The lore will be awakened in the strangest crannies. In the texture of a historical novel with real grit and panache, in a book of odd poems picked up in a thrift store, in the tale the old man at the bus station tells you about his home back in the bayous. Go afield, go afield, friend. Find your leaven for the flat page and yeast it with your breath like fog, the feet tramping on foreign lanes. Bake your bread in the hollow of an old cooked-clay heart/h. Let words of peasants and sailors temper and flavor your understanding. Let their dialects pass through you, and tell the tales from one idiom to another, until they take on the grooves and grain of your own bones, for tales can only be retold from there. Become fibrous and sinewed and fleshy through wide immersion in the nooks and niches of the world, where spice and hue is coveyed away. There, entangled in the strange spell of the local, your home-Gods will begin to whisper to you in unfamiliar dialects, but you will know it is them, and their presence in protean drag will convince you that they are not fossils, but very much alive, and that the keys to unlocking the dead letters imprisoned on the page lie in foreign ports, where they were scattered long ago, and lore is like a treasure map. Go afield, go afield, friend. On the tongues of eccentrics, in the gnarled hands of old characters, in the breath of someone who has dared to de-homogenize (or never knew it at all) and really let a place or places seep into the riverpaths of his or her blood, you will hear the guiding echoes, like sonar, like the blip that lets you triangulate against the blind spot in your own knowledge. Let the peculiar, and those bold enough to become particular, so the vagaries of situation twist and live through their innards and hard-earned quirks, teach you. The folk, only the folk, hold the keys to the lore, and they are a motley crüe indeed. Drink at the spring where Whitman and Sandburg found their voice. The people, the odd fellows, own the lore ; whether they know it or not, it lives implicit in them, across them. It's in their landscapes. It's in the mountaineer and the old rural guy from Maine. It's in the eight-wheeler at the desert truck stop and the sassy waitress off the 10. It's in the archive photos in the basement of a local history museum, and the scratchy old ragtime record. It's in tales of ex-slaves on yellowed paper, and hocked broadsheet-style crib notes of other cultures' myths. It's in the prairie grass beside that lone tree about 200 yards off the side of the road. It's in the coyote that crosses your path. It's in the reverie after a nap. Strange memories awaken, glimpses, little flashes in a kaleidoscope that arrange themselves in your dreams with their own peculiar logic. And then, like a bee, you've got to regurgitate and reconsume many times before you get honey ; at first what you find so amazing is just spit and a little pollen. You'll have to test your findings in many halls, experience that crestfallen feeling of being rejected for fresh insight, crust over a little, resent the critique you get, admit some of it but not all of it was right, first grudgingly then more gratefully and humbly, modify, tumble, retell, refit, stick to your guns, throw it all away, put it aside, wonder why at all, rediscover your pith, trust your instincts, and take the fully cooked bread out of the oven, no longer doughy but not burnt : browned and warm with just the right amount of softness : just right. And it takes time to bake.

Sigyn emptied the bowl, Loki flinched.
Aegir responded.
Njord, calm the waves ;
Love-goddess, soothe the hearts of our Japanese compatriots.
To them our compassion flows.

1. várkunn (to feel woe, to feel compassion for)

2. kenna í brjósti um (to feel in the breast about/for, to feel compassion for)

3. aumka sik (to feel compassion for)

4. miskunn (to overlook, pardon, forgive, show mercy and grace)

5. eir (peace, clemency, mercy ; also please note that this is cognate with Anglo-Saxon ár, "honor", indicating the precise qualities for which one earned honor.)

Five different ways of expressing the notion of mercy, compassion, or clemency. Five. One of them is actually a heathen word for "honor", and also happens to be the name of the Goddess of Healing. Several words for the same concept in a language often indicates the importance of the concept.

Just sayin'.

Now what you've got to do is you've got to study the old lore, and really get to know it, and let it sink into your bones. You've got to take the many expositions from varied perspectives, the beautiful and elegant reasonings of the pagan philosophers and the cogent and penetrating insights of the best of modern scholars, and then you have to let this beautiful garden go to seed. You just let it go, and let it go wild, and hairy, and let it grow into what it will grow into.

One way to do this is to study folklore collected from the mouths of rural and working folk, whose lives inflect their lore with their grittiness, their color, and their texture. These from-the-mouth testimonies give a picture of how lore gone to seed can look, whether they are first-person narratives, as one finds in some of the Foxfire books (which compile oral histories from the Appalachias, and provide a wonderful inview on hillbilly life), or ballads.

Thus, the study, the lore, is just the seed-form. It will become wooly. It's that wooliness that characterizes heathenism. It's that wild, rustic edge that takes the beautiful seed, and lets it become its ruffled, hairy, thorny, stubby, tall and lush self.

This characterizes the lore of witches. When we look at the lore of medieval witches, we may think of it as impoverished and cut off from its heathen root, and at times that is true, but at other times, what they have done is they have merely taken that root and they have allowed it to come into its wild environment and branch off in the directions that it wills. It's that rough and tumble, tough as nails, sometimes scolding, often shrill, and grounded in women's mysteries, which were never written down by the hand of man, and thereby hold up an untapped mirror into the wholeness of the ancient wisdom of the heath, that is needed in order to complete our training.

Every master, every teacher, has an angle, has an inflection. They usually have a blind spot as well, but together, being passed from the hands of teacher to teacher, you can fill in a lot of the blind spots, and gain a much more holistic perspective. No one person, no one book holds the truth. It's that which grows between all of these which manifests truth, and I say "grows" between, because it's not just the between, but it's that going to seed of the learning that really brings out its flavor.

There are those who would spurn and scoff at Rydberg. Let them, I say! I will not argue with fools, who gripe and whine about their myths being stolen from them, and then cannot see how they were hacked and fragmented, their shrapnel sent flying in hundreds of different directions, but refuse to gather them up and put the puzzle-pieces back together! I will not beg idiots to drink the proffered mug of foaming wisdom while they flounder in their ignorance! Be content in your poverty then!

Strong language you say? Strong ignorance, I say, to turn a blind eye to wisdom! Take that eye and hurl it into the Well instead! It's hard to keep from laughing at those whose mouths becry what the eye will not behold, and weep for what is lost and yet right before them! I shall not be meek in the face of willful ignorance, but will stand on the ground of my substantial knowledge and call out the true fools. No apologies for a brag grounded in deed.

Scoff at one of Sweden's greatest poets, who took that poet-mind (and keep in mind, that poet-mind was the pinnacle of our heathen wisdoms), and looked at the ancestral lore to see what patterns emerged? This was no shallow and baseless imposition, but an organic emergence over a decade of careful study of the primary sources!

If you are relying on Snorri alone, with little, pathetic snippets of the Poetic Edda, you, my friend, are an impoverished heathen. You have no clue and no idea how far and deep your lore really extends. It is not simply the "imagination" of some extravagant 19th century scholar, but solidly checks out when one truly reviews the lore. There are always small details to argue over in any field, but looked at broadly, as well as remarkably in the details, Rydberg's map, as a whole, checks out.

But "checks out" is a superficial evaluation. Fills out, broadens out, deepens : these are better words. A close study of Rydberg will fill your knowledge of the lore in a way no other study will. More importantly, this will not be vain, academic, dry, separative, will-to-keep-fragmented knowledge, but deeply interconnecting, fibrous knowledge, knowledge that will vibrate to the core of your soul and help you resonate to the wendings in the wind of the Tree itself. Here lies wisdom.

