So I’ve not posted here in a bit and there’s a reason for that. I’ve been getting a few articles under my belt at the Modern Mythology blog. It’s run by the editor of Immanence of Myth, the multi-faceted James Curcio, and he’s assembled quite a pack of extremely smart and erudite folks there.

So if you want to see posts that dig into the guts of the human narratives, I advise you to head over there. We’ve got some lovely surprises coming in the next few months, trust me on that.

And if you’re missing your fix here – don’t worry – I have some blinding content brewing in the back of my fevered brain just for you lot!

Until then…

Be seeing you.

And I haven’t given you any crunchy blog posts in a while, have a slightly odd story I wrote. Hope you enjoy!

“THE ISLE”

But you, they say, were on Sams Isle,

And drummed for the wights with the Völvas,

Like a wizard (vitki) through the world you passed,

which I thought was an unmanly (ergi) thing to do.

(Lokasenna: 24)

He comes to a place where the roads meet; there in the dead of night, he raises his gaze to the gallows and sees its heavy corpse-fruit swaying in the breeze. The dark is full of strange cries and weird rustling noises; shrieks from creatures not seen abroad by the light of day fill the air; his skin crawls and he pulls the knife from his pocket, slicing open his thumb along the old scar.

It burns like fire for a moment, the edges of the flesh gaping wide and empty for a frozen instant and then the wetness pulses and drips; warmth swiftly stolen by the wind as he marks the design out on his forehead; a spindled wheel with forks and bars which forms the stave-sign – an ægishjálmr – the helm of awe.

Nine breaths later, he feels his face shifting upon the planes of his skull; something old and terrible emerging once again from his features as he steps up and hugs the legs of the hanged man tight to his body. The sharp stench of excrement rises from the dead man’s breeches, mixed with the faint odour of spent seed, sticky and cold now that the final spew is done and the head lolls upon a broken neck.

Ignoring the urge to retch, his bloody hand now seeks the prize; finds it flaccid and shrivelled and so anoints it; paints it scarlet there in the dark and soiled places of death, strokes it like a lover – crooning, croaking runes like a lullaby.

A groan escapes the dead man’s mouth – lips all spittle-flecked and slack around a swollen tongue in a bloated, blackened face. A groan like an old oak creaking in a storm, like the timbers of a ship as she strains against roaring waves and jagged rock; a groan of doom and horrified release.

The prize now hard as iron in his palm, all blood-slick and leaping as a wild horse beneath his fingers; he grips tight and feels sightless eyes upon his face as he works, the grave-gaze chill and inhuman.

“More.” A sepulchral pleading, a doom-laden entreaty. “Give me more…bitch.”

The last word is bitten off in a snarl, a savage jerk of the wrist wrenching at manhood’s root, sending the memory of pain down into the depths to reach this dead thing.

“Please, I beg you. I was not always as you see me, all full of foul wind and rot. Once I was mighty and beautiful, and all the women wished my seed within their furrow. They howled when I took them, she-wolves and hell-cats all.” A death-rattle of laughter then, “If they would not throw open their gates at fine words then I would break them with fist and fury, ’til I could wash myself in their tears.”

“But the dead shed no tears now, for we are far too cold and our souls are all crusted with sea-rime; the rivers are poison and so we may not bathe. Our stench follows us like a cloak, we who are barred even from the halls of Hel, cast out beyond her yard across the plains of misty darkness and writhing serpents. Have you no pity for us – you with your hand so warm and breath so sweet?”

“No pity for me, who was once a man amongst men, who fought and fucked and fed like any other? I who raised my voice in battle-song and sought victory harder than any, I who sired sons and daughters all over the kingdom. I who honoured the gods and gave them the finest things?”

And though the red hand does not cease its work upon the corpse’s prick, the reply comes like a song of steel voiced with the roar of thunder:

“No pity.”

Cunning fills the corpse-voice then, like oil on water, or the whispering of doubt:

“You have the look of him, grim and severe – like a son to his father. I’ll be betting you’ve had your way with better furrows than the grave, just like him. Cut me down; let me stand and we’ll range across the worlds, living and dead, all full of fury. He’d like that, no?”

Silence is the only answer, broken by the wet slap of hand on flesh, moving with inexorable rhythmic purpose.

“Or maybe,” this last in a tone of echoing desperation. “Maybe I’ll tell a tale they sing, out in the wilds where the wind blows raw and the sky goes on forever; where the world is roofed with the skull of a giant?”

“Maybe…”

**

This is the tale they tell of the Old One, amongst the quiet ones and the shrivelled and amongst the shriekers too. This is the tale of how Jalk – the Gelding – came to the womenfolk and danced and sang, how he drummed and called; how the Allfather opened himself as mother opens herself to her child.

For this is one of many ways he learned the secrets of the volvas and the spaewives; how the wisdom taught by the lady of Fólkvangr in distant past set him to wax and grow in endless understanding; how that hidden god, every greedy for the Mysteries, learned women’s ways and wiles.

Thus did Waytamer come to that isle in the North, and first he walked in the guise of mortal flesh and did learn many things from the men of that place. Gifts of war-wisdom he gave in return, woke the thunder in the blood and fettered many a warrior there – freezing their hearts and setting the fury to rise so that they ran as wolf and bear.

A kingly few he marked, mixing blood with god-breath and words born in the cries of eagles and the croakings of the blackest birds – for is it not told by the skalds that there are lords arising from the very loins of the god himself?

Yet those are tales for another time, for the graves of Angatyr and his brothers did not yet lie upon the isle and the berserkers’ deeds were as yet unspoken. Still, even in those distant times the isle was known by all as a hallowed place, full of mighty wights and ancient powers.

So came Jalk across the sea and over land, to sit and spy out the places where men shiver and move hurriedly on. Long he waited in wind and cold, and many were the runes he carved; strange were the words he hurled from his lips into the air like spears. Many were the days he shook, and more still were those in which he was still as stone, until word came to him of a path that led to a secret place.

