Now listen, or as they say:

Hwaet!

We are passing through corridors of stone; routes of labyrinthine complexity filled with hollow, echoing ghosts – phantasmal strains and thin snatches of half-remembered speech. Perhaps there should be dust, and maybe, in the darkest corners, the compressed and most unseen crevices, there is.

But even a place like this must conform to certain biological processes – for there to be dust, there must be human skin to flake and to float, in the air that is so awfully still. And there hasn’t been a human presence here for an extraordinarily long time.

This is not simply a poetic way of describing a blog that’s been quiet for the past six months or so, while I’ve been busy doing other things. Nor is it distinctly evocative of a particular milieu – no grandiose visions of primordial places,  with hidden treasure glinting in subterranean splendour, all unseen by the eye of mortal man. No slumbering warriors lie in wait; an army of metaphor does not listen for the clarion call to reach its ears, rising with an inhuman swiftness; it is not charging into battle to engage in the struggle which we laughably call communication.

No. Because this is Cold Albion, and like all cold things, it exists at a remarkably low-energy state.

We have all met people before, and we have interacted with them – every look you give, every glance you receive, engages the neurology of those you contact, as well as your own. You carry representations of things, linkages and patterns, and all these are arrangements of energy.

When you see your loved ones, certain arrangements and patterns fire up. A great deal of the time, if you compared these arrangements -these perceptions – with a kind of nebulous ‘actuality’ you’d find pretty major discrepancies.

This is because it’s less effort than constantly re-analysing things. In short, it’s an evolutionary hack. It uses less energy and  means we can move faster, and do other things with that energy, because, apparently like every other organism on the planet, we are biochemical in nature.

Molecules shift and move, obeying particulate rules and concentration gradients – diffusion and pH – principles and contacts, meetings and transferences via chemical pump; these are the methods which produce the electric surge, and the crackle of lightning that runs along your nerves and the neurotransmitters that carry the messages over the synaptic gap.

Heat the body up too much and the enzymes are denatured, the bio-machines cooked into uselessness. Too much energy and radiation warps your DNA, or burns your flesh and bone. All fire burns, and what’s fire but the fastest thing; the hungry flame that consumes the fuel?

Imagine having that energy within you, the metabolic processes constantly running; proceeding endlessly until your systems begin mutating or degrading, worn by years of replicating ceaselessly while you are  unaware of the lion’s share of it, as you are going about your life. Does it feel like anything familiar, that sense of rushing existence?

…

And in that feeling, maybe we are considering something, you and I. Perhaps we could be considering the implications of the heated meat package that is our corporeal selves.

Because we’ve stood in the cold, haven’t we? It’s a sensation you’ve no doubt had – the heat of yourself bleeding away into the vaster space, spreading out and becoming diffuse. The way the chill is beginning to set in – except of course you’re losing heat, not gaining cold.

It’s not as if the cold is penetrating you, piercing you like a knife. It’s not as if the chill bites with sharp teeth, right before the numbness is beginning to set in, is it? In actual fact it’s the comfort that is leaving, dissolving; becoming threadbare as the body begins attempting the desperate process of  conserving heat, of keeping things moving. Withdrawing to the centre, protecting those vitally important organs, leaving extremities to their fates.

Yet actual facts of biology have little to to do with language and how we go about perceiving. The metaphors are those of disruption and attack, instead of an apparently natural adherence to basic physical-theory.

So what happens when you start considering the fact that energy is finite, that all fires exhaust their fuel eventually? We’ve discussed this before, and it’s fairly implicit in my philosophy and words. As  I say over in my latest essay on  Modern Mythology – Toasters, Bladerunner and Schizophrenia:

We can’t even tell if we’re Replicants. Can’t trust our memories, or our assumptions, or our senses.  All we have is now, this moment, and even that is being filtered by our imagined pasts and futures.

There is no escape; no external environment wherein the processes of change are stilled and all is in perfect repose, perfect balance. So instead, we wander these corridors and halls, chilled by the notion of eventual decay.

Gordon said I should write more, that there had been too much of silence in the corner of the blogosphere we inhabit. He said it, and admitted it was for purely selfish reasons. Since he’s back posting, I’m picking up that gauntlet: I respect such admissions, and that’s why I would like you to begin accepting the chill as we continue on, because in a sense it is somewhat necessary to what I’d like to give you.

Because I want to talk about trolls.

Not your internet trolls – this is not about griefers or 4chan – but the creatures from Scandinavian folklore. The monstrous beings that lurk in dark places and hidden caves, and who become quite literally petrified by sunlight; turned to stone by the dawn.

The heavy and unwieldy media, such as stone, are time binders. Used for writing, they are very cool indeed, and serve to unify the ages – Marshall McLuhan, ‘Understanding Media.’

Past, present and future, all emerging, swirling from the stony well of Urðarbrunnr. The woven web of wyrd, reaching back and forth, warp and weft and threads  a-binding; up and down, left and right, ana and kata.

