Spirituality

Xylem and Phloem: Part One

Some of what I have to say here is a development on previous comments made in this journal. More needed to be said – so here it is.

I still recall from high school biology class studying the physical structure of plants and trees. Xylem and phloem are the tubes and vessels that allow liquids to move through the stem, trunk, branches and fronds of a tree or a plant. They serve a very similar purpose to the human circulatory and respiratory systems.

We know that for the original heathens the whole world was arranged upon a massive tree – known by various names such as Yggrdrasil or Laerad. At the foot of the tree were three wells.

The first of these was Mimisbrunnr, the well over which the giant Mimir presided. This is the well to which Odin sacrifices his eye in exchange for a draught of wisdom.

The second was the Urdarbrunnr, over which the Norns, who administer to the shaping and passage of time – stand watch. Urd literally means ‘past’ – so this well, like the well of Mimir, seems to represent a repository of all that has come to pass.

The third well was Hvergelmir, the source of all the rivers (and in some interpretations the primal oceans) of the world. In Gylfaginning a spring in Niflheim is called Hvergelmir and is the source of the Elivagar rivers, which feed poisoned liquid into the Ginnungagap and thus assist in the quickening of creation.

Many scholars (Jan de Vries, Paul Bauschatz, etc) have suggested that originally there was a single well, and that the split into three is a later embellishment. That could well be true, though I don’t see that anything is lost from keep the triple well distinction. There are, after all, many triplet entities in Germanic mythology – Odin-Vili-Ve being the most obvious.

So the common theme between these three wells is that they are sources of origin. Mimisbrunnr is a repository of memory – and therefore it seems wisdom. Urdabrunnr is a repository of all past action – and since the past is the earth from which the present sprout it would seem to be the origin of all change and action in the world.

Hvergelmir is a source of water (which might represent life force itself), in fact, it is the source of all the waters of the world.

Now, following Paul Bauschatz and Bil Linzie, it would seem that the basic Germanic cosmology works like this – the wells are a repository of all that has been. This water then flows up through the world tree through all the worlds until it falls back down – in manifestation. Then it drips back down into the wells, forming the next layer of ørlög.

This understanding of time could be described as ecological, rather than linear or even circular. I think that this notion of ecological time is far richer and more nuanced than other models. Linear time is simplistic and doesn’t really even save the phenomena. Circular time is an improvement, but it is still very literal and one-dimensional.

Ecological time, on the other hand, allows for complexity – which is pretty essential in a model of how time works once we consider just how infinitely complex causality is (any lay or professional students of chaotic systems in the Elhaz readership? I really recommend James Gleick’s introductory book on the subject, it will teach you a lot about wyrd).

The ecological model of time articulated in this mythic portrait of well(s) and tree requires one other element to be fully rounded out. Since every being, object, entity is nourished by water from the well, every single thing might be regarded as sacred, magical, perhaps even as conscious.

At the same time as being utterly unique and magical, however, this flow of water and memory binds the cosmos together. At the heart of this model of Germanic cosmology – it seems to me anyway – is the classic insight that all things are interconnected and one, and yet at the same time different, separate and irreplaceably unique.

This delicate dance between interconnection and particularity runs as a motif throughout Germanic mythology. Often particular events in the myths seem at first to be isolated and particular – yet can have consequences that reach out across the worlds. Similarly, the gods play out their grand schemes through the immediate circumstances their followers must live.

This model of cosmology also offers a richer understanding of the Germanic notion of holy/unholy. The word “holy” has its origin in the notion of “wholeness”. It did not originally connate Christian separateness. It instead connoted a quality of being complete, well-rounded, healthy, fertile even. When something is bursting with life and breath it is holy.

Combining this with the notion that the waters of memory flow through all things – it would seem that what makes something holy is that it has a strong current of memory or wyrd flowing through it. Perhaps this is what having good ørlög means – or indeed what it is to have good luck or a strong hamingja.

Conversely to have poor luck, or to be unholy, simply means that a being is more or less cut off from the flow of waters. Perhaps its current is occluded or blocked or pinched. This might happen in any number of ways. By way of analogy: when we manage the environment in linear, instrumental and non-ecologically minded ways it becomes barren and lifeless.

If we adopt this interpretation of Germanic cosmology (and I have found no more complete, deep or thorough interpretation) then we are left facing a number of challenges and questions.

Most importantly, this view of Germanic cosmology forces a great deal of reassessment. Many heathens I have met in my time have adopted – to greater or lesser extent – the trappings of tradition without actually going into themselves and developing a different kind of experience of the world, a different consciousness.

As such they still see the world in a more or less linear (or sometimes circular) way. I do not consider that such individuals are truly heathen, regardless of how long their beards are or how many swords they own. They’re little better than tourists or hypocrites. Such people often seem to be very convinced of their own deep heathenry. How ironic.

I am going to spend a few journal entries exploring some dimensions of this reassessment, with an orientation towards practical things you can do to explore and experience the world through the doors of this metaphor, this myth, of well and tree.

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Will and Heart

willandheartimage1My recent reflections on the unconscious, the ego, and the place of magic and spirituality as bridges between, have been opened wider in the alchemy of fire and water.

A mysterious ally gave to me some perspective on who I am and how I function, and it bears some exploration.

I regard this and my previous post (Dissolution) as falling in some sense at more the chaos magic end of the spectrum of my interests. In truth however, there are no hard lines, only a seamless continuum.

These considerations are as much the concern of Kali, of Wotan, indeed of Hermes Trismegistus. They are Loki’s bastard children and I have felt the play and tension of my own ancestors within these insights.

So this is in a way an invitation for my reader to utilise me as a mirror. It is clear to me that “change is coming through” (Tool). I am in the cauldron, boiling away, seething like the sacrificial meat my Germanic ancestors offered to the gods. Perhaps in the bubbling surface of the water others might find themselves and profit for it.

In my life the play of passivity and activity; of control and submission; of ego-will and deep impulse; has been a powerful and recurring motif. I spent many years locked in dark and shadowy halls, the nightmarish chains of my own psychology. Those days are mostly laid to rest, but they mark the point of departure.

The heart of my struggle has been this – I am not a creature of will but of submission. Submission to wyrd, to the tides, to the impulses of gods and the fire of odrerir. Submission to imbas, berzerkergang and a thousand other imperious states of creation and destruction.

Most of my best achievements I can take little credit for, they being so significantly shaped by that which comes through me. My task in this life is to make myself as fit a vessel as possible for these forces – so that they are given as full a range of expression as possible.