Along that path he walked, until he came to a high place in the wilderness, and there he waited for night to fall. So it was, as he was biding his time, that he began to see movement below, there in the dusk. Flame and torch sprang up, marking out an enclosure and the wind carried the sound of women’s voices to his ears. Carefully, silently, he moved closer, the encroaching night gathered about him like a cloak, to rest all hidden just beyond the reaches of the light.

Now let me tell you, sweet one, of that which Jalk saw with his eye on Sams’s Isle. Let me tell you of the gathering there; of the wise women that stood proud and unfettered by the fire with their hair unbound, all clothed in brightness – gleaming with amber and fine work – full of power and deep knowledge.

For you have heard and seen tales of seeresses, oh red hand. You have heard of their staff kept close by them and the songs that are sung to call the attention of the wights and sweetly slide free of flesh.

But I ask you, have you seen as Jalk saw? Have you see them pass the rod from hand to hand, raise it to their lips and kiss it, or heard them call their ancient mothers and unborn children to the rite to witness? Have you heard them call out to the earth, to the great and terrible women with the might and power of the greatest of giants?

All this he saw, that and more; unveiled he saw them, gentle one moment, fierce the next. Clothed and naked, young and old, all adored the secret centre. Coarse and refined, lust and chastity both; unleashed – unfettered and free.

There in the dark he watched as they opened themselves to the world, holy and unafraid as it poured into and through them – watched the awe-inspiring embrace of womankind as it enfolded all things without fear or judgement. There he saw them, laughing with troll-wives and giantesses; each volva as mighty as those who the very gods themselves took as wives!

For have you not heard the doom of the worlds, spear-stroker? How One-Eye went to the mound and called upon Her and she spoke of ancient days and those yet to come? She spoke of the giants who gave Her bread before the world was made, and of those mighty giant-maids come from Jotunheim before the gods made men and dwarves.

All these things Jalk knew, had heard from Her in days before men; all this he knew and he saw yet more there. Great wights came up from the earth to feast and put on form; to whisper words and discharge ancient obligations.

Fine were the shapes there in the light, well-wrought was even the oldest hag – years worn like jewels, sunken dugs and sagging flesh gleaming with sacred power. Things monstrous to menfolk walked there, wearing the faces of daughter, wife and mother. Great was the wailing and the air was thick with power all unchained.

Such was the way of things when silence fell and all eyes turned to where Jalk hid – golden gazes and lambent eyes piercing the dark. Fixed there as surely as if a spear had pierced him, so the watcher looked boldly back, meeting each in turn with brazen frankness, though his breath was held.

Many are the names and many the ways of the speargod; he brings death at a word and victory to those he chooses. Yet even he paused there, when all had the ancient blood awoken in their veins, each a terrible fury, as fierce an enemy as a horde of giants.

Until at last, a voice spoke from that great throng:

“No man can come here tonight. All know this, and yet you come. Did you think to feast on us with your eye, to steal our beauty and lock it away in the treasure-chest of memory, to stroke your spear on cold winter nights? Or perhaps you thought to rape, to rut, to plant your seed, to seize and take by force the one that caught your fancy?”

Now had it been I, my sweet guest, this would be true – for rutting was my greatest joy. But even I should have died there screaming, ripped asunder by vengeful hands and butchered like a beast. As it is, I hang here for the same reason. But I am not Jalk.

Nay, not he; for he shook his head and stepped forward, saying: “No, great Lady. My lust is for other things, great though it is. I am no man, for my name is Jalk.”

“Gelding is it?” the voice was arch as he moved slowly onward, until he was surrounded on all sides by witches. “Queer then, are you? If you prefer the company of men, you are in the wrong place entirely!”

Can you imagine, can you hear the laughter of witches all around you, unfettered by law or propriety? It echoed off the landscape like a storm, and many were the hands that reached to grab and test him, but Jalk smiled and inclined his head in acknowledgement.

“Bent and crooked; these both I have been called for many years, and surely will for many hence Lady – just as I have been called treacherous and fickle, and I am sure there are many here who have borne the same!”

At this the laughter ceased abruptly, a murderous silence rising up and enveloping the world. Yet still they held back, as the Lady emerged from the throng. Her hood was furred with catskin, face obscured, and about her waist gleamed amber that seemed to burn in the firelight. It drew the eye to her hips, highlighting her movements, fluid and elegant as they were.

In her arms she cradled the staff – thick as a man’s arm, carved and ridged and trailing bright streamers that shifted faintly in the breeze.

“Is that courage or foolishness I hear Gelding? We have little use for the latter and the former must be of the right kind. Perhaps we should test the truth of your name?”

“Neither courage nor foolishness, Lady. Merely the truth – just as my name.”

Hardly had the words left his mouth when hands began to rip and tear at his clothes. Sharp nails drew blood, voices shouted and laughed as he was roughly stripped to stand naked amidst them. Hungry eyes devoured his form on all sides – taking in the beasts and runes, the battle scars and ritual marks that told their tale upon his hide.

Naked stood he, member drooping and sac shrivelled as the Lady circled, prowling like a cat. Stock-still, waiting; thus he was as the staff struck him from all angles, testing his poise. Three times he was driven to his knees, rising each time to stand with resolute strength until she stood before him, eyes upon him within her hood.

“Are you afraid, Gelding? I have seen many a man unmanned by fear – brave warriors on the field of battle sometimes turn to craven cowards in the bedchamber. We have all seen it.”

“I would be wise to fear Lady. There are many of you and I am alone – I have seen the forbidden and the holy and know you may wish to end me for it. But I am not unmanned by fear, no.”

“Is your name a curse then?” she asked him coolly, slipping off a catskin glove and stretching out a hand to grasp him with firm fingers. “Has some wife wished you ill, some wizard struck your rod with black thunder?”