If you would refuse a quaff from Mimir's Horn because it lies in Rydberg's hands, be that flagrant fool you are, and cast yourself off into your parochial irrelevancies! Behold my command of lore, and ponder whether I have the resources to evaluate the claims of his investigations. I have done the homework, and the back-checking, and see the interconnection of myths and figures to whom you remain blind because you stand staring at the gaps between names, clueless to the polynymy that bridges the functional interstrewnness of variations! There is a composite picture herein, sir, if you would look! With mirth and gratitude, I will guide the eye to vistas, but I shan't waste a moment arguing with fools. I lay down the gauntlet and say, Drink, or go about your way, beggar.

Could it be that that which seems to be helping to destroy the world is also its salvation? This may sound paradoxical, but alchemy suggests all things in the right proportions, which means that all kinds of energies can be included, and it may just be that we don't have things in the right combinations. Dialectics suggests that the world twists and turns, and what sounds like contradiction is merely the many sides of paradox, to which we must adjust ourselves in order to find truth.

What I'm referring to is the attitude of "To hell with the world! I'm just going to have fun. I just want my life of pleasure."

Many would argue that it is this attitude which is leading the world to go to hell in a handbasket, because of its essential narcissism, and to the degree that the attitude is captured in narcissism, and people have no capacity for empathy, and no capacity for any kind of systematic thinking, yes, that can lead to a downfall ; and by placing responsibility only in the hands of the experts, it allows those experts to have much greater say over things. But at the same time, I think there's something essential about the idea of "to hell with the world, I just want to have a good time."

There's always something healthy about hedonism. Always. Whenever we hear a condemnation of hedonism, our ears ought perk up, and we ought suspect that there's some sort of scam at work. We ought suspect that someone is trying to pull something over on us. We ought suspect that there are monks with whips waiting in the wings.

Now this is not to say that we can't moderate hedonism, and we can't ask for it to hold its proper place. Obviously it sometimes needs to be put in place. But as an ingredient in the larger mix, it is necessary and essential.

Beyond this, it is not just pleasure that is important, but actually, fun, because fun implies a certain amount of frivolousness and it implies a certain orientation of play, and these are needed to combat deadly seriousness.

When our ecologists are enforcing on us a notion of scarcity and are approximating the austerity measures that the IMF and World Bank try to place on countries, telling us that this is how it is, and this is how it is going to be from hereonin, and we have to stop having fun, and get used to the economy being depressed, I begin to suspect that ecology has gotten hijacked, and a particular brand has gotten funded and propagated by interests who wish us to be austere while they go right on hoarding. The way with which the "underground" or "alternative" has just fallen in with this lock, stock, and barrel is frankly just disgusting.

This is not to say that the American consumeristic lifestyle is sustainable, but what it is to say is that we ought to be placing ourselves at all times on at least that side of the balance that tends towards hedonism and playfulness and fun. Now, yes, obviously, that will include a level of self-management that implies a certain level of seriousness and a certain level of taking responsibility for things, but frankly, from my standpoint, one of the things that is entirely wrong with this world is its overemphasis on deadly seriousness, and moreover, the emphasis on scarcity, and that we should adapt ourselves to scarcity. Wow, we might as well just give our birthrights up if that's the case!

Because in fact, this is an abundant world! It's a completely abundant world. Now, we have been exploiting it, and whenever you engage in exploitation, there's going to be blowback, so we need to figure out how to work with things. What's needed is not austerity. What's needed is a kind of Taoism, an active working with Wyrd.

And of course, we haven't been. We have not been doing that at all. We've had a completely imperial way of doing things, of imposition, where we take the attitude that we're just going to do what we want and to hell with any other considerations. When we want a resource, we just go in and we take it. When we want something to be made out of that resource, we go in and we impose that on the resource, and if we have to pay people 30 cents a day in order to do so, then we'll do that, too. Well, this is arrogance.

So there is a price to be paid for arrogance. There is a price to be paid for empire. But the lie of empire is, Well, you can have abundance through empire and imposition, or you can have austerity and you can live as impoverished monks. Well, what bullshit is that!

And if there's anything positive that Ezra Pound, in all of his insanity and his deplorable fall into anti-Semitism, has to give us --- and there still is a baby there in the bathwater not to be thrown out --- it is, don't believe the lie of scarcity, because that's artificial scarcity.

This doesn't mean there aren't some means to be lived within, but don't accept an external notion from outside your concrete situation, outside your authentic needs, and outside the palpable abundance of the earth, of what that is. Don't begin by limiting yourself. Instead, let's think systematically of ways in which felicity, lightness, playfulness, and the natural unfolding and blossoming of human capacity can become the hallmarks of a production that will facilitate abundance and happiness. Let's affirm that these are possible, and that against the notion of classics as things which are heavy and weighty and to which we must give the full weight of deadly seriousness, that instead, true poetry and true creation is about making things lighter so that they can be enjoyed more. And to use a metaphor, to approximate this world, just a little bit more, to adjust it towards Elfland, where things are a little bit lighter and more enjoyable. And the elves are children of Mother Earth! That's what life should be about. We should be adjusting life towards joy, and following our joy.

Joseph Campbell called it "following your bliss", and he distinguished it from a kind of crude and vulgar hedonism, which I have called the "Roman attitude towards partying", an imperial seizing of pleasure that really has no authentic joy in it. This statement of Campbell's is exactly the right formula. Whether there are deadly serious people who think that is our downfall or not, fine, let it be our downfall, because I had rather go down being me than thrive being something I am not, and it is that kind of defiance and Luciferian spirit, coupled with a biophiliac love of life that I think will bring our salvation.

This is a matter of trusting Frey and Freya. It's a matter of turning around from exploitation and imperialism, and turning towards the earth, and following the way of wyrd, and trusting that that will bring the abundance we need. Too often scarcity is a result of hoarding. Let us not let Angrboda -- she who bodes angst, frightening us with fires that may come -- speak to us of ecology. What does she know or care of the earth? At the same time, let us allow the natural, abundantly flowing joy and love of Frey and Freya to temper our desires so that our simple yearnings for simple pleasures and rich festivity do not blow out of proportion into a greed that would eat the earth, but rather sate themselves on the fruits of good work. We have a choice. We can walk Gullveig's road, never sated, never allowing ourselves to fully enjoy, because we are frightened of scarcity, and restrict our options, or we can walk Frey and Freya's road, and permaculturally work with nature, and discover her natural abundance. Is there a way we can trust our sense of fun, and still flow with the Earth's wondrous ways?

Faith says of course there is. Trust abundance. Distrust scarcity.

Tonight I crawled on my hands and knees through the grass and ran my fingers through it, and kissed the earth. I felt the interwoven mat of the grass, solidly held together as an interconnected whole, and my soul went down, down into the earth, down into the root-world.

We are emissaries from the roots. We are emanations from the thick and deep. We have emerged up into separation from the whole, in order to speak what the whole must say. We are moments of the grassrooted, knotty, intricate foundation, that swaying prairie-ocean, that thick fund of ancestral unity where all is solidarity and interwovenness so thick there is no separation, and yet still breathing room. We are emissaries with some light to bring, expressions of the deep come up to drink the sun, to say something from the deep with our living. To come up as on the foam, in effulgence and glory. And not just to serve ourselves, though we may find comfort, but for that there is something to say through our living, through our living itself. The rising and falling, the circulation of life up from the depths, and then back down again. As it rises up, taking in glory of sunlight, and then diving back down, like the dolphins in the ocean, like flying fish. Even the whales leap out of the water. That is us, our souls. Oh, to join again in that deep, that wonder. That's what praying is all about, praying as deep imaginal participation in the deep things of this world. We pray to reconnect ; we pray to remember. To know that we are sacred and that we do have a sacred task to carry out.