As such I have for some years waged war with something that I choose to name the ego. For me this thing I call the ego is that sense of self I have which feels itself as detached and isolate from all that is around me. It is amnesiac to the infinite mystery and divinity of all things; it feels itself the sole author of its acts.

Fortunately and unfortunately for me many of my early spiritual influences – both individuals personally known and philosophies encountered – were very strongly of the view that only the ego matters! That isolation is the goal, that the ideal of the spiritual path is perfection of the self at the expense of all else.

Oddly – no one I have met who extols this path comes anywhere close to being an admirable individual. I cannot judge others who hold this philosophy whom I have not met; however it seems to me that those who spurn their egos seem to have better chances of perfecting themselves than those who make such self-perfection their goal.

Hand in hand with this ego magic approach goes something which I will here refer to as will-based living. Will-based living is an approach to life in which I seek to force things to fit with my conscious expectation and desire. I try to use myself as a source of life energy and impulse and I rapidly burn up into cinders.

Will-based living is no way for me to forge a life because as a single being I am extremely finite. There is little energy for me to draw on unless I steal it from others. But I am not a thief – I have (perhaps ironically) too much self-respect. I don’t see how ego magicians can get very far – perhaps they just don’t.

Regardless, will-based living has one very exciting advantage – it feels safe because it relies on the conscious mind to be the source of all things. The conscious mind, being far more limited than the Deep Mind, rarely presents us with anything particularly challenging, threatening, exciting or profound.

This also means that will-based living is not a very effective method for creating a life worth living. Not only does it encourage a barren horizon for one’s hopes; but one is forced to drawn one’s energy from self-destruction or theft from others. Since the latter is not an option for me, I have tended to the former, which is not healthy.

Some time ago I realised there is another way to live life – what I will here refer to as heart-based living. Heart-based living hands trust to my heart, the seat of my emotions and life force. The heart encourages circulation and transformation of the blood – our very life relies on this alchemy.

Furthermore the heart underscores our connectedness to all things. It is crucial in our use of an external substance – oxygen – to live. It also helps evacuate carbon dioxide – a chemical which other beings are able to use to live. The heart, that most individual of all parts of a person, is in the business of connection and exchange (Gebo).

Whenever I have opened my heart, made it as a cup or chalice to the water of Urd’s well, profound and positive changes have occurred. My expectations have never been fulfilled, but rather exceeded in remarkably lateral ways. I have become a pure student, an ardent lover of mystery – of Runa in its deepest sense.

Here however lies the trick – it is hard to trust in the heart, in the submission required by this agent of the gods and the Deeps. And so I lapse back into will-based living and into self-poison or mediocrity.

At various times in my life I have even sought to impose – by act of will – a more heart-based approach to life on myself. Indeed, I have been shown that this is why I talk so much about waging war on the ego – this is nothing less than my gods and ancestors attempting to awaken me to my hypocrisy.

Conversely, sometimes the amnesiac will plays at being the chalice of the heart by miring me in cold isolation. There, in the hovel of my own “mean-spirited road house” (Rumi), I curse the light and life that flows through others. But to be receptive is not to be quiescent – this is an illusion, a nightmare that the isolate will weaves.

To be receptive might be to be extremely active – but the art is to act only in accordance with the heart, without seeking to understand outcome. It is to attend to the unfolding of wyrd without presuming that Skuld can be easily tethered – or indeed, even should be tethered! I think. This is where I am very much still learning.

This kind of trust, this action without will, has served me well in my life. There are gifts it has given me that are of incalculable value. My ego will cannot make the same claim.

So now it is time for me to embrace this heart-based way of life with a new clarity – with awareness that it is not the stagnant pond of retreat that my will imagines it to be. It is time for me to have trust in the currents of water that falls throughout the words, back into Mimir’s Well, then up Laerad’s trunk again.

I would be lying if I claimed that I knew quite how to make this heart-based living the prevalent pattern of my life. But it has been given to me as a new challenge – to come into an accord between fire-will and water-reception. And to make the change without getting tangled in the illusions that my cowardly will weaves.

This is perhaps the challenge that Woden embraced on the tree; perhaps the challenge that Sigurd stumbled upon when he tasted his burned thumb.

The great goddess Kali – who I have a deep affection for – has spoken through to me a great deal recently. I invite her to shower her blessings upon me! She can have any man’s head any time she likes, and only love can still her all-conquering rage. To arm myself with great power I must disarm first it seems.

For many years the phrase “empty-handed magic” has been a star guiding the course of my ship through the mists of night. Now perhaps the phrase “open-hearted magic” must replace it.

None of this is to say I am now a rainbow-spangled hippy of course. Apart from the fact that such folk (in my experience) often have rather vile shadow-selves, my intention is informed by one of Nietzsche’s more fertile ideas – the challenge of the eternal return of the same.

Suppose, says Nietzsche, that time is a great circle, a great snake that coils about itself, birthing and devouring itself forever. And suppose that this life we have is destined to repeat, exactly the same every time, for all eternity.

Here is the challenge – can you face the prospect of living out your life, exactly as it is, repeatedly, over and over, forever, and declare “YES!” with all your being? Can you affirm and celebrate even your deepest miseries, failures, wounds and betrayals? Can you look upon all of the mountains and ravines of your life with equal delight?

It doesn’t matter whether time really does circle around itself like this or not. The point is to set this attitude before oneself as a challenge.

Not many of us have the strength or stomach for such an outlook on life. It is certainly not the kind of perspective that the blind optimist – or the blind pessimist – would adopt. But somehow I feel this is the door, the lock and the key to my task of cultivating a heart-based approach to life.

So onward we go, and I invite my gods and ancestors to offer whatever aid they may in this holy task.

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On Looking for Things

“When you go looking for something specific, your chances of finding it are very bad, because of all the things in the world, you’re only looking for one of them.

“When you go looking for anything at all, your chances of finding it are very good, because of all the things in the world, you’re sure to find some of them.

“And the most important rule…often the thing you’re looking for is right in front of your nose.”

-Daryl Zero

I came across the above quote yesterday while watching the great film The Zero Effect, and was immediately struck by how closely this ties in to the law of detachment. This applies to pretty much everything, whether you’re choosing a novel to read, looking for a lover or just trying to kill time on a Sunday afternoon.

