Month: December 2021

The Ash Yggdrasil, F.W. Heine

In the northern tradition of Germanic mythology, there lies a well beneath the world tree, Yggdrasil. Located at the lowest reaches of the Nordic peoples’ understanding of the cosmic order, it sits in the shadow of a root that reaches into Jötunheimr, the land of the giants, associated with the ungovernable aspects of the natural world. The well is watched over by a mysterious being known as Mímir (roughly, “the remember”), whose origin and nature are decidedly obscure, but is noted in the  Völuspá as being potently enlightened (compare the symbol of the character Tom Bombadil in the Tolkien mythos). It is stated explicitly that his wisdom is derived from the influence of the wellwater.

As is the case with many of the themes present in mythology, the character of Mímir’s Well can be understood as being primarily symbolic. The situation of the well in an area that is so suprachthonic, beyond even a material concept of obscurity, and existing on a plane so spiritually devoid of light that it sits beneath the roots of all of creation, is no accident, and can likewise be interpreted as a nod to the nature of Ginnungagap — the primordial state of nonbeing from which all phenomena, both material and immaterial, emerged at the beginning of time. The mutable quality of the water as a force that takes on the shape of the vessel in which it is contained (be it cistern or body), its association with sagacity and freeness of thought, and its place in the structure of the universe, also speaks to the Jungian concept of the collective unconscious: something available to anybody brave enough to descend to the darkest roots of the inner and outer worlds in order to sample its quality. This is a theme also echoed in the symbols of two other wells present at the roots of the world tree in Norse myth, Urðarbrunnr (the well of wyrd), tended by the three Norns, goddesses of fate, and Hvergelmir (the boiling spring), from which all waters originate.

Reciprocity is the highest law of the universe. The material and decidedly positivistic field of physics teaches us that every action begets a reasonable reaction at parity with the original impulse. Hermeticism teaches us, echoed in the outstretched palms of the Magician of the Major Arcana, that there is congruence both “above and below”. Naturally, when the reputation of Mímir’s well aroused the interest of the gods Óðinn and Heimdallr, they were not exempt from this rule. Óðinn, having hanged himself by the neck already in the very fabric of the universe, was no stranger to the doctrine of self-oblation, and cast his eye, a powerful symbol of his sensory relationship with the external world, into the depths of the well. Heimdallr, the guardian spirit of the realm of the divine, whose conservatory nature binds him to the blowing of his signal trumpet, the Gjallarhorn (roughly, “yelling horn”) at the end if the world, likewise sacrifices his ear. Óðinn finds the influence of the well and its curator so tempting, that after his death, he carries Mímir’s severed head around, consulting it for advice.

A similar anecdote, perhaps derived from a common source, comes to us from the part of the Prose Edda known as the Skáldskaparmál (the “language of poetry”), is the story of the fabled mead of poetry, from which Óðinn derives his creativity and aptitude at composing verses. After the war that pitted the two tribes of gods in the North Germanic tradition, the Æsir and Vanir, against one another, peace was sealed by way of  a communal ritual of spitting into a cauldron. The saliva, imbued with the power of the now-united pantheon, grew into a man of considerable wisdom, skill, and intelligence, known as Kvasir, whose name is probably derived from a Proto-Indo-European root, to ferment or crush, *kwh₂et-, a stem that brought us Latin cāseus (cheese) and the Slavic beverage kvass. Kvasir travels among mankind, spreading the consequence of his intellect, and is eventually killed, ostensibly through misadventure, his blood being mixed with honey and turned into mead — thereby ensuring his abilities will last thereafter through the effects of alcohol. This process of beverage-as-currency-for-inspiration is echoed in the Indo-Aryan tradition of soma or haoma, the Vedic botanical ritual beverage, the origins of which are still debated.

