Offering my services over email and Skype, my rune readings and Grimm readings are unique. The emphasis is on finding connections and becoming whole: helping you to remember and manifest the inner resources and wisdom you already possess.

Here are some testimonials from my customers…and some reflections on how it all works.

HB Says: “Henry mapped out the landscape of my heart with precision and clarity…”

LD Says: “Thank you so much for the amazing reading. You were very accurate in your interpretations…”

MA Says: “Your reading is so unbelievably accurate and revealing.”

BL Says: “I found you to be above all honest and deeply understanding in what you perceived and conveyed…”

KF Says: “As a professional reader myself, Henry is the one I have gone to for my own readings.”

AC Says: “I was actually moved to tears by the insight it brought forth.”

GT Says: “Not only was Henry’s Grimm reading the most insightful reading I have ever received, it was so lovely I carry it with me every day, in my heart, on my lips, and in my pocket.”

I invite you to visit www.findrune.com and read further…and, indeed, order a reading!

Meaning and Healing

Quoted from http://www.findrune.com/articles/meaning-and-healing/

I see readings as an opportunity to explore meaning as a vehicle to find healing.

Human beings experience the world (and themselves) as a warp and weft of meaning. All our actions, reactions, everything we do is shaped, guided, and informed by the significances we project onto the world around us. Meaning is the daily bedrock of our lives.

Yet it is easy to lose perspective on the meanings that we live out. Perhaps things have always been a certain way, so that we do not even realise there could be other attitudes or ways of living that might serve us better. Perhaps we have just been in a certain groove for so long that it seems non-negotiable, self-evident.

When these sorts of blindness trap us in unpleasant patterns it is easy to forget that change is possible, or that the way we are living is just one of many possibilities. We are forced to shut down our curiosity, our imagination, in order to endure. In this respect we lose our wholeness – it is no longer our entire being which guides our life, but only the parts that can subsist in the limited horizons that we find closing around us.

Sometimes external circumstances might change, yet, dulled by habit, we are unable to perceive this and so continue to react to our own expectations of reality as though they were true. Actually, everyone does this to one degree or another, and while to a point it is simply necessary to get through this complex world, it can also seriously impede our ability to live joyously and completely.

In my experience as a therapist (and for that matter as a therapy client) I lived a truth that Carl Jung emphasised again and again in his writings: the importance of being able to distinguish our projections from the world itself. Jung says that even if our projections – our expectations, our stories, our habitual assumptions – are correct, we still need to be able to recognise that they are distinct from world around us as such.

The moment we lose sight of this, we find ourselves reacting to our own habits and expectations and not to reality. We can become addicted to experiencing life in certain “stuck” ways. We lose sight of the horizon of mystery that shimmers on the rim of our lives; we become so focussed on the tree trunks that we cannot understand that we are in a forest. And when challenges or change come, we no longer possess the flexibility needed to survive and thrive.

Not only that, but often the narrow projected meanings that we adopt are hurtful, or at least unpleasant. Self-criticism, expecting the worst, not noticing one’s strengths and values in the face of hardship: all of these can grind us down, deadening our wisdom, our passion, our ability to live creatively.

Yet Jung also explored methods for using our tendency to project meaning against itself, and in working with the runes (among other things) I have discovered that they are a powerful means for just this purpose. Hence my passion for offering readings as a tool for healing.

Because the runes are a set of richly evocative symbols, we attach significance, project meaning, onto them very readily. Yet at the same time we can hold them at an arm’s length: these are semi-abstract symbols, after all, conjured from times past.

This enables us to take some space from the usual ruts and cycles of living. This enables us to find connections, piecing together the patterns of our life with insight, recognising the limits of narrow thinking, seeing how those limits might be overturned. In drawing a richer understanding of our circumstances we enable ourselves to become whole (or at least more whole) once more.

So as a set of symbols, runes allow us to detach from the meaning-drenched cycles of daily life a little, so that we can regrasp the maps of meaning which guide our choices, actions, and experiences. By consciously projecting onto these symbols we give ourselves breathing room. “Rune” means “mystery,” and by taking a little time to explore our life through these symbols we recover an awareness of the horizon of mystery in which all our lives unfold.

Naturally, a similar logic drives my use of Grimms’ Fairy Tale readings as a tool for insight and healing: we are able to withdraw for a little while from the usual habits of belief and expectation and attach ourselves to these mysterious stories, so loaded with potent imagery. In a way, each of these stories is a rune, too.

There’s something incredibly liberating about using projection as a tool to undo the very knots that our projective nature creates. Rather than trying to escape reality, my philosophy encourages each client to work with what they already have, to move with the natural tides of their own character. As a reader I’m hesitant to presume to tell people what their future holds; I’d rather help them to surprise themselves!

The Art of Simple Food, Alice Waters
Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon
The Fourfold Path to Healing, Thomas Cowan

First stop: nutrition and food. I am a huge aficionado of the traditional cuisine movement. Returning to traditional cuisine has almost totally cured my once utterly crippling allergies; it has also gone a long way to improving my fitness, mental health, and immune system. It has also taught me how to love food, to really savour it, to deeply appreciate the pleasure of eating in a way that all the production line rubbish I used to eat never did.

I haven’t talked about it for a while, but I remain convinced that if you are serious about spirituality, magic, growth, healing, Heathenry, or whatever…then you have to get serious about food: its history, its ecology, the experience of eating it, the nutritional science of it. NOT out of some punitive, sin-based body-hatred or pleasure-hatred (neither of which are a part of traditional cuisine); but out of the binary joys of gustatory sensuality and making oneself more whole, more powerful, more buoyant.

This isn’t to say that I always stick to my own culinary principles, of course, but mostly I do, and I’ve never been fitter or healthier or enjoyed cooking, eating, and even the washing up so much. All of these things help me integrate myself into the flow of the waters of life (Bil Linzie) that runs throughout the roots and branches of the World Tree.

If you give a stuff about the environment or the principle that what goes around comes around then traditional cuisine is even more important…and I’d like to think that anyone interested in Chaos Heathenism would be at least curious to know what they can do to preserve the precarious equilibrium of this fragile planet.

Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales
Prose Edda, Snorri Sturluson
The Poetic Edda, trans. Lee Hollander
Dictionary of Northern Mythology, Rudolph Simek

While personal gnosis is awesome, I believe that when we closely research historical belief and practice it often turns out to be far more subtle, inventive, and just plain fun than the half-baked ideas that modern folk turn out and pass off as spiritual or magical. This is no fault of ours: traditions that have had centuries to ferment, passed from hands to hands, are almost certainly going to outstrip our raw and hastily conceived insights.

