I have often advocated for the destruction of the ego. Then realizing this brought me little peace, I have advocated for its curtailing, hemming in, restricting. In short, advocated for controlling and regulating the ego. I could not see how ironic it was that activities such as controlling and regulating (and destroying for that matter) are all very much par for the ego’s course. No wonder I have struggled with myself despite the rich spiritual life I have been gifted.

Thor gave me a valuable lesson. I kneeled, and he stood behind me. “You want to be free of the ego’s insanity?” He asked. “You want to stop trying to force reality to fit your lazy wish-fulfillment childishness by sheer force of thinking and emoting?” (he knows that I have found such mental activity to bring nothing but suffering and pessimism).

“So!” he cried, and struck my head clean from my shoulders with his hammer.

But immediately, my head grew back, good as new.

“Again!” He cried, and Mjolnir’s reverse sweep decapitated me again. A new head immediately popped out of the gaping cavity of my neck.

“And again!” He was laughing now, as his hammer swished back and forth as though light as a switch of birch. With each swing, he sent my head flying. Yet by the time the backswing was on its way, a new head had appeared, ready to be knocked off again.

Finally, his point made, Thor stopped. “So,” he declared, “now you see that as soon as the ego is in any way attacked, it reappears. Its roots run deep, and at a certain point cannot be destroyed without ending your life.” I realized that the addiction to ego is like an addictive relationship to food (what we might call compulsive overeating). A food addiction is trickier than, say, a drug addiction, because you cannot quit food as an aid to overcoming the addiction. You have to manage a stable relationship with food, while constantly placing your hand in the wolf’s maw.

Now, how then to deal with the ego, its endless complaining, whining, raging, resenting, fearing, overthinking, superstitions, paranoia, and all the rest? How, if not by controlling or abolishing it?

“Just hand it over to me, or whoever you wish to hand it over to,” Thor says, reading my mind. “Just say, ‘Thor, I’m handing this over. I’m letting go.’ You can trust me that I’ll put your ego in a nice safe place for the duration, and you can get on with developing all the other parts of your psyche that have been atrophied in the shadow of your ego’s unruly canopy.”

Just hand it over? Just hand it over. Mind turns to powerless worrying? Hand it over. Mind turns to self-righteous pomposity (designed to inflate a feeling of well-being with little merit of effort)? Hand it over. Even the need to always let go…can be let go.

Like all human beings, I am lopsided, uneven, in my psychic anatomy. It is very hard to straighten a crooked spine when the load that bent it is still on your shoulder. Better to give it to the Divine so that your posture can be healed. The gods want us to be hale in order to better serve and celebrate them. They want to help. But we have to ask (know you how?).

How do we ask? The simplest formula I have heard is the prayer that goes, “God – help.” And then the trick is not to immediately look for the magical solution of all your problems. Causality doesn’t work like that. Let that go. And the need to let it go. And then in the next moment, whatever comes up – let it go. And that too. And that objection. And that digression. And that worry that you digressed. And so on.

Thor reminded me of his Marvel Comics incarnation. The comic book Thor flies, but not through force of will, not through effortful thinking, not through having a specific flying power.

No, how he flies is by whirling his hammer violently, around and around, until it builds up tremendous centrifugal force. Then he throws it, which actually amounts to releasing its circular momentum into a straight line. Just as it leaps away, he grabs the strap on the end of the handle and the hammer carries him with it.

So! This, Thor told me, is the ideal model for how to proceed. If we want to advance, if we want to fly, the way to do it is not through direct effort. No, instead we build momentum, or find momentum, or tap into momentum. When the time comes to move, we do not provide the power ourselves, we just channel the energy we have invoked through right action, self care, sensitivity, intuition, and all the rest.

If we overthink this at all then it will not work. Thor is a god of action (this is what makes him such a profound mystic). Overthinking, egoism whether self-aggrandizing or self-destroying, has a way of subtly creeping back into the mind. Vigilance but also self-compassion are necessary. It will never totally subside, but it can become more and more easily sated and salved – and therefore gradually takes up less space that could otherwise be held by happiness, laughter, play, and power.

So! Whirl the psychic hammer – do not try to somehow force forward. Instead, when the time is right just – let go, and catch the strap. The inner Mjolnir will do the rest. Our job is not to be big, strong, heroic, and striving. Our job is to make ourselves available for forces much more powerful and playful.

Hail Thor!

Consider participation mystique, a term coined by anthropologist Lucien Levy-Brühl and used extensively by Carl Jung. In such a state, our beliefs and the objects of our beliefs are experienced as one undifferentiated mass. Thus, for example, we can experience an inanimate object (or even living things like trees and animals) as having intentions, feelings, thoughts, spirit, and other qualities of consciousness.

This stands in contrast to what some would call anthropomorphism, thus revealing their allegiance to nihilism, which I will discuss shortly. In participation mystique correspondence is identity; there are no symbols, only literalism.

This mode of relationship enables us to experience the living magic of the cosmos (for surely participation mystique is a vehicle for the riches of imagination), but it also enables some very backward and hackneyed thinking, for example paranoia, denial, and superstition. The world is mystical, but if we are immersed without reflection in that world then we can get into trouble. For we then lack perspective on the sense or otherwise of our beliefs and deeds.

At the other extreme from “primitive” mysticism we have modern nihilism: when all our attributions, projections, and beliefs are radically withdrawn from the world around us, are seen purely as products of our isolated consciousness. Consequently we risk experiencing nothing as satisfying, comforting, joyous, or meaningful. Participation mystique enables the very possibility of communication, by conjuring for us a “theory of mind for the Other” and therefore implying the existence of relationships. That possibility is lost in nihilism, which is stuck in an endless, narcissistic, self-examining regress.

Nonetheless, great self-understanding and insight can come from the reflectiveness of nihilism. Once we withdraw our raw and undifferentiated acceptance of our experience of the world, we can develop subtle perception and deep appreciation of complexity. We can assess the implications of our thoughts and deeds, evaluate them, and refine them.

So if the supposedly premodern consciousness of participation mystique has reverence but not sense; and if the supposedly modern consciousness of nihilism has insight but wallows in the despair of abstraction, what are we to do?

Contra Levy-Brühl, who saw participation mystique as being culturally “primitive,” I do not believe that these two modes of consciousness are mutually exclusive. Rather, throughout history their symbiosis ebbs and flows in complementary tides. They exist in each of us, all the time, and weave around one another in complex and subtle patterns. Both can be active in a single belief or action, engaging together like multifaceted computer programs interfacing over the Internet; like two chess masters of equal ability but totally opposed styles and methods; like Odin’s ravens Thought (nihilism) and Memory (mysticism).

