Huginn | 2.2 | Yule 2012 | Ethics & Virtues by Talas Pái

ISSN 2009-4035

HUGINN a journal of alternative heathenry VOLUME 2, ISSUE 2 : ETHICS & VIRTUES YULE 2012 03

EDITORIAL: A RACKET, A CULT OR A CORPORATION Talas Pái

NOTA BENE Talas Pái

THE WATCHER Michaela Macha

THELEMA AND SURRENDER Ljót Lokadís

A HAND Michaela Macha

ITCHY FINGERS Damian Kemp

ETHICS Michaela Macha

WHAT WOULD THOR DO? A.J. Thorsson

MATAPALO C. James Aronen

BOOK REVIEW: LIVING WITH HONOUR: A PAGAN ETHICS Maris Pái

TIES Michaela Macha

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Courage is not simply one of

the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point. C. S. Lewis

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Editorial: A Racket, a Cult or a Corporation It has been a hard year for everyone. My dad died, the youngest of five and the first to die, wracked by the cancer that took both his parents. I think of him daily despite my own years of emotional ambivalence: whenever something interesting happens, I wonder what he would think of it. I wonder if he would be relieved that Obama won reelection. I wonder if he would be impressed that I learned to make crepes. I wonder what he would make of Curiosity's photos of Mars. I think about the scotch he won't drink, the bakewell tarts and barbeque he won't eat. Another late-fall steelhead season passed unfished. I honestly don't feel bad that he's dead, that sense of my own loss; I feel bad for his own loss, that he's not living. My mother, editing her mother's traditional Christmas letter, criticized it to me as a "depressing extended obituary" -- six paragraphs of family and close friends who died in 2012 with a brief coda that failed to set a festive mood. Somehow, despite my grandmother's perennial self-pity, it seemed exceptionally appropriate. My grandfather died. My father died. My cat died. Work has been hard. Family has been difficult. My personal tragedies have been overshadowed massively by national and global crises -mass shootings, war, economic instability, gross inequality, LGBTQ people struggling for basic rights, women struggling for bodily control. The apocalypse didn't come (of course) but to my mind, 2012 felt unusually brutal. It tested what we, as individuals and as people, could tolerate. What we, after years on the civilization merry-go-round, could abide. Compiling this issue on Ethics and Virtues seemed timely. The extent to which people's morality, behavior and sense of justice was tested seemed greater than in the recent past. This year, I have witnessed a degree of internecine fighting in the Heathen and Northern Traditionalist communities that seemed more pitched and vicious than before, more divisive and hurtful. The ancient sense of in-groups and outlaws, preserved and revived in our religious community, reached its bitter logical conclusion over and over. It seemed that more people moved further from the basic tenets of Heathen ethics, ignored more of the commonsense virtues, in pursuit of some nebulous victory. Eric Hoffer wrote in The Temper of Our Time that "Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect. They know that basic human problems can have no final solutions, that our freedom, justice, equality, etc. are far from absolute, and that the good life is compounded of half measures, compromises, lesser evils, and gropings toward the perfect." To me, that is the basic awareness that must underpin all moral and ethical choices; to always strive towards the perfect while making peace with inevitable imperfection. I am only partly in agreement with the Nine Noble Virtues; its provenance with the Odinic Rite and Asatru Folk Assembly bothers me, as does the tenor of its less well-known versions. I prefer Hรกvamรกl's advice, when I am inclined to take advice from an old piece of paper. Its wisdom is sensible and emphasizes our unity and communality instead of reinforcing a belligerence and sense of Heathenry as a world apart from other peoples. Hรกvamรกl is less concerned with ancestry or a sense of martial readiness; it emphasizes

