I knew I had a reason to be excited when I entered the capital city and one of the commoners (another bard) was talking about her contribution to the Edda. Sure enough, when I expressed interest in applying to the college they explained that the Poetic Edda was the history of their homeland, update by the bards of each age to preserve their stories for future generations. Unlike the Poetic Edda of our world, theirs is fluid, changing. And apparently open to revision.

The starting quest has you search for a missing piece of the Edda, one not tampered with by a disgrunted monarchy. At stake is the Bard college-sponsored festival of King Olaf, which includes burning the effigy of a straw king. Things are a little tense politically at the start of the game, so it makes sense that the recently widowed Queen would be a touch sensitive to the idea of burning representations of nobility, given the recent “murder” of her husband.

And so you march off to lay to rest the reanimated corpses of your forebears and win back a missing piece of history in typical video game fashion.

But when you uncover the artifact (the bard’s ghost leads you to a withered skeleton at the bottom of a pit), what you can decipher turns out to be a scandalous retelling of one of the most popular legends of Nordic lore–perhaps Olaf One-Eye was not the dragon-slayer he was remembered as, and so the verses were buried and forgotten for good reason. History is told be the victors. Only the Bard’s college’s annual festival keeps alive the true legacy of King Olaf.

Yet, half of the verses are–surprise!–ravaged by time: illegible, lost forever. What is a student of history to do?

Well, fill in the blanks, of course, and revise it for the times!

I think this side-quest, while seemingly a bastardization of various heathen concepts for popular consumption (and it certainly is that), it is also a meaningful lesson for any pagan seeking to resurrect a “dead” culture. Certainly some traces of Anglo-Saxon culture remain in 21st century America, but given the thousand plus years of blending with Christianity, it’s easy to see why Weber and deTocqueville were right. How much of our reliance on lore is inherited from our upbringing under the religions of the Book? How much of our fierce individualism is Protestant or Pentecostal? How much of the Eddas we know reflect the prejudices of the non-heathen authors who penned them?

So much has been lost over the ages, and so much has changed, that to cut and paste directly without “merging the formatting,” to put it in Word 2010 parlance, makes for, well, an ugly picture. We have to treat our religions as a living, breathing organism, changed everyday by the people who comprise them.

Some gaps must be filled in by those who have inherited them. Kept incomplete, the religion feels lacking as well.

Placed in a new context, the stories must be re-interpreted in light of the times.

And like the Edda in Skyrim, religion changes with each generation’s addition. Every day we are writing our own wyrd, building upon the legacy of our (predominantly Judeo-Christian) ancestors, but weaving our own design in a decidedly modern era.

Noun

inspiration /ɪnspɨˈɹeɪʃən/

1. The act of inspiring or breathing in.
2. breath
3. (physiology) The drawing of air into the lungs, accomplished in mammals by elevation of the chest walls and flattening of the diaphragm.
4. The act or power of exercising an elevating or stimulating influence upon the intellect or emotions; the result of such influence which quickens or stimulates; as, the inspiration of occasion, of art, etc.
5. A supernatural divine influence on the prophets, apostles, or sacred writers, by which they were qualified to communicate moral or religious truth with authority; a supernatural influence which qualifies men to receive and communicate divine truth; also, the truth communicated.

from Wiktionary

Last night I stood before my altar and took a few deep breaths. I closed my eyes and tried to empty myself, but found myself filled with words and moved to pray regardless. I have never spontaneously spouted poetry; usually when I pray it is conversational, offering thanks and beseeching blessings the same as I would speak, though with more respect and reverence.

I cannot remember the words, but it seemed like their ephemera was part of the magic. Giving voice to the words that are moving you, letting them be heard, and letting them “die” and fade back into the well or cauldron of creativity once more. It’s the fire that moves them into being, quickens the elements of the collective pool of memory, and for a moment you serve as the tree that bridges the Over and Underworlds in the temporary Midrealm.