In all of these paradigms, there is a common theme of sacrifice, of appendages that represent connection with the material world, of old grudges being laid down for common good, and the balm both of creativity and alcohol serving to unite pantheons and inspire humanity both. Not even supernatural beings are permitted to receive wisdom as gratuity. Certainly, you are not permitted to receive inspiration for free. The internal process of invigoration that allows us to transform our inner feelings and perspective into tangible results, artistic or practical, are not spontaneous (though they sometimes may seem to be), and cannot be created from nothing. Before the external work to spur results into existence is undertaken, inner work must be undertaken, and inner work must start with a catalyst that comes from without, however obscure or unconscious its origin may be. There can be no blood from Kvasir without the impetus of the spit from different mouths, there can be no wisdom without the removal of the part of the ego that thinks it already possesses the awareness to see what takes place in front of its face.

 And likewise, without the courage to descend, in the Jungian fashion, to the depths of the darkest places of the world, whether they be war or the reaches of the mind lowest and closest to the proverbial roots of the tree, there can be no opportunity for these gifts to be received. As the Medieval alchemical maxim was applied to the psyche of man by Jung himself, in sterquiliniis invenitur, or, put simply, “in filth, it will be found”. That which one seeks is often derived from its situation in the darkest, least tolerable places. These are the only waters from which the mead of life can be made:

The waters of sacrifice.

Before there were Gods, there was but one.

Before there was a middle-realm, there was but ice and fire.

Before there was spring, there was winter. 

Before there was light, there was an unimaginable dark. 

Before there was rebirth, there was death.

Before there was freedom, there was oppression. 

We need no science to explain this. We need no logic to wrestle with this deeply embedded truth. 

Chaos is not the opposite of Order. Order exists in many forms, and it is the nature of all things to adapt to the order of its time, or risk rebellion against such. 

It is the duty of youth to rebel against this state of stagnation.

As many books as religions might burn; 

As many truths a government might withhold from its peasantry;

The way of all things reminds us of this noble law, for it is the immortal call to arms. 

Winter is the end of a dynasty and era. 

It is the final motion of the earth as it completes its annual cycle.

It is the pantomime’s final act as the old clings to life before finally letting go in a bitter fall towards the unknown. 

What this leaves is the burning hearts of youth as they climb to the top of the charred mantle and claim the realm for themselves. Their new ideals were destined to usher in a new ‘perfection’. 

‘I’m the son of rage and love. The Jesus of suburbia’

Said Billie Joe Armstrong as he sung a timeless anthem to the youth of the modern world. 

Yet what he truly chants is the same timeless story that even the seasons scream to us. 

This is Baldr as he cries out for his fate to unfold. For he is literally the son of RAGE (Odin) and LOVE (Frigg).

Yet Baldr faces no true danger, or so he thinks. Like many youthful souls we believe ourselves to be immortal, and we also have an inherent venom for the safety we have been provided. 

It is often the thing we see coming the least that takes out the youth in their blind attack upon the world (i.e living the highest/most energetic life they can)

Rebellion in youth is an exhaustion of easy life, for it is nothing that our blood remembers. We are inherently hardwired as a people to undergo stress in order to become something more. 

This is Zeus as he trains to conquer his father Cronus.

The myth of Saturn / Cronus, father of the Greco-Roman Pantheon, is deeply troubling for any youth to digest because it is the cannibalistic oppression of the new from the upper hand for their paternal master the old. 

Zeus is the only son left after his father devoured all of his powerful, noble, and talented offspring. 

It is the darkest night that yields no hope. 

It is the soil which refuses to be harrowed nor house any seed the farmer plants to feed his people.

“City of the dead

At the end of another lost highway

Signs misleading to nowhere

City of the damned

Lost children with dirty faces today

No one really seems to care”

I imagine very vividly Baldr singing and understanding these Green Day lyrics the same way any punk might have when it was first heard by their ears. 

It speaks to the way the divine youth might see his surroundings. Especially now within this Kali Yuga. The world has turned to ratshit and concrete. The youth understand this.

Odin himself conquered the old state of the world as Ymir walked in solace between the ice and fire of two unkind worlds. 