Several years ago, while walking down George St in Sydney, I found myself slip into the mood I call “All Green Lights”. (The mood is best characterized as a sense of vague, detached euphoria. When I get it, all the lights turn green.) So there I was, cruising down George St with no particular idea of where I was going and every time I reached a street corner, the pedestrian crossing light would turn green for me before I even needed to break stride. Suddenly, one of the lights failed to change so I turned right and kept walking. Two streets down, I turned right again (without knowing why) and found myself standing outside an Occult bookshop nestled between a Sci-Fi bookshop and a branch of the Theosophical Society.

The event was hardly what I’d call life changing, but it did solve the question of what to do that afternoon and that pair of bookshops became one of my regular haunts in Sydney. Moral of the story? Go with the flow and you’ll get where you’re going, even if you’re not sure of quite of where that is.

Hail Chaos! Viva Loki! Aum Wotan!

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Meditations on the Ur-Law

Tao, Dharma, Logos, Orlog, Wyrd.

The names are different, but the basic concept is universal. There is a Natural Law, a fundamental pattern that underlies reality and according to which the entire universe operates. The Ur-Law is knowable, but not explicable. Unfortunately, no-one can be told what the Logos is. You have to see it…for yourself.

Fortunately, there is a simple method that allows you to see the web of Wyrd more clearly.

Relax, chill out, take a deep breath and a few steps back. Now see, hear, feel, smell and taste without judgment, without prejudice. Scientific observation requires detachment…So does Magic. Surrender your preconceptions and you will see truth. Divorce yourself from the lust for results and you will achieve power through effortless grace.

Weird, isn’t it? That the first thing you need to do, in order to succeed, is to stop trying so hard. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.

Clint.

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Soft Monotheism

“The Rune-gilder does not “believe” in the Gods and Goddesses in the same way Trothers do (or might). The underlying “reason” for this is made clear by what is implied by the Germanic Epistemology presented in Section II. Gilders may begin with a faithful approach to the nature of the reality of the divinities – but they eventually learn that such a belief is a fetter which must be loosened if they are to progress further.”

“All the Gods and Goddesses are real in a practical sense. But ultimately they are creations of the threefold All-Father. The only (apparent) exception to this is Freyja – who is the only deity who teaches him anything he did not already know, that is, the mysteries of seid”.

Both quotes from Gildisbok by Edred Thorsson.

After Clint’s recent and very rousing posting on the subject of so called “hard polytheism” I somehow felt the urge to make a perpendicular response – by reflecting on the words of Edred Thorsson in the Gildisbok, the Rune Gild’s members-only handbook. Note that I haven’t been in the Gild for years so my copy might be dated.

Regular Elhaz Ablaze readers know that I’m not a huge Thorsson fan, considerable though his contributions have been. I particularly take exception to his goal of attaining a state of immortal, isolate intelligence – this notion seems to fly in the face of both Heathen and specifically Odinnic cosmology and philosophy.

Given this goal is directly inspired by Temple of Set philosophy – which seems little more than a hilariously confused manifestation of late modern nihilism – it is no surprise that I am not Thorsson’s only critic. But I digress.

The two quotes above are fascinating launch pads for reflection on the nature of the Northern divinities – not least because they appear on the same page in the Gildisbok. With the first quote I find myself (mostly) cheering. With the second quote I find myself shaking my head in disbelief.

In the first quote I think Edred is saying that we need to get beyond the trappings of form. I think he is saying that we need to recognise that there is a lot more to Heathenry than memorising lists of facts or aping what we would like to think is old-fashioned behaviour (but may reflect more our own insecurities). I could be wrong in my reading of course.

He also seems to be saying that when we are talking about divine beings we will be well served if we avoid being too literal about who and what they are, and how they might interact with us.

After all, how can we really know? Whether they are ideas, myths, archetypes, or fully existent and independent conscious beings, they’re way beyond our limited perspective.

However, I do note one little discordant note in this first quote. It suggests that Edred has a monopoly on this point of view, or less strongly that somehow it’s an insight very specific to his philosophy or knowledge.

This is obviously absurd – I’ve known plenty of Gilders and plenty of non-Gilders, and if anything it’s the latter that have tended to be much less literal and simplistic in their grasp of matters divine.

That isn’t intended to be an absolute claim of course, and I know there are many, many exceptions in every category. I’m just speaking from my own direct and personal experience of specific individuals.

So it seems either the Rune Gild is not proving too good at promulgating Edred’s point of view (which in this instance is a point of view I broadly agree with), or else something odd is going on – who knows what the answer to this is, I guess it ultimately doesn’t matter.

There’s also something odd about the appropriation of the more ‘sophisticated’ view on the gods that is evident in the first quote. Why shouldn’t mere “Trothers” have understandings of the gods every bit as complex, contradictory and weird as the supposedly elite Rune Gilders?

The notion that simple dogma is good enough for the (implied) less discerning masses is obnoxious to a Chaos Heathen such as myself.

I’m sure Edred has copped flack from dogmatic types over the years, but you’d think the Yrmin-Drighten would be a little more thick-skinned. But hey, what do I know?

Maybe indirectly bagging out his more literal-minded critics in a book like the Gildisbok, a book to which they can’t respond, is the best way of dealing with the problem. Far be it from me to throw the first stone from the doorstep of my glass house.

It is the second quote that really floors me. All the gods and goddesses (save Freyja) are really Manifestations of Odin? If nothing else, isn’t this very definite and concrete claim substituting one dogma about the nature of the gods for another? The two quotes seem contradictory to my addled mind.

Putting aside the way that Edred very forcefully presents a flamboyant piece of UPG as though it were written “just so in the Edda”, this second quote really makes me wonder: just what is going on in his mind?

(I’ll put aside the comment about Freyja in this post because it really opens up a huge can of worms that needs separate attention).

The local Hindu temple near where I live has occasionally put out the following slogan: “God Is One, Though The Wise Call Him By Various Names”. Now that’s a subtle and very interesting point of view to hold. Viva the pan-Indo-European connection!

This slogan recognises the ultimate interconnectedness of everything (which is the spiritual truth of monotheism at its best), but also the significance of individual beings’ unique spirit (which is the spiritual truth of polytheism and animism at their best).

But to say that Odin – who really doesn’t strike me as being at all like the One, or Brahma, or whatever – is the secret source of all the other divine beings? Well that surely wouldn’t make sense under a comparative mythological lens. And intuitively it just seems like putting the cart before the horse.

I would have thought that the work of people like Paul Bauschatz and Bil Linzie resoundingly demonstrates that the closest cognate to the Totality of Existence (that is, God) in the Heathen myths would have to be some combination of Yggrdrassil, the various wells of memory and time, Wyrd, and possibly the surface of the Ginnung.

Conversely, Odin is surely best seen as somewhere between Mercury and Zeus, a definite divine entity of some kind but not a representation of the Totality.

