Having read those words I had to share them. Of course, I could quote whole books from this greatest of all German philosophers. Nietzsche had his flaws. Every philosopher has. There have been many thinkers who said things of importance. But only a few have the courage, the strength, the fearless honesty, the fire and the force, the will and the stamina to ask of the truth whether it brings profit or a fatality to him… But there are truths and there is Truth. Find out for yourself, if you are a Hyperborean. And don’t forget: “Your karma is your Dogma.” (Dr. Hyatt)

Taken from “The Antichrist”, by Friedrich Nietzsche (of course Nietzsche in English will never equal Nietzsche in German, but you still get the spirit):

“This book belongs to the most rare of men. Perhaps not one of them is yet alive. It is possible that they may be among those who understand my “Zarathustra”: how could I confound myself with those who are now sprouting ears?–First the day after tomorrow must come for me. Some men are born posthumously.

The conditions under which any one understands me, and necessarily understands me–I know them only too well. Even to endure my seriousness, my passion, he must carry intellectual integrity to the verge of hardness. He must be accustomed to living on mountain tops–and to looking upon the wretched gabble of politics and nationalism as beneath him. He must have become indifferent; he must never ask of the truth whether it brings profit to him or a fatality to him… He must have an inclination, born of strength, for questions that no one has the courage for; the courage for the forbidden; predestination for the labyrinth. The experience of seven solitudes. New ears for new music. New eyes for what is most distant. A new conscience for truths that have hitherto remained unheard. And the will to economize in the grand manner–to hold together his strength, his enthusiasm…Reverence for self; love of self; absolute freedom of self…..

Very well, then! of that sort only are my readers, my true readers, my readers foreordained: of what account are the rest?–The rest are merely humanity.–One must make one’s self superior to humanity, in power, in loftiness of soul,–in contempt.

FRIEDRICH WILHELM NIETZSCHE.

1.

–Let us look each other in the face. We are Hyperboreans–we know well enough how remote our place is. “Neither by land nor by water will you find the road to the Hyperboreans”: even Pindar1,in his day, knew that much about us. Beyond the North, beyond the ice, beyond death–our life, our happiness…We have discovered that happiness; we know the way; we got our knowledge of it from thousands of years in the labyrinth. Who else has found it?–The man of today?–”I don’t know either the way out or the way in; I am whatever doesn’t know either the way out or the way in”–so sighs the man of today…This is the sort of modernity that made us ill,–we sickened on lazy peace, cowardly compromise, the whole virtuous dirtiness of the modern Yea and Nay. This tolerance and largeur of the heart that “forgives” everything because it “understands” everything is a sirocco to us. Rather live amid the ice than among modern virtues and other such south-winds! . . . We were brave enough; we spared neither ourselves nor others; but we were a long time finding out where to direct our courage. We grew dismal; they called us fatalists. Our fate–it was the fulness, the tension, the storing up of powers. We thirsted for the lightnings and great deeds; we kept as far as possible from the happiness of the weakling, from “resignation” . . . There was thunder in our air; nature, as we embodied it, became overcast–for we had not yet found the way. The formula of our happiness: a Yea, a Nay, a straight line, a goal…

2.

What is good?–All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man.
What is evil?–All that proceeds from weakness.
What is happiness?–The feeling that power increases–that resistance is overcome.
Not contentment, but more power; not peace at all, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu, virtue free of moral acid).
The weak and the ill-consituted shall perish: first principle of our philanthropy. And one shall help them to do so.
What is more harmful than any vice?–Practiced sympathy for the ill-constituted and weak–Christianity…

3.

The problem that I set here is not what shall replace mankind in the order of living creatures (–man is an end–): but what type of man must be bred, must be willed, as being the most valuable, the most worthy of life, the most secure guarantee of the future.

This more valuable type has appeared often enough in the past: but always as a happy accident, as an exception, never as deliberately willed. Very often it has been precisely the most feared; hitherto it has been almost the terror of terrors ;–and out of that terror the contrary type has been willed, cultivated and attained: the domestic animal, the herd animal, the sick brute-man–the Christian. . .

4.

Mankind surely does not represent an evolution toward a better or stronger or higher level, as progress is now understood. This “progress” is merely a modern idea, which is to say, a false idea. The European of today, in his essential worth, falls far below the European of the Renaissance; the process of evolution does not necessarily mean elevation, enhancement, strengthening.

True enough, it succeeds in isolated and individual cases in various parts of the earth and under the most widely different cultures, and in these cases a higher type certainly manifests itself; something which, compared to mankind in the mass, appears as a sort of superman. Such happy strokes of high success have always been possible, and will remain possible, perhaps, for all time to come. Even whole races, tribes and nations may occasionally represent such lucky accidents.

5.

We should not deck out and embellish Christianity: it has waged a war to the death against this higher type of man, it has put all the deepest instincts of this type under its ban, it has developed its concept of evil, of the Evil One himself, out of these instincts–the strong man as the typical reprobate, the “outcast among men.” Christianity has taken the part of all the weak, the low, the botched; it has made an ideal out of antagonism to all the self-preservative instincts of sound life; it has corrupted even the faculties of those natures that are intellectually most vigorous, by representing the highest intellectual values as sinful, as misleading, as full of temptation. The most lamentable example: the corruption of Pascal, who believed that his intellect had been destroyed by original sin, whereas it was actually destroyed by Christianity!–

6.

It is a painful and tragic spectacle that rises before me: I have drawn back the curtain from the rottenness of man. This word, in my mouth, is at least free from one suspicion: that it involves a moral accusation against humanity. It is used–and I wish to emphasize the fact again–without any moral significance: and this is so far true that the rottenness I speak of is most apparent to me precisely in those quarters where there has been most aspiration, hitherto, toward “virtue” and “godliness.” As you probably surmise, I understand rottenness in the sense of decadence: my argument is that all the values on which mankind now fixes its highest aspirations are decadence-values.

I call an animal, a species, an individual corrupt, when it loses its instincts, when it chooses, when it prefers, what is injurious to it. A history of the “higher feelings,” the “ideals of humanity”–and it is possible that I’ll have to write it–would almost explain why man is so degenerate. Life itself appears to me as an instinct for growth, for survival, for the accumulation of forces, for power: whenever the will to power fails there is disaster. My contention is that all the highest values of humanity have been emptied of this will–that the values of decadence, of nihilism, now prevail under the holiest names.”

“In the East the wind is blowing all the boats across the sea,
And their sails, they fill the morning, and their cries ring out to me.

Oh the more it changes, well, well the more it stays the same,
And the hand just rearranges all the players in the game.

Oh, I had a dream: It seemed I stood alone,
And the veil of the ages, it goes sinking from my eyes like a stone.

Man, man, your time is sand, your ways are leaves upon the sea. I am the eyes of Nostradamus, all your ways are known to me. And these are the signs I bring to you to show you when your time is nigh…” (Peter Bellamy, “Nostradamus”, available from the Museum of Witchcraft)

Ok, I never did something like this before and I don’t know in which way magick can influence real time events of such a grand scale. But being the sorcerer’s appentice I am, why not try it? I’m talking about fighting the Gulf oil spil with Galdor or Chaos or Ceremonial Magic. I never believed (except in my teenage years) that doing a magickal ritual is enough to change the fabric of one’s Wyrd completely (sometimes it does). Here we are about to work on our collective Wyrd. What can be influenced by magick is a question of one’s sphere of availability and probably one’s Hamingja or ‘luck’. To enchant for low-probability events which lie beyond the range of possible options perceived at any one time isn’t wrong in itself. But I think that ritual must always be complemented by action. To paint the Helm of Awe on your forehead and then going into a fight without training and skills in martial arts won’t save you from being beaten up, if your adversary is a trained martial artist. Or another example: If the sole act of sorcery would make you win, why do all the African teams in soccer loose against a better skilled team from Europe? (They are supported by many sorcerers reportedly.) But conscious action and working focused on your objectives combined with magick will increase the chance to force the hand of fate. If a ritual is successful or not isn’t the thing, because you can never conceive all the forces of Wyrd that are at work. The only point is that you will get more likely what you want with magick than without it. I think the ritual for binding up and sealing the hole in the ocean floor that is causing the Gulf Oil Leak and for healing the associated environmental damage in the Gulf of Mexico is also a working one does for oneself. Let me say it this way: Even if it has no effect at all or you don’t believe magick to be able to affect such things, it’s still a useful way to deal with one’s helplessness and to tansform one’s anger.