Participation mystique invariably collapses. Either its own irrationality causes it to dismantle (consider the Protestant Reformation of an insane Catholic church); or it is so absorbed in the “world of its concern” (c.f. Martin Heidegger’s work) that it cannot cope with a sudden dramatic change of game (as happened to many indigenous cultures when European invaders turned up with guns, grog, and the Cross). Eve always ends up eating the apple and, though it can be unpleasant, the fall into ego consciousness is a necessary potentiality on the horizon of sacred oneness.

The Faustian fall into the clutches of the Devil’s isolated ego leads to a different kind of disaster than those which haunt participation mystique. Once we forget that our actions have consequences in the causal web that binds everything together, we begin to do incredibly stupid things. For example, burn dangerous quantities of fossil fuels, or base our society on disposability, unsustainably exponential “growth,” and other illusions. We layer abstractions upon abstractions, until stratospherically arbitrary conventions such as legality and economics conjure plenty in the midst of poverty…and, as we have seen so keenly in recent years, poverty in the midst of plenty.

Nonetheless, with the self-reflection of nihilism we are afforded an opportunity to, as Jung would say, withdraw our projections from the world. We can begin to recognize that our emotions, attributions, beliefs, thoughts, and feelings about the world are distinct from the objects in the world to which they pertain.

This is not dissimilar to what Edmund Husserl called the phenomenological turn. He correctly intuited a strong streak of participation mystique, of absorption in objects without reflection, in all the sciences (it continues today). In response, he called for a phenomenological revolution – to go “back to the things themselves” – to the projections which are the meat of all human experience.

A simple example: we all have an intuitive idea of what this “life” thing is that biology studies, and that intuition implicitly guides the very shape of all biological study. But try to draw out that intuition into a clear, explicit statement that doesn’t, in some fashion, already presuppose the shape of the field of study! Not so easy to do, least of all if you are a biologist. Husserl warned that often our implicit understandings quietly but fatefully determine the way we experience and interpret reality. Modern research on cognitive bias – on the dangers of the tendency thumbnailed by Robert Anton Wilson as “the prover proves what the thinker thinks” – is a powerful, if somewhat narrow, contemporary scientific exploration of this problem.

So Husserl invokes this turn, away from the world, to the phenomena themselves. In the process he puts the question of reality “as such,” “in truth,” aside. Which is in a sense nihilistic (or at least a kind of epistemological agnosticism). Yet it allows us to clarify how our unconscious beliefs frame and occlude the experiences we have. This in turn opens us, enables us to experience reality with a lot more open-mindedness, wonder, curiosity, acceptance, and equanimity. At least, it does if we set it to good use and do not allow it to become a hall of mirrors ala postmodern philosophy (which indeed partly emerged as a critical successor to Husserl’s ideas).

If we do not stop at a narrow and cramped state of nihilism (withdrawal of meaning from the world into the perceiver), but instead use that state to clarify how we relate to the world, then we find ourselves drawn, as Husserl was, to appreciate both the Forest and the Trees. Thus instead of being stuck with only mysticism, or only nihilism, we are given the gift of a bigger picture and a rapprochement of what seemed at first to be fundamentally irreconcilable kinds of consciousness.

For Jung, this all has a psychological dimension. Psychological well-being is achieved once we have systematically withdrawn all our projections from the world, grasped them as projections, as objects themselves (“to the things themselves!” we again hear Husserl cry).

This gradually enables us to see how our experience is shaped by our expectations, habits, and unconscious beliefs. Through this process we come to realize that it is not the world, not events, not other people that make us happy or unhappy, but rather our ability to achieve peace within ourselves; we become less dependent on the arbitrary whims of fate in order to feel whole. Of course, we then have to reintegrate ourselves so that the breach of psyche and cosmos is resolved into a new, far more robust relationship between mind and world.

(This is not to say that life events of a negative character somehow magically “shouldn’t” have a traumatic consequence, but to rather say that the person who achieves something close to Jung’s ideal of individuation is able to accept, cope with, and resolve negative situations more effectively and with less suffering).

Jung saw this process of withdrawal and rebirth in the symbolism of alchemy. He felt that the alchemists – sometimes purposefully, sometimes instinctively – used the state of participation mystique as a framework within which to experience their psychological withdrawal, transformation, and reintegration. Their medium? The myth-laden operations of their paraphernalia. Here we see the brilliance of alchemy: it distills the best of nihilistic, detached consciousness by establishing it within an environment of mystical literalism!

(Psychotherapy is almost identical, except that it substitutes the temenos of the therapeutic relationship for the retorts, alembics, and chemicals of the pseudo-scientist. The analogy was certainly not lost on Jung).

So: we begin by being immersed uncritically in the world, unable to separate our consciousness, our emotions and beliefs, from that which is around us – other people, other places, other things. Then we separate and become self-conscious – we detach ourselves from the world around in order to come to self-awareness. Finally we reintegrate, so that our newfound perspective serves to open and enrich our experience, while imparting a fresh sense of inner wholeness.

In this way we can enjoy the mystical sense of all existence as a sacred and interconnected whole without the blinders that we suffered prior to our quest for self-awareness. And naturally this is actually a recurring cycle, without alpha or omega.

The three stage model (withdrawal, transformation, reintegration) can be seen in the three stages of alchemy. We begin with the Prima Materia, the raw stuff to which we apply our Art. Then we enter stage one, nigredo: blackness, death – the detachment of self from world. Our gestation produces stage two, albedo: whiteness, in which we are transformed until we are pristine, unsullied by the world; but also isolated, disconnected. Finally comes stage three, the rubedo: reddening, where our pristine nature is redeemed to the world, and vice versa. Thus the lead becomes gold.

It is significant in this connection that Mercurius, the arch-patron of alchemy, is both Prima Materia and the Philosopher’s Stone; that is, he is both lead and gold. We begin with the lead, we finish with the gold, but Mercurius shows them to be the one thing. We complete our alchemical or psychological journey back where we started…yet at the same time everything is totally different. In this sense, alchemy depicts a spiral movement: our circular orbits nevertheless also describe an ascending path, with the Self or the Stone as the axis of the spiral. The same holds for any sound process of spiritual or psychological development.

The Philosopher’s Stone, the goal of alchemy, is that which is wrested from the chaos of the world, refined in isolation, and then reintegrated with the world from which it was wrenched. In a sense, this psychological redemption touches all of objective reality, for they are one even as they are distinct.

It is from Jung that I draw the analogy of the Self to the Stone – snatched from the blindness of naive projection, refined in the isolating reflection of the therapy room (or other life experiences), and then returning to the world in such a way that it is connected with, but no longer dissolved into, everything around it. It no longer needs to attack or defend or justify itself or anything of the sort. It is its own singular foundation and yet simultaneously utterly integrated and one with the universe as a whole.