Personally I lean towards seeing him as being more Mercurial, since Mercury is very similar to Odin; and Tacitus certainly glossed Wodan as Mercury. And also since the whole “king of the gods” thing only came on in late Dark Ages times and almost certainly isn’t representative of the whole spectrum of Heathenism.

Odin’s biography is maddeningly complex and with so few sources available there is a lot we just cannot know (and you can’t even ask him because he’s a bloody liar, so UPG isn’t much help either).

I get that Odin has a starring mythic role in shaping the cosmos, but even as Odin-Vili-Ve there was a whole lot of life and creation going on prior to his arrival.

This “Odin is behind all the gods” point of view just seems bizarre. It doesn’t square with the mythological evidence and as a speculative opinion it seems extremely left-field. It also seems rather disrespectful to a whole bunch of beings that I personally at least think have plenty of their own stuff going on.

Surely it would be prudent to refrain from making very strong, unusual and textually unjustifiable claims about Odin’s nature with no more authority than that old faithful “because I say so”. I mean speculate away (I know I do), but a bit of honesty about it please! What is lost from admitting the limits of one’s perspective?

Furthermore, it seems like a weird crypto-monotheism to reduce all the other gods to guises of Odin. If we are going to do that then why not just adopt monotheism for real? Or for those feeling the need to be contrary and ‘tough’, the Satanic road is there in its various absurd forms. Although Edred also walks that path, so who knows?

Hence the title of this post – “Soft Monotheism”. Just as Catholicism sneaks in all kinds of gods and goddesses through the back door of the Saints, one could be forgiven for thinking that Thorsson wants to sneak monotheism in through the back door of the endless hordes of divine beings that crowd out the old Germanic myths.

He is entitled to whatever opinion he wants of course. It just seems odd for someone who built their career on being so well grounded in actual historical evidence and research to then leap off into such a wild opinion and present it as though it were a matter of objective fact.

Maybe the New Age influence on Heathenry affects Edred more than he realises. Again – that isn’t a criticism, though given his marketing angle I imagine he might take it as one.

I for one have no idea what the gods and goddesses are; nor what the ultimate nature of reality is. I do have lots of personal experience with these things, but personal experience and rational discussion don’t necessarily like to hold hands.

I do know this though – every time I think I have it figured out, I find out there’s more mystery still. Silent, awe-struck, in the face of the infinite reaches of Runa – that’s where the truth lies. And I suspect the horizon of mystery is always going to foil any attempt at expressing it (though of course it might be possible to invoke…)

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Hard Polytheism

One phrase that keeps popping up in my reading lately is the term Hard Polytheist, referring to individuals who believe that each God is absolutely separate and distinct, not different representations of the same archetypes cross-culturally. The phrase and the whole idea bug me, partly because I don’t like it implied that I’m soft-anything and partly because it’s expressed with such dogmatic certainty every time. So I’d like to throw in my two cents on the issue and see if I can complicate things enough to raise some doubts for a few people.

Assuming the Gods really exist (and they do), we’re talking about beings that are extremely long lived, possibly immortal. They are known shape-shifters, sex-shifters, liars and users of multiple aliases. They are shown in the myths to grow, evolve, incarnate, die and reincarnate. I also wouldn’t put it past some of these guys to be in more than one place at a time. Take all that into account and it becomes pretty damn hard to say with any certainty that Odin is not now, nor has he ever been, another guise of Shiva or of Dionysus, or they guises of Him.

It certainly makes more sense to me to believe that the Gods have historically gone by different names when they’ve traveled to foreign kingdoms, rather than that the Gods have always restricted themselves to working exclusively within defined geographical areas and with specific, distinct racial groups.

I would also like to point out that Polytheistic Syncretism was an extremely common theory among the Romans and still is current in Hinduism today. Many Hindus even recognize both Jesus and the Buddha as avatars of Vishnu. This so-called “Soft” Polytheist view is definitely a historically valid part of the Indo-European Tradition.

As for the assertion “the Gods are not just archetypes”. What do you mean “just”? Archetypes are extremely  important. Ideas are extremely important. An idea can make or break not just lives, but entire civilizations. It’s not for nothing they say the pen is mightier than the sword. So even if the Gods did exist just inside our heads they would still be potentially more powerful than any one human being alive.

So, are all of the Gods distinct individual entities? They are and they aren’t. Do they exist in objective reality, or just inside our heads? Both. How is this possible? I don’t know, man. I didn’t do it.

Hail Chaos! Viva Loki! Aum Wotan!

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Of Iron and Ocean

After my recent anti-nidstang magic, aimed towards connecting with the local land spirits, some pretty amazing developments have occurred.

There is a stretch of beach near my home at the foot of a sea cliff. The rock is layers, smooth, black and red-brown. I’m no geologist but I think it is mostly layers of igneous, volcanic stone.

Piles of black angular boulders litter the beach here. At high tide they slip from view, only to stubbornly emerge as the sea gasps its last and recedes.

There are mysterious outcrops and places here, including a depression in part of the rock wall which looks like a door to another universe – and from which runs a huge thick vein of red rock that stretches into the ocean.

Last week while wandering among the rocks at low tide I stumbled over a rock formation that offers a perfect “throne”. Somehow the rocks are positioned perfectly for one to sit on in regal style. Even though I have seen these rocks many, many times, I had never before recognised the gestalt of their arrangement.

I sat on these rocks and it felt not unlike how I would imagine a mound sitting, albeit a very royal mound sitting. It felt as though I was being privileged with noticing this seat, as though it were hidden from view unless it wanted to be seen.

And as I sat there, just briefly in the corner of my eye, I saw a mysterious being for the briefest moment.

As a child I read a number of books about Aboriginal mythology, and one of the staples were tall, jet-black, angular land spirits, beings with flaring ears, pointed nails and sinister airs. Australia is no land of spandex-wearing faeries or cute little elves and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Now I can’t speak for someone else’s spiritual tradition, but what I saw in the corner of my eye as I sat in that throne was the spitting image of one of those spindly black land spirits. It was tall, and the surface of its body was like a sinkhole to light. It was watching me with a wary curiosity and its eyes glowed a deep red.

Unfortunately as I turned suddenly to get a better look it was gone. But I hoped this would not be our only meeting and I was not disappointed.

A few days later I returned to the rock throne. This time it was just past high tide, so the water almost lapped at my feet. I sat and I called, and made animal noises and shrieked as spontaneity dictated. Eventually I got a response.

