Monthly Archives: February 2021
Charming of the Plough Prayer to Thor and Sif
I offer this prayer to Thor and to the Goddess Sif.
Hail to You, Holy Ones.
Hail to You, Protectors of Midgard,
Hail to You, Son of Odin and Hail to You,
His gleaming Bride.
You hallow and drive out all pollution.
You are mighty. There is no malignant force
that You cannot banish. There is no threat,
You cannot overcome.
You are magnificent and Your grace
protects me in the face of evil.
Mighty Thor, wise, compassionate Friend of humanity,
look upon us and wield Your hammer for our protection.
Gracious Sif, You Whose gentle touch causes the grain to grow,
please nourish us, restore us, and grant us the fortitude
to walk in alignment with the Holy Powers always.
Through Your blessings, may we grow strong in faith.
through Your blessings may we grow strong in devotion.
Through Your blessings, may we always resist impiety,
may we be nourished as the grain is nourished
under Your caring hands.
In times of peril, come to our aid, I pray.
In times of desperation, I place myself under Your care.
Hail Thor, Son of Odin.
Hail Sif, His Gracious Bride.
Every Elder is a World
Our elders are the backbone of our traditions. Without elders, there is no tradition and certainly no clean, sustainable transmission of our traditions. There’s a trend now, largely from the Pagan left (no surprise there) to dismiss, erase, eradicate the contributions of our traditions’ elders, all the while reaping the benefits of the learning, traditions, and Mysteries those elders carry. People who spent and spend their lives pouring themselves out for their Gods are being excoriated and slowly pushed out of their traditions by those with little learning, less sense, and no humility at all. It’s really rather disgusting. It’s not surprising – I’ve seen the attitude before—but it is disgusting.
It also betrays a deeply flawed understanding of what tradition and lineage are and why they’re important. It speaks to modern discomfort with hierarchy and authority. It speaks to the quality of person modern Paganisms way too often draw, but it also speaks to a dearth of competent elders in some cases. An elder, however, can be “troublesome” without being wrong. A good elder knows better than to allow him or herself to move with the wind. Rather an elder stands strong and committed to service to the Holy Powers and Their traditions.
Should we have elders, prophets, diviners, etc.? Well that’s really up to the Gods isn’t it? And the Gods have, from time immemorial resounded with a clear and present YES. (This is particularly true in the case of prophets – the community has zero part to play in making a prophet. That is something the Gods alone do).
I am grateful to the elders in my world, living and dead. I am grateful for the doors they’ve opened, for their struggles, their hard work, their sacrifices.
Hreinsa and Verja (to cleanse and protect)
excellent post by Horn and Hearth on cleansing and protection for the home.
I wrote about Heathenry and Cleansing not very long ago and it, of course, still applies. I wanted to go a step further today and discuss the very important work of cleansing and protecting your Heathen home. This is an important discussion that keeps coming up for me in conversations with fellow pious polytheists. At the risk of being melodramatic – we do have enemies and our communities are full of pollution. We must not only fight against that pollution, we also have to do our very best not to let that pollution get to us or in us/in our homes. Heathens talk a lot about Innangard and Utgard – the Inner Yard where the people you have Frith with dwell and the Outer Yard where the stranger or those you may have Grith with are. It is our duty to protect our Inner Yard as part of our role…
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On Frith
My household had a really enlightening discussion of frith last night and I want to recap some of the key points here. Frith is a very important theological term and so, it is especially important to translate it accurately. The common translation of ‘peace’ just doesn’t do the job, partly because our modern conceptions of peace do not adequately reflect the understanding of our ancestors or, more importantly, the nature of our cosmology. A better translation (and my understanding here was first shaped by Gronbech, then W. Hodge and later by my own work and understanding of this term) would be ‘right order.’ Right order is something that must be maintained, worked for, sustained – sometimes by violence (1). It must be consistently cultivated. That is far, far closer to the meaning of the word ‘frith’ than modern conceptions of ‘peace,’ which often involve ignoring imbalance and wrongdoing, even turning a blind eye to lack of virtue (2) in order to avoid disturbing the status quo. Frith is not the status quo.
