What once was

What went wrong?

  1. Agriculture. We became farmers.
  2. Civilization. We became civilized.
  3. Christianity. We lost our roots.
  4. Industrialization. We became slaves.
  5. Feminism. We lost our families.
  6. Capitalism. We lost all direction.
  7. Globalization. We lost our homelands.
  8. High-tech. We lost ourselves.

We lost everything.

Start anew. Do better the next time.

Lighthouses

The problem when you reject the “lost souls” of our race is that many if these individuals have children. Not yet broken. Not yet ruined. Not yet soiled. Not yet “educated” (read: brainwashed) into worthlessness. Not yet as useless, destructive, self-hating and suicidal as their parents.

You can always argue that today we all have access to basically all information. We can all educate ourselves, if we want to. We can perfectly well “vaccinate” ourselves against their venomous lies, and thus become impervious to their mind plagues. If we don’t, it is our own fault, right? We are all responsible for our own lives. No excuses. If you are 30+ years old today and still push their (….) agenda, then I say f*** you. You will get what you deserve, when this house of shit comes falling down on top of your head. However, if you are 16 -20 years old and have started to push their agenda, you can still wake up. Your brain, your heart and your backbone have probably not rotted away completely yet. If you are a child…. then you are not yet responsible for your own education. You are still under the control of others. You are not yet free to do what is right.

When we wisely give up the Soros-agents, the ***-worshipping human waste, the weaklings kneeling to their idols, the gender-confused mental-cases, the broken, the perverse, the suicidal, etc. that is one thing, but we cannot give up on our young. Most of them probably are or will become worthless scum too, just like their parents most likely already are, but it is, I believe, our duty to enable them a chance to find their way through the darkness of the spreading desert, and back to their roots. Back to nature. Back to life. Back to the divine. Back to the “religion of the blood”. Back to their ancestral heritage.

We have no access to the educational institutions in this sick world. Nor can we shine light into their minds via the MSM, and most of the time not even on social media – at least not the social media where most of them end up. But we can shine bright from a distance. Like a beacon. Like a lighthouse, guiding ships through dangerous waters. They are young and vulnerable, and they might well need a little help to find the right way.

We can let them know that we exist. We can let them know that there is an alternative. Show them your perseverance, your success, your happiness, your abilities, your skills, your strength. Show them that in spite of what the goblin rulers of this world say or do, we still exist, proudly, and we are not affected by their poison.

They arrest you? Harass you? Imprison you for years? Shut down your bank accounts? Throw you out from your home? Character murder you in public, over and over again? Throw huge fines at you? They troll and shut down your social media accounts? They tell everyone that you are “racist” and “dangerous” etc.? They boycott everything you do? They take away civil rights from you? They even put you in history books and slander you there too?

You know, what do they achieve, when you after all that still do just fine in life? What does this say to all those who are told that people like you are the rejects and losers of society?

Yes, show the young that they have an alternative to living in the reeking cesspool of the global village. Show that there is still strength left in our race. Show that what has been right for hundreds of thousands of years still works and still is right.

Family and Tradition. Blood and Soil. Honour and Duty.

Work hard. Survive. Thrive. Shine. Inspire. Those individuals worth anything at all will see the light from your lighthouse and adjust their course. The rest? Who cares? Let them sail into the abyss and go extinct. Good riddance. Let them drown in their own vomit. Each man gets what he deserves.

Heill Óðinn!

The End is Nigh

The world has changed. Not by our hands. Not by our thoughts. Not without our resistance.

What used to be high ideals are now cast into the deepest mud and trampled on. Light is now darkness. Darkness is now light. Love is now hatred. Hatred is now love. The tallest mountain is now the deepest sea. The deepest sea is now the tallest mountain. All taboos have been broken. All justice destroyed. All truth spat upon. All that was pure has been soiled.

Like a tidal wave this filth washes over the Earth and defiles all who stand in its way. Mankind is thrown into a pit filled with stupidity, cowardice, perversion, dishonesty, greed, ignorance, mental disease, cruelty, hatred and bile. The end is nigh.

I resisted. Let that be known to all who read this: I did all I could to stop this, using all the means available to me. When I was knocked down, I got back up, and kept resisting. For a long time, I tried to hold back the tidal wave….

But I was washed away. It was to no avail. It was folly! When I tried to help the others wading around in this sea of shit, I was met with scorn and hatred. They spat at me, called me a “racist” and an “anti-Semite” and other strange name.

Bruised, injured, weakened, soiled, exhausted and barely able to walk, eventually I waded for higher ground. I made it to a little hill & climbed it. Always looking back at all those I cared for, who remained in the disgusting cesspit behind me. The hardest thing to accept was that they remained there of their own free will. Nobody forced them to. They too could head for higher ground, but they chose not to.

