January 2009 – Elhaz Ablaze

My Heathen Stall

January 31, 2009 by Heimlich A. Laguz

myheathenstallimage1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Woden, Fear, and Frey

January 30, 2009 by Heimlich A. Laguz

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Utiseta

November 25, 2009January 24, 2009 by DubhGhaill

Some strange things can happen when you spend a night sitting out in the dark. Your eyes play tricks with the light and objects that you try to focus on seem only to melt away. The combination of fatigue, hunger, fear and pure boredom can quickly break down the barrier between worlds and let you see things you never even believed could exist.

I’ve seen a thing or two, in the darkness.

No complex techniques, rituals or meditations are required. Just choose a spot and hold your ground. Gravesites are traditional, as are haunted houses, crossroads, wilderness areas and anywhere you are unlikely to be disturbed by humans. Just don’t fall asleep

Hail Chaos

Music and Magic

January 20, 2009 by Heimlich A. Laguz

Three cheers to Between The Buried And Me for putting on an amazing show on Saturday night. I had a wildly magical time and also found the inspiration for this journal entry.

Its pretty debatable that Heathen magicians ever used music for magical purposes, with the possible exception of singing (and perhaps on exceedingly thin evidence some percussion instruments).

But in modern times we are not so impoverished! I’ve mentioned in the past the consciousness altering properties of black metal, properties which seem particularly keyed into Heathen spirituality even though this genre of music is only a few decades old.

Considering the ways in which music can move one’s emotions, and indeed transform the state of one’s nervous system, it would seem wise to find ways to apply it for magical purposes. I’ve written about chanting in the past, but here I’d like to discuss the utilisation of live performances for magical ends.

When a group of performers are on their game they very easily become transmitters, vessels for the flow of all kinds of creative and evocative forces. There’s nothing like the spill of cold energy down your spine when music opens a rich new world for you to fall into.

Admittedly there are many bands that do not bring to bear this sort of manifestation; I’m personally quite sick of mediocre metal bands who are content to merely replicate the same old tired forms without so much as a single creative spark.

But when I encounter a band that is able to convey something, to offer a transpersonal experience, I find that I can use the magic they summon in all kinds of ways. Sometimes it even uses me.

There are a few sources of power that you can tap into when you are part of an audience. Firstly, of course, a good performance will pull the audience into a very unified state. A sense of group consciousness can manifest and that can be very powerful. The sense of oneness in music that is created can be deeply ecstatic.

This group consciousness generates a lot of energy (or whatever metaphor you choose), and it’s possible to imagine that flowing through your body. As it passes through you can imagine seeds of intention dropping into the rushing megin, to be carried out into the world.

I find imagining a giant Elhaz rune channelling light and heat through my body to be very helpful in this regard; I got some dramatic results right away when I did just this recently at a gig.

Since it’s possible to quite effortlessly occupy a state of altered consciousness, riding the back of the group experience, this is a very simple way of doing magic. Note that I don’t really recommend so-called magical vampirism as I feel its just plain bad form. There’s enough magic to go round that you don’t need to steal other peoples’.

Secondly there is the magic coming through the performers, which can really establish the atmosphere of the room. A band like Between The Buried And Me is capable of taking their audience on a journey through a vast spectrum of emotions and atmospheres. Through imagination it is very easy to ride that musical topography.

This riding can allow you to fare forth if you like, to rise from your own body and travel through imaginal roads (there’s all kinds of circumstantial evidence of this sort of thing in Heathen lore). You don’t need to provide the impetus to get moving because the music can provide a strong source. All you need to do is point yourself in a direction.

You can also let the music open up your body, energise your muscles, clear your metabolism, or unblock your emotions. I can use the music to reach a very elated state, not unlike berzerkergang but without the violent focus (or sometimes with, if truth be told).

If there are places that you have been avoiding in your emotional life then you can use music to open those doors, often quite safely thanks to the cushion of life force that it provides. In short – a little creative visualisation can turn even a death metal gig into a healing experience!

Aside from some of the more esoteric responses to music that are available, great live music can put you into a position of perspective. Sometimes, if the performers are particularly masterful, I find myself given the opportunity to open into a rich assessment of my life. I can question my decisions and direction and new possibilities come to me effortlessly.

Of course, holding onto such resolution after the fact is sometimes difficult and that’s one of the reasons why documenting intense but subjective experiences is so valuable – it helps to objectify the subjective, bringing it into what might be called ‘reality’.

With magic there is a danger of spiritual rootlessness, as we hungrily aspire to one epiphany after another – while at the same time our actual daily lives stagnate. Its important to act on the lofty decisions made in the throws of music-induced ecstacy.