We are in pain because we are separated, and yet this separateness is our glory to rise! To rise and touch the world of sunlight, and bring some of that sunlight back down. Do not pray for what praying can do for you, but pray for what you may do for the life-world, for it is your separation from that life-world which causes you your pain. We must remember that the world is not here for us but we for the world. That opportunity to serve with the flowering of our talents and joy is our glory. Our lives are not perfect in a world run by giants but we still have the opportunity to participate in something wondrous and larger than ourselves. That gives life meaning, and a meaningful, worthwhile life is one of the greatest gifts, even if it is hard at times.

The Earth matters. Joy and Love are in charge, if we will quit abandoning them to the ice because of greed and technology out of control, and if we will understand that our rationality runs deeper than the analytical mind, for its roots run through the deeper mind that flow down into the moebial twists of Wyrd's ribbons, from whence we are intricately, inextricably a part of all this, the threads of our being cross-stitched onto this rippling warp and woof. We are the rise of the depths itself, the fold of the lower planes emerging up into a wave of ongoing world, crashing down into itself again, ripple upon ripple running across that crenullated fabric of the deeper weave, from whence all hopes emerge. Death is simply the deeper life, and we are its emissaries, to seed this life more superficial with depth of wisdom and energy of greening. It falls down, having risen, and shall rise again.

I've heard some people say that faith is not a native part of our heathen religion. These people ought to know that faith and its cognate words are pagan words. The faith may be different than the kind of faith of the Christian religion, but we utilize faith every day.

When someone gives you a dollar, why do you take it? Because you have faith that you will be able to utilize that dollar and exchange it for something else of value. You have confidence and trust. The reason faith is needed is because there are gaps. There are gaps between when a person puts a dollar in your hand and when you take that dollar and go get the thing you want. It's a gap. It's not an obvious connection. It's a chasm. But it's a chasm that you're willing to leap. There are chasms in life. There are challenges. The world works in such nonlinear and knotted ways that often our faith is tested. Sometimes it seems as if nature is working against us, when we simply haven't discovered its twirling, spiralled flows. Trust is needed, just as we invest trust and confidence in money.

The world is built on trust. The world is built on faith. The question is, what do we put our faith into? These questions of faith are essential to any kind of religiosity. It is the confidence with which we put into things that determines our ability to move throughout the uncertainty in the world. I mention the faith behind the money system because it is that practical orientation towards faith which is essential for a heathen religiosity. Here is the real question of where do you demonstrate worth? We can look at that from another angle : where do you put your faith? Where do you invest your confidence?

Do you put your faith in Beloved Mother Earth? Is she beloved to you? For you see, if she were beloved to you, there are things you simply wouldn't permit and to happen to her. And you'd have faith that her herbs and the things growing out of her can be helpful and healing.

This is a question of faith in the Gods. It's not a matter of having a contrafactual imagination. It's a matter of having confidence that there's something real behind what you're speaking ; and if there's not something real behind what you're speaking, why are you speaking it? The Gods don't want lip-service. If we will trust the Gods, and really truly put our faith in them, then we can begin to connect to some magnificent, marvelous things, and things that faith in the Gods will be able to give, that the mere faith of the monotheist religions cannot give, because they do not have faith in the Earth, because they do not have faith in fertility, because they do not have faith in the wisdom of the winds. They do not perceive the sacredness permeating and running through this world. There are forces of corruption and forces of evil in this world, but their idea that the world is so permeated with evil that it is irredeemable is blasphemous to our heathen sensibility. There is good in the world! That is why we fight evil! And, beyond fighting evil, more to the point, we bolster up, we berm up, we surround and hedge and guard, and we nourish, the good.

We often begin as pagans engaging in a kind of play-activity. Play is the way that we human beings initiate ourselves into new realities. Play is how animals come to develop into adults. So as children, we come to play at faith. We begin, and our faith is little more than that suspension of disbelief that characterizes theatre-goers, and allows them to enjoy themselves for the duration of the show. But the suspension of disbelief is not something that can last for long unless that confidence begins to take root. And that's what we need to do. We need to get to the point where these names, these holy names that we have begun to use but barely understand --- we barely understand what these names -- Odin, Frigga, Thor --- we barely understand what they mean, for we are children reciting magical formulas that we don't comprehend --- and ground them in existential depth that undergirds our realism and the orientation of our activity. But the more that they take root, and the more confidence that we're willing to put into them, the way that we would put confidence into a dollar bill we were given, and run with it, the more powerful the experiences and possibilities will become. When someone gives you a dollar bill for something you've given, how do you know you haven't just been stolen from? If you took a completely 'atheistic' attitude towards money, you just gave something away. You're not going to get anything in return for it. You just got a piece of paper. But every day, even when we doubt the monetary system, even when we're having questions about it, even when people are telling us that inflation is going up, despite all that, until the point that people actually are taking wheelbarrows full of paper bills to the banks, every day we're acting on it. Can you act on your faith in the Gods with that kind of conviction?

Can we get to the point where we can see that it was our orientation that was out of touch with reality? The orientation that we thought was realistic. The "realistic" orientation that stands in the way of our confidence in the spiritual reality about us. It was our thought that the Earth was not alive that has been at the root of so many of our problems. It was the lack of faith that spirit permeates this world that has allowed us to devoid it of the intelligence with which we could enhance our rationality! That shamanism and analysis don't have to be at loggerheads! They can work together. If we will invest faith, find the roots of faith, then faith will no longer be contrafactual. It will instead be rooting into the ground and searching and seeking the deeper roots of reality, the deeper realities, and we will no longer be attacking symptoms! Realism will no longer be a matter of looking at symptoms, but a matter of going for the roots of things. This is radical faith, radical because the word "radical" means to go to the radix, to the roots. That's where faith becomes powerful, and it is absolulutely a part of our heathen sensibility.

The degree of life's rationality is the degree of luck that you have. I'm defining rationality here in a more basic way than it is ordinarily understood. I define rationality as the human capacity to solve problems (and more particularly, by figuring out the nature of things and then flowing with them rather than against them), and more generally, a state of rationality in life is a state where problems are at least conceivably solvable, if people put their minds together to try to solve those problems, and then act on those solutions. (Acting on the solutions is a necessary part of rationality. It's irrational to simply think them and not implement them!) Such is a very lucky situation indeed, because a situation of unluck is one where problems seem unsolvable and overwhelming and multiple.

If we can think of luck in terms of rationality, then luck is something that can be augmented and multiplied through education and through the encouragement of rational problem-solving techniques. Now lest the intuitive and mystic types amongst us get cold shivers at the sounds of spreading and utilizing rationality, once again, it is a problem-solving orientation, in which we can use our whole minds, our analytical and our intuitive sides, to solve problems ; so when I discuss rationality in this sense, I am not opposing it to intuitive methods that can work hand in hand with analytical methods. Irrationality would simply be not addressing problems at all, nor trying to solve them ; avoiding, and thinking that avoiding will solve them.

When I look around, I think the level of irrationality is increasing, and I think that this is a rational problem, not an irrational one. In other words, it's potentially solvable, and it is not out of our hands, or is inevitable, or just naturally happens that way. I think there's something that can be done about it.