The thing that scared me most was when I was praying for the Gods not only to see me and aid me but also to “forget” me. When I came to that part of the ecstatic prayer I choked and had to pause, repulsed, waiting for an explanation. Why was I asking to be forgotten?

There was something filling me at the edge of my mind, reminding me of my mortality and how, like these words that will be forgotten after their purpose has been fulfilled, I will also fade back into nothing after I do what I am here to do: live. Of course the identity/ego we create for ourselves with dissolve when we do, and the Gods will not remember us as Lindevi or whoever (our egotistical selves/identity) but as their children collectively. The relationship becomes abstract: the energy goes on, though the exchange has changed.

The past and future that constructs us will no longer have a reference point, and there will only be the Now again, until I am renewed into another body.

The Midrealm stands, subjective to the objective realities of Above and Below, being shaped by them and destroyed by Them, the conflicting bodies of Chaos and Cosmos.

I picked up my prayer again, scared but resolved, until I came to its end. With that I inclined my head and thanked the Powers, feeling perhaps a little more sure of my footing on this new path.

One of these days I will have the courage to offer up my voice as an offering. To sing for my Gods a song of prayer, full of intention and praise, as opposed to the little vocal exercises I have been to give to Them during the day, in the car or at my desk. I feel shivers down my spine and wonder if I’m just imagining things, or if is an actual response from SomeOne/Thing.

But it will be some time before I learn the words, the melodies. There is definitely something powerful about certain “riffs” that I have heard, a sort of permanence and timelessness that has affected me since I was young. You hear a song and instantly are transported back to a childhood memory that doesn’t exists, and are elated. “I must have heard this as a child, because it resonates with me so thoroughly, it’s like I’ve been searching for the notes my whole life and have finally heard them again.” I have identified some of those sacred melodies in modern songs, but it scares me to offer these parts that have been used in such mundane ways. But there’s something about them, that’s for sure. I want to weave these parts into perhaps my own song, or songs, but will need some more training before I can do so.

To that end I’ve decided I need to learn Old English. It shouldn’t be that hard, given the similarities to my own language, but it would set certain lyrics apart from the mundane, find a common ground between the Gods of my culture and me. I will have to experiment and give serious thought to the difference between praying in English and praying in the Old Tongue. There are certainly arguments to be had both ways.

Maybe, just maybe, it is time to approach Woden, whom I’ve avoided during my devotion to Tiw. Now that I’m not destined for a political path, and have dedicated myself to writing, the tables have likely turned. I am trading the upright sureties of law and order for the fluid gray areas of literature and human life. And perhaps I owe Woden a horn of mead as I begin to tread on his domain.

Not so this year. Our First Big Snow hit today, cancelling Halloween celebrations across the valley as we hunkered down and braced for a predicted 10-14” of wet, white slush. I was thankful to have gone in to work at 5am, meaning I would get out “on time” at 2pm, theoretically just in time to beat the storm home.

Three and a half hours later I owe this entry to the Gods-sent snowplow that blazed the trail up the mountain even when the main road was shutting down. Otherwise I’m not sure if or when I’d even have made it home, confronting steep hills or accident-laden highways in every direction.

Nothing like a natural disaster or two to get you back in touch with your region’s geography. Hurricane Irene taught me to look to slopes and ravines—where the water flows. You don’t realize how your entire town is bordered by streams until you are trying desperately to find a crossing that hasn’t been flooded over yet. Or how you’re incredibly lucky your house is situated on a ridge and blessed with drainage on either side to avoid devastating flooding.

This storm has taught me why trees lose their leaves in winter: surface area + sticky snow = disaster. Fall hadn’t even come full force in my town, and the roads were lined with green-leaved trees buckling under the weight or with branches missing—some had even split in half down the middle of the trunk. The river was veiled by a grey fog as I pulled into my neighborhood. A herd of deer crossed the road in between fallen debris, bounding over drifts. They are clearly more used to this than I.