“No curse Lady, though given by men. No wizard’s spell has stolen my manhood, nor have I abandoned the ways of my grandfathers.”

“What then?” asked she who stroked him, as you stroke my cold cock. “Why do you not leap as a stallion at my touch? Why does the sight of womanhood all unveiled not fill you with desire?”

He smiled then, all crooked and bent, flesh soft in her palm. “I am full of desire Lady, full of hunger and fury – my blood is the blood of bright blue ice and shining moon. But I am old and have no need to spread my seed, an old wolf with many cubs and grey fur.”

“Are you spent then, Gelding?” she asked him mockingly, eyes gleaming from within her hood. “Is your day done, are you an empty thing?”

“As empty as the yawning void where rime met fire, in the days before the worlds my Lady, full of naught all up to the broad brim of my hat and empty eye!” he said with gusto, exultant and amused.

“What need have we then of you? We who have a staff where you bear none.”

“No need at all.” admitted Jalk. “Save that I come in openness and without fear.”

“Why should we feed an old grey wolf who is always hungry? Why should we place the fruits of our labour in your gaping maw, so you may gobble them up, glut-lusty with knowledge?”

“No reason at all, nor need, as I have said. Simply thus:

The eagle’s eye gleams brightest and his voice cries loudest when the wind is beneath his wings.
The horse is at his finest when he runs and and rears with smooth muscle and shining mane.
The serpent is at his wisest when he coils, ready to spring, all venom held in fang.”

“All these things have no master Gelding, and yet by your own name, you have been mastered. Your staff is crooked and cold when another’s would be aflame. What knowing have you of these things?”

“I know much Lady, but I would always and ever know more. Before the question is asked by the spaewives, I would no more. Before their tongues twitch and breath gather, I would know more. In that knowing, and by it, I taste the truth of your words, for all those things have I been. All have known no master, and yet you speak rightly!”

Bright was the eye of the Gelding as he spoke, glinting with sharp merriment. “I have been mastered by he who is High, Just as High, and Third. I have been bound and pierced by the spear of Volsi himself. Aye, Lady, Jalk I am, and made so by Ygg the Terrible One, ridden by his fury until I knew naught else and my flesh turned as if to water!”

Now at these words, shaft-cradler, the Lady gave a great cry and all assembled began to pound the earth as a great wind sprang up and set the flames to roar. In answer came the shriek of an eagle ripped from the throat of a shape than ran like a river and howled like the wind. There, in that place began a terrible thing, there on that dark night.

For there danced the Gelding, twitching and arcing like I when the noose tightened about my neck. Unmanly were his movements, all wild and unrestrained his Art – with spit-frothed lips and rolling eyes did he thunder across that plain as if a horde of maddened horses.

One moment he fell down dead as a corpse, the next he leaped up as a ghastly thing – face black and breath foul, food for the worms as all semblance of manhood left him. A womanly thing it was, or so men would say, as he shivered and shook like a newborn babe, begging a suck from the tit of the Earth itself. There, he sweated like a maiden, crying out in agonized joy as the song of the stars pierced him like spear. There he bled moon-blood like like a lass, spilling out upon the ground, seeping into the places below, filled up with spirit seed until he drowned in that fierce jism.

The took him them, the witches and the volvas and the spaewives and the giant maids. They raised him up as the roots of Yggdrasil clamped about him. Twining about his limbs, the roots of that great tree held him as he gripped that trunk, festooned with a noose of his own bowels, bound there by tendon and sinew as he held the staff – the vast column of the pizzle of that wooden horse the axis of his very existence.

They raised him up to the heights and lowered him to the depths, and in the darkness of the hood he was seidhmadhr – the seidr-man. Charms and spells he spun and wove and wove them well, though men say such weavings be women’s work. Bestla’s son was he – born betwixt the thighs of a giantess, and blood breeds true – this you know, my night-worker.

From shadows he struck his enemies, and with poisoned words and subtle spells he ended great men and tugged upon the threads of wyrd, touching the lives of those not yet dreamt into existence. His fingers ran over the loom of fate, learning the ways of the Norns and seeing the growth of many a fylgia as a child slumbered snug in its mother’s womb.

And when the night was done, when the wights had sunk and returned from whence they came; when the blue dawn hour came and his body ached and his skull felt empty; when his hide felt loose yet shrunken and the shadows rose out of the night, so Jalk remained once more no-man, with a belly full of boiling dreamstuff nourished in the darkness of his bowels, full of power and quiet might.

Upon that isle then, it is said that he learned those ways, and that ever more, upon some silent night beyond the walls of Asgard, a shivering flowing shape would shriek and sing until dawn in that godly place, with the body of the lord of that realm seeming to lie cold and dead upon its earth.

**

“Unmanly then, the lord of Valholl, or so they whisper.” groans the corpse, “Filthy work, filthy as the hand that is my whore. Filthy bitch come greedy for my seed, begging for it with your every breath, your every word. Your features flow like water, run like rivers of fire through my sodden soul.”

In the dark, the gallows creak with the rocking of a dead man’s hips, the rustling of the leaves and the rhythm of frozen breathing. Then, abruptly, a splash of silver gulped greedily down by a shadow.

The sob that echoes forth from the corpse is already fading; the ties of inhuman lust are fraying, the summoning diminishing and bond between bloated flesh and outlaw shade now thinning to nothingness. Upon a plain of bones and writhing serpents a once-man wakens from a half-remembered dream of life to trudge endlessly through the icy wastes of Nifel.

There at the crossroads, a figure pauses to feel the singing in its cold blood with gleaming silver sheen, and then tips a broadbrimmed hat to the dead and to the living before striding silently out into the night, the sorcerer from out of the blue…

[W]ithin us, the element recalls its limitlessness amid the primordial flux, as element and flux devour themselves anew: the winds, the trees, and the stars now speak. Through immeasurably distant ages, death and birth greet the soul of man in the wavering blade of grass, and they hear the dark inner night of the blood of man in the falling rain, as it trickles through the leaves outside. -Ludwig Klages

The above is quoted in David Beth’s Voudon Gnosis - first by published by the good folks at Scarlet Imprint in 2008, and soon to be given an expanded edition by the eminently respected Fulgur Publishing. It should come as no surprise to those who are aware of my leanings, or indeed have read my work either here or in Scarlet Imprint’s own Datura, that I was very curious to hear his thoughts on certain matters.