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moderation, equality, generosity, quick wits and polite behavior, a more useful code for the modern age, more dinner party than raiding party. Hávamál tellingly does not make mention of ancestry and little reference to religion (if we're excluding Rúnatál). We -- Heathens, Pagans in general -- seem to spend a lot of time focusing on what we are not and what we do not. We are not Christians (except when some occasionally are). We do not bow down to our gods (except when it seems prudent or respectful or to show devotion or gratitude or awe). Paganisms leaning on ancestry as a condition of membership, rather than a facet of experience, are backwardsthinking and backwards-looking. While more seekers are exploring Paganisms now than ever before, we are not so popular that we need to concern ourselves with restricting membership; while disagreement is inevitable in the individualistic and personality-led realm of Heathenry, we should consider who we are driving away by our actions in direct opposition to our gods'. Instead of caring so much about exclusive membership or about the ways in which we are Totally Not Like Everyone Else, we should emphasize the universal tenets that underpin all moral behavior. Deal with others fairly, pursue justice and equality, cultivate gratitude and a tempering humility, embrace honesty (at least with yourself), strive for honor: there can be no greater code than this. Eric Hoffer also wrote, "America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation." Ignore the emphasis on America in this case -- its sphere of influence goes far beyond its borders. As revivalists, we spend a great deal of time looking back. But we must consider what we are building for the future, if anything. –

Talas Pái Editor editor@huginnjournal.com

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Nota bene This issue will be the last for Huginn before it goes on indefinite hiatus. While I am proud of every issue of Huginn we've put out and every contributor that has submitted their time and work, due to changing personal circumstances and our desire to focus our energies on Huginn Press, I cannot say when or if there will be another issue. I definitely can say that good things are in the works for Huginn Press for 2013, with its focus on intensive long-form books and monographs. First out will be Maris Pái's much-anticipated book for Frigga, Beloved. Future books from Huginn Press will deal with practical rune magic, Pagan monasticism, Odinic philosophy -- there's a lot of great stuff coming down the line. To find out more about Huginn Press, our current and upcoming titles or our submission guidelines, check out our website at [huginnpress.com]. –

Talas Pái Editor editor@huginnjournal.com

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The Watcher BY MICHAELA MACHA

A war, somewhere. A soldier is crossing a line when combat begins and something shifts in his head. I watch. He feels so alive, like never before-He revels. Ecstatic, the killing. Delightful, the gore. He´d not known he could be like this. He´ll try to forget, yet yearn for it later at home. All this is mine. A city, somewhen. An artist is doing a line; addicted to beauty, his craving helps him create. I watch his choice to live fast; he will not live long. He fades while his dreams become real in sculpture and song. Soon he will have nothing left, except wait for the time to pass between shots. This, too, is mine. A lab, someone. He muses over a graph line. His life has passed and he knew not the turning of seasons. I watch his hunt for a truth that he may never find; nothing else matters. I feel his hungering mind. His wife had left years ago; he did not ask reasons. With sudden rapture, he´s seeing the answer. All this is mine. Michaela Macha runs Odin's Gift [odins-gift.com], a site with over 2.000 Norse mythology poems, songs, and MP3s. Her first album "Skaldenmet - Der Ruf der Götter" (The Call of the Gods) with German Heathen folk rock is available from the Asatru Ring Frankfurt & Midgard [asatruringfrankfurt.de], an international spiritual community of which she is co-founder. She is currently working on a Heathen Songbook in print.

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Thelema and Surrender BY LJÓT LOKADÍS

That was a simple riddle used by Zen Masters in the training of monks, Joe remembered. You take a newborn gosling and slip it through the neck of a bottle. Month after month you keep it in there and feed it, until it is a full-grown goose and can no longer be passed through the bottle's neck. The question is: Without breaking the bottle, how do you get the goose out? -- Leviathan by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea

I grew up in Thelema. Okay, maybe not quite. I didn’t discover it until I was about 17 or so, but for years afterward it was one of my most profound influences, in terms of my magic and my personal code of ethics. Ceremonial magic, particularly through the lens of Thelema, has a certain intensity to it that draws me in: lengthy and grueling meditation sessions, lungbursting vibrations of godnames, vivid sex magic, lurid channeled books. And, lest we forget, the overwrought, larger-than-life persona of the prophet of the New Aeon, the Great Beast 666, Aleister Crowley, and the delicious libertinism (yet the terrifying strictness) of the Law of Thelema, do what thou wilt! What an adolescent badass I felt like! To be fair, I do owe Thelema a lot. It’s when I encountered Thelema that my magical and my spiritual life began to intensify. That’s when I started to study magic in earnest, rather than just dabbling. I began to grow serious about my spiritual work, and about living life in general. I worked to pick myself up from the pit of black depression that had eaten up my adolescence and had encouraged me toward scary, codependent patterns, and I tried to power through my fears and neuroses. Better than being paralyzed by them, I figured. Sometimes that worked well. Sometimes, not so well. But it kept me going, yes. More than once I kept myself from seeking an Out in a dark depressive fit, because I believed that I had True Will to accomplish here on earth. After all, if my True Will were fulfilled, I would be safely dead by now, I figured. So I had to pick myself up and keep on going toward … whatever. I was never sure what, but I figured I’d know when I got there. Getting there involved meeting the nebulous, mysterious spark of my own personal divinity, known as the Holy Guardian Angel. I figured I’d achieve that someday, too, but I didn’t really know how or when. It seemed impossible, despite all the exercises I tried and hard work I did. *** In terms of philosophy and ethics, some would say that the Law of Thelema is amoral. It certainly doesn’t adhere to normal human morality. And yet, I repeat: It’s strict. As countless Thelemites will dutifully and patiently explain to you, “do what thou wilt” doesn’t mean “do what you want.” The real heart of the Great Work, according to 7

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Thelema, is in figuring out what you’re here for by speaking with the Holy Guardian Angel, and then doing it – and never wavering. True Will, as it’s called, is paramount. It is the highest value. In the process of doing this, you accept no external limitations on yourself, save for those placed by the HGA. You do not let any other entity, god or man, hinder you in any way. The Law is the only ethical code in Thelema; to allow oneself to be constrained, or to constrain another, is the only sin. And when I say sin, I’m not being hyperbolic. Thelema has an evangelical streak; the Law is for all, the saying goes. In the communities I’ve been in, those who accept constraint are seen as weak at best and terribly codependent at worst. Those who place constraints on another are seen as having performed a violation. This lines up remarkably well with a lot of mainstream Heathen ideas about free will and individualism. (I expect that a lot of mainstream to right-wing heathens have encountered Thelemic ideas through the work of Evolan traditionalism, which meets and kisses with Thelema … and which also shares many distressing attitudes about race with many forms of Heathenry.) When these ideas on individualism meet more liberal and/or Northern Tradition ideas of how to work with the gods, the two worldviews usually lock horns. Many Northern Tradition pagans, including but not limited to shamans and those who identify as godslaves, say that the radical individualist view espoused in Thelema (and much of Heathenry) is naïve. If the gods want you constrained, they say, They’ll constrain you, and all the willpower and magic in the world won’t allow you to say no. Mainstream Heathens balk at that view; they say that the gods would never do that to human beings, and that the Tivar encourage human beings to “stand up” for themselves rather than to be “subjugated.” This is often folded into the Nine Noble Virtues, through the idea of self-reliance. *** But back up a bit. I met Loki when I was 13 – four years before I ran off into Thelema, in other words. The experience changed me, but not as dramatically or as quickly as some people might expect. I feel like I must make far slower progress in my spiritual life than the gods must be comfortable with, sometimes. And sometimes I have to be knocked over the head multiple times with something for it to make sense. When I say I’ve been working with Loki for 12 years of my life, that sounds very impressive, as though I’ve been in constant contact. No such thing. He wandered off for periods back then, and He still does. It seems to be a fact of our spiritual experience, but sometimes I wonder if it is – again – because I’m stubborn and can’t take spiritual direction sometimes. Maybe He gets frustrated with me. Maybe He knows that I need time to simmer and get my head out of the way. It was around one of those Lokean lulls that I started working with Thelema. I had received a strong push toward possessory work when I was 15 (two years before I entered into Thelema, in other words). That, and a strong intuitive streak that my practice has always had, should have pushed me into a more shamanic practice rather than the more calculated work of ceremonial magic. But instead, I freaked out. With the knowledge and resources at my disposal and in my area, I couldn’t find anyone who would train a 15-year-old white kid in suburbia in 8

