Spirituality

The Journeybook

If the doors of perception were cleansed,
everything would appear as it is – infinite.
– St. William Blake

In my last post I have stressed the importance of the psychedlic experience for my first contact with magickal consciousness that has become kind of my entrance into Neo-Paganism & Thelema. As I said I do not think that most people use these sacred plants in a beneficial way, but some do. And I still have a sentimental love for the psychedelic subculture. I find it’s great when some individuals explore the strange & wyrd pathways of consciousness through the gateways of psychedelic plants and create documents (if that be music, books or art) of their adventurous journeys into the anima mundi.

I don’t know what has been the exact role of sacred plants in Heathenism, but I once read in a book by Christan Rätsch that the Mead of the berserkers had only 2% alcohol & the really active contingents have been psychoactive substances of sacred plants (maybe also including Psilocybin mushrooms, he suggests). However, I found this interesting book by the Australian- based art collective Undergrowth, who have released The Journeybook.

“…To say what has never been said, to see what has never been seen,… to push the envelop of creativity and language…” Terence McKenna

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How I Sold My Soul to the Devil and Thus Found Odhinn

Rúnar munt thú finna    ok rádhna stafi, mjök stóra stafi,
mjök stinna stafi,
er fádhi fimbuldhulr
ok goerdhu ginregin
ok reist Hroptr rögna.

Runen wirst du finden und lesbare Stäbe,
sehr starke Stäbe,
sehr mächtige Stäbe,
gefärbt von Fimbuldhurl
gegeben von den magischen Göttern
und geschnitzt vom höchsten Herrscher.

Runes wilt thou find and read the staves,
very strong staves,
very stalwart staves,
which the mighty theal colored
and the magical gods made
and Hropt of the gods carved them.

“Hávamál”, verse 145. Old Norse version & English translation taken from Rune-Song by Edred Thorsson; German translation taken from Helrunar by Jan Fries, with little variations by me.

My first conscious contact with magick happened, when I took ‘magic mushrooms’ (f.e. Psilocybe cubensis, Psilocybe mexicana, Psilocybe semilanceata asf.). They worked for me as a trigger & made me aware of the fact that self-awareness is a miracle & mystery in itself. Having said that, let me state clearly that the prolonged use of such substances may have disastrous effects on the psyche. I’ve seen that happening to friends! Drugs, including psychedelics, are in most cases no help for spiritual seekers. (Heedful & experienced use of ‘chemognostic sacraments’ is possible in a shamanic and/or therapeutic context as the writings of Stanislav Grof prove. Nevertheless, most people misuse drugs. They try to escape reality & the responsibility of being human.) For spiritual pursuits – and most other endeavors in life – counts the following: Es gibt keine Wunder, nur Disziplin. (“There are no miracles, only discipline.”) Ian Read said this in his brilliant magazine RUNA, No. 19. (North Americans can purchase Runa Magazine from Runa Raven press, orders outside the US here) Most hippies & other protagonists of the 1960s who fished for short-cuts on the spiritual path somehow forgot about that. However, I’d argue that the first manifestation of my magickal path has been ‘psychedelic neo-shamanism’. What followed, sounds to me today like a cliché. An uprooted & alienated, urban & postmodern youngster tries to overcome his youthful nihilism by taking drugs & trying to escape consensus reality by following (what I then believed to be) AmerIndian shamanism. I was introduced to Castaneda’s books, Sun Bear, Terence McKenna, Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary & Jim DeKorne’s Psychedelic Shamanism. I visited often the local forest of my town & have been doing ‘shamanic journeys’ to the underworld (today I’d say my subconscious mind or the Deep Mind, as Jan Fries calls it), where I met my ‘power animals’ & asked them questions about certain issues that were important to me. The shamanic journeys came to an end, when I came across a very mysterious & weird book: Liber AL vel Legis (The Book of the Law). This “Book of Claws” :-) has been written by the notorious & furious, half-mad & half-ingenious Devil’s advocate: the Beast 666, also known as Aleister Crowley, called lovingly by us all who were ‘seduced’ by his exhilarated & energized enthusiasm Uncle Al.

Being who I am I found out EVERYTHING about Aleister Crowley & wanted only one thing from that moment on: to learn about magick.  This has led me at age 19 to the Ordo Templi Orientis. OTO is a group that promotes Crowley’s religion of Thelema (“True Will”) & occasionally practices (rather boring) rituals of Ceremonial Magick. While having been studying the stale & dogmatic system of Crowley, I slowly realized that there were other systems of magick around that have a far more easier & pragmatic approach to sorcery. (Then being “brainwashed” by modern occultism I thought of sorcery as a kind of ‘lower’ form of magick.) This was the hour of Austin Osman Spare & his ‘revolutionary’ method of sigil sorcery.

Because reading AOS is a rather complicated issue, it was the repeated application of ‘Thee Sigil Ov 3 Liquids’ in Thee Greyer Book that initiated a series of events that convinced me once & for all that magick WORKS as I got immediate results. (This manual was/is the manifesto of Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth that was founded in 1981 by Genesis P-Orridge, Peter Christopherson and others who are no longer its members.) It must have been what they call ‘beginner’s luck’! Such experiences with practical sorcery – those that manifest in the material world – are more important for the budding magician than reading thousand books by Crowley or whomever. I was 22 then. Thus my soul was sold to the Devil. He looked like him:

the inventor of magick and anything else that is fun & forbidden. But at that moment in time I already knew that the Devil was nothing but the degenerated manifestation of far older gods of our pagan forefathers. I believe these pagan gods to be the ecstatic Pan, Óðinn, Loki, asf.Of course any god that was associated with sensuality, sexuality & sorcery became a Devil. Satan does not exist, except in the minds of those that deny these aspects of Self.) As I’m a very loyal person it took me a while until I accepted the conclusion that my path lies outside of Crowley’s Current 93 & I left OTO at age 25. (Though to this day I find the 93rd Current an important one and I do believe that an intelligent and creative person can use Crowley’s work in a beneficial way.)

However, leaving OTO was an initiation in itself. But this initiation was not the kind of ‘freemasonic theatre play’ you pay 100 or 200 Euros/Dollars for to ascend in the artificial hierarchy of a magical order. No! This step has led to a spiritual crisis (the ‘Hagalaz-Nauthiz-Isa-Jera dance). It’s important to die before you die, my friends! This was the time, when I toyed around with chaos magick and, as I said before, there is no doubt that this current has brought fresh and new perspectives into contemporary magick. It synthesized the threads of the antagonistic twins Crowley & Spare in conjunction with the spirit of ‘free-form shamanism’ to bring forth a postmodern approach to magick, where “Nothing Is True & Everything Is Permitted” (Hassan-i Sabbah). I found a lot in chaos magick that inspired me, especially the fundamental insight that Gnosis & Belief are important for magick to work, though some chaos magicians already come to the conclusion that “belief alone is […] the basis of magick and gnosis is optional.” (Dave Lee, in a review of Advanced Magick for Beginners).

Dave Lee, Chaos Magus and Rune Master

But as time progressed my interest moved ever stronger towards the Runes. Simultaneously the chaos magick approach became an integral part of my magical assets, even if my ‘paradigm shifting’ always remained an unconscious process rather than a conscious attitude.

Though I have heard of the Runes for the first time when I was 15 or so, I’ve been confronted at that time only with the inauthentic Armanen-Futhark (composed of 18 Runes, which Guido von List ‘received’ in a state of crisis during which he was blind for a half year) and the terrible New Age nonsense by Ralph Blum (whose ‘system’ is anathema to anyone who is committed to the Runic Tradition). But since then I felt a deep respect for the Runes. Years later I found a book in the university library next to my school. It was called Leaves of Yggdrasil written by the Dutch singer, writer & ‘Norse Occultist’ Freya Aswynn. She inspired me to do a few divinations with Runes that were intriguing. However, as I don’t like to fiddle about too much, my focus has still been to unravel Crowley’s system of magick first. I also understood intuitively that Runes are nothing you can just explore in a few months. I understood intuitively that Runes are not just another ‘paradigm’ to ‘exploit’. Rather the Mystery encoded in the Runes demands of the Seeker to dedicate his whole life – and beyond – to the quest for Her: Runa.  Many years later, when I was already studying at university myself, I came across the German translation of Edred Thorsson’s Nine Doors of Midgard.

This was for the first time when it suddenly dawned on me that there is a Runic Revival going on and that the Runes have a tradition of their own. As I became already dissatisfied and disaffected with Crowley’s system and the OTO, and chaos magickalready began to crack open my head, I started to study the religion, culture and language(s) in which the Runes have originated [well, I studied one semester of Icelandic until now and I had to break off the course on Old Norse… but I will come back to it when time allowes!]. And here, for the first time, I realized where my roots lie – hidden.