The three brothers clearly said ‘how very boring this is’. Where the old simply strides. The youth juxtaposes them with an obsession with turning raw materials into useful and powerful new forms. 

Odin conquered there with his brothers and used the giants bones and flesh to shape the world you now read these words upon. Or so it is said. 

Where Ymir used his body, organs and lifeforce to simply exist for himself for aeons, the three divine brothers sacrificed his selfish form and blossomed him through a spell of rage and love into the world that now exists. 

So you see, there is every reason to burn a sunwheel in the heart of winter because of such tales gifted to us by earth, time, space and blood. 

To burn a fire in the heart of winter is the ultimate rebellion against the old. 

It is the ‘fuck you’ that man has always given to the foliage that the old become when they have clung to this realm for to long. 

For if the conqueror sits for too long, he will always see himself become the conquered. 

The spirit of youth and rebellion is the highest power that has ever existed, and it is a power that is fleeting for those who become too wise too soon. 

The Koryos conquered in chariots of fire, and a noble pursuit of manhood through chaos.

The chariot wheel burns forever.

As we ignite this symbol we keep the rebellion alive.

The rebellion against stagnation. 

The vegetation is stagnant, and we are the scythe of the reaper deep in the heart of winter. 

Go forth and conquer, go forth and raise chaos upon the dormant and dark. 

We spring forth from the maypole/Saturn/hagal and create powerful patterns that continuously multiply and conquer more space.

This is our duty to the flame of youth.

Photography taken at Oathbloods ritual 2021 by S.Riley 

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. This man came for a witness, to bear  witness of the Light, that all through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear  witness of that Light.

[John 1:6] 

Meditate on death. 

It feels to me like we’ve all been saying this in some way shape or form for years now. The  importance of reflecting on our own mortality and the uncomfortable truth that our time here must end  sooner or later. It’s been popularized by countless internet icons in various overlapping circles of  influence. Huge social venn-diagrams of crossovers with hashtags and mutual followers and we all  share and re-post these cool sounding, tough, packaged phrasings with pleasing aesthetics like a sharpie sketch of a pointy iron gauntlet holding a flail, or Arnold (perhaps not so much now) with laser eyes  and VHS glitch filters. But are we sincerely in our heart of hearts considering not just the fact that we  will die, but if it must end sooner than we would like, and that we might have to make that choice? 

I discussed recently with another pastor at the church that I attend whether the spirit of  martyrdom still had a place in our world of 2021. Given the ubiquity of martyrs throughout the expanse of time and place, throughout myth and legend and history of every great faith, there seems to be a lack of martyrs in the same sense today. A cold grey zone, an intermission, an age of lead. An epoch marked  by a foreboding absence of the kind of Heroism that truly sets our hearts ablaze with indignation and  the love of true purpose. The Tibetan monk who self immolates, or the man of Tiananmen square.  Even Aragorn’s final charge on the black gate; “for Frodo.” We love this. We may shed a tear, even for  the fictional instances beset with triumphant solemn music. But if or when the axe draws near, while  we have many things to live for – do we have something to die for? Or are we “the voice of one crying  in the wilderness”? 

The unpleasant truth is that given the current climate that is settling in for a very dark night,  even if we collectively marched with vigour and purpose to a symbolic Black Gate of the “Empire of  Nothing”; let’s say a storming of Facebook, or Google, or a pharmaceutical headquarters, or the capitol  building. Well, we’ve seen how that plays out and how it is broadcast to the masses in our perpetual  information control campaign. I do not strive to deliver black pills to any of you – quite the opposite –  but this sobering truth can and should inspire in us not hopelessness against the shadowy hydra of “the  system” but empowerment to begin making an impact around ourselves on comparatively smaller  scales. We have been cursed by large media to believe that we as a lone pilot must take out the death  star. And while history and myth is saturated with individual Heroic figures that perform titanic deeds,  they must be taken as allegory, digested, and assimilated into our life circumstances. The alchemical  transformation from written word and scripture, into inspiration and awe through our emotions and  thoughts, and then into concrete action is the miracle. We reclaim Satya Yuga first within ourselves. It  is an internal, unseen hidden process akin to the cumulative gathering masses of hydrogen in the  expanse of the vacuum of Ginnungagap until finally, under the gravity of their collective weight of  congregation, the birth of a new heavenly body – a god – ignites and illuminates the void where before there was only darkness. 

