The nomadic hunter-gatherer had a very homogenous intelligence level. Everyone was pretty much of the same intelligence level, because the society was one where everyone had to know about the same and have the same abilities. It promoted the “Jack of All Trades” (and master of them all…), forcing everyone to perform well on all fields.

Poor craftsmen would fail, because they would make poor hunting gear and other equipment, and would fail when hunting and fishing, or when building clothes and shelter. Poor planners would fail too, because their prey would get away, they would not find the right place to fish, etc. Poor gatherers would fail too, because they would not find the right or enough herbs, nuts, sea shells, roots etc.

The above is true, but yes, it is simplified to make a point. In reality, the ones with poor skills and abilities would simply more often fail. The result was that the intelligence and ability level was forcibly maintained at a high level. Yes, maintained by the force of Mother Nature.

The nomadic hunter-gatherers were few and note that they had no different social classes. Everyone was the same, because everyone had the same skills and abilities. Those that differed from the rest in a negative way would die out. If not immediately, then over time. Because the families were all left alone, in the wilderness, and any and all incapable families would more rarely succeed out there.

***

Agriculture changed this for several reasons. First because it became easier to produce enough food for many. They didn’t have to “leave the weak for the wolves” in the forest, in order to survive. They didn’t as often experience death from cold or starvation or predators, because of lacking abilities. Secondly because the possession of land became important. Thirdly because different abilities became more important. That is: specialization became a factor.

Specialization is a positively charged word, but note that by specialization I mean that some became good at performing only certain tasks. Often tedious tasks, like harvesting or planting or grinding of grains. Tasks that required very little intelligence or skill,and those who performed those tasks were untrained in most other skills.

With food enough for many, and with the need for individuals able to perform tedious tasks, the less intelligent all of a sudden became a valuable resource. They could allow them to live, because they had food enough for them too, and they were just as useful in society as the others – because they were able to perform those tedious tasks. Yes, I say able, because a more intelligent person will much faster and more easily get bored performing tedious tasks. They are, in effect, not able to. If forced to, they will at best become sad – possibly chronically depressed.

When harvest failed or herd animals got sick or died, to avoid large scale famine the farmers would simply put solve this by taking the harvest or animals from others. By force. Other consequences was of course tyranny (one man controlled the land producing food, and the food itself), slavery (you could kidnap others and make them work on your fields or with your animals under threat of violence and death), and also the introduction of different social classes: the owners versus the workers. The farmer and his slaves. You saw the introduction of a warrior class; men hired by the owner to protect his land and to enslave others or ensure obedience in the ranks of the workers. Men hired to enslave and steal from others or indeed to protect the owner’s lands and people from others doing that.

***

With different social classes we saw an active cultivation of different abilities in different groups of society. Owners needed to remain fairly smart, to organize society, to predict future events accurately, to understand and prepare for different challenges, etc. The warriors needed to be obedient and capable. The workers needed to be obedient and “able to perform tedious tasks”. Yes, the latter is a nice way of saying: “they needed the workers to be not too smart.” Ergo: they needed the workers to be stupid.

Now, this didn’t change man dramatically over night, but this process started some 7000 years ago here in Europe, and earlier elsewhere, and with time the differences became more and more noticeable. The owners remained fairly smart, although not as smart as the hunter-gatherers, because agriculture and later on civilization reduced their abilities too, as explained elsewhere. The warriors became more and more obedient (which can be a type of stupidity too, I may add….), and the workers dumber and dumber. So dumb that in our own age, the average worker is borderline retarded… and utterly slave-minded and incapable. Only able to obey and slave (work for others). Only able to perform simple tasks, and having close to zero personal initiative. They are content being entertained, when not slaving for their masters.

Yes, today we need people to be really stupid, because so many tasks are so utterly tedious, and we also need people to be extremely obedient, because otherwise they would not have performed them (like shoot rubber bullets on children only because your authorities tell you too, or throw gas grenades at pregnant women only because your authorities tell you too). “Don’t ask any questions! Don’t even wonder why you do that!” “Just obey!”

***

Then came Communism, or if you like; Marxism. I will use the Soviet Union as an example, because what happened there is so evident to those who look at it. First of all they removed (killed…) or enslaved (forced into GULags or working class jobs) the elite of the Russian society (the smarter owners). Secondly they removed the barriers that had previously prevented intermarriage between the social classes. In the USSR the “owner” would marry the “slave” as often as not. They were encouraged to, directly or indirectly. “There are no social classes! We are all the same!”

The result (after only some generations) of this mixing of classes was a man not smart enough to perform the tasks of the owner, but still a man too smart to perform the tasks of the worker. This of course is code for “a criminal”…. one just smart enough to understand that he can break the rules and get away with it.

Now, not all ex-Soviet peoples are criminals, of course, but a disproportionately large amount of their populations are criminally corrupt. Russia is not “by chance” the most corrupt country in all of Europe, and competing for the title of the most corrupt in the entire world… Western Europe is not flooded by criminal East Europeans “by chance”. This is the result of the Communism they have been under for 70 or so years.

Smart people still exist there, they are just fewer. Really stupid people (average workers) still exist there – and their numbers might actually have been increased. But the amount of “socially mixed” individuals have been dramatically increased by Communism, and the average intelligence has been lowered. Thanks to Marxism.

***

Here in “the West” we have had a similar reduction of overall quality of man, not just because of of the general negative effects of agriculture and civilization, but also because of the equally bad Capitalism and it’s cultivation of greed at the expense of all qualities of man, but in a different way. Not in a better way, nor any less, but in a different way. I might discuss that another time, but today I just wished to point out that social classes are a result of agriculture and civilization, both utterly destructive to mankind, and the mixing of these social classes don’t bring all up to the same or indeed a better level, but instead drag most down to the lowest levels of mankind. That of a criminally corrupt individual or that or that of a seriously stupid worker.

If you are from the working class yourself, I can throw you a bone here, and remind you of the fact that if you are better than the average worker, you will rise up from that cesspool and no longer be working class.

Thank you for reading.

V.

In a sense, the object of life is the accumulation of spiritual force. This force is in Scandinavia called Hamingja, and accumulates through honourable behaviour in life. It follows you into death, and then can be re-claimed (again) in the next life. You can add to this Hamingja, or you can weaken it, by your own actions. The more Hamingja you have, the more luck you will have in life, the more successful you will be; the more brave, wise, intuitive, honest, kind, skilled etc. In the end, you will be so blessed by the gods, so to speak, that you in effect have become a superior being, a deity incarnate – and can use this sorcerous power for the betterment of your kin.

In order to re-claim your Hamingja (luck, spirit and sorcerous power), that you possessed in your previous life, you need to remember previous lives, as I have explained before. But today I will remind you of the fact that your Hamingja, your guardian spirit, is linked to events, peoples, locations, music, feelings, ideas and…. material objects.

This time I will focus on the latter; the spirit in the material objects.

You see, we so often hear Orientalists talk about “spirituality” and about “rejecting materialism”. They hold as an ideal that you reject material comforts, material wealth, material goods and even material life itself. In effect, they reject everything material, in favour of some vague and by them unexplained “spiritual existence” beyond matter. But in European Paganism (Animism), the spirit is in the matter itself. Like your spirit is in you, and when you die, your spirit can only be found again in the places you visited, the people you knew, the music you listened to, the ideas you had, the love others had for you and in your material possessions. In your bones. To regain your spirit, you need to collect the many pieces, and put them together, to rebuild you. To reclaim yourself. To become you again. Fully and wholly.

So you visit the sacred places, that you knew in previous lives. You hear about the people you know, listen to the same music, learn about yours ideas and the love others had for you, and you take the material objects you used to own – and through this remember yourself. The more you reclaim, the merrier.

Yes, of course: this is the reason why our forbears buried their dead with their material belongings. These belongings possessed the spirit of the dead, that he could repossess when he returned to reclaim his belongings from previous lives. The more important these material objects had been to him, the more important they were when he returned to reclaim them, for his reincarnation as himself.

***

When you own something, an item, that you care about, this is not a bad thing at all. When you grow to love a possession of yours, with all your heart, this does not mean that you are a “materialist” or indeed a shallow person. When you do, you fill the item with your spirit, and make it a vessel for your own immortality. You enable yourself to re-connect to your Hamingja in your next life, through that very item. Treasure it…. keep it with you, even into death!

On the other hand, when you reject all objects as “base materialism”, and deem it lowly to develop feelings for any type of objects, you also cut off that link to your future self (and to your past self!). You close the door for your self, to your own spiritual force. And instead of reincarnating in your next life, you leave behind all that you have accumulated of spiritual force through the time. You have to start anew… with clean sheets.

Well, you can still find back to much of yourself via sacred locations, music, etc., but you will always drop something, lose something, if you reject these (to you: sacred) objects. Why would you do that?

The (to him) sacred possessions of a dead man:

And let me remind you: only the honourable, the good (god/divine…) in you, is part of your spirit. The dishonourable is forgotten forever, cast into Hel (“hidden”), when you die. It becomes a shadow, that will be banished by the light – and thus vanish forever. We do not speak ill of the dead…. we forget their flaws, and remember only the good about them.

***

So, dear reader, know that if you have an emotional tie to an object, perhaps a seemingly irrational love, then this object is actually important to you. Spiritually. Know also that you will find back to yourself much easier, in future lives, if you do learn to love and cherish items in this life.

But of course, the same applies to places, people, music and so forth too. Whatever matters to you, whatever you have appreciated in this life, will help you find back to yourself in the next. It will all help you reclaim your Hamingja. Your spirit.

Thank you for reading,

V.

If you are anything like me, and you want a physical copy of the books you read, you can find a copy of this one for a very reasonable price on Amazon. If you can bare reading this entire text online, and live without ownership of this booklet, you can now find it below, where I have included the booklet in it’s entirety.

If you have not read The Secret of the She-Bear by Marie Cachet or the other parts of Paganism Explained, before you read this booklet, I advice you to do so first. I am convinced that any misunderstandings that you may have will be removed if you do.

The text you find in this blog post is copyrighted, so you are not allowed to reproduce it or parts of it for any commercial reasons, but you are free to share a link to this blog post anywhere and to anyone you like, so that they can get access to the text for free.

Varg Vikernes, 22nd of July, 2020

Paganism Explained

Part V:

Ásgarðr, Vanaheimr & the Nine Worlds of Hel

By Varg Vikernes & Marie Cachet

® & © 2019 Marie Cachet

All Rights Reserved

Table of Contents

3 Rune Lore

5 Reincarnation

6 The Sacred

7 Divine Power

11 About Patterns in our Rune Lore

15 Ásgarðr

20 Vanaheimr

23 The Æsir-Vanir War

30 The Nine Worlds of Hel

34 Hel

36 The Seventh Father in the House

42 Butter-Goat

57 Sources for this book

Rune Lore

We tend to differentiate between myths and fairy tales, as if they are two completely different things altogether. The myths deal with the gods and their world in a poetic language, and the fairy tales seem to deal with ordinary people and their world with prose. As we have showed you before, in ‘Paganism Explained’ part 2 and 3, they contain the exact same riddles and secrets.