I had a vision tonight. Woden appeared to me younger than he ever has – no beard, and two eyes. He led me through a forest to a clearing. In the clearing was a phoenix (a symbol of the Philosopher’s Stone, of the goal of psycho-spiritual wholeness and perfection).

Woden explained that it is a mistake to think the phoenix dies and is reborn. Rather, he said, if you look closely you can see an almost invisible membrane around it: its egg. The phoenix can expand and contract this membrane at will. When its egg is expanded it contains the whole universe, and thus we perceive the phoenix and think it alive. But when needs be, the phoenix can contract the egg until the bird is tightly enclosed. Then it seems to us to have disappeared, to have died, only to be “reborn” when the phoenix is ready to “participate mystically” through projection once again, which is to say, only when it again expands its membrane to encompass the world around.

This is the model which Woden, in his almost Mercurial form, encouraged me to pursue psychologically and spiritually. The eternal phoenix, neither born nor unborn, in the world, loving the world, but not owned by the world. Shamanistic but not superstitious; realistic but not cynical.

That the three-part process of withdrawal – transformation – reintegration is common in premodern cultural imagery suggests that participation mystique was never as absolute as Levy-Brühl proposes; otherwise it would never have been posed as a problem or questioned at all. That the three-fold process here discussed is so resonant even in modern times suggests that nihilism does not hold total sway even in this, its ascendant age. We can have hope.

Yet none of the foregoing means anything if we do not act on our hope. Learn to meditate. Keep a journal. Get psychotherapy. Join a community of like minded seekers. Reflect. Pray. Make art. Find the divine in small things and hidden places. Be your own inner alchemist. This is the purpose for which we have been made.

For when we invert the alchemical way – when we run things inside out and try to observe participation mystique within a cocoon of nihilism – then we expose ourselves to danger. For then we reduce ourselves to mere armchair practice; to being talkers and not doers. Although we may sound like we have undertaken the necessary work, the truth is we are just making ourselves vulnerable to the worst aspects of both mysticism and nihilism, under the spell of for our laziness, fear, hurt, arrogance, self-hatred, and all the rest. We might even make ourselves worse off than when we began, for we risk flagrant hypocrisy as well. Alchemy was considered a dangerous art, and these are some of the pitfalls of proceeding incorrectly.

I have made such mistakes too readily in my life. Now is the time, now is always the time, to undo the ills of armchair “wisdom” and roll up my sleeves. Join me.

Fear often manifests for me in hesitation. Hesitate to phone someone. Hesitate to express my understanding without loading it first with childish “attitude.” Resistance to doing many tasks – stems from fear. Laziness and resentment are both also driven by fear. Resistance to being present, to negotiating complexity or interpersonal ambiguity – all rooted in fear, which is to say, impiety against Mystery and the Tree and the Well.

“Feel the fear but do it anyway” does not break out of the ego as a basic framework (a cage, if you will). This notion counsels that we accept the ego…but then force aside its resistance. But I just cannot sustainably or reliably win that. Even if I could, I could never relax, feel confident or secure. That was a big part of what fed/feeds anxiety in me: the knowledge that I am not enough to meet the challenges of life by myself.

Formerly I imagined that I needed to make myself equal to the challenge of life. I thought if I could just be hard enough on myself then I would force myself into the person I wanted to be. This did not work.

Then I thought that if I just obliterated my ego then what remained of me would become a vessel for the divine. Superhuman power would swiftly follow and thus I could become equal to the challenge of life (and equal to my ever skyrocketing standards). This also did not work.

The first approach failed because you cannot get something from nothing. Trying to force myself to be font and foundation of my own existence was futile, foolish, and impossible. It guaranteed failure in vicious cycles; I learned to think that if I punished myself more then maybe I’d get somewhere. Astride a horse carcass, I whipped and flayed with exponential urgency. I could not see my whip was only cutting my own flesh.

The second approach was better, I admit. But I became righteous and inflated by my knowledge of the need to embrace Mystery and the simultaneous oneness and difference of all things. I easily became complacent; my ego found ways to claim credit for achievements that my moments of reverence and surrender were responsible for. Eventually I realised that despite my supposedly advanced spirituality, supposed humility (in distinction to humiliation), supposed wisdom and dedication – I still suffered, flailed, became entangled in my own poison. I had finally found truth, but then proceeded to abuse it. Consequently: self punishment, suffering, self pity, pessimism. As before.

My new way I am only beginning to approach, to trace out and understand. It remains as yet a sketch and projection of possibility. Yet it seems to be the best option so far. It is to trust in the Divine and in my patron Wod (id est Mercurius). If I truly trust then I abandon my grandiose expectations of perfection, adolescent/egoistic wish fulfilment, self-obsession (other-obliviousness), overweening hypocrisy. If I truly trust then I hand over my fear. Not try to dominate it through force of will. Not try to obliterate it as part of the ego.

No. Just hand it over. Fear is an expression of lack of trust. So I will trust and accept that whatever happens is meant to be. Even if I don’t like it. Guess what? That’s real ego shedding. Being willing to be a flawed, finite mortal if that is my patron’s will (which it manifestly is, for I am human). I cannot defeat fear, but I can be willing to hand it away. If I trust my patron then I must hand over my fear. And thus transcend the binary madhouse of courage and cowardice altogether.

Fingers crossed.

As a musician I’m big on knowing theory. I can talk about double harmonic minors, and 13:8 time, and 16^th note sweep picking (on a bass, whee!) all day long. And I can effortlessly apply that theory: it isn’t just words or ideas (well, ok, the 16^th note bass sweeps do take a bit of effort, but I’m getting there!).

The discipline of all that structure is paradoxically freeing. When I want to do fast, complex music, my hands know what to do because my brain is so well versed. I know intuitively how different tones will combine from my theoretical understanding. I can break down compositions and assemble arrangements with both flair and rapidity. I can store a lot of information about musical structure very simply through the application of underlying rules of harmony or rhythm, which makes learning, performing, and remembering material a lot easier.

I’m far from perfect, and my music theory is very much geared towards practical usage rather than armchair reflection (I’m 100% self-trained). But nonetheless, I think the point is made.

I have even found that, being so deeply grounded in the “rules” of music, I can break them freely. I often find myself doing this with harmonic construction these days. I like the challenge of creating fresh tonal canvasses within the “rules” of conventional scales and chords, but I also find myself freely able to break up recognisable patterns and work atonally. Because I know what the “rules” of music are I can break them in interesting and enjoyable ways.

Occasionally I encounter the view that learning a lot of music theory can be a straightjacket that destroys spontaneity and the creative impulse. I know this does happen sometimes, especially for heavily drilled classical students.