Rats will always prefer to live in a sewer, I guess.

Well, I made it. I sit here on my little hill, safe from their filth and bile. Silenced, ignored and character-assassinated so thoroughly that nobody will even look for a second my way, I sit here and look out on the world and all the creatures in it. I understand that my resistance was futile. I understand that this world deserves to drown in its own filth. Those who deserve to live, those who wish to live have already run to the hills. They will prevail. Or some of them anyhow.

A new and better world will be born, free from their filth and free from all who welcome and embrace it.

Rejoice! The End is Nigh!

Signed Враг”, the Hillman:

Burnt Bridges

As you might know, I have burnt most bridges in life, and most of the time I knew very well what I was doing, and I did it of my own free will. Quite often it was done to force myself into a situation that would make me do the right thing. You see, if you burn all the bridges except the one leading to where you should go, then you cannot go wrong. You have no choice. You have to do what is right. Even if you are afraid to. Even if you don’t think it will turn out well. Even if you really would like an easier route every now and then. I made sure I did and not least said the right thing.

I find comfort in the thought that one day what I did and said will be appreciated (not only by fellow dissidents).

Finding back to yourself

The biggest problems of finding back to our own heritage is of course that the Judeo-Christians have actively tried to destroy it, murder those who kept it alive and replace it or at best empty it and fill it to the brim with their own alien contents. They have even done this for more than a thousand years most places in Europe, and at least for hundreds of years.

This problem is rather obvious though, but we also have another and much less known problem in this context. You see, when we think of e. g. the Viking Age, we assume that the Scandinavians living at that time knew the ins and outs of their heritage perfectly well. The same applies to the Romans and the Ancient Greeks, the Galls and the Britons as well as all other ancient peoples in Europe.

In reality, we see clear evidence that they did not know their own traditions very well, even back them. One such evidence came to light with Sir James Frazer’s “The Golden Bough”, where he discussed a priest of Diana by a sacred tree by the Nemi lake. Other Romans, such as Ovid, clearly did not actually know why this priest was there, why he protected the sacred boughs of the tree, why he had to be replaced by a stronger priest and so forth. It was actually already a mystery by then. One writer, the Greek geographer Strabo, even called it a “barbarian” element.

Do you really think that if they actually knew their own traditions in and out, they would not know what this was all about?!

The fact is that even in Classical Antiquity, our “Pagan” heritage had become veiled in mystery. Many no longer knew why they prayed, why they made sacrifices, what the myths meant, what the gods were, why they buried people with their most appreciated belongings, what their high festivals were actually all about, and so forth.

Before I explain why this was the case, let me make a point I really wish to stress here: when we use sources from Classical Antiquity we actually use sources written by people who often did not know what they were talking about. Even to them all of this was veiled and incomprehensible, and they were left to simply parrot what others said about this, without actually understanding much about it, if anything at all.

We see clear evidence of this lack of understanding of our own heritage all over Europe, from Classical Antiquity to the Viking Age and well into the Renaissance, when we still had parts of our populations (uninterrupted since the Stone Age) practising our own traditions.

Why?

Well, this is complicated, but I will try to explain it as best I can. You see, our pre-Christian “Pagan” heritage stems from the Bear Cult of our most ancient forebears, the Neanderthals. It is hundreds of thousands of years old, and yes, we practised this tradition continuously from the Stone Age and into historical times. For most part, it was unaltered throughout, but yes, even in fairly near pre-history something changed. First of all our forebears adopted agriculture, after hundreds of thousands of years of hunting and gathering. This lead to a dramatic increase in the population, because food became easily available for everyone and in abundance. But it also lead to war, famine, tyranny, slavery and malnutrition. War because when the crops failed in one place, they would try to take the food from someone else, whom had have better luck. Famine because some times the crops failed and warfare as well. Tyranny because someone came to control the food production, and thus decided over the fate of others. Lords (“Hle-worð”, meaning “Bread Warden”) and Ladies (“Hle-dige”, meaning “Baker of Bread”) emerged; rulers who could distribute bread only to loyal men, and let the others starve. Slavery because the Lords and Ladies needed people to work in the fields. Malnutrition because they went from eating a little bit of everything in nature, to eating mainly one thing.

Before agriculture the traditions applied to everyone. Every single boy and girl had to go through the same rites of passage, they had to experience the same, know the same, see the same and grow with and because of this. They all reincarnated. They all emerged from the Bear Cave when they were around 7 years old; reincarnated!