The myths explain reincarnation from a religious perspective, whilst the fairy tales explain the same from an older traditional perspective. The myths are younger than the fairy tales and came with religion (which in term came with agriculture, in the Neolithics).

As explained in ‘Sorcery and Religion in Ancient Scandinavia’ the animist tradition co-existed with the religious tradition. The latter never replaced the former. More than anything, the religion just supplemented the old tradition. It was still the same, only with some things changed, like anthropomorphised spirits. Then when Christianity arrived, a religion from the Hebrew desert, it crashed and clashed first and foremost with the Pagan religion, because this was it’s direct competitor, and not as much with the older Pagan tradition.

Because of that, the fairy tales managed to better fly under the Christian radar, so to speak, and survived to a much larger extent than the myths did.

We still have both myths and fairy tales, and even though they are slightly different from each other in format and style, we recognize the same patterns in them, and can tell that they tell the same story and in essence are the same. Together they make up our mythology. Our Rune Lore.

Reincarnation

As we have already showed you in this series of booklets, our myths and fairy tales tend to deal with one single topic: reincarnation. They describe it with much the same metaphors, but this way or that way, with focus on this or that. But they describe the same; the reincarnation.

The question then arises: “Why so many myths about the same?”

The purpose of the myth was to give the child an opportunity to understand it. If he did not, he would later on be told another myth, and then another myth, etc., until he would be able to see the pattern, and when he did, he would understand them all at once.

In order to do so, in order to achieve this, they made many myths about the same, many fairy tales about the same.

Therefore, when we explain these myths and fairy tales today, we repeat ourselves. We end up telling you about reincarnation, over and over again. Because that is the purpose of the Rune Lore (myths and the fairy tales); to tell you about reincarnation, its purpose, its function, its meaning. Its significance to us all.

The Sacred

You can treat amnesia in a patient today by showing him items that meant something to him before the amnesia, by having people he cared about talk to him and by bringing him to locations that he was emotionally connected to somehow. Likewise, you can enter the burial mound of your forebears and see the items they were buried with, touch and feel them, you can expose yourself to situations that your forebears were in and you can go to places where they lived or that were important to them emotionally.

Therefore we have sacred object, like Yule trees and Yule decorations. Therefore we have high festivals and rituals. Therefore we have temples. To lift the amnesia of death.

Therefore we have all these myths and fairy tales about reincarnation. They are instructions on how to reincarnate.

Divine Power

Many think reincarnation gives you the ability to literally remember previous lives. Your name, profession, events, loved ones, address, cause of death etc., and tend to ask the question: “Who were you in your previous life?”

Now, I don’t rule out concrete memories from previous lives, but I don’t think this is the purpose of reincarnation or the purpose of learning about it.

You don’t even remember everything from your own life. Not from your childhood, not from last year, not from a week ago, not from yesterday, and some times in relation to some things not even from earlier the same day. Memory has a purpose, and although we don’t actually understand everything surrounding this today, we must relate to the fact that we don’t remember everything. We easily and often fast slip into forgetfulness. Only a reminder will bring back the forgotten memories.

But what if you in an instant remembered all the joys and victories of your life; would it not lift your spirit if you did? There and then, light up and banish all darkness and shadows from your mind?

If you lived with this uplifting sensation permanently burnt into your mind and marrow, would it not make you a braver, saner, kinder, safer and in short a better person?

…and there you have it: the purpose of reincarnation and of spending so much time and energy on it.

The sum of all these joys and victories of all your forebears, every single one of them contributing to it more or less, is what our forebears called Hamingja (“walking in shapes”). This is what walks in shapes, follows your kin through the ages and gives you good luck in life.

But is luck even real?

The Norwegian term for luck: hell means “whole”, “healthy”, “unharmed”, but derives from Norse heill, proto-Nordic *hailagaR, from PIE *kolio, from the root *kel-, meaning “to conceal”, “to cover”.

Perhaps interestingly, it derives from the same PIE root as the -höll in Valhöll derives from, the same as the deity name Hel derives from.

You could say that luck covers and conceals you from the darkness of this world, and keeps you whole, in good health and unharmed.

In Roman mythology luck is personified in Fortuna, the goddess of good fortune. Her festival was on Midsummer Day, and she corresponds to our Freyja.

But is luck real? I think so yes. I can probably not prove it, but experience tells me that I am right. I leave it you to decide whether or not you believe in it too.

In relation to our Rune Lore whether or not we believe luck is real is not relevant: Those who made the myths and fairy tales did believe it was real, so we need to read/hear the myths with that in mind.

About Patterns in our Rune Lore

When the Christians in Scandinavia first started to talk about our myths, in the 19^th century, they tried to either belittle the Native European myths, or they tried to Christianize them. They were taught that for a mythology to be worth anything it needed to contain a creation, an Armageddon and of course morality. So even though none of this existed in the Scandinavian mythology, they tried to find it and interpreted everything in light of this. Or rather, in this pitch black darkness…

Fumbling about in this Judeo-Christian shadow, they failed to see the real meaning.

What we can tell from our Rune Lore, from our myths and fairy tales, is that not only is there no ‘morality’ in them, but the lack of morality is used as a means for an end. The children were, as I have already told you, meant to understand these runes. When they did not, they were told more fairy tales or more myths. Again: because they were meant to understand them. They would if they discovered a pattern.

Let me give you an example.

E. g. the protagonist in the Scandinavian fairy tale about Askeladden who enters an eating contest with a troll. He initially enters the forest of a troll to cut wood and is caught stealing. Yes, he trespasses on somebody else’s property in order to steal from him. When caught he tricks the troll into stabbing itself to death, by cutting its own stomach open. He then proceeds to steal all the troll’s gold and silver – and leaves the rightful owner of both the forest and the precious metals to bleed to death in his own home.

The protagonist is not acting according to normally accepted behaviour. This is a pattern found in all our myths and fairy tales.

So when you understand this, you will realize that the myth or fairy tale has another meaning and purpose. And that is a means used to help the child find that real meaning and purpose.

Morals are not found in mythology, but in our Native European instincts. You don’t need to learn it, and if you fail to behave morally, Mother Nature effectively removed you from procreation. Also, the tribe would react more directly to your immorality, first with banishment for some time, usually a year and a day, and then if you still failed to behave (after you returned home), they would remove you permanently.

Another means used for the same purpose is the use of impossibilities. What described in the myths and fairy tales is impossible in real life. A female troll carrying her head under her arm? Eight legged horses that can fly through the air? Gods that change into birds or flies? Wagons pulled by goats flying through the air? Come on! Anyone with the most basic understanding of reality, even a child, can tell that this is impossible!

No, they did not believe in these things in the past. They knew perfectly well that this was impossible.

…and when you know that, you can find the real meaning instead. Basic deduction. You strip all other possibilities, you end up with only one possible solution. You have to find it, in the end.

If you still don’t find it after all those chances and all that help?

Vituð ér enn, eða hvat? (“Do you still don’t know enough [to find the meaning] or what?”

Sigh.

Ásgarðr

Before we start talking about Ásgarðr and the other divine realms I will ask you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about this topic. Ignore it all. Whatever you heard or read in a book or online, forget it. Instead assume that you know nothing and then we together will look at what the original sources actually say. Not what Christian scholars claim the sources tell us, but straight forward: what do they actually and in themselves tell us?

If you continue reading assuming you already know what Ásgarðr is, you will probably not be able to learn much. To fill your head with the truth, it cannot be half-filled with lies already. Pour out the lies first.

Ignorance is not the worst. The worst is to think you know when you don’t. So let us start from scratch.

We will start with the Norse and the Etymological dictionary, to find out what Ásgarðr is.

The term áss (plural æsir, feminine ásynja) is normally understood as a Norse term for ‘god’. But the term derives from younger proto-Nordic ans, from older proto-Nordic ansuR, from proto-Germanic ansuz, from the proto-Indo-European root *ans-/*and-, meaning simply ‘breath’. So it doesn’t actually mean ‘god’. It means ‘breath’, just like the Latin term spiritus does. We are just told by the scholars that it means ‘god’, because the Æsir are understood as ‘gods’.

Garðr means ‘yard’, ‘farm’ or ‘world/home’.

So although we have it presented to us as “the world of the gods”, it actually means “the world of those with a breath”. And who has a breath? Yes, the living. It is not some fancy world in the sky, but the world of the living. Ásgarðr is our world, that we live and breathe in.

We learn from Hymiskviða that:

7.

Fóru drjúgum

dag þann fram

Ásgarði frá,

unz til Egils kvámu;

hirði hann hafra

horngöfgasta;

hurfu at höllu,

er Hymir átti.

7.

Far they travelled

that day

from Ásgarðr

to Egill they came.

He housed he-goats

with beautiful horns;

they went

to Hymir’s hall.

What this says is not that the gods travelled somewhere in space or from some divine realm, but that they… died. They left the world of the living (those with a breath), so they pretty much had to die. No breath, no human life. Simple. When we know what Ásgarðr really is, it cannot be misunderstood… in theory.

Hymir is also known as Ægir (‘sea’) and in mythology ‘the sea’ is always a metaphor for the amniotic fluid. You don’t believe me? Ok. You will see later that I am right.

Hymir is a word game with Ymir, which means “the twin”, and as explained in ‘Paganism Explained Part III’ and in ‘The Secret of the She-Bear’, the twin is the placenta-ancestor. The giant/dragon that has to be slain, when you are born; you cut its neck, the umbilical cord, and the placenta dies. The monster’s head is cut off.

The he-goats with golden horns are mentioned because they are instrumental to the quest. The Æsir are there to get a new cauldron for themselves. A new womb that can bring them back to live. They travel to Hymir because he has such a cauldron, but also the very important he-goats with golden horns in his hall. The he-goats are the absolutely necessary adrenaline, Cernunnos/Loki/Pan, as talked about in ‘Paganism Explained Part III’.

The other myths where Ásgarðr is (briefly) mentioned talk about Ásgarðr in the same sense: it’s a place the Æsir travel to (from Hel or Jötunnheimr) or from (to go to Hel or Jötunnheimr).

So Ásgarðr is not some “Heavenly realm” in the sky, as proposed by the Christian scholars. It is our own world; the world of those with a breath.

As for the divine homes found inside Ásgarðr, Valhöll is thoroughly described in Paganism Explained IV. What the other homes are were explained in the book ‘Sorcery and Religion in Ancient Scandinavia’ and will be briefly repeated later in this booklet.

Vanaheimr

Then you have that other world of deities mentioned in the Scandinavian mythology, Vanaheimr, where – according to modern scholars – another race of gods lived; the Vanir.

The Vanir are the twins Freyr and Freyja, and their father Njörðr.

But let us first dissect the term Vanaheimr. Vanir is a plural form of masculine vanr, meaning ‘water’. The feminine form of the term is dís (pluralis dísir), meaning ‘woman’. The latter is also related to the term dýs, meaning ‘small burial mound’.