Grimm’s Tales I use for divination purposes, as I’ve previously documented. It’s a font of endless free association and symbolic hilarity, often with blatant Heathen motifs and stories writhing just below a wafer-thin veneer (and just to upset the Heathen dogmatists out there [yeah, like those jerks would ever threaten their puny minds by reading Elhaz Ablaze articles]: the Christianly ones are good too).

The two Eddas are of course extremely valuable. Dipping randomly into the Poetic Edda is always fun and rewarding – not unlike the Bible, it’s actually a really weird collection of tales. When I read these texts I can’t help but think that once upon a time the only kind of Heathen around was the Chaos Heathen kind.

And finally, Simek. I bless a trillion times the day I bought this book. What an indispensable gem! Getting nastily out of date now, but still the ultimate starting place when you want to know anything about Northern mythology (and much more besides).

People think the Internet has made knowledge much more accessible, but only someone who doesn’t read books could possibly be convinced of this mediocrity-inducing illusion, which merely panders to our laziness and our vanity. If you are even marginally interested in anything even vaguely related to Heathenry…then go buy Simek right now.

Visual Magick, Jan Fries
The Rune Primer, Sweyn Plowright

Visual Magick is Jan’s first book, and I swear by it. It is so fun, inspiring, profound, playful, self-satirical…just what magic should be. It’s a slender volume, yet it contains ten to the power of infinity more wisdom and knowledge than just about any other book on magic ever written (I don’t know how he crammed it all in there, but he did). If you want to know about anything related to anything to do with the stuff we talk about on Elhaz Ablaze then this is the book.

That said…I actually like his Seidways even more, but it’s a little more specific; and his Helrunar is the best book on esoteric runes ever. No contest. I know lots of Heathens don’t like him because he isn’t Heathen, but that just underscores the point: this guy understands runes better than the best esoteric Heathen authorities and he isn’t even a Heathen. Sock that to the ideologues, dogmatists, and Master-of-the-Universe-type cult leader blow-hards.

Sweyn is of course part of the Elhaz Fellowship, so in celebrating his book I’m completely guilty of nepotism and all the rest. But the fact is, this is the best point of departure there is. His translations of the rune poems are absolutely perfect (much better, I must say, than Thorsson’s or Fries’), and the supporting documentation is extremely valuable for getting your brain sorted out before you do anything runic. Indispensable reference? Tick!

Everyday Tao, Deng Ming-Dao
The Places That Scare You, Pema Chodron

Many Westerners don’t know anything about Eastern religion except that “uh, isn’t it, like, life-denying?” No, actually it isn’t: if you bothered to actually pay attention you’d realise it is all about being radically present, and the otherworldly stuff circles back into that.

Take Buddhism, for example. What’s the highest deed you can do? Escape Samsara, achieve oneness…then become a Bodhisattva and come back to the physical world even though you don’t have to in order to help the healing of others. It’s easy to be world-affirming when your dogma doesn’t really give you a choice anyway, but these guys want to be here even once they’ve overcome the bloody place!

And when we all get to Nirvana? Holy cow, who even knows how hilarious that’ll be?! One thing is for sure, and this is presaged by some recent comments on other Elhaz posts: Woden is one of those utterly furious Bodhisattva types, I’m almost certain of it.

Uh, anyway, so yeah. Pema’s book is all about having the courage to do the things that scare you, to commit to your integrity, your spirit. It’s a great tonic and soul-nourisher. Enough said.

Everyday Tao is a book that has saved my brain many times. When I am stuck, blocked, down, whatever, I open it at a random page and invariably it blows away all fetters. Deng Ming-Dao is a genius. And there are patterns in the things I get; I can’t tell you how many times that book has told me in moments of self-doubt: “we have to stick to our perceptions and our feelings.” I dare you, go on, be stupid enough to call that sentiment life-denying.

So there you have it – the indispensable books I always keep in easy reach. What are yours?

It’s interesting to note that the Buddha attained enlightenment under a Tree. Our God of the Runes instead is Hangatýr, the God of the Hanged, as He has hung upon a Tree when He reached illumination. I come to believe that Eihwaz is the Rune of “psychological death.” Its number is 13 (a number often associated with bad luck now). Eihwaz is a very powerful Rune that I also consider to be the Rune of Enlightenment and Immortality. The Eihwaz-Rune represents the Tree, Yggdrasil, where Óðinn has won the Runes – His symbolic code that leads to enlightenment. And as I said once in a ritual I called the Elhaz Ablaze Rite: “The Tree is the World. The World is the Supreme Self. This Self is me. I Am the Tree. Tat tvam Asi.“

However, here is the link to the video where Thich Nhat Hanh explains the nature of Nirvana. Notice his calmness and clarity. Most interesting are the parts, where he explains the aim of meditative practice that is “non-fear.” I enjoyed a lot his way of looking at death, namely that death does not exist. A cloud does not die, it just changes its state of being, but it does not become nothing. Words of wisdom. Heed them well. Click here to watch the movie.

In the centre of the cosmos there is no throne, but the sound of thunder! (Hubert Veðrfölnir)

Life behaves as if it were going on. The universe behaves as if Gods exist. The Psyche is not bound by the laws of time and space…

“I begin with nothingness. Nothingness is the same as fullness. In infinity full is no better than empty. Nothingness is both empty and full. As well might ye say anything else of nothingness, as for instance, white is it, or black, or again, it is not, or it is. A thing that is infinite and eternal hath no qualities, since it hath all qualities.

This nothingness or fullness we name the PLEROMA. Therein both thinking and being cease, since the eternal and infinite possess no qualities. In it no being is, for he then would be distinct from the pleroma, and would possess qualities which would distinguish him as something distinct from the pleroma.

In the pleroma there is nothing and everything. It is quite fruitless to think about the pleroma, for this would mean self-dissolution.

CREATURA is not in the pleroma, but in itself. The pleroma is both beginning and end of the created beings. It pervadeth them, as the light of the sun everywhere pervadeth the air. Although the pleroma pervadeth altogether, yet hath created being no share thereof, just as a wholly transparent body becometh neither light nor dark through the light which pervadeth it. We are, however, the pleroma itself, for we are a part of the eternal and the infinite. But we have no share thereof, as we are from the pleroma infinitely removed; not spiritually or temporally, but essentially, since we are distinguished from the pleroma in our essence as creatura, which is confined within time and space.