They also had to understand the same. If they failed to understand, to solve the riddles, to find the way, to remember the passwords, to become themselves again, they would probably not be eligible for marriage and thus reproduction. There was little room for weakness, of any kind.

With agriculture and the multiplication of man this changed. Only some were granted access to the sacred sites, to the burial mounds, to the sacred items. To reincarnation. To the mysteries. The rest were left to wonder; to participate without any enlightenment.

Another problem with agriculture is that over time it does not improve the species. Malnutrition alone leads to smaller muscles, weaker bones and smaller brains, and of course famine does the same. Slavery leads to smaller “hearts”, if nothing else. War leads to the butchery of the courageous mainly, and the survival of cowards who run away to safety rather than fight. Tyranny leads to dishonesty and submission. So when you practise agriculture for thousands of years, you end up with a Neanderthal who might still look like a Nordic man, but he is a weaker, more coward, thinner, less honest, less kind and much less intelligent version of himself.

The “problem” with the Bear Cult of the Neanderthals was that it was a scientifically sound world view. It was based on facts and reality, and the pre-requisites to understand it and learn from it were many. So as time passed by, with agriculture, fewer and fewer even of the select group of Lords and Ladies still allowed to actually benefit from this tradition, were able to. Yes, indeed. As they became less and less intelligent, strong, courageous, honest, and kind, fewer and fewer of them passed the tests.

That is, they went through the same rites (education), but fewer and fewer of them actually benefited from this. Thus fewer and fewer of them actually understood the traditions and what they were all about. Think of mathematics. If you teach complex mathematics to very intelligent and well-educated adults, they are likely to understand and benefit from this education. But if you try to teach complex mathematics to children with no education, they will learn nothing, or at best very little. Our hunter-gatherer forebears were able to benefit from this education, but with the rise of agriculture, fewer and fewer were able to.

Then, as if agriculture had not been enough, civilization arrived, and the drop in human quality accelerated dramatically. Even the bits that had made sense thus far, even to ordinary people, lost all sense and meaning, and those who kept on doing it lost all understanding of why they did it and what they were doing.

And this is where we enter into history, when people started writing down much of what we today know – or think we know – about our history and heritage. Alas!

Now, we see a heritage left impotent by the decline in man, but at the same time there were indeed people who still understood what our heritage was all about. People who kept it alive, and practised it as it was intended. They however, did not live in any civilizations, they were all “barbarians”, and as you know, they did not write any books – and more often than not they fell victims to the greed and wrath of more numerous civilized peoples. The last of these superior human beings amongst us probably perished in deadly torture, flames or gallows, as the foreign Judeo-Christians went forth screaming “burn the witches”, with the intention of halting the Renaissance (of Pagan ideas and ideals).

***

Conclusion: when writers even in Classical Antiquity did not really know the ins and outs of our heritage, you must mainly seek elsewhere to be able to find back to your roots and what grew from them. You must use your brains and heart, your blood and the soil your forebears walked on, to find back to your heritage and to your real yourself; your purpose, direction and happiness.

The long shadow and impenetrable darkness of agriculture and civilization, and of that spiritual plague that we call “Christianity”, can be banished by one single ancestral light. Kindle it, and you shall see…

V.

28/04/22

About Prayers

There seem to be a discussion going on amongst Pagans regarding the nature, use and purpose of prayers. On one side we have those who say that prayers are useless and on the other those who pray to the gods like Judeo-Christians (and Muslims) pray to their “god”. So let us shed some light on prayers…

Be it English, German, Dutch, Latin or Norse, the term for “pray” means simply “to ask for”. When you pray you ask your deity for something.

To find out more about prayers we need to go back in time, to the origins of prayers. Naturally, like with pretty much everything else adopted by the Abrahamists, prayers go back to the Stone Age, when our “savage” forebears roamed the forests of Europe. They discovered that when you take a seed and put it into the soil, a plant will grow from it. That is, if the right amount of sunlight and rain falls upon the spot where you put the seed into the ground. They kneeled down, with seeds in their (folded) hands, and sowed… when done, they looked to the sky, asking, hoping for sunlight or rain, or rather both, in the right amount.

They had collected these seeds for food, but by sacrificing them this way, they could give to nature so that nature could give to them, later on. They asked for Mother Nature to give. They prayed to the Earth goddess. They asked for the Sky to give. They prayed to the Sky god. Like the Romans described their relation to the deities: Do ut des (“I give in order that you may give”).

A prayer is called a “bøn(n)” in Scandinavia. The original meaning of the term is “speech”, but it also means “bean”. Yes. They put beans into the soil. They prayed that Mother Nature would give to them, because they had given her beans.

