Category Archives: Asatru
Review: The Way of Wyrd by Brian Bates
The book The Way of Wyrd is a fictional story of a Christian Monk who is sent to learn the ways of the Anglo-Saxon pagans. The story is rich and entertaining. The author worked hard to research and present the information in a way that was informative and entertaining. By working the true beliefs of the Anglo-Saxon sorcerers into this work of fiction the author has brought back the use of stories to transmit knowledge and information.
The book is actually in two parts. The first part focuses on the early aspects of the Monk’s training. Here the monk is very skeptical of all the powers the sorcerer claims to work with and hold. While he works hard to learn all he can learn, Brand (the name of the monk) never really believes the ways of the people or that the powers are real.
In this part of the book the author introduces the basic beliefs of the people. The story actually opens with Brand working with Wulf (the sorcerer) at a healing ceremony banishing an evil spirit. This powerful start to the book illustrates a few of the key practices and beliefs that Brand is exposed to as he begins the training. This ceremony is set after he has completed his journey so we see here that Brand has much to learn and yet he was open to them.
In this first part of the book Brand is highly skeptical of the beliefs and practices. There are some that even scare him. Though he is fascinated with the tales of the Gods and of the spirits he does not appreciate their real value aside from primitive beliefs and practices.
The first powerful ritual that Brand is exposed to is an example of his difficulty in attempting to switch worldviews to learn the beliefs and practices. Here Brand is taught about gathering power from plants and how to properly gather the plant and give it an offering.
Other powerful rituals are experienced in this section. Here the author also goes into reading the omens of nature such as the flight pattern of birds and the way fish swim. The largest concept of Germanic paganism introduced here is the concept of Wyrd and knowing how to read and work with Wyrd.
The final experience in this section of the book Brand has is watching Wulf heal an elf shot horse. When Brand declares the process a fraud Wulf knows then that he must make Brand experience these forces or the mission to learn their ways will be a failure. The experience at the farm and Brand’s declaration of being a fraud.
In the second part of the book Brand is forced to encounter the shamanic aspects of Germanic paganism. Here we learn about spirit flight, how our spirits can be stolen, and how to work a soul retrieval in the practices of the Anglo-Saxon sorcerers.
The authors use of the narrative story teaches several elements of Germanic paganism. There are tales of the Gods taught, beliefs about plant lore explored, beliefs of the soul, and much more. The book provides through the story a basic concept and outline of many main beliefs found in Germanic Paganism as well as in Traditional Witchcraft, Anglo-Saxon shamanism, and much more. This book was well researched and written allowing a student to learn concepts in a way that non-fiction books may not be able to portray them.
Pagan Blog Project D: Direction, Decisions, & Divination
Direction and Decisions
The last few posts have given you several things to think about as a seeker. As you have thought about those things and your own beliefs you should have compiled or started to find a list of belief systems or religions that match up to what you are looking for to some extent. These religions and spiritual paths should have as many things related to your beliefs as possible. You may find there are a few which only have a few of your major beliefs in them but not all of them. That is ok. The point is you have a list of paths and options. No what do you do?
You need to make some choices. You need to make some decisions on where you want to go now. There are options. Now you need to choose. So how to choose?
Direction
Right now you may have a list of belief systems you are eager to explore that have things you want to explore. There may be many parallels in beliefs to what you hold. This is a good position to be in. It means you know what you believe you are just looking for more structure and concepts to develop from. You are looking for direction. Having a direction in which to focus allows stability and confidence building. Focusing on one specific direction can and will deepen spirituality.
Choosing that direction can be difficult. I myself look over all the paths I have studied that have things I believe in and wonder where I should go in my studies. I’m sort of in a cross roads right now myself as well which is part of the reason for writing this post. Directions can and will change in your studies and as your path and your spirituality grows. This is also a good sign that you have learned a lot in one area but need to grow in another. By changing directions and choosing a new direction when you start you already really begin to grow.
So to begin choosing your direction you should look at two of the paths or religions that inspire you the most. These are good places to start your exploration. These will be the focus of your deciding factor. You will still want to read about and research the other paths out there that interest you. There is a reason they are interesting to you. They have something to offer that you will benefit from. For now though having one direction or focus is essential.