I creep out of my car after enduring a ride more than eight times its usual length only to discover power is already out at home. My brother announces a single remaining cup of coffee left in the French press and I bask in its warmth, realizing that any hot meal tonight is going to require a moderate amount of effort on my part. You don’t realize how much the sacred fire is taken for granted in the modern era until simple conveniences like microwaves, lights, and heat go away. It was all you had left against the cold, the dark, and death, a theme echoed in George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire to great effect.

I will be spending tonight in darkness save for the candles I have pilfered from the closet and the sacred flame of transformation of fueland air to light and heat. I will be spending tonight in cold save for the warmth of modern fibers and the companionship of my kin. I will be spending tonight in contemplation of the beauty, the awe, and danger of the dark half of the year. And I will be spending tonight in gratitude for all that the Kindreds have given me to protect myself against it.

There is nothing quite like coming home after being truly afraid you’ll end up stranded in a winter’s storm.

More than 50 years after actors Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis donned their woollen tunics for Hollywood blockbuster The Vikings, a television series of the same name and a TV version of British writer Neil Gaiman’s Nordic gods-inspired bestseller, American Gods, are both in development. The Vikings, which picks up on interest aroused by Kenneth Branagh’s recent action film Thor, is being produced and written by the team behind BBC2 series The Tudors, and will tell the story of Ragnar, the great Viking leader and his two wives and four sons, who travelled to Ireland, England and France. The semi-mythological figures of Ragnar and his sons were also at the centre of the Curtis and Douglas epic, but this 10-part drama will chart their conquests while aiming to correct misconceptions about Viking society.

American Gods, Gaiman’s mystical cult saga, tells the story of Shadow and his dealings with a modern-day incarnation of the Norse god Odin, or Woden.

– “It’s a new Viking invasion of Britain – but this time it’s cultural” (10/22/11)

I wonder if either will be on BBC America or if I’ll have to wait for them to be picked up on Netflix. Boo.

“Okay,” he said, “you’ll have to show it to mom and do your homework if you don’t want the deer to eat it or the frost to kill it.” Fine, I can do that.

The Specs

Quercus rubra, says Wikipedia: the northern red oak. Likes shade (we can do that), slightly acidic soil (good, there was a blue spruce growing there before), mulch in winter and fertilizer in summer.

Okay, what kind of mulch? Red, brown, black, cedar, pine nugget, Scott’s Naturescapes? Dear, sweet Jesus. For all that I’ve sold hundreds of dollars of the crap I have no idea what the difference is. To the internet!

With a small application of Google-fu, it seems the colors are simply an aesthetic difference, but looking at the ingredients list for the Scott’s Naturescapes, particle board/composite filler? You mean like plywood? I was then considering an “organic” variety, but apparently organic mulch is just leaves and grass clippings and the like. The cedar or pine nuggets seem to be my best bet–at least they’re natural and may help to keep the pH where the tree wants it.

I’ll have to dig a hole three times as wide and a little less deep, plant it, mulch it three to four inches, and water it with a soak ball so all of the roots get wet. Then I’ll get a deer wrap to keep my neighborhood’s herd away (I’ll have to account for my mildly-rational fear of the animals in another post), and cross my fingers. Hopefully we have a few more weeks before the first frost hits hard.

I’m not going to lie, if this thing dies I’m going to be a little upset, especially after I invest the time to get it situated and protected. Its leaves weren’t in the best condition near the middle, but at the top the leaves were healthy and green. At the same time, it might be too late to plant a tree in this region (contrary to what my coworkers assured me). I wonder if Home Depot’s one year plant guarantee applies to trees as well… hopefully it won’t come to that.

The Spirit

The real motivation behind my getting the tree was my recent affiliation with the ADF: it’s a beautiful reminder of my faith, rich in symbolism, and will definitely help me with the nature awareness requirement of the Dedicant program, if only because I’m getting my feet wet in landscaping (gardening will come next spring, hopefully with some onions and garlic–yum). I feel inclined to give it a name, though I may want to try and listen for it from the leaves themselves.