Yet most people I’ve met who claim to avoid learning theory in order to preserve their freedom of expression actually have a rather limited range. They often seem to devolve to the same two or three tricks over and over again, not understanding how to develop their sound. They might be able to “hear” how to give flesh to the bones of their ideas, but lack the skill to embody their creations in a satisfying way.

In the worst cases they resort to “experimentalism” as a substitute for inspiration and ability, hiding behind provocative bungling as though it were a purposeful choice and not an inarticulate flailing.

So my point should be clear: with prudence and an adventurous attitude one can free oneself by submitting to the rigour of musical theory. One needs to avoid the reef of drudging slavery to musical form, and one needs to avoid the seemingly free – but actually inarticulate and blundering – position of being anti-theory.

Well, I see Heathenry in a similar light.

Sure, reconstructionism produces various boffins who shackle themselves to academic minutiae and end up saying the most ridiculous things. On the other hand, without the discipline of historical grounding, people cook up the most half-baked spiritual repast and, not knowing any better, think that they’re somehow creating something wonderful! Yet their efforts lack depth, grit, character (and you see this just as much among “Folkish” Heathens as among Universalists, incidentally).

The better road is to take the adventurousness of the Unsubstantiated Personal Gnosis (UPG) brigade (the anti-theory, or anti-reconstruction types), and the rigour of the reconstructionists. In this way, theory can offer a discipline which frees the creative spark to express itself with great subtlety.

For me this manifests as what I generally refer to as Psychological Reconstructionism. For example, to me understanding the worldview of the old Heathens – the importance of wyrd, time, interconnection, sacredness, hospitality, gift-giving, and reciprocity – stands over and above particular debates about exactly what clothes were worn when or the like.

And this attitude frees me to recognise the similarities between Heathenry and other traditions, even while simultaneously preserving a feel for the uniqueness of the Heathen traditions (and others). Just as music is a universal language spoken in an infinite range of nuances – so too culture. Hence, for example, when I see in Odin the archetype of (among others) the Wounded Healer, I can recognise how this connects him to many other cultures and traditions, even though I can still celebrate the manner in which he is a unique manifestation of that meme.

As a musician I’ve played in prog rock bands, death metal bands, world music outfits, experimental groups, folk ensembles, and bands that have fused various of the aforementioned influences. I’ve touched on genres as varied as black metal, hip hop, and ‘live’ dance music. I’ve played with blast beating metal drummers from hell, African percussionists, tabla masters, Middle Eastern percussionists, you name it (in some cases, I’ve played with people who’ve had mastery of several of these domains!). In all of these configurations, I’ve used the same language to find my way, bringing my particular idiom (to borrow from Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail) to bear in each case.

And I have the same attitude with culture. I bring my own spiritual idiom to the world, but I can freely interface with kindred spirits across all sorts of literal and figurative borders. My deep sense of specific identity – my interest in reconstructionism and ancestor worship – informs my spirit in ways that also enable me to interface with the Other, until I come to appreciate the ways in which seemingly hard barriers are always more porous and fascinating than first shallow glances might suggest.

Hence I am a reconstructionist who loves UPG; and I am a staunch ancestor worshipper and Europhile who embraces cross-cultural exchange and intermingling at the same time. Because to me, the latter is part of the heritage I glean from the former. Just as I am a theory-based musician who thinks nothing of violating every harmonic law in the book if it creates the effect I want (and indeed, I use my knowledge of the ‘rules’ of music and spirituality to break themselves in creative and appealing ways).

The fundamental question is this: are the forms of tradition (be it musical or spiritual or whatever) there to serve us, or are we to serve them? Or is it a bit of both? If we respect them we recognise that they were born from the inspiration of our predecessors, and hence to truly be “reconstructionist” (which, I should mention, is NOT at all necessarily synonymous with being Folkish or Universalist or any other -ism, as these comments on the whole imply) one might have to break the rules of reconstructionism now and again.

In my personal microcosmos Elric and Odin and alchemical Mercury are deeply related (yet naturally distinct); and for me the profound obsession with memory in Heathenry seems uncannily like the same obsession in Sufism (yet I at least cannot seem to effect a straightforward, simple fusion of the two). Things can be different yet the same; in fact this is what the symbol of Yggdrasill is all about: reminding us of the simultaneous oneness and difference of all things, and reminding us of the necessary interdependence that binds the archetypes of  isolation and dissolution.

Blur the lines and we see things as they are; blur the lines and we begin to shed abstraction and embrace the endless mystery from which our world is woven. The closer you examine any boundary, the less distinct it becomes – that might not make it less real, but it forces us to recognise that our specific, localised uniqueness is not dependent on rigid separation, nor necessarily threatened by absence of the same.

What counts is our integrity and our vulnerable imagination. Rigidly clinging to rules about either isolated specificity or generalised universality amounts to underutilising our human faculties and potential. As always, George Orwell had it right to blame the ills of the world on the gramophone mind and not on the particular records being played at any given time.

For like it or not, we are all hedgewalkers like Odin (another reason to call him Allfather), whether it comes to musical expression or spiritual inspiration. The point of being strict…is so that we can become free of all restriction.

All only in my humble, internally contradictory, and frighteningly arbitrary opinion, of course.

–

The night I dreamt a dream that altered my mind forever, was a night like any other.

The young’uns were in bed and I had spent the morning at an accountant in the city, processing the contents of a brown shoebox full of my year’s worth of receipts.

Nothing odd, whatsoever. But as the years roll on, I consider it to be one of the weirdest days of my life.

I will describe most of the dream but not in its entirety.

I found myself on a dark strip of road in the bush at night. There were dim yellow lights of homes in the near distance. My daughter Freyja was standing besides me and she was holding an open shoebox with a small hare cuddled up inside on a piece of warm fabric. Its eyes were huge and black. Shining in the darkness. We both looked at it fondly and Freyja replaced the lid of the box as we walked along the path through the bush. As we were walking and talking, my parents drove past us in their sedan. Both of them saw us and acknowledged our presence but kept on driving into the night. I yelled out to them, wondering why they would have left us out here with hours of walking between us and the next township.

We finally came across a tidy brick home that was occupied by a couple in their early seventies. They were very welcoming and very soon we were all enjoying a warm conversation in addition to a light meal and some much needed drink.

Freyja opened the shoe box again to proudly show the couple her pet. The hare was in the process of changing into some kind of sea creature with stumpy tendrils or tentacles perhaps, it was squirming around in the shoebox with the same moist cow eyes staring silently back at us. Before we could utter our surprise, a small opening appeared on its underside and a stream of clear liquid pissed out of the creature, splashing onto the polished white tiles of the old couple’s kitchen floor.

The room then became filled with brightness and a washing machine appeared in full swing vibrating on a spin cycle in the middle of the room. Was it the same room?

