gullindagan

A reader, (shoutout to JP!) asked that I write " a post where you discuss in more depth your preferred sources for magic and religion, especially the Germanic ones." so, here goes.

Firstly, I'd like to state that I am at least as much of an "occultist" as I am a "heathen", though I will write a future post on what "heathenry" means to me. I am also a bit idiosyncratic in general.  I have tried multiple paths over my years seeking Beauty, Power, Wisdom, and Truth, and have learned from each of them. This mixture of heathenry and Golden Dawn magic that I am currently working on seems to finally fit just right, at least for now (though I am fully committed to mastering this system before I move onto anything else anyway.)

In regards to magic in general, John Michael Greer is my main go to. I've read a lot of his books, and many of the other books on magic that I've read have been recommended by him. Dion Fortune is big for me, I've read almost all of her books (maybe 75%). I've also read a wide variety of other authors, including folks like Israel Regardie, Mark Stavish, Christopher Warnock, Gordon White, R.J. Stewart, Jason Miller, Franz Hartmann, Mouni Sadhu, as well as classics like Levi, Ficino, Picatrix, Agrippa, etc and many more, but JMG and Dion Fortune have been the ones I've dived the furthest into. I've also listened in depth to many podcasts, including Glitch Bottle, Rune Soup, The Secret History of Western Esotericism, Plant Cunning Podcast, and many others.

As with most things, my style of learning is to take in a wide swath, going deep into what interests me the most, and synthesizing up my own mind by taking into account all the information, weighed against my own experience and ideas.

With Germanic religion and magic, this is essential. There really isn't that much known about it, so there are a lot of opinions. I have read a lot of Edred Thorsson/Stephen Flowers, as well as books by Maria Kvilhaug, Nigel Pennick, Thomas Karlssson,  Alaric Albertson, Diana Paxson, Stephen Pollington, Galina Krasskova and Raven Kaldera. I've also watched a lot of Jackson Crawford's youtube videos and have a translation of his. Now this is just a fraction of the authors who have written on the subject, and if there are books that any of you dear readers have found especially useful, please let me know!

The main thing though, is to read the primary sources. I like to read multiple translations of the eddas and look at the actual old Norse and see what the words are signifying. Reading and meditating on the eddas is essential to understanding them, and to getting the mythic framework deep into the subconscious. Same thing with the runes. Meditating on the runes and learning the rune poems is essential. The sagas, Tacitus, etc, are also important to read, as well as a general reading of history, especially the time period from the fall of the western Roman empire til the high middle ages. In this regard, Pagan Europe by Nigel Pennick and Prudence Jones is good, so is The Barbarian Conversion by Richard Fletcher, as well as The Last Apocalypse: Europe at the year 1000 A.D. by James Reston.

In regards to my opinions of the Germanic magicians that I've listed, none of them do I agree with 100%. But then again, there aren't many people who I agree with that much. Reading all of them as foils against each other, getting rid of the dross and keeping the gold has been a good strategy. That being said, Thorsson/Flowers is a very competent, well educated, and successful mage in any regard, let alone in the Germanic/Heathen milieu. His book Futhark was my first introduction to the world of Heathenry and Germanic magic, and it was a good intro. His book ALU: An Advanced Guide to Operative Runology is likewise a very solid advanced book. Some of his others are hit or miss, and he has some obvious problems (I'm just not into satanism,setianism, the Left Hand Path or Traditionalism... very meh to me) but he's the standard that I compare other Germanic occultists to. I also really liked Maria Kvilaug's Seed of Yggdrasil. It's big, sprawling, large, not well edited, and it kinda seems like she wrote half of it on mushrooms, but I really did love it and it gives a very interesting perspective on the myths from somebody who was raised with them and studied them at an advanced academic level.

In regards to religion, books, blogs and videos by Galina Krasskova and Raven Kaldera have been very helpful, but again, I take each of them with several grains of salt.

Also, Jackson Crawford is about the furthest thing from an occultist that you can get, but that's kinda nice, and it's nice to compare things to his perspective.

All in all, I'm basically using a framework that I developed by reading Greer, Fortune, bits from Thorsson, and then going directly to the myths and other primary material.


Hope that helps, and if anybody has any other books they think would be useful for me to read, please let me know! And of course I'm down to continue this conversation in the comments and in future blog posts if you want clarification or there's a fun tangent to explore.