It’s strange to think that this tree, if it survives, will outlast me and my children and their children–it won’t even begin to produce acorns until I’m gone. There are trees all around you and you don’t realize just how old they are, like the sugar maple that died outside my bedroom window. Its trunk is easily three people’s arm-spans, maybe four. I can’t even how many centuries that must have took. My neighbor had the branches cut maybe ten years ago, and I always wondered if it had housed a wight, and whether that wight was displaced (or angry) afterwards. It was right about then that our families started to fall apart.

I’ll take some pictures once the sapling is planted. If some of the leaves are any indication, the rest of it will turn a stunning shade of red before winter arrives fully-fledged. Rubra indeed.

Yet, the ADF’s Dedicant program is what intrigued me most, with its formal course of study and practice to be completed at your own pace. Having almost ten years of background in paganism, I thought a year-and-a-day length would be doable, and as I’ve said before on this blog, I intend to take my first official step towards oathing on Hallows.

The hardest part will be learning the symbolism and values of ADF itself. The Fire, the Cauldron, and the Tree mean little to me as yet, nor does the awen or triskele, though I’ll be exploring them in depth in the coming months. Seeing the Fire and Ice Kindred and the number of northern tradition practitioners on ADF’s home page is encouraging, and hopefully I’ll be able to find my own footing within the parallel currents of Celtic and Indo-European cultures that run through the organization.

I’ve converted Linden Leaves into an online journal in the interest of staying on course, but also so I might be able to connect with other druids or witches out there who are treading a similar way. I’ve updated the layout and will be adding more content on rites and holy tides, prayer and meditation as I work my way through the 52-week program. Subjects of interest that I hope to be treating on include:

• Galdr
• Devotional Work
• Runes
• Totemism
• and Witchcraft

in addition to the three Kindreds venerated by the druids, the Gods, the Spirits, and Ancestors. Though these pages are spare as of yet, over the course of the next year they will hopefully fill out quite a bit, and perhaps some of the entries here might even serve as inspiration to the next seeker that comes along searching for relationship with the Gods and magic of the Old English.

More than that, I owe her a great debt for scaring the shit out of me when I needed it most. Fascinated by heathen mysticism, I essentially set out woefully unprepared and grandiosely delusioned as to my intent. I was, to put it bluntly, humbled before her, and I didn’t mess with shit I didn’t understand from then on. The next day I bought her a rose, dried it on my altar, and left it in the snow for her as an offering. She has been in my prayers ever since, even if the observance is somber.

When I pass over the tiger’s eye bead, I invoke her as “Guardian and Gatekeeper, Giver of Grace.” I see her as both protecting the living from the dead as guardian and regulating souls’ entrance into Death as gatekeeper, but also as ruling over a place that, while sorrowful, ensures each soul is given something to eat at death’s table.

As a culture we have such an unhealthy relationship with death in part because of the distance we maintain between it and us, pretending as though we will never die or artificially extending life without extending its quality. Death was a common occurrence centuries, even decades ago, but now we shield ourselves from it and fear it irrationally, pretending it doesn’t exist and trying to mask the pain of loss. To live is also to die. Death deserves our respect and reverence. But nobody said it would be easy.

I believe Hel appeared to me at that time in part because I had just lost my paternal grandmother, the woman I felt closest to of all my relatives, and was experiencing the loss of someone dear to me for the first time in my life. (I was lucky to have gotten away without knowing death until I was nineteen, but it also made me that much more keenly aware of her passing.) Hel did not comfort so much as confront me, and I was able to cope with my feelings on my own. Seeing even that tiny glimpse of Hel while I was struggling with grief for the first time put a lot of things into perspective, and allowed me to puzzle out my thoughts on death in a spiritual context.

I remember Ruth by a number of small trinkets of hers now stored on my altar, and feel her when I call upon my family’s Ides. She is not gone entirely; I still have my memories of her.