Heimr means simply ‘home’. So Vanaheimr is ‘the home of water’, related to women and ‘small burial mounds’. Ok.

With all of that in mind, one can easily think of water as amniotic fluid, found in women, when they are pregnant and have a belly looking like a small burial mound. Let us wait a bit with that though.

What about the Vanir/Dísir living there? Who and what are they?

Let us take Freyja first. A deity linked to the Moon and the burial mound, the most beautiful of all the goddesses and the one all the ettins want. Her name means ‘seed’, and the Moon is an obvious metaphor for eggs. So that’s real easy: Freyja is the egg in the woman.

The ettins trying to kidnap her is the endometrium, a carpet of crystallized blood, catching the egg in the womb of the woman. They are ‘frost ettins’ because the blood is crystallized. If the egg is not fertilized they catch and wash the egg out from the womb of the woman – in form of fire ettins ([not crystallized] menstrual blood).

….and yes, this is Jötunnheimr (‘home of the ettins’). One of the places the deities travel to or from.

Her twin brother is Freyr, whose name also means ‘seed’, and yes, this is the spermatozoid fertilizing the egg. We have it explained rather clearly in Skírnismál where Freyr sends his servant, Skírnir (‘shining one’), equipped with Freyr’s sword (his manhood), down to Gerð (‘belt’, ‘equipment’), to propose to her from him. We here see Freyja as Gerð, and yes, she is found in the ‘belt’ area of the woman. She rejects him, but finally accepts when threatened with a magic wand. If she does not accept, she will be washed out with the menstrual blood, by the ettins – as an unfertilized egg.

When Gerð accepts Freyr, he still has to wait for her to marry him for a few days. Perhaps because it takes some time for the spermatozoid to attach itself to the egg.

Their father, Njörðr, is the deity of the fertile sea, the amniotic fluid, where the fertilized egg grows into a human being. His ship is the placenta, that they ride in the ‘sea’.

So whilst Ásgarðr is the world of the living, Vanaheimr is the womb of the woman, when she is pregnant.

The Æsir-Vanir War

Now that we understand that Ásgarðr is the world of the living and Vanaheimr is the womb of the woman, then how can we explain the mythic war between the Æsir and the Vanir?

What we have commonly learnt, from scholars, is that this describes a meeting of different races of gods, and that they entered a multicultural mode and ended up in a harmonious race-mixed society. Or we have learnt that this describes how a feminine fertility cult in the Germanic area was invaded by a more aggressive and manly warrior cult, and of that this is supported by the Indo-European invasion hypothesis. Or the other way around, that this supports this hypothesis.

The first of these hypotheses is just a wild speculation intended to support (and motivated by) modern anti-European lie-propaganda. There is no evidence whatsoever to support this hypothesis. On the contrary; we see a continuous tradition in the Germanic area from the Stone Age.

The same fact disproves the Indo-European hypothesis, as this too suggests that some sort of different cult came to the Germanic area and either replaced their tradition or at least dramatically changed it. No such replacement or change has occurred. The only change we see is that I already spoke of above with the introduction of agriculture, in the Neolithic Age, several thousand years before any Indo-Europeans arrived in Scandinavia (according to scholars). Even in the Neolithic Age nothing was really changed, save the anthropomorphising of spirits. This was only an addition, and a continuation of the same.

So the Indo-European hypothesis too is simply not true.

Further, I am rather surprised by the lack of reasoning in the scholars who propose this, as the war between the Æsir and Vanir ends in a tie, because none of them are strong enough to win. Why would a manly warrior cult not be strong enough to win over a feminine fertility cult?! Knowing that the Æsir are numerically vastly superior to the Vanir makes this even more absurd. This makes no sense.

Their motivation for claiming this has nothing to do with the evidence provided to them. This is just what some of them want to be true, because they need support for their horribly lacking “Indo-European invasion” hypothesis.

So I will adamantly claim that both the above mentioned hypothesis are wrong and disproven.

Then we move on to the next stage, and where we can explain what the Æsir-Vanir war was all about.

Let me first remind you about what happened in that war:

Óðinn led an army of Æsir to attack the Vanir, and initiated the battle by casting his spear upon the enemies, but the Vanir were well prepared for an attack. None of them achieved victory, so they agreed to establish a truce and exchange hostages. The Vanir sent the wealthy Njörðr to the Æsir, and the Æsir sent the large and handsome Hønir and the wise Mímir to the Vanir.

The Vanir made Hønir their chieftain, but unless Mímir was there with him, he was rather useless, and only said; “let somebody else decide.” The Vanir felt cheated. They seized Mímir, cut his head off and sent it to Ásgarðr. Óðinn took Mímir’s head, embalmed it with herbs and cast spells on it, which gave it the power to speak and tell him secrets.

He then declared the Vanir gods, just like the Æsir.

The ‘battle’ started when Óðinn threw his spear. From ‘Paganism Explained Part IV’ you could learn that his spear is a metaphor for the umbilical cord. There is no ‘war’ in other words. It’s just an army of spermatozoids entering Vanaheimr, fertilizing an egg. Thus the ‘spear’ is attached. When the egg is fertilized, naturally a sea of amniotic fluid (Njörðr) is created by the mother, and the baby (Hønir) and it’s twin, the placenta (Mímir), enter Vanaheimr.

Before we continue, let us examine the names, and also remember that Hønir and Mímir are also known as Víli and Véi respectively, the brothers of Óðinn.

Hønir means “give sign”.

Vílir means “will”.

Mímir means “reminiscence”.

Véi means “sacred”.

The rather simple-minded baby does indeed ‘give sign’ when it wills, when it is ready to be born; it knocks it’s head on the cervix of the mother, to signal that it is ready to be born. There is little more to say about that.

But the case of Mímir is much more complex. Let me explain.

As said before, in this series, and as explained in ‘The Secret of the She-Bear’, the placenta is the sum of the forebears, or rather all the forebears at once. It transfers memories (‘reminiscence’) of previous lives via the umbilical cord, the well of Mímir, to the fetus, to Hønir. It educates the child even before it is born. When the Vanir cuts his head off, it means simply that the child is born, and naturally the umbilical cord is cut. The head of Mímir too is sent back to Ásgarðr, the world of the living.

Interestingly though, Óðinn preserves this sacred head, the placenta, to learn from it. And yes, you can learn a lot from studying the placenta. Unfortunately this is an art that was lost to us, during and after the Renaissance, when the Judeo-Christians persecuted and murdered our midwives (whom they called “witches”).

The midwives, known from mythology as the Norns, studied the placenta, and could tell from it’s shape, size and other properties about the fate of the person it had ‘educated’ in a womb. Funnily enough, modern science has begun to re-discover this lost art, and recognizes today that you can estimate risks for future medical problems in a child by studying his placenta.

The mythic ‘war’ between the Æsir and the Vanir is the process of impregnation, pregnancy and also birth. There you go.

The Nine Worlds of Hel

There is a common misconception that Ásgarðr, Vanaheimr and other worlds too are names for the different nine worlds, but this is not true. The nine worlds are mentioned in Völuspá, but they are not named. So regardless of what some people claim about this, we simply don’t know their names. In fact, from what we know, they don’t have any names.

2.

Ek man jötna

ár of borna,

þá er forðum mik

fædda höfðu;

níu man ek heima,

níu íviðjur,

mjötvið mæran

fyr mold neðan.

2.

I remember ettins,

age old,

who fed me

ages ago,

nine worlds I remember,

nine in-woods,

famous destiny-tree

below the earth.

As I explained in ‘Sorcery and Religion in Ancient Scandinavia’, a divine home, a world does not need to be a geographical location, but can perfectly well be a time period. Like a month. Every month of the ancient Scandinavian calendar was named as one of the homes of the deities. There are 13 of them, each with 4 weeks, making up 364 days, and then we have New Year’s Day in addition to that, which lasts for 2 days every leap year. And yes, this was not their only calendar. They also had a 12 month solar calendar and they used both.

Now, let us return to the second stanza of Völuspá. Knowing that a world can be a month will allow us to understand what the stanza tells us:

The child remembers nine worlds, that is months, in the womb of the mother, as it developed and grew (built nine in-woods) whilst hanging in the famous world tree, as described in ‘Paganism Explained Part IV’, in the womb (below the earth). These nine months can be any of the months of the calendar, as women don’t all become pregnant at the same time, so you cannot name them in a myth.

This explains why age old ettins fed her. The placenta is a monster to the mother of the child, feeding on her, so that it can feed the child. Since it is also the sum of your forebears, it is indeed age-old.

The nine worlds are also mentioned in Vafþruðnismál:

43.

Frá jötna rúnum

ok allra goða

ek kann segja satt,

því at hvern hef ek

heim of komit;

níu kom ek heima

fyr niflhel neðan;

hinig deyja ór helju halir.

43.

From the secrets of the ettins

and all gods

I can tell,

because I have been

in all worlds;

in nine worlds I came,

below the hidden fog,

here comes the dead from the hidden halls.

Yes, he knows the secrets, because he has been educated for nine months in the womb of the mother, by Mímir, the placenta. It reminded him of all his previous lives.

As he is born, the dead come, the forebears, from the hidden halls. They are in him. They are him. He has become them. See ‘Paganism Explained Part IV’.

No, the nine worlds are not named. They don’t need to be.

Hel

Hel? You see no mention of it here. You want me to talk about Hel too, whilst we are on the subject of worlds in Scandinavian mythology? Okay, I will.

Hel derives from a PIE root *cel-/*kel-, that means ‘conceal’ or ‘hidden’. The term ‘hall’ too derives from this; it conceals/hides what is inside. Again we have a reference to the womb of the mother, a hidden world – from whence all the dead come. When they are re-born in you.

hinig deyja ór helju halir.

(“here comes the dead from the hidden halls.”)

After nine months, that is…

In ‘Paganism Explained Part IV’ I show you how Valhöll too is a name for the womb, and it is tempting to suggest that all references to ‘hall’ in the mythology is a reference to the womb of the mother.

Note that the burial mound is a symbolic womb of the mother, a symbolic Hel, and that when the dead are laid to rest there, they are because they are assumed to return to life. But only the honourable were buried that way. The men who had won good Hamingja in life.

Others were not buried like that, because they were not deemed worthy of a return to life, or at least they were not promoted to be chosen for rebirth like that. Some, those they deemed to be “degenerates”, where according to Cornelius Tacitus in his ‘Germania’ instead executed and thrown into bogs, where “nothing” grows and where nothing can be easily recovered. They wanted to get rid of them and also to make sure they never returned to life.

In this we see a type of natural morality. They had a strong desire to promote the honurable and remove the degenerate. The execution of the degenerate was not a punishment as such, but simply a way to do what is right; get rid of it.

And speaking of the mysterious Hel, we should continue on that track, and enter the mysterious realm of fairy tales. Let’s explain a fairy tale here and now!

The Seventh Father in the House

Once upon a time a man was travelling. After long he came to a big and beautiful farm, with a mansion so magnificent it could well have been a small castle. “It will be nice to get some rest here”, he said to himself when he had come inside the gate in the surrounding fence. Close by an old man with gray beard and hair was chopping wood.