I think that frith is more analogous to the Roman Pax Deorum, peace of the Gods. This was not passive or static in any way. It laid tremendous responsibility on the part of the people for maintaining their part of this sacred contract. Frith, therefore, is the active and correct maintenance of a contract between the community and the Holy Powers, one the onus of which is on the community to uphold (3). It’s so important that we have a now little-known healing Goddess named Frith. That says something about the power of Frith for maintaining right order because health like frith is something that must be worked for, cultivated, and maintained. It’s about finding that inner balance, which is never static, and adhering to it. When you veer from that, you become sick. In a society when you veer from frith, that society becomes sick. Meanings of frith that translate it as security or safety are not incorrect, rather they tap into this necessary right-order and on-going course correction.
Etymologically, frith means to reconcile, to make peace, to protect what is one’s own, to protect peace (4). While the definition ‘peace’ is again given here, there is nothing passive about it in this context. It must be actively protected and that vigilance is enshrined in the very etymology of the word. One makes frith, one reconciles and this implies not only ongoing vigilance but ongoing action. It doesn’t must mean “peace” but “guarding” that peace as well. (5) It’s not a one-time thing but an ongoing process.
Because of this connection with right order, frith has a certain connection with ON/OE law, to the point that the term occasionally turns up in legal contexts (though grið, posited on the distinction between one’s inangarð and everyone else tends to be used more frequently, usually in the sense of „safe passage“ or „detente“). As an aside, a friend of mine who is a Russian translator and who is currently working on properly rendering the heiti of Frey into Russian told me that the concept of ‘frith’ as ‘right-order’ is actually so enshrined in her language, that the word for ‘right-order’ now carries a meaning more analogous to ‘law and order.’ (6). It was, in this culture, a logical evolution of the concept of frith.
Cosmologically to maintain frith is to maintain right order with the Holy Powers. This means that we are consciously charged with doing what we can to reify and restore the architecture the Gods have created. We are charged with the power of veneration and devotion, of pouring out our prayers to the Gods, and in so doing nourishing the Tree, laying new laws in Urða’s well that further support creation. For pre-Christian Heathens, frith may have been an ideal state of harmony within the tribe but the unspoken corollary to that was always “in relation to the Holy Powers” and the corollary to that, involves a reflection of the divine and cosmic architecture which those Powers have carefully created, in which we live as every living thing does, and which our lives and devotional actions have the power to nourish…or not. It’s something like the Pax Deorum that everyone played a part in maintaining.
Basically, if Frith is peace, it is a very active peace, an active maintaining of peace up to and including violent actions taken in order to restore it once sundered. What is at stake is the integrity of the worlds’ architecture itself. Our tribes and villages, communities, our respective inangarður are meant to mirror that greater structure. Frith is that process by which that unification with divine order is achieved and hopefully maintained.
Notes:
- For instance, while this is not meant at all to encourage violent action, theoretically vengeance is sacred in our tradition. We see this again and again in the sagas: there is no frith until loss of luck has been restored. That is a very difficult idea for modern Heathens to fully comprehend. Frith is about the wholeness and integrity of a contract between the community and the Gods and that means there are times when, if frith is broken, debt will be accrued by the community and an obligation for restoration. Every individual has to do his or her part because every individual is part of the community upholding that contract. This is why in a properly ordered community law should serve frith – right order—and why it is so important to cultivate an active, aware piety in all one’s people. The restoration of peace, of right order, when frith is broken, must occur not only on a physical, communal level, but on a spiritual one as well which is why vengeance is sometimes sacred and in fact good and necessary.
- By this, I mean virtue in the classical sense.
- The Gods after all, already pour blessings into our hands every day that we draw breath. Were they never to give anything else, we would still owe Them everything. That They DO give more is a tremendous grace.