Down at the roots of mountains, back along paths of memory, might you know the music of trolls?  If you’re of a certain age and from the UK, you might recognise it from Alton Towers adverts:

The well known piece, written by Grieg for Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt, occurs when the protagonist falls and strikes his head on a rock after chasing three maidens. Three maidens who claim to have got rid of their useless human lovers and are, to put it bluntly, hot for a little…troll-based action.

Peer, being a braggart and womaniser, claims he has enough troll-like stamina to satisfy all three, and so the chase ensues. Knocked unconscious by his amorous quest, he dreams of a green-clad girl who he pursues, eventually realising she is the daughter of the Old Man of the Mountain – specifically the Troll-King of the Dovre mountains. Lured by lust, as they travel to the Hall of the Mountain King, Peer comments on the clothing choice of his would-be shag:

THE GREEN-CLAD ONE

My week-day gown is of gold and silk.

 

PEER

It looks to me liker tow and straws.

 

THE GREEN-CLAD ONE

Ay, there is one thing you must remember:-

this is the Ronde-folk’s use and wont:

all our possessions have twofold form.

When you shall come to my father’s hall,

it well may chance that you’re on the point

of thinking you stand in a dismal moraine.

And here’s where things get interesting – the land of the Trolls seems to require a different way of looking at the world, of perceiving objects, and indeed, like many Otherly spaces, perhaps time itself. For when Peer arrives in that stony hall of the Old Man, far from being torn apart as the troll-courtiers would like, the King asks him a series of questions, questions that seem faintly ridiculous, albeit probably harmless – and the answers are even stranger. Take for example, the exchange that occurs when the Old Man asks what the difference is between humans and troll-kind:

PEER

No difference at all, as it seems to me.

Big trolls would roast you and small trolls would claw you;-

with us it were likewise, if only they dared.

 

THE OLD MAN

True enough; in that and in more we’re alike.

Yet morning is morning, and even is even,

and there is a difference all the same.-

Now let me tell you wherein it lies:

Out yonder, under the shining vault,

among men the saying goes: “Man, be thyself!”

At home here with us, ‘mid the tribe of the trolls,

the saying goes: “Troll, to thyself be-enough!”

Now, Grieg himself wrote of the piece:

“For the Hall of the Mountain King I have written something that so reeks of cowpats, ultra-Norwegianism, and ‘to-thyself-be-enough-ness’ that I can’t bear to hear it, though I hope that the irony will make itself felt.”

So we can see that he felt the piece summed up something negative, brash, and we might even say…trollish. Yet when you look at the Troll King’s remarks, you can perhaps feel a deeper meaning.

 

THE OLD MAN

My son, that “Enough,” that most potent and sundering  word, must be graven upon your escutcheon.

Further trials  await Peer – he is presented with music and dancing which to him is only a cacophony, and feasting which is only offal and gore. As he balks, the trolls  cry out for him to be torn apart, but the Old Man cautions them that he is, after all, only human, with human senses.

The proposed solution is grisly, involving a scratching of the eye and the wearing of blinders to rid Peer of his human perceptual biases. Presented with the notion that his human sense may never return after such an operation, he flees from the hall, giving up on his paramour and returning to the waking world of men.

While a classic mythical narrow escape, here we’re more concerned with the inescapable. Peer’s human perceptions render the world a certain way, and the ambivalence of trollish existence is abhorrent to him. So the question then becomes, from whence did Peer Gynt gain his humanity that it is so easily removable by the Old Man?

There are some that might argue such things are innate, but if so, how is it that his senses would not heal?

It’s that enough which concerns us. If we contrast this with chase of Peer Gynt after his women, then might we look at the trolls as those who are capable of perceiving what is dross and foulness to humans, as things of great joy and beauty?

Imagine if you could modulate your perception in such a way as to gain exactly what was needed from things others could not process or deal with. Not simple contrariness, or even ‘settling for less’, but having different requirements?

Suddenly the claims of the Yogis, the magicians, the Tibetan Masters – they start to appear as something other than mere hyperbole.  If you could change your perception, you could change how you react to things. What was once hostile and fearsome might now be known as a fierce protector or enthralling companion – phobia shifting to fascination, for example.

We are biochemical creatures, as  I’ve said. Our emotions are made manifest by chemical and hormonal shifts in response to stimuli. You swim in a soup of neuro-transmitters, our veins and arteries rage with chemical fury. Born from that amniotic ocean, you are briny seas suffused with lightning – an plethora of complex systems operating in concert to produce ‘your’ existence.

Where does this roaring creature gain its shape? Where does personality come from, its name and sense of self? Do you know where you begin, and where you end?

There’s a dilemma here, because every thing is defined by what it is not. If you are human, there must be something that is not human. For there even to be a ‘you’ as a distict thing, there must also be that which is not-you.

Can you remember where you came from?

Marshall McLuhan wrote of a spectrum of media, from hot to cool. Hot media requires little participation – it is delivered rapidly and possesses its own energy, its own structure and arrangement, which is impressed upon the recipient.  Film, for McLuhan, enhanced the visual sense – the spectacle is pre-delivered, it’s informational content designed to evoke specific reactions and resonances.