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how to handle a divine possession – and, in fact, most people in the Heathen community at the time were outstandingly negative about the idea of the Tivar ever riding a human. So I didn’t know what was happening, and the feedback I was getting from my online communities made me uncomfortable. Possession, even when I negotiated the terms carefully with the gods in advance, meant losing control. Hell, shamanism meant losing control, with its geases and its taboos, and I think I sensed that that was where this was all headed. I didn’t want to be controlled! So I turned around and ran into the arms of Thelema. There, I could still touch ecstasy, but tell myself I was still in control. There, I could have the desire for control mirrored back at me by the Thelemic community, which holds self-control as its highest virtue. As I mentioned, I was still hovering on the edge of bleak depression, and I clung to True Will to keep myself alive. (It was shaman sickness, maybe, but I’m loathe to assign a label to my own experience.) In the end, I guess I can say that Thelema worked okay for me, I guess, inasmuch as I was very sick, yet I didn’t die. *** I can’t quite say what it was that finally removed me from Thelema, or Thelema from me. Part of it was the realization that most of the central mysteries of Thelema are sex magic that assumes a (usually misogynistic) gender binary, and I was coming to terms with the fact that I don’t comfortably fit into a binary. Part of it was fully realizing that Crowley, for all of his shocking libertinism, was extremely socially conservative, espousing many of the same racist views that I have always found deplorable in Heathenry. But suddenly (and recently), a paradigm-shifting event: In the summer of 2011 I had what I would hesitantly label a dismemberment experience. Several months later, after healing the resultant changes to my hame, I received instructions as to the nature of my spiritual work. And the Tivar explained that I had received a first round of hame alterations long ago, prior to my dismemberment, that had set me up on this path. Normally the Thelemite in me wouldn’t have been too happy to have been ordered around by the gods. And normally I would have perceived this as a matter of I permitted myself to be altered, not I was altered. (If I’d been conscious and aware, after all, couldn’t I have fought back? The “weakness” I displayed is not valued in Thelema! You can see how quickly this can descend into victim blaming …) But instead, I found myself grateful. I had direction. Things about my personal experience that I’d never been able to fully understand had come together into a coherent whole. That same night I received my first taboos. The gist of them (there are several) is that I can’t take any deliberate actions that exacerbate my depression or otherwise bring me closer to an early death. I agreed to them, although I wasn’t sure how much choice I really had in the matter. But to be honest I didn’t really care. Some Thelemite, right? But here’s the thing: I may have abandoned Thelema as a system, but the Thelemite valuing of Will above all else has been hard for me to shake. And I don’t know what, exactly, brought this dramatic change in me about, much less what precipitated the realizations I’m playing with – maybe the trauma of the dismemberment. But somewhere along the way the Willcentric, self-reliant, individualist worldview got turned on its head. 9

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I’m beginning to think that geases and taboos are less like forceful impositions from without, and more like the laws of gravity. They will exist whether or not a deity or a divination makes them explicit to you. Many of them – not all, but many – may not even have been placed by a deity, but rather by wyrd. I’m starting to think that it’s nobody’s fault that someone has a shamanic geas or taboo placed upon them, any more than that it’s summer’s fault that it turns to autumn, or an apple’s fault that it falls from a tree. Describing it as a weakness, an acquiescence to another’s will, is as silly as saying that I acquiesced to having brown hair when I was born. Inasmuch as there’s a choice involved in them at all, it seems to me that geases and taboos are for one’s own good. Whether they’re to keep you away from real dangers inherent to the work, like they are for me, or if they’re to increase your power so you can do more and better work, they’re not arbitrary limitations that are here to hinder you or subjugate you. The gods do curse, but these aren’t curses. They are instructions on how to live for the purpose that one has become aware of, and they help us to be happy and survive and do the work well and with power. Which sounds a lot like ideas about the Holy Guardian Angel and acting out one’s True Will. With this view, it no longer makes sense to blame someone for the “transgression” of permitting themselves to be subject to a geas or a taboo. It no longer makes sense to run frantically from taboos and the more frightening tasks that the gods place on us; rather, we should reach out and embrace them, as we are able. The systems of Thelemite and mainstream Heathen individualism are deconstructed and fall in on themselves; the valuing of Will and self-control become nonsensical. The universe no longer stands in deadly opposition to the self. The Holy Guardian Angel is right here all along, and has been as long as the gods have stood with us. There’s your damn Thelema! Ljót Lokadís is a Heathen-type-person, practicing something seidhlike and studying Feri in Madison, WI. Sie is one of the founders of Sigewif Kindred [sigewif.weebly.com]. Hir blog is at [lokadis.wordpress.com].