The mess caused by BP is a crime beyond imagination and it shows once again what huge damage the greed of a few irresponsible men without foresight and wisdom can cause to the fragile, beautiful, living ecosystem and to the Earth community. If there is an Anima Mundi, if there is an Earth Spirit, a Vast Active Living Intelligence System (Philip K. Dick), if nature is alive,  with a Soul or a Life-Force that representatives of the Lebensphilosophie assumed to be a vital, non-mechanistic principle distinct from biochemical reactions — then the events that take place deep in the Gulf of Mexico in this very moment you read this, are far more than just pollution. It’s only one of many signs that humanity as a whole has taken a wrong direction towards extinction and that our leaders have lost the ability to listen to the inner voice of wisdom and to see the interconnectedness of Wyrd. They have been elected to serve their folk, but instead they have become the puppets of powerful megacorporations and their short-sighted interests of fast profits and an ideology of economic growth that has been decoupled from its purpose and thus degenerated to an end in itself. All this might sound quiet left-wing and I’m surely not propagating socialism, but I’m sorry: the (neo-)liberal ideologies have failed. Let’s move to something more useful, where free markets are embedded in an economic system and a cultural paradigm that propagates more than just the senseless accumulation of commodities for its own sake. Fehu is a mighty power that must be put into service of a higher good. But all this won’t be new to most Heathens, Wiccans, Druids, Pagans, Chaos Magicians, Technoshamans, Thelemites, Seeresses, Seiðkónas, Mystics, and various other Prophets and Prophetesses of Chaos of the 21st century. It’s the easier and lazier path to become cynical about the conditions humanity finds itself in. Taking responsibility is much harder. But even the most numb and narrow-minded pleb will understand that his children and grandchildren will have no future, if we don’t change our behavioural patterns and ways of thinking.

For this reason maybe some of you would like to go out into your local countryside, alone or with a few friends, and do some magic to help to bind the leak Deepwater Horizon (what a name for such a shame!) has caused. I have been made aware of this link by Nadine Drizzeq who is the US head of the IOT (Chaos Germans here) and sells useful stuff at http://www.iotbooks.com/, including the indispensable Hex Magazine. Her great article for Elhaz Ablaze is about Magusitis, a mental illness amongst magicians most of us encounter in some way at a certain point. The ritual for binding the leak, containing a Chaos Magic and a Ceremonial Magic version, can be found below, whilst others might want to “sing the galdor for the bindrune, and to work intuitively to heal the earth in their own way” (Nadine Drizzeq). Call up the Mighty Forces of the Æsir and wield your Hammer against the thurses!

http://hyperritual.com/bindleak/

“Not [the word as such], in this case, represents Crowley’s Qabalistic Zero, defined as 0=2. It is the Fool of the Tarot. It is a condition of Being unbound and unfettered, utterly outside of time and space. Thus it is not part of the Universe as we Understand it, it is the Absolute … It can be given no coherent definition, hence it is No-Thing, Nothing. It is every potential and possibility which we have within ourselves but have not yet made manifest. Thus it is all that … implies the omnijective perspective. … [W]e ourselves contain this Absolute and are Nothing, for we our Essence is not bound by the Universe.

‘There Is Never A Moment Which You Are Not’ — The declaration taken as a whole has two meanings, one obvious and one esoteric:

1. All of time and space, i.e. eternity and infinity, is imprinted with your presence and influence.

2. There exists a timeless Void in which you are All-Potential.”

(Michael Kelly 2009: Apophis, p.172/3)

“And if all things come from One Thing, then send your prayers to the Sun.” Boyd Rice

Everything is one, when 0=2, I pondered once, when I first grasped Crowley’s idea of the mystical Nothing, Zero or the Tarot trump The Fool. I remember that realization very vividly. My friend Henrik and me were on a trip, on shroooms, in the woods and he quoted a sentence from a Current 93 song: “Nothing shall fresh spring again.” And I said: “Isn’t that rather heavily pessimistic?” And he went: “No, don’t you get it? It’s about Nothing of which All springs.” Well, I’m quiet sure that the band was talking about apocalyptic visions and meant literally what they said. But with an overdose of Crowley and magic mushrooms things can connect quiet differently in your brain. However, it’s also encoded in the Qabalistic Ain and I think it’s behind the Germanic idea of the “magically charged Void”, Ginnungagap. The equation of the mystic then might be 2=0, changing duality into No-Thing, uniting duality, transcending the whole show (of duality and thus illusion), as it were, by returning to the source of all, to the primordial state of being (or non-being?). God to some (monists and monotheists), shunyata (‘emptiness’) to others (Buddhists). In Qabalistic terms it means to return to the Abode of the Nous, the higher triad of the Tree of Life (‘City of the Pyramids’), where the spiritual world, the Real, which is ideal, is seperated from the material one, the Unreal, which is actual (in neo-platonic thought). Hence the world-denying tendency in mystical currents (not all currents). The magician, in turn, plays with duality, with Maya, with Ginnung, or Chaos — an undifferentiated ether that longs to be formed into substance by the will of the magician. (Of course, this division between the mystic and the magician is arbitrary and unnecessary.)

“Ginnung or Ginning becomes a word for ‘delusion’ at a certain point in Old Norse. One of the sections of the Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson is called the Gylfa-ginning, usually translated Gylfi’s Delusion. But in the Rig Veda we see that Maya is the creative power wielded by Varuna, who with his pashas [bonds] can bind or loosen, destroy or create anything he can imagine. In both cases what we are dealing with is the idea that this is ‘powerful stuff — and power can equal mortal danger. In essence Ginnung is the undifferentiated energy/matter which preexists creation, and which underlies the forms of all phenomena. What had been ‘magical power’ to the trained elite, became ‘bad ju-ju’ as its practices drifted down to the masses. The amount of training and discipline necessary to wield Ginnung in a reliable way is so great that the vast majority of humanity, when they try to ‘use’ it, simply end up confusing themselves and devolving into a morass of illusion. Hence the use of the substance becomes more or less taboo.” (Edred Thorsson)

This is an interesting explanation of what this ’stuff of Chaos’, this Ether, Maya or Ginning might be. Anyway, when I began to write this article today I thought of writing a short persiflage of the Lord’s Prayer, using the image of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but my poem, including the whole article, turned into something completely different and took a strange direction in the last few hours. It’s rather weird to write poetry in your non-native language, similar to playing an instrument you can’t play. But also, it opens new angles and one can use words differently, create word-plays that don’t exist in one’s own language and new meanings emerge. That’s one of the many reasons why learning Old Norse will be very rewarding to any true Runer, I guess. And why learning new languages in general is a rewarding activity. “To learn another language is to possess another soul”, said Karl the Frank. After the poem I quote one of my absolute favourite passages from Hakim Bey’s famous Temporary Autonomous Zone that puts his idea of ontological anarchism across. He was also, like Henry, inspired by Sufism.

The Mystical (K)Not

Primal Chaos — permeating Heaven and Hell,

Shape wisdom erupting from Urðr’s Well,

As above, so below,

Eternal Mystery I strive to know.

Eagle King, spread thy wings,

Thou art the Shaper of all things,

Thou who art No-Thing and have no Name,

Inventor and Player of the Master Game,

Thy Intelligence come, thy Word be done,

I am thy Son of the the Black Sun.

Let feverish dreams rain down from the skies,

Teaching false truths and true lies,

Give us frenzy, make us divine or insane,

Push us to change ourSelves and to unchain

us from false divisions and Single Vision.

Lead us into temptation with Her — Runa,

I came to court Her, She’s my Fortuna.

And deliver us from mere Beliefs,

They are for priests and other thieves.

Death is the Warrior’s Wife and ultimate Bliss

The bloody Knife and the Valkyrie’s kiss,

And Life is Power, Beauty and Desire

We are the Dragon’s Eye, arosen from Fire.

For thine is Intelligent Chaos and Noetic Gnosis,

I don’t care, if you teach by thorns or by roses,

Thou art God’s Golden Shower

Magic is Love and Will to Power,

Thy Glory is the Cosmos’ Story

Of the Eternal Copulation of Kia and Zos,

Pulsating in Dagaz and the Elhaz Cross!

Blessed be their Child that dances and sees

Eternal Forms ascending in Ecstasies.

With formless Fire I create from mud,

I know I’m drunk on Kvasir’s blood.

Thou exhaled wisdom and divinity,

Now I bathe in thy Eternity,

For what is Thine is also Mine,

I Am as Thee and thou Art as Me.

Thou gave me Life-Breath, thou gave me Form,

Holy Madness pours from thy Horm,

Thou art the violent, upcoming storm

That tears all apart to again be reborn.

And to grow and to dance and to love and to fight

To rise in thy Might, seek for Darkness and Light

Is to love Mystery and to wear Her Sign

Man’s  incomplete, but man is Divine,

Do not fear, Eternity is here,

The only crime is not to notice Her,

And I think to myself, lying dead on the floor

Oh Life, oh Death, you are but one Door

Man cannot cut this Gordion Knot

There Is Never A Moment Which You Are Not

Hakim Bey, ontological anarchist and prophet of Chaos

“CHAOS NEVER DIED. Primordial uncarved block, sole worshipful monster, inert & spontaneous, more ultraviolet than any mythology (like the shadows before Babylon), the original undifferentiated oneness-of-being still radiates serene as the black pennants of Assassins, random & perpetually intoxicated. Chaos comes before all principles of order & entropy, it’s neither a god nor a maggot, its idiotic desires encompass & define every possible choreography, all meaningless aethers & phlogistons: its masks are crystallizations of its own facelessness, like clouds.