“The passive consumer wants packages, but those[...]who are concerned in pursuing knowledge and in seeking causes will resort to aphorisms, just because they are incomplete and require participation in depth.” - Marshall McLuhan

How much energy is spent, how much time is used, in the construction of identity? How many packages have you received before a personality emerged, and hence, how much of ‘you’ is a product of environmental shaping? Multi-billion dollar corporations are founded on the presumption that the consumer wants to be kept in-formed – hot off the presses comes the gossip, the news, the celebrity hijinks!

The trolls come from a cold and snowy land – their way is colder, slower. The Old Man’s aphorism is an incompleteness, an indefinite ambivalence that Peer cannot stomach – he’d rather be off chasing hot young wenches!

(Can’t fault him there, actually.)

The cooler media that McLuhan speaks of requires participation – cold media is incomplete and requires interaction to access.

We’ve all been in that situation – you know the one – where we’re presented with someone who we know nothing about, at a party, some sort of social gathering, or a business function. Striking up a conversation often requires more energy from the initiator than the recipient at the beginning. Once both parties are comfortable with the level of communication and interest, communication starts flowing easily and time can just fly by!

Things that exist at low energy states, such as this place, can lie quiet for a long while, and as participation increases, the level of energy increases dramatically because of the incompleteness.

It takes more energy to define, and maintain those definitions, than it does to allow ambivalence and incompleteness. More energy is expended in maintaining the status quo, than is accepting and utilising changing conditions. I’ve touched on the subject more narrowly in this post about the power of absence and architectural decay as regards creativity.

The coldest medium is apparently the environment itself – the mountains so beloved of the Troll King and other natural phenomena. They exist independently of the human sphere, indeed the majority of human culture seems to be about heating them up – defining and making sense of them. Even with modern technology, their contouring – or rather their need to be defined and mapped in the human mind, they generate more energy than a thousand scientists and poets in the silent inscrutability.

They do not require rapid, hot, energy to maintain some notion of integrity, unlike most of the human sphere.

And if cold media requires participation, then the earliest form within that sphere would be storytelling – a shared experience which the audience experiences and co-creates to produce something richer than its constituent parts. What’s more, the art is not lost – many are waking up to this fact, and I’ll even point you to some.

Foolish People are producing an independent film that’s certainly cooler than the films McLuhan knew of. Crowdfunded, “Strange Factories” offers bonuses and artefacts which draw their funders deeper into the world. But rather than just being a simple film, Strange Factories will have a live component, with the characters directly interacting with the audience. You can read more about it in this Wired article.

And if there’s anything of a magical persuasion about cold media, it’s this – a seemingly inert or innocuous word, object or gesture, possessed of low energy or apparent significance, can  achieve a stronger affect than a drug regimen or therapy. It can even kill.

Now, as I said earlier, the coldest medium is the environment, except that’s not true.

The coldest medium is the self, that same roaring creature you were considering earlier. Because it is an indefinite thing. Why else would humanity be so desperate to define and name and package you?  How do you perceive the self? Imagine if you could perceive all those processes, and modulate them.

Imagine what kind of being that would be, perceiving and participating in itself; how very vast and terrible it might be to have the knowing that you were enough, and knowing that you were all you could ever know.

Coldly aware that the rune of your self, risted with your life’s blood, was the only thing that was yours. That your name and everything you were taught – along with half your thoughts – were not actually native to you, but an attempt to confine you, to complete the incomplete, to cook you until you were palatable, and not raw and indigestible.

…

Yes. Welcome back to Cold Albion.

 THE GREEN-CLAD ONE

       My week-day gown is of gold and silk.

  PEER

       It looks to me liker tow and straws.

  THE GREEN-CLAD ONE

       Ay, there is one thing you must remember:-

       this is the Ronde-folk's use and wont:

       all our possessions have twofold form.

       When you shall come to my father's hall,

       it well may chance that you're on the point

       of thinking you stand in a dismal moraine.

 PEER

       No difference at all, as it seems to me.

       Big trolls would roast you and small trolls would claw you;-

       with us it were likewise, if only they dared.

  THE OLD MAN

       True enough; in that and in more we're alike.

       Yet morning is morning, and even is even,

       and there is a difference all the same.-

       Now let me tell you wherein it lies:

       Out yonder, under the shining vault,

       among men the saying goes: "Man, be thyself!"

       At home here with us, 'mid the tribe of the trolls,

       the saying goes: "Troll, to thyself be-enough!"

Restoring mental health does not mean simply adjusting individuals to the modern world of rapid economic growth. The world is ill, and adapting to an ill environment cannot bring real mental health. Psychiatric treatment requires environmental change and psychiatrists must participate in efforts to change the environment, but that is only half the task. The other half is to help individuals be themselves, not by helping them adapt to an ill environment, but by providing them with the strength to change it. To tranquilize them is not the Way. The explosion of bombs , the burning of napalm, the violent death of our neighbors and relatives, the pressure of time, noise, and pollution, the lonely crowds; these have all been created by the disruptive course of our economic growth. They are all sources of mental illness, and they must be ended.
— Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist peace activist (Emphasis mine)

I’m no psychiatrist, no counsellor, no professional trained brain-shifter. Well, that’s not strictly true – I don’t have qualifications ratified by some external authority, however, I have well over a decade of poking my own head under my belt and also the knowledge that I’ve helped more than a few folks over the years.