“Good evening, father”, the traveller said, “can I stay in your house tonight?”

“I am not the father in the house”, the old man said, “go inside to the kitchen, and talk to my father!”

The traveller went inside to the kitchen, and there he met a man even older, sitting on his knees in front of the fire place, blowing on the heat (fire-place).

“Good evening, father, can I stay in your house tonight?” the traveller said.

“I am not the father in the house”, the old man said, “go inside and talk to my father, he sits by the table in the living room!”

The traveller went to the living room and spoke to the man sitting at the table. He was much older than both the others, and he sat there, shivering and shaking, his teeth chattering, and was reading in a large book, almost like a little child.

“Good evening, father, can I stay in your house tonight?” the traveller said.

“I am not the father in the house”, the old man said, “go and talk to my father, he sits inside the bench!” said the man who sat there, shivering and shaking, with teeth chattering.

The traveller then went to the man who sat inside the bench, who was about to prepare tobacco for his pipe, but he was so huddled up and his hands shook so much that he had problems holding on to the pipe.

“Good evening, father”, the traveller said again. “Can I stay in your house tonight?”

“I am not the father in the house”, the old huddled up guy said, “go and talk to my father, he lies in the bed!”

The traveller went to the bed, and there he found an old, old man, whose only signs of life were a pair of big eyes.

“Good evening, father, can I stay in your house tonight?” the traveller said.

“I am not the father in the house”, the old man with the big eyes said, “go and talk to my father, he lies in the crib!”

Yes, the traveller went to the crib, and there he found an exceedingly old man, so huddled up that he was no bigger than an infant, and he could not detect any life in him, other than some sounds coming from his throat every now and then.

“Good evening, father, can I stay in your house tonight?” the traveller said.

A long time passed before he received an answer, and even longer it took for him to finish his answer, but he said like the others, that he was not the father, “but talk to my father, he hangs in the horn on the wall.”

The traveller stared up at the wall, and finally he spotted the horn, but when he looked at the man hanging in it, it was not much more to look at than a white spot resembling a human face.

He then became so afraid that he screamed out: “Good evening, father, can I stay in your house tonight?”

A squeeking sound much like that from a great titmouse could be heard, and he could barely tell that it was supposed to be the same as: “Yes, my child!”

And then a table with all the most precious dishes and with beer and booze came in, and when he had eaten and drinked, a good bed with raindeer calf skin came in, and the traveller was very happy that he after much time had found the right father in the house.

As you can already imagine, this is about reincarnation again. The seven fathers represent the first seven years of life, when we go through a dramatic change and end up in the age of reason. The traveller is a child of age seven finding back to himself.

The purpose of the reincarnation ritual is to recapitulate what has happened to you the first seven years of life. So the traveller arrives to see the youngest of the seven fathers, himself at age seven, cutting the umbilical cord outside the house, with an axe, and being reborn as one of his ancestors.

He then goes back in time and enters the house (womb) to find back to who he is and to be accepted as himself: as the reincarnated ancestor. The purpose is to become aware of himself and who he is.

He only realises who he is after talking to the seventh father, who tells him: “Yes, my child”, instead of the normal “talk to my fahter.” Only then does he become aware of himself and who he is.

The drinking horn on the wall is the ‘holy grail’, the placenta, giving blood to (feeding) the fetus in the womb. The seventh father is the traveller himself as a fetus and the ancestor in the placenta transferring the Hamingja to him.

The first seven years of life he doesn’t know who he is, but when he goes through the reincarnation ritual this changes, and he becomes aware of who he is. He has been his ancestor all the time, but only now he knows. Only now he is aware of it. He is finally really reborn. Reincarnated.

Butter-Goat

Once upon a time a woman sat and baked. She had a small boy who was thick and fat, and who very much wanted good food, and therefore she called him Butter-Goat, and she had a dog called Golden-Tooth. Suddenly the dog started to bark.

“Run out, my Butter-Goat” the woman said, “and have a look at who Golden-Tooth barks at.”

The boy ran out, came back in and said: “Oh dear god, a big and long burrow-woman is coming, carrying her own head under the arm and with a sack on her back.”

“Run under the baking table and hide,” his mother told him.

The the large troll entered.

“Good day!” she said.

“God bless!” said Butter-Goat’s mother.

“Isn’t Butter-Goat home today?” the troll asked.

“No, he is out in the forest hunting grouse with his father,” the mother replied.

“What a troll that was, then!” said the burrow-woman, “because I had such a nice little silver knife that I wanted to give him.”

“Peep, peep! Here I am!” said Butter-Goat under the baking table.

“I am so old and my back is so stiff, “ the troll said. “You should jump into my sack and pick it up yourself.”

Once Butter-Goat had entered deep and well into the sack, the troll slung it on her back and went out the door. But after they had left a stretch behind them the troll got tired and asked: “How far is it to home?”

“Half a quarter (of a Norwegian mile)”, Butter-Goat answered.

Then the troll put down the sack by the road and went through the copsewood on her own and lay down to sleep. In the meanwhile Butter-Goat saw his chance, took his knife, cut a hole in the sack and escaped. He placed a large pine root in the sack in his place, and hurried back to his mother. When the troll came home and saw what she had in her sack she became very angry.

The day after the women was baking again. Suddenly the dog started to bark.

“Run out, my Butter-Goat” the woman said, “and have a look at who Golden-Tooth barks at.”

The boy ran out, came back in and said: “Oh no, oh no, that ugly beast!” Butter-Goat said. “She returns with her head under the arm and a big sack on her back.”

“Run under the baking table and hide,” his mother told him.

The the large troll entered.

“Good day!” she said, “is Butter-Goat home today?”.

“No, he is out in the forest hunting grouse with his father,” the mother replied.

“What a troll that was, then!” said the burrow-woman, “because I had such a nice little silver fork that I wanted to give him.”

“Peep, peep! Here I am!” said Butter-Goat and came out from his hiding-place.

“I am so old and my back is so stiff, “ the troll said. “You should jump into my sack and pick it up yourself.”

Once Butter-Goat had entered deep and well into the sack, the troll slung it on her back and went out the door. But after they had left a stretch behind them the troll got tired and asked: “How far is it to home?”

“Half a (Norwegian) mile”, Butter-Goat answered.

Then the troll put down the sack by the road and climbed up through the woods on her own and lay down to sleep. Whilst the troll did that Butter-Goat cut a hole in the sack and when he had escaped he placed a large rock in the sack. When the troll came home she kindled a fire in the fireplace and put a large cauldron on the fire and was about to boil Butter-Goat. But when she took the sack and was about to put Butter-Goat in the cauldron the rock fell out and knocked a hole in the cauldron, so that the water ran out and put the fire out. The troll became very angry and said: “Even if he makes himself as heavy as he can, I will trick him anyhow.”

The third day it went the same way. Golden-Tooth barked and Butter-Goat’s mother said: “

“Run out, my Butter-Goat” the woman said, “and have a look at who Golden-Tooth barks at.”

The boy ran out, came back in and said: “Oh dear, the troll is back, carrying her own head under the arm and with a sack on her back.”

“Run under the baking table and hide,” his mother told him.

“Good day!” the troll said, and entered, “is Butter-Goat home today?”

“No, he is out in the forest hunting grouse with his father,” the mother replied.

“What a troll that was, then!” said the burrow-woman, “because I had such a nice little silver spoon that I wanted to give him.”

“Peep, peep! Here I am!” said Butter-Goat and emerged from under the baking-table.

“I am so old and my back is so stiff, “ the troll said. “You should jump into my sack and pick it up yourself.”

Once Butter-Goat had entered deep and well into the sack, the troll slung it on her back and went out the door. This time she didn’t leave the sack alone and went to sleep, but instead went straight home with Butter-Goat in the sack. When they came home it was Sunday.

Then troll then said to her daughter: “Now you take Butter-Goat and butcher him and boil him and make a soup and have it ready until I return. I will go to church and ask others to join us for a feast.”

When the troll had left the daughter was about to take Butter-Goat and butcher him, but she didn’t really know hiw to.

“Wait, I will show you how to do that,” Butter-Goat said. “Put your head on the stool, and you will see.”

She did, poor her, and Butter-Goat took the axe and cut her head off as if she was a chicken. Then he puts the head in the bed and the rest of her corpse in the cauldron and made a soup. When he had done that he crawled up over the door and brought the pine root and the rock, and put one over the door and the other on the shelf above the fireplace.

When people came home from church and saw the head in the bed they thought that the daughter was sleeping, and they went over to the soup.

“Tastes good, Butter-Goat soup!” the woman said.

“Tastes good, daughter-soup!” said Butter-Goat. But they didn’t listen.

The burrow-troll took the spoon and was about to taste.

“Tastes good, Butter-Goat soup!” he said.

“Tastes good, daughter-soup!” said Butter-Goat from the chimney above the fireplace.

They started to wonder, who was speaking, and wanted to go outside and have a look. But when they came out the door Butter-Goat threw the pine root and the rock on their heads and beat them to death. Then he took all the gold and silver in the house, and that made him very rich, and he travelled home to his mother.

At this point I am tempted to say: Vituð ér enn eða hvat? (“Do you still don’t know enough or what?”) You should be able to see the pattern by now, really. The tale is so clear and easy to interpret that I am tempted not to even explain anything.

Let us go through this together anyhow, though. If nothing else to make you understand that you were not wrong, and understood it correctly.

The woman who sat and baked is a pregnant woman. He small boy, who is thick and fat, is her baby in the womb. Therefore he loves good food. Babies greedily feeds on their mothers whilst in the womb, via the placenta.

Let us first explain why there is a dog called Golden-Tooth. At age seven you start to lose your milk teeth. You place the fallen tooth in a container, and the next day there is a piece of gold there instead. That is: as you age and the ancestor in you comes to the surface (the adult teeth), you become wiser (‘wisdom is worth more than gold’). It’s a dog in the fairy tales, because the dog (and wolf) is a metaphor for the reproductive organ of the woman. This is where you need to go to be reborn.

Notice also the fact that the dog is called by a name that we also know the deity Heimdalr as: Gullintanni (“Golden-Tooth”). He is by chance the guardian of the bridge leading to and from Ásgarðr.

When the dog starts to bark, it means that this is the moment the mother becomes pregnant.

The big and long burrow-woman is the foster mother, the She-Bear of the grave. Hence the description of her as big and long and a burrow-woman. The head she carries under her arm is Mímir, the placenta-ancestor.

The silver knife she brings is the key he needs to get out. It’s one of the items he used to own in previous lives. It’s there to help him remember and to reincarnate. It is a silver knife because it also shows us that he no longer breast feeds. He can eat real food. He has become seven years old.

She puts him in a sack, a metaphor for the womb, and carries him a distance. But she leaves him. She is the woman seeking solitude during birth, and he uses the key given to him to escape her womb. He leaves behind the placenta, the tree root, and is reborn. The first part of the reincarnation ritual has been completed.