This direction will for some time be the focus of your studies and growth. You will use this to establish your foundation if you are new to exploring spiritual options. Here you will start to establish relationships with specific gods and spirits according to the path you choose to walk. Here after you do additional study you may want to then do a dedication and deeper studies for a while before exploring elsewhere. The point is the direction you pick will be the foundation of your spiritual home and your path.
If you have been exploring spirituality your new direction will add a new level to your spirit house and you will have a deeper knowledge base to choose from. This will expand your spiritual awareness. You will probably meet new guides and spirits in the new direction you choose to explore. Your previous understandings will develop and may slightly change. You are reaching the next level in spirituality and practice as it were.
Making the decisions
Now that I have highlighted the reasons for choosing one direction rather than exploring multiple paths at once it is time to explain and go over how you can make the decision for yourself. There are many ways you can make the decision about which path to take. I am going to list them here and then go into each one in a bit more detail. In the end there are two ways you can really go about making this. You can do a soul and spiritual searching of it or you can do some practical work. You can also do a combination.
Spiritual decision making aids
Here are the spiritual and insightful methods. There is a meditation method. There is the prayer method. You have divination through cards or even using a pendulum. You finally have the what does my heart say about what I know about this path right now method. All of these methods involve working with a spirit or some aspect of the hidden self you have to contact in some form. Now I will expand on each of those methods.
I am going to start with the meditative method. The meditative method actually comes in two forms. The first form involves contact with your own spirit guides and guardians for advice. The second form of the meditative method is a bit more introspective yet just as effective. Both are in a meditative state so they are both the meditative method of making your decisions.
The first meditative method to discuss then is the method where you contact your spirit guides and guardians. Here you can go into a meditative state and contact your spirit guides and guardians for advice. You can give them an idea of why you are having difficulties with this decision. You can ask them where they think you should go. They may give you an idea or they may show you something that you have to think about. Either way through contacting your spirit guides you have been given their insight on the matter which should prove useful for your own decision making.
The second meditative method is less about spirit guides and more about yourself and your thoughts. The idea here is that you will get into a meditative state and you will be able to focus on asking yourself the question “which path is mine?”. You may find symbols appear that relate to one path. That is your answer. You may even find yourself brought on some sort of vision quest by your higher self. That quest there and that experience there. Either way your answer comes from yourself, your heart, and your spirit.
The prayer method is a method that many people use. Here you will work on praying to spirits or guides for the answer. If there are specific Gods and Goddesses in either path that you are interested in more than others you can pray to them. If there is a specific type of spirit found in each culture you are interested in you can also pray to them. You can also pray to both pantheons in a general reaching out prayer and see who answers. The same thing applies to the various spirit entities found in the different paths.
When you are working with the prayer method you are leaving the answer to the question up to the Gods and the spirits. In the end it will be them who make the decision about accepting your worship or working with you or not. You can not force a deity or spirit to work with you that is not willing to work with you. For this reason many people recommended prayers above other methods. All of the methods I am telling you about are useful and worth trying. I do have to agree that prayer is one of the more powerful ways to connect with willing spirits and Gods.
Divination methods of decision making
Divination is a method that takes many forms. Here you have tarot cards and oracle cards. You also have pendulums and scrying. Channeling is also a form of divination. In using divination you are spending the time contacting the spirits directly. From how you connect to the spirits the various forms work to provide the answer.
In the oracle card methods (tarot decks and other decks) the answer comes out through the meaning of the cards pulled. By looking at the order the cards were pulled and where they stand in the reading your answer can be interpreted. There are thousands of different oracle decks out there. Tarot cards are one form. Doreen Virtue has several oracle decks out there as well. In working with these decks you will find that some card decorations and symbols speak to you more than others. Those are the decks you want to work with.
On to Pendulums! With the pendulum you will have a movement answer for yes and a different answer for no. One of the best ways to use a pendulum in this fashion would be to hold the pendulum over the text of the paths you are interested. Ask it if its for you. The answer will be in the movement. Do it over the other text and see the answer. If you don’t get an answer from either of those you may just need to take more time or try another method.
Now not everyone has a stone pendulum. That is ok. I am going to share a secret with you. Ready? Every one can make one themselves. Yes. You can make a pendulum yourself with objects you have around your house. If you have string or something to suspend the item with you can make a pendulum. The best examples are taking a necklace chord unused and put a ring in the center. Then hold the necklace with the ring suspended. Ask it for yes and ask it for no. Presto instant pendulum.