Help was at hand in the form of Diabolical Discourse – Craig Smith has done a wonderful job of tempting some very fine speakers up North to Manchester, and long may it continue!

(As a side note to my geographically challenged friends, I dwell still further up North than Manchester – something I am still getting used to as for much of my early life was spent in Cornwall, so everything is instinctively supposed to be up-country from me.)

This was originally going to be a not-quite review of David’s talk, but I found as I was making notes that, as usual, it became something far more organic and wyrd. With that in mind, I am afraid you will have to make do with things, and after all if you’re here, you are going to have to learn to enjoy that, aren’t you?

But it was much earlier even than that when most people forgot that the very oldest stories are, sooner or later, about blood. – HOGFATHER, Terry Pratchett

The truth of the above quote is fundamental to my work – how many times have you suddenly raised your head and looked about, feeling and seeing the hollow nature of things; the bloodless paper-thin veneer that seems to spawn an unease and then a desperate hope that there must, surely be something more to life? After all, if this rote existence is all there is, then what exactly is the point of the business?

Now, leaving aside the obvious teleological fallacy that there must even be a point or a reason for anything at all, we are still left with the unsettling conviction that something is missing. When that gap raises its head, when the dim recognition of a void somewhere a little too close to comfort begins to insinuate itself into our fore-brain, we are presented with a choice. As with most choices, there is a vast roaring chaos of probable actions, but most human minds wibble a bit when presented with more than say, 3-5 options.

Often then, the choice and its plethora of possibility – its raging cornucopia of angles and roads and paths-not-taken – is subject to a reduction into two options, an either/or. Void or solid, illusion or reality, life and death – you know the sort of thing we mean. This analytic drive, the urge to reduce things to a fundamental, simplistic, ultimately causal and mechanistic world is an essential survival skill. It has enabled humanity to make a multitude of short-cuts throughout our existence as a species; saving us valuable processing power, laying down patterns and reflexes that keep an individual alive – and I here I would like to pause a moment, to allow you to consider the fact that survival is paramount and recall all those times your instincts have unconsciously saved your proverbial bacon…

Good, aren’t they, those primal instincts of yours?

Really rather efficient at keeping you alive; lungs inflating, heart beating – and let’s not forget those bacteria and enzymes, busily working away like tiny powerhouses, giving you the energy to go about your day. Nor should we forget your brainmeat, squirting those hormones and regulating the entire equilibrium of your biosystem, giving you that burst of adrenalin to get you moving, or that flood of endorphins which are precisely calibrated to hit the spot more accurately and efficiently than a dozen doses of opiates – your own personal bliss-factories and munitions plants!

It’s these same instincts, that same Spirit, which builds the world and conveniently excludes vast chunks of the universe from your conscious awareness, rendering them irrelevant to you. Because it’s easier that way, less messy and complicated to comprehend, and though that same Spirit drives you on and keeps you running, the universe is a big damn place, full of interesting and wonderful things.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that Spirit is awfully good at what it does; that it’s given us the pattern recognition skills which spawned so much of culture and endeavour; that it’s tailored toward valuing comfort and contouring our experience in terms of escaping the sheer ambivalence of the cosmos at large. It’s driven us to escape the elements, to develop technology which gives us control over forces that burn in the hearts of of stars, the ability to spread a network of voice and thought over the whole planet.

It has led us to the top of the food chain, levelled the playing field, and given us the ability to give the finger to predators older and more well adapted to survival than us, or more properly, shoot those fierce creatures square between the eyes with a roar of thunder and a hammer blow of metal.

All these things it has done, and more besides; we have become things of speed and poison and hunger, hope and endless striving towards an endless paradisal abundance. Heaven stands before us as a shining city, a goal of perfection and eternal life; an image of immortality, a singular future wherein all and anything we desire is within effortless reach. Spirit, as it quickens in humanity, shall lead us on, and ever outward, escaping bondage and setting us free!

And yet…

Amidst this gleaming future, amidst this glorious orgy of construction and reconfiguration, amidst the abundance and the desire made manifest, we pause. We pause and feel the gap between the dream, the hope, and the actuality. We clear our throats and look at each other with quick, sidelong glances, momentarily nervous, an instant wherein the normal flow of everyday events is disrupted.

A blip. A quirk. A momentary anomaly.

A snatch of silence that’s abruptly out of-place and your voice rises, loud and alone as all other conversations drop away and all eyes are abruptly upon you. The pattern is broken, and you can feel your blood pumping and your senses sharpen as the awkwardness rises to an almost unbearable degree…

Click. Boom.  The hammer-blow, right between the eyes.

You freeze up.

Then the moment is past; empathy reasserts itself and the collective smiles, shrugs and moves on. The frozen river has been crossed, the chains unloosed and the void has been filled; the gap has been crossed and life can proceed as normal.

But for some, that gap is a door; a threshold and a focusing point; the void becomes pregnant, a vast womb which engenders a multitude of children, quickened by the very absence which unnerves so many on an atavistic level. There is a frozen realm there, as we pass through a kind of roaring Ginnungagap, a yawning void which holds echoes of the primal myth concealed within the Eddic tale of creation  – the bloody slaughter of Ymir.