I know this because they’ve told me, and it always surprises me. I like that surprise, because it actually tells me that I’m not set in my ways when it comes to talking to folks. Which is great because it means I’m still learning, still adapting, still becoming better at what it it is that I am.

Now, I am by no means perfect; I have my flaws, and many of them are fairly obvious. I’m still working on them though, which is the point, isn’t it? Because if we stop, we’re dead, to put it bluntly – everything moves, everything shifts, flows, changes, eventually decays and is recycled.

Nobody wants to be dead – at worst they just want to die, which is really an exit-strategy against pain and suffering or other pressures, be they internal or external. That’s completely understandable. My cousin took that route, and I won’t fault him for it; it was his choice and despite the fact that it led to a great deal of pain for his family and was, essentially, what broke me and began my descent into the depths.

I won’t fault him, because without that, it would have been far harder to break myself. Instead I shattered and found myself in some pretty dark places, and I learned some terrible things and experienced the nadir of my life to date. Without that, and without the love and support of my friends, I’d never be where I am now.

I wouldn’t be able to grin at death, smile at the grim and mind-numbing and find fuel for my dreams and thoughts in almost anything. I wouldn’t have become the peculiar person you all know and love, or at the very least are oddly fascinated by.

I have the quote at the beginning of this piece emblazoned on my brain, and as I’have already said I’m no psychiatrist, no counsellor, no professional trained brain-shifter – and that’s great because I can put all my effort into the second half of that equation, the section I have emphasized:

The other half is to help individuals be themselves, not by helping them adapt to an ill environment, but by providing them with the strength to change it. To tranquilize them is not the Way.

By now, if you know me at all, you’ll have become aware that I spend my life trying to be myself completely and that I don’t esteem herd behaviour that much. When I catch myself at it, I grow faintly annoyed, because I should know better, and actually do more than 80% of the time.

I’m not big on tranquillization – I dislike numbness and somnambulism and it actually makes me feel a little ill. I was talking to somebody the other day, and she knows who she is, about the numbness and lethargy. I was most impressed and gratified by the notion and demonstration of screaming for stimulants, let me tell you.

Stimulus is important and more than that, it it is vital because it is contact with the world. When I take part in a stimulating experience or conversation, the action it engenders reminds you that things can change and become something else.

It has been said that my writing has an intoxicating edge, and that that is wonderful to me, because it means that when you read it, you can become aware of things – you are stimulated and presented with options and choices that you were previously not aware of.

Yet somehow you could become aware of them, or at the very least you can recall times when you’ve been enlivened and stimulated, can’t you?

Times when you’ve felt so very vital and full of possibility that it feels like you might overflow and break your boundaries, move beyond other people’s image of yourself into something greater. We all have them, and for some they’re distant childhood and for others it’s just yesterday. It doesn’t matter when it happened to you, what matters is that you know what it felt like, doesn’t it?

Amidst that feeling, anything is possible, and that’s the key to it all. Amidst the thrill, the intoxication, the sheer inspiration – which is echoed in the constant everyday action of breathing; the act of inhaling. You are dead if you have expired, and so long as the possibility to inspire and be inspired exists you are alive.

That’s the thing you need to remember and consider at all times – every thing in all the worlds proceeds from that.

Because of that fundamental fact, I can quite honestly tell you that I don’t rightly care that no external body sanctions my actions. Nobody gave me leave to start breathing, did they? You’re supposed to keep breathing until you die, so they say.

Well I didn’t.

I stopped. I tasted death, and I started again. This is, needless to say, not normal, is it? So I’ve been flouting that since day one and there’s no reason to stop now because it’s easier or less painful. Thus, consider me a renegade when it comes to that, and that means I’m not exactly bound by conventional forms of morality.

This is of course beneficial to me, and hence to you, because I can do certain things far more easily than those tied in knots by certain moral qualms. When I communicate with people, everything I say or do arises from the notion that the universe is ambivalent and that the world is a constructed thing -built by people and their ideas.

All it takes it to disrupt the world, the everyday business of life, is to inject something odd, something different, something extra-ordinary into the system. This is easy for me, because I make it my business to find the extra-ordinary, to hunt it down in the wilds of the mundane, to bring its secrets up from where they have lain hidden.

Literally as well as figuratively, I’m an occultist – from Latin. occultus “hidden, concealed, secret,” pp. of occulere “cover over, conceal,” from ob “over” + a verb related to celare “to hide,” from PIE base *kel- (see cell)

So when it comes to people, everything I do is specifically designed to help you do the same, to open the cellar door and descend to find yourself. To give you the wine that intoxicates you, takes you across the threshold to the Otherland; to breathe enough breath into your lungs that you can dive into the depths of the ocean that birthed you.

All these things are metaphors, paths and ways  which can be used to find your own runa, your own Mysteries. When you find them, you will begin to change your world, because you will understand how to do so. This is what I am absolutely certain of, and that’s because I’ve done it, and it has enabled me to do things thought impossible.

