The Wrong Way to Pray

Well, life continues to be busy. Between another bout with COVID and struggling to make ends meet in this difficult economy, I’ve had very little time for anything but the basics. And not only has that included this blog, it’s also included most things in my spiritual life. Including, lately, prayer. I just haven’t been able to find the time or energy for work that doesn’t pay. It took me a little while to spot the mistake I was making.

If prayer seems like a chore to you, you’re doing it wrong. Prayer isn’t just something you do to honor the gods, ancestors, and spirits. Nor is it just a way of asking for favors. It’s also supposed to inspire you. It’s supposed to enflame you with passion. It’s supposed to fill you with the influence of those gods, ancestors, and spirits. It should give you a sense of energy and purpose. So the fact that I was seeing it as a chore showed that I was looking at it the wrong way, and that I had stopped praying well.

So, I figured I’d take the opportunity to put this reminder out there, in case any of you are dealing with similar issues. Prayer should lift you up. If it’s not, take a step back from it, try to look at it in a new way. Approach it with a naïve mind, like you’re praying for the first time. It could help. Good luck.

Putting the Gods First

One of the more mature and clear thinking polytheists has just posted an important reply to the most recent round of BS from some of the Righteous Radical Social Justice Warrior crowd. It describes the concerns and lives of those who are devoted to the gods first and foremost, and rejects the pernicious foolishness that says that all things, including religion, are primarily political.

Happy Loki’s Day

Happy Loki’s Day, to all who love the god, or can bear his blessings.

Too Casual a Climate

 

Back in the mid nineties, my best friend in the world was a Lokian former street kid named Steve. Mad as a hatter, and also one of the most intelligent people I ever met. He had a complex, Kauffman-esque sense of humor. At one point, he started learning how to paint in an old-fashioned, realistic style. He wanted to develop a high level of skill and then do one, and only one, painting. He wanted to do Odin and Loki, in oil paint, sharing a bong, with Loki’s eyes and cheeks bulging out as he tried to keep his hit in. Subject matter like a poster from Spencer’s, in the medium of da Vinci. After that, he said, he would never paint again. He thought it would be the ultimate sacrifice, to Loki, to put so much work into developing a skill that was then never used but for one frivolous purpose. The ultimate absurdism.

You know what? His sacrifice could not be made today. You see, he thought that the whole point of the painting was that it was really transgressive. He thought that depicting the gods in such a casual, frivolous manner was really inappropriate, and not respectful enough. He was doing it because, as a Lokian, he viewed it as his duty to cross certain boundaries, and break certain taboos. Doing such a painting in the climate of his day would have made a real statement. Today? Not so much. Today, this kind of casual, frivolous representation of the gods is commonplace. Serious, supposedly devoted Asatruar put such images up on their websites, and share them on social media. Today, far too often, the gods are pictured as laughing stocks, as if they were just people.

I think we have lost something in finding such an attitude to be acceptable. These are our gods, people. These are our revered, ancient, ancestral traditions. They deserve a little respect.

And you know what? It’s a lot easier to cultivate a spiritual state of mind, and reach out for genuine contact with the gods, when you keep the space you devote to them in your head as something special.

Everything Furthers

If I had to sum up the heart of the Odinic path into two words, they would be these words:

Everything furthers.

An Odinist does not shy away from doing something that is hard, because effort is beneficial. An Odinist does not shy away from doing something that is painful, because pain is a most useful tool. An Odinist does not shy away from sacrifice and loss, because these things too can be beneficial.

When times are tough, Odin does not offer mindless reassurances that everything will be alright. He does not claim that every bad thing is part of some mysterious, invisible greater good. He does not promise an eternity of reward in some future existence. Instead, he teaches practical ways to use and benefit from the world as it is.

The wisdom that Odin teaches is the wisdom to see the benefit in everything. By that I do not mean some blind Panglossian optimism, I mean learning to use all experiences for your own benefit. Consider:

Have you been injured, and find yourself in constant pain? Then you have the opportunity to learn how to focus your mind, be productive, and keep your mood up under difficult circumstances. If you can manage to do these things, you will be sharper, happier, and more disciplined for the rest of your life.

Hungry? Then you have the perfect opportunity to use the clarity of mind that hunger brings to sharpen your meditative state, which brings mental health benefits.

Lost your job? Now you have the chance to work on your powers of persuasion, which will benefit you in all areas of life.