I am still fairly new to Heathenism and it’s not long ago that I swore my first oath to Óðinn. But from the first moment on I read about the idea put forth by Edred Thorsson / Stephen Flowers that the Seeker has to emulate the archetype of the First Runemaster Óðinn, to emulate His act of ‘Winning the Runes’, for gaining insight into Runa – the Mother of all Mysteries – I knew this is where my magick has led me. (However, as I identify with ANON it must be considered that there is no ultimate destination. „Anon freely transmogrifies its arbitrary personality, refusing any identity defined by its environment. Residing in the ultimate freedom possible on the plane of illusion, it has choice of duality. Everything which exists for it is a form of desire, for this is the universe in which it willed to incarnate.“ — in: Liber Null, by Pete Carrol) Feeling attracted by the Mystery, I swore my first oath to Óðinn whilst holding my Sax against my beating heart and ever since I’m feeling the pull from Runa becoming stronger and stronger. Thusly the trail of the Devil turned out to be the demon’s footprint of the one-eyed God whose Rune-Might still manifests in Midgard. „When the written codes of Gods and Man are abandoned, what remains but the footprint of the Demon?“ (Fire + Ice) Now I began to know my own wyrd and destiny. And I hear the knocking of Sleipnir’s hooves and the winds on the raging sea, whispering from eternity: Reyn til Runa!

Edred Thorsson, Ian Read, Phil Hine, unknown, and Ingrid Fischer

And as long as there are those who devote themselves to the Quest for Runa like the First Rune Master did, who arranged and carved the Runes 2200 years ago in the form of the Elder Futhark, the Might of our Holy Gods still lives on. “Our freedom shall hinge on it soon… Take Wyrd in your hands & reclaim your Might.” (Sweyn Plowright/Fire + Ice) And it’s only now that I begin to have glimpses of understanding the words whispered to us through the ages. Just by reading these words and speaking them aloud I get my Óðr rises and combines with my hughr and minni:

Rúnar munt thú finna    ok rádhna stafi,
mjök stóra stafi,
mjök stinna stafi,
er fádhi fimbuldhulr
ok goerdhu ginregin
ok reist Hroptr rögna.


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Chaos, Wyrd, and the Left Hand Path

Magick is black

Reason is white

Thus magick’s unseen

It’s nature’s to hide


Introduction:

“No-Thing is true. Everything is trance-mitted.” The Fool of the Sacred Chao

My name is Matt Anon. I’m a Chaos Mystic and Left-Hand Path initiate (for my take on the LHP, see below), who studies Chaos Magick, Galdor and esoteric Runology within the broader philosophy of Chaos Heathenism. The aim of my magick is encoded in my name, beside the desire to fall in love with divine mystery :ᚱᚢᚾᚨ: and to reawaken the ancient wisdom in my Soul. I’m attracted by the conception of a Perennial Philosophy that appeared under different guises independent of epoch or culture and seek to understand its eternal mysteries. One of the maps of special interest to me that represents an expression of that perennial wisdom is the Runic tradition as it manifested in the cosmological and magico-mystical structures of Northern European spirituality. I’ve been interested in ecstatic experiences and inspired and altered states of consciousness since my youth. I hold many wyrd beliefs that are subject to change on my journeys along the pathways that lead down, around and up the Tree. That’s why I believe that beliefs and all dualities are fetters to be loosened (the mystic’s aim) or played with (the magician’s game), rather than unchangable dogmas set in stone. Two major influences are to be named that initially got me into the Northern Mysteries: Fire + Ice and True Helm.

I explore the Runic Mysteries by emulating the divine archetype of the Rune-Master Óðinn, who is seen as a mythical role model for spiritual development. But I would look at all philosophical, metaphysical and magical worldviews not as a reality, but recognize them “as models or maps, and no one model elevated to the truth.” (RAW). That’s why I combine different approaches and techniques of sorcery and mysticism (= magick) to my own Self-Empowerment and explore the mysteries of consciousness and nature.

Though I began experimenting and toying around with magick as a teenager (often intoxicated by shroooooms), my more serious and structured involvement with magick began in my early 20’s (see for my magickal background here). Having gone through all kinds of phases and systems, beliefs and dogmas (though for many years my main focus has been Crowley’s system of Thelemic Magick), ‘enlightenments’ and delusions, I stopped looking for an occult system that ‘explains’ everything and deludes the seeker that the inexplicable could be presented in a ‘step-by-step’-system to enlightenment. After all I came to ponder about the chaosmagickal saying: ‘Nothing is True, Everything is Permittes’. Nevertheless I’m against a postmodern (POMO) relativism with its “Anything-goes”- triviality. This is, perhaps, my only real criticism of the Chaos Magick Current (though also here we begin to hear diverse voices). Once I heard clearly “das Raunen der Runen” (the whispering of the Runes), I turned my face towards the North. In this regard I take the reconstruction of the Runic Tradition very seriously & do not think that it’s just another “paradigm” for the “paradigm pirate” to “exploit”. Such a person will never grasp the profundity of the Runes – especially, when one considers that Runa can never be fully grasped (I am deeply indebted for the concept of Runa to Edred Thorsson). What I liked about the term “Chaos Heathen” that Henry’s genius gave birth to, is that in Chaos Heathenism there are no members, there are no gurus, there are no systems and there are no dogmas. There is only you, you & Runa – the eternal & sacred Dance of Consciousness & Mystery. For the Runic Quest to begin, some essential qualities are required like a thirst for knowledge, a longing for something that is hard to define (probably what deRopp called “the Will to Power”, “the Will to Meaning” & “the Will to Transcendence”), a strong self (not what common man calls ego), courage and, certainly, humour – just to name a few. But the nature of collaboration or participation in chaos Heathenism, as far as I understand it, is defined by every individual herself. In this way, I’d like to begin this journal by exploring some concepts & ideas I came across since I got into magick. Though in magick nothing ever remains the same (hey, it’s the same with life, isn’t it?) I hope that in this way I can demonstrate how I approach “the lonely path where waits the eight-legged steed” (Fire + Ice / Ian Read).

Chaos:

Chaos defines, in many ways, my approach to sorcery. I am deeply indebted for the elaboration of the meta-system of chaos magic(k) made by Pete Carrol and the magicians who developed his ideas to present us an approach to sorcery that is authentic, individualistic, result-orientated and compatible with a world that has gone mad. However, it must be said that the Chaos approach was not invented by the chaos magicians themselves, but was there, hidden and applied and made visible for the first time in the Zos Kia Cultus of the artist and sorcerer Austin Osman Spare. But it was the Illuminates of Thanateros who took on the sparks of this flame and made a huge fire of it that burnt down most – if not all – assumptions of western magic(k), and thus created a tour de force, which changed the underworld of western occultism forever.

Chaos for me means that magick has no form, that the nature of the multiverse is unpredictable, that its behaviour is chaotic, that rules and “laws” are invented by the human hardware, the brain, for making sense out of information that is by its very nature inconsistent. The Chaos approach gives us the opportunity to look at different systems of magic(k) as arbitrary, children of their time and culture, and possible models rather than fixed ones that often can be limiting to one’s transpersonal vision of sorcery. Therefore it encourages the individual sorcerer to explore different perspectives and applications of doing sorcery and developing her own system of magick rather than following the worn-out paths of others. Thus Chaos becomes the major tool to look at various schools of magic(k) and to choose those elements that are appealing to the sorcerer and that work for her. However, to my mind this is – as paradoxical as it may sound – also the great weakness of the Chaos approach. In a way, the traditional assumption that everything must be kept in balance is, once again, also true in this case. By concluding that every traditional system of magick uses an arbitrary classification, we blank out the fact that the traditional ways of thinking are ancient & have been in use over hundreds of generations. They reflect what Carl Gustav Jung has called the Collective Unconscious. Individualistic approaches to sorcery are useful, but an Alphabet of Desire will never achieve what a system like the Elder Futhark can bring forth & reveal (I suppose).

Order:


Chaos is not my aim, it is my primal condition. Basically, the human being is a multiplicity of selves, a morass of chaos, “a ‘schizophrenic’ identifying in one moment with a dominant thought, emotion or sensation that wears the mantle of self, just to be pushed aside by some other ‘I’ in an equally mechanical and accidental manner” (see Robert S. deRopp: The Master Game). Thus it must be the first aim of the sorcerer to make her willed order out of this chaotic condition, to create a Magnetic Centre, to create a “soul”, as it were. Though the Chaos approach is very useful, I practice no apotheosis of Chaos. But also, Chaos is not a condition that has to be overcome, but which must be controlled to an extent that enables the sorcerer to exercise her will upon the multiverse. However, Chaos is necessary and can never be controlled completely, which is not desirable anyway. Chaos and Order must maintain their inherent moment of tension. A universe which is fully controlled, from which Chaos is abolished, is dead. In a universe where order is absent, intentional action is impossible. That’s why the intelligent sorcerer looks – as in every area of her life – for a harmonious balance. Chaos and Order are two polarities from which existence, as we know it, emerges.

Left-Hand Path:

I personally see myself going beyond the Right-Hand Path & the Left-Hand Path divide, at least as its modern, neo-satanic version is concerned. However, as the idea of the LHP has been such an important philosophical thread on my magickal path, I want to discuss it here. Genesis P-Orridge once said something about “the Path of No Distinction”. This, of course, is a Tantric idea. And Tantra is a good starting point to bring clear light into such a confused darkness, because, at its heart, the concept of the LHP developed in the context of Tantra. We should look there first to find some answers. So, I hear you ask, what is Tantra? I have two good excerpts I want to quote that explain Tantra very clearly:

“Tantra is … an attempt to place kama, desire, in every sense of the word, in the service of liberation… not to sacrifice this world for liberation’s sake, but to reinstate it, in varying ways, within the perspective of salvation. This use of kama and of all aspects of this world to gain both worldly and supernatural enjoyments (bhukti) and powers (siddhis), and to obtain liberation in this life (jivanmukti), implies a particular attitude on the part of the Tantric adept toward cosmos, whereby he feels integrated within an all-embracing system of micro-macrocosmic correlations.” (“Tantrism”, Andre Padoux, in: Encyclopedia of Religion”, edited by Mircea Eliade, Macmillan, New York, 1986, Vol. 14, pp. 272 – 76.)