Scrying is the next item on the list. Scrying is basically starting into a reflective surface and relaxing your gaze. After some time an image will appear. There are many methods and ways of accomplishing this methods. You have the fire method which can include candles, campfires, wood stoves, and much more. There is the water method. Here you can use ice, a glass of water, a lake, a pond, or basically any form of water you can think of. Other methods include using a reflective mirror made for that purpose or through using a crystal ball. Other people may be able to use incense smoke of fire smoke to scry. Try it and good luck.
Channeling is the final method that was mentioned as a way of working divination. In channeling you basically call a spirit into your body or mind for the answer. You ask them the question and they will be answer. This is the process that mediums use. If you are not comfortable speaking you can try the same method with automatic writing using a paper and pen to let the spirit basically write down the answers to the question.
So I have given several different ways you can work divination to get an answer. The idea behind divination is that you are working with a spirit or your higher self for an answer. The answer is coming from outside of you. The only real difference between these styles mentioned is the fact that they all use different techniques. The philosophy behind their use and why they work though is basically the same.
Spirits and Gods can be powerful allies in answering questions. They have access to wisdom that we do not have. They can also be very powerful teachers in our spiritual development. All of the above methods are ways of contacting these guides and beings for assistance in making the decision about the path you are about to take. I must be mentioned however the above methods of making a decision with spiritual aids can be used for other situations in life. Here they are just used as tools in choosing your spiritual paths.
Practical decision making tools
I have just spent some time illustrating ways that you can combine looking for a spiritual and religious path with doing active spiritual path work and spiritual development. While these tools are important to be used in working with spiritual choices there are other options. You can use your day to day decision making tools as well to work with this.
What are your day to day decision making tools? Well there are a few. You have pros and cons, evaluating available information on the topic at hand, space and time, economic, and you also have emotional aspects to play into this as well. Anything you would use to make a decision in the rest of your day to day life you can use for spiritual choices as well.
I’m going to start with a basic tool. The pros and cons tool. This tool allows you to list all the good things about taking this path. It also gives you a place to list any issues or problems that could come up because of practicing this path. You can if you feel the need to make a column for places of thoughts that are not an issue or a great thing but just there, or something you are not sure where it goes. That would be the column for that. When you have listed everything you can think of in one page for one path do it for the other path as well. When you have done both take some time to rest before looking at them and comparing the three lists.
The tool of evaluating the amount of available information on a subject is actually quite important when choosing a path to work with. There are some paths out there which have a lot more information on them than others. This may have already been a consideration in the Pros and Cons aspect of the path. For some people the lack of or overwhelming information of a spiritual paths practices can be a key reason in their interest in pursuing it. You should consider this as you look at your options for paths.
The factors of space to practice, time to practice, and the economic aspect may actually all fall together under one thing which is can I practice this path where I am now with what I have now? Some cultures have rituals that require elaborate dances or at least a lot of movement for space to work the spiritual paths. Other paths may work with herbs that are expensive and exotic or out of your reach. How much time will it take to perform the ritual? These are all things to think about. If you can’t effectively perform the rites where you are with what you have is it worth investing your spiritual energy into spirits and Gods that may not respond for lack of traditional rituals?
Finally one thing we all use in our day to day decisions is our emotional reactions. Some of us are going to have stronger emotional reactions to the tales and legends of spirits and Gods than others will. Looking at the emotional reactions we have to thinking about the culture, the myths, and the powers we read about in some cultures may be where we should be looking for answers. Here is a personal example. I for one have always been fascinated by Egyptian Gods and myths as well as their culture. Yet when I read the myths I feel no emotional response. I had no interest previously in looking at the Germanic Gods. However when I read the myths and legends I had an emotional response. This proved to give me insight into my spiritual direction. I urge you to look at your emotional responses to myths and legends as you read them.
Conclusion
In this blog post I have given you several tools to use to make your decisions regarding which paths to study and follow when you are attracted to multiple paths. You can always go back and explore the other paths after you have done some study and practice of the first path you choose. I strongly believe that we can all find truths in every path out there. It is just up to us to find them as individuals.
*Photo found on http://www.alanbrookscrossroads.com/*
H: Heathen practices and me
Heathenism
For many years the only definition of heathen was one who was not Christian. If you look in the dictionary you will still find that as part of the definition of heathen. Today however I am not talking about the dictionary definition. I am talking about how it relates to the modern Pagan culture and the culture of Germanic pagans. My heathenism studies have been a major influence in my path and on my craft as a witch.