The function of leaders, when there are true leaders, is to try to ensure that life stays as rational as possible, and there are a number of different mechanisms for doing this, the largest of which is law, which is supposed to provide remedies when rights are violated, and is supposed to adjucate conflicts in a way that is both fair and prevents open warfare. But it is plain to just about anyone who opens their eyes that the legal system has become completely irrational. Most people don't turn to it for any kind of solving of their problems, and most people have an understandably cynical attitude towards it, taking the attitude that law is something that is utilized as an aggressive weapon by the powerful to bind the powerless, and such cynical attitude is in fact largely how it is used, which is a complete reversal of how things are supposed to be. When leaders are not ensuring that life is essentially rational, that problems are solvable, it's time to replace them with true leaders. Now, no one can guarantee that life will be without problems, because life is full of problems, and there will always be a margin of problems that just can't be dealt with , but when things get to a point where good, competent people who have passion, who have dedication, who work hard, who have good spirit just begin to feel overwhelmed and that there's not much that can be done about tremendous problems, then something is very wrong. One of the ways that would have been expressed in the old days is talking about luck and unluck, and proclaiming that leaders had not been warding luck. It is useful to look at luck through this lens. Not solely through this lens, but at least through this lens. One thing they were talking about was solvability of problems.

The problem is, irrationality breeds irrationality, because the more unsolvable things seem, the less willing people are to tackle, and the more they are going to want distractions such as entertainment, television, and so forth, which is completely understandable. In the face of problems that seem unsolvable, why confront them at all? One might as well distract oneself and do what one can to enjoy oneself. But of course, the more that people are not focusing on solving the problems, the more the problems are proliferating.

People have become so detached cynically through disappointment from the macro systems that affect us the most, that it's become a real problem. We've left law and economics, which affect us more than just about any other arena, in the hands of experts, who very clearly do not have our best interests at heart, and it's very clear that the official systems of law and economics are being utilized by myopic individuals focused solely on their own interests. Now some of this actually is evil, but some of it is the result of our culture. We have to remember that culture is a cultivation. Culture is a kind of agriculture of the mind, a gardening of values, and for a long time we've been breeding this idea of self-interest, very narrow self-interest and self-concern, and with those who are fortunate, it's quite understandable that they run with this. The end effect is that there are some very wealthy people who are milking the existing mechanisms which are supposed to be in place to protect the weak from the predatory, such that that system is being used to prey upon people. That's very clear.

The primary tool that the Gods have given us is our minds, and so if you want to look at things that are going wrong in the world, you have to look at minds and mindsets. You have to look at the values that are being cultivated. You have to look at the systems that have been created out of mind : law, economics, and so forth. And you have to begin to connect the dots and think systematically. Rationality needs wyrd in order to complete itself. Ecology has been telling us ever since Rachel Carlson that everything is interconnected, and that we must look to this interconnectedness. Wyrd tells us that we must look at nonlinear flows, dynamics, and turbulences in order to understand how things really work. Cause and effect is not just a linear function. Once causes set effects into motion, those effects interact amongst themselves and form flows and streams which take on momentum, and one needs to look at where the momentum is flowing.

The powers that be don't really want people using rationality, because although analysis and intuition must struggle hard to glean genuine insights and separate them from illusion, once that process is rolling, and the insights begin connecting with each other in authentic ways, things often become very simple out of the complexity. It's very easy to see a number of things which are important to notice.

For example, pesticide use is just stupid. There's really little use in debating it. Here bringing in scientists to have scientific battles about this, that, and the other is unnecessary. All we need to know is that pesticides are nerve toxins. They are nerve toxins, and we are spreading poison. There's not a single person from the ancient world who wouldn't have seen that that is just stupid. End of discussion. No need for debate, no need to get into polemics, no need to get pulled into endless argumentation. There's some places where it's useful to argue, and there's other places where you just need to open your eyes and speak what is self-evident before you. Pesticide use is not only stupid ; it's incredibly harmful. Our ancestors would also see that while they had to struggle with pests, the idea of declaring war on all the other creatures of our Beloved Mother Earth, as a way to bring prosperity to ourselves, is essentially a strategy of the giants. That's not a strategy of Vanir-worshippers. That's not a strategy of people who looked to nature, tried to understand her cycles, and work with those cycles. That's an attitude of war on nature, and we're beginning to see, hopefully, that the war on nature is not a war that we will win.

Now when something is both stupid and toxic, you don't argue over the little details. You don't even argue over procedural rules. If people saw how toxic pesticides are, we wouldn't be having discussions on the internet about them, and we wouldn't be having legal battles over them. We'd be engaging in direct action. And it's extraordinarily important that we understand that direct action is the primary engine that gets anything going in life. Direct action. Politicians, legal systems, everything else are not pro-active, at least not in our favor and our direction. They are pro-active for the interests they serve, which for the moment are jotunn interests. No, direct action is the only way to get those systems to respond in the correct way, and whether you think that's radical or not is a matter of how frozen you've become, and how irrational you've become. No, if people saw how incredibly destructive pesticides have become --- and I'm just using one very stupid modern practice amongst many for which it can stand in --- we know where the farms are, we know where the planes are that spread these pesticides and herbicides throughout our air. People would go and block the tractors that pull the pesticides along. They would go and stand in the takeoff lanes at the local airports where the planes are taking off with pesticides. They would surround the factories where these chemicals are made, and they would begin to block and shut down the poison. That's what it will take, and if you trust your heathen ancestors, you'll see that that attitude of action, of direct action, is what it takes. That doesn't mean you need to start with a combative attitude and go to war immediately, although it could take that. Struggles sometimes get to that point, but it doesn't have to start that way. In a rational scenario, people would go out there and put their bodies between their health and the irrationality of people who are driven entirely by profit, by Gullveig.

These symbols are not meant to stay as little fairy-tales. The power of greed, the power of gold, is a real corrupting force in the world. Gullveig does breed wolves, and those wolves are predators. Giants are a way of approaching the world. As Eve put it, the giant corporations are our modern representations of the jotunnish spiritual energies. Direct action, as the implementation of rationality, can help us begin to create a more rational world, a world of luck, a world where the problems don't have to cripple us, and it's time to begin thinking in these terms, because it's irrational to believe that people who don't have your best interests at heart are going to take care of things. It's irrational to believe that having an entirely passive attitude about difficulties is going to solve any problems. It's irrational to believe that sitting in front of your television set is going to do anything. This is not about electoral politics. This is not about writing your congressman. This is about direct action, in the fact of stupidities, and standing up for intelligence.

Had an imaginary conversation with Odin tonight, near L.A.X. I got outside my car and walked around some beautiful paperbark trees. The wind was cool and full of moisture.



"Like those?" He asked in my mind. "Pretty neat, huh? The way the bark just self-peels like paper or origami?" He was genuinely fascinated, and admiring the handiwork.

I nodded. "You made these?"

"Me?" he said, dismissively. "Nah, not I. Made lots of things, but that's the work of my wife. She's had a hand in shaping many things."

"Pretty impressive," I said.

"You know there's not anything like it in any other world. If only you humans could get a sense of what exists out there, you might appreciate the wonder of this stuff here more. I mean, you are surrounded by wonders!"

Now, I knew this was an imaginary conversation in my head. And I also knew that Odin was speaking directly to me.

My friend, fellow heathen, and rock star Eve Ghost responded to my recent post about Freya, "Loveliness', by challenging my idea that Freya herself is really free, and that it is simply a subjective matter in these days of freeing her within our hearts. She suggested that perhaps objectively the mythic scenario of the Frost War is recurring, and we must pay attention, lest we lose love, fertility, and the preciousness of our planet.

Eve makes a powerful point when she becries the rapid losing of our bees. This is no theoretical but an actual problem, with immense implications for fertility.

Here we must ask, have our notions of love become so anthropomorphized that we have forgotten the love Freya has for all of her mother's creatures? And can we ask for Freya's love if we will not imitate that expansive love? Can love survive without roses? Can roses survive without bees?