David White adds: “Tantra is an Asian body of beliefs and practices which, working from the principle that the universe we experience is nothing other than the concrete manifestation of the divine energy of the godhead that creates and maintains the universe, seeking to ritually appropriate and channel that energy, within the human microcosmos, in creative and emancipatory ways.” (David Gordon White (ed.) 2000: Tantra in Practice, Princeton University Press, p. 9)

So, for those of you who thought that Tantra is some kind of “sex religion” – sorry, this isn’t the case. In India the LHP-Tantrika uses unorthodox, transgressive means to achieve bhukti, siddhis and jivanmukti. She cuts her bindings from consensus reality and thus liberates the enlightened nature of her limitless consciousness. She transcends the limitations of the “socially constructed reality”, of the society and culture she lives in. By this she often works with behaviours, symbols, ideas and things that appear abominable to her identity and that are tabooed in her culture. Thus sex, death, drugs and madness become methods of transforming mundane consciousness into a state of enlightenment. Because everything is One, part of the same divine source whose nature is limitless consciousness, there is nothing to fear or to be rejected. Thus the Tantrika is freed from the delusion of separateness and embraces all existence, including her body and the material world. Because in India the left hand is used to do “unclean” things, this path to liberation has been called the Left-Hand Path. Nevertheless it is presumed by spiritual scholars that both paths, the Right-Hand Patt and the Left-Hand Path, lead to enlightenment. Not so in the Western conception of RHP and LHP in modern times. Here the basic idea is that every system of religion, mysticism and magic(k) that belongs to the RHP ultimately leads to dissolution, the Unio Mystica or the absorption of personal consciousness into godhood. Contrary to this popular conception the LHP magician initiates a process that is known as Self-Deification. Rather than dissolving into God (or Buddhahood) by confronting the abyss of existence/non-existence, the LHP magician tries to resist the urge to be absorbed and chooses to separate her psyche from the “objective” universe & to “create a self-aware, individual, enlightened, immortal and semi-divine entity” out of her “subjective” consciousness (see Ross G. H. Shott: The Dark Arts of Immortality). To my mind, this way of defining the spiritual journey (called Setianism, developed by Michael Aquino, founder of the Temple of Set) is short-sighted and rather an intellectual affair. I think the urge is rather stronger to be not absorbed and to maintain a kind of an ego. Please keep in mind that the whole discussion about separation (LHP) & annihilation (RHP) is a neo-satanic fantasy! Buddha once said something to the effect that what looks like annihilation to the outsider, is innermost bliss & enlightenment to the meditator. And this is the point: what modern Western LHP philosophy doesn’t seem to get is the mystical insight that it’s not just an either/or option of preservation or annihilation of self, but about the simultaneity of being self & nonself, the irrational moment of the Coincidentia Oppositorum – the paradox of Oneness. Fuck Hegel, when he mocks that the Coincidentia Oppositorum is“the night, when all cows are black”! Because this is the point, where the otherwise very useful tools of logic, rationality & the intellect collapse. Here language fails or becomes mystical poetry (thus not being an expression of logic anymore). So basically, my scepticism concerning these modern LHP conceptions comes from the fact that trying to preserve one’s ego is born out of fear and “denies thousands of years of meditative experience” (Sweyn Plowright). Eight seconds spent in Samadhi and such philosophical constructions would be burned in the inmost flame of uttermost ecstasy! The whole question of this appears so important to me, because the way one perceives the Sacred Self (or True Self) determines one’s interpretation of what happened with Odhinn at his Yggdrasil Ordeal, where he sacrificed himself to himSelf – expressed in his enigmatic words: sjálf sjálfum mér (myself to myself).

However, one can identify certain threads that can be found in both definitions of the LHP. First of all, there is the rejection of the common values of morality. The Left-Hand Path sorcerer deconditions herself from the cultural fiction she was brought up with – the cultural memes, as it were. Of course this doesn’t lead to an aversion of the values of one’s own culture. Because choosing to be anti-cultural would just mean to submit to a form of control and herd conditioning as well. The core idea here is to break inner taboos, to confront oneself with inner fears, disgusts, dislikes, repulsions etc. and to free oneself from self-imposed limitations of one’s identity (a form of Ego Magic in chaospeak; Ego Magic is about change, not about maintaining the ego like in neo-satanic philosophy). Thus a more authentic, flexible, fluid and free state of Self-consciousness can be reached. This procedure has been called antinomianism in the Western LHP tradition. This should lead to a rejection of dogmatism in general, which enables the sorcerer to question the “truths” of any magic(k)al ‘tradition’ and any route or map that pretends to show the entire path towards perfection. This leads to the second point of a genuine LHP sorcerer from my point of view: the developing of one’s own system of sorcery. (Don Webb in his witty book about the Setian path, Uncle Setnakt’s Essential Guide to the Left-Hand Path, stresses the point that one should first master a Traditional system of magick, before one attempts to create one’s own system. To my mind, this makes sense.) The sources for this process have been given to us by Austin Osman Spare and chaos magick writers. Further the LHP sorcerer doesn’t fall into the trap of denying their own ego, body and the material world. All of these are tools to power and fulfilment. LHP sorcerers don’t deny this world, they embrace it! LHP sorcerers realize that every individual has to follow her own path, her own unique explorations of what is possible for the body/mind/spirit trinity, without being dependent upon any person or system. Finally it must be add that sorcerers on the LHP are not interested in the “common good”, “God”, the “state” or any other abstract idea that submits the individual to some “higher purpose”. In the first place the LHP sorcerer strives for Self-Empowerment and her own enlightenment.

I think all those ideas describing a LHP sorcerer could also apply to a Chaos Heathen or be applied by a Chaos Heathen to her own ends, though, when I consider this thoroughly, what could be not applied by a Chaos Heathen? So, if one wants to preserve the idea of the LHP in Chaos Heathenism or apply it in that context, the best definition of the LHP to me would be that one does not follow anyone or any fixed routes to enlightenment, but rather that one follows one’s own path. The Chaotick Path makes more sense.

Magick & Wyrd:

Ceremonial Magic(k), also the one with Crowley’s ‘k’, has been associated for a very long time with so-called ‘High Magic’, which suggests that there’s some kind of ‘Lower Magic’. In the late 19th & early 20th century this meant that High Magic strives towards spiritual aims, whilst Lower Magic was orientated towards material results, basically sorcery of the rural population – folk magic (see Phil Hine: Condensed Chaos). The divisions between matter/spirit appear as utter nonsense in the face of modern neurology, or even neurotheology. This is one of the reasons why I came to reject Ceremonial Magic(k) & turned towards Chaos & Rune Magic(k). Such dualistic conceptions, like High & Low Magic, are rooted in Platonic Idealism, which were perpetuated by the monotheistic cults, from which they entered the ideological superstructure of modern occultism with its pretentious obscurantism and pompous, ego-blown ritualism. I wholeheartedly reject such short-sighted, body- and world-denying dualisms.

Magick, as Dave Lee has demonstrated in his wonderful & brilliant book Chaotopia!, includes three things:

1) making things happen to consensus reality (sorcery),

2) making things happen to one’s own consciousness according to will (self-transformation) and

3) experiencing higher states of consciousness, often leading to unitary consciousness (mysticism). In the first case (sorcery) we manifest results in Midgard or, to put it simply, in the material world. In the second case (self-transformation) we change the world of our subjective experience, which is the only way we can experience reality in the end anyway.

Self-Transformation (making things happen to consciousness) often leads to mysticism (see Dave Lee: Chaotopia!). This process (mystical experience) cannot be easily recognized by others as a result in Midgard, probably that’s why it has been excluded from chaos magick – a drawback Dave Lee corrects in Chaotopia!. In the final analysis, magick is a sublime art, and either the results of a working are ‘material’ in its plain sense or they remain – for the sceptic – subjective. The reason why I want to include “chaos-mystical”(Dave Lee) operations into the concept of magick (freed from its Low/High magic divide) has wide-ranging philosophical implications that stem from my vision of the world. This vision is holistic, animistic, & mystical – suspending the immanence/transcendence divide. Here the idea of Wyrd is very useful, which I sometimes refer to as The Net of Power. This multivalent term is reflected in Indo-European mythology of Indra’s Web and, most importantly, in Teutonic sorcery in the idea of Wyrd and the myth of the Three Norns. “Wyrd can be translated as ‘Coming Into Being’. Wyrd is imagined as a tapestry woven by the three Norns, called Urd, Verdandi and Skuld, representing an interconnected ‘fabric’ underlying all events that is manifest in every shape. Urd – still resonating in the German syllable Ur – suggests the primal or ancient and stands for the unseen influences underlying an event. It is the unmanifest potential, wherein all possibilities exist. Skuld means ‘should’ – that, what should happen if all progresses without interference” (see Sweyn Plowright: True Helm). But here we can see the wisdom of the Germanic peoples of old: Skuld is not a deterministic future, like the idea of fate in Christian conceptions of time, but is one that can be influenced, that is changeable and open to ‘chance’. “Verdandi is the process of ‘Coming Into Being’, that which is becoming or manifesting, the present moment, which we perceive as the manifest world” (Sweyn Plowright: True Helm). The sorcerer empowers herself by realizing that this vast Net of Power exists. Dr. Hyatt has described this concept in a non-Germanic context as “a web of gigantic sets of interwoven neocid-correlation matrices where one tiny push in the right place causes an entire field to collapse” (see Christopher Hyatt: The Psychopath’s Bible). We pull an entire system of symbolic signs and correspondences over this Net of Power(or we can say, the system emerges from the Net), which builds up our magickal “psychocosm” (Phil Hine). This enables us to manipulate the Net, or our Wyrd,according to our congruent Will. Thus chaos Heathen sorcerers empowerthemselves to make their innermost dreams, desires, visions and their quest for wisdom flesh. Hence the definition of magick has been often described as the pursuit of power.