The heathens of today are often hard to define. For some people it is an umbrella term for an eclectic Germanic recon path. For other people is a very specific tradition with in the label of Germanic religions. I consider it to be a term for an eclectic approach to being a semi Recon based practitioner.
You may be thinking wait a minute you can’t be both eclectic and a Reconstruction can you? When it comes to the Germanic religions it is more possible. There are several Germanic cultures to choose from. You have the Angels and the Saxons, The Danish, The Norse, The Icelandic, the Franks, and several other tribes. Each tribe had slightly different lore. By studying the lore of all the paths and tribes a person can gain a fuller insight into the lore for Germanic paganism.
It is the Nordic lore which we have the most information from. It was also in Norway and Iceland where the religious practices of the Germanic tribes lasted the longest. Several of the sagas that many heathens use as source texts for their practices and understanding of the culture are preserved in a book titled The Sagas of the Icelanders. These sagas tell of the social structure and the social etiquette. From these sagas we learn how they lived. That is why they are excellent sources to use. The other books which provide sagas and lore about the Gods are:
Saxo Grammaticus: The history of the Danes
,Heimskringla: The life of the Norse Kings
Right now I am in the process of reading Heimskringla. I’ve already gotten some information about lore but not a whole lot. Snorri used the same tale about Odin founding the Kingdom of the Norse in both the prose Edda and in Heimskringla. Both tales are very interesting and explain a bit of the culture of the Gods. Yet my preference is for the origins discussed in the poetic Edda.
My Heathen Practice
My personal heathen practice is more related to the magical practices and the crafts. Witchcraft as we know it ultimately came from the Anglo-Saxon culture. There are three primary deities associated with Magic and witchcraft Odin, Freya,and Loki. Many of the books I have read on Traditional witchcraft have had a Germanic slant. That’s one of the things that started my more invested study and practice with Germanic pagan traditions.
Aside from Raymond Buckland’s Seax Wica there are several other traditions of witchcraft which have a more Germanic leaning.. These books along with the Eddas and Sagas has helped me develop and understand how Germanic magic worked and what the culture was like. As a witch I have found this knowledge and information immensely helpful and informative. I have gained much wisdom from those practices. Yet it is not the only part of my heathen practices.
So what makes me a Heathen? Worship of the Aesir, Vanir, and Jotun. I have accepted the Nine Nobel virtues as part of my moral and ethical guidelines. The Germanic tribes had a concept of Fate of sorts called Wyrd. There is a lot about Wyrd I am still trying to understand and evaluate for myself, I am not discouraged by it though.
The Norse were very much a warrior culture. For them it was about honor and the battle. Yes they had head hunting and other practices that today are considered “Barbaric” but to accept the deities with out accepting an understanding of the culture which worshiped those deities is meaningless. Yes. The Germanic tribes were considered barbarians to the Romans & Greeks, but so were the Celtic tribes. It is only by understanding or trying to understand the culture in which the deities were worshiped that we can truly understand how the religion and spirituality of those times worked.
My interest as an anthropologist really plays into why I work so hard to reconstruct what I can. It is actually through historical sources such as the Sagas of the Kings and warriors and the few archeological finds that we have any concept of what that culture was like. The practice of heathenism also plays deeply into my desire to connect to something from my blood ancestry. For me it was sort of embracing a part of my history and understanding where my family origins were.
What my heathen practice entails
I have not fully developed a comprehensive unified product of witchcraft and Germanic paganism. While witchcraft is a part of my worship and practice of Germanic paganism, there is a lot more to it than that. My heathen practice entails doing a specific form of ritual called a Blot to the Gods. It involves prayers and obviously magic.
I am looking into learning more about rune lore so I can try my hand at runic magic. Working with the runes would also allow me to learn the mysteries of the Runes. Rune magic is actually one of the priary forms of magic used in Germanic paganism. It was gifted to Odin after he sacrificed himself to himself on the tree of knowledge and wisdom. There were several sets made I know of one for humans, one for the Gods, and one for the Dwarves.
My practice also entails a lot of study. There is probably more study than worship at times, and that works for me. My worship is actually often times more impromptu than it is for specific holidays or occasions. I have even developed my own ritual structure for their worship which they don’t seem to mind which is a combination of a Blot and a typical religious witchcraft ritual. One of the reasons I study so much is there is a lot of lore to pour over and assimilate and there is also a lot of history and multiple translations of sacred texts to read.