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A Hand BY MICHAELA MACHA

A hand Can be open and giving Can clench to a fist with anger It can protect and defend It can rise to say "Stop!" You can swear oaths with it You can deceive with it Some things have to be done Some thing you can only do once With one hand For everything has its price Especially doing right. Michaela Macha runs Odin's Gift [odins-gift.com], a site with over 2.000 Norse mythology poems, songs, and MP3s. Her first album "Skaldenmet - Der Ruf der Gรถtter" (The Call of the Gods) with German Heathen folk rock is available from the Asatru Ring Frankfurt & Midgard [asatruringfrankfurt.de], an international spiritual community of which she is co-founder. She is currently working on a Heathen Songbook in print.

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Itchy Fingers BY DAMIAN KEMP

Their group creates a diversion, we steal the documents. Of course, "we" just means "one of us." A fine plan, sure, except nobody had volunteered for the hard part. To be honest, I don't think any of us expected to actually surround the surveyor's truck without being noticed, but here we are - two behind and three in front, hidden in the hedges alongside the gravel road, walkie-talkies turned down - in over our heads. Someone needs to go, now. [Doom.] "Okay, I'll go." Wait, did I just say that out loud? But it makes the most sense. For a variety of reasons, it's best if it's me. Already they're getting the attention of the surveyor and the cop. The trick is working! And suddenly I'm running for the truck. The documents are on the dashboard, but the door is locked. The cop's shouting and running over. The other door? Nope, also locked. Shit. Suddenly, I'm me again. He's only a few meters behind. Run! I'm faster than him, and I've gotten good at jumping fences. Stop to catch my breath. Dense branches and thin lines conceal me. Ugh, hasty runes are a bad idea. I wish I'd memorized the camouflage stave. Anyway, I'm safe. Still, I'm much more cautious than I need to be, and I take my time coming back to the house. The others were worried about me, but I'm alright. I had Tyr's help. Obviously, I see Tyr differently from most people. Tyr's sometimes painted as a lawyer-soldier. I see Him more as an agent of thoughtful sacrifice. The scamming of Hymir (probably Tyr's dad, which would make Him ethnically giant) and the betrayal of Fenrir (who Tyr raised, apparently lovingly, and who is also, problematically, a giant) both reek of a sober, conflicted intellect. They demonstrate the wisdom to weigh one's own well-being and the good of one's family against the good of others, and the capacity to act once a decision is reached, to sacrifice personal honor (lower justice) for the sake of all (higher justice). To lie for love and die for truth. Honor, sacrificed. Without a hand, Tyr can no longer swear oaths, and will no longer be called a reconciler of men. Doubtful, then, that He could preside over the Althing â&#x20AC;&#x201C; presumably averting Odin's death and Ragnarok is more important than all that other stuff? I've had an affinity with Tyr for a while now, over a decade. He makes me stick to my ethics, and back up those ethics with actions as much as my audacity allows. He encourages me to chip in, which is great because I'm naturally quite lazy. He helps me be truthful, whether by answering good-faith questions in good faith or by wearing girl clothes in public when I feel like it. Most importantly He gives me doom when I need it, which is like giving someone a match. It's a small thing, but try starting a fire without it. There is no replacement for doom. By 'doom', I mean guided, emotionless action. Voluntary dissociation, or occasionally peritraumatic. Battle trance. 12