References:

– CHAOTOPIA! – Sorcery and Ecstasy in the Fifth Aeon, Dave Lee

– THE MASTER GAME – Pathways to Higher Consciousness, Robert S. De Ropp

– TRUE HELM – A Practical Guide to Nothern Warriorship, Sweyn Plowright

– THE PSYCHOPATH’S BIBLE – For the Extreme Individual, Dr. Christopher Hyatt with Dr. Jack Willis

– THE DARK ARTS OF IMMORTALITY: Transformation through War, Sex, & Magic,
Ross G. H. Shott

CONDENSED CHAOS – An Introduction to Chaos Magic, Phil Hine

Edred Thorsson’s Radio Free Runa talks at: http://edred.net/community/

The band Fire + Ice, especially the albums: RUNA & BIRDKING

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My Heathen Stall

myheathenstallimage1

We know that in Heathen Europe there were various kinds of altar, stall, etc utilised. My favourites personally are the thousands of votive matron stones that German warriors, enlisted in the Roman army, left all over Europe. And of course, people have been building altar-like structures in Europe since the stone ages – real arch-Heathenism there!

I’m not sure what other Heathens put on their altars but I thought it might be a little interesting to describe some of the elements of my own. As you can see from the photo, it is very cluttered; like some species of bird I compulsively decorate and redecorate my spiritual nest.

Inside the black box are various crystals, stones, letters, a leather collar, and so forth. There is also a pocket watch my Opa left me, a potent existential reminder. And inside the red box with the moon is a sea shell into which I periodically earth excess megin. Other than those things everything on my stall is completely visible in the photograph.

I’ll just pick through the objects, some of them have some wild stories! Some of them have stories I won’t tell; some of them I don’t understand the meaning of, but my unconscious says they should be there so they are. Incidentally, that painting to the left of the stall was painted by my Oma, who’s talents just keep developing. She almost gives Monet a scare these days!

Conspicuous in their absence are any representations of the divine. No large bust of Woden; no smirking image of Loki. There is a card (which is not visible) with a painting of a crow that reminds me of Odin but that is about as close as I get. Oh yes, and those two brass chess pawns, which I regard as symbolic of my ancestors watching over me.

The cards have various stories; the one on top has a picture of a glacier in New Zealand. It was sent to me by my friend Lorien, who now lives in the US (funny, a lot of my friends have done that…) Lorien and I had a number of wild magical and spiritual experiences together.

I’ve floated on the surface of cosmic oceans with him; our old all-night conversations used to completely dismantle and rebuild the very fabric of reality. So although I haven’t seen him in years, I have kept this symbol of our friendship on my altar because I know the love will never actually die, even if it doesn’t get as much energy these days.

That leads me to the little porcelain Dutch clogs on the corner of the table top. They’re actually ash trays – thankfully I don’t smoke anymore – and my mother gave them to me as a memento (however kitsch) of my Dutch heritage. Little windmills are painted on them, as well as decorative flowers.

To me these funny little shoes are a door into thousands of years of history to which I am personally rooted. To someone else they might be tasteless bric a brac. The wonders of spiritual expression!

The rusted iron bar across the front is of course my iron spirit antenna, the getting of which is documented in this very journal. Next to to it lies a piece of wood sculpted into smooth shapes by the ocean, a reminder of the sea’s creative power. And next to that an antique screwdriver I use to carve runes – a symbol of humanity’s creative power.

The creative theme continues – on the right front corner is a portrait my Opa drew of me when I was a child. Its slightly to harsh and angular to represent me, but it captures something, a rough-hewn movement that a more finished image would likely lose. On top of it is a picture of my twin nephews; so again the ancestral theme is dominant on my stall.

Above that is my business card, the business of which I intend to revamp as a part of the project of Fearless Honesty. And above that a badge for The Greens. I detest the notion of political parties, but here in Australia at least The Greens seem to be the only party, left or right, to be free of hypocrisy and double-dealing.

They’re also the only party that take conservation seriously, an issue that I personally think all Heathens should be concerned about – again regardless of their political leanings. If we do not preserve the planet that preserves us then the luxury of debating politics will quickly be lost, along with everything else!

Up the back you can see a flyer for Hex Magazine. Yes, everyone knows that I’m fanatically in love with Hex, it being generations ahead of any other Heathen publication. Simultaneously conservative and progressive, it draws together a huge spectrum of the international Heathen community, which is so important given the endless stupid debates we Heathens get into to.

More importantly free of the brittle posturing that ruins the writing of most Heathens (even ones who in person are very genuine people). Hex restored my faith in Heathenism as a social phenomenon; I had come to hold most Heathens in such low esteem and avoided all but a few.

Yet the existence of Hex has somewhat refuted my cynicism and I’m very proud to be able to contribute to it (incidentally, I write a regular runic column for their e-newsletter, you can subscribe here).

In many respects ancestry refers to much more than just cultural or familial heritage. For example, I regard my musical, magical and philosophical influences as ancestors, for they have all nourished and shaped me. Even though Hex and I are contemporary entities, I nevertheless accord this marvellous magazine with the status of a revered ancestor.

Hex is the very first manifestation of strong, vulnerable, open and honest Heathenism with heart. I’m sure it will inspire many more such worthy manifestations.

Wedged between the thunder stone and the black box is a folded up Sufi cap, a gift to me from the Jerrahi order when I was initiated. People don’t realise it, but the secret heart of Sufism is very similar to some of the fundamental elements of Heathenry. That said, I do not practice Sufi ritual or the like any more as Woden tends to get summoned all to easily and that can leave me at risk of committing all kinds of inter-faith faux pas!

Nevertheless, the Sufis have taught me a great deal. Incidentally, the Sufi circle to which I am connected is the first spiritual or religious group I’ve ever encountered where every single person involved is of unimpeachably high calibre. Those Sufis leave us Heathens for dead on that front, I’m sad to say. Lift your game, sons and daughters of Rig!

I have to keep some mysteries to myself, but the blue ceramic Japanese cup with the flowers in the middle of the stall was a gift to me from John AKA Volksfreund. When I do practical rune magic I put the sigils in there to slowly brew and seep into the well of wyrd for me. It seems to work quite well, though as you can see at the moment I don’t have any spells active.

Oh yes, and the CD case on the right with the Berkano-Eihwaz-Berkano emblem is a copy of :Fire:Water:Ash:, my band Ironwood’s debut album, which has just come out (and which all readers of this journal should buy, just click the above link ;-) ;-)

:Fire:Water:Ash: represents victory after many, many years of struggle and I still cannot quite believe it exists. It’s an achievement I am very proud of, and as the most recent addition to my stall, and a marker of bright future possibilities, I will leave you there.

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Woden, Fear, and Frey

I am very much made after Woden’s form. I am a writer, musician and poet. I am no stranger to extremes of life, consciousness and the rest. I am an inveterate occultist; a wanderer of worlds and of this world; I tend to shroud myself in ambiguity and mystery (so I am told my reputation often seems to stand at any rate).

I don’t fit too well in consensus reality, and I don’t think Woden fit too well in the consensus reality of the old Heathens – too dark, contrary and mystical. The Outsider is a rather clichéd posture from which to live one’s life, and it certainly doesn’t define me as it once did; but its always been there, like a raven perched on a blue-cloaked shoulder.

Like Woden, I have a great deal of power at my disposal, but also a great deal of vulnerability. Woden might be the savage inciter of ecstatic fury (and this is the meaning of his name); but he is also the lonely old man on the moor, melancholy and (in my own subjective experience) suffering from wounds which have never fully healed.

Most of my life this pattern – intense power but also intense vulnerability – has made things difficult. Many times I have felt moved by awesome forces within me, yet been unable to bring them into manifestation due to a host of limitations, as well as some rather brutal depression and anxiety issues.

These latter two are now pretty much conquered, but as my personal alchemy unfolds I am beginning to come to grips with the root of my vulnerability: fear.

Let me explain what I mean. Often in my life I have held back, not brought my power, my will into action. I’ve retreated; I’ve given up without being forced to; I’ve convinced myself to bow down to resistance; I’ve deferred to others even though I know better. I am an unconventional person, yet I have somehow tried to force myself to fit within the conventional world.