Yet because we are parts of the pleroma, the pleroma is also in us. Even in the smallest point is the pleroma endless, eternal, and entire, since small and great are qualities which are contained in it. It is that nothingness which is everywhere whole and continuous. Only figuratively, therefore, do I speak of created being as part of the pleroma. Because, actually, the pleroma is nowhere divided, since it is nothingness. We are also the whole pleroma, because, figuratively, the pleroma is the smallest point (assumed only, not existing) in us and the boundless firmanent about us. But wherefore, then, do we speak of the pleroma at all, since it is thus everything and nothing?

I speak of it to make a beginning somewhere, and also to free you from the delusion that somewhere, either without or within, there standeth something fixed, or in some way established, from the beginning. Every so-called fixed and certain thing is only relative. That alone is fixed and certain which is subject to change.

What is changeable, however, is creatura. Therefore is it the one thing which is fixed and certain; because it hath qualities: it is even quality itself.

The question ariseth: How did creatura originate? Created beings came to pass, not creatura: since created being is the very quality of the pleroma, as much as non-creation which is the eternal death. In all times and places is creation, in all times and places is death. The pleroma hath all, distinctiveness and non-distinctiveness.

Distinctiveness is creatura. It is distinct. Distinctivness is its essence, and therefore it distinguisheth. Wherefore also he distinguished qualities of the pleroma which are not. He distinguisheth them out of his own nature. Therefore he must speak of qualities of the pleroma which are not.

What use, say ye, to speak of it? Saidst thou not thyself, there is no profit in thinking upon the pleroma?

That said I unto you, to free you from the delusion that we are able to think about the pleroma. When we distinguish qualities of the pleroma, we are speaking from the ground of our own distinctiveness and concerning our own distinctiveness. But we have said nothing concerning the pleroma. Concerning our own distinctiveness, however, it is needful to speak, whereby we may distinguish ourselves enough. Our very nature is distinctiveness. If we are not true to this nature we do not distinguish ourselves enough. Therefore must we make distinctions of qualities.

What is the harm, ye ask, in not distinguishing oneself? If we do not distinguish, we get beyond our own nature, away from creatura. We fall into indistinctiveness, which is the other quality of the pleroma. We fall into the pleroma itself and cease to be creatures. We are given over to dissolution in nothingness. This is the death of the creature. Therefore we die in such measure as we do not distinguish. Hence the natural striving of the creature goeth towards distinctiveness, fighteth against primeval, perilous sameness. This is called the PRINCIPIUM INDIVIDUATIONIS. This principle is the essence of the creature. From this you can see why indistictiveness and non-distinction are a great danger for the creature.

We must, therefore, distinguish the qualities of the pleroma. The qualities are PAIRS OF OPPOSITES, such as:

The Effective and the ineffective.
Fullness and Emptiness.
Living and Dead.
Difference and Sameness.
Light and Darkness.
The Hot and the Cold.
Force and Matter.
Time and Space.
Good and Evil.
Beauty and Ugliness.
The One and the Many.

The pairs of opposites are qualities of the pleroma which are not, because each balanceth each. As we are the pleroma itself, we also have all these qualities in us. Because the very ground of our nature is distinctiveness, which meaneth:

1. These qualities are distinct and separate in us one from the other; therefore they are not balanced and void, but are effective. Thus are we the victims of the pairs of opposites. The pleroma is rent in us.

1. The qualities belong to the pleroma, and only in the name and sign of distinctiveness can and must we possess and live them. We must distinguish ourselves from qualities. In the pleroma they are balanced and void; in us not. Being distinguished from them delivereth us.

When we strive after the good or the beautiful, we thereby forget our own nature, which is disinctiveness, and we are delivered over to the qualities of the pleroma, which are pairs of opposites. We labor to attain the good and the beautiful, yet at the same time we also lay hold of the evil and the ugly, since in the pleroma these are one with the good and the beautiful. When, however, we remain true to our own nature, which is distinctiveness, we distinguish ourselves from the good and the beautiful, therefore, at the same time, from the evil and ugly. And thus we fall not into the pleroma, namely, into nothingness and dissolution.

Thou sayest, ye object, that difference and sameness are also qualities of the pleroma. How would it be, then, if we strive after difference? Are we, in so doing, not true to our own nature? And must we none the less be given over to the sameness when we strive after difference?

Ye must not forget that the pleroma hath no qualities. We create them through thinking. If, therefore, ye strive after difference or sameness, or any qualities whatsoever, ye pursue thoughts which flow to you out of the pleroma: thoughts, namely, concerning non-existing qualities of the pleroma. Inasmuch as ye run after these thoughts, ye fall again into the pleroma, and reach difference and sameness at the same time. Not your thinking, but your being, is distinctiveness. Therefore not after difference, ye think it, must ye strive; but after YOUR OWN BEING. At bottom, therefore, there is only one striving, namely, the striving after your own being. If ye had this striving ye would not need to know anything about the pleroma and its qualities, and yet would ye come to your right goal by virtue of your own being. Since, however, thought estrangeth from being, that knowledge must I teach you wherewith ye may be able to hold your thought in leash. … God is not dead; he is as much alive as ever. God is the created world, inasmuch as he is something definite and therefore he is differentiated from the Pleroma. God is a quality of the Pleroma and everything that I have stated in reference to the created world is equally true of him.

God is distinguished from the created world, however, inasmuch as he is less definite and less definable than the created world in general. He is less differentiated than the created world, because the ground of his being is effective fullness; and only to the extent that he is definite and differentiated is he identical with the created world; and thus he is the manifestation of the effective fullness of the Pleroma.

Everything that we do not differentiate falls into the Pleroma and is cancelled out along with its opposite. Therefore if we do not discern God, then the effective fullness is cancelled out for us. God also is himself the Pleroma, even as every smallest point within the created world, as well as within the uncreated realm, is itself of the Pleroma.

The effective emptiness is the being of the Devil. God and Devil are the first manifestations of the nothingness, which we call the Pleroma. It does not matter whether the Pleroma is or is not, for it cancels itself out in all things. The created world, however, is different. Inasmuch as God and Devil are created beings, they do not cancel each other out, rather they stand against each other as active opposites. We need no proof of their being ; it is sufficient that we must always speak about them. Even if they did not exist, the created being would forever (because of its own differentiated nature) bring them for out of the Pleroma.

All things which are brought forth from the Pleroma by differentiation are pairs of opposites; therefore God always has with him the Devil.

This interrelationship is so close, as you have learned, it is so indissoluble in your own lives, that it is even as the Pleroma itself. The reason for this is that these two stand very close to the Pleroma, in which all opposites are cancelled out and unified.” (C. G. Jung 1916: The Seven Sermons to the Dead)

Listen to the message of a modern prophet: Carl Gustav Jung.