Everything in nature is perfectly real including consciousness, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. Not only have the chains of the Law been broken, they never existed; demons never guarded the stars, the Empire never got started, Eros never grew a beard.

No, listen, what happened was this: they lied to you, sold you ideas of good & evil, gave you distrust of your body & shame for your prophethood of chaos, invented words of disgust for your molecular love, mesmerized you with inattention, bored you with civilization & all its usurious emotions.

There is no becoming, no revolution, no struggle, no path; already you’re the monarch of your own skin–your inviolable freedom waits to be completed only by the love of other monarchs: a politics of dream, urgent as the blueness of sky.

To shed all the illusory rights & hesitations of history demands the economy of some legendary Stone Age–shamans not priests, bards not lords, hunters not police, gatherers of paleolithic laziness, gentle as blood, going naked for a sign or painted as birds, poised on the wave of explicit presence, the clockless nowever.

Agents of chaos cast burning glances at anything or anyone capable of bearing witness to their condition, their fever of lux et voluptas. I am awake only in what I love & desire to the point of terror–everything else is just shrouded furniture, quotidian anaesthesia, shit-for-brains, sub-reptilian ennui of totalitarian regimes, banal censorship & useless pain.

Avatars of chaos act as spies, saboteurs, criminals of amour fou, neither selfless nor selfish, accessible as children, mannered as barbarians, chafed with obsessions, unemployed, sensually deranged, wolfangels, mirrors for contemplation, eyes like flowers, pirates of all signs & meanings.

Here we are crawling the cracks between walls of church state school & factory, all the paranoid monoliths. Cut off from the tribe by feral nostalgia we tunnel after lost words, imaginary bombs.

The last possible deed is that which defines perception itself, an invisible golden cord that connects us: illegal dancing in the courthouse corridors. If I were to kiss you here they’d call it an act of terrorism–so let’s take our pistols to bed & wake up the city at midnight like drunken bandits celebrating with a fusillade, the message of the taste of chaos.”

Hakim Bey, T.A.Z.

The Runic Seed was planted into my Soul

I have no need for a religious creed

My spirit ascends and is free, without a goal

I heed the Old Man’s advice, who moves with speed

When the world’s veil is pushed aside

Mystery plays with me Hide-and-Seek

Where Her Eternal Forms give birth at night

Attracting the strong, but frightening the weak

We all are Learners on the Runic Path no matter how far we get, Rune Master Ian Read recently wrote in a course he gave at Arcanorium College. I’m not a great fan of online-learning, but Clint pointed me into that direction recently (thanks, bro!) and I joined it for three months. Magical luminaries like Peter Carrol, Dave Lee, Ian Read and many other magicians from the Chaos Magic Current give courses there about all kinds of interesting things: courses on Mind Money & Magick, Following Spare’s Footprints, Galdrastafir, Sorcery & Alternative Science, Kitchen Magic, Aloha Huna Shamanism, Magickal Trance and many other interesting things can be found there. Seekers could learn directly from Pete Carrol to „pursue a bracing and invigorating program of martial magic to empower the inner warrior and to immanentise the eschaton in whatever way participants choose“ in a course he called the Jihad of Chaos. So should you be interested in practical magic and if you need some new approaches or inspiration, that’s the place to go. Ok, enough advertisement. Suffice it to say that the ‘Jihad’ Carrol is talking about is the real one. The Holy War here isn’t about killing, but is a „war of consciousness against conformity“ (Michael Kelly), which means „to stand against ignorance or tyranny“ (Sweyn Plowright) – fighting „against the inertia of the cosmos“ (Don Webb), against the stupidity of man, if you will.

However, recently I heard some people asking for introductory books on Runes. This really made me ponder, because I don’t think this is an easy question to answer. Sure, I have my favourite books. But at a deeper level I believe it doesn’t really matter what kind of books one reads in the beginning, because those dedicated to the Path will find their way ‘any-way’. Further the true meaning of the Runes cannot be found in books, no matter how knowledgable such an author seems to be. But even if this is the case we shouldn’t let people run into the wrong direction just because we somehow found our way inside (wherever that is where we are now). First of all, I should say that I hardly talk about Runes or magic with other persons, because it seems to be a waste of time and energy. (I look back at my teenager years/ early twenties with amusement, when I began to become nervous after five minutes when a conversation moved into a different direction than magic.) Most so-called occultists somehow seem to think that they know better what Runes are all about and that it’s ‘just another system’ and after all it doesn’t matter what kind of system one uses, because all of them lead to the same aim anyway. Really?

If I’d be asked by someone what kind of books I recommend for him  or her for learning about the Runes, I had to decide depending on the person. The ’shamanic type’ should probably begin with Jan Fries’ Helrunar. Those more into a traditional use of Runes should read Thorsson’s Futhark and Runelore. But all would get a copy of Sweyn Plowright’s Rune Primer. However, honestly said I do not think that Runes can be learned from books. It should also be noted that though I’m not absolutely new to Runes, I am considering myself a beginner and am still in the process of becoming familiar with the fundamental literature. (This stement is no wrongly understood modesty. It implies also that I haven’t read through or studied thoroughly every book I recommend. For example, I haven’t read most of the sagas.) It seems to me that in the beginning it makes sense to become familiar with a few academic books like Klaus Düwel’s Runenkunde and R. I. Page’s Runes. Especially the esoteric buff and occultnik should become familiar with the objective facts, regardless of how ‘dry’ or ‘boring’ they seem to be to him or her. Then a certain knowledge of the way our ancestors thought and what they believed could be helpful. The sagas and Hilda Ellis Davidson’s books come to my mind. The dedicated German speaking seeker should study Jan de Vries’ Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte. First then the esoteric works should be taken into account. How to practice ‘Rune Magic’ is next to impossible to explain as everyone will develop his or her own methods over the years, but Thorsson’s, Carrol’s and Fries’ magical methods are a good pointer how to enter this wyrd realm. At this stage subjective meanings will appear that will very likely contradict with (some of) the interpretations of other magical authors. My take on this is: follow your intuition. Noone can help you here except your ‘Deep Mind’ (Jan Fries) or, to say it in a more traditional way, your Fylgja. The only rule is: don’t universalise your own intuitive realisations. It is this subjective stage most of us are engaged in. Some say, there is no other stage to reach (than a subjective one), others are convinced that there is a level of meaning that is reflecting a traditional, objective knowledge. It’s not for me here to decide for you what take is the right one. But I recommend to think about the fact that a purely subjective knowledge will leave us with nothing more than a ‘NiTEiP ‘-attitude that we Chaos Heathens do not subscribe to (please correct me Elhaz fellows, if you disagree). To me this is one of the huge differences between Chaos Heathendom and Chaos Magic.

Let me exemplify how my chaos-magical approach to Runes (rooted in a ‘NiTEiP ‘-attitude) moved from a ‘Personal Gnosis Above All’-belief (PGAA – thanks, Henry!) – that considered my UPG [Unverified Personal Gnosis] as the most important one – towards a traditional approach to the meaning of the Runes (of course always supplemented and deepened by UPGs). When I worked with the ‘astral projection’-method Jan Fries suggests in Helrunar I somehow got to the conclusion that the Ingwaz-Rune – on one level of reference – is an entrance and symbolizes a vagina. I imagined Isa as the penis in this context. (Yes, Mr. Freud, I know it’s all suppressed sexuality, right? Or did I just read too much about Crowley’s sex magick? :-) Ingwaz – seen here as two united Kenaz-Runes – would symbolize fire and heat (sexual arousal) to me. On another, deeper level I saw an ‘alchemical’ process behind these three Runes (Isa, Kenaz, Ingwaz) and thought of the Isa-Rune also as the ‘I’, the ego. The ‘ice’ of the ego – its rigidity and illusory solidity – could be molten by the heat of Kenaz (‘gnosis’ in a CM sense) and so being transformed into ‘Ing’, an enlightened state of being, its essence or true Self. „Man finds his Ing“ has been a beautiful expression for this interpretation that caught my attention in Osborn’s inspiring (albeit rather untraditional) book Rune Games at that time. All this might look quiet weird and exremely subjective to you. Well, it is. But this is somehow the way things work (on a subjective level). And if you ‘feed your mind’ with accurate (traditional) data, better results will come out of your Runic Work. However, at some point I was made aware of the fact at Rune-Net that the traditional meaning of Ingwaz was the opposite of what I came to consider as one layer of its meaning: Ingwaz in no way does represent a vagina or female fertility (the latter meaning being encoded in Berkano amongst others), but rather male fertility manifested in the God Ing. Also the ideographic interpretation of Ingwaz proposed by Thorsson in Futhark is of an erected penis. (Oh yes, there exists Germanic sex magic. And Spare’s method of sigils – as original as it might look at first glance – has been known to our ancestors since centuries in the form of Bind-Runes etc. Always look to tradition first. Never underestimate the wisdom of the ‘ancients in your brain’ [John Balance].) I couldn’t agree more with what Henry has to say about the importance of tradition in his last article:

„I find that the more I research actual magical traditions the more I realise that the average modern occultist or Heathen has far inferior ideas to those that mythological or occult traditions have left behind. We really need tradition as a source of material for our creative, spiritual, and unconscious aspects to weave into reality. The depth and texture of a whole magical ideology cannot possibly be replicated in the half hearted attempts of individual seekers of whatever sort to invent their own. How can one person compete with centuries of people organically and indirectly collaborating across the ages?“

The same has been recently said by my brother, Hubert, who wondered how shallow Crowley’s Thelemic ‘mythology’ appears when it is compared to the richness, profundity and subtlety of the ancient Lore of our forefathers and foremothers. So I started to explore the traditional meaning of this Rune (Ingwaz) and, after that one, of all other Runes of the Elder Futhark. It’s not easy to let go of subjective ‘insights’ or visions and your own UPGs in favour of an ‘objective tradition’. But looking back, I think, this is exactly the point where I began to discover the far richer and greater worlds of ‘Runic Magic’ than before. All modern occultisms appear to me today as totally artificial, deficient and illusory ivory towers lacking the power and tested ‘down-to-earth’ approach of tradition. (Again, as said in another post, read Flowers’ The Northern Dawn before saying that our tradition is lost and unaccessible to us anymore.) I think that I knew intuitively about this intrinsic constructional flaw of western occultism, that’s why I always peered to the East until my Eye has been attracted by the strangely shining, northern Noxia-Licht [night-light] of Thule. The difference between the occult systems of the modern age and the Runic system of old is that in the latter there is no ‘final aim’, ‘last explanation of everything’, ‘final revelation of God’ or final state of consciousness like ‘Nirvana‘, ‘Eternal Bliss‘, ‘Samadhi‘ or ‘Heaven‘. If anything, there is the will to power, to continuance and enjoyment of life and the expansion of consciousness. I find these aims are of great importance today.

“The joy of life consists in the exercise of one’s energies, continual growth, constant change, the enjoyment of every new experience. To stop means simply to die. The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal.” (Aleister Crowley)

The expansion of consciousness and continuation of life can be seen as the sole dictums of evolution itself. That’s why the attempt of some Ásatrú groups today to deny this evolutionary aspect of our tradition – like its contribution to the development of modern science – is not only historically wrong, but also dangerous in the sense that only science and traditional wisdom can prevent humankind from the ecological desaster we’re facing now and not hiding in the woods while dreaming up a romantic utopia in the past. Sweyn stresses the connection between our Heathen Germanic Tradition and modern ideas and ideals in his article ‘Heathenry and Modernity’:

„In many ways, the values developed by the Enlightenment thinkers can be seen as a real renaissance of the Heathen Germanic culture of freedom, law, pragmatic reasonableness, and individual rights. The success of this culture is obvious in the way it has become that basis of the values of the free world. The English language spread along with it, and has become the language of international trade, science, and politics to a large degree. So, while it is worthwhile connecting with nature and our ancestors, camping out and dressing in Viking gear at feasts, it is not necessary or productive to make that the major focus of one’s life. In the larger modern world, a world of our own making, we need to be participants. We need to be there to safeguard and carry forward the legacy and values of our Heathen ancestors as they have come down to us in the form of modern democratic freedoms. Something our ancestors were always prepared to fight for.“

In modern science the will to power is demonstrated by its attempt to control the environment. In the Heathen Germanic system of magic this will to power manifests differently and it shouldn’t be understood solely in a Nietzschen superman fashion (though everyone who knows me, knows that I love this aspect of Nietzsche’s philosophy). It is rather a power of the soul that is sought here and the ability to let the different ‘parts’ of the soul communicate with eachother and to enable them to work harmoniously. The work of the Rune Master then, perhaps, is the immortalization of those parts of the soul that make up the magician’s individuated personality (in a Jungian sense, not its persona) and to strengthen them to gain Sovereignty.

„[T]he power that Initiates seek is not the same as the power that politicians seek. We seek Sovereignty, not control.“ (Michael Kelly 2009: Apophis, p. 216)

This quest for meaning, transcendence and power is encoded in the Runic system. In this age the will to power manifests (amongst others) in an existential way as the need of modern man to find meaning in life. I think the worst consequence of the modern age is that it has isolated man from the world around him, that it has obscured  his ‘transpersonal will’ (Assagioli) or ’spiritual need’ (‘transcendent self-actualisation’ in Maslow’s model of the hierarchy of needs) and thrown him into a universe devoid of any meaning. This led finally to an emptiness and ‘inner desert’ – an existential vacuum – that existentialists felt so deeply inside them and that Tolstoi described in A Confession. To overcome that emptiness, that feeling of senselessness and „absurdity of one’s own existence“ (Camus) is only possible by the individual effort of each man by an act of (‘transporsonal’) will. Thus ‘the will to power’ is also a will to meaning, as Frankl has put it, who survived the horror of the concentration camp in Nazi Germany. There he observed that those who saw a meaning in life or believed in a ‘higher power’ or fate were stronger in spirit and were more likely to survive these inhuman conditions.

„… the striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man. That is why I speak of a will to meaning in contrast to the pleasure principle (or, as we could also term it, the will to pleasure) on which Freudian psychoanalysis is centered, as well as in contrast to the will to power stressed by Adlerian psychology [deduced from the Nietzschean concept, my remark].“ (Viktor E. Frankl)

By immersing oneself in the Runic worldview this will to meaning is manifested in the pursuit of power, knowledge and wisdom. But the meanings that are thus experienced are not created by man or his ego, but are uncovered and rediscovered by a transpersonal power and guidance that opens up and leads us on to greater deeds and mightier thoughts, where „one word leads to another word, and one work leads to another work“ as Fjölsviðr envisioned in the Hávamál. By delving deeper and deeper into the Runic realms we learn that behind the Runes – their actual shapes, sounds and meanings – greater Runes exist that man’s mind will never pervade completely. Layer after layer new meanings emerge and we are „approaching an infinite succession of veils, each of which parts to reveal another behind it“ (Dave Lee). This is how Runa is hiding and sought after eternally. This terrific, tremendous, sacred dance of consciousness and mystery, Óðinn and his Runakóna Freyja, Shiva and Shakti, spirit and matter, life and death and on and on ad infinitum, is where the meaning of Life Everlasting is created from moment to moment – and inbetween, where time collapses back upon itself like the waves of the ocean subside at the shore, Eternity gushes endlessly from no-where to ‘now-here’…  …from Ásgarðr to Miðgarðr. Um mik ok í mér Ásgarðr ok Miðgarðr!

„Everything copulates around me“, Spare laughed in ecstasy and hurled himself into this violent flame erupting from the creative Chaos we call rather unimaginatively ‘being alive’.

I updated my biography with mythical elements [this has been changed again, July 23rd 2010] that are not true in a ‘flatland’ logic sense. But they are true in the sense that they reveal the way my ‘dream self’ conceives reality. And in our days of gross materialism and spiritual illiteracy we forgot the language of Myth, Magic and Mystery. “Nature is a Language. Can’t you read?”, Coil once asked. And I ask myself, if I can read the language of my psyche and if I can learn to speak with her? I believe yes. I believe that this, in many ways, is part of practising magic. And I believe that such a language is encoded in the Runes. The Runes are far greater and far more mysterious than these 24 ‘letters’ look at first glance (or more or less than 24 depending on the Futhark you use; and there were many variations of each particular Rune). And, of course, our psyche speaks every night to us. Sometimes answers come in dreams. And most, if not all, spiritual philosophies emphasized that life itself is dream-like (that’s why they want us to wake up!). Others again purported that they can dream things into reality. Sometimes my life has been like this. Not really that I were dreaming things and then they happened (though I once dreamt that my grandmother will die a half year before it happened), but that I was longing for things or wanted some things to happen in a really strong way and then they happened. One thing was that I wanted to write about magic and other things that I feel deeply attracted to and – hocuspocus abracadabra – a guy named Henry asks me, if I’d like to write something for Elhaz Ablaze. Things like that, you get the picture. Life can be full of such coincidences. That doesn’t mean that life is about fulfilling every desire or that with magic ‘anything is possible’ like some New Age dreamers believe (or some newcomers to magic – no, not me, I never believed such childish nonsense :-). But what I’m talking about is that daydreams, secret desires, fantasy identities or other aspects of ourSelf can tell a great deal about where we want to go, who we want to be and what NEEDS to be done, if we are to become successful in our lives (a success defined by ourselves, not some normative ideas society holds). This in many ways is what Crowley called ‘the discovery of one’s True Will’. A Will, I believe now, that is more to be understood as a dynamic force and a PROCESS, not a static aim we have to get to. Matt Anon is such a ‘creation’ of my ‘dream self’. He is something my ‘everyday self’ (my persona) is not, but he embodies qualities to which I aspire. Anon is a ‘future self’ that functions as an attractor, a magical self that can do things ‘I’ couldn’t normally do. (At least, this is the ‘trick’ here.) And this is one of the definitions of magic: ‘Magic is a way to make things happen that ordinarily would not happen.’ (Flowers 1997: Lords of the Left Hand Path, p. 3) However, the test for the aspiring magician is mundane reality. A reality that must not be rejected, but one that is our arena and our playground. With work, discipline and one-pointedness it is possible to reach a sense of destiny, a destiny created by the magician – not karma, fate or chance.