This habit of not rocking the boat of those with more conventional (read: often boring and pointless) ideals, values, beliefs and habits is a bad one. I feel I should be subverting the closed borders of other peoples’ lives, not compromising on my wide-ranging spirit in order to keep those closed borders free of disturbance.

Of course in many ways, at many times, I have done just that: thrown spanners in the works of other peoples’ blinkered lives, and I’d like to think that this has had a net positive effect on both them and the world in general. I think that expanding the bounds of what might be called consensus reality is a good thing by definition.

But many other times I’ve compromised my power, passion and potential for the sake of my fear, my insecurity. And that has hurt me and sometimes others, I openly admit! It is a kind of dishonesty, a betrayal of my deepest worth – that which is given to me by Woden. And it also has caused me to harm others, whether by act or omission of act.

As far as I can tell the recently invented Innangard/Utangard distinction so popular in some modern Heathen circles is usually deployed to justify laziness of opinion and spirit. It often seems to breed stagnation and stupidity (as well as a mind-blowingly over-simplified understanding of the Heathens of old).

It seems not much better than the attitude of those people who are glued to the tube 24 hours a day. When I tell people I never watch TV – and don’t in fact own one – they incredulously ask me how I found out about the news. This response revealed the shocking impoverishment of these peoples’ horizons. The Innangard/Utangard crew aren’t much better in most cases.

(Not to mention the fact that television news has got to be far and away the most superficial, biased, sensationalised and idiotic information source you can find – other perhaps than blog websites pertaining to weird fringe Heathen mysticism of course).

I would much prefer to be confused, lost, and contradictory than mired in comfortable illusions. I would much rather walk paths of shadow and pain than slumber in slovenly, ego-bloated ignorance.

I once gave myself to Runa – to Mystery – and when I offered myself, Mystery laughed. “But I already own you, my dear, and always have” was her response. I just wish I could hold onto that with more conviction in the face of my fear.

Satisfied that I am like Woden, who violates the very ethics of the cultures he is at the heart of; who speaks with the dead and schemes with a vision that no one else can perceive; who is willing to kill himself on the world tree in order to encounter an illuminated dialogue with Runa (Mystery)? I hope some small resemblance is apparent.

I’m not saying I hold even a match to Woden’s bonfire; I am little more than a small spark that has blown off from his great conflagration, his river of fire, and I pray that I become a precursor, a way-finder, for the inferno to spread with vigour and without the crooked poison that some so-called Heathens carry in their hearts.

But that will never happen so long as I let fear dictate my actions. And over the years I have concluded that Woden alone cannot help me shatter this fetter, this Valknut.

In recent weeks I have more and more strongly confronted this blockage and wound within myself, this terrible fear-foe. And confronted too its ally, dishonesty, self-deception, a willingness to blind myself to my own thoughts and feelings for the sake of foolish beliefs or what I perceive to be the comfort of others.

I have been racking up terrible debts in the name of fear and dishonesty, debts to both myself and others. At the end of last year I started paying these debts and the result has been massive upheaval in my personal life, indeed in my life as a whole. Much pain and sorrow has emerged from this course of action, pain and sorrow I’ve been pretending I could avoid.

It is not unlike the current economic crisis, which was forged out of unscrupulous individuals’ beliefs that they could defer the consequences of their financial duplicity and rash greed forever. I do not like to compare myself to such persons, but the comparison is there to be made and I do not entertain illusions about my failings.

And yet, now I find myself for the most part facing up to these debts, and though it hurts terribly, I am glad that I am setting imbalances right and owning up to my own needs, wants and character.

I think this is a solid basis for proceeding in my life, or at least I now have the opportunity to forge such a basis, if I can be unflinching in prosecuting this transformative debt repaying.

Fear and dishonesty go together, however. To be honest with myself, and then to act on that, requires a lot of courage, or more precisely, provokes a lot of fear. You can see how as I seek to uproot my self-deceptions I thereby provoke a lot of suffering. And as I say, I do not believe that Woden is able alone to help me shatter this fetter. I need other kinds of guidance.

And a few days ago I realised, based on clues that have been offered to me over the last year, just who it is that might aid me – the great Veraldar guð or World(ly) God – Frey. But more on that is to come…

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At the Art Gallery

(Warning: I use the term “arch-Heathen” in this post. It refers to the “original Heathens” from back when Europe was a pre-modern, pre-Christian place. I don’t know who first coined this term).

I’ve found myself at a strange loose end these last few days, following the dismantling/collapse of one of the most important things in my life. Consequently I’ve been staying at the home of my band mates, and because of the time of year the world around me rather reflects the limbo I have entered.

Today more than most I knew that I needed to move, evolve, shift my consciousness. I found myself alone, in solitude, and while there was a temptation to raid my band mates’ disgustingly huge CD collections, I know myself. I had to get the blood moving through my limbs and brain.

Uncertain where to head, particularly on a glaring and disgusting Sydney summer day, I called on Woden as the Wanderer and invited him to set my feet on the correct path. He responded; my journey took me into the city, then had me roam in a seemingly accidental spiral, which tightened and tightened around the New South Wales Art Gallery.

I love the NSW Art Gallery. I love visiting the old statuary of Hindu gods, today pausing in particular to acknowledge an image of Vishnu surrounded by his many avatars. I wondered idly if Woden is not in fact an avatar of Vishnu, and I an avatar of Woden – an avatar of an avatar! I love the Hindu gods – they’re like friendly and well-known cousins to my own Indo-European spiritual forebears.

I love staring into the infinity of Aboriginal dot art. These huge canvasses seem at first to have little merit, being covered in uniform rows of white dots. The magic lies in staring at them for an extended period of time. Only machines make perfectly uniform lines, and so the slight variations in the arrangement of the dots create visual illusions and beautiful trance states.

Folk glance at these images for but a handful of seconds and then wander off, thinking Aboriginal art to be little more than primitive splotches. If they exhibited even a little depth or patience, they’d discover whole universes.

But the reason Woden led me to the Art Gallery was that, although I did not know it, the current feature exhibition was on Impressionism, with Monet in the starring role.

“All I have ever done is try to convey my experience before nature” – Claude Monet, 1912.

I love Monet. He is my favourite painter. He paints with light. His work does not represent reality; it presents for you the thing itself, the very experience and spirit of the thing or place that he has painted. Look too close and you’ll fall in. When I behold his paintings I smell the grass or the snow, feel the wind, the taste of dawn light or afternoon shadow. My understanding of the natural world was grossly incomplete before I encountered his work.

I was fortunate enough to see a major Monet exhibition a few years ago and in the final room was a massive water lily painting. It literally filled the entire room with colour and radiance and it took me some 15 minutes acclimatising before I could bring myself to even look at it, let alone really engage with it.

The waterlilies were produced in the final years of Monet’s life, and they represent the pinnacle of his work. Vast multiverses await anyone brave enough to really gaze into these images. From the pond in his own back yard Monet presented the whole fabric of Being for all to see. What artist could ever even dream of competing with that?

It doesn’t work with the prints you can buy of his work, either. Mass-production ruins the spell. Only the actual works by the actual artist can take you into the magic.

Seeing these marvellous images, being thrown into deeply altered states of consciousness by these paintings, caused me to reflect on something I read recently in an article that touched on the “folkish versus universalist” debate in Heathenry.

Regular readers will know that I consider this debate to be a barren waste of time, and will also know that I happily incorporate elements of both points of view into my own – which to me just demonstrates how vacuous the argument is.

This particular article argued that extremely strict and rigourous historical reconstruction is needed for modern Heathenry and that anything less is a deep affront and offence to the gods. The worst of the lot, the argument went, were those bloody universalists, off syncretising Heathenry with other traditions.

Of course many universalists are not in fact syncretists, so this particular person was obviously a bit of an expert at executing straw men.

And of course, there is a logical flaw in arguing that the gods would be offended if we’re not strict reconstructionists – because from what I can see that view could only be supported by Unsubstantiated Personal Gnosis, and is therefore an example of the kind of creative license this article regarded as anathema.

There is of course the passage in Havamal that asks if you know how to carve, stain, offer, sacrifice, etc. But there is no passage in that poem that runs “and if you don’t reconstruct exactly how we did these things then we’ll get pissed at you”.

There is also an emphasis on doing things the “right” way – but again I can’t see any historical basis for equating this with hard reconstructionism, though it seems likely that being familiar with history would rather be of assistance.

Given that my strange chaos magic-influenced runic experiments seem to work I can only conclude that the gods are Not in fact adverse to innovation, though I suppose keeping it in the spirit of the tradition would be good manners (whatever “the spirit of the tradition” means – another matter of arbitrary opinion I fear).

This isn’t to say we should throw out the historical record of course – on the contrary, it is a source of marvelous riches. Often when you do the research you find that the arch-Heathen’s view on a particular issue was much more interesting than the psuedo-historical stuff that folk sneak into modern Heathenism all the time.

But just because it is old and original doesn’t mean it is the best – the Heathen cultures of yore certainly didn’t agree with one another on how to do things, and in the meantime I think we can safely dispense with human sacrifice and the like.

Look at me – I started by rhapsodising about the rich experiences afforded by Monet’s work and now I am debating ideas and ideology. What a degeneration! It troubles me that so many Heathens are so eager to debate theory and ideology but so few are willing to go and directly engage with the magic of the ancestral traditions, the natural world, the runes, and so forth.