...in opposition to all humanistic culture we are lured ever to the brink of chaos. We want to go where we are forbidden. We want to know what has been denied to us. We want to know what has been denied to us. We seek, in a word, the ‘more’. – M. Bertiaux, The Voudon Gnostic Workbook

Ice in the blood, glittering beneath the flesh – he who men call Allfather is born of the cold and giant blood; grandson to Buri. Each cut sets the red to run, reveals the icy Soul beneath, burning cold with blue potency. The blue endless hour of the in-between, of twilight and dusk in their infinite possibility, called kosmic as it is drawn from some esoteric Northern space. Call it Avalon-Thule or Hyperborea and also in this place – COLD ALBION.

Call it as we do, allow yourselves to take a breath and observe Spirit within that moment. Consider its movements and shapes, and the way it quickens and slows, as it restricts, binds and and directs, as it dismembers and casts aside. And as the understanding flows, as blood  fills veins and sets the flesh to pulse, you may wonder at what is revealed…

For as you become aware of the near infinite variety of moments which are constantly occurring in order to maintain your integrity, your perception of the base status quo, you may not immediately notice what lies beneath them, and that is fine and good, for Spirit is busy even now in its business of maintenance of your world and has always been so. Yet because of that, when the Soul’s cold glitter is revealed, when the scales fall from your inner eyes and the taste, texture and touch of the rime fills your awareness once more, you might realize how easily you could return to that fundamental place within your nature, and how nigh-on impossible it is to forget, despite and even because of the activities of Spirit.

In fact, all the activities of Spirit which render the world just-so can be seen as secret beacons into the Mystery of the Soul, shining most visibly, most unquenchably, as the shadows of the in-between. For as the shadows lengthen and twist, as the light shifts, so the business of the world reaches its place of transition and upon the threshold the Soul welcomes you home!

In the shadow lies the land of dark fecundity and fierce fury. It is that same fury that seizes poets, the wôd, the furor poeticus. Adam of Bremen once wrote:

“Wodan id est furor.” - “Wodan, which means fury.”

Is it any wonder then that the kosmic light is a deep and icy blue? That the Allfather stands as a generator of the same by definition, and through some  esoteric way is fundamentally kosmic in identity; that the forms in which the Mysteries are revealed suffused with that light, silhouetting the figure of the Wanderer striding through the icy Meon, across realms utterly inhuman in nature.

The Drighten stalks the frozen lands, moving through Ghostworlds, utterly alone as he leads his band of brothers on. Drottin of Draugr so the old tales whisper, Lord of those who are the walking dead, possessed of some strange vitality. Terrifying are they, called hel-blár – blue-black as death.

Aptrgangr – literally the “after-goers” in Old Norse, or “those who walk after death”. Where their Chief walks, so do they; each is bound by to the others by an advanced esoteric re-ordering of their faculties and flesh. Where one stands, so do they all, ranged about as an army of harriers, a wellspring of inexorable, implacable strength.

So it is that these Hyperborean sorcerers, warrior-poets of furious and merciless intensity, may walk ways which none who are merely human can even penetrate, their blood cold and gaze potent with what Beth refers to in Vodoun Gnosis as Esoteric Vision.

The gaze is fixed upon the flame, until such time as the eyes are forced to close by exhaustion or over exposure. Any visions or lights are to be allowed to arise, occur, and pass. They are by-products of the human desire for light, desperate echoes captured by the retina in the face of impending darkness.[...]After the eyes reach their limit, the practitioner, is to open their eyes again and attempt to view the periphery of their vision as opposed to anything else.

Again, any appearances should be allowed to rise and pass away as before, the gaze relaxed and taking in the peripheral vision.

[...]

Similarly, with the increased sensitivity, it becomes easier to notice one’s surroundings, since one is now practised in observing peripheral vision in a relaxed and comfortable way. By utilizing the whole visual field, one is is able to perceive events slightly ahead of time when compared to normal so -called tunnel vision.

Rather than focusing on the method of line and enclosure – encapsulating an objects as a method of resolving them- one begins to perceive the in-betweeness which is far more rapidly responsive to change than objects themselves.

This relaxed mindfulness allows one to perceive far more data than before, and with practice, one may develop a level of perception which is better suited to one who dwells in the spaces which are not delineated by walls and human architecture.

Such a practice enables one to say, observe a flock of birds in flight and garner information about the world, or to walk along the streets of a city and follow the currents of emotion rippling outward. It is the wide-angled gaze of a bird, a predator and hunter.

All things are said to speak, if one knows how but to listen.

- Extract from an unpublished manuscript of mine entitled The Book of The Ravens’ Head.

The fundamental disengagement from Spirit as away of existence necessitates a recognition that perception is limited and tautological. As Spirit contours and limits in order to maintain ease via short-cuts, so we become aware that the associations and connexions we use to model the world are not based on actual accuracy or any kind of righteous order.

Rather, we are in a sense, ultimately at the mercy of our senses. Descartes’ evil genius of a demon whom God keeps from deluding us by virtue of His divinity is suddenly revealed to be an ambivalent daimon – a demiourgos (from demos “common people” and ergos “work”.) which when latinized is rendered as demiurge!

Upon this realization that we are at the mercy of the demiurge, it is natural to feel a certain kinship with the ancient Gnostics of varying traditions. However, one must take a deep breath and reconsider this in the light of all that has gone before – the notion of escape is a product of Spirit, a denialism that is insidious in nature, since it renders the future possibility of escape as the thing to be achieved at all costs.

Yet, we have already touched upon how the products of the Spirit cast shadows which are pathways to the Soul, and this is true here also. The shadow cast by the urge to transcend is the urge to embrace, to involve and immerse, to plunge deeply into the unknown which hides behind the familiar.

The demiurge is no singular daimon. Rather it is the self-maintaining product of society, an almost endless feedback loop of Spirit which engenders a Nietzschean “Spirit of the Times” which in turn powers the status quo. The demiurge is thus born of the urge towards integrity and hence enforces limitation and order.

To be clear the relation between Spirit and Soul is equatable to the relation of Nous and Psyche.

How then might we be free of the restrictions of the demiurge, our quasi-benevolent dictator who has been elevated above us by the majority who seek stability and ease? How might we become seekers after Sophia, the kosmic wisdom, lighting our way with lamps forged of will?