Gordon has an interesting post entitled The Doc Brown School of Self-Improvement which you should read, about the dangers of inductive reasoning and gives an interesting method of keeping tabs on your own processes. Because I’m a contrary sod, I’m going to take issue with a possible interpretation of the post, rather than the post itself.

The issue isn’t really the traps of inductive reasoning – in actuality the issue is that the past is not fixed, nor that the future is a plane of possibility. It’s an issue of propulsion here; if one is to project into the future, a kind of physics still applies. To get to this future requires energy, requires fuel – the plutonium for your flux-capacitor which, combined with the speed of 88 mph catapults you elsewhere.

Where does this fuel come from? How exactly does future-you come back? More to the point, how do you go back and tell your past self what they need to know? You’d have to have the fuel in the present to do it. Now, before you get us all in trouble with the counter-terrorism bods in your search for nuclear material, I’d like to invite you to consider another option.

Suppose, just for a moment, that your future, your extrapolation, is completely unnecessary. That in fact, all that exists is you now, that you are newly emergent from the maw of chaos, and that all your past was created to give you an identity to stop your newly formed consciousness from falling apart, or so you’ve been informed/discovered.

Both future and past are manufactured, born of the same stuff. Thought and Memory drink from the same skull – yours.

If that’s the case, if the terminals of your awareness are not fixed, then what of the awareness itself? Might not it be plastic and far more malleable than first thought?  What would you change if anything was allowed and all was tabula rasa?

How might you become a fundamental thing, an axis mundi, the centre of the worlds?

I’m utterly selfish and that’s because I wish to be surrounded by people who have found themselves. I know what one man can do when he embraces his runa and focuses on becoming it in totality – what could a band of such souls do, working together – ask yourselves that!

To Hrothgar was given such glory of war,
such honor of combat, that all his kin
obeyed him gladly till great grew his band
of youthful comrades.

It came in his mind
to bid his henchmen a hall uprear,
a master mead-house, mightier far
than ever was seen by the sons of earth,
and within it, then, to old and young
he would all allot that the Lord had sent him,
save only the land and the lives of his men.

Wide, I heard, was the work commanded,
for many a tribe this mid-earth round,
to fashion the folkstead. It fell, as he ordered,
in rapid achievement that ready it stood there,
of halls the noblest: Heorot he named it
whose message had might in many a land.

-Beowulf, Grunmere trans.

So runs the prologue of Beowulf, one of the oldest surviving tales written in English. King Hrothgar is a mighty man, mighty enough to have erected  his meadhall called Heorot. The noise and tumult of a great king’s court rouses the monster Grendel from his lair, who goes on a murderous rampage and slaughters many of the king’s thegns. What should have been a beacon of light and joy, evidence of Hrothgar’s  might, now becomes a deserted place.

The great man of the Geats, the hero Beowulf, arrives with a band of men, to slaughter Grendel and win much fame and fortune. Along the way, he kills the fiend’s mother and, later in life meets his end as a grey-bearded king who kills a dragon that threatens his kingdom, dying himself by a wound inflicted by that very same wyrm.

Imagine if you will, how the tale would have been told: a mead-hall with long benches and burning fires, long benches for the warriors and folk to sit at as food was served and mead was drunk from horns and cups; laughter and mirth as the chieftain sits  there, responsible for his people and his land.

Close by sit his trusted men, a body of men bound by oath and loyalty – all fierce fighters and practical sorts – and about their arms and necks they bear the gifts of their lord, recognition of their valour and service. Imagine the firelight glinting off metal, gleaming off weapons and worked jewellery.

Can you hear them call out loudly for a tale, a narration of mighty deeds and great things? Might you perhaps see someone shake their head, busy as they are with the business of feasting? Hear again the roar, the cajoling and the cursing of those assembled which ripples out in a wave of good-natured complaint to be met with a heavy sigh and a nod.

Rising to their feet, the scop makes their way forward.

Now the scop is smiling, slow and easy, with a quick tongue that flicks a few barbs in the direction of the more vocal or insulting detractors, to the delight of the crowd. A reminder then, if any were needed, that this one can make weapons out of words and ways out of songs. Meeting the eyes of all present, by the strength of gaze and a raised hand, silence falls.

Do you recall how that goes, how the silence comes – first as a drip, then as a trickle, then as a wave breaks over them all? The way you find yourselves adjusting into a familiar, comfortable position – allowing your body to prepare itself for the long haul – as you begin to listen, even before the storyteller speaks. It’s intriguing how easily you can do that; adopting an attitude of acceptance even before any sense of the story is known, because you are in a very real way placing yourself in the hands of the storyteller; you are giving them and I license to transport you.

For Hrothgar was a mighty man, and Heorot was a mighty hall, as befits a king. Mightier still was the fiend Grendel, for he drove Hrothgar from that place until the coming of Beowulf. Mightier than king or monster was Beowulf, and this you know – for were it otherwise, there would be no tale, would there?

Since all this is true, and since you are here reading these words, following me as I write them in the past, you are indulging in looking backward, aren’t you? So I’d like to make a suggestion – that now you realize how easily and simply you can look back, you turn that sight back over certain concepts with me now.

