Beneath These Boughs: Part One of Four
I stand beneath the vartrad (“house tree”) at my ve, and close my eyes. Somewhere in the “great outside of myself”, I can feel the change; as though some unknown switch has been flipped by some unknown hand. A southerly wind whips my hair, tickling my face, but it smells of ages past: of mouldering leather, verdigris, and decay. I hear a voice; I see a face. I realize I am no longer completely in the now: I stand in a time between times; in a place between places. Yet the tree remains the same, its roots comingled with those of Yggdrasil. And I learn….
To some people, that may sound overly romanticized and near-impossible. Some may even wag their fingers at me and say that I have an unfair advantage, because of my current state of being. Yet this is a valid description of my genuine lived experience, and I know plenty of others who do not share my current state of being, who have experienced similar things.
Raven Kaldera calls the sort of work I’m talking about doing “pathfinding” or “way-taming”: it is a method wherein a person walks or moves on the mundane level, while at the same time experiencing the Otherworlds. For twenty-six years, I’ve just called this “the way I live my life”, without realizing there might should be an actual term for it! You see, when I’m “driving” the “vehicle”, I am still very much aware of the Otherworld at the same time. It’s sort of like when you drive a car, but are still aware of the world outside the car. It never really occurred to me to think of it as anything extraordinary, except that I know it wasn’t something of which I was aware before I died. I would like to make it very clear that both “pathwalking” and “way-taming” are Kaldera’s terms, and not my own, and that I intend no infringement of any previous copyrights which he may carry, hold, or whatever else. I just know that, given his mountains of work on the topic, those might be terms with which my audience is likely already familiar. If I had to choose my own term for it, I would call it “driving”, because the key to being successful with it is realizing you are not your “car”: the “vehicle” that is your body. I know it’s cliché to say this, but it really is true that “we are not humans having a spiritual experience; we are spirits having a human experience”. It took actually dying for that to dawn on me; hopefully you’ll get a clue long before that happens!
Most practitioners who are even aware of this method use it exclusively for Otherworld travel, and for a very long time, I was no different. Yet over the course of the past year I have discovered that this “driving” method is equally applicable to travel in time as to travel in place, and I use it often when working with my ancestral allies and learning the lessons which they have to teach.
For reasons I don’t begin to understand, the topics of past lives and “time travel” are apparently taboo in most Heathen circles. That has become yet another reason why I no longer identify myself as Heathen. I know what I have experienced and what I am experiencing; I also know that there is ample lore evidence (not that I ever rely solely on lore evidence, but most of the people who consider such things taboo do) that such things were concepts in the minds of medieval Scandinavians by at least the 13th century (and likely even to the 10th century or before, given the potential dating of the skaldic poetry in the Lays of Helgi). Opening and broadening my mind on these “taboo topics” has not only led me to two of my greatest teachers (my ancestral allies), but has allowed me, as a Vitki and Freyjasgodhi, to better serve members of my “tribe”, who have been in need of counseling and/or magickal assistance.
What did I experience that led me down this shadowed and oft-ill-judged path? It all began with a burning need to create a leather pouch to wear upon the belt of my ritual garb, which I was planning to wear to the Viking Days event at Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut in June, 2018. Now, I don’t wear my ritual garb to events in order to “look cool” or “play Viking”; I wear it so that I can carry the staff for our community, as a Vitki, and make people aware that Norse Practice is still a living, thriving thing, and that we aren’t all nazis. And, yes, I needed some sort of bag at the time, to carry my business cards, but for that, I could have just as easily borrowed space in Suzanne’s bag which she was carrying. No, when I say that it was a burning need, I’m not exaggerating, and the parameters of what it should look like and how it should be designed were quite specific in my mind. It was one of those moments where I knew this was not entirely “my idea”. So I made the bag, and was quite pleased with myself, and that was that.
Until we arrived in the heart of the Vikings Begin Exhibition. I stood in front of a glass case containing a 6th century ring sword from Valsgarde Gravefield in Uppland Sweden. As I stood there in that darkened room, full of glass cases filled with artifacts, I had an epiphany which washed over me so deeply that it became a conviction: “I am this man, and he is me, and that is my sword.” Whether or not you choose to believe that I actually had this experience is up to you; personally, I find questioning such things as rude as questioning a person’s veracity when they say “I don’t feel well.” That initial epiphany/conviction/thought then bloomed into something deeper:
This man lived this Heidhrinn life which I now live; he knew the seasons, and their changing; he knew his own High Days, and also his own low ones. This man mattered: he mattered enough to be buried with all of these things that I am standing here looking at right now, alongside all of these other people; he mattered enough to be remembered almost 1400 years later by people on the other side of the Atlantic.
That initial experience sparked a passion for discovery that eventually led me to understand my burning need to create exactly that leather pouch: the man to whom that sword had belonged, buried in Valsgarde boat grave 7, had a leather pouch at his waist which was apparently identical to the one I had been compelled to fashion here in the 21st century. You can believe that or not: this ain’t Ripley’s.
It was shortly after this experience that my ancestral allies visited me for the first time, while I stood at blot beneath my vartrad in the ve within the bounds of our tiny yard. I’ll confess: at first, I chalked almost everything, including their arrival, up to “mental sock puppets”, but for that undeniable gut-feeling of the “flipped switch”. Maybe you’ve never experienced that feeling for yourself; then again, maybe you have: the hairs raise on the back of your neck, and it is almost as though something has actually, physically touched you, and you know that whatever that “something” is, it isn’t of this world.
For a Path so based in ancestor veneration that it has legit led to things like volkisch folkishness and outright white supremacy, I find it downright shocking that very few people actually pay much attention to or attempt to make contact with the actual ancient Revered Dead. In truth, my own ancestral practice had revolved largely around those ancestors I have known (which always seemed “clunky”, given the nature of my existence, because those are people I can legit “hang out with out there” on a daily basis), until the Revered Dead decided to approach me, instead of the other way around. Over the course of the past year, they have expanded and shaped my practice in astounding and very deep ways.
Yet I’ve talked about all of this to virtually no one, until now. Daily, as I teach, give counsel, write, and practice, I find myself walking a strange tightrope that inevitably seems to lead to a crucifixion scene on the other side. Because my Path is so “outside the typical Heathen box”, I have been ridiculed; I have been criticized; I have been ostracized. At the same time, though, I have also made friends-for-life-friends, many of whom have become as family to me, and I have somehow managed to gather around myself a “tribe” of like-minded people who are also eager to shatter the box. Yet, I find myself constantly feeling the need to phrase myself carefully, in case I might alienate even those who have chosen to actually hear what I have to say and practice what I “preach”. Consequently, I have played these “cards” so close to my chest that they’re basically under the table, like Han Solo sitting at a sabaac table, trying to win the Falcon away from Lando Calrissian.
Until now, almost exactly a year to the day since I had that experience and met my allies.
So I ask you: if you have disbelief, suspend it. Put down your rocks and pitchforks so I can safely venture a little bit further out on this tightrope, and I’ll teach you how to do these things yourself, while I precariously balance myself here. It is easy for a man to talk about what he has done; what he has experienced; what he knows. We can “buy” that, in the end, or not. However, if a man can teach another person how to do those things themselves; experience those things themselves; know those things themselves: well, then, that’s not just “buying the farm”, that’s living it. And people who have lived things themselves are far less likely to go on the attack. In fact, they’re more likely to defend the one who helped them “buy the farm” in the first place.