The significance of Hel being my first mystical experience makes Hallows all the more appropriate for the beginning of a serious year-and-a-day study of saxon paganism and witchcraft. I begin with the death of my old life and will end with death again, completing the cycle and preparing me to start my spiritual journey anew. My ancestors will be there with me, the women whom I honor on the fourth bead of my rosary, moonstone. “Ancient Ancestors, aid us and our own.” When I like three candles for them on Hallows, may they be a beacon in the darkness of the long nights of winter soon to come.

When I first began dating him I lacked any knowledge about Jews whatsoever, only my insistence that Israel was an aggressor state, that Jews were oppressing the poor Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and that Jewish settlements and military retaliations were singularly to blame for the stalled peace process. (Let me tell you how quickly that came to an end. I have since tried to understand more about the conflict, but it’s difficult when my favorite leftist authors and organizations, like Noam Chomsky and Democracy Now, are also seemingly staunchly anti-Israel.)

Being the religion junkie that I am (and hating ignorance perhaps most of all), I quickly proceeded to check out a bunch of books from the library on the topic.  But, strangely, I had to hide the books and my thoughts from my parents. I began to understand the extent of anti-semitism when I realized my parents were more concerned about me learning about Judaism that witchcraft. My mother has even bought me Llewellyn almanacs and calendars before, but reading about the Torah and mitzvot and Israel? Awkward. “Watch out for Jewish boys,” my grandmother warned me, “they only want Jewish girls who can give them Jewish babies.” The message was hammered into me by my peers when they began to seriously suggest that I stop seeing him solely on the grounds of him being Jewish. One of these friends lives with a Wiccan, so you can’t say that they’re simply an intolerant person in general. To spite them, I now tease that I’m going to become “a Jewess brood mother” and will like it, and they can go fuck themselves. They’ve stopped bothering me about it since. (To Eric I play the other side of the coin, calling myself the shiksa he wishes he didn’t love.)

My resolve made all the stronger by my friends and family’s assholery, I tore through the books quickly. I was fascinated by the traditions of intellectual debate, the concepts of loving-kindness and charity, and the theological flexibility that comes with Judaism being more of a culture than a religion. I found out my Russian paternal grandmother likely had Jewish roots, though that meant nothing for my own status as gentile. I even began to consider what my home might look like if I observed Shabbat, went to Temple, and raised my children to be Jewish. I imagined a wedding with my Jewish groom, my Jewish best friend as the maid of honor, a chuppah, a ketubah, and the sound of breaking glass. I bought a book on converting and learned everything I could about the process, from the bet din to the mikvah.

It wasn’t too far from what I believed, I told myself. The mystery of Elohim’s simultaneous plurality and singularity could explain my polytheism, and I had always held the pantheistic belief that there is a divinity that comprises the entirety of the universe and even the gods who are otherwise distinct, called the All. It wouldn’t be too different to change the “All” to “Adonai,” to go from the wheel of the year to the Jewish calendar, wiccecraeft to Kabbalah, galdr to davening. I thought the things that I wanted from paganism were there, more strongly, in Judaism: actively partaking in ritual at home, a strong community to connect with, a God whose tenets matched my own liberal philosophy. Most of all, I would have a partner to share these things with, reluctant though he might be.

But I began to grow frustrated that for all that I would have to dedicate myself entirely and be essentially a textbook Jew to convert, Eric would always be more Jewish than me (having had a Jewish mother) even though he would be more lax about observing holidays, studying Torah, and believing in God in the Jewish sense. He wanted to see his children bar or bat mitzvah’ed but didn’t care about much else. The important part was being Jewish, not living Jewish.

More than that, I couldn’t shake my own Gods. A monochrome view of the world would never quite suit me, and where did my totemic inclinations and magical aspirations fit in? I couldn’t convert if I was still a pagan at heart, even if I could celebrate family and toast to l’chaim alongside the Jews I loved. That leaves any children I have with him without a solid Jewish identity, but I can’t bring myself to change who I am for the sake of others. I also like to think that would be a sin in Judaism, and I respect the tradition too much to convert without my heart and soul in it.