He who is inhabited by Eros-Dionysos is a daemon whilst he yet remains a man. Such a being sees through the shadow-body of things into the flaming night of the images. He himself is destiny; he incarnates a Gorgonic dread. The streams of earth, the storms of heaven, and the starry vaults are all within him, and his power reaches beyond the orbit of Saturn – Klages

Or, in more familiar terms:

Like Dionysus and Woden – uncanny in their fury, masters of that same inspiration – the story-teller makes war on the static ennui of reality. Enlivening and breaking apart, rearranging and reconfiguring, we speak of strange lands and stranger ways, opening eyes and hearts to possibility and vital joy. – My COLD ALBION Biography

To thusly declare war  is to arrogate to oneself the authority to do so, to partake of the daimonic and exercise the sovereign aristocratic blue-blood of the kosmos within, to unify Eros with Psyche.

In Norse myth, mankind is shaped by three beings, the sons of Borr. Odin and his two brothers take trees, driftwood in fact – sodden with the sea – and impart the faculties of humanity to the same. It is telling that the axis mundi of Norse shamanic sorcery is a tree containing many worlds and three wells. This tree is known as Yggdrasil, or ‘Steed of the Terrible One.’, that is to say Odin/Woden.

(Interestingly, one of the major temples of the Voudon Gnostic tradition was named  Temple of the Two Yggdrasils – a fact not lost on this author.)

Since the human body is hence, in an esoteric sense, an axis mundi directly descended from two trees imbued with the fury and wisdom of the sons of Borr, it follows that by the laws of ancestry, the blood of mankind is possessed of a direct link to that daimonic triad, grandsons to Buri who emerged from the ice. Personal esoteric investigations have suggested a great many things about Buri, but these are not yet ready for public dissemination.

It is sufficient to note that within the context of Northern Sorcery, as with Gnostic Voudon, ancestry is paramount – the alignment of oneself with one’s ancestral dead is vital as is the reconfiguration of one’s esoteric anatomy to accept the ancient wisdoms and fuse them with one’s own personality.

When that furious blood is awakened, it becomes charged with power and many subtle changes begin to occur as the esoteric anatomy of the sorcerer is altered to become a suitable home for the daimonic reality of the axis mundi. As this begins, the fierce erotic link between the kosmos and the sorcerer calls forth and enlivens many slumbering aspects of the personality, rendering a pandaimonium within the mind of the sorcerer, mirroring the variety of life and entities found on the macrocosmic Yggdrasil. It is only through Soul-faring, that is to say, journeying through the ancestral roads laid down in one’s Soul, that the individual grasps his roots.

The dead have much to teach, and there are often mighty figures waiting by the side of the road as the sorcerer walks his way – and it must be understood that the traffic between living and dead is two way. Those no longer corporeal will seek to strengthen their kin and by doing so strengthen for themselves, for ancestral power is timeless. As the one waxes, so do they all – this is the heathen way, for there is no escape; no future, only past, present and the obligations arising from them.

Thus it is that Northern sorcery is fundamentally kin to Gnostic Voudon – the awareness that merciless inexorable forces exist outside of the world of man, and that to pass beyond the limitations laid upon us by archontic forces we must be equally daimonic and merciless in our actions. By furiously partaking of our blood and all that entails, maximizing our affect, far beyond the notions of simple ease and satisfaction, we become as hungry as wolves, as fierce as eagles, as sly as serpents and as cunning and foreboding figures as ravens.

For nine nights the Father of All hanged himself upon the axis mundi. sacrificed to himself, speared and starving, deliberately defying those forces that would limit his actions. This is an act of clear esoteric significance – a submission to and identification with the kosmos, infusing himself with it and, in doing so, becoming a transmitter of that gnosis without effort.

So it is with the Northern sorcerer – able to descend to the deepest places and the highest reaches.

For there is an esoteric secret here: that the body of the sorcerer becomes the horse of Ygg – not simply a vessel, but a fusion with that Terrible One. It is often said that a master horseman and his mount are one without division, though I leave it to the reader to ponder that fact.

As we’ve already said, there are those who stalk the Ghostworlds and still darker places, by virtue of that bond – but what has not been stated is the method by which one might travel that way. In fact, it is similar in nature to the crossing through the hidden gate between Yesod and Malkuth which may take the adept to the back of the Tree of Life and the so-called qlippothic realms.

Just as the Voltiguers travel where they will, so certain kinds of Northern sorcerer may choose to plunge into the lowest of the wells upon Yggdrasil, Hvergelmir or ‘Roaring Kettle.’ This writhing mass of chaotic water bubbles and roars in a most awful way as, surrounded by hissing serpents presided over by Nidhogg – the dragon-wyrm that gnaws ceaselessly on the roots of the tree – one is pulled under and dragged through subterranean rivers that chill the bone, battered and bruised and totally out of control, until one is at last ejected, and spat out into a realm of utmost existential dread.

Thereupon, one must recall one’s true furious nature and give up any pretence at humanity, drawing on the bondage of the noose which marks one as one of those belonging to the Hangatyr. If successful, one undergoes metamorphosis which unites the alien vitality of those particular mysteries with the flesh – enabling once again a movement beyond death.

This is but one of the unique and strange movements within the apparently perennial cultus of the Furious One – a movement wherein there is no distinction between life and death by virtue of utter in-betweeness. Another is the practice of keeping a Fetich so that the sorcerer does not always have to go personally. What follows is another extract from The Book of the Ravens’ Head:

As the primary fetish, the House of the Bone Wight should already have been anointed with the blood of the sorcerer. What follows is fundamentally unique to both Wight and practitioner, however, in the case of the author, the Bone Wight came in the form of a buck deer and its skull.