I want to say that Diana was extremely friendly and kind. She leads the Hrafnr Community in California. I must thank her very much! For books by Diana Paxson check out our Elhaz Ablaze Bookshop.

Interview with Diana Paxson

This interview is part of an academic investigation of the practices of Seidhr in the postmodern world. Could you tell me a little bit about your background in the area of magic(k) and/or Neo-Paganism and how you came to practice Seidhr?

My first magical training was in a ceremonial tradition based on the work of Dion Fortune. After several years, I felt that I needed to balance that with a more energetic and ecstatic practice, so I began to work with the techniques in Michael Harner’s book on shamanism. However these techniques, although very well presented and effective, lacked the substance that comes from a cultural tradition, but I had no connection to any of the Native American or other cultures. When I was doing research into Norse mythology I had seen references to seidhr, which sounded like a northern European magical tradition that I could explore without the danger of cultural appropriation. Unfortunately, at that time, I knew of no one who was practicing it, so I had to figure it out for myself, using what I had learned in other traditions about spirit journeying and trance work to interpret and flesh out the information in the lore.

Where does Seidhr come from? What was Seidhr in the past and what is Seidhr today?

In the Eddas and sagas, Seidh is used as a term for a variety of magical practices which involve a trance state and is often translated into English as “witchcraft”. The list of skills ascribed to Odin in Ynglingasaga (although presented in negative terms) is similar to lists
of shamanic practices from other cultures. The oracular practice described in the saga of Eirik the Red and other sagas is also called seidh (or spae). It is said to have been taught to the Aesir by Freyja.

Oracular Seidh is the best known form today. The process I developed is based on the sources given in my answer to question 4. I have trained people all over the US, in England, and in Holland. Many have taken the basic approach and developed their own variations.

Why do you think Seidhr should be practiced? What does result from practicing Seidhr?

Oracular seidh is a community service, a way to provide insight and counsel. Other forms of seidh can be used for healing, inspiration and to gather information.

What sources have inspired you to take up the practice of Seidhr? What sources have you studied / read?

1. The sagas, especially the saga of Eirik the Red, which includes the most explicit description of any Norse religio-magical ceremony that we have.

2. The Eddic poems in which Odin visits the Völva in hel to question her: Baldrsdraumar, The shorter seeress’ prophecy, and Völuspá.

3. Saxo and other sources that describe journeys to the Otherworld.

James Chisholm has put together a sourcebook of references to seidh, published by RunaRaven Press.

Do you think one has to speak Old Norse or has to study the original sources to be able to practice Seidhr?

In order to understand the references in the lore it is useful to at least compare several translations and look up problematic words in an Old Norse dictionary, as modern languages have a more limited vocabulary, and terms are often mistranslated.

Despite the fact that the term ’shamanism’ is itself controversial outside the context of Siberian shamanism, do you believe that Seidhr is a kind of ‘Northern Shamanism’? Does Seidhr feature shamanistic elements?

I find “shamanistic” to be a useful term for practices that resemble those found in true shamanic cultures. Ethnographic research (see Eliade’s „Shamanism“) indicates a remarkable similarity of practices in widely separated cultures. I believe that such practices were once
world-wide, and some may have survived in the Indo-European cultures. It is also possible that the Norse borrowed practices from the Finns and Saami (just as the latter borrowed some elements from Norse mythology). Oracular seidh, though it uses many of the same skills, in format is clearly part of the Indo-European oracular tradition.

What are the differences between shamanism and Seidhr? What are the specifics of Seidhr?

My understanding of the way “shamanism” is now being used is that it properly is applied to the practices of tribal hunter/herder-gatherer cultures, with the classic initiatory and other experiences.

By the saga-period, practitioners of seidh play a more anomalous role in their societies, except for the seers, who seem to have been highly respected. Because terms such as “seidhjallr” are used in connection with spae, I classify it as a subset of Seidh.

Do you consider Seidhr as part of the ‘Northern Tradition’ / Teutonic-Germanic Religion?

Although not universal, oracular seidh is practiced in a number of heathen communities in the U.S. In my opinion seidh is the proper term for such practices in Asatru. Groups basing their practice on Anglo-Saxon or Continental Germanic ways might find other terms (such as
“hexerei”). Certainly “Seidh” is the best-known and most popular term for Teutonic-Germanic magic.

What is the role of women in Seidhr? Is Seidhr somehow more connected to women?

In Ynglingasaga we are told that in earlier times both men and women practiced seidh, but that later it was considered so “ergi” that it was only taught to priestesses. Apparently as the Norse became acculturated to European Christian ideas, the status of women and anything requiring receptivity was lowered. Thus, except for the seidhmadhrs persecuted by the Norse kings, the seidh workers we read about in the lore are female.

I have trained both men and women in seidh, and both are quite able to master the skills. It is true, however, that those who continue to practice seidh and make it part of their Asatru identity include more women and gay men than straight men.

Is it ‘unmanly’ to practice Seidhr? What does that say about the role of men and women in (ancient) Germanic culture? How is this seen in (post)modern
Neo-Paganism / Ásatrú?

See above, and for a full analysis, see my article, “Sex, Seidh, and Status” (http://www.seidh.org/articles/sex-status-seidh.html)

Germanic Neo-Heathenism has been often accused of being racist / right-wing? Why do you think that is the case? Can descendents of non-European cultures be part of Ásatrú?

This is a topic that has been discussed exhaustively by contemporary heathens. For an analysis, see Chapter 7 of /Our Troth, Vol. 1/. Essentially, opinions range from those who believe that anyone who feels called by the Germanic gods can worship them to the splinter groups who think that Asatru is the natural religion of a superior white race. The heathen emphasis on family and heritage means that for many, their descent from Germanic peoples is one motive for becoming heathen, however, at least in the U.S., everyone has been formed by speaking a Germanic language and living in a culture shaped by Germanic ideas, so we all have a Germanic cultural heritage.

Why do you think so many people feel attracted to Neo-Paganism today (including Wicca, Druidry & Ásatrú)?

There are many reasons: the Abrahamic religions don’t deal well with the feminine or the environment, many of them fail to help people connect with Spiritual Power, focusing on sin and guilt is depressing, and finally, Monotheism doesn’t really make sense (see John Michael Greer’s „A World Full of Gods“).

Finally, what answers does Heathenism / Paganism have to the condition of the modern world (including modern challenges like climate change, overpopulation, financial crisis etc.)? In which way does it help to improve the conditio humana? (I would also like to ask in this context: Why is it ‘better’ than the monotheistic cults?)
To properly address any one of these questions would require a book. In brief, Paganism in general sees humans as part of the natural world, not superior to it, and teaches harmony and cooperation rather than exploitation. If we understand natural law and apply it to our own
actions, we have a better chance of restoring balance in all areas of life, and thus human, as well as natural survival.

Heathenry in particular offers a strong ethical system with an emphasis on personal responsibility, and plenty of inspiration for meeting adversity with courage. One popular saying is, “We are our deeds.”Polytheism makes more sense because no matter how hard people try to deal with the Divine as an all-powerful, etc. universal Being, so long as we are in human bodies, we inevitably personify our gods and in doing so, limit them. The solution is to have many deities that cover all aspects of existence.

Heathens tend to think of their deities as friends or relations, senior partners in the fight to preserve the world.

Skaal,
Diana.

...it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.