(In fact, given that the arch-Heathens seemed far too busy living life to be splitting intellectual hairs, it seems distinctly syncretistic and unHeathen to get obsessed about distinctions like folkish/universalist).

The point of my questioning the hard reconstructionist view that the only valid sources for modern Heathenry come from the original Heathens is this: what if the spiritual and cultural current of Heathenry never really went away, but has instead been happily manifesting itself in all sorts of guises since the Conversion?

My instinct is to say that this possibility could only ever be the truth. What else would guide us back into the arms of history but the latent Heathen intuition and instinct that still lives within us?

And so I turn to Monet, whose art – like the Greek temple Heidegger invokes in his landmark essay “On The Origin Of The Work Of Art” – redeems us to a reverent relationship to nature.

This reverent relationship is deeply scored in the art, mythology and physical culture that the arch-Heathens left behind. And yet I would argue that its most refined and ultimate expression does not occur until nine hundred odd years after the Conversion: on the doorstep of nihilistic modernity Monet erected the final distillation of the Heathen-animist experience.

Monet is not the only one – Nietzsche, Heidegger, Moorcock, Cave, Von Till – the list goes on, artists, thinkers, writers, musicians who, whether consciously or not, have expressed in powerful terms the threads of arch-Heathen consciousness.

We would be utterly insane not to draw upon these living, breathing (though concealed) manifestations of the life-urge which shaped arch-Heathen culture and consciousness in the first place.

In Hinduism, a useful and valid Indo-European cognate to Heathenism, there are always new developments, as great humans are elevated to godhood and as cultural mores shift. For our ancestors it was no different – we need only compare the different branch cultures of old Heathenry. Modern Heathenry will not be truly reconstructionist until it whole-heartedly embraces innovation.

Again, this is not to dismiss the reconstructionist project, which is utterly needed if we are to have a fluid connection to the Well of Memory. I am as amused and disappointed by the endless hordes of shallow and idiotic pseudo-Heathen writings and articles as anyone else. But if we dismiss the impulse that produces these well-meant attempts then the game is over, too.

Look at it another way: as soon as we reduce modern Heathenry to hard reconstructionism we are left with two choices: either continue to draw on post-Conversion Heathen manifestations such as Monet’s art and thus become hypocrites; or abandon computers, modern languages, stop eating potatoes, and countless other absurd sacrifices. The reconstructionist project might be necessary but it sure as hell is not sufficient to produce a genuinely flourishing modern Heathenism.

Me? I’ll be letting Woden guide me to the art gallery, where I’ll gorge my soul on Monet and listen to the advance reference tracks of the new Ironwood album (about to come out) on my mp3 player. And hope that one day the focus of mainstream Heathenry will be the experience, the thing itself, and not irresolvable debates about what amount to arbitrary rules.

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Heathenism with Heart

If there has been a subtle trajectory to my recent journal updates (and at least one commenting reader has laid the theme right open) it is the importance of love in Heathen spiritual practice.

Generally speaking Heathen authors have had little to say on love. Plenty to say on honour, industriousness, fidelity and so forth. Plenty to say on being staunch, walking your talk, and all the rest. But very little about love.

Thus the common style of Heathen writings is brittle and shallow, which doesn’t make a lot of sense given that we are supposedly digging down into the guts of our spiritual heritage with this stuff. And worse, I often hear (or personally see) that these loud-mouths very rarely live true to their words.

It is possible that modern Heathen writers have avoided the theme of love because of the desire to distance themselves from association with Christianity. Christianity is (at least in theory) a religion which focussed heavily on love. Modern Heathens, struggling to free themselves of Christian influence, would therefore understandably avoid this theme.

However I think this avoidance comes at the expense of an important element of Heathenry. What binds generations together? What binds the gods to one another? What drives the desire to create, survive, evolve? What is the source of the inspiration for craftsmanship, ingenuity, and creativity? What gives hope in dark winters?

If you withhold love from a baby, not touching it or attending it, it will die. Indeed, without love you might well not even bother to feed the child. Without love, we are all baby murderers. That’s an extreme example, but you can see my point.

So can modern Heathenry proceed as it has, without any acknowledgement of love? All pre-modern, low technology cultures require love to survive – you’ve got to have a powerful motivation to keep going in the face of extreme adversity.

I do not think anyone can honestly call themselves a “reconstructionist” Heathen if love is not an important part of their life and thinking. And yet many Heathens I have met have not so much as reflected on this theme. They would rather embroil themselves in clichés, dogma and one dimensional thought.

When I first read Hex Magazine I was deeply astounded because never before had I encountered a Heathen publication with the necessary vulnerability and honesty to express love. It was deeply intimidating because it forced me to recognise just how much I had divorced love from my own Heathenry and replaced it with superficial gleam.

Even though I desperately wanted to add my voice to Hex it took some 18 months to teach myself how to write with the necessary raw honesty and therefore be able to offer the magazine anything even approaching the general standard of their articles. The thing that, to me, sets Hex apart is that it is edited and presented in the spirit of Heathenism with Heart.

Despite the adolescent grand-standing of so many Heathens, vulnerability remains a truer mode of being Heathen. When we are vulnerable to the whims of our deities; when we are able to respond to those around us rather than just react; when we are able to feel the painful contradictions of being a human being and keep going. To me this is the heart of Heathenry. This is love.

If we are serious about immersing ourselves in the cosmological experience of the ancestral Heathens, which means living the interconnected matrix of seasons, nature and time, then we need to carry ourselves with the greatest gratitude and respect. None of us can survive alone; we are deeply dependent on the world around us.

The old Heathens had a worldly religion. It required deep love of the natural universe and this love – I believe – finds its root in simply remembering that our existence is entirely thanks to the generosity of the natural world that sustains us.

But of course love is more than just having an open heart to one’s community, history and natural environment. Love is also a key to deeper doors. It can carry us into deeply magical realms; it can purify or purge us and thereby render us whole/holy; it can guide us into deep creativity, determination and joy.

When I remember to listen to my heart my life begins to make sense. When I forget my heart, stagnation or chaos follows. The heart is like a compass, pointing us to True North, reading the magnetic fields of love. No amount of Heathen posturing, dressing up or one-upmanship will ever get us near to the heart of Heathenry. We need love to do that.

Arguably Woden is a deity of önd, the divine breath that brings inspiration and ecstasy. This breath flows through the heart, feeding and nourishing it. And Woden is a god of the heart – for even though his ethics are truly beyond good and evil (and indeed in his purest form his force is more prototypical than even love or hate), he moves from the heart, whether it be love of wisdom, love of women, love of chaos or love for his children.

Perhaps the deepest motivation that guides Woden is love of creation – for even his most violent fury is a manifestation of abundant force, energy and change. He is a sinister god to be sure, but let us not slander him into total shadow!

For even though I am not always convinced that he has my best interests in mind, I still trust the One Eyed God implicitly. Because I have felt his heart. I have felt his love and it is a love more intense and explosive than any human heart could hold.

This vast power, this river of fire, this ardent desire, is available to anyone willing to sink down into the subterranean streams of Woden’s being. Charged with it we can travel anywhere in the worlds. We might find ourselves blooming like a tree that had been on the edge of drought-death and then suddenly lathed by cloud-burst.

I believe that modern Heathenry needs heart more than anything. It needs love. It is impossible to build community, to build cordial relationships with gods and land spirits, without love.

Too often modern Heathenry has been content to found itself on brittle dogma or rigid arrogance. The truth is that only our love for the gods, for the old ways in this new day (to paraphrase someone very wise), and for each other, can effect the alchemy needed to turn Heathenry from a quack fringe faith into a deeply soulful and fertile cultural movement.

And though it might not be directly obvious, this post follows directly from the recent Xylem & Phloem thread. The heart is a circulatory organ, and generosity – the power of exchange, energy circulation (Gebo) – was a fundamental element of old Heathen society. Without heart and love we can never be anything more than self-deceiving late modern nihilists.

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Xylem and Phloem Part Four: Attracting the Flow of the Waters

I’ve focussed a lot on the process of improving one’s fitness for containing or channelling the flow of waters; and on the delicate balance between ego and dissolution that this seems to imply.

Now I’d like to turn to the other end of the continuum (though I reiterate that the continuum is circular, not linear) and consider ways to increase our ability to attract flows of water from the well.

As with the other posts in this theme, I cannot claim to be an expert in this area. If anything I am drawing on prototypical past experiences and speculatively developing a sketch for possible themes to develop. The comments made here are neither exhaustive nor absolute.

As previously discussed, the art of attracting the flow of the waters requires a certain kind of receptivity; if we act from our conscious will power we’ll get nowhere. However this receptivity needs to be distinguished from simple stagnation or passivity, too. We have to present ourselves to wyrd in opportune ways in order to garner its favours.

In this sense I draw a certain amount of parallel between heathen cosmology and Taoism. In Taoism the trick seems to be the art of being able to place yourself in positions sensitive to the Tao. While it takes a fit vessel to get to that sweet spot, once there the individual’s actions become free, easy, and powerfully amplified by the tide of the Tao.

I am not a surfer, but surfing makes a great analogy. When a surfer catches a wave their ability to move through the water is increased massively, and that power comes from the wave, not from the surfer.