There can be many reasons and triggers that can wake you up — wake you up to that kind of awareness, where the higher and hidden levels of the spectrum of human consciousness are experienced. I can remember a week some years ago, when I fasted for five days (no food at all, but much water and juice) and I meditated a lot and did other spiritual excercises from Crowley’s curriculum. And in one moment I realized my mind was so clear that I thought to myself: “How can life be any different again? It’s so easy to attain such a clear mind. I will never loose it again.” Believe me, it’s easier to fall asleep than to wake up again. The mind is such a tricky and sneaky thing! I guess nothing is easier than to travel the road of life asleep until one dies. Hence the need for a spiritual discipline. Nothing else helps. I tried it. Pills, thrills, drills and stuff that kills. But only slow and steady wins the race. Not the extreme and radical, but the golden middle. Neither this master nor that teaching, neither this order nor that secret ritual, neither this drug nor that technique. All that is needed is Here, all the that you have is the Now, the only one who can do the Work is you. “Who is the Great Master that makes the grass green?” You, the silent Watcher, you, the Ultimate Observer.

However, some times are special, when we feel that Wyrd leads us and just everything falls into place. Such times are often characterized by unusual events, books you find or get, people you meet, things you discover, music you hear and all kinds of weird / wyrd synchronicities.

There are many songs I remember that influenced me during that time of sheer beauty and madness. (Literally one friend of mine later had a psychosis, because the things we were experiencing and ‘consuming’ were just too much and too heavy.) Two songs I remember vividly and still love are Fokstua Hall and Svartálfar by Fire + Ice (like many other songs by this magical band) and now I found out that Sweyn has written these two songs! Things like that are magical, meaningful and empowering on a personal level, because it gives one’s life a direction and purpose. They confirm on a personal level that you were and are on the right track.

The Inmost Light and This Shining Shining World (read the text below) are my favourite songs by the band Current 93, a band that was also very important on my path for some time. This Shining Shining World kind of ‘converted’ me with the help of magic mushrooms and the Tibetan Book of the Dead from nihilism to the beauty and awe of Mystery. And thus I broke on through to the other side that greeted me behind the dead end of existentialism, which I thought (in my youthful arrogance and ignorance at age 15) was the last answer to all questions. But since I could gaze at the spinning of the Wyrd Sisters on “the other side” (or behind the curtain and beneath the obvious) I decided to open up to the possibility of magic and pantheism. To put it rather roughly: I concluded that we may be — maybe — more than a chunk of meat. Since then my interest for mysticism and the Occult became a vital part of my life. I came to know, rather than to believe (like Mr. Jung, listen to his words above), that we are more than we seem. The idea that there are secrets which are eternal mysteries — that is what I am interested in. And I am still going. Still seeking…

(In this process after having been a member of a rather known occult franternity I came to be opposed to so-called occultism, because the occultists assert that there are secrets, but what they think of as mysteries are rather conventional things that I now put in my pocket. These people just make any arbitrary thing a secret and simply conceal it from you for the sake of keeping it a secret to manipulate people or to simply create a commodity and they will tell you that these “secrets” can only be revealed to you if you become a member of this group, read this book or do something along those lines. This is utter nonsense. True mystery does not belong to anyone nor can it be taught, shown, revealed or attained.)

However, since then I was touched by the Ansuz flame. And I remember that when I had my second trip and looked through the Looking-Glass I did my first Staða of Dagaz — my absolutely most beloved Rune and the central mystery of a certain God, who is said to be a great Poet, Magician and Master of ecstatic Consciousness.

“But to love me is better than all things: if under the night-stars in the desert thou presently burnest mine incense before me, invoking me with a pure heart, and the Serpent flame therein, thou shalt come a little to lie in my bosom. For one kiss wilt thou then be willing to give all; but whoso gives one particle of dust shall lose all in that hour. … Put on the wings, and arouse the coiled splendour within you: come unto me!” (AL I, 61).

Since then I had only one sincere wish: to seek for spiritual liberation. Sounds naive, probably. But who doesn’t want to be free? Free from what, one is inclined to ask? Freedom is a myth, the Buddhist Master and Tantric teacher of “Crazy Wisdom”, Chögyam Trungpa, once said (in: Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism). By showing, in true Buddhist fashion, the interdependence of everything that exists, the dependence of any thing on some other thing is demonstrated (pratītyasamutpāda = „dependent origination“), including the ego, resulting in the realization that all things are ‘void’ or empty of any characteristic. So freedom in the way the usual Westerner imagines it doesn’t exist according to the philosophy of Shunyata (“Emptiness”), invented by the Buddhist scholar Nagarjuna (c. 150 – 250 CE). Though I’ve always been humbled and fascinated by Buddhist philosophy (not knowing a lot about it), I reject its world- and life-denying implications. That’s why I’m mostly interested in the Left-Hand Path manifestations of Tantric Buddhism and of the manifold sects (used here in a positive sense) of the complex religious phenomenon in India that the British colonials called rather unimaginatively “Hinduism”. Already Crowley observed:

“The essence of the Tantric cults is that by performance of certain rites of Magick, one does not only escape disaster, but obtains positive benediction. The Tantric is not obsessed with the will-to die. … [H]e implicitly denies the proposition that existence is sorrow and he formulates the postulate … that means exist by which the universal sorrow … may be unmasked.” (Crowley, in: Grant 1991 [1971]: The Magical Revival)

So freedom for an orthodox Buddhist or a Gnostic was reached when they were freed in a state of bliss (Nirvana or Heaven), delivered “from the body of Death” (Saint Paul). For a Tantric (spiritual) freedom was already here, for those who were strong, determined and courageous enough to grasp it. It is reached by developing what the chaos magician Julian Wilde once called Vajra Awareness. My brother and me had lastly a conversation and we were talking about god(s), the world(s) and all that stuff and then I misheard what he said, when a car drove by. And what I heard was: “In the centre of the cosmos there is no throne, but the sound of thunder!” Kaos Keraunos Kybernetosthe: The Chaos Thunderbolt Steers All Things. To hear the thunder and the silence at once, to see with the all-pentrating eye of the true nature of the mind, it is necessary to reach vajra awareness:

“The first necessary (and much misunderstood) stance is the need to remain ‘centred’, self-aware, to retain one’s ’spirit’, … to seek an uninterrupted stream of consciousness/awareness whatever may happen, be it calamity, death or rebirth/becomings. It is a channelling process/tendency, an identification of the self as separate/disengaged from the rest of the universe.