Henry David Thoreau, „Walden“

In such a union „each element achieves completeness, not directly in a seperate consummation, but by incorporation in a higher pole of consciousness in which alone it can enter into contact with all others.“ (Teilhard de Chardin) Tillich was expressing the same thought when he denied that union with the Ground of Being means a loss of self in a larger whole. „If the self participates in the power of being-itself,“ said Tillich, „it receives itself back. For the power of being acts through the power of the individual selves. It does not swollow them as every limited whole, every collectivism, and every conformism does.“

Braden, „The Private Sea – LSD and the Search for God“

There are two souls living in my breast. Goethe said that. And I often feel the same way. On the one hand there is the „Anarch“ (Ernst Jünger), the free spirit („Freigeist“), the one, who dares to live without certainty and follows his own path… …and then there is the one, who follows more systematic approches to Mystery by more experienced magicians, the one, who needs some guarantee that he’s on the right track, someone who believes that someone ‘out there’ might have THE answers. Ironically these antagonistic forces in my soul led me once into the arms of the OTO. They promise freedom of speech and individualism, but practice dogma, rigidity, hierarchies and, ultimately, the subordination of the individual under certain ‘truths’ (read DOGMA=AMGOD). The fine line where freedom of speech ends and dogma begins is not easily seen, especially when you’re a 19 years old occultist, who believes in the Great White Brotherhood (I know why cynics exist). However, when I study the magical systems of others and try to follow their approaches to the Mystery, I always get stuck at some point where I begin to question some (or all) of their basic premises. This always leads me to the same conclusion: that I’m not a follower type, that I want to create my own philosophy and that there are Masters and Magicians who can help along the way, but there are no guarantees. If I may just quote a quote Henry uses in an upcoming article (in a magazine) that resonated deeply with my being:

„Theoretical loyalty provides clear direction but is inherently limiting; theoretical anarchy enables flexibility but also inserts uncertainty…there are no fixed and correct ideas or methods…and therefore no inherently right ways…“ (for the source, read Henry’s article when it’s published)

Just think about it: Theoretical Anarchy enables flexibility but also inserts Uncertainty! Don’t we all just yearn for that absolute certainty? But with absolute certainty Mystery ceases to exist. Hasn’t the world reached that point already? The way of the world is not my way… Uncertainty means freedom, certainty means dogma.

To trust my own instincts is the hard part of the equation. I do, but not all the time. However, doubts and conflicts have always been an important part of my path. They have often created a Need-Fire (Nauthiz), which led me to new horizons beyond what any magical model can describe as every model is „a map, not the reality“ (RAW). This dynamic of ‘friction-resistence-breakthrough’ was also behind the process to go beyond Crowley’s Thelemic model that finally culminated in the termination of my OTO membership in 2006 (and that dynamic is behind many other important processes that led to inner development). I regard this step as one of my most important ones towards an independent magical path.

In Occultism there is the tendency to explain everything, to package the Mystery in a formulae. Crowley’s teachings are full of such formulas and they explain a lot, but ultimately mean nothing. They may be used, but after all they cloth the Mystery in some costume. But this costume is not the Mystery itself. The Mystery is sensed in a certain state of consciousness (usually a kind of gnosis in a CM sense) and fills the seeker with awe. (Rudolf Otto described this awe in his work about The Holy and called the two emotions of man when he encounters the Divine mysterium tremendum and mysterium fascinans.) And after such an experience the seeker tries to rationalize what he experienced by creating certain correspondences between his experience and the system he’s using. He does this by assigning certain concrete elements of his experience to certain abstract qualities of his system-in-use. Too abstract? Ok, I give you an example:

Let’s say I invoke my Genius / HGA / Augoides / Wode-Self / Fylgja (what ever you want to call it – I’m not saying it’s all the same thing; the HGA seems to represent a combination of Wode-Self and Fylgja) and I’m deeply rooted in the Kabbalistic Psychocosm. If you invoke that part of your psyche in that system you will do it with surrender and love and, maybe, with submission. After you have established a rapport with your Deep Mind a voice starts speaking (not necessarily verbally, but visually or otherwise) that seems to come out of the core of your very existence (one-dimensional, uneducated and spiritually underdeveloped primates often think they met „God“). After this mysterious experience you turn towards your Tree of Life and assign that experience to Tiphareth. This corresponds to the Sun and the Heart. This again is connected to the Anahatha-Chakra, which leads to another chain of correspondences. In modern QBL these can be connected to the Hebrew aphabet and Tarot cards, so that finally a psychocosm full of correspondences is created. Too many are obsessed with the symbols, signs, correspondences, colours etc., so that they forget what the initial intention was behind to use them in the first place. And that’s basically to allow the mind to focus and use all those tools as keys for opening the doors of perception and thus to reach higher states of conciousness. BUT, once you are there, as Isreal Regardie never stopped emphasising, throw away the ladder, because you don’t need it anymore! All too often from such correspondences predetermined routes to „enlightenment“ (also known under its mysterious name „delusion“) are created that alienate the true seeker from the goal.

So, what is the goal? In my experience the first and foremost aim is to experience reality directly, without immediately conceptualising and contexualising the experience itself. Though I don’t deny the usefulness of certain concepts I realize that it’s all to easy to take the package for the content. Honestly said, I believe that my path has often revolved around CONCEPTS (package) explaining some of my (hardly to explain and hardly to accept) mystical and/or magical experiences (content). This, I believe, is the reason why Jan Fries said in my interview that „I believe that the individual is a lot more important than any system, religion, cult or school. And if you have to stick a label to yourself to do your thing you ain’t good enough yet.“

Labels, they give certainty, don’t they? Words are more real than reality – for most of us. But in truth we’re caught in our own prison of concepts most of the time.

Ludwig Feuerbach, the first real atheist we know of (maybe the Greeks had also some examples of what we think of as ‘atheists’ today) showed how to free man from the concept of a transcendental being called „God“. He was a German philosopher, who declared that God was nothing but the projection of human qualities in their perfected form. He argued that the superhuman deities of religion are involuntary projections of the essential attributes of human nature, and this projection, in turn, is explained by him by using a theory of human consciousness that is heavily indepted to Hegel. Feuerbach is really the unrecognised father of the criticism of religion, because whatever was interesting in Feuerbach has been taken up by Marx and Freud (I’m not saying they’re right), who formulated their theses in a more logical, coherent and systematic fashion. However, Feuerbach proved that ‘God’ is just a WORD (label). But wait, words are more real than reality, right? In the beginning was the word… and the word was God. (By negating the existence of God – after his daughter has died at a very early age – Feuerbach has been prohibited to publish his works.) But those of us who experienced the Divine (content) cannot believe in the explanations of religion (package). And isn’t it strange that those Christians, who encountered the Divine in mystical experiences (like Meister Eckhart, Jacob Böhme, Paracelsus, Giordano Bruno, Blaise Pascal etc.) were doomed by the Church and that the Fathers of Dogma (who are the fathers of fear) became the patrons of this alien creed called Christianity? Before they imposed their dogmas on our forefathers and foremothers we had no conception of THE Divine (as the “One God”), but experienced that quality of reality (or consciousness – after all, I don’t know, if it has an objective reality) in different forms (thus polytheism). So, if Feuerbach is right (albeit a materialist), then he is confirming the mystical premise that the Gods live in our breasts. Thus the projections of “the superhuman deities of religion” that man has created aren’t mere illusions of human consciousness, but become an essential expression of the divine nature of Consciousness itself (Óðr).

In this way the label “God” degenerated into a concept that man has to believe in, instead of being the vision of each man realizing the core of his very existence. (I finally have to read Emerson. I know that he had a lot to say about that.) This imprisonment to labels is the hypnotising effect of language itself and due to an “evolutionary error” in our brains to ceaselessly create meaning. Zen Masters and other Masters of Meditation developed all kinds of techniques –including shock techniques, gazing at walls for hours, silence, sensory deprivation, mantras, mudras, yantras etc. – to overcome that miserable condition, also known as the conditio humana.

What I learn from this is that being a chaos mystic – doing your own research, experiments, rituals, meditations asf., and trusting your own experiences and your own perception, asking any premise and any dogma, system or preacher – is the only way to go. We can learn from those who walked the Path before us (magicians and mystics), we can learn to read their sign posts (symbol systems) and explanations (philosophies), but after everything is said and done, whom will you trust when you’re in danger or when death approaches? Your guru, your system, your God?

My answer is: “No, I will trust mySelf.”

This Self, I believe, is part of the Divine energy of godhead that creates and maintains the universe, who is the Alföðr and whom the Einherjar called Óðinn.