He needs to go through three rebirths though. So the She-Bear returns, and the same happens again. The next time it’s a silver fork, with the same function and purpose as the silver knife. The same happens again, only this time he leaves a rock in the sack. The rock is a petrified placenta.

When the burrow-woman returns home the rock knocks a hole in her cauldron and puts out the fire. Indeed, if the placenta becomes petrified the blood (fire) will stop running. This is a symbol of her placenta getting too old, signalling that it’s time for the child to be born. Therefore it knocks a hole in her cauldron (womb). The second part of the reincarnation ritual has been completed.

I can add that a placenta will indeed turn to stone if it gets too old, it petrifies (yes, a pre-warning of a future Paganism Explained book about the Medusa….).

He needs to go through three rebirths though. Yes, like in all other fairy tales too. So the She-Bear returns, and the same happens again. The next time it’s a silver spoon, with the same function and purpose as the silver knife and the silver fork.

This time she brings him home. Her home is another metaphor for the womb, and she brings him home to show us that he has gone further in the reincarnation ritual. It’s a Sunday, because he is born on this day. He sees the Sun on the seventh day – at age seven.

In Scandinavia the week starts on the Monday, and ends on the Sunday. So yes, the Sunday is the seventh day of the week.

Her daughter is his twin. The burrow-woman is his mother, and if her daughter is in her womb (house) at the same time as Butter-Goat, she neccessarily has to be his twin sister. Like in other myths, the twin is always a metaphor for the placenta.

The mother tells her daughter to prepare the child for birth, which is of course what the placenta does, in the womb – during pregnancy. It feeds and prepares the child.

The church in this fairy tale is a modern addition, possibly added to make it possible to tell the fairy tale in Christian times, and it is a metaphor for the burial mound. Like in the church (with a grave yard), you will find sacred relics in the burial mound. The burrow… So the burrow-woman goes to collect the sacred object whom her forebears owned, to bring them home – to bring the memories of the forebears home, and thus bring them home. In the Stone Age this would have been a cave, and the burrow-woman a She-Bear. She enters the realm of death, to gather the dead. The feast she talks about is Butter-Goat’s birth – and the re-birth of the forebears.

In every fairy tale with a child, the child is always very naive and ignorant in the beginning, and the troll is wise and smart. But with time, as Mímir (the placenta) transfers memories to the child the situation is reversed, and the child becomes wise and the troll stupid. Thus the daughter, his twin, the placenta, when he is about to be born, suddenly doesn’t know anymore what to do. But he does. He tricks her into putting her head on the stool, to show her how to butcher him, and instead cuts her head off. He is born and the umbilical cord, connecting him to the placenta, is cut.

The detail “cut her head off as if she was a chicken” is not by chance, of course. This shows the bird as a metaphor for the womb with the placenta. The neck is the umbilical cord, and the wings the amniotic bag. Therefore many eat a bird (originally with a long neck) for dinner on the Yule eve (or you eat a pig, a metaphor for the same).

When the burrow-troll returns with the ancestors, Butter-Goat is still in the womb of the mother. The placenta is seemingly sleeping in the bed (the womb) and the soup is the amniotic fluid. This is the moment the child signals to the mother that it is ready to be born. He crawls up over the door and also the chimney. He places the pine root and the rock over the fireplace and the door, because both the pine root and the rock are metaphors for the placenta, and both the door and the fireplace with a chimney above it are metaphors for the vagina. This is where the child exits the womb.

The talk about the soup is the child communicating with the mother that it is ready to be born. When they go outside the door we see that all of a sudden Butter-Goat is in the chimney and above the door at the same time. Yes, because they are both the same thing. When he casts down the pine root and the rock, both symbols of the placenta, he is born. The mother no longer carries him, so her role as a bearer (a She-Bear) is terminated. The foster mother, the She-Bear, helping him reincarnate spiritually, likewise is no longer needed and her role is terminated. The ancestors are no longer in the placenta, but have been transferred to him. They are dead, but at the same time reborn in him. He has become them. They have become him. He has been given to himself. He has become his reincarnated forebears.

This is the reason why he can take all the gold and silver from the house. These are precious metals, in the case of gold non-corroding and eternal – just like the memories of the ancestors.

The third and final part of the reincarnation ritual has been completed and has made him spiritually rich, with the ancestors in him.

Sources for this book:

–Samlagets Norrøn ordbok, 5. utgåva, Oslo 2012

-Snorri Sturluson’s The Eddas.

-Hjalmar Falk’s, Etymologisk Ordbog over det norske og det danske Sprog, Kristiania 1906.

-Asbjørnsen og Moe’s, Eventyr, J. M. Stenersens Forlag AS, Oslo 2009.

-Paternally expressed genes predominate in the placenta : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3696791/

-Placental developmental defects in cloned mammalian animals : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27232488?log$=activity

-Altered Fetal Head Growth in Preeclampsia: A Retrospective Cohort Proof-Of-Concept Study : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4595787/?log$=activity

-Placental Origins of Chronic Disease : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5504455/?log$=activity

-Paternal age, placental weight and placental to birthweight ratio: a population-based study of 590,835 pregnancies : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23873147?log$=activity

-Gender differences in fetal growth and fetal-placental ratio in pre-eclamptic and normal pregnancies. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26105931

-The influence of head growth in fetal life, infancy, and childhood on intelligence at the ages of 4 and 8 years. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17015539

-The influence of birth size on intelligence in healthy children. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19482733

–Association of birthweight and head circumference at birth to cognitive performance in 9-10 year old children in South India: prospective birth cohort study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3073480/

-Comparative placentation (in animals): http://placentation.ucsd.edu/

-Placenta Abnormalities (in humans): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK459355/

-Modeling the variability of shapes of a human placenta: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2570048/

Other books by Varg Vikernes

–Vargsmål, Oslo 1997

–Germansk Mytologi og Verdensanskuelse, Stockholm 2000

–Sorcery and Religion in Ancient Scandinavia, London 2011

–Reflections on European Mythology and Polytheism, 2015

–Mythic Fantasy Role-playing Game (MYFAROG), 2015

Other books by Marie Cachet

–The Secret of the She-Bear (originally written and also available in French as Le secret de l’Ourse, 2016)

–Le besoin d’impossible, 2009

Let us continue on the topic of civilization and in particular (auto-) domestication. What we do when we domesticate an animal is to further one special ability of an animal, such as tasty meat in one type of cows, the ability to produce much milk in another, obedience in dogs or their ability to pull snow sleds or hunt rats or pick up the scent of cancer cells or humans buried under masses of snow, and so forth. We don’t need or want animals able to stand on their own two feet, so to speak. In fact our domestication of them to a very large degree, or even completely, ruins that ability. A milk cow let loose today, for example, would die real quick. It has been specialized in milk production so much that if she is not milked regularly this will kill her.

With humans we do the same, or we do the same to ourselves; because of civilization we automatically – unconsciously – domesticate ourselves. We have to be at least somewhat domesticated to function in this civilization to begin with, and by functioning in this civilization we become even more domesticated. We end up in a downward going spiral, until we – at one point – become completely dependent on civilization to survive and then finally unable to survive at all. And that will be the end of us, Idiocracy style.

***

Our hunter-gatherer forebears lived in small tribes, no larger than 144 people (called “a great dozen”). If they grew larger than that, they would split up and you would have two tribes instead. These tribes lived on their own for most of their time, away from others, but they did regularly meet at some few sacred places in Europe. I would guess that Stonehenge was such a place, but we also know of one such place in what is today the Czech Republic, and other such places surely existed too. They organized ring games (competitions), that eventually became known in historical times as the Olympic games, for example, and later as knight tournaments. They would go there to share news and other information, but also to find spouses from other tribes – to avoid inbreeding.

However, they only needed to tolerate the presence of other humans, and to socialize with distant relatives and strangers, for a short time. After these gatherings, they returned to living on their own, away from others. They remained wild and free, in natural tribes. Untamed. Everyone was family. They did not need to domesticate themselves to function in their type of society.

***

The (undesired) consequences of (auto-)domestication are many. We get a weaker skeleton, we get shorter faces (with teeth no longer having space to grow, like with “wisdom teeth”), we get weaker muscles, poorer joint definition, hair changes, fat accumulation, simplified patters of behaviour, more pathology, physical defects, extended immaturity and not least, we get smaller brains. Yes, we become dumber.

But people today, completely hung up in the idea of “evolution”, but too unintelligent to understand that theory, often believe that we are better today than we were before. “We have to be, because we have evolved so much since the Stone Age, right?” We we live longer and we are capable of so much more – as proven by our high tech (the advanced wheelchair I talked about when I wrote about Civilization).

In reality we only live longer on average thanks to modern medicine (and other modern sciences), completely at odds with Nature and what is good for us – and we are so incapable that the only way we can get anything at all done is through specialization.

Now, this is a positively charged word, don’t you agree? “Specialization”. It means that each and every one of us becomes a specialist in something. Not necessarily something glamorous, it can be a specialist toilet cleaner, but still: a specialist. The term itself suggests, I think, that we at least perform one single task well, and better than our pre-agricultural forebears, who were all jacks-of-all-trades. But….

Ah, yes. There is a “but” here. You see, when you look at historical sources, describing the performances of our forebears, and when you look at archaeological evidence, and not least the first books written, you realize that this is not the case at all. Yes, we specialize, we educate each and every one of us to become an efficient (hopefully?) cog in a great machinery, able to perform one single task well (dentist, driver, computer programmer, soldier, psychiatrist, teacher etc.), and some of us are indeed skilled in other tasks too, but even though we specialize, and pour all our energy into mastering that one single skill or lore, we fall short compared to our forebears.

Historical records tell us how the city of Athens, that had even been civilized for some time by then, could produce thousands of rowers able to row faster and for longer than our Olympic rowing champions are able to today. Fossilized footprints in the sand can tell how the average Stone Age man could run faster than our Olympic champion runners and world-record holders can. And they didn’t even have running shoes on when they did, and ran along sandy beaches. Our average Stone Age forebear could throw a spear farther than our Olympic javelin champions can throw a javelin. And yes, the same average Stone Age forebear could do all these things that well, whilst we can only produce specialists able to compete with him in one single task. And it doesn’t stop there. They average Stone Age man was also intellectually superior to our biggest geniuses.

Now, I don’t claim to be one of our biggest geniuses, but if you take my own role-playing game, MYFAROG, as an example, you could say that I have specialized in making such a game, and therefore I am able to. I have written a comprehensive rule system that makes sense and covers all eventualities in the setting, and that can be used for role-playing. But I had to write it down. I don’t remember everything in the rule-book by heart. A Stone Age forebear of mine would have been able to not only come up with such a system, but also he would not need to write it down. He would memorize it and everything in it. His players would not need character sheets, because they would easily remember all their stats and XP and whatnot, and changes to them as well. I might think highly of myself for making such a game, but I am but a shadow of my forebears.

They would memorize the position of the stars at different times of the year, learn all the properties of plant from their parents, without the need for any books, tell stories to each other that would make even Tolkien envious, and then those who listened to them would hear it once and be able to retell the same stories to others later on. And so forth. Our “great potential” was lost, because of agriculture and civilization. Or at least greatly diminished.

