The Ministry of Hel
Connla seriously wanted to write this blog post, but it’s my “gnosis”, so here I am. Sometimes, he seriously needs to just scoot over! [smiley face emoji]
Apparently there is a rampant stereotype running about that Hel is the “dark, edgy, Goth-Goddess” in the Norse Pantheon. Having been frequently accused of being a “dark, edgy, Goth-goddess” myself, and having been privileged to actually know a few “dark, edgy, Goth-goddesses” in our surrounding Pagan community, I’m not sure whether I should be more upset about the fact that people have pigeon-holed my Fulltrua that way, or about the fact that people have such a deeply wrong idea of what being a “dark, edgy, Goth-goddess” entails in the first place! So, please, allow me the privilege of doing some serious dispelling:
“Dark, edgy, and Goth” are generally fashion choices. So far as I’m aware, we don’t have any deities connected to modern fashion choices. I can’t speak for everyone (nor would I ever presume to do so), but my fashion choices are not always emblematic of my religious beliefs. I mean, as I’m writing this, I am sitting here wearing a pair of boxers covered in sailboats and a Star Wars t-shirt (clearly, Connla picked out the wardrobe this morning!): I’m not sure what that says about either of our religious beliefs? A Njordr-venerating Jedi, perhaps? Sometimes, I wear so many bright colors and patterns that my Zanney describes my wardrobe as “she looks like the laundry basket threw up on her, yet somehow, she makes it work”, while at other times, I leave the house cloaked in black and dripping with “Gothy goodness” (see photographic evidence below). I am no less fulltrua of Hela when clad in bright blue, than when clad in deepest black lace. Judging a person’s spiritual path by the clothes that they wear is the exact same thing as judging a book by its cover, and I personally advise doing neither. That is precisely how things like the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s and the subsequent conviction of the West Memphis Three happen in the first place! In other words: those attitudes cut both ways, and can leave some pretty nasty scars.
Add to that a historical truth that most modern practitioners aren’t going to want to hear: Hel Herself has not always been depicted as “dark, edgy, and goth” (Goth, yes; goth, no; more on this in a sec). Like each and every one of us, She has the right to “dress” any way She wishes–probably even moreso than us, in fact, since She is a goddess! That “half and half” image of Her, as half corpse and half not? Yeah, that only appears in the writings of the Prose Edda, and the original text patently does not say that in the first place. Snorri neither describes the Norse female version of Batman’s Two-Face, nor does he describe some sort of Corpse Bride version of a mermaid. That text, in the original Old Norse, literally translates as:
She is half blue (literally: bruise-colored), but half flesh-colored. Thus is She easily recognized and rather stern-looking and fierce.
–Gylfaginning 34, Connla Freyjason Translation
In other words, She either has a skin condition (which we see echoed in later syncretized traditions of the Dravidian Goddess Mariamman), or She is a being whose appearance is very much that of a corpse that has been “left out” a bit too long, particularly in a damp space, such as a woodland. Not one to be easily stereotyped, She is also the Lady in White–the Weisse Frauen and Dame Blanches of Germany and Norman France, as well as Perchta and Holda/Hulda/Holle–and the Black Madonnas, also of France, who likely source from earlier Frankish as well as Norman influence (read: “Germanic” and “Vikings”). We find Her cloaked in red as Mari among the Basque people of France, and also as the aforementioned Mariamman. And we find Her wearing the colors associated with early French alchemy in the guise of the Black Madonnas: red, blue, and white. Obviously, fashion choices make neither the practitioner nor the Goddess they serve.
The original Goths were from Gotland; so are most of the images of Hel which have come down to us. As I said in a previous paragraph: “Goth, yes; goth, no”. The most popular images of Hel which have come down to us via the archaeological record are those carved into the Gotlandic Picture Stones. Widely attributed as images of either Freyja or a valkyrie, the recent discovery of a bracteate on the southwestern coast of Norway is changing our perspectives. Called the Mauland Medallion, Mauland Bracteate, or simply Bracteate IK-124, it is a small medallion, coin-like, bearing the depiction of an obviously female figure greeting a man on a horse. This female figure is unusually tall and rather stern-looking, and holds up an object which might either be a torch or a drinking horn. It dates to the 5th century CE (the period right before the Vendel Period). For those who don’t know a bracteate from a hole in the wall, these pendants or medallions were a form of religious jewelry, worn by the people of the Iron Age and after in the same way that a modern Wiccan might wear a pentacle, or a modern Christian might wear a cross. Most scholars who have studied the medallion agree that it is a depiction of Hel. Meanwhile, identical images on the Gotland Picture Stones have previously been identified as either Freyja or a valkyrie. Interesting how our perspectives change, the more new things we dig out of the dirt, isn’t it?