Yet in order to catch that wave the surfer needs to be a strong enough swimmer; needs to know how to judge the waves as they come in; and needs a little luck too. Similarly, once on the wave it is the surfer’s individual skill at managing the flow of tidal force so that they are not dumped by the crashing waves.

In catching the wave, which is analogous to attracting the flow of waters, the surfer has to be receptive in the sense of putting themselves into a position where the wave will come at the right point in its development and let that wave collect them. However this receptivity requires strength and action – if they just floated inactive in the water surfers would get very bored.

Broadly speaking there seem to be two approaches to attracting the flow of waters. The first is broadly psychological; the second is more physical.

This first approach amounts to doing things that sharpen one’s imagination, perception and desire to act. I have found, for example, that rune readings and other forms of divination have often been catalysts for all kinds of change and new developments in my life. Somehow simply reading the patterns can better situate us within the sweet spots of the unfolding weave.

This might be analogous (though not identical) with the quantum physics discovery that by observing a process we change it – that is, observer and observed are interconnected and affect one another.

I say analogous but not identical because I do not want to indulge in the pseudo-scientific silliness that spiritual people get into sometimes when they confuse science as a source of inspiration with their own (usually much cruder) notions. There are similarities in the quantum physics portrait of reality and the heathen one, but let’s not make foolish claims about either.

Perhaps another aspect of why divination can help us get into a good position for attracting the flow of the waters is that it puts before us the horizon of time’s uncertainty; and similarly it thrusts us potentially into the possibility of the new.

Of course there are many ways to achieve encounters with uncertainty and possibility. A trivial example: I recently subscribed to National Geographic magazine for just this purpose.

Because it documents a wide range of subjects from all over the world I think that this subscription will help me keep perspective on the immediate bounds of my life and also give me some inspiration – because it’s a marvellous world out there!

Reading in general can serve this purpose – when I think about how much more energetic and empowered I became after reading Seidways I want to laugh! Brilliant works like that can permanently open you up to more flow. In fact, that’s another book I need to reread.

Nietzsche has the same effect on me; so did Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, which got to me so thoroughly that I read it in one sitting (no mean feat, it is some 800 pages).

Related, but more physical, methods for attracting the flow include meeting new people, entering new social circles, and adopting the old chaos magic technique of transgressing against one’s characteristic patterns (that Crowley quote from my last post gives a good example of this technique).

We might feel some fear and resistance to expanding our horizons, yet usually once we’ve taken the risk we never look back.

Something about the thrill of the new can draw in plenty of watery nourishment and dissolve blockages. However I should mention that this is not enough on its own – if we are constantly dependent on novelty then we are unlikely to commit to anything long enough to bring it to fruition.

Hence there is the gamut of more stable spiritual practices – performing ritual; chanting; using music as a mood-altering device; communicating in various ways with ideas, archetypes, gods, ancestors and spirits. Even just getting out of the house more!

I find that when I acknowledge divine beings on a regular basis my life starts to build momentum. If I fall off that bandwagon then things tend to get more confused, lost and bewildered. There are plenty of powerful entities out there that are more than happy to lend you their support in exchange for a bit of love and attention, but you’ve got to make the effort.

Which leads to a general principle – related to the rune Gebo – that seems to govern the art of attracting the flow of the waters. Namely that this is a receptivity in which you need to get the flow started yourself by giving something – perhaps something of your ego attachments, or it might be time, or money, or support to friends or family, or anything really.

Nothing comes from nothing. This might be part of why ancestral heathens emphasised the importance of generosity so much: a leader who spreads the wealth around encourages a richer, healthier, more vibrant community and perhaps attracts more positive megin (power) and flows from the wells. It might be that the return on the investment far outweighs the initial cost.

Similarly, I have decided recently in my practice that I need to find a better space to work from. Where I am just isn’t up to scratch, and it demoralises me sufficiently that I almost don’t want to do any work at all!

I chose it because it was cheap, but that has actually ended up costing me time, motivation, money and optimism. I need to expend a bit of energy so that I am situated more fully in the path of the flow of the waters of life throughout the world tree.

It should be evident that much of what I have described here is pretty everyday, trivial sort of stuff. But I think spirituality is just as much about manifest reality, or just as much about our deeds in Midgard, as it is anything lofty or subterranean. As above, so below makes just as much sense if we invert it.

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Xylem and Phloem Part Three: the Vessel and Ego

Since my previous journal update I’ve had time not only to reflect more on this idea and project of perfecting the vessel but also a fair bit of very stimulating correspondence with various insightful folk I have the pleasure to be in contact with.

There’s nothing like the sympathetic exploration of other points of view to help you develop, expand, or clarify your own. In this case, I feel might be in a position to find a point of agreement between my own rather anti-ego model of spiritual development and the more ego-focussed models of modern Satanism, Rune Gilders, etc… and also perhaps the more subtle considerations of ego made by Jung and others.

As I have previously illustrated, my spiritual philosophy boils down to a few simple propositions, informed by the old heathen worldview of memory and ørlög:

1) Everything is interconnected, yet each individual entity is unique and divine;

2) Any individual being requires nourishment from the flow of the water of life throughout the worlds (yes folks, that is a metaphor!) if it is to flourish;

3) Isolation and separation cause amnesia, confusion and death;

4) Opening to connectedness is (or can be) terrifying because it forces us to confront our finitude, no matter how good for us it might be or even how good it can feel;

5) Therefore the spiritual task is to develop one’s capacity to sustain connection to what is beyond one – to become a good vessel and conduit for the flow of the waters of life throughout the World Tree.

A corollary of point 5 might be that we need to find our right place in the order of things in order to facilitate good flow of the waters, but this is a new idea to me and I don’t yet know what it means.

Now I generally take a dim view of the ego, that is, the physical and psychological sense of being a separate will or being, a sense which can run the whole gamut from reptile brain reactivity to hyper-cerebral intellectualising. I suppose I have generally regarded the ego as armour, blockage, analogous to the hardened arteries that bad diet and poor exercise cause.

The ego on this view prevents us from being good vessels for the flow of the water of life because it occludes our connection to that flow. Rather than embrace ego magic as a model for growth or transformation, my view seems to imply that the opposite of ego magic – ego destruction – is the door to positive change or evolution.

However in the process of dismantling the ego (which is an ongoing process as the ego is very durable) we risk also destroying the integrity of our vessel, which is after all a finite being. In order to be truly connected to the whole of the Tree we need to retain some specificity, some particularity. In this way the age old philosophical problem of universal and particular is transcended in an almost Hegelian fashion.

A word at this point is called for in relation to the terms Left Hand Path and Right Hand Path. These days in the western world Left Hand Path seems to refer to spiritual practices related to ego development; where as Right Hand Path seem to refer to spiritual practices related to devotion. People like to think of the Left as ‘evil’ and the Right as ‘good’, though such Manichean ideas need have little place in heathenry or magical practice more generally.

This distinction irritates me for two reasons. Firstly, it implies that unless you are a budding ego-maniac you cannot be interested in your own spiritual (or other) growth or development. Clearly a load of rubbish! Secondly, it implies that if your spiritual focus is largely devotional then you are more of a dim-witted follower than an exciting maverick. Again, a load of rubbish.

However there is a deeper reason why the distinction irritates me – that being that these terms, Left and Right Hand Path, do not refer originally to the goal of spiritual practice, but more the journey taken.

The Left Hand Path is the quick but dangerous road to union with God; this is the road that the well-known Sufi Irena Tweedie took under the tutelage of an Indian Sufi master. The Right Hand Path is the slower, but surer, road to union with the divine.

Of course, some Left Hand Path practices involve the use of transgression in order to free the individual from slavery to their received social mores, but if anything this sort of practice is part and parcel of ego destruction – dismantling the individual’s concrete sense of identity and throwing them into a much more vast ocean of possibilities.

Coming back from my digression – how do I find a rapprochement with ego magic? David Tacey makes the point that the ego is an archetype too. Ego has its mythic patterns of manifestation and withdrawal just like any transpersonal being, deity, or indeed the tides of history or the flow of the waters.

If that is the case then a simple linear determination to shatter the ego becomes itself an egotistical project. As I’ve quoted before – “the struggle to free myself of restraints becomes my very shackles” (Meshuggah).

In order to perfect the vessel – to effect a union of universal and particular within our being – we need to have a more organic – and less egotistical – relationship to the ego.

Now my impression of most self-professed ego magicians is that they really don’t grasp this point at all. That isn’t a surprise, since I am suggesting that we need to develop the ego in non-egotistical ways!

Since we cannot do away with our particularity (not if we want to stay alive) we need to find a way to prevent it from occluding our capacity for opening to the flow of waters; but also to find a way to house it in our lives so that it might even enhance our ability to see the forest for the trees, to be good conduits for the flow of waters.

And there’s a lovely seeming contradiction for you – how to invite the ego to serve us in remembering the bigger picture of the World Tree in its full all-encompassing and connecting (and ego humbling) glory?

If anything, Woden is a master of dissolving impossible conundrums. Perhaps he has an answer to this almost alchemical conclusion that my reflections on heathen cosmology and spirituality have led to? Feel free to drop by and make some suggestions, One Eye… and in the meantime the practices outlined in my last post could all provide a good start.