You don’t believe me? Well. Have you ever seen a “rosary”? “Prayer beads”? They are made up of a thread with… beans on them. The beans are used to count the number of prayers or chants or mantras of the religious person. So even today, beans are still used for prayers. In pretty much all religions.

The problem, I think, is not whether or not prayers were used, or whether or not they worked, but rather whether or not we understand what a prayer actually is, or indeed what Ancient Man meant by it in Classical Antiquity, when much about prayers was recorded.

The idea that “I give in order that you may give” is where our attention should be here. Making sacrifices and praying. Yes. They did it, and they did it because they understood that there need to be a balance in nature. You cannot take everything for yourself without consequence. In fact, you cannot take everything for yourself without dramatic consequences. If I come across a group of oak trees and I cut down the trees for firewood and take all the acorns for myself, then no new oak trees will grow there. I have to make a sacrifice: give back to nature something I have harvested, lest I will suffer. So I pray; I plant some of the acorns. I give (sacrifice) in order that Mother Nature may give. She cannot if I offer no prayers and make no such sacrifice.

They understood that you had to give to the gods in order for the gods to give something back to you. If you gave nothing, of you offered them no prayers or sacrifice, the gods would “punish” you.

To maintain a good relationship to the gods was incredibly important. For tens of thousands of years, they prayed to them and made sacrifices to them, as I have described above. When harvesting, they always left some for birds or other animals, and for the soil, as a sacrifice to the gods. When they hunted, they always left some of the meat, as a sacrifice to the gods. They gave so that the gods could give.

When mankind became civilized he gradually lost contact with nature and thus the gods. Prayers and making sacrifices became more illogical and abstract, where it before had been perfectly logical and concrete. Instead of actually planting seeds in the ground with folded hands, asking the gods for the seed to grow into a plant, they just kneeled down with folded hands, asking the gods for something else. Instead of holding the hands to the sky, asking the gods for sunshine or rainfall, they held their hands to the sky asking for something else. Prayers and making sacrifices lost their meaning.

They still believed that it was important to pray to the gods and to make sacrifices to them, to avoid their wrath. But of course, it had all lost its meaning and purpose.

And this is where we are today, with all these different religious people praying to their favourite god or gods, using rosaries without knowing why, kneeling down with folded hands without knowing why, addressing the sky without knowing why, etc.

The original tradition was about moderation and enabling a species, mankind, with great potential for destruction, to actually live in harmony with Mother Nature. Making sacrifices and praying (sowing) to ensure the continued growth of the plants he harvested or cut down – or sharing fish or meat with other animals, so that they would not starve because man had hunted too many of their prey.

Today prayer is basically just a means for useless or lazy people to have some fictional power they believe in to give them something they do not deserve to begin with. When they claim their god or gods answer their prayers, this has more to do with mental disease or simple dishonesty than anything else. Mother Earth does not “answer” your prayers that way. The Sky God does not “answer” your prayers that way. They answer in form of growth of the seeds you sow, or in form of sunlight and rainfall. All you could ever want.

As a Pagan I make sacrifices every day, and I pray almost every day. Not like some civilized clown with zero contact with the divine, but like my most ancient forebears. I give to the gods so that they may give to me. I sow seeds, I plant, I give a share of my food to birds and other animals. I help myself by helping the gods. I live as part of Mother Nature, instead of as one in constant conflict with her.

The gods help those who help themselves.

27/04/22

About Elves

In this text I am going to discuss the origins of elves. Where do they come from? What were they originally? What does the term itself mean? Why are they misunderstood and misrepresented today?

The elf was originally a term used by Scandinavian peoples for their ancestral spirits. They believed in reincarnation and therefore buried their dead with their belongings in burial mounds, to enable them to return to life later on – as explained in detail elsewhere on this blog (see here Sacred Objects). The elf would exist in the burial mound, waiting for rebirth, but at times the elves left the burial mounds, to sing and dance in the meadows. They needed the song, the poetry and the stories, in order for them to remain in the memory of the living. As long as the dead and their deeds are remembered, they can return to life (see here: Sorcery).

“There is no death for the honourable, only a change of bodies”

But even after the forced Jewification (“Christianization”) of Scandinavia the Scandinavians kept practising their own Pagan traditions. When discovered by the Judeo-Christian clergy, they were not at all happy by the fact that the “Christianized” Scandinavians were still Pagans, practising their own traditions, so these ancestral spirit, the elves, were demonized and cursed by the Judeo-Christians, as “malignant“ and “mischievous” and ultimately turned into a “goblin” or “kobold”.