What this brief episode of interest in Judaism has done in my life is to really teach me about where I stand and why I gravitated towards paganism in the first place. What makes it so that I cannot join the house of Yisrael, no matter how much of a headache that might save me down the line?

Simply, monotheism does not honor life in all its myriad forms the way paganism does for me. By distilling everything down to One, a good deal of variation is lost, from the dark to the fertile to the righteous to the warlike. Paganism is more sensitive to these nuances and addresses them directly, either in the festivals or the Gods themselves, the elements and the spirits of place, plant, and beast. And I’m pretty sure I cannot commune with Falcon in ritual and then go on to recite Kaddish at dinner, or maintain my altar and hang a mezuzah on my front door (unless some of my housemates want to, but that’s their choice).

And so I’m back to where I started, just in time to seriously prepare for a year-and-a-day course of study starting on the 31^st, when I will be celebrating Hallows. I had given myself that deadline back in June, not realizing it would be just enough time to work through my fascination and trepidation with becoming Jewish and come full circle back to Saxon paganism. On that night I’ll honor Hel again for the first time in years, who marked my first true mystical—if absolutely terrifying—experience, and remember the ancestors who brought me here as the veil between worlds thins. The late fall/early winter has always been my most spiritual time, with its dark, rainy nights and cold, cloudy days, and so I will begin and end my course of study with its power.

I ask for faith now, Holy Ones,
and in this, I gather up the last wisps
of what faith I have left, that You
will hear me, that some among You
may feel moved to guide me, that but
one of You will speak to me, aloud or
in the profound silence of the soul
and that I may receive into my hands
all the tools I need to build that faith into
nothing so much as a mighty fortress,
but the crumbling wall which, I know,
I shall have to scale again and again.

– Elizabeth Vongvisith, Be Thou My Hearth and Shield

30 Days of Saxon Paganism Index

The farm next to Eric's house is beginning to bundle its hay for the winter.

Yesterday was the first time I smelled “Fall” in the morning, and tonight is the full moon. Perhaps I should have known that Eric and I would have had an argument about what I’ve “reaped” thus far. I think the message is that I should be thankful for what I have right now, not perpetually pining for a distant future. I just landed a promotion with a 15% pay raise, my managers like me, and I’m able to practice writing more. Eric hasn’t gone to school yet, my best friend is back from college, and I’m getting to know my coworkers better. For now, that should be enough.

Sunday

Sunne, Ing-Frea, Neorð, Erce, Idun

• Enjoying life, abundance
• Thanksgiving for one’s fruits and family
• Appreciating the renewed fertility of the land and animals
• Taking time out to enjoy the natural beauty of the fields, woods, rivers, oceans

Monday

Mona, Hama

• Staking stock of one’s accounts; counting
• Keeping watch, being observant
• Thinking of one’s fellow man
• Enduring the rough times, being reliable for others

Tuesday

Tiw, Forseta, Sceadu

• Staying true to one’s ideals
• Keeping one’s word
• Contributing to the common good; government
• Being independent, hunting for one’s own desires

Wednesday

Woden

• Thinking before one speaks
• Valuing the breath of life
• Self-discovery, sacrifice, wisdom
• Assuming leadership

Thursday

Thunor, Sib

• Being courageous, facing challenges head-on
• Protecting that which is close to you
• Working hard, volunteering time and effort
• Acknowledging the destructive power of nature

Friday

Freo, Frige

• Compassion, being more loving
• Appreciating one’s loved ones, especially romantic relationships
• Spending time with kin, honoring the family
• Being hospitable and generous to others

Saturday

Hel, Baldor

• Learning to accept, acknowledge loss
• Living life to its fullest, as if it were the last day
• Honoring those that have passed on
• Understanding the cycle of death and rebirth