In order to become a Magician, one must at least try to understand what "magic" is. We are not making up "magic" out of whole cloth, but are given a tapestry woven by those Weird Sisters with which we might decipher, and learn, what "magic" means. "Meaning" itself is a tapestry, and is part of the tapestry; nothing means anything outside of it's relationship to everything else, at least, nothing meaningful . So we look to what has come before to understand the present and the future, and pull at golden threads till the treasure is revealed. Let's look at some definitions.

John Michael Greer often recites the definition given by Dion Fortune when asked what magic is. "Magic is the art and science of causing change in consciousness in accordance with the will." This is a riff on the definition of magic given by her elder contemporary, Aleister Crowley: " Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will"... as you can plainly see, Fortune altered her definition to emphasize that part about it changing "consciousness" in accordance with will. This makes it a little more specific than Crowley's definition, but it also makes it more accessible to a modern, materialistic, post-Freudian society while also keeping the back door open to Mystery. Yes, the mass psychological spells of advertising and propaganda are magic. So is psychotherapy! And New Thought! Since your subjective experience of the world is malleable, by changing your consciousness, you can literally change your life!

But, if everything is Consciousness, as many sages say, then what can't magic do?

Edred Thorsson/Stephen Flowers, in his book ALU: An Advanced Guide to Operative Runology defines magic as "a technique by which the human being is able, by the power of volition expressed through symbols, to influence events in subjective and/or objective reality." Now Thorsson/Flowers is known mainly for his work with Runes, which is a magical language; they are symbols used to express the will of the Magician, thus affecting the change. So he's a bit focused on the symbolic side. Isn't there more to magic than manipulating symbols? 

Let's look at the main toolkit of the Golden Dawn magician: rituals. These also are constructed from symbols. The pentagrams, the divine names, the movements, all of these have meaning and that's the point. By repeating these rituals, you empower them with meaning, and you start affecting consciousness. Here it might be useful to remember a famous phrase from the psychoanalyst Jacque Lacan "The unconscious is structured like a language" Hmmm...

This still, seems rather limiting. Isn't there anything outside of language/symbols/meaning? Sure, lots. But how can you make sense of or describe "it"? In one way, this is what I see as the goal of the true Magician. To master their own consciousness, and to transcend it, or as JMG might say, to build the Mental body. The Spiritual realm is higher than the Mind realm though, and by connecting with the Divine, through symbols, one can connect to currents of power that are much farther beyond the human ken.

Most of the time, magic is about changing things in the world, look at all the folk magic traditions. Getting a lover, getting a job, healing illness, etc... In common terms, magic is about power. This is why the powerless look to magic, and why the powerful have their own kind to keep them in power. But power is worse than useless without wisdom. Without wisdom, power can actually be quite dangerous. Magic can rebound in unanticipated ways, can send the magician into spirals of malaise, can lead the one who wants to become more powerful into becoming a slave; to malicious spirits, to their own  fears and desires, or to ignorance and senility. Good thing that because magic is an art and science that takes discipline to master it can be rather hard to wield magic effectively without wisdom. You must master "concentration, visualization, and memorization" as Thorsson/Flowers writes in his book Icelandic Magic: Practical Secrets of the Northern Grimoires.  There are those though with inborn gifts, but I have heard as many stories of these souls burning out as becoming great Magicians.

This is why initiation is essential. Initiation aligns the magician with the divine forces of order in the universe, and helps the aspirant become more divine themselves.  As Thorsson/Flowers says in Icelandic Magic, "Most of magical effort should be spent in gaining knowledge, wisdom and self-transformation. Most of your woes will be healed when this process is successful." This is something that I have found to be very true. Often times, just by focusing on my own transformation, the problems I have in the world take care of themselves. This is different than the "spiritual bypassing" that one sees so often in spiritual circles, where people escape the problems in their lives by chanting mantras or practicing mind-numbing kinds of meditation, or doing lots and lots of ayahuasca. In self-transformation you must confront your problems head on as part of your process of initiation. Often this can happen by such mundane pursuits as journaling, inquiring into your motivations, intentions, and trauma, or just feeling the feelings that come up and acknowledging them. This can also take the form of spiritual retreats, theurgic ritual, meditation, and scrying. But by developing these skills: of discipline, concentration, visualization, and self-knowledge, the problems of the world become much easier to deal with.

Of course, there may be still things that require magical action to affect. And by using that power, initiation is also furthered.

What does magic mean to you?