Have you been betrayed by a loved one? You now have an unparalleled opportunity to work on disciplining your emotions, on being productive even while heartbroken, on not lashing out in anger when you feel pain. Learning to do these things will make you a better person.

Are you suffering from depression? Then you have the chance to condition yourself to think in ways that do not reinforce the depression, and instead lead on to better moods. While medications may help, conditioning your mind to steer clear of depression naturally will be a much more effective treatment.

Everything furthers. The mind of an Odinist is like a bonfire: everything put into it becomes fuel. Good things, bad things, indifferent things, all become fuel. Pleasant things, unpleasant things, the mind of an Odinist takes all that comes his or her way and turns it to his or her benefit.

This makes an Odinist unstoppable. An Odinist does not run from fear, or pain. An Odinist keeps going long after everyone else has quit or collapsed. An Odinist can be knocked down, but cannot be kept down.

Some people find Odinists to be dark, strange, even unpleasant. They do not understand why we embrace pain and suffering the way we do. Let me tell you something. It isn’t masochism. It isn’t even really darkness. It’s more a matter of being able to recognize power and opportunity where most people cannot see them. Odinists desire growth, strength, intelligence, and wisdom above all other things, so we take advantage of everything that comes our way.

And you know what? Being able to see value even in scary, painful things means that fear and pain aren’t such big deals to us. It actually makes us happier, and more well adjusted in general.

Now, Odin’s way is most certainly not for everyone. However, his example is something that anyone can learn and benefit from. Especially when times are dark. All you have to do is remember that everything furthers.

May Odin bless you.

Getting Started

When I first came to the heathen path, some twenty years ago, it was very difficult to know how to get started. Back then, before the Internet was much of a thing, you had to search the local bookstores and hope you got lucky if you wanted to find any useful information at all. You might be fortunate enough to find a local group of pagans that included another heathen, if you lived in the right area, but this was probably too much to hope for. Many heathens back then had to make their way on their own, without much guidance from others or from quality books. (Thanks to Llewellyn Press, there were unfortunately a lot of useless and worse than useless books, though.)

Today, things are much better. There are a lot of resources online. There are many heathen groups that modern heathens can go to for help. That does not always make it easy for new heathens to know how to get started, though, because there are now so many voices that it can be difficult to know who to listen to. To help with this problem, I will share here the way I got started on the heathen path.

• Read the primary sources, the Eddas and the Sagas. These are the oldest written records of what the ancients believed, so they are the best source for understanding the ancient ways. No amount of reading what other people have to say about these works will tell you as much. If you can, read multiple translations, to get a better sense of the original meanings. You must also remember: these stories were recorded by Christian scribes. While they were attempting to preserve a historical record of a vanishing era, there were parts of heathenry they liked, and parts they didn’t like. Because of this, they skipped a lot of things, like goddess lore. What we have left are more the beliefs of the ancient heathen warrior caste rather than the entirety of ancient heathen belief. Helpful hint: read the Hollander translation of the Poetic Edda. It not only retains the original meanings best, it keeps to the ancient poetic form pretty closely too.
• Pray often. Nothing will bring your mind and spirit closer to the gods than regular prayer. Begin each day with the prayer from the Sigrdrifumal, that begins “Hail the day, hail day’s sons….” Make the sign of the Hammer over every meal, and say “Hammer, please hallow this food to my might.” This is an ancient blessing. Make the sign of the valknut over alcoholic drinks. This is a more modern blessing, but it fits.
• Make a traditional altar. The ancients used piles of stones for altars, and poured offerings over them. River stones would be most appropriate.
• If you are devoted to a particular god, do work that advances the god’s goals. An Odinist might write poetry, for example, or practice the martial arts, or join the armed forces. Someone devoted to Bertha or Perchta might weave.

Just following these practices is a good start. After a couple of years of such practices, you should start developing an idea of how to go further.

Wes thu hal. May the gods bless you.

The Power of Negative Thinking

People talk a lot about the power of positive thinking, and it does indeed have its benefits. I, however, often think I have gotten more mileage out of the power of negative thinking. Before you think I’m just being funny, let me try to put it to you from an Odinic perspective.

Life is hard, sometimes. Sometimes, it’s hard all the time. Occasionally it seems unbearable. Positive emotions such as hope can sustain you through these times, but the darker the times get, the more difficult it is to experience them.