On top of the buzzing machine was a light grey bird-like animal. It had the appearance of an owl or a hawk and I noticed that its head was turning from left to right in a kind of happy rhythm. Out of the sides of its head sprang two long feathery horns, like a kind of Muppet monster, and it was shrugging its fuzzy shoulders in a very contented fashion. The animal was vibrating at an incredibly rapid rate, and as it did so, emitted waves of what I could only describe to you as love towards me. More love than I thought I could bear. I remember almost weeping with joy and fear, as the power that this thing possessed obviously was well out of my range of experience and I could do nothing to slow the vibrations running through my heart and soul.

As I concentrated on its face, I could make out three black dots where two eyes and a mouth should have been. The dots were hollow and solid, like black plastic beads. Behind the dots, swirling in the creatures bristling grey fur was an endless streaming of beautiful women’s faces in ecstatic expression. These faces were representative of all ethnicities and they all appeared to be on the brink of orgasmic climax.

It was at this point that I asked the creature its name (standard practice I suppose).

It replied in an English speaking women’s voice with a recognizable Australian tone. Its voice was the loudest sound I had ever heard, or could ever imagine hearing.

She calmly answered my question as I asked it. Her reply completing itself simultaneously in the space of time I spent finishing my shocked enquiry. She said “My name is Chardakiel, and I’ve known you forever!”

She then held out her left hand to me. It was a petite white hand with beautiful tapered fingers. She was reaching out to me with all her love, all at once. I fell away in terror and found myself wide awake in bed with my heart about to leap out of my chest. I was drenched in sweat and very confused indeed.

I had always been in the habit of writing down as many dreams as I could. They always made for good reading at a later date, and this dream was no exception. I began at once to document everything I could recall. I was soon to discover that this dream was totally different to every dream I’d experienced before.

The next morning I made a phone call to my Beastianity band mate Richard Horner. He was a most knowledgeable chap (he still is), and I knew that he had a couple of dictionaries in his possession that listed demonic entities in alphabetical order. He told me that according to his books, the Enochian demon Chardakiel was known to be the ‘Guardian of the South Winds’ and was also described in another dictionary as ‘The spirit of Libra’.

Now I thought to myself…’I haven’t studied anything remotely Enochian since I was a child’, but then I thought…‘Australia is really about as South as it gets’ and even Richard knew that I had been born under the sign of the scales. I continued to “go hmmm”…

I went about my day off as usual, but found it difficult to organize my dream into the back of my mind with any efficacy. I received a telephone call in the late morning from the principal of Freyja’s primary school. She reported that Freyja had injured her shoulder playing silly buggers in the school grounds, and requested that I come and pick her up.

When I arrived at the school sick bay I found Freyja lying on a stretcher bed in the company of her little friend Danielle (Danielle?). She was a little upset and in a great deal of pain. We found out via an X-Ray that Freyja has broken her clavicle or ‘collar bone’.

The shrugging shoulders of the grey and vibrating hawk entity flooded back into my memory as I equated my daughters name with the symbol of the hawk in the knowing that the two were inseparable.

This was just the beginning of the journey that my children and I were to embark on. I remember speaking of this dream to many friends. Some had tears after hearing it.

The years played out in big and dangerous ways. I found myself in the process of planning a brutal homicide close to home. There were scores of sad junkies blasting away in the streets around our inner city home. The insulin syringes would crunch under my boots as I walked Freyja and Otto to their schools each morning. I experienced numerous break-ins to my home. Chasing stray teenagers out of my house in the middle of the day as they were sprung rifling through our kitchen drawers. And without going into too much detail it got much, much worse.

I escaped the city, never to return. I brought with me the kids and the dogs, and returned to my childhood home up North. We settled in a tiny beachside settlement called Blackhead Beach Village. Our daggy little wooden beach house was nestled in a thick rainforest atop a high rocky headland. To walk to the ‘back beach’, we would start down a single lane road that was only partially tarred. The road was covered by a thick canopy of shade trees and at night would silently remind me of the place where ‘the dream’ began.

We met some amazing folk in Blackhead. Wise women taught Freyja and Otto about the animals that lived in the surrounding bush.

There were Possums, Gliders, and Goannas that stretched as long as my two ton truck. There were also families of hares living there. We now dwelled within a community that knew us and respected us and would look out for Freyja and Otto at all times. The spirit of place extended it’s peace and it’s freedom to us. There were no fences dividing properties, no letter boxes and plenty of kindly couples in their 70’s (or so I guessed). No more danger, no more needles for us.

Four years passed before I met my Melinda. We found ourselves at a pact meeting for many of Australia’s underground magic groups held in a bush camp on the outskirts of Sydney. Sweyn and Kara Plowright of the Rune Net were the organizers every year I attended. It was always a very special event, and I thank my man Mark Morte for introducing me into it so many years ago. Melinda attended due to her deep knowledge of the Runes, and hoped to meet someone there who could share her magical life. When she first put her hands on my naked chest it was like receiving a shock from a defibrillator attached to a power station that had been attached to two more power stations. To me it was an unmistakable sign that I’d found a girl who truly knew about magic and that my painful wait was over.

I asked Melinda to be my bride six months down the track and Lokily for me she said “yes”.

Our first ‘date’ was on ‘Imbolg’, or The Feast of St Brigit and we though it would be a grand idea to go out dressed as the elderly. I had my grandfather’s deerstalker hat, a walking cane and a crappy old tweed jacket with fawn elbow pads. The ensemble was topped off with a pair of horn rimmed spectacles. As we discussed our ideas to surprise our friends with our ingenious disguises, we researched the feast of Imbolg only to discover that it was the ancient custom to wear old clothes for the entire day and beg for alms. Melinda donned a huge woolen cardigan that came down to her mid-calf and it was made of a mohair blend. It was light grey in colour and was shaggy and furry and reminded me again of my beautiful and terrible female guardian. We were smitten and married to each other in a beautiful private ceremony on a quiet grassy headland near the ‘back beach’ in Blackhead Beach Village not long after that.

The love I receive from Melinda is comparable to that of the spirit in my dream. The same can be said of the love and patience that my Freyja bestows on me.

I can also say that the love and support that I have received from practically all of the women in my forty odd years of living is unconditionally astonishing.

My dream continues to unfold in beautiful ways throughout my life and may it continue to do so…

It is important not to trivialise mortality in the name of spiritual or philosophical reflection of course. There are others far more qualified to write about the subject than I. Nevertheless, mortality has been a leit-motif throughout my life and it is a theme that figures importantly for me. Thus I am moved to write.