You think I exaggerate? Maybe I do, but I don’t think so, and if you look at Europe, the average IQ has dropped here by 15 points the last 100 or so years already – and no, it’s not all due to immigration from low-IQ populations in the third world. And the physical achievements of our forebears are well documented.

Even in the 19^th century, we had for example a Norwegian author, Peter Andreas Munch, who went to the Vatican to read a book. He was not allowed to take notes or to take the book away from the Vatican library, but he simply went there and read the book, and then went outside and wrote what he had read down on paper. Yes, he could memorize what he had read, and then write it down afterwards. Even only a few generations ago, people were on average much smarter than people are today. The decline in intellectual abilities is dramatic! My father had to learn and were able to learn a lot more when he became an engineer, than my brother did, some 22-23 years later. Some time in the 90ies a class of engineers in Norway were given an exam from the late 70ies, because their professor had not had the time to make one himself, so he just used an old one that he was convinced they could not have seen before, and every single engineer student failed the exams, and filed complaints that it was too hard. Not one of them passed. Now, this can of course also be attributed to a decline in the education in Norway, but this changes nothing, because why is education declining in Norway? The answer is the same: because people in general are becoming dumber. When the students today can’t pass a single test and fail all their exams, then they… simply make the tests and exams easier. This applies to all subjects today in the educational system, even mathematics and biology.

And speaking off; even the scholars of the 19^th century were not specialized like scholars are today. They would be experts in a wide field of subjects, whilst today’s scholars are just poorly educated, according to their limited intellectual abilities, in one single subject.

So no, the specialization that came from civilization is not something positive. It had to come, because modern man has become so useless that the only way he can become useful is by focusing all his energy into learning to perform one task somewhat well, so that he can make a living and be somewhat useful for society. As you know painfully well, most of us aren’t even able to perform that one task very well though. In fact, many so-called experts today are barely trained to look up questions in their field of expertise online. If the web went down, so would their knowledge and competence. A modern repairman no longer repairs anything. He just replaces broken parts with new parts.

It’s because of Capitalism, yes, I agree, but this is a part of civilization, a consequence of it, and follows in the wake of its intellectual destruction – of our auto-domestication. In fact, it’s a good example of how we domesticate ourselves and ensure that we become only increasingly dumber.

When mankind adopted agriculture and developed civilization he basically took a dive from a cliff. At first it went well – he was flying! But as he falls he picks up speed and we are currently heading at full speed towards the ground. It doesn’t help to close your eyes. If you see what is coming or not is irrelevant. You will soon hit the ground regardless. And be smashed against the sharp rocks below.

The only parachute we have, that can save us? I will discuss that another day….

Thank you for reading.

V.

P. A. Munch:

High technology, superior art, great temples, great achievements and even great empires. It’s all a result of civilization, and casting aside civilization would be a waste of potential. Right?

To answer that, the first question we need to ask is: where and why did civilization appear?

Where did they first appear? The oldest civilizations were located in the Middle East and North Africa, in the Fertile Crescent, the meeting point between Africa, Europe and Asia.

Why did they appear? When the humans of Africa, Europe and Asia met they also mixed. The peoples perfectly adapted for life in Africa mixed with the peoples perfectly adapted for life in Europe and Asia, and the result was a hybridized man not perfectly adapted for life anywhere. They had no natural habitat, because they were a cross between peoples from vastly different places.

They were hardly complete failures, surely they too could hunt and survive, but not as well as those perfectly adapted to their environment. So instead more and more of them resorted to agriculture. I may add that Europeans too resorted to agriculture some times, in the Stone Age, when they had no other choice, so this was not a new idea. This was how they had done it in the past, when things went wrong. However, they always cast aside agriculture again when they could, because they understood and felt that living as hunter-gatherers was better. The hybrids in the Middle East though kept it, and with time agriculture almost close to completely replaced hunting and gathering.

This however didn’t repair their problem with not having any environment perfectly adapted for themselves. On the contrary, agriculture made it even worse. Their farmer diet made their jaws shrink (which is why people today no longer have room for their “wisdom teeth”), their skeletons became weaker, their brains shrunk and they even became more “slave-minded”.

Let me elaborate on that a bit, before we continue: with agriculture came malnutrition (because their diet became less varied), slavery (because some people took control of the land and needed workers), war (because when famine struck one place, they tended to just go to another place and take their food instead, by force) and tyranny (because one guy always took control of it all). So in order to survive in these farmer areas of the Middle East/North Africa, most people had to be obedient, even submissive. You also didn’t need very much intelligence: your local tyrant gave you what you needed to survive, in return for your slave-service in the fields.

Yes, this is how social classes appeared. They had no such division as hunter-gatherers, it was not needed at all, and would have been just a destructive nuisance. Free peoples don’t have social classes. But in the farmer areas some people ruled, others slaved and some got their food by enforcing slavery.

I can add that the English term “Lord” actually means “Warden of the Bread”, from Old English hleward (“bread-warden”). He was that tyrant who kept and distributed the bread to his warriors and slaves. The Lord. You don’t do as he wishes? No bread for you…

These increasingly inadequate human beings built larger and larger communities, because although inferior to the hunter-gatherer diet, the farmer diet allowed them to feed many more. And voila! Civilization appeared, as a result of agriculture! They built entire towns to house the tyrant and his administration, surrounded by the farms of his slaves/workers. The hybrids constructed an artificial environment for themselves, because they didn’t fit in perfectly in any natural environment.

***

You are right though: no hunter-gather ever invented combustion engines, satellite navigation systems, advanced computers or anything like that. You can argue that they didn’t because they were “primitive” and because we are so much smarter than them, but you would be wrong to think so. Our hunter-gatherer forebears were not only stronger than us and had more powerful bones, but they also had bigger brains and were smarter than we are today.

Let me explain….

All this advanced technology that we surround ourselves with today, not only is it unsustainable, considering the amount of resources – often finite resources – we need to spend to make them, but it is basically like a wheelchair. Not just a simple wheelchair that needs to be pushed by someone. No! A high tech, fancy wheelchair with suspension, electric engines and inflatable tyres, sure.

Driving around in a modern wheelchair like that is probably fun, but you don’t invent such a thing unless you need one. Yeah. If you can walk, you wont build yourself any type of walking aids to begin with. And this is the core of the problem: our forebears could walk, but because we become increasingly unable to walk on our own two feet, we keep inventing all these different types of walking aids. Not because we are smarter than them, but because we become more and more dependent on such aids.

The wheelchair is just an example, of course: this applies to everything we invent or invented, to help us survive. Even a script was such a “wheelchair”. When asked by the Romans why the Gauls didn’t have a script of their own, letters to write down things with, the Gauls replied that they didn’t want to reduce their ability to remember. They argued that if you got used to writing down things, then you would no longer need to remember it, and therefore you would become more and more incapable of remembering – in the end anything. You would become more stupid.

Would you even want a book to write things down in, if you knew you could remember everything you wanted? What a waste! History, mythology, heraldic, herb lore, geography, etc. etc. etc. all remembered by heart and taught to others orally. Yeah, they Gauls could “walk”. They didn’t need this “wheelchair”. Not because they were inferior to the Romans, but actually because they were superior to the (more civilized….) Romans.

And yes, they were inferior to the Gauls because they were more civilized.

But in reality the inferior often beats the superior, as history has shown us over and over again, because quality is no match for treachery, lies, deceit and often also quantity. Alas! Civilization is a horrible and destructive force, but it spreads like fire in dry grass.

***

When we then enter the topic of “wasted potential” it starts to become more interesting, I think. Because what defines a “great achievement”? Walking on the Moon? Modern computers? Atomic bombs? Combustion engines? Sky scrapers? What?

You can justly argue that all such things are great achievements, but have you calculated in the costs of these achievements? Is it worth to degrade our species to such a degree as we have done by now, with civilization, to achieve that? Is it worth to risk our own destruction – through a slow suicide by degeneration and eventually starvation due to a devastated environment on Earth (caused by our civilization itself!) – for such things?

As part of this civilization we have something called auto-domestication, where we basically domesticate ourselves more and more, as time goes by. Yes, this is what cause the weakening of our skeleton and the reduction in brain size. We have seen it happen in all the animals we domesticated, and we see it happen in ourselves too. Compare one of those little rat-like dogs women carry around in their purses today or a bulldog or something like that to a wolf, and you get an idea of how we have become compared to our forebears. Because of auto-domestication.

Had we instead created and kept a system where we would have seen a gradual improvement of our species over the ages…. that would have been a great achievement. Sounds like an Utopian idea, right?

Except it isn’t. That’s what we had, when we were hunter-gatherers…. we cultivated courage, kindness, honesty, intelligence, loyalty, strength, speed, skill and beauty/health.

Despair not! Many of us still do, but they fight an uphill struggle, because they still auto-domesticate themselves, by living in an agricultural civilization. Let me give you an example: we still have hunters who opt to use bow and arrow instead of a modern rifle. Why? Solely because it’s more challenging. They pick the hard route to their goal. They elect to do it the hard way. This is still, thankfully, in our Native European spirit: to walk uphill even when we don’t have to, simply because we want to challenge ourselves and improve. We are broken by civilization, but not that broken, and not completely broken. Yet.

So you might say that throwing away Moon journeys and fancy fast cars with air condition, and all else that technocrats love to think might come in the future, is a wasted potential, but look instead at yourself, and understand that you have potential too, as an individual and we as a species. Is it not a wasted potential to throw away your ability to walk only because high tech wheelchairs exist, and you really want to keep the one you have? Is it not a wasted potential to throw away your ability to remember the exact position of all the stars on the night sky, only because you can download some software telling you the same?

But now you must listen carefully to what I say: Is it not a wasted potential to throw away your ability to not be greedy, envious, petty, hateful, dishonest and coward?

The greatness of man does not lie in his ability to make fancy high tech wheelchairs, but in his ability to walk!

***

We can still walk. Yes, we have driven wheelchairs for thousands of years now, metaphorically speaking, but we have not yet lost our ability to walk. At least not all of us. This civilization was imposed on us, we didn’t create it. We never needed it. Others did, yes, but we – Native Europeans – did not – and we still don’t. Nor do the Native Africans or the Native Americans need it. Probably not the Native Asians either, although I am not sure if any of them are left, as such. They are all very mixed by now.

Only hybrids need civilization to survive, because they are not adapted to survival in any natural habitat. Civilization is their (artificial) habitat. Without it, they wont survive in the long run.

Civilization isn’t going away though, anytime soon, and more and more people become hybridized. This is an inevitable consequence of having an artificial habitat where everyone can survive. In the end, everyone in this civilization will be hybrids. Everyone will depend on its survival. Everyone will need civilization in order to survive….

Yes, either civilization goes away, or we go away. That’s your options, “Men of the West”.

***

This brings us to the topic of survival. Because the only way mankind, as a species, can survive civilization is by letting civilization destroy itself and everyone in it. Only those who elect to not participate, only those who elect to live not as a part of civilization, can stand any hope of survival – and they must survive not only the intrusions of civilization, but also its probably dramatic fall.