Having handed over my actions to my unthinking reflex-mind I was soon exploring the rocks, as an inaudible voice guided me first to this nook, then that cranny. It was as though I was being educated about the secret life of the cliff and boulders, as though I was being shown the insider’s point of view on this place.

I spent quite a long time leaping and bounding, climbing and jumping, until I think I had a pretty good feel for the place. But no spirit. No spectral presence, not even when I sat once more on the throne.

I was starting to get frustrated because I really couldn’t see the point of all this stone ballet. Then I noticed something odd.

Sitting further out from the main boulder area is a single huge, flat-topped rock. This boulder was still water-bound by the tides.

Sitting on the boulder was what looked like the much rusted blade of a saw. Since I had just been about ready to leave, I debated with myself whether to examine this strange sight. But I knew that I had to. I hated the idea of leaving without having made some kind of connection with the being I saw amid the rocks and cliffs.

So out I went, narrowly avoiding getting very soaked. I clambered up onto the boulder and discovered that it was indeed a severely corroded saw blade. This saw had been swimming in the ocean for a very long time, from what I could see. The blade was so rusted that it virtually crumbled in my grasp. No more cutting for this one!

The waves started lashing much higher as I inspected the saw, and I had the strangest feeling that someone was laughing at me as I realised that I had to move quickly before this new watery assault had me soaked. Carefully and swiftly I clambered down the rock and back across the slippery surfaces to the main boulder area.

As soon as I was back to safety the waves resumed their steady seaward march – so it seemed anyway. I didn’t really understand the meaning of the saw, other than perhaps bait to lure me onto the rock where I could be the victim of a wet prank. Oh, and I cut myself lightly as I escaped the seas clutches. “Blood sacrifice” I thought to myself.

After some deliberation I dumped the saw. I figured it was so badly corroded that it was about ready to disintegrate – indeed, it was disintegrating – and that somehow it belonged among the boulders. With that I headed back across the rocky space and off home.

As I neared the edge of the boulder area I heard a noise behind me, I turned to see the strange being, this time in a small rock alcove behind a boulder – another obvious feature like the throne that I had somehow never before noticed. Then it was gone.

I ran over the rocks to where the spirit had stood. I picked among the boulders, finding more hollows and secrets, mystified. Now I knew that it was watching me, but still things seemed rather opaque.

Eventually, no more enlightened as to the being’s purpose, I turned again to leave. This time I stumbled over an iron bar, as long as my forearm, also corroded to the point of disintegration.

As I tested the bar’s heft my mind wandered to an article I recently read about how prehistoric humans made chimes out of resonant stones that would sing when struck. I decided to test some of the local boulders for their tuning.

The rusty bar was not much of a drum stick, being heavy and soft, but to my surprise the rocks sang clear and true! I amused myself for a few minutes recapitulating the prehistoric version of rock stardom before this discovery too seemed to reach the end of my attention span.

I couldn’t help but feel that I was missing something. Then the connection became clear – the rusted saw, the rusted bar, my blood and the veins of iron oxide that run through the rocky cliff face. The being I had seen was the spirit of the Iron here!

With that realisation it began to speak to me in my mind, its voice slow and heavy and clanking. It told me that once all had been hot and liquid and it had danced joyously.

But now for untold stretches of time it had been cold and rigid, bound to the cliff and the boulders that had once been like water. And slowly the sea ate away at the rock, stripping out the veins of iron ore and dissolving even their hard shapes.

The spirit lived a lonely life here, with few for company and an inexorable oceanic aggressor at its doorstep. I felt moved to ask it if it could travel somehow – perhaps it could ride the iron in my blood? Then it presented its own solution – a small-shaped piece of corroded iron that had been wedged between two rocks for what looked like a very long time. The spirit told me to take the iron so that its awareness could travel wherever I took this adopted piece of its form.

It also led me to a beautiful shell hidden among the rocks, a gift it said.

Now it was finally time to head home.

On my way it spoke to me a little. It told me that I am the first European-descended person to have noticed it or been able to engage with it. It told me that what made the difference was my connection to my own spiritual heritage.

It told me that most white people in Australia are completely addled and befuddled when it comes to their spiritual identity, that they don’t know themselves and therefore are unable to go beyond their own context to meet the land and people.

It indicated that my anti-nidstang ritual had specific importance in allowing me to interact with me, and that my ability to perform this ritual was one example of the kind of self-knowledge it feels is required.

Strong words from an Iron Spirit! And as always with such experiences to be taken with caution. But as I sit here with the spirit’s mobile iron “transmitter’ on my lap I cannot help but wonder where this will all lead. At the very least, I hope to learn from it and I hope to offer it the chance to explore the world beyond its harsh and wet home.

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Dealing with a Spirit; Heathens in Australia

Annalise and I had some very strange experiences this last week with what seemed to be a ghost or spirit. Strange enough to be worth documenting.

I should say before I go any further that as always I am hesitant to attach some kind of fixed meaning to terms like “ghost”. I really don’t know what the true nature of this entity was and I can only relate to it phenomenologically, that is, as something I found myself in some kind of engagement or relationship with.

I have to take it as what it presents itself as and put aside metaphysical questions. Otherwise I fear losing the thing itself in exchange for theories which are likely to represent only an approximation of the thing itself.

For the more sceptical reader, therefore, I am not implying or relying upon any particular metaphysical theory when I talk about ghosts or any other of the many odd subjects that I write about in this journal.

Now that this preamble is done…

The story begins with Annalise reporting to me that she feels like some ghost or being is around her, drawing on her strength. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. At the time I didn’t really know what to do, but she got rather sick.

As an aside we spent a few hours doing some big rune chanting and that dropped her sickness from a subjective rating of 9/10 sick vs. well to about 0.3/10 sick vs. well. Not a bad effort.

I find putting numbers on things is useful for tracking feedback in these kinds of circumstances. It can also develop into hypnotic states that let you modify the problem itself. When we observe our experience we tend to alter it, after all.

Around the same time I was beginning to experience progressively more troubling dreams, which really isn’t my idea of fun. At first each night was filled with frustrating and strange phantasms, but over the course of a few nights they became more oppressive.

As all this unfolded I began to feel very depressed. It was as though I had become vulnerable, my defences sapped, and my will and life with them. Both of us were rather miserable.

Then the climax of these events arrived. I found myself asleep, caught in a dream in which the environment continually transformed. As often happens in my dreams I am assigned some mysterious task which I cannot decipher.