Death provokes fear. Fear provokes the desire to escape the threat of death. Since we are unavoidably mortal, fear therefore resorts to the deployment of belief as a bulwark against our inevitable demise. This is the essence of what in psychology is known as Terror Management Theory. In order to manage our terror in the face of the awful dark horizon we construct beliefs which simplify the world for our brains, reduce it to digestible symbols that paper over the screaming horror of our infinitesimal powerlessness before the frightful majesty of creation.

Hence, when we make the commitment to live a spiritual life and embrace the horizon of the unknown, we offer ourselves up to a state of tremendous vulnerability. It is here that the double nature of mythology, on one hand door, on the other refuge, is revealed.

Myth is a door. What is a door? A door is an opening in a wall through which we may pass. The door is an invitation into a larger world beyond the limits of the walls we immediately perceive. Even when closed, it is a constant reminder to us of a bigger picture: there is more to be experienced than just our immediate existence.

What lies through the door? It could be anything. A larger world, a different perspective. It could be dark or light, joyous or miserable. It could be a cul de sac or a road that ever ends. Likely enough all of these things await those that step through the door that is called myth.

For where the myth itself is done, safe, secure in its form, recognisable in its character, shaped and regulated by convention, the world that awaits us on its other side is wild, unpredictable, untameable. It is one thing to read about the fury and ecstasy that Odin inspires; another to be swept into a tide of poetic frenzy. It is one thing to praise Jord’s bounty; another to sink your hands into the soil, to plant a tree, to be lost in wild country, to be tossed by storm or tremor.

How does myth open itself? How do we step through? It opens itself when we slow down, when we listen to our heart beating, when we give space for its secrets to give themselves. When we open ourselves to uncertainty, when we put aside our fear of death and the need for control and faith that this fear impels.

Myth is by itself mere words. It can be justified only by the worlds into which it opens. Myth is not property, cultural, intellectual, or otherwise. Myth is a seduction, a lover, an agent provocateur set on unsettling our settled, death denying articles of faith. Myth is always in motion. It is a verb, an action carried out endlessly by the horizon of mystery – Runa – herself.

And so those that want to control myth, to make it dead, predictable, to make it into property, to make it into a rigid template for the construction of stale identity – these we accuse of impiety. If we use myth as nothing more than a vehicle for mere belief – and not as an opportunity to open our spirits to the unknown – then we blaspheme.

I am not afraid, therefore, to declare that it appears that many Heathens blaspheme against their own professed faith without so much as realising it. Yet such folk should not be blamed, unless of course they know better but are too cowardly to embrace the dare of the door. Unless of course, though knowing better, they bar the door up and declare that it is the thing to be worshipped, not the infinite magic that glowers beyond it.

Yet myth is also a refuge. For if we were to stand, naked and purged, before the raw intensity of this mystery-woven universe without any railing to grasp then we would be swept away in the torrent. The universe is so incredibly vast, and often as cruel and arbitrary as she is loving and rational, at least from the narrow glimpse of her secrets that we mere mortals are afforded.

How then are we to cope with true piety – with steeling ourselves against our fear of death and stepping through the door of myth? What protection might we give ourselves?

Myth is redolent with symbolism, with endless layers of associations, connections, refractions, reflections. We find ourselves making sense of the world in the truisms of Havamal, or putting words to the ineffable art of creation when we invoke the subterranean skulduggery of Bolverkr. In the rune poems we find endless fractional images of reality, metaphors which offer moments of order and sense in this vast chaotic carnival of life.

Thus myth invites us to shed all form and embrace the pure unknown, and myth provides language and sense for us to recover and integrate the experiences we find beyond the mythic door. When too distilled our experience becomes, myth offers a refuge, a stable retreat and ward. It helps us to recover from the shock of being finite in this infinite cosmic passion play.

And thus is the art of the alchemist, the magician, the saint, the shaman: to move back and forth across the very threshold of myth. To step out into the unknown, to drink its thick, roaring waters; and then to step back into the warm embrace of mythic refuge, to clothe oneself in the images and metaphor, the traces and patterns which are ultimately inspired by the Unknown and which help us to integrate the Unknown into our finite forms.

In other words, the spiritual art, the art of stepping back and forth through the doors of myth, is the art of living on the threshold of death, which is the ever-present spectre of the Unknown in life. We can only taste the gush of our lifeblood if we are willing to shed it.

Yet we continually lose ourselves in the small doings of daily life, the invisible but compelling stories we tell ourselves: lose ourselves in a futile attempt to avoid facing death’s gaze. Therefore, to surround oneself with memento mori, with reminders of death, is to continually draw oneself back to the door of myth, and the Beyond, and to the refuge of myth, and the need to care for one’s finitude even amid infinity.

To those who dare to remember myth:
Drink deep of the Well!

To those who dare to remember death:
Dance joyous on the threshold!

To those who have ears to hear:

Carpe Diem!

Their last few albums have partly grappled with the question of identity from a European perspective – their combination of Heathen and Pagan spiritual influences and their sense of history as coming from Ireland gives them a unique perspective.

Nemtheanga is given to dark, apocalyptic vision of worlds crumbling these days, and in the face of the dark portraits his lyrics paint, the grandeur of the music really ignites. There is a truly powerful sense of resolution in this music, and part of that comes from a notion of identity as European, one which Primordial articulates with subtlety, complexity, and little in the way of self-righteousness or arrogance, which is rather welcome for a change!

I am often quite critical of the use of Heathenry simply as a source of solid sense of identity, because it seems to stem from weakness or fear, and because ironically it often seems to impair curiosity and reverence for history and tradition. Yet I feel I need to balance the scales a little, and reflect on my own limitations.

Because you see I cannot imagine the men of Primordial giving into their fear for anything or anyone. The strength that flows through their music flows precisely through a powerful sense of self-possession, of being rooted in history and myth. And part of that strength is tied up in “identity politics” if you want to call it that, yet the way that Primordial do it seems like a really positive force, neither brittle nor shallow.

This gets me pondering whether there isn’t more to this whole “well, I just am Heathen” (and therefore insolubly worthwhile regardless of any evidence there may be to the contrary) attitude that I often see.

Sure, it can make people reductionist in their sense of self, amputating or ignoring their full range of character and their full ability to perceive the world around them. But Primordial seem to demonstrate that it doesn’t have to be this way.

Maybe, then, the more shallow and rigid applications of identity politics in Heathenry are aiming at a more valid and valuable goal. Perhaps I owe those that I find irritating in this regard a little more respect – perhaps, as fallibly as all humans, they are nevertheless driving at something which could be both positive and healing.

What leads me to reflect on this further is my sense that I struggle greatly to stay connected to my own spiritual grounding. I am someone that needs to drink from the well of memory on a regular basis, but I often avoid doing it. I am someone who carries around a lot of self-critical impulses (don’t we all, though?), and while in some respects this is helpful, it is often gratuitously hurtful.