Oh yeah, one final thought, a realisation I had after one of my bands (Sword Toward Self) recently shared the stage with Aleister Crowley-inspired progressive death metal act Aeon of Horus (who incidentally have just released an utterly astounding album).

Crowley on the one hand seemed an inveterate ego-magician; yet on the other hand he seemed obsessed with the fine art of dissolution. I wonder whether his method of keeping the ego groomed for maximum flow was to indulge its excesses – then shift just as dramatically to something new?

Perhaps by playing the ego up to the hilt he absolved it of its power, not unlike a paradoxical injunction in Ericksonian style psychotherapy. If so, then once again it seems we can draw yet another straight line through from Crowley to chaos magic. I have to go back and re-read the Book of Lies perhaps… here are some of Crowley’s own comments about the writing of said marvellous book:

“One of these chapters bothered me. I could not write it. I invoked Dionysus with particular fervour, but still without success. I went off in desperation to `change my luck’, by doing something entirely contrary to my inclinations. In the midst of my disgust, the spirit came over me, and I scribbled the chapter down by the light of a farthing dip.. When I read it over, I was as discontented as before, but I stuck it into the book in a sort of anger at myself as a deliberate act of spite towards my readers”.

I hate to say it… but this sort of thing reminds me of me.

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Xylem and Phloem Part Two: Perfecting the Vessel

An initial question to pose, following last week’s journal entry, is this: how might we unblock and expand our conduit to the waters of the tree? And the related question – how might we make ourselves a more fitting vessel for the waters?

Intimately connected to the task of making oneself a fit vessel is the question of how we then invite the waters to flow through us. I think there is actually some overlap between the two tasks – the task of making oneself a good vessel and the task of attracting the flow of the waters.

These are nevertheless distinct undertakings and I will therefore consider them as such, although ultimately both tasks call upon us at the same time – we might find ourselves shifting from one to the other quite smoothly. They tend to also help one another build momentum; it is very difficult to get anywhere if we focus on one of the tasks to the exclusion of the other.

For our purposes, there are three aspects to being a good vessel for the flow of the waters of life (as Bil Linzie calls them). Firstly we must be open so that the waters can enter us. Secondly we must be strong and flexible to allow them rich and full manifestation. Thirdly we must be sufficiently non-attached that they can pass away back into the Wells once more.

As with the two tasks, these three aspects of being a good vessel are interrelated; we undertake all three  simultaneously. As such, practices which engage all of these aspects are particularly useful.

A word on UPG and the question of deriving modern heathen magical techniques from historical lore is in order at this point.

As far as UPG goes, I consider the approach to Germanic spirituality I am here exploring to be well grounded in both lore and personal experience (mine and other peoples’). As such I am dispensing with further exposition/justification – if you aren’t clear on where I am coming from you need to read some of my other journal entries, such as the first Xylem & Phloem post.

While there is a sound argument that we must derive magical practices from historical lore, I personally am not so attached to this. What matters to me is the experience, not so much the method.

Of course the method used influences the kind of experience we have, but as I’ve noted before, listening to or performing black metal is just as berzerkergang inducing as biting a shield before entering combat. So let us not split hairs!

The most important thing is to be true to the spirit, the essence, of heathen magic. Plenty of material I’ve read on strict reconstructed magical technique is dry, uninspired and leaves one with the impression that the author in question has never actually practiced any of their tricks.

Right, here we go with five general things you can do to become a better vessel.

Meditation

Yes, I know, there really isn’t any evidence that heathen magicians did this sort of thing. But their Indo-European cousins and ancestors did (and do) – and given how much Edred Thorrson relies on that connection in the Nine Doors of Midgard I think its safe for me to do the same (gosh, I’m so bloody open about my ‘inauthentic’ influences, don’t you think?)

Meditation is a word which gets used in many different ways. I mean it in its most basic form – stilling and focussing one’s conscious mind. I have been meditating every day for the last three or so weeks and it makes a huge difference.

My method is quite basic – I just lie down, set my alarm, and then watch my breath going in and out. Soon all kinds of thoughts, feelings, images, etc rise up and my mind begins wandering off the task. And then after a bit of that I realise I’ve lost the plot and come back to the breath again.

Simple! And after a while of practicing this you will find two things happen.

One: you find yourself going into a deep state where your conscious mind is completely quiet (though sometimes afterward you may have a hazy memory of images or colours that you cannot quite grasp).

Two: You start to experience just how random and arbitrary your everyday thoughts and feelings are. This is a great relief, it just gives that little bit of pause and perspective. The less ruled I am by the circumstances I am in, the more able I am to open a space within for the waters to flow through.

I view meditation as being like pouring water out of a pitcher so that new, fresh water can then be poured in. If we don’t empty the pitcher of the mind periodically then we can get blocked up, stuck on the same thought and feeling patterns and habits. This clogs us up and we become less able to contain, absorb and release the waters of life.

Its important to remember with this practice that it doesn’t matter if you mind wanders from the breath (or whatever else you choose to focus on). The point is just that you eventually notice what has happened. The important skill is the ability to become aware of what your consciousness is doing instead of just being swept along with it.

Spending Time in Nature

Preferably you could be walking, riding, running, swimming or similar – physical exercise combined with being in nature is a winner. The natural world is infinitely complex and easily overloads our senses – compare the sight of a forest with the sight of four straight walls and a flat roof!

Additionally, the natural world wears the ecological nature of being openly. We tend to conceal the interconnected flowing structure of reality from ourselves in the modern human built environment. Going into nature reminds us of how things really work, even if we can’t see that.

In pre-modern times I suppose folks were much more embedded in the natural world and their consciousness was shaped accordingly. There are also specific practices such as sitting out that must surely be seen as partly incorporating the practice of just being in the natural world.

I find that spending time in nature grounds me, opens me, dissolves my own internal chaos and stiffens my resolve. It encourages me to reflect and breathe and I get many of my best ideas while staring at the ocean’s horizon or at water running over rocks. I’ve spent hours in deep trance, wandering the sea rocks and beaches of the seaside near my home.

Talking

Given my professional background I’ve had many experiences of the power of speech. We can infer from the rune poems related to Ansuz that speech is divine – so too is listening; and the Havamal is filled with advice on the important of cultivating good friendships.

There is a specific kind of talking in which one can hear oneself. Sometimes I have found myself watching myself from outside my own body in these conversations, suddenly presented with the reality of my identity and being. That’s a kind of objectivity that is very hard to achieve in other ways.

We often carry a lot of stuff around in our minds and bodies, and thoughts and feelings can get stuck in vicious loops if we don’t let them out. This clogs us up and makes us poor vessels for the waters. Exchanging speech with someone who is trustworthy is a powerful tool for relieving this pressure and blockage.

I regard this as a spiritual practice, because this is no the everyday, empty or utilitarian talking we so often encounter. It is rather the kind of communication that Hegel had in mind when he spoke of the power of recognition – namely, it is communication in which we find ourselves and our other. We create ourselves literally through the act of speaking and being heard.

Nietzsche talks about a certain kind of conversation – in which one person is a midwife and the other ready to burst forth with child. I’ve been blessed with the chance to play both roles many times in my life. Both roles can serve as powerful tools for unblocking oneself and expanding one’s capacity to hold the waters.

Music

I use music to achieve all kinds of open, supple and cleared states. In particular I have written a number of finger style guitar pieces that utilise a lot of droning notes and open tuning structures. Something about droning notes is extremely trance-inducing. I can totally rewire my consciousness in this way.

I will say more on this subject in subsequent posts, but I would like to quote the marvellous folk singer Tony Eardley at this point:

If it takes you half a lifetime, don’t begrudge a single day
Just stumble back along the track that puts you on your way
You travel half the world around, through every port of call
To watch the clock rewinding to the hour before the fall

So now I try to listen, to take it as it comes
On silent cobweb mornings, through the city’s grinding hum
I try to catch the moment and hold it in the raw
To reach for the connecting thread to all that’s gone before

And sometimes I fear I’m standing here
With nothing to tell
But when the music’s flowing
Its like water from the well
Drawing water from the well

Exercise, Dance, Martial Arts, etc

Developing your physical fitness is a powerful way to unblock yourself and expand your capacity to hold the waters. Consider dance for example. The stronger and more flexible you become, the more free you become to express whatever impulse comes through your flesh.

Exercise really gets your physiology flowing, and this is a bit of a microcosm-macrocosm thing: the more flow within your body, the more flow you’ll be able to entertain from beyond your body. Insofar as I see the heart as an important part of being a vessel for the waters of life it make sense to do activities which literally strengthen and even enlarge your heart.

The stronger and more flexible you are – I find at least – the quieter the random chaos of your mind becomes. I think this is because with regular exercise you are spending more time in an embodied consciousness (assuming you practice with a bit of mindfulness of course). This in turn opens the conduit for the waters because as a vessel you become less turbulent.

Oh, and exercise entails a certain amount of pain. Getting used to pain, to being stretched to one’s limits, is very useful for breaking down the blockages that can shut us off from the flow.

Well that’s about all I have to say on this subject – suffice to say that all of this should be able to keep you going for, oh, a lifetime! I’m far from perfect, but recently I’ve become more and more resolute and active in pursuing these practices. The more I do them, the better I feel, the more free and creative I feel, which then invites me to do more. I still have my blockages and armour of course – but am I not human?

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