Sweyn has been contributing some fantastic writings to Elhaz Ablaze for a while now as a guest author.

We decided it was time to invite him to be a member of the Elhaz crew and he has graciously accepted.

We’re honoured to have him on board!

Feel free to check out his bio on the bio page.

Prost!

Henry for the Elhaz Fellowship

As you may be aware, in 2009 Ironwood released our debut album :Fire:Water:Ash: to rave reviews. Our potent weave of dark folk, progressive rock, and black metal has been acclaimed as “an outstanding piece of mythological storytelling that defies heavy metal convention” (Metal Review.Com), and “too beautiful for this world” (Metal District).

Recently, we were both surprised and pleased to discover that :Fire:Water:Ash: has been nominated in the category of Best Debut Album on major European music webzine Metal Storm.

This is where you come in. We invite you to offer your vote for our album: this is an opportunity to lend your support to evocative, creative, and adventurous music, music that combines animistic reverence and deep-felt emotion. If you haven’t heard the album in it’s entirely you may listen to some quite representative tracks on our Myspace page, from where details on how to buy a copy (physical or digital) are also available: http://www.myspace.com/ironwoodband

To vote for Ironwood and :Fire:Water:Ash: in the Metal Storm awards you will need to register with the Metal Awards site, a very simple exercise which you can do here: http://www.metalstorm.ee/users/register.php

Once you have registered and logged in, just go to this page to vote:
http://www.metalstorm.ee/awards/categories.php?cat_id=22

Ironwood would deeply appreciate the support of the Heathen community, not least because of the strongly Heathen spirit that informs our work. We invite you to cast a vote for us… and if you could also invite others to cast their vote as well…that would be even more amazing.

In the meantime, we will continue to work on post-production for our follow-up album: Storm Over Sea, due out later in 2010.

With respect and thanks,

Henry

Well, we’ve made it. Here it is: Elhaz Ablaze 2.0. Not bad for only the second full website I’ve ever designed, with Donovan providing that amazing Chaos Elhaz Bindrune symbol. Feel free to contact me if you’d like to use my services, incidentally, I’d like to build up a portfolio so I’ll work for cheap or even free!

We’re still transferring our articles but that shouldn’t take too much longer.

We have lots of exciting plans for this little chunk of webspace, so stay tuned!

Oh, and how good is this: I Googled “seidh” today and we (only just) came up on the first page. We’re on the second page if you Google “Heathenism” or “Chaos Magic”. Not a bad effort at all.

So stick around folks, because we’re only just getting started…

Henry

I am also learning that sometimes you have to say no to your patron deity; I am learning that Fearless Honesty doesn’t mean that one should be tactless or unguarded.

Ever more humbled by life, ever more confronted by my limitations (but unbowed by fear), I proceed therefore. In case you are wondering what I’ve been doing instead of writing my blog… finishing my university course (including a minor thesis), working through the demanding role of being an editor of Hex Magazine (issue 5, the first with me on the editorial team, is out now and selling like hot cakes so get one quick).

Oh – and this is really exciting – building a new website for Elhaz Ablaze! Yes, soon (I hope) we’ll have a much more functional, pretty, and easy to use (for us) website. We’ve got lots of plans for adding extra bits, and even tossing around some top secret shared project ideas!

Also, since last you heard from me my band Ironwood recorded our second album, due for release some time in the early strains of 2010.

That’s all I have to say for now, but there is plenty more to come… so stay tuned!

Finally our empty talk reached critical mass and, with my discovery of the crappy but easy-to-use Weebly blog system, Elhaz Ablaze was born. It was (and is) an ugly site to look at, but we hoped that we could fill it with enough worthwhile content that readers would not mind.

Of course, we had absolutely no idea who would be interested in what we had to say. As far as we knew, the notions that we have come to refer to under the rubric of Chaos Heathenism would fall on dead (as opposed to deaf) ears.

Actually I have to admit that I hoped to provoke hate mail for the controversial opinions we and our guests have presented. But to date we have gone unscathed (much to my Loko chagrin).

Instead we have discovered that people actually seem to like our stuff – and moreover we seem to have some kind of readership, at least guessing from the Google Analytics thingy I set up in early January.

Since January 4, 2009 we’ve had some 1,238 unique visitors, 2,763 visits and 8,693 page views. Not bad for what must be one of the weirdest Heathen/magic/martial arts sites on the ‘Net! I have no idea what the patronage was like prior to that unfortunately.

I don’t know whether we are preaching to the converted (perverted?) or whether we are actually opening folk to new perspectives – I’d like to hope for a bit of both.

Certainly we felt terribly unrepresented by the bulk of Heathen writings out there and we hoped that we weren’t the only ones. Consequently, one of the joys of Elhaz Ablaze is that it has put us in touch with folk on similar wavelengths to ourselves. It’s a relief to know that we’re not alone.

I’m also pleased that we could invite Matt Anon to join our group. I’ve known Matt electronically for years and we are like cosmic siblings (despite having never met), so to have his ideas presented alongside mine is a deep privilege.

One of the fundamental principles of Elhaz Ablaze is our commitment to the notion that there is only OPINION in Heathenism: there is no orthodoxy and anyone who claims a monopoly on truth in such a sketchy cultural manifestation as ours is a fraud.

Hence, I love that we contradict ourselves and disagree with one another. Nietzsche says that the more permissive a culture is, the stronger it is; the more restrictive it is, the more brittle and weak it is. We want Heathenism to be strong, and therefore it must be pluralistic. I’m proud that Elhaz Ablaze has become a model for this ideal.

That extends also to our guest writers, who do a great job of both agreeing with and contradicting both us and each other! I might not entirely agree with, say, Sweyn’s views about modernity (see his articles in the guest section), but I’m proud to offer them a home, to defy the widespread anti-modernity Heathen attitude that I myself tend to adopt.