Odin’s way shows another, surer, form of motivation. One of the paths that he teaches to his devotees is the path of the warrior. He is the god of war, and often gifts his followers with war-related skills and experiences. Another is the path of the ascetic. As his sacrifices at the Tree and the Well show, his particular type of mysticism utilizes pain and sacrifice.

Both of these paths make extensive use of negative motivation, negative thinking. Any fighter knows what it’s like to be knocked down, gasping for breath, vision a tunnel, stomach a hell of nausea, with the enemy still on his feet, strong, fast, closing in. It isn’t the power of positive thinking that comes to your aid then. It’s the cold, heartless voice from deep within, or far without, that says “Get on your feet, you pathetic weakling.” Any ascetic who has used the Fast Path, the Diamond Way, knows the point where all of your resources are gone, and all of a sudden you AREN’T resisting the pain any more, and there’s a moment of panic, and that moment’s enough to trigger a vicious cycle of doubt and fear. At that moment you are beyond self confidence. You are beyond hope. You are naked and alone before everything that ever hurt you. The motivation to hang on, re-establish the meditative state, and reach then end of the rite instead of giving up comes instead from sneering, mocking laughter at your failure. It comes from the fear of negative consequences.

This principle does not just apply to extremes of Odinic practice. Sure, use positive thinking, positive motivation, when you can. But do not neglect the power of negative thinking. Adopt the principle that “Everything furthers,” everything is useful when approached properly. Feel guilty about treating someone badly? Don’t just try to get over it, USE IT TO CHANGE YOUR BEHAVIOR. That’s what the emotion’s for, after all. Fearful of failing midterms? Don’t try to relax. Use that fear to drive you to go study some more, and increase your odds of passing. Feel a lack of self confidence? Don’t paint over the problem by learning to “love yourself as you are,” use the badness of that feeling as a goad to make yourself become someone with the skills and abilities to give them self confidence.

Negative thinking. Is it nice? Hel, no. But it’s damn useful.

Priest vs. Godhi

As long time readers of this blog already know, I am a priest of Odin. I get asked, periodically, why I refer to myself as a priest rather than a godhi. The answer is because I am not a godhi. And neither is anybody else, more or less. Yes, yes, I know that “godhi” is usually translated as “priest,” and most people use it as the ancient heathen word for priest. Trouble is, that’s not very accurate.

Godhis did indeed perform priestly duties. They had priest-like relationships with the gods and landwights. And they were so much more than that as well. They often functioned as lawyers, and a godhi had to be well educated in legal matters. They also performed many other civil functions, including acting as scribes and notaries. A godhi had to be a historian too. It was often mandatory that a godhi be a landowner, and possibly even wealthy. A godhi was not just any person who had a special relationship with the gods, you see. A godhi also had to have a special relationship with the community, had to be something of a community leader.

Leading blots and sumbels is one thing, being a godhi is something more. It does not help our people to disregard so much of the ancient ways just so that we can use some of the ancient words. That sloppy, “me-first” kind of thinking is turning our religion into a massive live action role playing game. This is the year 2014, not 914. Being a heathen today means living in today’s world while respecting and learning from the ancient world. Godhis are a thing of the ancients. I am a priest, because that is the way today’s world is.

The Mystery of Sumbel

Noted heathen scholar H. R. Ellis Davidson once commented that the sumbel was perhaps the most important rite in ancient heathenry. It is one of the very few rites that we have any descriptions of. Stupid oral traditions. It is also one of the most unusual religious rituals in the world. I have long wanted to write something on the mystery of the sumbel, but was hesitant to, for reasons that will become clear below.

There are many different types of religion. Some go in for elaborate, formal rituals. Others utilize spontaneous, informal spiritual observance. The heathen sumbel, however, is a strange blend of both. Too formal to be a mere drunken banquet, too much of a party to qualify as high ritual, the sumbel has always been something of an enigma.

The key to resolution of the enigma lies in the nature of the heathen relationship to alcohol. Almost all cultures have one drug that is special to them, that is no mere recreational toy. Such drugs are used to gain access to the realm of the spirits in some fashion. They are called entheogens. Peyote is the entheogen of certain Native American tribes. Marijuana is a Rastafarian entheogen. Alcohol is the traditional entheogen of the heathens.