And a dramatic fall will come, in one way or the other. When many live cramped together, like humans do in cities, viruses will mutate a lot, and it is only a matter of time before one so deadly it will kill everyone will come from this – bred by our civilization itself. Like a self-destruct mechanism for a cancer on planet Earth. If that doesn’t happen soon enough, civilization will collapse under the weight of all the problems it creates: idiocracy, desertification, crime and not least a lack of resources – especially finite resources. A massive solar storm would also send it into absolute chaos, or a nuclear war. Or something (by most people) unexpected, like a new Ice Age. Only death awaits for the civilized man and his cancerous civilization. Degeneration, decay, destruction and ultimately death.

What hope does mankind have then? We have hope in those who might survive the coming fall. Before the collapse they balance on a thin edge, over a vast sea of disaster, because they must not be noticed by the civilized man, lest the masses will drag them down; throw them in prison for “thought crimes”, take their children from them, steal their food or even kill them. They must learn to endure hardship before hardship has come. They must become able to survive without civilization, whilst they at the same time LARP as NPCs, so that nobody notices what they are doing. They must become autonomous without anyone knowing they are. They must fake misery, when everyone else are suffering as it all comes crashing down on top of us all. Most importantly, they must stay unmixed, when everyone else mixes, or else they will not even be able to survive in the natural habitat that will replace the artificial habitat of civilization.

Yes, we have little hope, but a little is better than no hope, and Óðinn is to fight and never give up!

The gods help those who help themselves! So let us. Heill Óðinn!

Liberals today use Norse mythology and our heritage to justify their LGBT+ agenda. For legal reasons I will not argue against their agenda here, but I will show you how here they err in this context.

The common misconceptions they have are Loki’s assumed “genderfluid” role as a mare, giving birth to an eight-legged horse, Þórr’s “cross-dressing” when he tries to regain his hammer, and Óðinn’s sorcery (seið), learned from a goddess and that also involves cross-dressing and that therefore was seen as unmanly, according to Christians.

They also refer to a Norse term, ergi, which they believe to mean “homosexuality”.

They also refer to Gudmundar Saga, where there is talk about the rape of a man, involving no shame for the rapist, and only shame for the rape victim.

***

Let’s take the last thing first. Gudmundar Saga. This is not the full name of that saga, so let us first call it by it’s real name: Prestssaga Guðmundar byskups. This translates approximately as “The Priest Saga of the Bishop Gudmund”, who died in 1237 on Iceland.

Iceland was converted to Christianity in the year 1000, and as the title of the saga in question suggests, this was not a saga about Pagans in a Pagan Iceland. This was a saga about Christians in a country that had officially converted to Christianity some 200+ years before, and 300+ years before the saga was written, much of it in a Benedictine School of writing, I may add (so at least much of it was written by Benedictine monks).

The opinions and world view in that saga are wholly that of the Christian monks who wrote it, and not that of the Pagan society that had existed 300+ years before. This is also the only saga where anything like this is written about.

It is clear that many places, even in Europe, a man is not considered to be homosexual if he rapes another man. It is not considered to be homosexual to “give”, but only to “receive”. This however is not and has never been the case in Scandinavia, where both the “giver” and the “receiver” are considered to be homosexual. Therefore, for example, you find no sexualized violence in Scandinavian prisons, because the rapist would have been seen as a homosexual just as much as the rape victim – and yes, that would have been seen as extremely shameful for him. The last thing you want to be in a prison, save perhaps except a rapist, is a homosexual. They are not treated well by the other prisoners at all, so to speak. Outside of modern liberals, there is and never was a culture of or tolerance for homosexuality in Scandinavia.

Ergi translates as “immoral lust”, “fornication”, “madness”, “anger” and “evil (or “bad force”)”. The verb ergjast, from the same root, means “become unmanly”, “become weak” or simply “weaken”, known from the Norse proverb: Svá ergjast hverr sem eldist (“Every man who grows old grows weak”).

The term still exists in modern Norwegian ergelig, meaning “annoying”, “irritating” or “vexatious” and ergre, “to annoy” etc. It appears in modern Icelandic as ergeligur, meaning “to seem irritable” or “to appear irritable”.

David F. Greenberg, who did the original studies on this, concludes that only the “taker” was ergi (“had immoral lust”), and not the giver, but he comes to this conclusion based on a Christian saga written at least partly by Benedictine monks 300+ years after Iceland was Christianized. I don’t see how this should prove anything in relation to Pagan Scandinavia, or Pagan Iceland.

Then we arrive at the first mentioned group of arguments they have, with reference to different myths in the Norse mythology. Their problem is that they take the myths literally, when we know they are actually metaphorical, filled to the brim with kenningar (“metaphors”). They come to their conclusions because they don’t understand the myths, their meaning or purpose; they don’t understand what the deities represent or indeed what a Norse deity is to begin with.

As demonstrated in our Paganism Explained series, and as demonstrated by Marie Cachet in her The Secret of the She-Bear, our mythology revolves around reincarnation. When the deities return to life, when they reincarnate, they need the mother to panic, to become afraid, at the end of the birth. As the term suggests, it is related to the deity Pan, known in Norse mythology by the name Víðarr and Loki. This is adrenaline, or what causes adrenaline to come. Called Panic.

The myth about Loki changing into a mare and giving birth to Sleipnir, is a myth describing the pregnancy and it’s end. The Ettin mason hired to build a wall is the womb, building the foetus, with help from a horse, the placenta. After some time “the building of the wall” (the pregnancy) has to end, for the child to be born, and this is where adrenaline, Loki, comes in, provoking the birth and thus getting rid of the placenta.

It is even suggested in the myth, that fear is what drives Loki to take action. The other deities threaten to beat him to death unless he does something. Terrified, he… panics, and does his job.

No, they did not know about adrenaline, but they knew about the feeling caused by adrenaline, and they knew about fear and panic, and how important this was for the woman to give birth. And no, Loki is not “genderfluid”. Adrenaline, fear and panic, has no sex. Both men and women, young and old, can panic.

The “cross-dressing” of Þórr is a myth about how Ettins have stolen his hammer, and he needs to get it back. To do so, he needs to pretend to be Freyja. Again, it’s a myth about reincarnation. Þórr is the spark of life, his hammer is his beating heart, life itself. He is dead, and needs to be reborn. So he travels to the Ettins, the womb, in form of a fertilized egg: the male deity Þórr as Freyja (“[female] seed [i. e. egg])”. There he eats and drinks greedily, in order to grow as a foetus, and when he is finally ready to be reborn, he grabs his hammer and kills the Ettins. Note that when a child is born and starts to breathe, when his heart starts to work sans assistance from the mother, this “kills” the placenta. Also, when still a foetus, the child has no sex. It is neither male nor female. It will become a male or a female later on in the pregnancy.

Note that he is accompanied by Loki, adrenaline, panic, because he cannot be reborn and get his heart back without him!

This has nothing to do with cross-dressing…

Then their final piece of evidence: Óðinn’s “shameful” female sorcery. You can read what I said about Sorcery, to know more about this, but first let me explain a few things: when a woman is pregnant and is ready to give birth, she is assisted by midwives. Women who dress in white robes, wise women, known as the Norns in Norse mythology, able to examine the placenta and by doing so tell if the child will suffer from this or that illness in life, or have this or that quality in life (they are thus called “goddesses of destiny”, not because they give a destiny to the child, but because they can predict it, by analysing the placenta after birth).

Well, they were the midwives alright, but in Pagan Europe they also had something called the midwives of the mind. Yes, we know this from Ancient Greek philosophy as maïeutics – commonly known as “the Socratic method”. As you can understand, the term comes from the goddess Maïa, the midwife of the gods. The midwives of the mind of the ancient world are commonly known as the Druids today, and they dressed in white robes, just like “real” midwives. Yes, they were taught about midwifery from the goddess of midwifery, Maïa…

This is the “shameful” midwifery of Óðinn – the god of the mind in Scandinavia. As I explain in my blog post about Sorcery, this has nothing to do with homosexual practises and it is not shameful at all, save perhaps in Christian eyes. It was not unmanly to be a Druid.

***

So as you can see, all their evidence is rubbish, and proves only that they are ignorant and have zero understanding of our Native European heritage. Our Pagan forebears were not “cross-dressers”, they did not approve of “genderfluid” people and they did not see homosexuality as anything but shameful. As you can tell from Tacitus’ “Germania”, supported by archaeological finds, our forebears actually even executed what they called “degenerates” (homosexuals), by smashing their skulls, cutting their throats, strangling them and then finally throwing their by then rather dead bodies into bogs.

They can argue for their liberal world view as much as they want, but they can not rightfully take the world view of our pre-Christian Scandinavian forebears as support for their own world view. In fact, their modern world view crashes fully, totally, utterly and completely with the world view of the Ancient Scandinavians.

Proto-Nordic *saiþaR means “tradition” or “sorcery”, but upon entering the Viking Age this term had branched into Norse seiðr (“sorcery”) and siðr (“tradition”). Originally though, both sorcery and tradition was the same. Perhaps is this branching evidence of the decreasing ability of farmers (as opposed to the intellectually superior hunter-gatherers) to pass the tests, so one part of the Tradition became esoteric whilst the other one remained exoteric. One became “sorcery” and the other one remained the everyday beliefs and festivals and traditions, sans any deeper understanding.

The English term sorcery as well as proto-Nordic *saiþaR are believed to derive from the same PIE root *sêr-, meaning originally “lot”, “fate” or “give sign”, or even just “signs”.

The sorcerer would carry a sacred bough, a sorcerer’s staff, called a gandr, from proto-Nordic *ga-anda-, meaning “animate” or actually “give breath to”. He himself was the forebears reincarnated, a god, Óðinn, and like the placenta (the world tree) transfers knowledge from the forebears to the foetus via the umbilical cord, he would sit under a sacred tree and transfer knowledge to others from the sacred tree and himself via his sorcerer’s staff. He would help them “give birth to themselves”, like a midwife of the mind, to reincarnate, by “giving them signs”. This was his sorcery.

For a person to find himself the sorcerer would present different signs and then see if the person would recognize them, or be able to find the right combination of signs. If he did he would ask the person for a password, that only the sorcerer would know, directly from the mouth of the person in the grave, or passed on from a sorcerer who had, some times many generations ago. The rightful person would be able to recognize the right signs and the right combination of signs and be able to remember this secret password, just by having been presented with these signs. They would remind him of his password, and thus the sorcerer could tell if this was indeed the right person – if it really was the person in the grave, having come back to life.

The signs could be songs, runes or stanzas, but he also used physical objects for this purpose. These objects were either “false” items or items linked to the individual that was to reincarnate. The latter would be collected from the grave of the person who was going to reincarnate. This was the purpose of burying the dead with their most precious items: so that they could recognize and remember themselves in the next life. The “false” items were present just to allow the sorcerer to test the person. If a person was to reincarnate he would recognize the items he had known in his previous life, and would then not pick a similar “false” item as his own when he was to recognize himself. Only the real person would be able to tell the difference between e. g. two different swords, one “false” and one he actually owned in his previous life.