The path to wisdom is never ending. This is just one place you may also be able to find wisdom and truth.
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D: Dedication
Dedication
The subject of this post is something that I actually have to think long and hard about. Lately when I think about it I can’t honestly say that I have been fulfilling my honest statement of being dedicated to serving my readers and myself on my personal spiritual journey. The last few weeks have been full of self doubt and self assessment. To be honest I even asked myself what right I had to run and even continue to post on a blog dedicated to helping newbies and seekers find their own paths.
I honestly felt that there was no reason for me to continue posting this blog. I have had a crisis of self esteem and self worth. It just hit me recently that while I may not be exactly where I thought I would be at this point in my life I am exactly where Fate has dictated I belong. This for me was a central part of accepting my current situation and current feelings of worthlessness.
During this time I have had to take a look at where I stand spiritually. I have to admit I have never completed any training beyond my Reiki 1 certification. I am proud to be a dedicant in the Temple Tradition. This to me also shows and states quite a bit about the truth regarding myself. I consider myself dedicated to the truths of witchcraft and finding my own path.
So this post is about the process of dedication and what exactly dedication means. It is actually something that I consider several times a year as I look at my studies in witchcraft, paganism, philosophy, and magic. With everything that I want to do in my life I have to make sure I study diligently .
Dedication or Initiation?
One of the most common things that new witches find in books on solitary witchcraft is a self initiation ritual. A self initiation ritual does not work. One can not self initiate. To be initiated means that you are being brought into the religion or tradition. You can not bring yourself into a religion or tradition. You can however perform a dedication ritual announcing to the Gods and yourself that you are going to be following their path.
As a person seeks their spiritual path they are going to have to decide at some point if they want to a solitary practitioner (alone or maybe with a close friend or family member or if they want to seek out a group. There are benefits to both of these choices. I have never been a member of a group so I can’t speak for the benefits, though I am seeking one for fellowship and joint worship. Groups may call for initiation rituals (Any British Traditional Witchcraft coven will require it and other traditions are also initiatory). This is choice will found the rest of your path for the near future.
Types of dedication rituals
As dedication rituals are personal there are many different ways and many different types of doing a dedication ritual. When I am exploring the worship of a religion I have not studied I perform a different type of dedication ritual than I do when I committing myself to the worship of specific set of deities. All of these dedications are important rituals to be taken seriously. Each type signifies a different level of commitment to a relationship with deities.
The first type of dedication is one of an introduction. An introduction ritual is one where you are telling the Gods that you want to learn about them and their worship. That you are opening yourself to them and that you are finding your path. In this way you are not saying that you are going to stick around forever but that you are exploring and wishing to get to know them.
Here is a simple introduction ritual. It is this ritual I have used when I introduced myself to the Germanic pantheons. I will make similar rituals when I go back and study Hellenic Paganism, Roman Paganism, and Kemetic recon. This ritual is only used when I am simply saying “Hi. I’m…. I want to learn more about you and will try to honor you as I study about you, your culture, and your history”. For me it is a sign of respect to introduce yourself before you start blindly studying and working on a base relationship.
Introductory Ritual:
Supplies:
White Candle
Offering of milk,ale,red wine, or incense
Sea Salt
Table to work as an altar (see Altar entry 1 and Altar entry 2 )
Water
Ritual:
Place your hands over the water and state “By water’s natural cleansing I cleanse this water”
Take a pinch of pure sea salt and place it in the water. State “With salt this water is pure”
Take your finger and stir the water together creating a sacred holy water.
Walk around the ritual space and state “By the purity of this sacred water this space in prepared for ritual”.
Go to the altar and light the candle.
Here is where the ritual is going to essentially different for each person. Every culture and every religious tradition out there will have a different sort of prayer style. Some prayers are invocatory and others are more free form. This is where a seekers early research should pay off as they should have some sort of idea as to what rituals the Gods of that pantheon like. This is where you will state in ritual and prayer you intent to learn about them and is the first step in developing a relationship with the deities.
Say the appropriate type of prayer for the pantheon and culture in mind
Sit in silence for a few minutes.
Go to the what ever you are offering.
Place your hands over the offering and state “This is my gift to you may it nourish you and bring your much joy”
Pour the offering into the plate or bowl.