Consider then this tale of mighty men, of mothers and monsters – consider it as a beacon from over a thousand years ago; a gleaming treasure flickering in the fire-light.

Cen byþ cwicera gehwam, cuþ on fyre
blac ond beorhtlic, byrneþ oftust
ðær hi æþelingas inne restaþ.

The torch is known to every living man
by its pale, bright flame; it always burns
where princes sit within.

The best leaders are cunning – they know how to get the most out of their men and their environment. Cunning men and women then, these folk; knowledge, will and ability all combined into something, distilled down to some essence that sets them apart. They have the wherewithal; the ways and the means to inspire and to lead their followers to their goal in defiance of obstacles.

This means that a mighty individual is one who is capable of surviving where others fail; Beowulf kills the three monsters, doing the seemingly impossible, returning Heorot to Hrothgar, winning fame and becoming a king. Not bad for a man who casts aside his sword and wrestles with Grendel and tears the monster’s arm off, is it?

Can you picture it? Beowulf vs. Grendel; circling, waiting for the moment to strike, each looking for weakness in the other, when suddenly and without warning the Geat tosses the sword away and leaps on the monster who has torn men asunder and gobbled their flesh, cracked their bones and sucked out the very marrow!

Locked together in loathing, struggling and striving for the upper hand in a mead-hall surrounded by corpses and wounded men in the depths of the night, Grendel’s jaws are scant inches from Beowulf’s face as he snarls his hate…

Could you bear to meet that infernal look, a look that would kill you, and deal with the knowledge that if it fails there’s row upon row of razor teeth that would finish the job? Can you allow yourself to conceive of the strength of will that must have taken, to hold Grendel as close as any lover, to embrace your potential death and dismemberment, or does your heart quail within your chest at the thought of meeting that dread abyssal gaze up close and personal?

Not so for Beowulf! He tightens his grip and pulls the monster closer as claws rake his flesh and jaws snap; foul breath fills his lungs, his vision narrows and Grendel’s awful visage swells to fill the entire world. Then Beowulf, brave Beowulf of the Geats, Beowulf the wave-rider,  mighty Beowulf son of Ecgtheow…

Rips off Grendel’s arm. At the shoulder. With his bare hands.

How easily might you hear once more, here in the now, the roar that raised in the mead-halls? Do you know how raw that cry of exultation is, sent forth from myriad throats across a thousand years?  I think you do – and that is mighty fine! For this is what greets a hero’s deeds, an exultation, a joy which transcends time and space.

In that moment we are all elevated, all drawn in to dwell with those who hear, and the sense of it, the raw, unrestrained emotion rips through you; all those times you have punched the air, howled with laughter or felt the rightness of something deep inside – I’m certain you know of what I speak!

This is the sheer presence of it. The knowing of the power as it flows from an individual, the way they move, and the the way they act. We’ve all seen it – the way some people are inexorable, how their confidence marks them out, their progress a seemingly foregone conclusion. We recognize it, are aware of it subconsciously – something beyond mere physical prowess, beyond circumstance. Some part of our lizard brain is aware that they could do anything.

Watch them. Watch them closely. Danger, Will Robinson. Danger!

Then there’s the way that these people seem to be able to get away with murder. How do they do it, always landing on their feet, even in situations which would cause most people to grind to a soul-destroying halt? You know the feeling – when your options have fallen away and you’re staring at an impasse; dead-ended as the walls are closing in. It saps your strength, makes you wonder why you bother sometimes, right?

It’s exhausting, frustrating and, if you care about what you’re doing, not a little painful.

There’s only so much pain we can take, only so many times we can pound our fists against that wall, head-butt the desk, feel our heart gripped by despair, our guts twist in sick horror at the unfairness of a situation.

Only so much we can deal with; we reach the end of our tethers, finding the limits of our resources and feeling our resolve beginning to crumble, until eventually we have to let go and move on. Because you know, you can’t win ‘em all, can you?

Except, they seem to be able to. Those thrice gods-damn bastards, those lucky sods. It’s like some people were just given a greater portion of luck by the gods, by chance, by whatever the hell it is that deals with these things, isn’t it?

Here’s the thing though:

Most people find themselves thinking that way at some point or other in their lives, even if they know it’s irrational. I’d bet you good money that you can recall a moment when you thought something similar – and I’m certain I would win. The reason I’m so certain is that such a concept is very very old, and has been used in magic and various nefarious sorceries throughout the ages.

Have you perhaps idly wondered if it might be possible to…appropriate someone else’s luck – after all, they have bucketloads and wouldn’t miss a  little would they? Or maybe you’re of the school that says you make your own luck, and because of that you wonder what exactly these super-lucky people do to be that successful?

Repeatedly. Over and Over. Again and Again.

Gits.

Maybe you’re hungry for that edge – and I certainly wouldn’t blame you if you were. Look at the way the mighty are remembered, how they achieve virtual immortality. From Einstein and Socrates, to Beowulf and Jack the Giant-Killer – they are all legends. All of them are larger-than-life, enduring icons and heroes in the technical sense.

hero (1)

late 14c., “man of superhuman strength or courage,” from L. heros “hero,” from Gk. heros “demi-god” (a variant singular of which was heroe), originally “defender, protector,” from PIE base *ser- “to watch over, protect” (cf. L. servare “to save, deliver, preserve, protect”). Sense of “chief male character in a play, story, etc.” first recorded 1690s.