The key to proper entheogenic use of alcohol is to remember that it is like walking a tightrope. Too little, and you are not drunk enough to contact the spirits. Too much, and you are too drunk to contact them. The goal is that “golden glowing” state where everything seems a little bright, you feel a strange sort of energy and a close connection to everything, and feel simple joy. Sumbel included ritual recitations, and the goal was to recite them flawlessly, no matter how long the drinking had been going on. Proper sumbel meant finding this state and then drinking only so as to maintain it.

Sumbels took the form of feasts, or formal meals, with drinking. Family and religious groups celebrated together. There would be recitations of poetry, or boasts of deeds that would be accomplished. These had specific forms that had to be followed. While this was going on there would also be drinking from ritual vessels. This could include informal feast-style drinking, but it also had ritual formalism. The gods were toasted, as were local spirits such as alfs, dwarfs, and jotuns. One’s own ancestors might be hailed in this fashion as well. Noteworthy deeds of those hailed might be recited.

One of the reasons for alcohol’s enduring popularity is the intense social bonding that it encourages. It blurs the boundaries of the self, lowers inhibitions, and in special circumstances can make a group feel like it has become one. The sumbel is structured to take advantage of this. The informal, alcohol-fueled social gathering assists this softening of boundaries and tendency to oneness. It also relaxes and clears the mind. The repetition of formal ritual words engages the subconscious mind like all ritual does. The constant speech concerning the gods and ancestors keep the minds of the participants turned to them. When a sumbel works right, these factors come together and result in the gods and ancestors being drawn into the group gestalt, just like everybody else. It can result in the experience of becoming one with the gods or ancestors. It requires no advanced ritual knowledge or meditative skills, just the awareness and discipline to maintain a proper balance with the blood of Kvasir.

The mystery of the sumbel is the revelation of the divine in the experience of the physical. It is a blending of the sacred and the profane. Heathenry has no preachers because it needs none. Instead, all devotees may hold direct communion with the gods.

I have been hesitant to write this article for some time. You see, I don’t want it to be confused with something else that is out there. There are a great many lazy, egotistical “spirit workers,” “godhis,” and “seidhmen” out there who seem to have as their sole spiritual practice watching TV or movies while drinking beer and “talking” to their gods. This “ritual” is usually followed by blogging about how the gods are in said holy person’s social circle. The sumbel is not this sort of lazy, egotistical excuse to avoid devotion. It is instead a rather difficult mental and emotional balancing game, that results in having no spiritual experience at all more often than not. It takes practice to perform properly. Learning to do so means cultivating a good relationship with alcohol, the sacred blood of a god.

Some Thoughts on Odin’s Path and the Modern World

Today is the anniversary of my berserker initiation. Fourteen years ago I stood in the ancient ruins of Dogtown, abandoned centuries ago and considered haunted ever since, and faced the ritual fire. In the years since that night, I have been asked why many times. I have answered that question several times, in other places. On reflecting on the experience today, I was moved instead of why to talk about the reason why the question gets asked at all.

The simple reason why people ask me this question is that today’s world is seriously lacking some of the Odinic values. Many people, even many heathens, do not believe that Odin has anything to offer today’s world. But it’s not as simple as that. You see, this is only one side of the issue. The other side is the other question I get asked by a very different bunch of people: why don’t I rely on the aggression of the berserkergang and the Odinic path more than I do? There are, broadly and stereotypically speaking, two kinds of modern heathens. Both of them tend to miss the true Odinic path in some ways, I think.

To understand the context of these questions, I have to share a little bit about my past. I was born in “The Armpit of the Nation,” that area of Massachusetts comprising the cities of Haverhill, Lawrence, Methuen, and Lovell. It was an economically depressed area, all dying mill towns and gangs. My childhood was rather violent. I was shot before I hit my teens. It gave me a rather skewed understanding of the world, perhaps, but it also gave me a high tolerance for hardship and danger. It is a big part of what made me an Odinist. I needed power, and the ability to fight, and he offered me both. It also helped lead me to live the kind of life that I have lived since growing up.

I am, as I discussed in my last post, primarily a scientist. My life has largely been dedicated to pursuing my own scientific studies, even though there is no money in it. That is, after all, how I helped to redevelop the berserkergang as a living practice. As such, I know a lot of academic people, a lot of thoughtful philosophical types. Some of them are heathen. Many of them are atheist. Most of them are liberal. Many have been my friends. Most of them don’t get me, though. They find me scary, and violent, and they do not understand the “dark, risky” path that I have chosen to walk. They ask me why I am an Odinist. They ask me why I have become a berserk. To them, such things are insanities from a bygone era. And yes, this includes many modern heathens.