The actions of human beings have become so powerful that we have become planetary agents for diverse forces. How often are those forces the Gods? How often are they bumbling idiocy, greed, and megasized consumption? We are no longer simply passive recipients of spiritual forces, but actual active agents, and our collective deeds now have great import.

Eve's points are poignant, pressing, and relevant, concerning issues and matters that all pagans and heathens, as well as anyone else who cares about the spiritual-material destiny of this planet, ought to be wrestling with. I hope you will take these ideas to heart, and very, very seriously. I asked Eve to write up her ideas, and I proudly present her words as a guest Op Ed piece, along with my followup commentary :

It began with dead bees.

Or dying bees, as it were.

Upon my arrival in California, I noticed something, something that haunted me. It was the bees that all too frequently were found on the ground, writhing around in a sickly manner. I saw far less of them in the air than I did in the ground. This affected me more than I could have predicted. It literally made my heart ache, and this was before I understood what was going on.

Or perhaps it began when I was still in Minnesota, when Freyr's once relatively reliable guidance dropped out of my life quite abruptly. I felt abandoned. I still had Freya, but eventually she dropped out too, leaving me frustrated and alone. I felt it was something I had done wrong, for some reason I had driven them away. Clearly, I would suffer from their disappearance.

I have watched great love stories wither and collapse without rhyme or reason. We have seen the collapse of true love in favor of reality series inspired drama-fests. Marriages are disposable, friendships are hardly nourished by honor, loyalty and respect in this day and age. Of course, all of this is debatable and relative.

What can't be debated is this: the impending collapse of agriculture and the fertile quality of the land itself. We have allowed giants, represented by corporations, to take ownership of DNA, the essence of life itself. Monsanto can tweak seeds and lord over them with little regard for their consequence and so we have GMO corn that can wreak havoc on peoples' immune systems, we have GMO soy that blows into the next field and contaminates heirloom crops (and results in law suits that unfairly victimize farmers). We have legislation that makes seed saving, a practice that farmers have performed for generations upon generations, illegal.

These same jotunnish corporations are being intrusted with the “green revolution”, to strip native populations of livelihoods that have worked for them for years and use technology to force the land to yield cash crops that were never intended to grow there. Force people from their ancestral lands that populations knew how to graze their animals on without resulting in harm and make them use farming practices that in time strip the land of any use what so ever.

Other corporations will get away with using pesticides in the name of agriculture that murder our bees. Where will be we be without Freyr's mighty legion of bees? Will our crops be pollinated by butterflies? Probably not, they're dying off too. Without Freyr's humble servant, the bees, we are all, in effect screwed.

Now let's take into account climate change. As climates shift and weather “weirds”, we are going to find even less arable land as deserts form where once there were none and crops that once were hearty like the oranges of Florida, succumb to unthinkable winter freezes. And what did we do to reign in the giants who spew death into our atmosphere, to reign in our own use of fossil fuels? We've done too little too late and the fertility of the earth will pay for it.

Look at the inexplicable winters we're having, these progressions into colder and colder weather while in other regions, the permafrost melts and trees topple over. Look at the oceans rising, the huge chunks of glaciers falling into the sea.

And look at how we as people treat each other. We've launched unthinkable wars run behind the curtain by multinational monsters like oil companies and the military industrial complex. We've seen torture of our enemies become actual policy, although thankfully it is abating. We see peoples basic rights even to land and homes stripped away in favor of the profits of bank-giants and mall building developer giants. We have dumped all of our precious resources into war, bailing out banks that fund monstrous endeavors, we've let big agra business run the show, we're sucking the water dry to bottle it and sully Freyr and Freya's father's domain with the islands of dead sea awash with plastic that ensue. We are running out of water, arable land, love for each other and time. And without love for each other, respect for each others freedoms, we're pretty much fucked as far as caring.

Where are we in the myth cycle? Is time cyclic, and how does time work in our heathen mythic landscape? Many pagan cultures had stories of earth moving in cycles of destruction and rebirth. Now physicists seem to agree that time might not be linear as we think. Hell, they now even posit that there's an alternate reality where gravity doesn't exist that's messing with our own plane of existence. So who knows? Do we always get to the end of the mythic cycle, culminating in Ragnarok or does time jump around? Do we always replay the scenarios in the same way? Does it matter?

Where some might jump to the conclusion that we're headed toward Ragnarok, I think what's really happening is the frost war running through its cycle. Again. Freyr and Freya have been held hostage by the giants. We will see a decrease in the natural fertility of this planet, we may see climates changing the earth beyond our recognition at a rate not seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs. But maybe it's not the end of the world as we know it, maybe we just need a hero.

[and my response : ]

Fantastic piece!

We do need heroes. We need the human soul, Odr, to reach out across the wide spaces and rescue Frey and Freya from the Ice Giants. But it means we need not only Svipdag but a Halfdan, too, a true king who will draw all the scattered tribes together against the world order that has aligned itself with frost. This king will be on the side of organic agriculture and farmers (Groa). This king will show a great understanding for the mysteries of existence (the runes). This will be a true philosopher-king who understands that leadership is a privilege and a trust that flows from the Gods with the folk as beneficiaries and which must respect each God's domain.

This king will dare to speak out against the spiritual principles that have turned against the Gods : our arrogant technology (Weland) that thinks its magic and its devices more important than holiness and devotion to the earth. He must also speak against that part of us that wants to mess with everything (Loki), and which led us to this problem in the first place, distinguishing such a meddling, disruptive spirit from true inquiry and holy wisdom. Of course, that spiritual principle which always tries to frighten us with scarcity, and leads towards greed and hoarding, thus creating the very terror we feared (Gullveig) must be countered as well, which is particularly hard in an age where much of that self-fulfilling prophecy has come true. Nevertheless, by demonstrating true generosity, the king will set the tone for how that spirit will be countered.

And it explains the rune sequence I got in my mind when I meditated on this issue, Wunjo, Raidho, Odal : Victory via the Road to Odal. The king must spearhead the movement against worldwide feudalism, and create tribute-free zones that are unbeholden to corporations or to government. A new relationship with land, akin to how the Native Americans saw it : a sacred trust, with every creature and growth upon it connected in some way to our luck, to be held in extended families generation after generation so it is well cared for as a home and not treated as a commodity on the open market (all characteristics of odal land.) Those stewards who actually care for the land and intend to do so for the generations to come and not just for their short-term profit must be seen as the true and only kind of nobility (Athelings). This king must never lord it over others but be merely the leader of the assemblies of sacred liberated zones (odal). The idea is then to free up tiny zone after tiny zone and link them. While the spiritual prophet (Svipdag) helps restore our relationship to the true fertility of Love and Joy, which will eventually renew us, but whose journey through frost is hard and takes a long time, on the material level we are liberated by greening little plot by little plot (a gardeners revolution : Groa), every restored area of organic permaculture a little victory. Together these form a unified spiritual-material strategy.

Proceeding square foot by square foot if necessary, we can plant flowers that are nourishing to bees. Even people with apartment balconies can plant such flowers to help the bees. We can make sure we garden organically, because pesticides are not only killing us with outrageous rates of cancer, but the bees as well. As cell phone and microwave radiation may be implicated in bee die-off, we can shield our gardens with various materials, including constructing faraday cages near or around the gardens, if need be. We have already spoken on this blog about the nature-preserves that were traditional on the property of our Indo-European ancestors ; setting aside a part of your yard or balcony as a bee-refuge would be a way to invoke the rune Algiz, or sacred protection, in a very concrete way.