No longer just an ordinary human, almost half a god, raised above ordinary mortals. These are mighty men and women, by any stretch of the imagination – extraordinary people. Now, hopefully, if you have read my work, you’ll know by now that it’s the extra-ordinary that fascinates me, and if you’ve been following me through the paths and byways of this piece, you may begin to realize that there’s a connection here.

Maybe it’s obvious to you – that mighty means extra-ordinary, and if so then I congratulate you. By way of congratulation, I’d like to flash you a quick grin and note that I do tricksy things with words. Part of that tricksiness is to dig down into the roots of my native language, and by now you’re wondering what on earth Necropants are, or what they have to do with mighty folk.

We’ll get to the grisly couture, the deathly trousers, the pantaloons of peril soon – I promise.

Hidden in our everyday use of language are secrets that can be used to great effect; occult roots which when applied properly, can reveal secret paths to power. After all, the world is full of communication, full of mutual agreements of how things should be done – all  based on shared assumptions and empathy. It’s a tenet of neurolinguistic programming that you can change people’s internal states by judicious use of words alone. Sorcery on the other hand, is the art – and believe me, it is an Art far more than anything else – of changing things; an attack on the status quo of reality itself!

Accepting this, what if the words I’m using now – the words you are reading here – have deep roots which might be used to change things? What if our language, our stories, contains secrets our ancestors knew, what if mighty men and women was more than a mere descriptor?

might (v.)

O.E. mihte, meahte, originally the past tense of may (O.E. magen “to be able”), thus “*may-ed.” See may (v.). The first record of might-have-been is from 1848.

might (n.)

O.E. miht, earlier mæht, from P.Gmc. *makhtuz (cf. O.N. mattr, O.Fris., M.Du. macht, Ger. Macht, Goth. mahts), from PIE base *mag- “be able, have power” (see may (v.)).

Consider the above for a moment – that might is intrinsically linked to ability, that the mighty are more able than others, because they have more might. The luckier you are, the more opportunities you might (pun intended) have. There is some quality which is possessed by, or is intrinsic, to certain individuals.

What if it was in your interest to be able to take advantage of anything and everything, wouldn’t it be a good idea to align yourself with the ones who seem to know how to do this instinctively? What if, by aligning yourself with one of those people, you increased your chances of survival, and because of that, you became known as a mighty individual?

Such things form the basis of social engineering of course, but suppose we go even beyond that. Suppose we begin to notice that a culture of success tends to breed even more success, and that culture shares a root with cultus and cultivate. Suppose you could be able to cultivate might itself?

A little heretical perhaps, in these days when performance-enhancing drugs are cheating, when everyone is supposedly equal – or at least ideally so. But when we are dealing with survival, that may just go out the proverbial window – you would try to survive with all your might and main, wouldn’t you?

main (n.)

O.E. mægen (n.) “power, strength, force,” from P.Gmc. *maginam- “power,” from *mag- “be able, have power” (see may). Original sense preserved in phrase with might and main. Meaning “principal channel in a utility system” is first recorded 1727 in main drain; Used since 1540s for “continuous stretch of land or water.”

main (adj.)

early 13c., “large, bulky, strong,” from O.E. mægen- “power, strength, force,” used in compounds (see main (n.)), probably infl. by O.N. megenn (adj.) “strong, powerful.” Sense of “chief” is c.1400

I am pretty sure that the notion of mægen is a little alien to us today, and yet it could be said that some might find comfort in the notion that such things are hardly modern, or even New Age. On the contrary, it is a deeply old concept which is tightly bound with the world-view of those who came before us. Because of that, with our eyes turned backward, we are already hip-deep in waters that run through underground rivers beneath the words.

All it takes for us to understand these things is an open mind, and the realization that our ancestors held no illusions about the fact that life is precarious. The closest most people get to an ‘act of (G)od’ these days is an insurance policy!

So what does it mean to us, this faculty of concentrated ability, this elixir of luck and potency? Might you muse on it a little, allow yourself to be drawn into a heavy consideration of power and mastery, so that you can do what is required? Or perhaps you could let yourself drift back in time, to follow the lines of your blood and your thoughts back to the space where both converge into one?

In either case, may be confronted with the stark fact that in order to harness your full abilities, you would have to reject those things which limit you, in whatever form they may come. You may have to cast aside many dearly held beliefs about yourself, and more importantly, others around you.

For the issue is not one of ethics or morality, it is how you can maximize your ability and how you choose to affect the world. Everybody wants to be better at what they do, to follow their dreams and be greater than what their critics deem them capable of. Even those who simply desire to be content wish for the ability to be so without restriction.

Imagine what you could do if you divested yourself of all the things that hold you back, and then add to that the notion of being able to enhance those things which enliven and strengthen you, until they cause you to be so very much more than you had ever dreamed.