We are hydrogen atoms, alone and adrift we do nothing and can offer nothing. It is only through interaction and collective power that we hold any sway over the course of our world and the void. It is  only in numbers that we can be a hydrogen bomb – implosive and irresistible, opening gateways to  worlds never dreamed of even by the greatest of utopians. 

Each of us is as John, a witness of the Light. But we individually are not the Light. It is our  interactions, our influence, and our collective force that creates the Light to illumine the shadowy expanses of our worlds. We are Lightbringers, Lucifer and Prometheus, who steal or free Light or Fire  to the benefit of collective Mankind. These figures are indeed individuals, cast about the archetypal  records of the cosmos and passed down to us to pull together us individuals in a united force as sole  atoms are to the unfathomable mass of fire, plasma, and lightning that is a Star. And we will be  punished; chained to the Caucasus, our crowns split by Michael to illuminate the world. For the power  to forge a star was not supposed to be granted us, that which lies with the creator, and we wish to share  that power with our fellow man. Zeus knows all too well that the Titans can be dethroned, perhaps he  has gleaned it from the woven work of the Fates. The wheels turns, Kings are cast asunder, new  empires built, new emperors and Gods crowned. 

I wrote in my earlier article “Incarnating Gods” that our goal here is to forge a vessel into which we may “lure” or “entice” archetypal Gods into, imbuing us with miraculous insight, temperament, and abilities. I still hold this to be true, but as I also said that while Christians will never be Christ, they can only aspire to be as Christ-like as possible in this life, we will never as individuals attain that flawless  archetype we strive to entice. It is the congregation of men and women coming together, collectively  striving for a similar archetype – in service to the same God or Gods – that enkindles the Holy Spark of that Deity which is carried glowing within us all into a mighty conflagration that can consume the high  ramparts, castles, and fortresses of the existing empires of the world. None of us can truly know the  critical mass that is reached in the void of space whereupon the hydrogen ignites under the pressure of  their own gravitas, but once that threshold is passed, once we cross the event horizon, there is no  slowing or stopping that irresistible and insatiable force. Only once the newly birthed star or God has  reached the ferocity ordained by it’s own fate is it then constrained under it’s own gravity once more  and stabilized that it casts it’s own Light out into the cosmos as a beacon to all ships navigating beneath the icy waters of the void with all lights blazing, calling them home to join the blinding brilliance of the new cause. 

How will we tie these symbols and metaphors into our daily lives, and will we be martyrs for a  new cause, a new path, and the new light of a newly born God? 

Consider first, as I will paraphrase here the work of Massimo Scaligero, that we do not see the  Light. What we see is the dying of the Light. The Light of the cosmos extinguishes itself upon contact  with our retinas; dying so that we may see. The Light is the original martyr, the Light cast forth from  the hearts of stars is chained to the rock of our consciousness through the heavy shackles of our  perception so that we may see and bear witness to the beauty of existence. Only death can pay for life. 

The Greek word that we translate by witness is martus. There are three words of the same  derivation: to witness – marturein; the act of witnessing – marturia; the testimony (in an objective  sense) – marturion. The original meaning is that of a witness in a law court; namely, someone who has  direct and personal experience of events in which he took part, or of persons he met, and who certifies  in court as to what he has seen or heard.  

But in ancient Greek usage and already in the time of Plato the words martus, marturein, and  marturia were also used in a wider sense, as an expression of personal conviction without this  conviction’s being necessarily based on “factual evidence.” 

To bear witness to creation is to make a martyr of the Light, to behold the Passion of the Light.  Without this first sacrifice we are left in the void with naught to illumine the cosmos. The word  Passion is from the Latin pati, which simply means “to endure” or “to suffer.” The Ouroborous must  feed and be extinguished, forever undulating in realms above and below or day-to-day perceptions.