The myth also suggests we must be careful about too much separation and hatred between our spirit of spiritual quest (Svipdag) and true material-political leaders actually working hard, but inching step by inching step, to restore fertility and freedom on the practical level (Halfdan). The former is likely to get impatient and furious with the latter. The latter is likely to fetter the former, try to hold the seeking spirit of inspiration back (Halfdan tying up Svipdag in Fetters' Grove). This is disastrous, and the material leaders must always strive to respect the spiritual leaders, otherwise the search for revenge may distract and deflect from the true task. Vengeance must be surrendered on the altar of love, joy, and fertility, which is what it is all about.

Rod Landreth, over at Jotun's Bane Kindred (and who can't immediately like a kindred with a cool name like that?), has written a kind appraisal of my work here, accompanied by good-hearted critique, as well as more critical attention to elitism amongst the denizens of the academy that is worth reading. It is an honor on my part to hear such high praise, along with good suggestions by someone who is not only a fellow heathen, but an elder (not in the chronological sense, but the spiritual sense)in our community. Good-hearted critique is always worth considering, because it is not only a compliment, but a goad to be better ; moreover, it means that someone actually enjoys your work, and so much, they want it at its best. We must thank those who have such love, particularly in the face of more widespread apathy.

It seems worthwhile to begin with our agreement, which is substantial. I think we are both opposed to elitism, but with slightly different approaches and strategies. One of the things that drives me crazy about Ezra Pound, for example, was his refusal to footnote his work. There seems to be the assumption that you should "just know" whatever random quote he pulled out of the archive and decided to slip into his poetry. Footnoting his work (with the notes in the back) would not have detracted from the work, but would have made it more accessible. Snobbery irritates me. Pound did know a lot, but how does he expect the rest of us to know the material he gleaned pouring through rare archives in Europe? That's silly. I also am irritated by scholars who will include quotations in Greek, Latin, French, or any other language for that matter, and not bother to translate it, assuming that we should "just know".

I also agree that we need to be bold and push forward the development of our living religion, without fear of stepping forward "unless they see three to five references that supports their step." Certainly. Actually, for myself, I often move first with my gut. I get an intuitive feel about a topic, and then, as educators say, engage in backwards planning : once you've figured out your goal, going back and mapping out the steps on how to get there. My high school math teacher emphasized this approach to me. He'd say, "Ziggy, you can know the end answer, but you still have to show the proof on how you got there." It took me a while to understand that, but actually, I think it is an anti-elitist move to provide footnotes and outline steps. I sometimes have some leaps to make, and I want people to be able to retrace my steps so they can check me at each step along the way. It doesn't have to be in the lore for me to speak on it, but I have developed such a broad faith in the resiliency of the lore, even in the fractured, skewed state we have it, that I'm pretty confident that the tradition has some angle on just about anything I might want to speak about. For me, that is a way of speaking not just to a modern audience, which I agree is important, but also including the ancestral audience, which is equally as important. The footnotes are there not out of timidity but out of respect, and frankly, a kind of intellectual necromancy.

By providing readers with the careful steps on how I got somewhere, I avoid the authoritarianism of "Look, just trust my intuition 'cuz I said so." I can show you how I got to where I wanted to go, so if you want to go there, too, you can do so confidently. On the other hand, if you want to go part way, and then veer off and explore other territory, you can do that, too. I can also point out where I went on gut instinct.

The lore is necessary to explore in depth, and it is complicated, which means there's a bit of study to be done. I've done most of that work, and so from my perspective, having gone into arcane medieval documents and translated their Latin (or whatever), and taken the time to synthesize the material, I am already presenting more simplified work. You're getting a lot of already digested material. Do we need to digest it further? Absolutely. But my point here is that the ancients wouldn't have needed to be scholars when it came to lore because they would have had it at their fingertips from an early age. Having the full span of lore before them, they could reflect on it at their leisure. They knew it like adolescents now know Star Wars, like trekkies know Star Trek, like kids know Robin Hood. But because our literature was often religious in tone, the Christians did the best they could to blow all that to smithereens, so that we have hundreds of fragments that require careful puzzle-piecing together, just so we can approach the knowledge any seven year old heathen of ancient days would have had! This is frustrating to all of us, but until we assimilate this matter, we aren't as open to all of the encoded spiritual messages found therein. The lore is meant to unlock all kinds of intuitive reflections and inner locked material. It's often unlocked best on reflection when one is walking out of doors in a natural setting, looking at a sunset, dancing in a rainstorm, struggling with the cold. Then the poignancy of certain episodes suddenly hits one.

It's true that I'm so often enthralled by my visions of the old growth heathenism that I know we can grow and develop into, that I'm a little more neglectful of the pioneer stage of succession that we're at. I believe we need voices at all levels, and it's important to have accessible materials. I will again extend the offer : if there are any articles here that anyone thinks worthwhile, but needing a little simplifying, I would be happy to either initiate or collaborate on a kind of "Cliff Notes" version.

The other point in this regard that I'd like to emphasize is that I really encourage people to ask questions and comment, and I am very happy to answer any and all questions. I am also willing to engage critical debate, and the only comments I will not acknowledge or respond to are those which are openly antagonistic or bigoted. I very much want to encourage dialogue here, and I'm very happy to explain anything I've said here, both prose and poetry.

However, while we need accessible materials -- no questions about that -- it is also true, I believe, that we need something to aspire towards, cultural materials that are not about barring entrance but raising the bar and providing a challenge. Rod speaks of materials that require one "to read, reread, unpack and make copious notes." I think that's ok, so long as there is also other material at more accessible levels as well. We need all levels of challenge. For myself, I cannot assess what levels I may have managed to reach -- perhaps I am bombastic failure -- but that I do reach is something I am proud of. It may be that I fall on my face, but reaching is a noble action, and I would like everyone in their own right to reach.

Despite the fact that our ancestors "were not a literate people", their oral culture could be quite sophisticated. Skaldic poetry, which people delighted in, was sometimes difficult even for well-trained and educated listeners to fully understand. They delighted in its riddling nature and its ability to overwhelm with nuances one often only caught on a third or fourth hearing. Nobility, high ideals, and intricate, elevated, and lofty forms of art are native to our tradition. That doesn't mean they were for everyone. But consider : even common folks came to see Shakespeare. They may not have caught every nuance in the play which more educated folks may have, but they enjoyed the mythic situations, and appreciated the rich imagery, as well as the feeling of elevation that came from being immersed in such diction. It is not elitist to offer people the opportunity to level up. Not all leveling has to be downwards. This religion is based on challenge.

So far as my poetry is concerned (and I don't know if its level or prevalence is of concern to anyone or not), my style is far less baroque than classical skaldic poetry. In fact, I often write in blank verse precisely because it's more accessible than the beautiful alliterative style of our ancestors. There's lofty mythic material here to be told in elegant, powerful ways.

Rod compliments me greatly by flattering me with the label of "Brahmanic". If only I could write such Upanishadic literature! It is my goal to try to create literature, and thus extend lore, to give some solid meat and garnishes for our ample feasts. Brahmanic knowledge was often elitist precisely because it was mostly confined to the caste system ; but I envision the three levels Rig instituted as meritocratic, and thus potentially open to all who have an interest.

However, I never write with the object of trying to impress with big words, and I have always been very critical of people who try to intimidate others with their knowledge, rather than welcome their participation and dialogue. (Being intentionally intimidating, and naturally formidable, are different things. I don't find Patrick Stewart intentionally intimidating, but I do find him naturally formidable, and am appropriately impressed and inspired.) I have a particular style that is native to me, and other styles that I am experimenting with as I strive to develop my craft as a skald. The denseness of some of my writing may be due to wanting to pack so much in and gather every possible nuance. I would love to do this unpacking myself, but I would need reader input on where they would find such unpacking and explanation helpful. "I wish he would ramp down his dense wall of words so more people could access what he has to say." I am open to suggestions!