The second is the need to transcend the human view-point, to realise the narrowness, arrogance and ultimate impotence of one’s present perception and to seek a re-alignment of one’s will/vision to that of the universe/void/chaos flow. It is a diffusing process, an identification with something larger than the human perspective (that can, unchecked or abused, lead to false bliss, a nirvanic torpor, a capitulation of drive/energy).

Held/practised together these two polar opposites create a third, highest stance. As usual the tantrists have a word for it. The word ‘vajra’ or ‘dorje’ can either mean a diamond ie- that which is compact/focused, symmetrical/crystalised, unbreakable, immutable, untarnishable (part of the drive to eros/control, order, possession) or a thunderbolt ie- that which is frightening, all-powerful, ego-destructive, disintegrating (part of the drive to thanatos/disorder, ego-death). ‘Vajra’ therefore may also be held to mean both stances (diamond-eros and thunderbolt-thanatos) together/simultaneously. This captures nicely the feel of the third stance so let us call it the vajra-awareness. As a bolt of lightning (the thunderbolt) strikes the earth, swift, random, brilliant (ILLUMINATING!), so too must the vajra-awareness be instantly in response, cultivated to be active/reactive to changing emotional states, rebirths, disasters and environments, being one with the lightning, being the lightning, flowing at one with all but retaining the diamond-hard yet infinitely flexible self-ness in the midst of conditions, manifestaions and becomings. The vajra-awareness is what it touches yet it retains its self-ness, wherever it alights there is totality and purity, where it is not are ignorance and eventual suffering.

The vajra-awareness, then is a conscious integration/inter-action with all that is – an eternal balance between self-knowing/posession and immersion in the ceaseless flux of the universe.“ (Julian Wilde 1999: The Grimoire of Chaos Magick)

This is what has to be done. One of the most important tasks of that Great Work is the attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. In terms of Germanic Soul-Lore this part of the Magician’s Psyche is called the Fylgja or Fetch. It can be contacted by certain methodologies like this one. The relationship to that entity (HGA, Augoides, Dæmon, Genius, “Totem”, Deep Mind or Fylgja) is a vital part of one’s initiatory process. The HGA / Fylgja is often thought of as a non-human intelligence or a seperate being that carries in it all the ancestors’ pasts and holds the individual’s fate.

“As to why such a relationship is vital to cultivate, even in early stages of one’s Rune Work, that’s perhaps easier.  I’d say that the idea of the complex, multifaceted Self — the plural Soul — is one that is absolutely key to deep understanding of and practical work with the Northern Mysteries (and Indo-European mysticism in general). It’s also one of the ideas that has been most thoroughly abolished from the modern, materialist concept of the self.  We clearly yearn for it though, and it consistently emerges in pop culture and fantasy literature (think of the daemons in Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series, and I’m sure other examples will come to light).  It is a very difficult task to learn to think of ‘One’s Selves’ rather than ‘Oneself,’ but when we can do so, we come to know, rather than to believe, that we are more than we seem.  And we move farther and faster along the road of personal transformation in the Germanic Tradition.” (Ristandi)

Such a transpersonal guide is hidden in the soul-complex and to be discovered by those who travel along the Runic pathways that lead down, around and up the Tree. This part of the Soul is non-local in the sense of quantum mind. To say it more accurately: it’s here in Midgard and there in Asgard simultaneously — the ‘Realm’ of Awakened Consciousness that might be (according to “metaphysics of ’substance’”) / do (according to “all things flow”-process philosophy) in non-local ‘hyper-space’ beyond time, connected with the other eight worlds of the map of the multiverse, f.e. as represented by the Chaos Star (the multi-directional expansion of consciousness from a central still-point). Um mik ok í mér Ásgarðr ok Miðgarðr! From the point of view of the Germanic Soul-Lore, that C. G. Jung helped to dig up, this entity, the Fylgja, does not die because it already exists in an eternal dimension not bound by the laws of time and space, like Jung already suggested. And, apparently, most cosmological and psychological maps, especially those influenced by shamanic lore, implied something along those lines. Michael Kelly, who worked a lot with the Celtic soul model, says:

“We may now gain a perspective on what may cause an active shade or ghost to linger, if an attachment is still felt toward a loved one who embodied the deceased’s Other on the physical plane. But as I considered the soul in the context of Desire, I realised that the féin does not pass from this world into the magical realms upon physical death. Why not? Because it is already there and it always has been. The sense of Self is not and has never been bound to the physical body. Even in the most dull and unimaginative of people, it indulges in daydreams, it dreams while the body sleeps and it creates new worlds within the imagination. The féin resides permanently in the magical realms and it interfaces with the physical body through the other parts of the soul that we have described. Upon death, it draws several of those parts back to itself to one degree or another.”(Michael Kelly 2009: Apophis)

In Sweyn Plowright’s book True Helm Ian Read puts forth the idea (in the foreword) that upon following the guidelines in this book “you may create such a strong being (that we call hamingja) and may even, upon death, join those greatest warriors … in Valhalla.”  Ultimately, I come to understand it in such a way that the Hamingja — the life force and soul power of the magician — may become so strong in the process of individuation that even upon death it will survive.

“But exceed! exceed! Strive ever to more! and if thou art truly mine — and doubt it not, and if thou art ever joyous! — death is the crown of all. Ah! Ah! Death! Death! thou shalt long for death. Death is forbidden, o man, unto thee. The length of thy longing shall be the strength of its glory. He that lives long & desires death much is ever the King among the Kings.” (AL II, 71 – 74)

So, from a Germanic point of view, the Fylgja (unique to an individual, but nevertheless completely independent of him / her) and the Hamingja (later to become associated with one’s indwelling luck) are (semi-)autonomous ‘entities’ and yet portions of the individual’s psyche that are immune to physical death. What happens to the Self? Can it unite with the Fylgja and Hamingja? Does it continue to exist after death, like Kelly suggests in his Celtic soul model? Or is it rather an illusion as suggested in the teachings of Nagarjuna and as expressed in the idea of pratītyasamutpāda (dependent origination)? I don’t know, fellow traveler. It’a Mystery hidden in your Soul. Seek it!