- See Altnordisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, by J. de Vries, p. 142.
- Ibid. de Vries gives Frieden, schutz, and versöhnen as definitions of this term. The etymology is full not only of the idea that frith is a treasure to be guarded, that it brings peace and goodness to a community but more importantly that it must be actively protected.
- The word in Russian is Правопорядок. There are elements in the way the word frith was used in both ON and OE that point to the idea of fealty, legal protection, and specific legal rights as well. This led to T.V. following my own translation of ‘frith’ into English as ‘right order’ to the Russian term above, which now just has a meaning of ‘law and order’ but originally meant something much more akin to frith.
Loud Piety
Today I discovered that if you go to google and type in “Thor’s Mother” google will tell you that it’s Frigga – at least it did for me and my household. This is not correct. Thor’s Mother is the Earth Goddess Jörd. We have Marvel to thank for Google’s inaccuracy and oh does it piss me off (1). Pop culture, amusing though it may be, is all too often so polluting. It also inevitably caters to the lowest common denominator. It’s bad enough that one can’t do a search for “Odin” or “Loki” without Marvel images coming up. It makes me wish that our pop culture had just a little more piety, or even accuracy (2). Granted, this was a problem even in the ancient world. Even the Homeric corpus came under fire by certain philosophers for the impious way it treated the Gods. I think the difference is that then the dominant worldview was polytheistic and so piety was reinforced elsewhere. In our world, it’s attacked on every side (3). This makes the influence of pop culture far more significant than it otherwise would be.
I’ll admit, I like some aspects of pop culture. I just don’t base my personality and reason for being around it and I certainly don’t put it ahead of my devotion. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with enjoying a movie or game though. I think we just have to consider carefully what we want to give space to in our minds. What are we going to allow to take up mental and emotional space? What furthers our respect and reverence for the Gods and what doesn’t? What makes us better people and better devotees, and what chips away little by little at our piety? Every person has to make those determinations for him or herself and individuals will find that these things affect them each differently. The important point is to consider the media we take in, and to make conscious choices about it, because these things have long term consequences. They build habits of mind.
One of the problems with Marvel Thor is that we’re getting people coming into our traditions thinking that this nonsense is canon (and they are usually unwilling to self-correct) (4). There are Mysteries inherent in the relationships between our Gods, and that is all muddled and lost if one has the nature of those relationships awry. Secondly, it’s a matter of proper devotional respect. I don’t think we should encourage the erasure of any of our Holy Powers, which is what errata like this do, especially when we have people taking this as truth. Finally, how long until Marvel/Disney attempts to copyright or impose royalties on any use of “Thor,” even when that usage is devotional and not part of their shit franchise? Think I’m overexaggerating? I know several polytheistic artists who are also devotees of the God Hermes who have had to fight various professional art/sales platforms because the handbag company Hermes has laid exclusionary claim to the term, that term being the name of one of our Gods. This is when I start wanting to burn it all down.
Most disturbingly of all, a fellow-traveler on twitter commented that he’d seen the same type of thing with pop culture and newcomers to Hellenic polytheism and noted – quite accurately, I think – that it almost always goes hand in hand with a certain misotheism, hatred of the Gods. That’s the real and pressing problem, one already found throughout our communities far, far more than it ought to be.
So what to do? Horn and Hearth had THE best answer and it’s one that I will cherish: loud piety. On our blogs, in books, in song, in offerings, in the stories we tell, in videos, in shrine making, everywhere. Loud piety. I can be loud.
NOTES:
- Why can’t google note the disambiguation: Thor’s Mother- Norse Myths: Jord; Marvel movies: Frigga. I wouldn’t complain about that and this is standard practice in most other cases of disambiguation on google. Why wasn’t it done here?