From personal notes:

‘I spent some time, an hour or so, locked in silent communication with the spirit of the deer, my eyes fixed on its brow and empty sockets in flickering candlelight. I saw a beast’s life, slow and easy as a querying intellect touched mine. It was as confused as I, for how is it otherwise to one who is not a man?

And after a time, the confusion seemed to pass, and we had established some form of rapport. I conveyed my desires to the spirit, that it would travel through the worlds seeking the Old Grey Wolf, with whom I would speak. In return I should feed it, and share more of the experiences of mankind, allowing it to know such things as are unique to the human species.

Upon mention of the Wolf, I perceived an almost ancestral memory which, while at first seemed to involve the experience of deer-as-hunted – an animal atavism – it triggered in me a primordial recall of human hunting practices, seemingly in some bygone and ancient time.’

Upon meditation, the understanding arose that the distinction of hunter and hunted is not clearly distinct. The hunted is a creature of flight or speed, while the hunter must act with speed in order to catch his food – the two must partake of each other for their roles to function. Hunters are often dressed in the hides of their prey, particularly if they are human; while any hunter, regardless of species, must learn the habits of his prey.

With this in mind, we recall the ancient art of the palaeolithic period – zoomorphic figures fused with human. So it is that the blood marking on the fetish – the deer skull in the case of the author – provides a method of that partaking.

Thus after developing a relation with the spirit, one is now inextricably bonded with it due to the blood shed, much as a hunter is truly bonded with their prey.

In ceremonial magic, there is a practice known as assuming a god-form. At first glance, what is now to be done is similar in nature. However, in this practice, it must be noted that the spirit does not overshadow or possess the sorcerer. Rather it is a fusion and wakening.

BONE-FACE

‘The skull grins. This is the final expression of mirth, the ultimate primate threat. The room is dark and the candle flickers. The last echoes of the hailing of the Dwellers in the House on the Borderlands die away

The breath moves easy, turning the inner into outer, the outer into inner. The gaze blurs and things shift at the edge of vision, the thumbs tracing the blood markings of the skull over and over.

Abruptly the knife is in hand, metal kissing brow, lips and throat. The blade gleams as it passes through flame, blackening with soot, muttering the spirit’s name as the stinging teeth cut and blood flows slick. The pain is sent as a savoury spice, a new kind of feeling to draw it closer as the hand daubs the skull’s design upon flesh, and it is cold, shockingly cold against the skin.

The iron stench, the bitter taste of cold spilt blood. Visions of butchery, steaming meat upon the snow, pale bone displayed as the mouth stretches to match the rictus grin. Skin and muscle, sinew and tendon; a sliding like melted wax and the eyes shrink inside sockets suddenly deep and dark.

Ice in the marrow as shuddering fits snap to painful spasm after spasm. Breath is steaming in the cold as the head grows hollow and heavy with it all. Antlers fuse and flow across the wall, shadows crawling and twitching as they writhe into each other.

The heart pounds, like hooves, like the stamping of the dance. I am no longer alone, for we dance together, in step. They surge around the flame, drawing me inward and spiralling down. Down, and down we go, moving through the forests and across the plains as night races behind us, vainly seeking the sun as the darkness envelops, cocoons us.

What skin there is is paper-thin, the luminous blue inside my bones blazing dully as frost on a moonless night. We breathe together and all of us – the flowing beastfolk, – sense the freezing mist. Its wind whistles through bone flutes, a chilling gust that would blacken and burn flesh if we possessed any left.

And on that wind is carried the sound of myriad voices, those long fallen, drawn to us by our movements in the lands of stillness. We are made of bone and ice and our gait is high, our footfalls rapid and light…

Back then, drawn down into the cave-darkness. The skull looks us in the eye, neither beast not man. Sharp teeth and smiling patience, full of recognition – of self awareness.’

Here we can see necromantic and blood practises fusing together to create a weaving which transcends division – the sorcerer and fetish have aligned and blended their fields, a spiritual conjugation which results in a beneficial entanglement enabling increased potency – a kind of sovereign zoomorphism  which allows a new form of movement with all its attendant possibilities.

“If there were a cavern in the earth so deep that the sun could never reach it, and if it were possible for a child to be born in that cavern, do you know what that child would be?”

“Almost certainly blind,” I replied; “beyond which my imagination fails me.”

“Then I will inform you, Mr. Knox. It would be a demon.” - Sax Rohmer, Batwing.

From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties and things that go bump in the night, good Lord deliver us!” – Anon

The things that go bump in the night, that rattle windows and howl around the dwellings of men – these are the things that concern us as sorcerers. At certain times of the year, we note the encroaching darkness and cold – the way the shadows lengthen and the days shorten.

Even today, the doors are shut and barred, lights blazing in the windows to keep out the night. The fire burns more fiercely now, the fuel stored up begins to be used. Such is the law of combustion – movements become pointed, resources husbanded as the dark comes in. The goal, of course is to survive, to endure and pass into the realms wherein the Sol Invictus returns unconquered.

It is said that the Unconquered Sun arises to bless mankind with its order – the shape of things may once more be discerned clearly. Mithras slaughters the Bull, tossing its haunch into the night sky to look down upon us as the Plough. A Messiah is born in an inherited cave-cum-stable, Mithras’ younger brother stealing the birthright from the elder. It’s Jacob and Esau all over again – appropriate for a religion emerging from the monolatry of Judaism.

But what of us, who incline our hearts and minds to a sun that is Black?

The Egyptian scarab-god Kephera is said to push a ball of dung across the sky, and even through the Duat on the solar-barque. Dung is of course, waste matter – that is to say it is the byproduct of a metabolic process in a creature which can no longer be reduced by that same organism. It is the organic left-overs which then may be further processed by other creatures capable of such metabolism. Most waste matter eventually is broken down and metabolised by other organisms, but for the purposes of symbolism, the sun-as-dung is telling.