Then I find myself tangled in the branches of a huge dead tree animated by a malevolent intelligence. All around me is a blasted night-time landscape. Really solid nightmarish stuff. The tree has any number of vines which lash about and seek to restrain or choke me.Then a great knife appears and floats towards me. I know that it has a malevolent intention of its own, that an invisible hand guides it. This isn’t good! I think to myself, struggling to escape.

Of course at about that time my unconscious helpfully dumps me out of my sleep. I find myself in bed and in the room is a hovering spectral Aboriginal woman. She is very angry at me and is shrouded in an eerie and decidedly unfriendly-looking host of shadows.

I know that there is a lot of terribly history in Australia so I am not particularly surprised that a local land or ancestor spirit might decide to take out some of that misery on me.

From what I understand it isn’t like all the spirits in Aboriginal mythologies are friendly in the first place, let
alone to marauding European invaders or their contemptuous descendents.

I also know that I know how to deal with this sort of situation. I can be up and summoning Thor very quickly,
bellowing and shrieking his name, and in particular signing the hammer, which usually works wonders.

(UPG alert: this is probably a modern practice, I don’t think it has much historical basis, though it works very
nicely nonetheless).

However in situations like this I don’t really want to leap from my bed roaring the varied violent epithets of the Thunder God. So instead I bargain with the interloping entity.

I explain that “we both know” that I could put on such a performance if I wanted to, and that it would hurt them big time. Then I suggest that we pretend that I’ve already done the whole thing, so that they can bugger off and I can go about my business (e.g. sleep).

This kind of bargaining seems surprisingly effective, and it certainly saves a lot of time and effort.

Ok, so its late, I’m in bed, there is a strange being in the room. As soon as I awake I feel it trying to force my eyes closed, trying to lull me back to sleep again. I can sense the dream with the tree and the knife is waiting for me and I really don’t want to find out what happens
next.

So in addition to bargaining with this spirit I am signing the hammer in a very understated way with one hand. I explain that half of my ancestors were recent migrants (so their hands are clean of the atrocities inflicted by European invaders in Australia); and that while the other half probably were involved in some way at some point, I don’t exactly approve of white Australia’s shameful history.

By my logic, I explain, there isn’t much point attacking me. Not while there are so many folks in the country still actively trying to put the screws on both indigenous Australians and the spirits of their culture and land. I say that I think it would be much more advantageous if the spirit and I instead try to communicate.

Well with that the whole threatening vibe coming off this being goes away. It comes closer to me and I can no longer resit falling asleep at its command. I find myself in a hall or a forest (I’m not sure) and here the being appears as an Aboriginal woman.

She is trying to speak to me, to communicate, but there is a tremendous echo on her voice, as though she is on the far side of a great ravine, and I can’t make out the words.

I tell her this, and she comes closer and closer, still shouting, but although her voice becomes clearer I still can’t make out what she is saying. Then suddenly the dream ends.

Since that night I’ve recovered my emotional equilibrium and Annalise no longer has strange intuitions of being attacked either. No further hint of the spirit has been evident, so I really don’t understand what happened that caused the change.

Perhaps the spirit was satisfied that I was genuine in my outlook and went elsewhere to vent its rage? I really don’t know. Perhaps it just got bored of me, or perhaps I just didn’t have what it took to communicate successfully.

I know that in some circles it is not acceptable for non-Aboriginal Australians to talk about experiences with beings which seem to originate from Aboriginal spirituality.

For example right wing loonies just do not want to know about anything outside of their own narrow minds; whereas some left wing loonies (particularly the academically-minded) can’t see the difference between cultural appropriation and spontaneous (and in this case unasked for) experiences.

But I think Australian heathens should openly, if cautiously, acknowledge these kinds of experiences. We are here in this land, not Europe or anywhere else. Like it not we are going to have to come to grips with that – spiritually, practically and politically.

This land is forced to deal with us by our very presence – at some point the ørlög this generates has to mount into interaction, be it positive or negative. We are going to have to move with a lot of care and a lot of respect if we want to forge a positive relation with this land and its people.

I have a feeling that the forces of this land are a lot bigger than we heathens can probably begin to comprehend. With respect, Australia has an ancient power that I am not sure Europe and her children can match.

The heathens of old varied their religious beliefs and practices relative to the climate and geography in which they lived. This is already occurring here in Australia, but perhaps if we consciously embrace this attitude our spiritual practices will be – perhaps less formally true to ancestral heathen, but far more true psychologically.

There I go again with my talk of psychological reconstruction, which amounts to the conviction that spirituality is more than the forms in which it finds its home.

Mythology, culture, belief and practice are all doors into experience. These doors are not totally arbitrary and may even prove indispensable, but they are not enough by themselves.

If we mistake the door for the experience then we end up with empty dogma and dead religion. This is a big part of why faiths like Catholicism are on the decline in the Western world. Heathens would do well to forge a different path, and here in Australia we may find the very land itself teaching us (whether by stick or carrot I do not know).

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Fire and Water

I preface these comments by saying that I have omitted some important details from what follows and edited what remains to make sense in light of these omissions. The elements omitted are simply too personal and/or too way out for me to want to share to the whole of the internet. What remains will, I hope, prove to be of interest nevertheless.

In the last few years I’ve had four particularly magical dreams. In these four dreams the experience was so vivid that it felt as though my physical body were in the dream. At the end of several of these dreams, figures from the dreams have remained once I’ve woken up and continued to very tangibly communicate with me.

These dreams aren’t a result of my attempts to develop my spiritual power or use ritual to contact spiritual or magical forces. They fall more into the category of spontaneous experiences that Bil Linzie says distinguish his notion of “real” seidh from the more structured practices performed by groups like Hrafnar.

I should emphasise that even though these dreams (and other experiences I’ve had) probably place me more in the Bil Linzie camp in terms of the kind of seidh I’ve known, I disagree with his view that more considered or consciously constructed seidh work is necessarily inferior.

The first three dreams happened in the space of a week back in 2006. I will only give a short synopsis of each.

First Dream:

In the first I found myself part of a choir that was to perform at a strange concert on a boat in Sydney Harbour. One of my fellow singers was a very intriguing woman who seemed completely larger than life. Her radiance and spirit made everything around her seem completely dull. I felt immediately drawn to her.

After the rehearsal it occurred to me that no one had explained the money side of things to this gig (which I had after all just suddenly found myself in the midst of rehearsing for). This was my excuse to talk to the intriguing woman.

I ran after her and asked her about how we would get paid. She did not know, it turned out, but was loathe to part ways with me. In fact she simply stated that she wanted to stay with me forever! I must admit to feeling overwhelmed with desire for this being, whose radiant aura so thoroughly outshone everything and everyone around
her.