“Consider the lillies of the field…” (Matt. 6: 28)
Consider the carnage and massacre
Consider the love and embraces
Consider the hangingred skies
Consider the pain of your enemy
Consider the hatred of your friend
There, oh there, there is the land
All the musics shall combine
All the daughters are no longer brought low
They are araised
In brightfiregodgiven they rejoice
And those who deny this world
Is the soul of the unbroken one
Lie
This is indeed Paradise
(Come I shall show you where
The stars give birth and sleep)
And all around you is the warm bluegreen breath of heavens
Do not fear
Around you is the vast blueblack space of stars
Do not fear
This is the great ocean
On which the endless waves crash down
God is not dead
There is no death I say
(Come I shall show you where
Dreams go to when they die)
Hurry now; the sun is descending
The shadows wait to play

Current 93, Of Ruine Or Some Blazing Starre — The Broken Heart Of Man (1994)

]]> http://www.elhazablaze.com/2010/08/death-is-not-an-end/feed/ 7 http://www.elhazablaze.com/2010/06/my-runes-your-runes-and-runa-hiding/ http://www.elhazablaze.com/2010/06/my-runes-your-runes-and-runa-hiding/#comments Wed, 02 Jun 2010 23:49:51 +0000 Matt Anon http://www.elhazablaze.com/?p=1152

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 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.

This book is essential reading for anyone interested in runes or indeed European cultural history. Macleod and Mees decline to adopt the recent fashion in academic circles for dismissing the idea that the runes had any kind of magical significance, just as they refuse to pretend that different regions were hermetically sealed from one another. They steer a balanced path between emphasising the many mundane applications of the runes and their magical function, and indeed the book focuses on the latter, as may be inferred from the title.

The authors document and interpret scores of inscriptions from amulets, artefacts, monuments, and written texts, bringing incredible breadth and depth of learning to the task. Their vibrant enthusiasm for the subject matter is infectious, and consequently the book is anything but dry or boring. Indeed, there are even moments of high humour, such as a hilarious passage that recounts some of the more ribald love magic charms of the runic era!

The interpretations and explanations of the inscriptions are fleshed out with background perspective on cultural history and a real empathy for folk long dead, and this make the book much more than just a study of dusty museum pieces to be nit-picked and quarrelled over. The endlessly unfolding cultural and political evolution of Northern Europe over the centuries is explored through the angular scratchings of the runes, and the reality of Europe’s convoluted history is graphically exposed in the inscriptions that remain.

One of the most striking things that emerges from this book is the incredible diversity of runic writings. Although we talk about, say, “the Elder Futhark” as though it were a defined and uniform 24 character alphabet, the reality is that rune carvers modified the characters ceaselessly, obeying all manner of personal whims as to the orientation, style, and variety of ways of carving the runes. There is an almost aggressive outpouring of creative invention in the way that the rune carvers improvised on the basic themes of these archaic characters, a phenomena that we in our age of standardised spelling and formatting might struggle to grasp.

The book goes deep into the patterns and structures by which magical runic inscriptions on charms and amulets were composed. Indeed, their analysis of the five-fold structure of these inscriptions is elegant and brilliant, as is their discussion o the significance of terms like “alu.” Anyone interested in making their own modern rune carvings would benefit greatly from this book, which inadvertently serves as a detailed and clear “how to” manual.

In the course this analysis of the structure of runic amulet inscriptions the authors also underscore how indebted the Germanic runic tradition was to the Etruscans – for the fundamental magical structure used in the rune inscriptions was adopted wholesale from Etruscan/Rhaetic traditions. This is a fine illustration of the point that cultural exchange and mixing can sometimes strengthen the cultures involved and help them become more unique and distinct: this non-Germanic influence surely seeded one of the most distinctive aspects of Germanic culture. The tendency of some academics to only focus on specific regions (say, England) therefore risks grossly distorting our understanding of both history and the runes.

The book also makes the point that the runes were heavily used for Christian as well as Heathen purposes in later centuries, that they were combined with various other magical traditions, sometimes quite elegantly and even seamlessly, though it is clear that their place as a magical tool eroded by the middle ages and their usage became progressively more trivialised. This in turn underscores the complex cultural dynamics unleashed by the coming of Christianity, and the durability of Heathen cultural practices and aesthetics post-conversion, although the magical tradition of the runes seems to have ultimately declined into ignorance and ignominy.

The authors express some very valid criticisms of the use of the Icelandic sagas as sources for understanding rune lore, but their analysis of the Eddic poems “Havamal” and “Sigrdrifumal” concludes that these sources do provide valuable insights for understanding rune magic, again making the point that in the past some academics have been perhaps sceptical of these sources to an unjustifiable extent. This is very useful information, particularly as the mistake of seeing the sagas as a faithful representation of Dark Age Scandinavian culture seems very common.

I find myself disagreeing with the authors’ view that the various rune poems were merely mnemonics for remembering the rune alphabet orders, however. From personal experience I can assure the reader that memorising these poems for the most part) is far more arduous than merely memorising the Futhark alphabet(s) – indeed, I have forgotten my verbatim memory of the poems (though the substance remains), but remembering the correct Futhark order is easy and was, I found, almost a prerequisite for being able to absorb the rune poems into memory. An intelligent young child could happily memorise the rune names and order, but almost certainly not the poems.

Furthermore, the poems themselves seem to echo many aspects of Heathen culture and worldview and paint incredibly evocative images that, at least in my opinion, resonate much further than any putative modern mnemonic equivalent (“the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” comes to mind). There are various other criticisms that could be made of the book, too, although ultimately it survives its flaws admirably.

On the whole this book is a revelatory window into the free-wheeling, anarchic, and bracing world of rune magic as attested by primary sources (as opposed to wishful thinking in either too-fanciful or too-cynical directions). It is fun, fascinating, and inspiring, and strongly, strongly recommended. The price tag is rather high, and this may dissuade some from making the purchase – but please, take the plunge, Runic Amulets and Magic Objects is worth every penny.

I have enjoyed what I have read of Galina Krasskova’s writings, so I was quite excited to review this book. Having devoured it, I have come to the conclusion that, although there are some discordant notes that did not sit comfortably with me, it is on the whole a valuable contribution to contemporary runic lore.

The book is not really for beginners, and for the most part assumes the reader already has (or is capable of acquiring) a grasp of the history of the runes, and indeed of Heathenry more generally. It focuses more on explaining Krasskova’s ideas and experiences pertaining to rune work, derived from her many years of experience.

Krasskova is one of those admirable Heathen/runic authors who is open about which of her claims have an historical basis and which come from her own invention or experience. In a world where many authors on runes present themselves as being historically/academically sound – only to then promulgate all kinds of fabrications as “authentic” – this is very welcome.