Keep the offering out for a while letting the liquid be absorbed into the atmosphere or our it onto the ground the next day
You have to keep in mind that was just a simple outline for some one who has no real experience or any real knowledge of ritual structure and organization. The more experience you have the more complexity you can add to the ritual if you so choose. This ritual was simple because it is simply an introduction and they can be very simple.
The second type of dedication ritual is one that is sort of like a marriage. You are committing yourself to your path for actual service to the Gods. During this point in time you will have many trials and tests as you figure out your role and what the deities want from you. Some its teaching, others it’s healing. Some people never quite find exactly what the deities they worship want out of them for service, so they do what comes naturally to them or they simply continue to hold rituals in honor the memory of the Gods they worship.
One thing I did for the longest time to help me gain confidence and keep on track with my spiritual studies and practices was to do a renewal ritual. This ritual always renewed my spirit in the process. It also always brought me back into myself and into my place in my studies. It also always seemed to bring me closer to the deities I had introduced myself to.
Recomitment ritual:
Supplies:
White Candle
Offering of milk,ale,red wine, or incense
Sea Salt
Table to work as an altar (see Altar entry 1 and Altar entry 2 )
Water
Ritual:
Place your hands over the water and state “By water’s natural cleansing I cleanse this water”
Take a pinch of pure sea salt and place it in the water. State “With salt this water is pure”
Take your finger and stir the water together creating a sacred holy water.
Walk around the ritual space and state “By the purity of this sacred water this space in prepared for ritual”.
Go to the altar and light the candle.
Say the appropriate type of prayer for the pantheon and culture in mind
Sit in silence for a few minutes.
Go to the what ever you are offering.
Place your hands over the offering and state “This is my gift to you may it nourish you and bring your much joy”
Pour the offering into the plate or bowl.
As you place your offering state your promise to start serving with more honesty and more dedication. Announce proudly that you are giving yourself to service to these Gods for however long you are planning to keep at this level of service.
Look for any signs in your dreams or day to day life that the deities are listening to you and ready to accept your service to them.
Keep the offering out for a while letting the liquid be absorbed into the atmosphere or our it onto the ground the next day.
The ritual you see out there is one of my reasons for having such a strong connection with the Germanic deities. I have spent a lot of time working ritual in honor of the Germanic deities. It has fostered my relationships with several different deities in the Germanic pantheon. In some ways this is a connection to my believed ancestral path.
The last name of Boynton is very Germanic. There is a shire in Yorkshire England which holds the name Boynton. My research has indicated that this shire would have been under control of the Saxxons. This is a place I need to visit when I next visit England. I mean a shire which has the same name as my biological surname? How can I not visit that place? In which case the Germanic pantheon (which includes the Anglo’s, The Saxon’s, The Franks, The Norse, and several more tribes) would be a home coming for me which is what it felt like to me.
The third type of ritual is one that indicates a more serious commitment. In this final dedication ritual you are completely giving yourself to everything any anything that the deities you worship desire. This is a very difficult and very important type of ritual that will cement your future. Here you are asking to become an active priest or priestess.
The final dedication is one of an initiation from the Gods. When witches talk about how only the Gods can initiate and make some one a priest or priestess of their path this is the sort of ritual that they have in mind. This is a life changing ritual and is one of deep meaning. It is this ritual where you finally accept what it is that the Gods truly desires.
This is where one becomes a true servant of the Gods. You are not only doing rituals for the Gods, but you are also offering services to the community. You may start doing more volunteer work, you may teach a few people, you may even become an interfaith Chaplin. In accepting the true mantle of what it means to be a member of the clergy (a true priest and priestess) one has given all that they are to their deities.
Remember when I said that a person would have to choose between being a solitary practitioner and as a member of a group and how I mention that BTW requires an initiation of sorts? The level of commitment that this dedication entails is the same as an initiation into a BTW Coven. How can I say that with out actually being initiated into BTW? It’s simple. I have enough friends within various BTW traditions both with valid initiations and one oath breaker related tradition to say for sure that initiation into BTW makes you a priestess of those deities. That means that within your coven and in your day to day life you are serving the needs of those Gods in what ever way they need from you. That is the sort of commitment that this level of dedication and initiation requires.