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The word 'doom' comes from a Norse word that means 'code of law', which Tyr is often associated with. Maybe 'program code' works better for me, and the idea of coding covers the other kind of juice that Tyr offers. If harsh doom is good for getting past fears, coding is good for other kinds of tough calls. "IF this girl is making us uncomfortable, THEN she can't live with us." There's definitely some overlap between doom and code. Notably, self-coding can also be nice. "Hey, do you want to get a drink sometime? Hey, do you want to get a drink sometime? Whew, okay, here goes nothing. Hey, Sam..." Sometimes we need guiding principles (not to be confused with laws â&#x20AC;&#x201C; although local laws offer a ready-made code for the uninquisitive). Sometimes something just needs to get done, right now. I see these kinds of emotionless self-codings as Tyr's domain. The sacrifice - to a code or to doom - of our emotions, and potentially also of our well-being, is ideally for a higher purpose. A Point. For me, one Point is depleted uranium. Thousands of kids every year are born with horrifying deformities from the depleted uranium spread over Iraq, Afghanistan, and the former Yugoslavia in the wars of the last 20 years. A major military conflict every five years, rather than being abnormal, is exactly average for the United States over the past half century, the only difference in the last four is that they've included depleted uranium (okay, and more mercenary forces, and remote-control murderbots). One every 5 years. Depleted uranium has a half-life of 4.5 billion years (and you could say the same for Midgard, since 4.5 billion years happens to be both the current age of the sun and Earth, and the approximate time until the one expands into a red giant and consumes the other â&#x20AC;&#x201C; so this shit is sticking around as long as we are). Why is such a thing permitted? Depleted uranium is heavy, innately explosive, and has negative value â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the perfect munition, from a cold entrepreneurial mindset. It's permitted because it's convenient. Capitalists accumulate wealth by extracting resources from developing countries whose officials they can bribe. National borders, like cheesecloth, allow these resources to diffuse freely without any of those filthy people coming through. Fracking, clear-cutting and mountaintop removal leave us with a broken, poisoned planet. Our precarious Ice Age interglacial climate, like our aquifers, is due for an imminent collapse, from which the rich and powerful will easily shield themselves. If none of that stirs you, try this. 18 million people die every year because they're too poor. 18 million. Three Holocausts. Per year. [Ours is not a just world. Our laws, if they've brought us here, cannot be just laws.] The Point, from my perspective and I believe from Tyr's, is simply to try and do something about the world going to shit. Save part of this place, help some of these people. It's possible if we're willing to invest ourselves, and how much better it is to do something to help someone, anyone, than to devote our lives to work, sleep, and getting good at Mario Kart. This is not about gaining the moral high ground. The fact that wrong and right do exist, that there is righteous work to be done, makes self-righteous hypocrisy all the more ugly. [I don't need to know if you're an ethical person or not. Only you need to know that.]

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It's also not about soul bleaching. "Well, I never litter and I don't wear Nikes, so I'm not part of The Problem." Moral hygiene is at best irrelevant. Being here is about getting elbow-deep in spiky ethical dilemmas, making sense of them, and then doing something messy. Find your code and follow it into the maw. Hold onto doom with both hands, or as many as you have.

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Chaos and order. Photo: Talas Pรกi

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Ethics BY MICHAELA MACHA

Don't talk to me about ethics. Dire necessity, consuming desire, those are my virtues. My methods, arguably, have been a matter of dispute. While they dispute, I act. I work with what works. A price is paid, anyway, always; What matters is the result. Tyr understands - he, too, values the spirit over law's letter. We are not that different, at heart. What drives me is me. Can fire stop burning? I am the hangman who serves life. One sacrifice leads to another. Foresight does not grant freedom. The path ahead is clear. Do I really have a choice?

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One of my kind is quite enough, though, for one multiverse-if there were more, or if there was none, you would even now hear Gjallarhorn blow. Michaela Macha runs Odin's Gift [odins-gift.com], a site with over 2.000 Norse mythology poems, songs, and MP3s. Her first album "Skaldenmet - Der Ruf der Gรถtter" (The Call of the Gods) with German Heathen folk rock is available from the Asatru Ring Frankfurt & Midgard [asatruringfrankfurt.de], an international spiritual community of which she is co-founder. She is currently working on a Heathen Songbook in print.