But although it was clear by now that she was non-human and that, despite how real it felt, I was probably dreaming, I could not accept her offer – in particular, because I am married and I love my wife! I stood fast and so we parted ways, though it seemed this would not be the last time I would meet this being.

Second Dream:

I am visiting my father. A pall comes over him and, like a lashing dragon (which is certainly something like how he can be in reality), he starts tearing strips off every decision and act I’ve ever made. My career, my interests, my marriage, you name it – even things that are out of my control (such as my musical taste)!

I am overcome with hurt and rage and then chaos breaks loose. The fabric of the dream tears and everything is destroyed, my entire worldly existence and all markers thereof.

It seems there is a theme here, one which I had not previously noticed – namely that both the woman and my dream-father sought to pull me away from my material, earthly life and point me to different horizons. Their means – seduction and violence – differed of course, but perhaps the intention was the same.

Third Dream:

I find myself living out a series of life-spans. In each life span I face some terrible struggle and I am defeated – only to be reborn again, and again, and again, and again. The life spans zip by faster and faster as I become more and more bewildered by their endless torrent.

Finally I find myself in a strange parallel reality in which we have to remake one of the Rambo films on an alien planet and I have to play the lead role – except there is no acting, it is all real. Thus I find myself in an extra-terrestrial jungle, questing for who knows what.

I am ambushed by the tree-dwelling alien locals and after a swift battle they subdue me. They inform me that I am to be initiated into a very high mystery. I am forced to ingest poison and black out.

Then I am in a strange multi-dimensional open space which I cannot describe. To my right and left are scintillating beings of pure power and the two of them hold me up. We are hurtling through this strange space, the flight seemingly powered by the blazing energies that pour off them.

These two being pass me through a series of initiations, as my perspective becomes broader, and richer, and more expansive. They explain that they have come to assist me on my way through existence. I ask them what their names are. Odin? Freya? All of these – and more – they reply, smirking at my earthling provinciality.

I don’t really understand how they can both be and not be my ancestral gods, but somehow I am deeply convinced. They explain they are taking me somewhere important.

Then I wake up in what seems like the house where my band-mates in Ironwood live, an old and dilapidated home of faded glory. Except in this dreaming reality it is far larger, more ramshackle, and more eerily gothic than in real life.

I somehow know that I must seek out something in this house, something which I will know only when I find it. And so I find myself exploring dark tunnels, strange stairwells, a whole mould-covered, shadow-drenched universe of mystery. Dangerous beings abound and I realise that my time is running out.

Finally I come into a large hall, the ceiling lost in darkness. There is someone else here, but they are invisible. A ghost. He tells me a terrible tale through ethereal sobs. Once he had a daughter but then through his arrogance and foolishness she was lost to him. And he has worn himself almost to nothingness seeking her.

I realise that, somehow, this ghost and I are connected or related. It is a kind of ancestor to me, passing on a torch and a challenge.

Suddenly, I am awake – for real awake. My body is on fire with energy. But the ghost is still there! I hear his voice as clearly as I would a physical human being: “the challenge is passed on to you now”. The challenge to seek out whatever it is that his daughter represents.

In the months after these dreams I generally lapsed into a rather non-spiritual phase, mostly due to a number of very difficult challenges that entered my life financially and so forth.

But since I met Donovan my spirituality has been getting fed a lot more regularly, and starting Elhaz Ablaze has forced me to open into the stream of magic even more – after all if I am going to have a regular column then I need to have something to write about, and I would much rather write (and read) about practical experiences than my opinions and beliefs.

I think this renewed attention to this part of myself has created a fertile ground for the deeper aspects of my being to awaken again as they were back in 2006. Reading a lot of James Hillman’s work has also had a critical impact on this re-awakening. I think his work should be mandatory for all heathens to read, even though he isn’t a heathen but rather a psychological polytheist. Start with A Blue Fire
and go from there!

Heading into Yule this year I started having very strange and wild dreams and I knew some strange new upheaval was coming towards me.

A few weeks before Yule I fell very sick and became quite depressed for a little while as a result. It was a very hard thing but I have learned that you come back from the depths if you have patience and a little contempt for the ego’s mind games.

On the day of the Yule celebration I was very sick in the stomach and spent most of the day vomiting.

We couldn’t figure out what was the cause except the vague possibility of food poisoning. Eventually I must have thrown up whatever caused the problem however because just as the Yule festivities were due to begin I suddenly completely recovered.

While I was sick during that day I wandered through all kinds of strange worlds, and in particular the dark lands of Helheim. Freya appeared to me and she told me that I was in a process. I had died one death with my recent sickness, and this illness and attendant world-walking was a second death. She warned that I would have to die one more death yet.

Incidentally, this little but of Unsubstantiated Personal Gnosis (UPG) seems to fit with the idea that Freya is identical with Gullveig, the volva who the gods destroy three times by fire – and who is then reborn as Heidh, the Shining. Who would be more likely to come to tell me I was undergoing a somewhat similar process of
triple death?

After Yule I continued to have many wild and strange dreams – until a few weeks ago when I had the fourth of my significant dreams – and the third of the three deaths Freya spoke of.

The last night of dreaming I had series of intensely embodied dreams. In them I had to pass all sorts of tests and challenges, in all kinds of identities. In some cases it was members of my family that set the challenges.

After completing many of these tests I started to be overcome with déjà vu – indeed, it felt as though I had actually done every one of these tests many times over in the past.

The realisation woke up – and on either side of me there was a being composed of intense white light. The two beings started to speak to me. They were quite circuitous in their manner of speaking and very direct.

After a great deal of negotiation they agreed to permit me to refer to them as Fire and Water. They were the woman in the first dream, my father in the second, and the two great beings in the third dream.

Fire and Water are like trans-mythological beings, who predate even my heathen ancestral gods. They represent a distilled expression of divinity – at least insofar as I am able to experience it.

They told me that, though I might not know it, my task in this life is to bring together the riches of my internal spiritual life with the physical realities of finite existence. To me this is a great challenge but they were very certain that watching me would be an interesting exercise!

By passing the challenges of my dreams it seems I have been granted the perspective on life that they were trying to give me those years ago through seduction and destruction. This was the third death – the death of my limited horizons. I think that this in turn frees me to seek whatever the “daughter” in my third dream represents.

There were other things too but I won’t go into that here.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve had some spontaneous experiences in the last year that could have come straight out of an alchemy handbook. On a whim I therefore did some research – and discovered that alchemical Mercury is the union of Fire and Water, and of Spirit and Matter. Given that Mercury and Woden are cousins this explains a lot about my connection to the latter.