I am actually at this point in the development of my own witchcraft tradition. I have yet to formalize the arrangement through a ritual. This is something I am working on. I have some what reluctantly accepted the mantled of priestess. Perhaps this is the only way I can develop access to the mysteries that my Gods have instore for me. For this reason I can not give a sample ritual. If you are looking for some ideas you might want to look at:
- A witches Bible By Stewart Farrar
- What witches do by Stewart Farrar
- Solitary Wicca by Scott Cunningham
- Witchcraft for Today by Gerald Gardner
- Wicca for One by Raymond Buckland
- The Outer Temple of Witchcraft by Christopher Penczack
Pagan Blog Project: B: breath The essence of Life and much more
Breath:
The essence of life and much more
No real introduction to this post. I am just going to cut to the chase, This is a post I have been meaning to write for two weeks because there are essentially two key points that I wanted to make with this topic that would benefit two separate posts. One is on the origin of it’s spiritual component and the other is on a magical aid and as a trance inducing practice. Like I said both of these posts would be related in that they are both centered around the concept of breath and what it means.
One of the reasons I have both felt the need to write these posts and have been unable to complete or even begin starting these posts is that here in Maine its the middle of winter and that’s bad news for asthmatics like myself. If I am struggling to breathe properly it makes sense that while I would both be in the perfect state to explain the properties of Breath as life I am also not in the best states to think of anything but focusing on my own breath.
It is with both of these things in consideration (and the personal stress I was feeling for not posting for two weeks at this point) that I have decided to write this post. I have a lot of different sources to pull on how breath is both life and is also counted to be an aspect and an essence of the soul (though I’ll try to give enough info for you to create your own opinion). This is a wide topic so let’s start with science and the birth of a human baby and the “actual full death” of a human.
Breath in the human life cycle
After a mother has given birth to her child the doctor slaps the baby on the ass to begin crying and thus start breathing. A human is not considered alive if they are not breathing. If a baby does not cry with that action they are not alive and thus need work to be able to breathe or may be considered dead. In the elderly a person’s whole mind and spirit could be gone yet their body kept alive through food and automatic breathing considered “life support”.
The ability to breath and to have the freedom to some what control one’s breath has always been part of what makes a person alive. So long as a person is breathing and their body can “physically” function even with the support of machines a person is technically considered alive. This is a thought and a concept that has been buried deep within human cultures and thoughts for many reasons and a lot of it relates back to lore and mythology.
I mention that this has been buried deep and that would be correct. There are many different mythologies around the creation of man. There are two central themes I have found that in the creation of humanity. One is that we have been physically created out of the earth by the hands of the Gods. The other is that it wasn’t until the Gods gave us breath that we became fully alive, even if other Gods had contributed other factors to what made a human being, we were not alive until we were given breath by the Gods.
There are two examples that I can think of that support this though. . While many people may not be able to understand and accept this, when it comes to the creation and what actually brought humans to life Christians and those who follow Germanic paganism have one thing in common: The breath of life from their High God.
I’ll start with the creation myth of humans from the Poetic Edda (one of the Norse and Germanic sacred texts):”
17. Then from the throng | did three come forth,
From the home of the gods, | the mighty and gracious;
Two without fate | on the land they found,
Ask and Embla, | empty of might.18. Soul they had not, | sense they had not,
Heat nor motion, | nor goodly hue;
Soul gave Othin, | sense gave Hönir,
Heat gave Lothur | and goodly hue.”
Here Soul is often equated with physical life. The warmth of our body and fact that it actually reflects life was the gift of Honir. Two of the elements that make humans alive were given from one deity. The abilities to make sense/understand the world is one of the gifts of the Gods. That gift was given by Honir. Finally we have Odin’s gift. Other translations list Odin’s gift last as it is not until breath and life is actually given to Ash and Embla that the first humans come to life.
As you can see from my analysis soul and breath in Germanic lore are associated. The breath of life is important. It enters our body at birth and leaves at Death. The breath can be seen as being the vessel for the soul. It enters at birth and leave on death. That s what the soul is. In some ways the soul and the mind and the breath can all be linked exactly to life. The heart starts working before the mind, and the breath.
In the book of Genisis humanity is not aware or alive until God gives them the breath of life:
5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.
7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
So that is the connection in the creation of humanity. In both cultures humans were born from the earth in some form. In Christianity it’s from dust. In Germanic lore it’s from trees that we were born. In both sets of lore it is also only through the gift of the breath of life that humanity becomes aware and able to live.
Mystic Echoes 