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What Would Thor Do? BY A.J. THORSSON

Being raised Christian in a predominantly Christian culture, it seemed normal to me for my primary spiritual figure, my focus of worship, to also be a moral exemplar. I was taught that as a good Christian I should try to emulate Jesus, and take the life of Jesus as a model for my conduct. Admittedly, this involved a highly sanitized and expurgated portrayal of the life and teachings of Jesus, but it did provide us with a code of conduct which had greater personal relevance than a simple list of rules. While it might seem trite, asking myself “What would Jesus do?” brought my moral conflicts back to a more genuinely spiritual ground. It was better than trying to get into some legalistic debate about whether a certain thing technically counted as violating this rule or that rule. In fact, most of what drove me away from Christianity in my youth was seeing how people could twist around the same set of rules to support whatever agenda they liked. Coming to Paganism many years later, I initially found the lack of doctrine and rules to be a type of spiritual transcendence, a more genuine connection to spirituality that went beyond doing what you are told. It challenged me to question and explore my values in ways I never had before. But as I went deeper into my exploration, it seemed empty without some kind of direct moral guidance. Naturally I looked to the gods for role models, which led to a crisis of faith that tempted me to give up on religion entirely. How could They be my role models? Certainly you can find virtues extolled in the old myths, but so often they seem to sanction deception, theft, oath-breaking, rape, and murder. How many of our stories involve our gods trying to cleverly extract themselves from Their commitments or take what by right belongs to someone else? To see Them as moral exemplars, we are left to pick and choose based on whatever morals and values we came in with. I was back where I started, but now with an even larger and more varied set of “scriptures” for people to manipulate and no clear role model. There seemed to be no consensus among the gods about how to act, as They were all so varied, and there were none that I could embrace fully as an arbiter of right behavior. They all had their virtues and They all had their flaws. How could I choose? Eventually, it dawned on me that I was still desperately looking for one god, the right god, to worship and emulate. My new Jesus. But the Northern gods all stubbornly refused to be my Jesus. The harder I tried to stuff one of Them into that mold, the more wrong it felt. There is a very important core theological difference between polytheism and monotheism (or at least Christianity) that I had entirely overlooked. From a polytheistic perspective, the gods are idealized reflections of reality as it is, rather than ideals of human nature at its best. Reality is not constructed of good things and bad things, right things and wrong things. Reality is constructed of a complex interplay of diverse forces, and to take one of those forces and enthrone it misses the point entirely. While I can seek guidance for many of life’s challenges by asking myself “What would Thor do?” I need to keep in mind that I’m not Thor. Nurturing and sustaining a relationship with Thor has given me a deep appreciation for a certain way of being in the world, and also taught me something about the limitations of that way of being. Whenever I think of commitments I’ve made to my family, I do so knowing that Thor notices and 18

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cares how I keep those commitments. When I feel like I need to defend what is mine from “outsiders,” I also think of Thor, and of the ways in which that urge is both necessary and dangerous. I have over the years developed relationships with other gods, and each one enriches my perspective. Each one adds a few more core values which shape my behavior. All of this doesn’t necessarily show me what is right and what is wrong, but it does show me what is important. My family is important. Working with my hands is important. Keeping my word is important. Honoring the land is important. Yet I’m indifferent to art and music, I’m indifferent to esoteric quests for spiritual wisdom, and I’m especially indifferent to keeping a serene and tidy home. This is no criticism of Bragi, or Odin, or Holda, just a reflection of where my priorities are in this life. When I keep that in mind, I realize I don’t need to decide whether those things are good or bad or assess their value. I just focus on the things that are important to me and honor my gods as best I can. A.J. Thorsson is a native of New England who spends as much time outdoors as possible, a passion he shares with his three growing boys and most of their dogs.

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Matapalo BY C. JAMES ARONEN

You do not need the ground and loam the sun and stars is all you've known, but soon the sky becomes to small and you begin your decent, your fall. Your tendriled fingers first touch the soil, the power of the earth embroils your bitter soul. You must have more. You're jealous of the forest floor. The more you touch, the more you crave; your hunger is what made you brave. To reach below the rocks and stones and taste the things you shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know. And soon the stones are not enough and so you search the shaded tufts. The more you search, the more you're held; the tree that stood inside now felled. So you must stand upon this ground as aging giants stand around like pillars of cathedrals, all knowing of your birth and fall. One day you'll stand so proud, like they, as your face will greet the day for you'll have known both ground and sky as you will until you die.