Since that experience a month or two ago I have been feeling myself changing, becoming more confident, or at least less enslaved to my limitations. The full consequences of these experiences are still unfolding. I don’t know if I should describe them as “real” or “psychological” or something else, but I do know that their consequences are proving to be highly positive.

Of course, Fire and Water do not exactly have a home in heathen mythology, but their existence does make me ponder the nature of the boundaries of any set of myths.

Insofar as any mythology is a cultural expression of mysteries which are (at least somewhat) beyond human comprehension, I find myself reaffirming the importance of heathenism being more than cultural/practical reconstruction.

Fire and Water seem to consider themselves as trans-cultural, able to manifest in a variety of unique and individual ways. I think it is a bit like how for the ancient Greeks the gods often had to be met in very specific manifestations.

Thus they had, for example, the Temple of Zeus at Athens. Now Zeus at Athens is a different entity to Zeus at Sparta from what I understand, even though they are nevertheless both Zeus. This kind of looseness around the distinction between universal and particular seems a common hallmark of polytheism, especially Indo-European polytheism (look at all of Odin’s identities or the many incarnations of the Hindu deities).

Our ancestors lived on the horizon of the unknown; introducing border-dwelling into our own lives is just as important as reconstructing the communal/cultural dimensions of heathenism – otherwise we risk modern heathenry becoming a caricature of the old ways, not their rebirth.

Furthermore, when the unconscious/deep mind/magical beings/gods/whatever speak (choose-your-own-belief-system), they may or may not have a concern for our beliefs about how things are or should be. In order to respect them and allow them to help us grow or transform or distil we need to be open to possibilities that our conscious (ego) reconstructions might not anticipate.

The well known chaos magician Fenwick Rysen has written about Fire and Water as essential forces in his spirituality. I’ve not been able to contact him but I’d love to see what he would make of the experiences I have described.

For me I know that Fire and Water are essential parts of who I am – and their presence changes my heathenry for the better, even though they appear in no historical manual and no Eddic poem. I’ve never incorporated such wholesale UPG into my spirituality before but it seems right.

Such mysterious and elemental beings certainly would not seem out of place in the old poems, although their machinations probably work in a different context to the Aesir, Vanir and Jotnar. And of course, Freyja knows about them and predicted their coming too.

It’s often been pointed out that the heathen lore we still have was once the UPG of our ancestors. It’s important to keep the difference between our and their creations clear so that others are not misled, but that said it would be a sad reconstruction of heathenry that we engage in if we do not do as they did and delve into the realms of magical experience with trust that those experiences are meaningful.

Fire and Water might also be found in the more purely animistic beliefs that polytheism proper grew out of. They certainly have opened a door for me into a wider, darker and richer world.

Neurosis sing:

We stand encircled by wing and fire
Our deepest ties return and turn upon us

Heathenry might be about finding ourselves here and now in the grand weave of history and life, rather than slumbering in disconnected numbness. If this is so then Fire and Water, and the entire process I am experiencing, are about as heathen as you can get.

I’d like to conclude this article with some of the lyrics I wrote for our forthcoming Ironwood album :Fire:Water:Ash: (incidentally the title of the album and the reference to fire and water in the lyrics occurred prior to my encounter with Fire and Water, though with hindsight it all seems connected).

The Serpent Seeks its Tail

Streams of steaming ice
Streams of molten flame
Compelled to clash
In the whirling halls of chaos

Is this a creation myth?
Screeching atomic tide
Stars blaze with insanity
In generation destruction delights

Formed by ice, forged by flame
Frail mortal breathing
Lathed by salt, poison laced
Frail mortal dreaming

Is this a parable?
An endlessly retold tale
A failed symbol for moment:
Thus untamed is time

Nature dismissed as nothing
Ancient Ur-laws lost, defied
Can you remember your own being?
Where does your weary heart hide?

A glimpse of boiling Ginnung
Sloughs off this armoured weight
Purging power of Salt,
Fire, Water and Ash

Dismiss with contempt
The false forms you hold
Become what you are
Become what you must be

Destroyed by ice, destroyed by flame
Frail mortal breathing
Lathed by salt, poison laced
This frail mortal dreaming

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Somafera Journal

Let me start with a little history into my choice of practice.

I have always been involved on some sort of self defence art, whether it was boxing, Muay Thai kick boxing, or another form of martial art, mixed with a lot of weight pushing.

The biggest issue I had was when I did get into a situation where these practices could be used was that I would just black out, and when I came to the other person was not in any hurry to move. (I am not trying to blow my own trumpet here I am just making a ground point of how I first started this Journey).

One example of this really scared the crap out of me.

I was out with a friend and he had a scuffle with someone, anyway when we were leaving the guy ran up from behind and hooked my mate in the face with knuckle dusters, spreading his nose all over his face.

Then the guy ran at me. I don’t know what happened next I seem to have lost a few minutes which to this day I still can’t recall. The next thing I know there is the head light of a car about 30 cm from my head I am sitting on the guy’s chest beating his face in.

There was blood pouring out of this guy’s face, the guy was out cold and not moving, all the security were screaming at me to stop but they wouldn’t touch me.I ran off up the road I stopped about 50 metres away and the guy still hadn’t moved.

The next day I was freaking out what if I had killed this guy what was I to do. I even watched the news to see if they had said anything.

This wasn’t the first time this had happened though definitely the most serious so I started looking for a reason this was happening.

I happened to stumble across a site called Uppsala online; after reading the segment on Berserkergangr it all started to make sense. The berserker had always been of interest to me.

I read over this site repeatedly for a few months then I notice the link to something called somafera.

After reading through this site I could not stop thinking about what I had read, it really tripped something within me. Please read through the somafera site for a full understanding and description of what is involved.

The only thing that was missing to make this a full spiritual / physical training system was there was no set martial art to use.

I started asking around and the system I found to fit with the somafera training is a style of kung-fu called YANG MIAN where as you use internal pressure to create power.

You raise the pressure in your body by doing repetitive exercises while keeping your mind, breathing and muscles relaxed similar to raising the wode (check out their site it has some great videos on it).

Lucky for me a good friend of mine has been given permission by his Master (Master Yang) to start his own school. I have been training with him over the last couple of months to get my body conditioned and am now ready to tie Somafera and Yang Mian together in a experiment to see what can be achieved.

I will be keeping a monthly journal of my experiences on this page, it will be quite a journey.

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