It seems that they don’t understand two things. One: the world actually is still a scary, dangerous place. Yes, they have the fortune to live in the better parts of a rich country, and can choose to pretend that such places do not exist. That does not make them go away though. A great many people aren’t as fortunate as they are. I got myself out of a bad beginning to life through the Odinic path. The things I have learned on that path have been of use to others.

Additionally, Odin is a god of much more than war. He is the god of inspiration, and also of science. (Which is just a specific form of inspiration-derived work.) Science depends on the eureka moment, the moment of insight when everything become clear and you realize how it all works. That moment can be deliberately triggered, through the practice of certain Odinic arts, and that is a skill of inestimable value to all forms of science. It is also difficult, and extremely stressful. The character development I have gone through pursuing the Odinic path’s more, er, vigorous aspects is of incalculable value in this too.

I have never much cared for the stupid little rules and popularity contests of society, so it was easy for me to make the decision to reject it all and live the way I wanted to. A big part of this has involved wandering the Earth. I live to see cool stuff. I live to discover secret things, and to set my eyes on sights never seen before. I have traveled all over the Americas and Europe, in both hemispheres. I have been privy to the secret rites of the Chanting Dervishes, and talked at length with an Isawiyaan elder, whose kind has long been thought to have vanished. I have walked through a necropolis on the other side of the world, explored caves running far beneath the surface of the Earth, been in a fortress with walls so thick they had internal highways, and seen places that look far more like alien planets than places from this world. I have partied with bikers and with crowds that contained fashion designers and Kennedies. (Bikers party WAY better.)

When you wander that far, you keep winding up in strange and even dangerous situations. I’ve had to intervene in domestic violence situations more than once. I’ve gotten involved in trying to get an idiot out of the dangerous situation with organized crime that she thought she could handle. I’ve been accosted by various street thugs and robbers. I have fought no holds barred matches against sumo-sized giants and special forces soldiers half my age, in a ring made of barbed wire. It hasn’t been a boring life.

Because of this part of my life, I have also come to know a wide variety of soldiers, professional sport fighters, thugs, borderline criminals, outright criminals, hookers with hearts of gold, lowlifes, noble hobos, vaudeville performers, and various other colorful characters. Many of these have been right wing. Many of them have been heathen. Many of them have been my friends. They don’t get me either, mostly.

I tend to end up having the same conversation with these people, too. For example, I was discussing my martial arts training with a younger fighter one day, and mentioned that my sensei had rebuked me sharply one night when I came to see him, expressing pride at winning a street fight. He told me that hand to hand combat, though a necessary skill, was a minor one, and only to be used as a last resort. He said that instead of pride I should feel shame, because I was not instantly aware of the situation well enough to manipulate it to be resolved without violence.

The kid found this puzzling. He asked for an example. So I told him about one of the more dangerous shifts I had as a social worker. I have been a security guard and a body guard, but I NEVER saw so much action as when I was a social worker. One night at the shelter for runaway teens, my kids came running in quickly, then sat down and behaved very well. This naturally made me suspicious, and I soon had the truth out of them: they had gotten into a gang fight with a gang that had proved to be more hardcore than they were, and they had fled. Upon further questioning, they revealed that they may not have lost them while fleeing the battleground.

Sure enough, the shelter was soon confronted with some 14 tough guys demanding that my boys come out and face the music. Calling the cops was no good. In that neighborhood, they never showed up in under 30 minutes, hoping things would resolve themselves first without risk to them. So I told my idiots that I was going outside and that if they didn’t stay inside, then if we all survived the confrontation, I would kill them myself. Because I had proved to them that they could trust me to look out for them AND to kick their asses if needed, they obeyed.

So, I went up to the end of the driveway and faced the other gang. Because I was alone, I had several seconds in which they would listen to me talk. After all, I obviously was not a threat. Because I have had, thanks to my sensei, extensive training as a Mentalist (read: Headologist, or Functional Amateur Psychologist) I was able to do what is known as a cold reading on several of them, particularly the leader. My single unarmed man bit bought me the time for it. So we chatted for a few minutes, while they aired their grievances and threats, and I selected a strategy. I berserked, but only a bit. Just enough to seem dangerous. And I told them, in a calm level voice, that they did indeed have the numbers and weapons to kill me. I also promised them that the first four across the line that separated us would die. I described how, in detail. And I promised them that I was not going to allow them to go after my idiots, even though, yes, they probably were the ones in the wrong.