For myself, I settled into a regular writing discipline from day one of the site and maintaining my journal has really assisted my spiritual development. Keeping a public diary, writing short monographs on magical subjects, etc, has enabled me to objectify the sometimes all-too-ephemeral unfolding of my spiritual experience.

This in turn has helped me to integrate the various facets of my existence to a much better degree than I have ever achieved – Elhaz Ablaze for me has been a powerful alchemical vessel. Although, of course, there is a great deal more work to come, and many a loose end yet to be brought to roost in Wyrd’s weave.

When I am lost to myself I can turn to my writings on this site and they anchor and reintegrate me into Mimir’s gift of memory, so essential to the nourishment of my personal microcosmic Yggdrasil.

Indeed, writing my journal has been like mapping out a vast and unknowable continent. Every entry I write feels utterly essential to my being once it is done. Some time soon I will read over everything I’ve done – it will be fascinating to retrace my steps over the last year (and the earlier essays I posted in particular).

This journal has been a profound anchor and way-station for my evolution (and in the last year I can barely start to express how much my life has changed, mostly for the better, though certainly not without great struggle and suffering).

Given it is our first birthday I feel it is high time to explain the name Elhaz Ablaze.

Elhaz is a rune of polarities – consider the Old English Rune Poem (this translation by the inestimable Sweyn Plowright):

Elk-sedge is native most often to the fen,
It grows in water; it wounds grimly,
Burning with blood any warrior
Who, in any way, grabs at it.

The fen, the marsh, the swamp, is a liminal place between land and sea. We know these were holy places to the arch-Heathens – the bog offerings archaeologists have found alone confirm this. Yet for all of its liminal openness, the marsh is warded by the elk-sedge – sharp grass, the points of the elk’s antlers, the reach of a deadly blade.

Elhaz represents, therefore, all the beauty and magic of vulnerability and mystery; but also the strength and integrity of the wild beast that dwells within the wetlands. It represents our desire to deal only with those on the ‘level’. This isn’t a question of elitism or anything silly like that, more a question of taste and time management.

Why Elhaz Ablaze? The fire to me represents the overflowing flames of inspiration, magic, possession, enlightenment, purification, celebration, Life itself. The two words in combination to me suggest the meeting of frost and flame, fire and water: in Elhaz Ablaze all oppositions are subsumed into a greater and dynamic whole.

In a sense, then, Elhaz Ablaze is the necessary conceptual twin to Chaos Heathenism. Chaos Heathenism is a philosophy built on the notion of Elhaz Ablaze – the Chaos offers us liminality and magic, the Heathenism offers structure and integrity. In combination they create a synergistic conflagration.

Where to from here? Speaking for myself – I am about to go travelling for six weeks and this journal will likely be fallow in that time. However I will soon post up my voluminous (circa 13,000 word) essay in response to Alain de Benoist’s book On Being a Pagan.

This essay was written originally for Heathen Harvest, where it will also soon appear, but they have graciously let me present it here on Elhaz Ablaze too. I figure it should offer plenty of mind-meat in my absence for those that care to read it!

A word on the creative process of this essay. I took extensive notes on the book as I read it, until my brain was super-saturated. Because the book provoked me emotionally as well as intellectually it put me into an intense fervour over the fortnight or so that I read it.

Then, the day before my current university course started, I sat down with all my notes and wrote the whole thing out in one sitting. Since then I’ve been tweaking a little bit and getting a little bit of feedback from a few trusted readers (Volksfreund deserves particular praise in this regard).

In short, the writing of the essay was itself an act of applied seidh. I utilised extended altered states of consciousness, full activation of my deep mind, variegated forms of trance and seething, runic incantations and the riding of my Wode – my personal River of Fire – into the arms of inspired creation.

I could not have written it with cold blood, but thankfully I did not have to. So when you read it, please see it for what it is – an exercise in poetry as much as philosophical discussion.

Now – what next? I really cannot predict what I’ll do once I get back from my adventures (or what I hope amount to adventures), and I’ll be very busy with my studies as soon as I get back. But I’m sure that wherever the creative impulse leads me, you’ll read about it right here.

Oh yeah, that reminds me, Ironwood’s debut album has received amazing press. We still have copies available – see below for some reviewer responses. If you like beautiful, emotionally intense folk music with some heavy excursions – or intense, provocative metal with dreamy acoustic explorations – plus magical lyrics and consciousness-altering atmospheres – well, check it out!

In other news, the chapter I wrote for the chaos magic masterpiece Liber Malorum has been released into the wilds of the WWW by LM editor/weaver Sean Scullion. You can read this tale of sacred groves, land spirits and religious intolerance here. If you like the story then please buy a copy (or ten) of Liber Malorum (available here) cause the whole damn book is a masterpiece.

And for the observant – yes, I’ve been asked to become an editor of Hex Magazine. I don’t exactly hide my love for this marvellous publication and I’m very excited to become involved to such an in depth level. But remember folks, it’s a grass-roots labour of love and they/we need all the subscribers, advertisers and the rest that we can get to keep this beast fed and pumping!

Just released is an awesome but very limited run of all four print issues of Hex to date (including the ones that are out of print but for which a handful of copies have been redone on a one off basis), available in a unique and just amazing leather-bound book format (pictured right). Well worth your checking out, you can get more info on that here (and this has to be about the classiest way you could support Hex ever…)

I feel it only right to mention that while Elhaz Ablaze tends to be more radical than Hex, folk who like Hex just the way it is can be reassured that I like it just the way it is, too. As the flagship magazine of Heathenism in all of its marvellous manifestations – so long as they have heart. So I won’t be rocking the boat, and in any case at this point I’m more of what you’d call an auxiliary editor ;-)