It seems almost too obvious to mention the place of dance in live music. Music can very easily have us involuntarily nodding our heads, tapping our feet – or wildly spinning and weaving across the room!

This combination of physical abandon and shared consciousness in turn can easily open the door for possession states. I can recall a dance party I once attended where a horde of gods and spirits used me to express and play in the physical world. I become a vessel for them, the chorus of beings hovering around me, laughing and singing, diving in and out.

That was profoundly healing for me, but it came with a price: I was hospitalised the next day! Physiologically, the doctors said, it was as though I had run a marathon or two, but having not taken care of myself as an athlete would my body went into shut down as the amount of muscle waste in my blood sky-rocketed. It was very dramatic – I just keeled over at work.

Which leads me to conclude that if you intend to explore the conscious utilisation of live music for magical purposes you had best know your limits! Music can invoke forces much stronger than what any one individual can safely express.

This ties back in with the theme of “perfecting the vessel” that I’ve discussed before, too. In order to better channel and manifest the flow of the waters of life throughout the World Tree we are well served to strengthen ourselves, to become more supple and more stable.

A good way to do this is gradually build up your exposure to powerful transpersonal experiences such as good live music! If you open the magical doors a little bit at first you can gradually expand your capacity to channel and utilise the flowing waters of life that live music can invoke.

Listening to recordings of evocative bands (Emperor come to mind) is good training, too.

Be aware that the scale of the performance is not a reliable predictor of the power it might evoke. Seeing Roger Waters and band perform the Pink Floyd back catalogue in full luxury was deeply profound to me; but Joe Dolce with an acoustic guitar in a back shed at some crappy Australian folk festival can reduce me to a puddle with a single chord.

A warning: avoid bad music, which can block you up like molasses in a straw. Here in Australia, for example, there is an endless rogues’ gallery of miserable blues and ‘roots’ bands, each replicating the same tired forms in a spirit of miserable pig-headedness. No creative spark to be seen.

I feel that such music can create magical and psychological constipation: so avoid!

In summary, then, live music provides three main doors into magical and spiritual experience (via the application of the imagination).

Firstly through the intense shared consciousness that can emerge in the synergy of audience and performers. Secondly, through the spirit channelled by the performers themselves. Thirdly, through your individual response to the performance, be it reflective (a moment of clarity) or visceral (the union of conscious and unconscious experience in dance or movement).

All of these doors are worth entering and exploring; and for all the gathered press about you, no one will even know that you are working magic into the world as the band plays on.

Note:

Some music styles are more trance inducing than others. Droning notes; repetitive beats; music with slow note changes and lots of delay/flange/phaser/reverb; music in compound time signatures – all classic tools for intense trance induction. Then again, a hip hop MC in full flight and a spiralling jazz horn soloist can have the same effect.

The key seems to be something about alternating layers of repetition or stillness (recurring rhythms, droning notes, etc) layered against unfolding variations (solos, gradual chord transmutations, etc).

The means shapes the experience of course (I’m not like to get homicidal watching Tony Eardley or lovelorn watching Aeon of Horus), but the ends are very much up your own particular creativity. Oh yeah, and check out Tool, in particular their album Lateralus. They’ll pretty much take you everywhere you could possibly need to go.

Rogue Runa

January 8, 2009 by Heimlich A. Laguz

I am drinking a cup of tea with an Othala rune printed prominently upon it. The cup wasn’t designed by some neo-Heathen runic enthusiast; indeed, the text on the cup reads “Staff & Executive Resources”. Am I surprised? Not in the slightest. Ever since my first real initiatory experience I’ve tended to see runes everywhere. Often they seem to bear significance, though I can’t always puzzle this out.

For example, I once lived in a three storey terrace in the inner west of Sydney. In the middle of the middle floor was situated the bathroom. The bathroom tiles were decorated with a motif that featured hundred of Othala runes.

It occurred to me that, insofar as Othala might possibly be considered a symbol of Midgard, it was no accident that the room with these runes would be right in the heart and centre of the dwelling. I know, that’s a little trivial, but on the other hand, someone’s aesthetic decision was unconsciously shaped by a runic instinct, and that seems less trivial.

I wanted to document some other examples of this sort of thing. These things make me smile, because there the runes are, right where they belong, sneaking through the collective unconscious without the slightest hesitation. We are more connected to the arch-Heathens than we tend to think, floating on a deep and wild ocean of history and symbolism.

To me Dagaz represents liminality – that’s my personal take on the rune of course, but consider this little poem I wrote a while back:

Dagaz [Day] is sunlight
Dappled on yew-leaves;
The hidden revealed
Cleared through and through
seen and not seen.