The book begins with some general comments on rune magic, including Krasskova’s thesis that the runes are sentient spirits; moves to a discussion of each rune (including the Anglo-Saxon runes, a rare inclusion); and then discusses theory and technique for applying the runes to various purposes such as magic, galdr (song magic, which she correctly notes as not necessarily being a runic practice), and divination.

The discussion of the runes themselves is thought-provoking and Krasskova has some fascinating interpretations and ideas. She accompanies her thoughts with translations of the three Rune Poems that history has bequeathed us – essential for anyone who has an interest in the runes – and her discussion is also accompanied by some evocative modern rune poems composed by Elizabeth Vongvisith.

Krasskova’s ideas on divination and singing the runes are very useful. Some authors on rune magic, being addicted to the vice of over-complication, leave the reader feeling overwhelmed and discouraged, whereas Krasskova makes one feel inspired to experiment and explore.

Despite my generally very positive impression, I did have a few raised eyebrows when reading this book. Krasskova’s ideas about runes as spirit allies are very unorthodox, but she pretty much presents the notion as though it were simply a matter of fact. I think a little more transparency with her readers would be appropriate on that score. I am somewhat sympathetic to the idea personally, but there are plenty of very experienced rune workers out there who do not adopt this notion and seem to have no difficulties at all.

Similarly, her claim that runes inevitably and necessarily like to feed on blood offerings is very unusual. I have known many experienced rune workers – and indeed, I am one myself – but I have never before encountered this notion. Again, Krasskova presents this idea as a simple matter of fact, whereas in truth it is quite unusual. I think for something potentially so controversial it would have been in good taste to have explicitly noted that many rune workers would disagree with this idea.

Perhaps Galina has simply assumed that, given her audience are likely to have some familiarity with runes already, they will know that these ideas are unorthodox. Nonetheless, I think that a simple acknowledgement or qualification would have been easy enough to include. Certainly such an inclusion would have been more consistent with her general openness about the difference between historical lore and personal innovation/experience.

Some of the book’s initial remarks on ordeal magic and spirit allies feel like introductory comments, but unfortunately the book does not really return to flesh these themes out. I rather wish the book had been longer; it ends rather abruptly and I felt like she had more to say. This is especially relevant given that this is a book for those who are no longer beginners and who are willing (and able) to dive deep.

I would hesitate to recommend this book to a beginner, but it certainly has given me pause and some fresh ideas for exploration, as well as inspiration to re-examine my own spiritual/magical practice. I still think that Jan Fries’ Helrunar remains unsurpassed as the best modern book on rune magic, but nonetheless Runes: Theory and Practice represents a considerable contribution to esoteric runic literature and offers many refreshing insights and reflections.

1) Galdor Made Me Into Road Runner

One day some years ago I was attempting to make my way to a friend’s home. It was a hot summer’s day and the train system had broken down, leaving me in the unenviable position of having to walk from Central Station to Stanmore (Sydney-siders will know what that means; the distance involved is about five kilometres). Oh, and I had something like twenty minutes to get there in time.

Despite the fact that normally I might have just called and cancelled, I felt it important at the time to connect with my friend, who had experienced a recent break up. One of my Odinnic poems came unbidden to my lips as I steeled myself to run the distance, knowing that I certainly was not fit enough to make the distance in the time available, particularly since I had a backpack with me.

As I began to chant the poem over and over, its rhythm taking a hold of me, I began to be filled with a stern vehemence. It was like a kind of berserkergang keyed to movement rather than violence. Swept up in my own roaring chant, I fairly flew the distance.

Strangely, I didn’t actually run, I just walked, albeit at a cracking pace, reciting my poem over and over. I covered the distance in exactly the time available, and not only that, but I was overflowing with energy when I arrived: not in the least bit tired. A totally bizarre display of physical power. I really should try to tap into that trick more often.

Less dramatically, I have found that I can get more energy to walk faster by simply increasing the tempo of my singing when I am out and about. Not exactly a new discovery – music has been used to synchronise rowers and marching soldiers for thousands of years – but I hadn’t realised that I could manipulate my own body into a swifter mode of action just by varying the tempo of my song.

2) Galdor on Stage

Things often get pretty intense when my band Ironwood performs: here is a photo from a gig – you can see the incredible proliferation of spirit orbs attracted by our magical music! Of course, a big part of our mojo is our vocals.

I often get possessed when I am on stage – in fact I think we all do – and my singing tends to take on a life of its own. Prior to our first gig, I had never been able to sing “extreme” vocals – the screeches, bellows, howls, and roars typical of extreme metal music. That was generally fine because mostly I sing “clean” in Ironwood, but sometimes I wished  could add just that extra layer of intensity to our performances.

On our first gig, after a while, I noticed a tremendous roaring voice coming back at me through the monitors. It seemed to sweep up the entire room and certainly drove me into total ecstasy. Then I realised: the voice was me! Presented with the immediacy and risk of performing for an audience had unleashed a wild and powerful new range of vocal expression for me, one that established a positive feedback loop with my trance states.

In recording settings I struggle to replicate these vocals, though my efforts for the next Ironwood album came out quite well in the end.

I think the magic of that first (and subsequent) gigs came from the fact that I didn’t recognise my own voice, and that dissociation sent me into a whirl of trances and altered states. Since then I’ve experimented a lot with exploring unorthodox ways of vocalising, and they can indeed send you into a huge range of worlds. Sometimes this practice will get me shivering spontaneously – classic Jan Fries-style seidh.

3) Galdor Duets

Apart from my time spent chanting within the Illawarra circle of the Jerrahi Sufis, in which I experienced an incredible array of magical states (not least because so many members of the circle were musicians and we’d really explore tonal chaos in our chanting), I’ve also spent a lot of time chanting with Donovan (which inspired this article from a while back). Donovan and I don’t get to do this together as much as we like, but it is always awesome.

I’d particularly like to share a recent, and quite bizarre, experience I had while rehearsing Ironwood vocals with my band mate Matthew. Matt and I were practicing a particularly beautiful but tricky duet passage that will be featured on the next Ironwood album. It is only a short span of music so we’d just sing it over and over again.

Something strange began to happen. I felt an intense sensation of electricity or energy moving up and down my limbs, through my body, my head, etc. It was like a powerful energetic vibration streaming through my body.

Then I had this intense impression that there was a third person in the room, forming the third point of a triangle with Matt and I, watching us as we sang. This presence seemed shadowy, hard to pin down, but benevolent. It was the most uncanny thing to be sitting there, singing with Matt, consumed by strange energetic sensations, watched by some ineffable but intense presence.

We stopped for a minute and I told Matt what I was experiencing.