Persistence is all. Search continues…

I don’t expect I’ll ever understand
How life just trickled through my hand

Jhonn Balance

Jhonn dead dead dead. May he be blessed by all horned animals. IO PAN IO PAN IO PAN PAN PAN! “Death knows, death goes, death blows, death shows… Does death come alone or with eager reinforcements?” Holy Holy Holy

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

I

IT IS WRITTEN in The Book of the Law: Every man and every woman is a Star. It is Our Lady of the Stars that speaketh to thee, O thou that art a star, a member of the Body of Nuith! Listen, for thine ears become dulled to the mean noises of the earth; the infinite silence of the Stars woos thee with subtile musick. Behold her bending down above thee, a flame of blue, all-touching, all-penetrant, her lovely hands upon the black earth, and her lithe body arched for love, and her soft feet not hurting the little flowers, and think that all thy grossness shall presently fall from thee as thou leapest to her embrace, caught up into her love as a dewdrop into the kisses of the sunrise. Is not the ecstasy of Nuit the consciousness of the continuity of existence, the omnipresence of her body? All that hath hurt thee was that thou knewest it not, and as that fadeth from thee thou shalt know as never yet how all is one. Again She saith: I give unimaginable joys upon earth, certainty, not faith, while in life, upon death. This thou hast known. Time that eateth his children hath not power on them that would not be children of Time. To them that think themselves immortal, that dwell alway in eternity, conscious of Nuit, throned upon the chariot of the sun, there is no death that men call death. In all the universe darkness is only to be found in the shadow of a gross and opaque planet, as it were for a moment; the universe itself is a flood of light eternal. So also death is but through accident; thou hast hidden thyself in the shadow of thy gross body, and taking it for reality, thou hast trembled. But the orb revolveth anon; the shadow passeth away from thee. There is the dissolution, and the eternal ecstasy in the kisses of Nu! For inasmuch as thou hast made the Law of Freedom thine, as thou hast lived in Light and Liberty and Love, thou hast become a Free-man of the City of the Stars.

II

LISTEN AGAIN to thine own voice within thee. Is not Hadit the flame that burns in every heart of man, and in the core of every star? Is not He Life, and the giver of Life? And is not therefore the knowledge of Him the knowledge of Death? For it hath been shown unto thee in many other places how Death and Love be twins. Now art thou the hunter, and Death rideth beside thee with his horse and spear as thou chasest thy Will through the forests of Eternity, whose trees are the hair of Nuit thy mistress! Thrill with the joy of life and death! Know, hunter mighty and swift, the quarry turns to bay! Thou hast but to make one sharp thrust, and thou hast won. The Virgin of Eternity lies supine at thy mercy, and thou art Pan! Thy death shall be the seal of the promise of our agelong love. Hast thou not striven to the inmost in thee? Death is the crown of all. Harden! Hold up thyself! Lift thine head! breathe not so deep–die!

III

OR ART THOU STILL ENTANGLED with the thorny plaits of wild briar rose that thou hast woven in thy magick dance on earth? Art not thine eyes strong enough to bear the starlight? Must thou linger yet awhile in the valley? Must thou dally with the shadows in the dusk? Then if it be Thy Will, thou hast no right but to do Thy Will! Love still these phantoms of the earth; thou hast made thyself a King; if it please thee to play with toys of matter, were they not made to serve thy pleasure? Then follow in thy mind the wondrous word of the Steele of Revealing itself. Return if thou wilt from the abode of the Stars; dwell with mortality, and feast thereon. For thou art this day Lord of Heaven and of Earth.

Love is the law, love under will.

The Benediction of the All-Begetter, All-Devourer be upon thee.

Today five years ago, John Balance died in a tragic accident. Goeffrey Rushton, better known under the name Jhonn Balance, is an artist whose art, life and magick has inspired me in many ways, when I was a teenager. John has started out as a fan of the infamous ‘Wreckers of Civilization’, Throbbing Gristle, where he met Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson, his life partner and co-founder of their band Coil. They founded the band Psychic TV and Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth with Genesis P-Orridge in 1981 (as far as I remember). After arguements they both left TOPY and Psychick TV to follow their own creative spark and to break free from TOPY that seemed to turn into a trap of a cult, as they said.

“Genesis is definitely, concretising ideas from various traditions, but we assumed the mantle of organised religion, copying aspects of The Process Church, Jim Jones and actual clerical stuff, and we came across as a cult, but we were in fact individually practicing sexual magic. So that was a camouflage, which eventually became a trap that we had to break away from. I felt very strongly that we had to get away from that.”

Their first mini-album has become How to Destroy Angels, ‘music(k) for the accumulation of male sexual energy’, which is to say that men could use it for homosexual magic(k) (though they said that women could use it, too). Their following albums Scatology and Horse Rotovator are a testimony to their brilliance and that they have always been ahead of their time (like with most albums that followed). John Balance was responsible for vocals, lyrics, chants, synthetics and various esoteric sound-making instruments and devices. Outside of Coil he collaborated with Nurse With Wound, Death In June, Psychic TV, Current 93 and Thighpaulsandra, and produced a couple of Nine Inch Nails remixes. His early work and wide-ranging collaborations made him one of the most influential figures in the industrial, experimental minimalist and neofolk music scenes. Peter Christopherson is the ‘unseen’genius behind the inimitable sounds and ’styles’ that Coil has invented. He wasone of the original members of the band that invented the genre of Industrial Music, Throbbing Gristle, co-founded Psychic TV and Coil. Christopherson has participated in the reuniting of Throbbing Gristle (I think in 2004) as well as composed an album for his current solo endeavour The Threshold HouseBoys Choir (now SoiSong).John and ‘Sleazy’ have nurtured the entity called Coil for 23 years.

John Balance has influenced me on many levels. First of all, Coil helped me in times of isolation in ways I hardly can describe. They helped me to come to terms with the fact that I am an outsider and that I’m neither mad nor alone. (In fact Sleazy once told me in Berlin that “it’s very important to be an outsider”!) The music of Coil displayed an orginality and a creativity that showed that ‘occult experiences’ are real and can be ‘translated’ into sound. John was initially influenced by Max Ernst and the surrealists. Later P-Orridge and Burroughs introduced him to the general concept of magic as a practicality in everyday life. After having been asked how magic has sweeped into his work, he answered:

“Well it has, totally. I’ve always been into magic, with Crowley’s ‘k’, and studied it. I tried to buy stuff by Crowley when I was young, but my parents absolutely refused to have anything to do with it and actively discouraged me. I wrote to Alex Sanders (King of the Witches), when I was 14, and he wrote back to me saying thanks for writing, I’m very pleased that you want to do this, but can you write back when you’re 18. He wouldn’t accept anyone so young into his coven. I used to worship the moon too, I’d encourage other boys at school to do it, too. I just instinctivelydid things like that. It once got me into trouble. I was at school with the son of David Tomlinson, who was in Bedknobs and Broomsticks (a Disney comedy about witches). The two of us were taught astral projection by a teacher and there was a scandal because they thought there was some homosexual relationship going on with the three of us, but there wasn’t. I went to school one day and there was David Tomlinson’s limousine outside -he grabbed me as I was coming off the school bus and asked whether his son and I had a sexual relationship with this teacher. From then on, all the teachers were watching me!”

Asked at which point he started to practice magick, he said:

“…even as a kid I used to do it. I was an only child, always talking to animals, fantasy creatures and spirits. I would make little plasticine gods and make offerings to them. I was just born with a pagan sensibility. I’m an animal, I’ve never been a human – there’s no difference between animals and humans to me. I think that’s one of the signs of a true pagan. Some life experiences can just jolt you into it. I had German measles really badly, twice I think, and wasn’t allowed contact with the light in case I went blind. Shut in this dark room, that was like my initiation, I imagine.”

Ossian Brown, Thighpaulsandra, Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson and Jhonn Balance

However, it was really Spare who got him into a way of magick that was truely his. “As soon as I discovered Austin Spare I realised that we were loners, we practiced magick on our. That’s my style of magic, the shamanic way – and Spare was definitely a shaman.” Like Spare did paint pictures in a sidereal fashion, where images and gestalts are infused into the realm of Midgard, Coil did a sidereal sound, where ‘the Other’ – the Mystery – (Runa?)pours into mundane reality.

“What Spare did in art, we try to do through music. This is why we do sidereal sound. The way he twisted his pictures, so that the geometry appears warped, we try to do that, to produce strange geometries through sound, so that it comes out sideways. We do it with technology, with 3D devices, phasers, out-of-phasers, all sorts of gizmos. There’s no one particular box that does it, we all do it any possible way that we can. … Spare used to do speaker battles, where he would project sound into the aether – which I think is a real physical thing, some kind of cosmic glue, a genuine substance, or non-substance – that connects everything and allows unexplained things and ideas to be transmitted.”

John Balance had a very intimate relationship with Spare. He did sigils to ‘contact’ Spare and his Current of the Zos Kia Cultus. After that Coil were in touch with Crowley’s and Spare’s art forever. In many ways Balance was overwhelmed by the results of his magical workings. They collected many artifacts from these two artists and magicians. Balance claimed that you can commune with the pictures of Spare and that they would change.