Thus, when you look up the meaning of the word “elf”, you find such ignorant and disparaging definitions, instead of the original “ancestral spirit”. Thankfully though, in Scandinavia, those of us with some basic education still know what elf means, what an elf really was, thanks not only to memory and tradition, but also to the work of 19th and early 20th century scholars, who wrote excellent books about our ancestral cult. Books such as Fedrekult (“Ancestral Cult”), by Emil Birkeli.

The elves were thus actually the spirits of the dead ancestors of the Scandinavians, but the word itself has a specific meaning. Modern Scandinavian alv (“elf”) derives from Norse alfr, from proto-Nordic *albaR, from proto-Germanic *albaz, from proto-Indo-European *albu– or *albo-, meaning simply “white”. We see the same word, with the same meaning in Latin, albus and Ancient Greek, ἀλφός (alphos), “whiteness”, and a few modern languages too.

The reasons why the ancestral spirits were called “white” are many: when you die you pale and turn white, all that is left of you after some time in the burial mound are but white bones, the dead were buried in white clothing, the spirits are understood as white light, etc. However, they were also called “white” because only the good, pure and innocent of the dead ancestor was left. Only that would be remembered and brought back to life, when the elf reincarnated in the kin, one day.

Yes, this brings us to the topic of “Dark Elves”, another extremely misunderstood term. A dark elf is of course better known in modern English simply as a dwarf. A small, bearded creature residing in holes in the ground, and very fond of gold and riches. To understand what this is require some background knowledge, that most people today simply have no access too, thanks to the massive misinformation about the Pagan heritage of Europe from the Judeo-Christian establishment, the last hundreds of years.

Like I said, elves were ancestral spirits, and the whole point of the Pagan tradition was to enable ancestors to return to life, reincarnated, with the same spiritual strength, courage and wisdom that they had before they died. The dead were placed in burial mounds, with their belongings, and since time tears down everything they tended to bring items of gold with them into the burial mound. Not because they needed it in some fictional “realm after death”, but because they needed these items to remind them of who they were, and in order to do so these items had to survive – some times for thousands of years in a damp burial mound. As explained here: Sacred Objects.

In role-playing game terms, this tradition enabled the ancestors to return to life with plenty of XP, so that they did not have to start all over, as level 1 characters.

When a child had found back to themselves, they would enter the burial mound itself and collect the items they had possessed in previous lives. They would also bring out the thigh bone (a symbol of life) and the skull of the dead (their wisdom, XP if you like), and when they left the burial mound, reincarnated, they held this head up above their heads.

Think about it for a while. How would that look? A 7 year-old child leaving a burial mound, with a dead ancestor’s head above the head?

(…)

Yes, they were small, and hair does not easily disappear from the dead… so the skull would often be bearded. Hence that image of dwarves as small creatures….

They also collected the sacred objects in the burial mound, that was often made up of gold or other riches, and this was needed for them to remember themselves. To really become reincarnated. Thus we say these dwarves loved gold.

They went underground to collect these sacred objects, and this might be the right time to tell you that dwarf actually means “opening in the ground”. This is where they went, to collect the sacred objects; into opening in the ground. The burial mound.

Calling them “dark elves” might seem odd to some, because it means “dark light”, a clear oxymoron, but the distinction is clear. The elves were “light elves” when they resided outside the burial mound, for example as light in the Northern Light, but they were called “dark elves” when they resided in the dark and gloomy burial mound. The opening in the ground.

The children entering and later leaving the burial mound with their ancestors’ bearded heads were the ancestors themselves. They had become reincarnated. So yes, they were dark elves.

Now, I talk much about Scandinavians here, but this ancestral cult stems from the Neanderthals, and was practised all over Europe, in Asia and later on in America as well, amongst all the peoples descending from the Neanderthals, more (like the Europeans) or less (like others). The term elf though is itself Germanic, and other (very similar, in both meaning and symbolism) terms were used elsewhere.

In the end I will add that I have left out some information about bees here, and how they are related to the elves (with their “arrows” that sting) and why the Northern Light (Aurora Borealis) was called Alvedans (“Elf Dance”) or “The Way of the Bees”, but at least for now, this will suffice. My purpose was to explain what an elf really was, originally, what the term means, originally, and also explain why and how they have become so misunderstood over the years.

Thank you for reading,

Varg Vikernes (July, 2021)

PS. If you want a really good book (written by my wife) about our Pagan heritage, I highly recommend this one.

The Class Struggle

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.

See the source image

***

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.

Sacred Objects

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.

Paganism Explained, Part V: Ásgarðr, Vanaheimr & The Nine Worlds of Hel

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 19th 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