I often notice that over windows people erect metal grilles in the shape of Dagaz runes. Or on doors and gates. Speaking of the latter, you get many Ingwaz runes on security gates, doors, entry alcoves, and the like. Ingwaz to me has a resonance of protective enclosure that seems to correspond nicely to this sort of co-incidence. Wire mesh fences also often are composed out of thousands of little Ingwaz shapes, too.

One example of rogue runa I often encounter is the hail form Hagalaz. It crops up on air conditioner grilles, on the covers of drains and drainage grates, and seems to appear any time there is an opening designed to let some things through but stop other things. As though it were some kind of purification device – well that’s my best guess.

I guess if hail destroys the inessential, then what is left is distilled and allowed to pass through. But this is one runic correspondence that I can’t yet fully explain to my own satisfaction.

And sometimes in elevators I see Eihwaz runes – my sense is that, just as sap flows up and down the yew tree’s trunk the elevator carries us up and down the column of the building.

So while some authors have made much of the use of rune-like shapes in old school European buildings, few have noticed that these symbols still seem to pop up with monotonous regularity and thematic coherence.

Admittedly the more self-consciously modern architecture is less likely to have these sorts of little features. Then again, modern design seems often to be divorced of any archetypal or psychically resonant content. It is pure disembodied ego in character and offers little or no shelter for mystery. The utilitarian aesthetic strips buildings of their homeliness and ironically causes them to serve their utility less well.

It doesn’t happen as much these days as it used to, but I often see rune shaped objects as I wander about the place. Sometimes scratches in the pavement or walls, sometimes in the way twigs fall from trees. Graffiti artists often unintentionally leave runic inscriptions on train barriers and tunnels. The world around me seems to pulse with runic manifestations.

Jan Fries argues that to understand the runes you need to go back to the Palaeolithic, look at the very origin of the urge to scratch symbols into stone or bone. I think he is onto something, and think that the various modern examples I’ve given here also attest to his views.

While my specific interest might be the Elder Futhark, it remains that all the Futharks grew out of a more primordial human need and practice, and we are well served to ponder the ways in which these symbols are able to well up out of the imaginations of folk who do not know anything about them consciously.

I find myself pondering whether this year I should be exploring the art of rune magic and runic inscriptions more thoroughly. Since I want to develop a really strong results magic practice, and since runes are well suited as the carriers of intention in such magic, I really ought to combine the two.

Here is a prototypical bit of magic I did last year to illustrate. We were living in a ground floor unit and new neighbours moved in upstairs. This new family had three young boys who really needed a big back yard, not to be cooped up in a little balcony. And they were pretty damn badly behaved. Soon they were dropping their rubbish in our garden in fact!

This couldn’t go on. After a few neighbourly confrontations the most flagrant misbehaviour stopped, but the people upstairs were nevertheless oppressively noisy. The family as a whole seemed riddled with conflict and a lot of sniping and backstabbing. Lovely people. And every nasty word was audible downstairs. Things got pretty intolerable.

I cast two spells to deal with the situation. The first was to make a Raidho rune out of plasticine and then place it facing up at them on the top of a cupboard. The message was move on.

The second, to control the excesses of the worst child, was to draw an image of a giant wolf eating a child. In runes I wrote “I have you now”. I then attached this to the clothes line, facing up towards the obnoxious peoples’ unit.

Results? Well the child in question suddenly pulled into line very nicely. And not long after I installed the Raidho rune the people upstairs moved out – in fact, they weren’t there very long and definitely broke the terms of their lease which in New South Wales had to be for at least six months.

I don’t know what happened, but given all the arguing going on I guess they realised that they would never be able to have stability in a small unit and moved to digs that would better accommodate them and give much-needed relief to everyone. Mission accomplished.

It took a month or two for these sigils to reach their fruition. Even if they had nothing to do with the changes that occurred, I sure felt a lot better about the situation. Doing that magic returned to me my sense of control over a frustrating situation. Psychologically speaking I think that is a very important aspect of any kind of magic or ritual and not something to be overlooked.

But I like to take credit for them moving because I specifically enchanted for them to break their lease – and they well and truly did. Call me crazy – I know I do. I had a lot of emotion behind these spells, since these people were so damn annoying. I bet that helped things along too.

So there you have it – Rogue Runa, stalking through the modern world by accident or intention. Some time soon I will have to document one of my better experiments, a runic formula for money that has made me perhaps $3,000 in my own deluded thinking – the dreaded and fearfully uttered TRIPY COMES. What ever you do, DON’T think about that phrase bringing you plentiful wealth. And don’t think about it doing that for me either. Got it?