Rod makes a very good point when he says, "They miss the point entirely of religion, spirituality, faith, and belief, but they are mostly agnostic to all that *anyway.*" This is right on target. Asatru may be the "religion with homework", but it is still a religion, and that involves faith, belief, prayer, cultivation of gnostic experiences, and so forth. In other words, we're supposed to be ambidextrous : faith and reason, intuition and lore, modern and ancestral, precisely because wisdom is the blend of the theoretical and the practical, the intuitive and the logical, the inspired and the studied. The God of Warriors may be one-handed, but he is one God amongst more than a dozen. We needn't be.

Faith, and the struggles that go with faith, are very important to me. I don't know whether it's obvious or not, but from my perspective, I am often leading here with my emotions, with my aspirations, with my passions, and with my desperate wrestlings with reconciling ancient religion and modern dilemmas. It's something we're all struggling with to make it relevant, yet still be faithful to the ancestors.

So ... what would you like to see at Heathen Ranter? What would make the discourse here more accessible? What would make your questions and dialogue feel more welcoming? Chime in.



Would hypertexting help more? I've hypertexted in this blog entry a little more, linking to any terms I think might be arcane in any way.

One must always remember that Freya’s domain is not limited to romance, the flowering of love, but all loveliness itself. This means beauty, it means affection between friends, it means the devotion native to the fruit of love (children), and the family-ties that flow therefrom. In all things, she cultivates the lovely, and it is this quality of loveliness which she fosters within the world to adorn it as she is adorned with Brisingamen, her shining necklace. Beauty makes us to love, and it is not just an external adornment, but a quality that glows from within. From Freya’s standpoint, art is simply that which successfully manifests the beauty within. Here even an ugly face may be more beautiful than a pretty face without loveliness, and we may be tested to see whether we simply fawn after appealing surfaces, or whether the surfaces of beautiful things draw us deeper into the loveliness within, so that beauty may find its root, for where the root is, there is strength.

It is the loveliness within things which makes them bloom. All life struggles to find its beauty, and within the constraints of each several existence, the urgency towards poignancy, that revelation of soul which is exposure of all the creature loves, is the force behind growth. Thus she causes flowers to blossom, and beasts to burst with fruit of the womb. She is Beauty, and her brother is Joy. Together they are the peace and fruitfulness that love brings. If you can’t see the garden as a rampant love affair, you haven’t been understanding the very process of life itself.

We all yearn for that crown of Freya’s gifts, romance, that hormone-circulating devotion and passion which makes all the world seem lovely, and we pine for it when it is absent. But we must remember that Freya is abundant with gifts of love even when romance is dormant, for the love of friends and family should never be discounted or devalued, for these kinds of love also bring out the loveliness of the world, sometimes in softer ways than romance, but often more lasting and stronger. If our romances, in fact, can take on the qualities of those loves that cleave to friends and family, grafting onto its rootstock, as it were, we will have demonstrated our devotion to Freya.

Freya flows with compassion and benevolence beyond compare, but she tasks for the gifts she gives, that we show proper devotion to them, and not toss them aside like bored toys. That which is lovely deserves devotion, and those who cannot incorporate this truth into their life may find themselves increasingly barren. Freya can test you. She wants you to rise up to the level of what love demands. Do not expect love to bow to you, for you must bow to love. You may have to travel long for love ; you may have to risk for love ; you may have to learn patience, and bear hardship, and develop resilience in the face of even repeated disappointment. You may have your temper tantrums and your listlessness in this regard, but she expects you to come back and be ready once again for the privilege of bearing the weight of love, for when it comes, its loveliness will lighten all the loads one carries.

To woo love, cultivate loveliness. Develop your sense of beauty, and let it manifest in the world. Find ways of transforming even the ugly and ogrely into domains of loveliness through well-plied and skillful art. Learn to love yourself through feeling and appreciating the loveliness you are capable of manifesting. If at times you feel that no one else loves you, when you allow beauty to express itself through you, that experience is itself the feeling of Freya’s deep love for you. If she loves you, and she does, unless you have abandoned yourself completely to the monstrous, then you are worthy of love.

Freya was locked away from the world at one point during the yore-days, and imprisoned in a cold, frozen dungeon deep beneath the mountains. Because of this, the world lost its loveliness, the flowers stopped blooming, romance and childbirth came to a standstill. She is now free, but each of us must live through her drama for ourselves, and free her from within. Only Odr was able to free her. Our soul of inspiration and imagination must do the work of trekking through all the trials, bearing all the setbacks, and plowing through all the endless snow to reach her and free her. For we ourselves are frozen off from love until we do so. Odr was lucky ; her peril was his opportunity, for under what other circumstances could a mortal win the hand of immortal love? So we mortals must treat her as precious, and do whatever it takes to unlock her from the frozen dungeon that too often is our heart, and thaw it into springlands of wild blossoms.

It’s not easy. But it’s worth it. And just as Freya’s drama from the yore-days was celebrated liturgically year after year in the passing of the seasons, so we too may many times pass through these cycles ourselves. If we are lucky, and if we are wise, and if we are devoted, those cycles will evolve into spirals that evolve us and bring us closer to fulfillment each round.

In Drápa af Maríugrát, a skaldic poem of the 1300s, Jesus is repeatedly referred to as a "prince of the sun". He is called the öðlingr ... bjartra röðla, "atheling of the bright sun", the fylki sunnu, "king of the sun", sunnu grundar siklings , "king of the sun's grassy fields", hilmi sólar, "helmsman/ruler of the sun", lofðung‹r› hauðrs ... sólar, "the prince of the sun's land", máttugr anzar mána stjettar, "mighty defender of the paths of Mani", sólar vísir, "leader of the sun", Höll ítarlig himna stillis, "glorious moderator of the Hall of Heaven", mildingr ... mána hauðrs, "the merciful prince of Mani's land", mána hauðrs stilli, "moderator of Mani's land", hilmis sunnu, "helmsman of the sun", hilmir vænnar stjettar ... bjartrar sólar, "helmsman of the beautiful paths of the bright sun", sólar kóngs, "king of the sun", birti dróttins ... mána strandar, "the bright lord of Mani's shores", sólar þengils, "thing-leader of the sun", hirði mána bryggju, "herdsman of Mani's bridge", and sæll ... sólar stillir sóma prýddr, "blessed honor-adorned moderator of the sun".

Although the intent of the poem is to designate Jesus as the ruler of the heavens, and indeed, he is sometimes so called, it is curious that he is paired with the sun so often. In three places, he is actually referred to as a protector of the paths of the sun and the moon, a place which in the heathen mythology belonged to Baldr. This suggests that the skald had his kennings ready to hand, and could simply transfer what had been kennings of Baldr directly to Jesus. Indeed, in a couple places, the skald seems to lift paraphrases of Thor as well, lát þú kveikjast loginn dróttins leiptra skríns í hjarta mínu, "Let thou kindle the fire of the lord of the shrine of lightning in my heart", and lýðr er allr leiptra stillis lofi dýrligstu skyldr að ofra, "All people should offer endearing praise to the leader of lightning". It would seem as if Christian poets were free to lift the epithets of various heathen Gods and with a slight twist, apply them all to God or to Christ. Yet when these adaptations are obvious, we may have an inroads to reclaiming important kennings and conceptions of our ancient Gods.