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Book Review: Living With Honour: A Pagan Ethics BY MARIS Pﾃ！

Although 'Living With Honour' is not a Heathen book, Emma Restall-Orr offers an engaged, thoughtful examination of ethics from an explicitly animistic, Pagan perspective and such a thing is rare enough to warrant an inclusion of this review in the Huginn 'Ethics & Virtues' issue. This is not a book review as much as an examination. However, some Heathens will, I think, dismiss the book out of hand by the end of the introduction. RestallOrr founds her entire argument on the premise that "Pagan ethics are sourced in the individual's acutely sensitive relationship with nature" (pg. 5) and I'm so thoroughly bored with the number of people who will go rounds to inform you that Heathenry is not a nature religion. Rather than digressing into my own standard screed about how Heathenry is not not a nature religion, I will pause here in this review to suggest that if that is your perspective, skip the rest of this article. Still here? Alright. Now, our author's background is Druidic and animist, and she's upfront about that. She also is aware that the a danger in writing a book on ethics is that it potentially positions the writer as a moral authority and does her best to dismiss that promptly. The act of writing the book, she says, is an act of interrogation and learning -- she's all too aware of the problems in so many of our lives caused by out of control consumption, greed, ignorance and apathy. Pagan ethics, she suggests, are, in part, about cultivating "the elusive skill of living well." (pg. 6) The tenets she proposes to form a backbone for LIVING WITH HONOUR Pagan ethics (and yes, there's a whole chapter Ethics interrogating the term 'Pagan') begin with -- and seem AByPagan Emma Restall-Orr to cycle back around to -- honour. It's a problematic 368 pp. O Books, 2008. ﾂ｣8.39 print. term in the modern world, Restall-Orr acknowledges, Available at Amazon.co.uk. with too many associations that connect it to pride, vanity and the provocation of arrogant violence. But the honour she writes of is rooted more in right-action and so she breaks it down further into a triad that she thinks vital to a Pagan morality: courage, generosity and loyalty. According to Restall-Orr, how we treat another -- from an animistic perspective that includes not just other people, but animals and the world at large -- is the measure of morality and a reflection of how we value life and interconnectedness. Integrity, love and connection are other virtues saluted and tied back again to honour, courage, generosity and loyalty. It's a rare thing, a book on ethics from a Pagan perspective. Aside from the Wiccan Rede, the Nine Noble Virtues and equivalent, pithy summaries, it's something that is rarely discussed. Perhaps this, like too much in Pagan circles, is a reaction to the vocal segments 21

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of the monotheistic population and the hypocrisy criticized in them. Perhaps we as a larger Pagan community need to open our eyes to our own hypocrisies and failings so that we can begin to address them. This book is at times insightful and at times flawed, but it's an interesting place to begin. I recommend it as a starting point for some introspection and interrogation as to what our beliefs amount to and how we are -- or aren't -- living them. Maris Pรกi is Huginn's assistant editor, resident Freyaswoman and a practicing witch based out of the West of Ireland. She has a devotional to Frigga coming out in early 2013 with Huginn Press [huginnpress.com].

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Ties BY MICHAELA MACHA

This giant wolf, he still was pup to me; I´d throw a stick and he would fetch a tree. The others feared his hunger deep and raw, while I in play would often grasp his maw. A different sort of game I came to play: For safety´s sake his trust I should betray, not for what he had done, but he might do; and for his freedom pledged my hand in lieu. That part of me he´d keep, if nothing more; like him, in years to come I´d miss it sore. Six things that cannot be wrapped him in chains; the seventh, justice, unmentioned remains. My choice was clear, with all the worlds at stake: That bond, as it tied him, made ours break. Michaela Macha runs Odin's Gift [odins-gift.com], a site with over 2.000 Norse mythology poems, songs, and MP3s. Her first album "Skaldenmet - Der Ruf der Götter" (The Call of the Gods) with German Heathen folk rock is available from the Asatru Ring Frankfurt & Midgard [asatruringfrankfurt.de], an international spiritual community of which she is co-founder. She is currently working on a Heathen Songbook in print.