- I’ll stop complaining about this when Marvel includes Jesus and Mohammed in the list of sacred figures they appropriate. Oh, but that won’t happen. Christians would complain and doing this with Mohammed might get people killed. Our community doesn’t care enough about its Gods in general to recognize the disrespect and long-term disadvantages inherent in such depictions. They’d rather pollute their minds unthinkingly in the name of fun. (Have fun but recognize that these things aren’t innocent. Approaching them and engaging consciously makes it much less likely that there will be any lasting negative imprint in our minds and hearts. I personally may not choose to watch Marvel movies but I acknowledge that they can be enjoyable. Just realize that consuming anything uncritically is dangerous to the integrity of our devotion.
- This is the case not just for polytheists but for monotheistic traditions too. The modern world is very hostile to any but the most negligible of devotions.
- I cannot tell you how many hits I get on my article “Freya is NOT Queen of the Valkyries.” I’m not sure where this fallacy started, but it has endured far beyond what it ought to have done.
A PSA I posted to Reddit: “Deity work” is not dangerous!
Excellent, absolutely excellent article. Here’s the take away: “gods are only dangerous if you treat them like shit.” So don’t do that. The Holy Powers are not people. They are above us in the cosmic hierarchy. If that is difficult or “triggering” to you, that’s a problem for you to explore with your spiritual elders. it’s not something inherently wrong with the Gods Themselves. This is a brilliant, brilliant article that underscores the need for elders, tradition keepers, respect, reverence, and common friggin’ sense.
You, yes you, all the way in the back:
“Deity work” is not dangerous.
This is an insidious lie that damages communities, and activelyharms people.
Gods, and having relationships with them, are not any more dangerous than interacting with any other human being. It is no more dangerous than getting behind the wheel of your car. It is no more dangerous than showing up to work. It is no more dangerous than cooking dinner.
That is, thereisa risk. But it is not what you seem to think it is: it is dangerous if you lack basic respect for that – or in this case,Whom- you are interacting with.
You know who claims gods are dangerous? People who are selfish assholes. People who want to convince you they have special abilities or training that you don’t. People who want power and attention. People who wrongly, stupidly,
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Encyclopedia Now Available in Paperback and Ebook Form
For those interested in the Kemetic Gods, whether as devotees or scholars, this is an excellent resource.
My Theological Encyclopedia of the Goddesses and Gods of the Ancient Egyptians, hosted on this site since 2009, and which will remain available here, is now available in paperback and Kindle ebook form as well.
NOTE: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, getting commissions for purchases made through links in this post.
Hail to our Sancta Fuensanta Plaza
Today is the feast day for one of our most beloved Sanctae, most beloved to me at least, because she was my adopted mom. She was also the most devout and pious person I have ever known. As her daughter, I can say that she centered me in reverence and piety, helped me to be a better devotee of my Gods, and helped me to become a better person, and she taught me a renewed joy in the grace of sacred service to Them. I know she helped others too and has continued to do so, as is the way of a saint, after her death. I usually write something about her on this day and on her birthday. I’ve been thinking about her a great deal over the last few weeks especially, though every day I ache for the loss of her.
As is my custom, this evening I made offerings at her shrine. There are prayers that I said, and prayers that I wished to make, many too personal to be shared here. Love and reverence, piety, and a very quiet discipline, that of doing what needs to be done even when it is inconvenient…those are the gifts I feel she poured into my heart and hands and I am deeply grateful. To be loved in this way, and to be challenged is a very precious gift. I know that the Gods placed me into her care and were They to do nothing else for the rest of my life, that gift, that tremendous gift would be enough. That They do more, always is a blessing beyond measure. She taught me to recognize the blessings of the Gods as they come, large, small, or in-between.
On this, her feast day, I offer this prayer:
May Fuensanta and all our sancti and sanctae be honored. May they be remembered. May we ever learn reverence at their feet. May we cultivate the discipline of piety. May we wrap ourselves in veneration, until our love of the Holy Ones becomes a fire that nothing may quench. Hail to Fuensanta Arismendi Plaza, devoted servant of Sigyn and Loki, and Hail to all our Gods. What is remembered, lives.
Gangleri's Grove 