My screen name is Chris, I am a worshipper of Zeus and Poseidon.
I also am loyal to Odin.
This forum has caught my attention as I became more proficient in Odinic magic, in Seidr. I now live my life as a runecaster in deep gratitude. I wish to share my joy with people here, and learn, and teach where I can.
It is my belief that we are heading for a "Pagan Spring" the coming decades.
If you will allow me to post something from a time slightly in the past, an ode to these gods.
::
"Odin gave us the Runes. The Runes gave us Odin, and the other Gods, who are worthy of us.
What a bliss to be given Gods that are worthy.
Do you know what this is like?
Or have you only experienced the soothing, softening mellowness of the Christ-Child?
I have endured this softness, as it has pervaded our culture, and sensed it eat at me. Even though I never chose it, it hung in the air.
It endures no violence. It endures no friction in the soul. It says: all that is must be relinquished, all the will come is at ease. It wants to relax, to sink, to lie flat on the surface of the ocean-floor. It wants not to breathe. It wants no pain.
Beautiful things are made from that mold. As excess is expelled and set free - 'in tongues' - only god knows what is said. It is all sexual and violent. But it is 'gibberish'.
Ah the gods, how lucidly they speak and how well we understand. But how hard it is to communicate all that!
This is because what we understand of that god transforms us, away from the world. The Christ god, who is the humanist Ideal, is sweet and soothing, and moving us away from the world. Whenever the world gives itself, one shirks back as if pricked by thorns. And the world is sharp, and the thorn is the entrance to the world. Through our own blood we learn to taste.
Then there is the path through the mud. Somewhere along that path, the animals begin to look us in the eye.
At the end of the path a figure rises.
Gather ye under the Storm
Sun is rising in the deep
the dark clouds dispel the light
so that it can proceed unseen
by the eyes to the heart
Now, that we have come to know the Earthy god as someone who likes pain, we shall discern him from the Ascetic.
The Ascetic endures a controlled degree of pain every waking moment all throughout his daily existence, whereby he is make keen to pain and to things that cause it and is able to walk around relatively untroubled. Pleasure to him is the degree of pain as it is controlled. He seeks no excess in pleasure, instead he seeks the limits of the pain he can endure, inflicting it on himself.
The Earthy god gives a state that does not prepare for pain, but simply heads in its way. It is prepared for the unexpected. It uses the thorns and hail on its path to become aware of himself, in his most innocent form; the form of having-just-encountered. The shaken-ness, the state we can not fake unless we have transcended into a permanent touch with - the state we enjoy to see most on anothers face; the laughter of love caused by a child in one who has already seen the dead ends of life.
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And in the barn, the maiden wormed a path through the cows.
There is no light at the tunnel yet. There won't be any for a long time. This is a place in the dark, where mysteries are seen so as to be taken for coincidental paths of mineral forming in a granite wall -
Once the torch of the pathwalker passes these tracings, the gates will open somewhat, but
It is not in my power to illuminate.
I rumble merely to express.
- The Armanen runes.
It is a very aesthetic and slick set compiled, or evision, by an Austrian mystic in a spell of temporary blindless after a cataract.
Very strange modifications occurred.
First of all the Ansuz rune has been reversed; the 'branches' now go out left, rather than right.
I wonder what could possibly have compelled this change.
The greatest problem with the Armanen runes is that Dagaz is excluded. This, the mightiest rune perhaps, represents the breakthrough, the coming above ground, the establishment of the light, basically a non-moral Good; Daylight.
It is a supremely powerful and lofty rune.
Like Othala,
another supreme rune representing accomplishment, reality, this rune found no place in Von Lists row. But I think they were already left out of the 'younger futhark' -
Unlike Dagaz, Othala was employed extensively by the nazis, as representing their heritage and homeland.
All the images that the Odinic traditions give us are wholesome.
Imagine trying to make a thread like this about Christianity. It would not be possible even to find a single wholesome image of Jesus Christ.
The power of the runes, in which the entire power of this shamanism is resplendent, Ive come to see in the hard angles. This is health.
Somehow, juxtaposition, sharp cuts, hard measures, unmistakable decisions - all this accounts for health.
A people bred over generations to never hesitate in the face of specific physical dangers, to always make decisions with force and without second thoughts, this is what the runes speak.
The whole coherence of the world, the entire force that keeps it together, might be evoked best by bringing to mind the range from weak to strong in terms of decision making.
Usually, we men make decisions about things that are already in the process of being decided, by a collective of many forces. But all magic treats the state of affairs where reality is still fluid, under the surface of the present moment, becoming.
God-systems are powerful because/when they address the world right before it appears.
This is how the runes are drawn.
The manifest as the tension of their angles and then use the man, or the tree, or the wind and the bird to appear.
Where this intention resides, I do not know. "In Odin", one might say - but Odin too found the runes, at the mercy of a greater force - he hung from the tree Yggdrasil which has its roots where no one knows.
Like Blakean visions, the Odinic visions treat of the worlds between worlds; the formative stages, the phases of existence where things are still in the process of emerging against the void, it does not treat of objects but of states and types of development. Yes, this is how science operates as well, at the most powerful level. But it is not how man is accustomed to think, not of science nor of himself.
Things are real right before they appear. When they appear, they have become appearances.
::
So far on the Nordic gods. I hope it is clear I do not sympathize with certain German movements of the past. I consider their use of Odinic symbolism and runes as theft. Ive been filled with joy since Ive taken up the task of purifying these things from the foul ones of the past that have made claims to them.
For 21 years exactly Ive been swimming in the primordial soup, training to be a shaman. I have much to share. I hope I will find some like minded people here.
FEOH
Cattle (dutch: Vee)
Archetype: WEALTH
The cattle come slowly though the mud from the north. The bulls horns are adorned with iron. The cows, a trail longer than the eye can see in the january mist, will provide wealth, meat and milk. Newly woven baskets with fine flowers on long stems in them are carried by girls standing along the path. The tower of brick and natural stone is visible above the welcoming.
A beginning of a prosperous phase. The winter as a time of reward; a time given to the rich, the happy. Endless festivities, music, stories told in great halls to many happy feasters. Outside the forests are unthreatening, well guarded by archers in thick yet silent leather in which they move well and swiftly, trained by long standing tradition. Villains are shown some mercy.