am I’ll already be up, showered, breakfasted and ready to stomach the undead. But 4 in the morning? C’mon, surely that’s still roll over and go back to sleep time.

Ok, so petty complaints aside – Abigail explains that she has been sent by someone, she is serving another being which took care of her ability to find me and weather the dismissal magic. And so she says that she’d like to see me again (which just seems a bit weird and uncool to me, can I just say), and then she’s gone.

To be replaced but what I can only describe as a presence. This thing is old. I mean, I sometimes think that in the big picture I’m pretty old (or my true nature is anyway), but this thing is all old all the time. Its voice echoes in my skull like leaden sledgehammers. I have this vague intuition of a vast inky blackness, but really, who knows. I don’t have any of that cool second sight stuff unfortunately.

Well anyway, this being explains that it has sought me out because of my Odinnic lineage. I considers me to be a psychopomp, one who guides the dead to their resting place. And it wants to educate me in this undertaking!

Volksfreund tells me that the haunted location this being followed him from on its way to me was used by the local Aboriginal groups once upon a time as a psychopomp training ground – apparently this is a matter of historical fact. Well I don’t know how I fit into all that (or not) but hearing that did make me feel a bit less nuts.

Apologies to anyone who finds it offensive that an Australian land spirit would take any notice of a white guy, but they seem to like Woden for some reason. Its not my fault! Yes, I am aware of the complex politics of spirit of place and also I’m not going to ignore some big scary spirit just to keep happy a bunch of atheist academics who don’t believe in Aboriginal spirits anyway. Or something along those line anyway. Don’t take me too seriously on this folks.

It explains that I am a psychopomp. My only true calling is to serve the dead, to guide them from blockage or ensnarement into the next part of wherever they are supposed to go when they die. Hmm. That gets me thinking. I had an uncle who was an Odinnic avatar. At his funeral I saw Odin come, cloth him in garments of blazing gold, and lead him off to Valhalla. I wonder if I saw that because of this psychopomp business?

I point out to this spirit that I’ve been following this whole psychotherapy path, and that I’m about to can that and do more psychology study, and that this work is a bit like being a psychopomp for the living at times. Isn’t that enough? No, it says. Not enough. Apparently it doesn’t think I was ever meant to work with the living – that was just the best compromise I could find in this damn atheist-on-the-surface-but-actually-terrified-of-the-unknown society I’m in.

Well then, I point out that this is no basis for putting my beloved organic vegetables on the table, or having anything better than rags to wear. “Arrangements would be made” is the response. What on earth does that mean?

I mean, let me get this straight, I’m told by an entity which may have at some point knocked about with Aboriginal sacred stuff that I am a psychopomp by virtue of my Odinnic lineage and that I’m supposed to spend my working life freeing the dead of entrapment and helping them on their way to the next stop on the grand consciousness carousel.

Does anyone else find this bloody weird?

And then this great beastie says it wants me to come visit it at the location Volksfreund was mucking about at so it can educate me some more. Well, we are going to check it out on Sunday night, so I sure hope that something happens.

A few days later I try contacting this spirit again but all I get is a brief Abigail appearance, who tells me that it I have to visit them if I want to know any more. Damn.

Does it end there? Oh no it doesn’t!

Ironwood played a gig in Canberra last weekend. While I’m watching the band on before us (a very classy act called The Veil, check them out), the big scary spirit speaks to me. It says our performance tonight is only incidentally for the living. Really, it’s for the dead. What does that even mean? Ok, I say. Whatever, at least you know what is going on!

And then a name of Odin’s comes to mind. Draugadrottin – Lord Of The Dead. Sounding a bit thematic? Sure is to me. The first song we planned to play (and indeed did play) is an Odinnic invocation. So I made sure Draugadrottin got some extra focus when we performed. I really should try to contact this aspect of One-Eye.

As we prepare to perform all these ghostly forms start entering the venue. By the time we are underway the place is bursting from the seams with ghosts. Yet when I try to focus directly on them – gone. Then when I stop trying – bang, everywhere. Luckily we performed really well (hurray for returning to a regular rehearsal schedule). So I guess we satisfied them. I mean, I didn’t get any rotten spectral tomatoes in the face after our set.

Is this what being a psychopomp is? I don’t even know. But hey, if I can make a living doing this sort of thing, well that sounds like fun. I hope it means I get to have an Indiana Jones kinda lifestyle in fact. I need one of those cool whips that psychically know when you want them to come loose and when you want them to hold on tight.

So yeah, we’re about to go and check this place out. I wonder what will happen? Well, you might read about it here… if I make it back. After all, they never said I was going to be a living psychopomp. I hope I can make sense of this. If this is somehow my path… well then I better bloody well embrace it with all my heart. See you on the other side… or not.

Hey, I just realised. Its Friday The 13th!

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