“Some of the chaotic ones, you look at them with one person and see certain  hings, and you look at them with another person and you see a completely different set of things. Every piece he did was magical. There were some that were done for other people specifically as magical spells, such as the stele or the magical alphabet. But he lived his life as a magician and a stoic. He could survive for a week on a kipper… Austin Spare had people who came through for him, spirit guides, and there are magical currents. He may have opened up a gateway or whatever, but now it’s flowing in trickles, rivulets, even streams. That’s why it’s very important that we flash Zos Kia Cultus – Spare’s magical philosophy or code – and his images onto the screen at our performances, to energise Spare’s current and put our own energies into it. To make it a living, breathing, energising, wonderful thing. By Cultus I don’t mean a cult, but a way of life, a philosophy, a code, which puts me in touch with what I really, truly should be doing onthis planet.”

And this means really – albeit in a different context – what Ódhinn meant by the saying that “I Give myself to mySelf”: that you would totally dedicate yourself to the divine current you come in touch with. Everything you do becomes you. There is no difference between your everyday life as Joe and your magical persona. You do not only do, but you become magick. “Like Burroughs, or Spare, there’s no difference between our philosophy, our lifestyle and our art. This is what we do. We are what we do.” Well, my friends, and this is what I call Chaos Heathenism in action. However, there is a dark side to all of this. Jhonn (as he later spelled himself) suffered from two demons: depression and alcoholism. He struggled with both of them his whole life. And as Peter has told me, his alcoholism started when they were doing E’s (MDMA) in the mid-80s and Jhonn began to use alcohol for ‘coming down’ from them. On November 11th 2004 Jhonn fell down the stairs in his house after having been drunk for weeks. He never again regained consciousness and died on November 13th 2004.

This has been one of the saddest days of my life. I was to perform my duty in a Gnostic Mass as a Deacon in OTO (now I left the order, as you know). My friend Maarten e-mailed me to tell me these terrible news. I was hardly able to perform the ritual, but I did and prayed for Balance and lit a candle for him (as I do every year). For days I was in shock and my girl friend (though not being a ‘fan’, but knowing my pain) cried. I will never forget the pain and grief I felt for weeks, if not months, after this shaman died. It was as if a brother has gone away.

When I interviewed ‘Sleazy’ on December 30th 2005 in Berlin with my friend Henrik, when Throbbing Gristle were doing an exhibition in Berlin, he told me many times things like this: “You should’ve asked Jhonn”, “Jhonn was the expert”, “Jhonn was into the Occult”. I’ve seen Jhonn performing in Amsterdam in the year 2000 and in Berlin a few years later. I’ve never spoken to him out of shyness. There’s nothing I regret more nowadays, but it seems to me that this was necessary. There were those who had the key to Coil (an elite or minority), and then there have been the ‘fans’. I’ve certainly belonged to the minority of those, who knew what Jhonn was talking about. In many ways his life has been an example of a prophet in a Blakean sense. “Why be bleak, when you can be Blake?”, he once said. We have seen a few of such seers. One example has been Allen Ginsberg. But at the same time you could fill in the gap by saying Jhonn Balance:

“He considered his role of poet-prophet as part of the miraculous tradition of his creator, William Blake … He recognized that the Latin conception of the poet as vates, the prophetic seer, fitted his own identity as a divinely inspired poet who could now see below the surface of reality into the very essence of existence. … When Ginsberg started searching through Blake’s writing for a model for his role as poet-prophet, he was startled by Blake’s insistence that … the art of the role of the poet was to help his fellow men perceive the depths of reality. … Blake’s prophet is not a person who predicts the future; rather, the prophet sees deeper into the meanings of things.” (Portugés 1978: 65/66)“

Jhonn Balance was just such a man. I admire the work he has created with Sleazy and I will never forget all the special moments, inspirations and revelations I experienced whilst listening to Coil. “When you listen to Coil, do you think of music?” was one of Coil’s slogans. Well, when I listen to Coil I think of magic(k). But Jhonn Balance’s tragic death meant also a departing for me on a magical level. In the past when I got ‘into’ magic(k)’ I entered the same chaotic place into which Jhonn has immersed himself totally: the derangement of the senses, as Rimbaud called it. But after I have stared into the abyss a few times – drug abuse like and otherwise – I knew that Jhonn’s sudden death was also a warning for me. Though his death had more to do with his alcoholism than magic, I also believe that approaching magic like Jhonn did (and many of us did probably) has certain dangers:

“Experience has shown that one’s life is a reflection of spiritual processes, and a magician’s desire may be counter to his or her soul’s necessity, unless backed up by the order of the sacred world (echoed in the soul) has temporary effects and often conspires to undo the fertile areas of one’s life. Therefore, magic is by no means the sole answer in the face of life’s greatest hardships (…)” (Travers 2008: The Serpent and the Eagle, p. 8f)

I also think that approaching magic without certain inner developments is a very dangerous thing. Development of Self ahead of the development of sorcery techniques (like casting sigils etc.) ensures that you will have the wisdom to seek what you need more than what you merely think you want. My path is now more towards a balance – a harmonious and more ordered way of approaching the initiatory process rather than only ‘thee Chaotick Path’, as it were. To immerse oneself firmly in one’s indigenous, ‘natural’ Tradition (siðr) that one is born into – being rooted in one’s cultural heritage – gives a solidity, a real fundament, that I find indispensable on a magical path (of course, you can do without – I don’t deny that). So, in a certain way, Jhonn’s death was also a marking point for me to leave the path I’ve been walking on and to turn away from the restless seeking of drug-induced visions, extraordinary experiences and self-destructive invocations “under my unquiet skull”. Such realizations were hard lessons for me to learn and to accept and you will hardly find them in ‘occult books’ (and I read more than a few). Freeing mySelf from such fetters on my magical path by following the Tradition of our ancestors and learning to use their spiritual technologies, I believe to have found a more holistic, integrated and ‘organic’ path. This means that I had to look very critically on my initiatory process and on the path(s) I’ve been walking on until now. The absorption of a functional, complete system (like the Elder Futhark) for processing information within the mind is something essential to a successful form of initiation.

However, Jhonn Balance is a hero in my personal ‘pantheon’ of great individuals. May he find his way back to Midgard in a transformed form.

May the Gods Bless Thee,
Matt Anon.

Jhonn’s two friends, and the exceptional artists, David Tibet (Current 93) and Steven Stapleton (Nurse With Wound) say:
“With burning sadness and with burning sorrow we remember You as:
kindest of men, funniest of men, most intuitive of men, most incisive of men, most generous of men
a great artist, a great voice, a great visionary, a great Soul and a great Heart
Finally you were overwhelmed by it all: by all the beauty and by all the pain
You perhaps never knew how much you were loved
Till we meet again as we know we will, our dearest friend, with love always to you dearest Geff, John, Jhonn
shape-shifter and joker, in angelic form now, playing with stars in the love of God
David Tibet and Steven Stapleton”

This is dedicated to my father, who died on April 11th 2008. Having fought communism, you are an example for all those, who fight for Freedom! I love you…

Empfindsamkeit

Siehst du der Felder Leuchten,
Wenn Tau im Morgenlicht
Berauscht vom Rot der Sonne
Durch junge Halme bricht.

Hörst du der Wälder Atem,
Der durch den Abend weht
Und fernen Sturm verkündet,
Der sich schon bald entlädt.

Spürst du die rauhe Rinde
An alter Esche Stamm.
Zerfurcht vom Weltenwandel,
Das Holz vom Nebel klamm.

Riechst du den Duft der Erde,
So regennaß und schwer.
Er strömt aus schwarzem Grunde,
Noch kahl und saatenleer.

Schmeckst du das Salz des Meeres
Im Wandel der Gezeiten.
Ein Sehnen nach der Ferne,
Nach unbekannten Weiten.

Kannst du im Traum erahnen
Verborgener Sinne Macht,
Die deinen Geist begleiten
Durch tiefe Erdennacht.

“the law of
the strong:
this is our law
and the joy
of the world.” AL. II. 2

“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” –AL. I. 40

“thou hast no right but to do thy will. Do that, and no other shall say nay.” –AL. I. 42-3

“Every man and every woman is a star.” –AL. I. 3

There is no god but man.

1. Man has the right to live by his own law– to live in the way that he wills to do:
to work as he will:
to play as he will:
to rest as he will:
to die when and how he will.

2. Man has the right to eat what he will: to drink what he will:
to dwell where he will:
to move as he will on the face of the earth.

3. Man has the right to think what he will: to speak what he will:
to write what he will:
to draw, paint, carve, etch, mould, build as he will:
to dress as he will.

4. Man has the right to love as he will:– “take your fill and will of love as ye will,
when, where, and with whom ye will.” –AL. I. 51 5. Man has the right to kill those who would thwart these rights. “the slaves shall serve.” –AL. II. 58 “Love is the law, love under will.” –AL. I. 57