Scholars have speculated that the poet of Drápa af Maríugrát was reworking Planctus siue lamentacio beate Marie, which was a prose translation into Icelandic of Liber de passione Christi et doloribus et planctus matris eius, by the Italian abbot Ogerius de Locedio of the 12th century, but as a skaldic poem, the choice of kennings was the poet's. He may have many times needed to translate a phrase meaning "lord of the heavens", but that he does so with kennings that are strikingly reminiscent of Baldur's epithets is telling. Knowing this, we may reclaim these kennings for Baldur, who was known as a great moderator of the heavens, and who protected the sun and the moon on their courses.

Don’t be lazy about your good. Too much whip about your ill can wilt the good, however small, still active within you. The good must be nurtured, cultivated, watered, loved, given ample opportunity and room. Scolding has its place, but it oversteps if it begins to encroach on the active nurturing of the good. What is good in you, act upon. What promises fruit, water and tend. What promises opportunity and growth, seize upon. It is our feebleness in the face of our good promise, and less our fill of ill, that undoes us. Have the courage to be the best within you. It takes valour to reach out for what calls from within.

The sinuous,

As thick, petrified snake,

Its scales of mottled bark,

Uptending skyward-bound,

Where far past all the canopies of men,

Its trunk enringed by billowed clouds,

And up through starry heights,

Where white-powdered fog-roiled beard of All-Father looms,

The thunder of his son beside him,

And the colors all of all the Heavenly Gods.

Through such clouds as these, I close my eyes and pray,

That rippling tree in serpentine waves might up

my breath’d requests that yearn for deep communion.

Rushing megin in my flesh, I tilt my head back,

And gasp with rapture. (And though this be cartoon of mind,

Though brightest, vibrant film to me,

These fancies stretched do make the link,

So far beyond is here beside.)

My only prayer, to make me holy,

Year by year by year.

And let ascend the spiraled staircase

Round the royal ash

Where my further noble blood

may be imbibed and fused into my bones,

The boons of which I share with kith,

And kin, as shining sun.

Let all stains of unworth begone ;

Let all unholy thoughts,

Let all unholy will,

Let all unholy deeds, drain down as watered venom

To the wastelands of the nether North,

Where they may rot the ill back into soil.

Give me strength to fight each battle,

The inner as the outer, too,

For ill, oft tricky, hides within,

As out withal we ward.

Let me pulse on that path laid for my wholemaking,

And never far astray from it do wend,

For where I don’t belong I have no holy power.

But where I do belong, give strength,

Give will, give righteous wisdom.

And as I ask You All to listen

With wisened balance the in-between

The mercy and the justice that I crave,

May I my own ears’ judgement broaden,

And to fellows fair, my fairest judgements give.

Let me gather my momentum,

as a wave with all its fellows does,

When rushing from the all of ocean,

It out upon the shores as horses spring.

For I am fruit, and fruit ought warm, and come to fullness.

Give soothe to wounds’ torment,

Which oft long linger after scars.

Let eyes in darkness rest from dazzle of battle’s blaze,

And in dream a new way portend and glimpse.

Let my boldness be a beacon to the weak,

To find their strength in bending,

But the ill leave far behind.

May I fulfill my highest, righteous rung of wyrd,

And be a blessing to my Folk, and Land, and Cosmos;

Be it humble, I shall smile.

Let breathe the bless of each day’s boon

Which you in plural color give

So deep into my inner dens,

And banish angst,

And banish sickness,

And banish every wicked seed of deed,

For I shall will the Good, in all its blessed Wholeness,

With the stridence of my fullest might,

And pledge myself to do thy Right,

Whose pathways long ago you laid down.

This, a humble-handed ant,

With spark of upper fires held

in silly, smallest brain,

Beneath on dust of planets’ shores,

A world though small, be full of good potential,

Offers up to Thee and Thine.

There in high cathedrals, in a city further far

Than all of space and time could fathom,

I know you are, and yet you hear my prayers.

O hear my prayers, O blessed Lords and Ladies.

As if the waves of water part, when swim,

I peer, by peeling back the papered bark

Of crystal-boughèd tree (whose crown in seas

Of studded-flash of black does blow its green

And luminescent leaves), within the pith

Of pulpy xylem, and I hear within the echoed pulse

Of beating song that stirs fermented saps, a sound.

First faint, a newer strand, a fresh motif

Of orange-blazèd mew, and padded paws

On dark and dewy grass as heads he forth

For family grounds of mine in lower realms,

My cat, this midnight last his breath in-took ;

And know within the surging choir hid

Invisible beneath all things, his wise meow

Shall now resound, as wisdom realized, all

Within the all of inner depths of all, from roots

So thick and gnarled, down, how far

Their downing goes, O no one knows ; but there,

In nestled valley meadows, where my hall

Of elders’ roof is raised beside the mountain gardens,

He shall purr ; and trill from his enwisened purr

Shall pulse within the pith of tree, and nourish me,

And all my kin, and you, as well, if feline wit

In old and graceful strength you’d claim as wise.

I do, I do, I do ; adieu, O sweetest Garfield.

Let tears of mine be dew

That softens all the pathways’ meadows

As you pitter-patter to the steps of where

My friend two years of late did pass

Shall warm and welcome you, with soft caresses.

Wyrd is full of twist and turns of flowing, raging chance, which ravel 'bout each other, forming loop and twine and threaded pattern, giving layer to the screaming song, so it has force of habit rolling forward. So deep are deepest habits that we call these layers law, but though this pulsing web of rippled light is strong, and we may oft predict, what will become is shimmered on the rippling skein of lake, in constant motion. So the deepest strength of fate has chance insurging through it, strong, so all determinations laid down have a strange, uncanny whimsy running through them. From higher elevations, momentum may be projected towards trajectory, but how the details come, not even higher ones can know. And so the world is woven with surprise, and all our hopes ride on the wings of shrouded magic, even as the strongest motions lunge with near-unstoppable stampede. An element of uncertainty survives ; and thus, we call it Wyrd.

Who is spiritual? Often the people who are advertising it the least. The people who proclaim their spirituality are often seeking spirituality, but haven't found it. "The wyrd that can be worded is not so weirded." Thus sayeth Wyrd Megin Thew, in loving transliteration of the Tao Te Ching. Those who know speak softly and do.

In my book Wyrd Megin Thew, I suggest that there are inchoate priesthoods waiting in the earth to be claimed, that ordinary people may be living. An English professor teaching the soulful meanings in literature may be functioning as a druid. A hospice worker may function more as a shaman than someone with a lot of paraphernalia. A gardener may be an inchoate pagan, intuitively working with the spirits.

There are people out there doing good work. Exceptional work, even. They exhude wisdom, and often, they are too immersed in their work to do advertising. Yet they deserve recognition and we ought to open our eyes and praise the worth of their work, because they can teach us. Teachers are all around us. If pagan/heathen spirituality is about anything, it is that : teachers surround us. But often in humble places that require us to humble our imperialist arrogance and get closer to the ground.

Who is spiritual? Those doing the work of the spirits. Spirits are invisible. Their workers may be less than obvious to the eyes as well. Priesthoods do not disappear ; they simply stop being recognized by a culture, yet the draw and pull to them continues to pull souls in to do the good work. Good culture gives name and role to that which has value. Look around you. Who, unrecognized, is performing ministry? Who is serving spirit in all its many variations and relations? Let them know that they are doing something sacred. Life is tended to in many ways, and all who do the tending merit praise. Spirituality is often performed in surprisingly ordinary ways. Who touches us acts as spirits' emissary. Who teaches us gives us access to deeper legacies. Who lives well, however silent, provides model for all of us who fall from virtue so easily. Let us see teachers where before we saw none. Let us recognize good work and give it praise.