First, he tells me that he is experiencing exactly the same energy sensation or whatever it was.

Then he tells me that he also can perceive the third person watching us…and that it is him! Matt’s perception, thanks to our singing, somehow has expanded beyond his body, and incredibly, I could sense the presence of his consciousness without any prompting or clue!

Neither of us can make any sense of the experience, but it was very empowering for us both. I chalk it up to the power of shared singing, the beauty of galdor and vocal-induced seidh-like consciousness. I am curious to see if we can replicate the experience: I wonder where it might lead?

Convinced yet that singing should be an essential part of most any magical practice? If not, give it a go and persevere. You’ll thank yourself for the effort.

Indeed, the “birdy” aspect to the word brings to mind the myth of Sigurd. When Sigurd tastes the heart of the dragon Fafnir he is granted the ability to understand the speech of birds and proceeds to experience some kind of magical initiation or expansion of consciousness. Perhaps hearing the speech of birds is a convoluted way of saying he became conscious of galdor: of the presence of magic suffusing all things.

Once we realise that the term galdor is not nearly as specific as some misinforming writers would have us think, we find ourselves in a position of immense freedom. While presumably there were various specific forms of galdor in days of yore of which no records remain, it also seems likely that there was a proliferation of styles of galdor, just as the old myths, customs, and even the rune alphabets varied from place and culture to place and culture.

Presumably individuals of magical inclination back then were as idiosyncratic as they are today (myth, sagas, and folk tales all seem to imply this conclusion).Consequently it seems reasonable to propose that song-magic innovation, undertaken with sensitivity to the mythic corpus, is perfectly “authentic”, at least in the sense of recapitulating exactly what the old sorcerers were up to.

Given the poetic proclivities of the Heathen folk (and the existence of an Old Norse poetic form called galdralag) it also seems appropriate to include rhythmic speech and poetry set to magical purpose under the category of galdor.

Recently I have been experimenting with singing in public: walking down the street, on the platform at train stations, in shops, you name it. It takes a bit of courage to openly sing in public: we are programmed to suppress ourselves, to package ourselves away from visibility (or audibility, more specifically), in contemporary Western society. At first I found it rather terrifying, and indeed my mind would turn constantly around that impossible question, “are the people around me judging me?” Sometimes I would feel so anxious that I would end up silencing myself.

Then I realised that the opinions of my impromptu audience were completely irrelevant, and that they were almost certainly not going to act on them if in fact they didn’t like the idea of me singing. Occasionally children laugh, or more commonly, stare in bewilderment, when I walk past them, singing happily away. Often I am shocked by the number of people who have no idea that I am singing because they have headphones in their ears, or because the surrounding traffic is so loud. Modern life is definitely not what our ears evolved to handle.

Apart from the fact that my singing technique is improving and I am feeling more creative (since I am now exploring musical ideas every time I go walking in public), I am experiencing deeper changes as a result of my public singing practice, and this leads me to conclude that I am practicing a form of galdor, at least in my own specific sense of psychological reconstruction.

My public singing is having effects that might be deemed magical in two senses. Firstly, it alters my relationship to my environment, including my relationship to other people. It modifies my experience of myself and the world around me, causing various fears to weaken, and correspondingly, causing me to feel more powerful.

Secondly, it is opening up the channel of my spirit. For example, when you sing your throat opens up. The vocal chords and neck muscles get massaged and strengthened, becoming more fluid and more definite. Normal speech becomes clearer, more compelling, and a little musical – all subtle “magical” effects. Even more importantly, this singing provokes feels of great joy and a lightening of life’s burdens. I feel very energised by my regular galdor, and unwittingly break into song in all sorts of moments – even when doing simple things like cooking.

If one of the central purposes of magic is to alter one’s consciousness (we might loosely call this seidh), and another is to bring empowerment (a purpose some see as a specific  purpose of the runes) then I think I have hit on an exceptionally potential-rich form of magical practice with my personal type of galdor.

What do I sing? Mostly improvised, wordless melodies. Sometimes I chant the names of runes or gods. Sometimes, rarely, I will sing songs from my band Ironwood, but mostly I just embrace the art of exploring my voice.You don’t necessarily have to sing to make this work for you – even just to recite poetry in a projective fashion would probably suffice.

Other advantages for this type of magic are that 1) you don’t need any special skills (since you aren’t singing to produce a “quality performance” and will in any case improve your “quality” of singing organically just by doing it a lot); 2) it doesn’t require any special preparation, memorising pages of middling-to-bad poetry, waving of obscure magical artifacts, dressing up in silly costumes, or anything else like that. All you need are a set of lungs and a throat. Magic that works in the here and now of daily reality is always preferable to me.

If you are not brave enough to sing in public straight away then I suggest starting by singing in “safe” contexts: while driving, or at home. Needless to say this will necessitate turning off your television (or better, driving a steam roller over it), and choosing to listen to music less (although I suppose you could always sing along to your favourite CDs).

When first singing in public, start off almost sub-vocalising or humming to yourself; don’t even bother with opening your mouth. There is no need to freak yourself out – just gradually increase the volume and physical obviousness of your singing as your comfort zone expands. It is perfectly alright to moderate your singing as appropriate for specific circumstances – I won’t sing as loud indoors for example.

One particular challenge is to not fall quiet or silent automatically when someone walks towards you. It might be scary, but once you can happily sing despite passers-by and the opinions of strangers you might start to feel a lot more cheerful and powerful. Certainly this is gradually unfolding in my experience.

The more I sing, the easier it feels to take other kinds of action in the world, to assert myself, and so forth. For example I have always had a strong telephone phobia, but recently it seems to have almost completey entered into remissiobn. Singing is very personal, yet also very public, and it enables one to reach a valuable equilibrium between internal and external worlds. If the philosopher’s stone is a thing of thought that can directly transform matter, then singing must surely be some alchemical agent – perhaps mercury – to help facilitate the process of transforming oneself into such a stone.

Of course, as alluded above, the names of the runes do lend themselves very nicely to song, and there is no reason why you shouldn’t apply runes to the art of galdor, even if strictly speaking rune-magic and galdor are two different things.

To my mind this sort of literally empty-handed magic is much more interesting, powerful, useful, healing, and deep than a lot of the more elaborate and effortful approaches. It draws on spontaneity rather than will and creativity rather than intellectual artifice. The old Heathens lived in a tough, often brutal, world, and from necessity I think they tended to prefer the quick and practical over the unwieldy and impractical. Hence my ancestors are reborn from the wordless song on my lips.