Life based on such principles is ultimately broken down – the structures dismantled and consumed to feed yet another form of existence. It is intriguing to note that in Norse myth, the god Thor travels often to do battle with the jotnar in the lands of Utgard which may be Anglicized as Outgarth – garth being an Old English word that is cognate with yard, an enclosure.

Jotun (Old Norse) or Eoten (Old English) are now translated as ‘giant’, a term that is also applied to the Sons of Muspell who will march at Ragnarok and burn the World Tree. Further, one only has to look to look to folklore of giants, trolls, ogres and the like to discover they are often perceived as beings with strange and terrifying appetites:

‘Fee-fi-fo-fum,
I smell the blood of an Englishman,
Be he alive, or be he dead
I’ll have his bones to grind my bread.’

Also, we have the murderous Grendel devouring the sleepers in the hall of Heorot, in the ancient poem Beowulf:

‘As a first step, he set his hands on a sleeping soldier, savagely tore at him, gnashed at his bone joints, bolted huge gobbets, sucked at his veins, and had soon eaten all of the dead man, even down to his hands and feet.’

Though there are giant-kilers, many of these men are killers by cunning, rather than righteousness. The tales of Northern Europe, in which the author dwells and lives, show a peculiar understanding which is echoed in the words of Nietzsche:

‘He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. ‘

We, as would-be sorcerers acknowledge the truth of this. In fact, it is that monstrous nature, that living sentience of the Out-garth, which we strive to recall through resurgent atavisms. As monsters are the embodied fleshly sigils which point the way and intrude upon the age of man, his lighted settlements which consume so desperately in the face of the Dark, so the sorcerer understands that the movements of those in the dark appear to violate the ‘natural order’.

Acceptance and cultivation of this heritage is paramount, and the tides now present us with an emblematic point of reference. Here, the internal distillation of the sorcerer through the rays of the Black Sun and Red Moon is made external. Here, the Neither-Neither is made to emerge from the physicality of the environment.

Here, in the freezing twilight, the roaring winds in the trees, comes that time and tide when the division between living and dead falls away. It does not matter that our ancestors, our ghosts and guests, are not part of the world. Indeed, this need not be.

Nos Galan Gaeaf, All Souls, All Hallows Eve, Winternights, Samhain.

All through Northern Europe, these festivals exist – in varying forms. Even the Roman Catholic Church gets in the act. In the 7th Century Pope Boniface IV consecrated the Pantheon to the Blessed Virgin and the Martyrs on May 13th – the culmination of the 3 day festival of the Lemures. In the days of Charlemagne, following the tradition of Pope Gregory III, the festival had moved to November the 1st.

The Lemures were liminal spirits of darkness and dread, figures which were propitiated yearly so as not to interfere with the living – in this sense, they may be similar to the original meaning of ghost – as supernatural figures which inspire terror in the darkness. Cognate with the larvae (singularly larva) meaning ‘masks’ – we begin to uncover the features of fearful apparitions lurking in the dark, ancestral cthonic deities and otherworldly spirits raging across the world with moral ambivalence.

Interestingly, the biological use of the word larvae for juvenile forms of insects and other creatures is used since these forms often conceal the final adult forms. The connexions continue along the threads of wyrd when one considers the conception that certain insect larvae are parasitical, requiring a host.

A host in its original sense was in the Latin hospitem meaning lord of strangers. Thus, a host as reference to army or multitude was in the sense of these strangers banded together. This replaced the Old English here which shares a root with ‘harry’.

Thus, one might conjecture that these ‘harriers’ of the living, these who frighten and terrify and upset in this no-time – this terrible and sacred in-between – are a veritable band of seemingly noxious spirits which echo the quote at the beginning of this piece.

For this is the time of the Wild Hunt, led by varying figures throughout Europe – whether they be Perchta, Frau Holle, Gwyn ap Nudd, Herne the Hunter, Odin, Woden or many others. The author cites personal experience that, while these Hunts may vary in folklore or purpose, what is constant throughout the lore is their terrible and fearsome nature, bound to ride – seemingly forever – across the sky as the embodiment of Freedom-Through-Bondage.

This may at first seem an oxymoron, until one considers such things from a cultic perspective. One notes that the members of a particular cultus are dedicated to its Mysteries, in whatever form they may be expressed. Additionally, the bond between members is one of initiation via shared experience. For this reason, it might be said that such things are elitist.

Such assertions would be correct.

This separation is Saturnian in the extreme – the initiate has, often through extreme severity – become a stranger to the society in which they were once embedded. One might see a more culturally understood notion of this in the ‘thousand-yard stare’ of combat veterans.

For the sorcerer, within the context of the becoming-as, one is essentially alone. The acknowledgement of that which lies beyond the threshold as necessary to, and integral to their existence – the ability to move as other-than is that which enables survival and prosperity in impossible conditions.

As the Wild Hunt is made of a multiplicity of individuals, it is, in and of itself, a singular thing. To the Germanic people, and others also, a king’s power was tied to his people and land. If we consider the warband as exemplar of this, then the notion of the might and main of the leader strengthening his men and vice versa is exceedingly important.

As such, the sorcerer may be considered part of the sabbatic stream – that is to say, co-equal with all those who indulge in sorcery and are sorcery. One may call and command those spirits as leader, only when one is aware that one is host to them.

This is not to say that the sorcerer creates them – quite the contrary. The sorcerer is re-created by them. By participating in that masked dance, as one of the dead amongst the living, he leaves behind the lighted world of men.

As one of the Wild Hunt, the flow from its members – allied in a way beyond ordinary comprehension – initiates the sorcerer into its Mysteries of darkness and ecstasy. As the Many, becoming-as One.

That One is the Silent Watcher, Hooded and Hidden. It stands, waiting. Only when the sorcerer accepts that One as the Ancient Unborn and accepts the Nature of the same, as it runs through the blood of all of their fellow initiates and invigorates the Self, will the runa be theirs.

And in that moment, the mask becomes flesh and blood. The gate is open, and the Master comes from the North.