Month: November 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meditation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spending Time in Nature

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

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

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

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

Talking

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

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

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

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

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

Music

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

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

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

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

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

Exercise, Dance, Martial Arts, etc

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

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

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

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

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

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.

My 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.