Somehow, none of them wanted to be one of the first four. So they all held back. Once their hesitation went on long enough, I made it clear to the leader that he had lost control of the situation, and that it was time to move on. Not being a total idiot, he did.

You see, I had used a much better weapon than a gang of armed teenagers. I used Story as a weapon. I fed them a story that they would believe, that would make them choose of their own free will to behave as I wanted them to. What, a strange man confronting a gang of armed street thugs all alone, without any weapons? Talking like he has no fear at all? Well, they’ve seen that scene a hundred times, in movies and on TV. The obviously outmatched weirdo always turns out to be a vampire, or a legendary hit man, or something like that, and kills everybody. And, well, what kind of halfwit would BLUFF something like that, right? So they believed me just enough to lose their nerve.

The young fighter I was talking to asked why I took the risk I did. I am a skilled berserk, he pointed out, and could likely have simply scared them all off or actually kicked their asses (not bloody likely) rather than dissemble, bargain, and manipulate in a scheme that required me to be unarmed and alone. He thought it a foolish risk. He thought my sensei’s advice foolish. He said that I should have taken pride in my berserker nature, and my status as an Odinic priest, and taught them a lesson they would never forget.

I get questions like this from this crowd all the time. And similar ones, like why I pay heed to the moralities and beliefs of other cultures, or why I still hand out with elitist eggheads and never joined the armed forces and fought in a real war.

You see, this sort of heathen doesn’t really understand Odinic values in this modern world either. It is no longer enough to fight for the sake of fighting! That is a foolishness of the ancient world, a weakness that we would do well to leave behind. My left-wing friends are correct there. All lives are valuable, all lives should be cherished. An Odinist in today’s world SHOULD have handled that situation as I did. Odinists are expected to be heroes. Modern people are expected to have ideals. So I do not feel, as my right-wing brothers and sisters, that such sentimentality is a weakness. Indeed, I have found it a great source of strength. And because I am a hero, I will take risks to live up to those ideals. That means protecting the stupid teenagers I was responsible for from the consequences of their own actions. It ALSO meant protecting the attackers, if I possibly could manage it.

And you know what? I DID. I sent them all packing without ANYONE having to get hurt.

Particularly me.

All because I used a warrior’s BEST weapon: that 8 pound lump of grey goo in my skull. And this wasn’t an isolated incident. Since I graduated from my martial arts program, and got enough experience in the real world to have some worth as a serious fighter, you know what?

I’ve never had to fight. I have handled every situation that has arisen in the last several years by using my head and my words. And this is because I think I do understand a thing or two about Odin’s path and its relationship to today’s world.

My pacifistic, liberal brothers and sisters are wrong that only thugs and professional lawmen have need of the skills of war. Lawmen cannot be everywhere, and even privileged rich countries have many dark and bad things happening all over. Because I had the skills needed to fight for my life, I had the confidence to tackle a few of these situations. My more war-like right wing brethren are also wrong. Because I had the benefit of modern, peaceful, evolved ideals I could manage to resolve things, again and again, so that nobody had to get hurt. I survived to fight another day. My kids survived. Mission accomplished, minimum fuss, maximum efficiency. Because I could take the high road, and show that you could be a better person even in the face of danger, I could really make these kids listen when I told them that their lives could be better, even nobler, than the lives they were then living. It is because I see both Odin’s higher intellectual functions and his base warrior functions that I could do these things.

Of course, many of you dear readers are going to see this as a simple excuse to boast on my part. Somehow, whenever I have to talk about any experiences from either my scientific work or adventuring, most people leap to that conclusion. But I think that what I have to say here is important. Odin offers something unique to the modern world, something that it needs. Odin’s path allows everyone, even lay people, to receive some of the benefits of the warrior’s path, without the need to become a soldier. It encourages people to have heroic ideals. And it offers a way to uphold those ideals, without either weakness or compromise. Odinists can benefit from the perspective of both right and left wing, both liberal and conservative. Odinists can go far beyond the limits of either of these philosophies. And that understanding won’t be passed around unless people talk about something other than either the knee-jerk violence and warrior-responses of the right wing heathens or the often unworkable but still beautiful and all too necessary ideals of the left wing heathens.

I came to much of this understanding on a road that started on the night that I stood in the ruins of Dogtown, and held my hand in a fire, and understood what GOING BERSERK truly meant.