If a person “recognized himself” in this manner, the sorcerer would help him remember himself, by means of this sorcery. He would re-animate the dead, so to speak, in a new body. He would discover his lot in life, his fate, by means of sorcery.

The term “god”, Norse góð, from proto-Nordic *guda, means simply “good”, but the original meaning of the term is “what you conjure” or “what you with spells/sorcery control”. It’s a force of nature that the sorcerer can command (so it’s good [god] for you). A sorcerer was called góði (“god”) and a sorceress gýðja (“goddess”). Any force of nature that the sorcerer/sorceress could conjure was a “god/goddess”.

The deities were named according to their attributes or their powers, their function or their roles, such as Óðinn (“to blow, “to inspire”, “spiritually arousing”), Freyja (“[feminine] seed [i. e. the egg])”, Freyr (“[masculine] seed [i. e. the spermatozoid]”), Baldr (“shining white”), Týr (“beam [of light]”), Þórr (“thunderer”), Jörð (“earth”), Höðr (“hide”, “hood”), Heimdallr (“tree above the bed”, “world tree”), Máni (“wanderer”, “measure”), Njörðr (“thirst from below”), Forseti (“front seat”, “judge seat”, “feast”), Sága (“seek [knowledge]), Skaði (“jump”, “climb”), Sól (“shining”, “giver”, “safe”, “health”), Váli (“fallen”, “chosen”, “strong”, “power”), Viðarr (“wood”, “wide forest”), Íðunn (“laborious”, “industrious”), Loki (“lightning”, “flash of light”), etc.

Yes, the conjurer became the god/goddess he/she conjured. He/she was a góði/gýðja.

So as you can see, the concept of “god” was not the same as most people have today. The divine was not “supernatural”. The divine might hold powers we today have forgotten to connect to or don’t understand any more, but all of it is perfectly natural. Yes, there is nothing supernatural about the divine.

When you believe that they saw them as supernatural beings that they “worshipped”, like the Abrahamists worship their Hebrew idol, you fall into the trap sat up for the uninitiated. Yes, this is the impression you can get from ancient descriptions of our Tradition. Yes, it all seems supernatural, and superstitious. But this is a charade.

The charade, the ginn, (“charade”), is set up not to deceive people for no good reason, but as a means to test and to educate them. So the Tradition is not just a Tradition, but a Tradition divided into different levels of understanding; the exoteric and the esoteric. Some will remains inside Plato’s cave, and believe the shadows dancing on the wall in front of them are “real”. Others will turn around and see what causes the shadows to dance on the wall. They will leave the darkness of the cave and become…. elevated to the divine. You will fall down screaming, and pick up the runes (secrets) from the green grass. Yourself given to yourself.

Our forebears were wild and free; nomadic savages living as hunter-gatherers – for hundreds of thousands of years. But as we know, at one point this changed, first with the advent of agriculture and then with civilization. Agriculture meant domestication of animals, but also auto-domestication. As a result we saw a decline in the physical and intellectual capabilities of our forebears. Not only did their skeletons grow thinner and weaker, but their brains shrank too, and they became dumber. Before this decline, everybody passed the tests and found back to themselves, but the auto-domesticated farmer every now and then failed, and remained in “Plato’s cave”, so to speak. With time more and more farmers failed the tests, and with the advent of (semi-) civilization the auto-domestication accelerated dramatically, and so did the decline in man’s intellectual and physical capabilities. In Classical Antiquity only a select few passed the tests and became divine. The rest kept on “believing Santa Claus is real”, so to speak. Yes, in the end, a majority knew only the exoteric Tradition; only the charade intended to help them find back to themselves. And thus they did not find back to themselves…

Yes, when we see books written about our heritage, even those written in Classical Antiquity, we need to keep this in mind. We see a description of the exoteric Tradition. The charade…. In the background sat a select few, keeping the esoteric Tradition to themselves. Only they had passed the tests. Only they were divine.

When the Romans murdered the Celtic druids, the Celtic heritage fell into shadow. Ignorance. When the Judeo-Christians murdered the rest of the European Pagan spiritual & intellectual elite, some as late as in the 18^th century, the same happened to the rest of Europe. Our Tradition fell into shadow.

What remained was the charade, the seemingly silly belief in “Santa Claus”, incomprehensible and mystic elves, gods & goddesses. Þórr riding his wagon across the sky, Óðinn riding an eight-legged horse, Loki transforming into a fly, Freyja crying tears of gold, etc. etc. etc.

My task is to help you find back to the meaning. To help you open your eyes and find the runes in the green grass, to read them and to understand them. Ideally on your own.

Part I

Many don’t like what we say about our heritage, because it doesn’t fit their agenda or their own personal opinions and because it doesn’t fit with what they have been taught about this from scholars. They attack us armed with: “Sources?”, to suggest that we just made this up ourselves and have nothing to back it up. When we give them our sources, they tend to claim that our sources aren’t good enough. Either that, or we hear nothing more from them.

What most people seem to think when they ask for sources is for references to somebody else saying the exact same. A renowned scholar, that is. If no renowned scholars say the same as you, then you have no source, they claim, and what you say can be easily brushed under the carpet.

Another problem we face is the reluctance in people to admit that we might know more than them, even if just about a limited subject. Instead of bowing down to superior knowledge they bow down to envy. When they cannot argue against what we say using facts, they resort to ridicule and name calling.

The final problem I will address here is the fact that many simply cannot fathom that we are able to know the answers to these riddles at all. Why would we know that!? What makes us think we know better than scholars who have studied these subjects for hundreds of years!? What arrogance!

Part II

The sources we use are the primary sources. Yes, for understanding what the mythology tells us, we use (big surprise) the mythology as our source. Yes, for understanding what the fairy tales tell us, we use the fairy tales as our source. Etc. When the language is hard to understand we use dictionaries, such as Hjalmar Falk & Alf Torp’s “Etymologisk Ordbog over det norske og danske Sprog”. A scholarly book about the roots of the words and their original meaning.

These are our sources…. the original sources and dictionaries. That’s all we need. I am sorry, if this doesn’t satisfy your need for sources, but we cannot use any such scholars as a source because they don’t know what the myths or anything else related to our heritage mean. Amazingly, I agree, but true: they have no clue!

Which leads us to the next point, namely that the scholars have studied this for hundreds of years, and still have not been able to understand what this is all about. They have not even come close to the truth. How is this even possible? Yes, I agree. It sounds unlikely, but it’s actually true, and I explained why it is so in Dissent, Truth & Paganism.

Then to the topic of Marie and her ability to understand what scholars have failed to understand for hundreds of years. How could she be able to decipher this? How can you even believe that she is right and the scholars of Europe for hundreds of years are wrong? How is this even possible?!

Well, the truth is that I don’t need to convince you that she is right, because you can tell for yourself that she is, by studying the original sources using the key she gave you in The Secret of the She-Bear. When you apply this key to the myths and fairy tales, to pretty much any and all myths and fairy tales, you are able to at least partly understand what they mean. From Ancient Egypt to Japan, from Ancient Greece to Scandinavia, from Ireland to Russia. Even the New World myths can be deciphered, using her key. It all fits.

Now, had I interpreted a myth to be a cake recipe, and made sense of it, you could smile and tell me that I was clever to do that, but I cannot use the same key to unlock the meaning of other myths. So you would be able to claim that this is not the actual meaning of the myth, and you could brush my interpretation off as irrelevant. I agree. But if I told you – like Marie does – that these myths are instructions for how you can reincarnate, and I showed you how to interpret any and all myths in this context, then it is impossible to honestly brush what I say off as irrelevant. I can show you how each and every myth and fairy tale is such an instruction. The key fits into all the keyholes, so it is impossible to claim that it’s not the universal key. You can tell that I am right, if you use the key on the fairy tales or myths. Only your own dishonesty can convince you otherwise.

Part III

So why is it we face critics and ridicule? If what we claim is so obviously right, why doesn’t everybody agree with us?

We return to the fact that scholars have failed to understand anything at all in hundreds of years studying these subject. They have written thousands of essays and books about how our forebears did this or that, had “fertility” cults (as if fertility was such a big problem in the past!?…), believed in an “afterlife”, etc. etc. etc. They have described our heritage from a thoroughly Judeo-Christian perspective, they have filled up every vessel, well and cavity in our heritage with pure nonsense, and have left no room for reason, sense, logic or meaning. They have turned the deepest wells into the tallest towers, the tallest towers into the deepest wells, and everything else too has been turned upside down and then covered in deep, reeking Judeo-Christian mud.

The reality of our heritage is in total contrast to the impossible, empty, childish & not least meaningless heritage they present to us, and because people have been brainwashed to worship authority, and they are the authority, people have serious problems opening their eyes. It takes time to let reality sink in. It takes courage to admit that everything you knew before was not only a lie, but a waste. A complete waste of time. It also takes some honesty and magnanimity of spirit to admit that somebody else, Marie, has found the truth, instead of you. Or me. We all search. We all want to find the truth ourselves. Especially in this age of narcissism.

It takes time to wash away all the filth our education, brought to us by the ignorant scholars, have covered our minds with. Even I, married to Marie and in possession of her key for years already, only understood for real some days ago that only the living has a spirit. Even though I have translated and written about it before, explaining how Ásgarðr is actually the world of the living (in Paganism Explained, Part V), explaining for years how spirit translates as “breath”. It takes time to let it all sink in. But in the end, I have to realize that of course…… the dead has no breath. Only the living has a breath.

Then when that has sunk in, you can also understand that “The Book of the Dead”, called by the Ancient Egyptians; “The Book about how to arrive to the Day”, was not a book for the dead to enter the “afterlife”, but a book – just like Marie has said – about how you can reincarnate. How you return “to day” and become “a spirit” (somebody with a breath, ergo somebody alive) again. It teaches you to return to life.

In addition to this we have many scholars who wish to keep the status quo, as this is the only way they can keep their authority and power over others’ thinking. If ordinary people realize that everything they teach and know is absolute nonsense, then their fancy diplomas and their “wisdom” are no longer worth anything. Instead they talk about how our heritage is “a mysterium”, and “that we can never know” etc., on order to discourage people from even trying to find out. We further have at least one billion Judeo-Christians who don’t want our heritage to resurface. They went to great lengths to bury our heritage, often literally, by building their desert cult temples right on top of our sacred sites, but also in other manners, like by ruthlessly persecuting all who knew – and even burning them alive, to keep them quiet.

Today they use other means, like slander (“Varg/Gandálfr is a cult leader”), misrepresentation (“they worship the placenta”), false labelling (“Varg is an atheist”) etc., in order to distract, to sow doubt, to ensure that people who otherwise would have been interested wont listen to us. I am not worried though. The sea of ignorance, pettiness, cowardice and dishonesty is vast, but mankind is like a clear night sky: a big vast and empty blackness, but dotted with many shining stars.

Thank you for reading