Imagine that out of next to nothing, you could somehow bring forth all you needed to wax and thrive well. Wouldn’t that be something to desire above anything else?

Would you wear a dead man’s skin? Would you dig him up, and peel the hide from his cold flesh, put a coin and a magical stave in the scrotum, then feel joy as they melded with your own body? For these are some of the things you must do, should you desire a pair of Nábrók, which literally translates as ‘Necropants.’

I first heard of the Necropants via a good friend who was giving a talk on runic magic and sorcery, and was reminded of them by a question asked on Jason Miller’s Strategic Sorcery blog. So Jason, if you read this, the entire post is indirectly your fault, all right?

Good.

Now, the rune-stave comes from Iceland, so I’ll let the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft do the explaining:

All of the signs and staves seen here can be found in Icelandic grimoires, some from the 17th century, some from later times though all of them seem to be related. The origin of this peculiar Icelandic magic is difficult to ascertain. Some signs seem to be derived from medieval mysticism and renaissance occultism, while others show some relation to runic culture and the old Germanic belief in Thor and Odinn. Much of the magic mentioned in court records can be found in grimoires kept in various manuscript collections. The purpose of the magic involved tells us something of the concerns of the lower classes that used them to lessen the burden of subsidence living in a harsh climate.

More information is available at the Museum site, which is full of wonderful things, including what is required to make the deathly trousers work properly:

If you want to make your own necropants (literally; nábrók) you have to get permission from a living man to use his skin after his dead. [sic] After he has been buried you must dig up his body and flay the skin of the corpse in one piece from the waist down. As soon as you step into the pants they will stick to your own skin. A coin must be stolen from a poor widow and placed in the scrotum along with the magical sign, nábrókarstafur, written on a piece of paper. Consequently the coin will draw money into the scrotum so it will never be empty, as long as the original coin is not removed. To ensure salvation the owner has to convince someone else to overtake the  pants and step into each leg as soon as he gets out of it. The necropants will thus keep the money-gathering nature for generations.

According to the commentary on the website, the coin stolen from the poor widow must be taken at Christmas, Whitsun or Easter. These three festivals all occur at times when pagan feasts occurred before the coming of Christianity – Yule, Summer’s Day and Eostur-monath respectively. Also that the sorcerer must make a pact with the man while still living, and that if the sorcerer died in the necropants, his body would be infested with lice.

This is particularly interesting since Early Christian doctrine held that the bodily Resurrection required the dead to be intact – those infested with lice would be unclean at best and rotten at worst, certainly not suitable for the Kingdom of Heaven. Add to this the fact that the sorcerer must find someone to stand in the right leg of the necropants before he steps out of the left, and we are left wondering if the notion of the via sinistra and all the associations with widdershins and leftness applied here also.

Further, the commentary states that wealth would be taken from ‘living persons’. Let’s consider this for a second:

A pact is made, wherein an individual agrees to let the sorcerer wear his skin after he is dead. The skin is synonymous with form and shape in many cultures, so could we be looking at an act which allows the sorcerer to take on the form of the dead? Note also the importance of the scrotum, the sac beneath the generative organ.

Into this is placed a coin stolen from a poor widow, echoing the biblical story of the widow in the temple:

¹And he looked up, and saw the rich men casting their gifts into the treasury.

²And he saw also a certain poor widow casting in thither two mites.

³And he said, Of a truth I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all:

⁴For all these have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God: but she of her penury hath cast in all the living that she had. -Luke  Ch.21

There are multiple ways to look at this theft – the coin may draw the blessings of God to the scrotum of the necropants in the form of money, the theft breaks through morality into necessity, or that the coin provides a magical link to money held by others. There are probably even more valid options, but they have been lost under over four centuries of time.

Regardless of the fact, we once again see the importance of the dead in Northern sorcery, and that of might. The notion of Mighty Dead who are not bound by mortal law or the structures of the human world is extremely important. Whether they be in service to the sorcerer through being bound by force, a sense of familial obligation or an altogether more wyrd pact, they are ever-present.

What is also fascinating is that the wealth is taken from the living – one might suppose that in elder days, the wealth might have been something far more esoteric, which in turn enabled the acquisition of what was necessary for survival. To requote the Museum:

The purpose of the magic involved tells us something of the concerns of the lower classes that used them to lessen the burden of subsidence living in a harsh climate.

The harshness of the environment is something that should never be understated – survival is not a right, despite what we would like to think. Is it any wonder that those exposed to the Elemental turn to magic of an equally visceral and Elemental nature? There’s absolutely no need to say more on the necessities of existence than to quote the saying Flags, flax, fodder and frig!

If you’ve read this far and not walked away in despair, indeed if you are as intrigued by these ideas as I am, then perhaps you might muse still further. As you digest all that I have written, as the concepts arrange themselves in a way that makes some kind of sense to you, perhaps you may find yourself considering all this again when you perform the necessities of your life – the eating, the drinking, the having sex, the way you can notice shifts in temperature as you cross a threshold…

All these things can serve as reminders, doorways into understanding the magic of mægen , the sorcery of survival, born of the icy North.

That said, does anyone want to give me their hides for some pantaloons of peril..?