Every day we have undertakings and work towards goals in which we extinguish elements of  ourselves forevermore; we open some doors on the path of our lives and others close. Common  perception we have all experienced as we trade one potential path of life for another and may  sometimes reminisce of times in hindsight where we can recognize that was a indeed a hard fork in our  path. The ways behind us can never be revisited and the forks ahead of us are beyond comprehension;  the plethora of infinite quantum possibility jittering and jostling in that Schrödinger-esque eternal state  of potentiality. For eternity is unused time – time in reserve of paths untrodden through each round,  stored and set aside for the Gods who are not bound here or now. 

When we choose to pick up weights, to run, to read challenging material, to eat better, to gather  and laugh with friends and family, to turn ourselves into more instead of withering and shrinking away,  we close doors that lead down dark paths to dark ends. They are things that bolster our lives and enrich  the world as our own internal Satya Yuga slowly kindles, ignites, and casts that radiance outward. It  

does not necessarily usher our friends and family through the same doors that we walk, but it does open that door for them and offer them to make their own choice to enter or not. Some will join us, some  will depart from us, some may rejoin us later on the path higher up the mountain having found a  different route to similar vantage points. But these concepts here are reliant upon our living, what of  our dying? 

Just as the extinguishing – the passion – of the Light is the only principal by which we see –  bear witness – it is only the extinguishing of a Life lived with vigour, absolute Love and conviction that is the ignition and detonation in the heart of what will shortly be a new star, a new God, or an atomic  blast that reduces irreconcilable differences to ash in the wake of the new path – all of the above. Only  with endings are there new beginnings. When we begin to glean that the end of our golden thread of  Fate is within sight, what will our impact be and how will it echo past the end of our perception? In this short article, I do not have an answer, because I am not you. We may share aesthetic ideals, we may be  friends, we may never meet. I am just a man at the end of 2021 who feels the weight of the end of an  era bearing down like the unfathomable gravity and heat of a dying star going red giant and engulfing  planets as it’s internal atomic stores burn out. This end will only be a new beginning – the beginning of  a better age. 

As these witnesses – these martyrs – of the Light which is collectively emanating from more  and more of us, a tidal wave is coming down. It has long since crested the horizon and is towering over  us. Not just a tidal wave of water – for that is not our baptism. It is the tidal wave and the baptism of  Spirit and Fire as the Son of Man returns as Kalki atop the white horse with bronze feet and the double  edged sword for a tongue. We are born perfect and continue to strive for perfection; the re-attainment  of Eden, Paradise, Heaven, Hyperborea. Thus, we are not required to undergo the watery Baptism  symbolic of the drowning of the imperfect human with original sin, washing away his or her flaws for  we recognize that as Muhammad Ali once said with the conviction of Grace: “God didn’t make NO  mistakes when he made me the way that I am.” 

As this tidal wave of Spirit and Fire comes to cleanse this time and place, the Black Gate opens  and the hordes of Mordor pour out, we take a deep breath and dive beneath the turmoil and find that  there is an odd calm – “for Frodo.” We do not know if we will hold our breath long enough to resurface but we see others who have taken the same plunge and gain encouragement that should our breath  elapse, should our constitution not be enough to endure this passing of eras, that our friends and  families will be our witnesses that we did all that we could. That we lived beautiful, unrelenting lives of desire and drive in honour of things far above and beyond our individual lives. Some of us will drown  under the weight of this wave of Spirit and Fire. There is no way around this. What is important is that  we are here – and will be there – together beneath the flames and when those of us who resurface on  the other side are blessed with the manna of ancients with an iron rod in our hands and crowned with the Sun, that we rebuild in honour of those who chose willingly to dive in with us. They were  extinguished so that we might see. Those who are martyred are the Light, we who survive are not the  Light, but sent by God to bear witness to the Light, and thus will be John of the New Way.