So I find myself wondering – would someone who seems as spiritually self-assured as A. A. Nemtheanga put himself down in his own mind? Would he have those bastard voices that most of us carry around (which I certainly do), which love to stick hot pokers into our brains at the least provocation? I just can’t imagine he does.

Of course the flip side of total self-assurance is the temptation to blame everything on everyone else, and I’ve recently had some very miserable experiences with someone I’ve been very close to but who works in this way. Well I certainly don’t want to be projecting my shadow onto the Other, to paraphrase good old Jung, but nonetheless a bit less gratuitous self assault and a bit more default self-assurance would be nice.

These reflections are all relative of course. In many domains I do feel completely capable and self assured. I’m also known to have a poker face under pressure, never letting on that I’m finding a challenge hard until after it is beaten. The problem is more to do with what goes on in my head. I don’t want to live a life where I am grinding myself down. Because over time that can affect one’s freedom to be and do in the world.

So perhaps what I am circulating around is the possibility that I tend to dismiss the “I want an identity” motivation for being Heathen precisely because it offers something I need. And perhaps I am too quick to dismiss this motivation as brittle, aggressive, and shallow: Primordial seem to be showing that a deeper form of it is possible.

It is pretty absurd that someone who has invested so much of their life into spiritual pursuits and personal growth (and admittedly out of brutal necessity) nevertheless has a habit of refusing the nourishment offered by the divine and then crying about starving to death.

That reminds me, actually, of one of my favourite poems by Rumi. It’s about depression – disconnection from God, the divine in all things. There’s a bit where it says something like: “you decline to enter the open door of the road house; later you curse the hardship of the road.”

Part of the reason I am hesitant to be a “loud and proud” – or perhaps more in my style, “silent but resolute” – Heathen is because I dislike the way that many Heathens present their Heathenry, and to be honest I’m wary of being painted in the same colours. But then again, Heathenry is what we make of it, so maybe I should be just being myself under that banner so that I can ensure that the definition of “Heathen” is sufficiently wide to include me.

I’m not really sure how any of this applies in daily life. And I know that when I sing a sense of connection and assurance certainly flows through me – perhaps Primordial are at their best in performance, and like the rest of us as people are not equal to the art that the divine inspires them to create.

But imagine living every moment of one’s life with the sense of confidence and spirit that can come in moments of rapturous possession while singing? Imagine that power that flows through the body just always being there?

One thing is for sure, this ideal would require the ability to separate one’s self-worth from the world around. The Daoists say we should worship the 10,000 Things, the infinite gods, but not get too attached, and there’s wisdom in this being in the world but also having a touch of reserve, or more specifically, of circumspection.

This is also the Jungian Way – the path to individuation, to having achieved one’s own Lapis, the unchanging, perfected core that dwells eternally amid the chaos of the world.

Well I want my own philosopher’s stone. I invoke Fire and Water here and now and every time anyone reads this to flood and inflame my life! It is time to dismantle my sordid affair with amnesia and start afresh with memory.

Well and good, these metaphors. I need reminders. The magic of memento mori. Let these words be one such. Let there be many more.

I learned a few things about tradition and spirituality that day, and I thought I’d share some of what I learned.

Firstly, the ceremonial elements themselves. The priestesses (what a luxury, a mainstream world religion that has priestesses!) wore exquisite traditional costumes and everyone was dressed quite formally. The altar was bedecked with mountains of food offerings to Kami (spirit/god/anima mundi). The ceremony included extensive chanting and although it was challenging to keep up, my Sufi chanting experience helped, and I really appreciated the extent of “audience participation.”

Everything ran smoothly, the priestesses were confident and appreciated the sense in which performing ritual is just that – a performance that needs to be treated as such if it is to have power.

All this stood in contrast to many of the Heathen rituals I have attended or heard about. For example people turning up in the most informal costume (I have been guilty of this too) where adherents of any other religion would show their respect by dressing at least a little formally (some Heathens are into historical dress, of course, which is fine by me even if I don’t do it personally).

More generally there is both a lack of formality and reverence in much of the Heathen ritual I’ve experienced…and simultaneously a lack of play and humour as well! Heathens seem a bit stuck in the “dispassionate church attendance” mentality, whereas the Konkokyo folks were not at all awkward in their spiritual practice.

And audience participation! What a wonderful thing it is. Not just something generic thing like “ok folks, repeat after me,” but some pretty intense group chanting and individual involvement in making offerings. It gives a lot more investment in the ritual when shared, group activity of this kind is involved.

Second thing I learned: folk religions in the real world (because really, Heathenry often lives in a world of total make believe) don’t need to obsess about ethnic inclusion and exclusion. I was made welcome at this gathering, which is specifically held annually as an opportunity for the general public to attend. It is clear that these guys have a strong and healthy tradition which they are living. They know who they are and what they are doing. So they really aren’t concerned about having foreigners come. In fact they are so quietly self-assured that they invite us in!

What struck me about this in contrast is the relatively immature Heathen attitude to these issues. Heathens carry on so much about who is or isn’t “allowed” to be Heathen on the basis of ethnicity (who appointed anyone to be the arbiter of such questions anyway?), and sometimes this seems more important than the actual practice of Heathenism itself. I think if Heathens had a little more depth in their own connection to tradition, ancestry, and spirituality then they’d no longer be so touchy about the identity politics gig.

If Konkokyo Shinto is like a capable, self-aware adult, Heathenry often seems like a teenager who acts tough to hide their insecurities. I really enjoyed being around a mature folk tradition, but it did highlight to me the shallowness of much of contemporary Heathenry, I hate to say.

To go deep requires much work: both theoretical and practical. It involves learning about history and archaeology and the small details of premodern consciousness. To me it means looking into everyday living, imbuing it with a reverential or animistic attitude. It requires a lot of personal introspection, sorting through and discarding the on-lay of one’s previous faith(s) or values where there is an inconsistency.

I suspect that many Heathens are very hesitant to undertake this work, but especially the personal, psychological aspect of the process. This is unfortunate. I’d like to hope that it changes. I know I need to do a lot more work on this myself, though I console myself with the thought that at least I can recognise and admit it!

The Shinto folk I met, of course, don’t have to do a lot of this sort of work because theirs is a living tradition, whereas ours is a kind of pseudo-historical shibboleth (sorry folks, but that is the hard truth of the matter, no matter how thorough one’s reconstructionist tendencies).

The most important message I took from the day, though, was a point made while watching a couple of short anime films about Konkokyo Shinto – yes I am serious, and I have to say both films were awesome!

The point made related to spiritual practice. Namely that what matters is not whom one prays to, but rather the spirit in which one prays. Honest reverence and sincere supplication are what make spiritual tradition potent. If one holds back or has mixed motives then it doesn’t matter who one worships – that worship will be empty.

