Copyright 2008 T. Sheil & A. Sheil All Rights Reserved
“What’s in a word?” Perhaps there is more than we like to admit. A matter of semantics can cause people to see differences where none exist. The problem is exacerbated in Heathenism. There are people who cling so much to old lore and the mixed up Icelandic buzz words that they will not accept anything that sounds different. Merely because another tradition words it differently, the Fundamentalist Heathens reject it.
The irony is that the Eddas and most of the extant lore itself is incomplete and has been subjected to alteration. Even interpretation by experts is at best rash speculation based on an incomplete foundation.. To demand an Eddic precedent for everything is not only limiting, but erroneous. The result of such thinking is to deny Heathenism the means to be a successful religion and way of life in the present and future.
Life itself is not limited to the old lore. Life does what it will. Heathenism has the tools to face it. All we need do is remember that what we have of old lore does not cover all of the bases. We need to learn from experience, be it our own or that of others.
One case I thought funny was on a forum I run. One fellow had mentioned “negativity.” An arrogant and ill-informed individual replied that “negativity” was not part of Norse lore.. She was wrong. Terms such as “blight” and “alfreka” are two old terms that match the definition of “negative energy.” Here was a case where one word could have been a bridge or a barrier.
Keep in mind that very few of the old magickal techniques are explained in the old lore. We are fortunate that variants survived, such as the Christianized spoken spells recorded in the Albertus Magnus Egyptian Secrets and John Hohman’s Pow Wows, or The Long Lost Friend. Other magickal bits and pieces have been found in old black books, vestiges of folklore and other places. A few exist in the traditions of Scandinavia, Germany and England.
Discovering and recovering these requires experience in magick and metaphysics. Magick works along a certain set of principles. All viable magickal system work because they use one or more of these principles. It can be no other way. One or more of the principles are a necessity to magickal success. The general public thinks magick is superstition and special powers. Only those who work with it know that magick has a solid foundation rather than a fanciful one.
A large part of the process requires the ability to recognize a concept amid the specialized lexicons used by each magickal system. Because of its nature, many schools of magick have lexicons steeped in their indigenous religions and myths. They can be difficult to decipher. It takes solid magickal experience to help in the process of rendering arcane language into comprehensible terms.
As Heathen lore goes, there is also the problem of translating a magickal concept into its Heathen equivalent. Many of these equivalents were lost. The few that survived may take some effort. As an example, look at Astral entities. The sprites and nature spirits of conventional occultism translate to the landvaetter and nisse of Nordic lore. In legend, the Nordic dvaerg is equivalent to the vampires recorded in central Europe a couple of centuries ago. ( The vampire of European lore is very different from the fictional Dracula and the current vampire characters.) Alfreka or Alfrekt, which denote a place so blighted the landvaetter and alfs have left, is the same as “blighted” or “negativity.”
Those who practice Runecraft are occasionally interested in the idea of Runes enabling one to contact the spirit of the dead. Ceremonial magick has a lore of raising a spirit. Eliphas Levi, a famous Hermetic occultist, wrote of doing such an operation to converse with the spirit of the dead. The same has also been mentioned in the Fourth Book of Agrippa and other texts. Here is a case where the Nordic reference is only a passing mention of Runes. There is no discussion of technique. We do not know if it is legend or if such a technique existed in Scandinavia. We know that other traditions attempted such a thing using a very different magickal technology. That does not leave us much for recovering a Heathen method.
The Havamal is a very practical guide, but the Rune Poem segment has to be taken with a grain of salt. Did the poet know how to work the Runes or were his verses based entirely on commonly-known legends about Odin? The same goes for the other Rune Poems. Were they intended as magickal instruction, or were their intentions merely poetic? Could it more likely be a little bit of both? A great help in answering this would be to look at other systems and see if they have corresponding materials. For instance, the Havamal mentioned Runes for childbirth*. A look into other systems for childbirth spells would give us some insight. Though their magickal technology would differ, the concept might be useful.
We need to keep our minds open to opportunity. Many a gem is concealed in the strange language of other traditions,. We ought not reject it out of hand just because we think it is not “Norse.” More often than not, there is just a variation of something that is indeed Heathen.
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*(There are childbirth Runes, though the person who taught me them had never actually used them himself. I will only give that information to personal students, because the are too many careless persons and wannabes whose ineptitude would harm an infant.)
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