It often appears that Heathens lack a genuinely unguarded reverence in their spiritual practice. For all the hard and brittle talk about ancestors and Aesir, there seems little in the way of open, liminal, vulnerable interaction with the divine. Without which, all the trappings and forms are completely hollow.

So I received a good reminder that spiritual forms – myth, story, tradition, specific practices, whatever – are doors and we’re supposed to step through into personal spiritual experience. We aren’t supposed to board these doors and turn them into empty idols. I felt that the Konkokyo folks opened up a place into which a very powerful, beautiful presence of Kami came. Its pretty amazing for a formal spiritual tradition to express these insights and I’d like to experience more of that in the Heathen world.

Perhaps the immediately preceding comments are a little obscure, so allow me to give an example of how the spiritual forms are doors into experience. A few years back at a Christmas lunch (I was the only Heathen present among Christians, agnostics, and atheists) it was somehow decided that we should offer toasts.

There were two toasts that changed the atmosphere. They made everyone fall silent, no, made the world fall silent, as though it were holding its breath, watching with palpable fascination, like we were on the threshold of the universe being born (I’ve also felt this atmosphere working as a counsellor when a client has really entered deeply into insight and begun to make big healing or transformative steps).

The first toast that invoked this sacred atmosphere, this temenos, was a recitation of the Lords Prayer in Arabic by a Lebanese Christian gentleman. In the beautiful cadences of Arabic, this prayer, which I usually find grating and shallow, resonated with power and grace. His performance touched all of us.

The second toast was my own. I started by saying that any gathering of warmth such as this is joyous. And then I recited:

Joy is had by the one who knows
Few troubles, pains and sorrows
And by him who has
Power and blessedness
And a good enough house

The shining stillness of the moment made the wine sweet and many an enigmatic smile appeared on the lips of those gathered. We all sat for a little while, unable to speak but not needing to, either. That moment I feel we stepped through the door of a rune poem into what Heidegger perhaps would have called aletheia – the moment of truth, the primal truth, when all Being is gathered into its sacred, secret perfection.

The experience taught me that both Christian and Heathen forms can be doors into something greater: what makes the difference is our attitude and intention.

The Konkokyo Shinto folks seem to be getting close to this kind of power every time they hold spiritual observance. They made me feel both humble and inspired, which is a pretty awesome combination. We Heathens have a lot to learn, and, I hope, a lot to be excited about.

There it was staring back at me. Two faint lines across my forehead. The lightest dusting of shadows under my eyes that will one day crease my features like dry creek beds. Granted, it was late, after a long day at work. Granted, I had a touch of conjunctivitis, which could not have helped. Nevertheless, the proof of time was revealed in that moment.

These words are not an expression of panic, nor hand wringing. And I still look young for my age. And I am not at all addicted to the cult of youth-at-all-cost: beauty and youth are not identical, and neither is essential or even necessarily desirable.

The marks of time’s seductive kisses drew my awareness to a memory that lurks all too often in my body and mind (which are really the one thing, a continuum from matter to spirit): death is my fate. Before I was born, I was ordained to die. “Like acres of wheat we’re all grown to be mown” (Beastianity).

This is not a sad thought to recover. I am not afraid of death, which of course makes me unusual as a human being. I have had a bit to do with death. It has hurt me, stolen loved ones with untimely haste, and several times almost had me before my own fair allotment of breath. Even as a child I had shed my fear, had it shriven from my bones.

The memory of my inevitable demise points me to a horizon of infinite mystery – the mystery of being a conscious being in this vast universe. Confronted with the impenetrable veil, one’s life stands out all too starkly. The small mercies for which one feels gratitude, the endless barrage of wounds, the compromises and concessions into which one drifts and atomises.

Death sends out its call, strings the beads of momentary living onto a single thread. Where chaotic experience invisibly carries us through scattered moments, death draws all into alignment. It brings us to the forest clearing and, in the thought of absence of life, the very shape of life is exposed.

And we forget, and forget, and forget. If indeed we ever remember in the first place. I believe it a poor thing to get to later life without being touched vicariously by death through the loss of loved ones. Death shocks us from the cocoon of our self-evidence. If we have not embraced it then the very foundations of our whole life may prove wanting when the unavoidable time comes and we must cope with loss, with the outrages of fortune’s arrows and slings.

Death points us to a paradox: to set our living with deep roots, so that this transient existence might be as soundly made as it may be, we must confront that same transience, the skull and scythe hovering impatiently in the wings of every stage.

Not the confrontation of aggressive emergency surgery. Not the confrontation of dogmatic faith in the hereafter. Rather, we must court death, embrace this god so that our denial of its power does not make of it a devil. Not to literally paint ourselves in its livery, but to let it draw our attention clear of the infinite hall of mirrors from which life is composed.

Facing the mystery of death is facing the mystery of life. The two are one, and though we tend to only understand them implicitly, unconsciously, we nevertheless always must encounter them together.

The mystery of death is a mystery of memory and forgetfulness. We touch the mystery and recoil, and in the icy gasp of our vulnerability we find our reptile emotionality – fear, fury, the fire of lust.

The mystery of death is a mystery of vulnerability. We carry our death with us always. It spans out before us, probing for the shape of our unfolding life. We carry our death with us, our finite nature, our helplessness before the vast eye of the cosmos, which exceeds our deepest wisdom and our subtlest science.

The conclusion is inescapable: we face the mystery of death whether we wish to or not. We face the mystery of death whether we realise it or not. It curls its tendrils around our every breath. It haunts the choices we make as much as it does the choices we decline. Therefore I ask: how best to face this mystery? Death’s precociousness is legendary: how may we make ourselves equal to the doom that we carry in our very flesh?

The mystery of death is the mystery of life, and it trades in the currency of memory and forgetfulness. It trades in the currency of vulnerability. How might we enrich the wealth of our vulnerability? How might we strike a balance between memory and forgetfulness so that we might fully embrace our demise and the riches of the life that precedes it?

My answer is simple: through memento mori. By building reminders of the elusive memory of death into our life. Yet any reminder loses its gloss in time: the amnesia of our world-encircled nature guarantees it. Thus facing the mystery requires more than a one time effort. We have to renew our memories, continually wash the soporific of daily living from our eyes and ears.

Spiritual practice offers many means for this rememorialising: doing the gardening, meditating, creating art, reflecting on myth, and others. Conversations where we ask questions to which we genuinely do not know the answers; rituals in which we truly put aside our egos and embrace the irrepressible life that binds this universe together. When we go beyond ourselves, we also go deep within ourselves.

And what of Heathen spirituality? Odin is a god of death. It is this that earns him the right to be called All Father.

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?