Gotlandic picture stones which bear near-identical images include the Broa Stone and the Tjangvide Image Stone, both of which date from the 700s-800s CE. These gravestones both depict women offering drinking horns to men on horseback. On the Broa Stone, the female figure raises her horn to welcome a man on a “basic” horse, above a second panel depicting a longship. The image on the Tjangvide Image Stone is even more convincing as Hel, however: it includes an image of a woman, with raised drinking horn, welcoming a man on an eight-legged horse which is clearly Sleipnir. Immediately to her left (behind her) we find the image of a hound. Not a pig nor a cat (both commonly associated with Freyja); a hound (most often associated with the Underworld and, therefore, with Hel). As with the Broa Stone, the woman in this image has also commonly been attributed as either Freyja or a valkyrie by scholars, regardless of the fact that Freyja has never been described as welcoming someone riding Sleipnir, yet Hel has been described as doing precisely that, in Gylfaginning.
So what does any of that have to do with the Goths? Most scholars agree that the original homeland of the Goths (Ostrogoths and Visigoths) was Gotaland, which originally included the whole of southern Sweden, and not just the present-day island of Gotland. These are the people for whom the modern fashion movement are actually named: the term “Goth” was originally adopted by the Romans as a synonym for anything “barbaric” and “uncultured”. Later, it came to be applied to “Gothic architecture”, which medieval critics likewise considered “uncouth”. In the 18th-19th century, with the rise of a literary movement apparently “obsessed” with death and the supernatural, “Gothic”–implying “barbaric”, “uncultured”, and “uncouth”–seemed the perfect classification for writings so “distasteful” to the Victorian palate. Thus, when a fashion and music movement in the 1980s revived a penchant for the black lace, vampires, “supernatural vibe”, and “sex and death aesthetic” common to that style of literature, the members of that movement likewise became known as “goths”. (Can you tell I have a degree in English?) Hence: historical images of Hel from Gotland are most definitely Goth, but not necessarily goth.
“Goth” does not equal “Satanic” or otherwise “evil”. To begin, please see references to the “Satanic Panic” and the West Memphis Three in my opening paragraphs. Again: these attitudes are a double-edged sword, which most definitely cuts both ways, and leads to some serious ugliness. If you don’t believe that, clearly you have never ventured south of the Maxon-Dixon. I was born and raised a psychic in the South. That meant that from a very early age (around two), I was fascinated by death, dying, and the supernatural. Growing up, this fascination led me to read everything I could get my hands on–both fiction and non–which dealt with these topics. I cut my literary teeth on the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. By age 9 (circa 1981), I had been introduced to Stephen King, John Saul, and Peter Straub, courtesy of the coolest aunty in history: my Aunt Ann; my Mema’s (grandmother’s) sister, who I still call “Ann-Mama”. By age twelve (circa 1984), I had discovered talking boards, and by age fifteen (circa 1987), I had begun to dabble in witchcraft. I wore heavy, black eyeliner, in the style of the rock bands I enjoyed (Motley Crue, Ratt, Poison, Iron Maiden), and at the ripe young age of sixteen, I found myself threatened by the local sheriff’s son: he threatened to burn me at the stake, and he wasn’t just using that as a figure of speech; he was completely serious, and had the wherewithall to do precisely what he said! Then one day, I sat in my living room, transfixed, as Laurie Cabot (“The Official Witch of Salem”) explained the “common misconceptions” that most people have of modern witches, which are fostered by images in the popular media: “They weren’t three bad Buddhists or three bad Baptists, they were three bad witches.” Having recently had my very life threatened by “three bad Baptists”, I saw in this “dark, edgy, goth” woman on my television screen a beacon of hope wearing deepest black eyeliner: just because I could do the things that I can do (I see dead people…), believed what I believe, and practiced what I practice, that didn’t make me “Satanic” or “evil”. It simply made me a witch.
Yet that double-edged sword of the “public image” that “dark, edgy, and goth”–witchy–equates with “Satanic” and “evil” led me to have my life threatened at the ripe young age of sixteen. Whereas now many “younglings” cling to those stereotypes of “Satanic evilness” as yet another aspect of their supposed “edgy coolness”, when you flip the switch, on the other end, those same stereotypes can lead to exceedingly dangerous attitudes (and possibly even actions).
“Goddess of Death” who “lives in the Underworld” patently does not equate with “Satanic” or otherwise “evil”, either. Hel does not equal “Hell”, nor does the concept of an Underworld as a whole. Just because a deity or other entity is chthonic, that does not automatically make it evil. In some of our earliest recorded literature concerning Hel She is actually called “Seo Hell”, and attributed as flyting the devil himself in a manner that would do Her Father, Loki, proud! And so far as a Christian concept of an underground realm of punishment called “Hell” is concerned, you might be shocked to discover that even in the King James Version of the Bible (don’t get me started….) the word hell never actually even appears! The modern Christian vision of Hell, with its enthroned Satan, fire, and brimstone is not a Biblical interpretation of “The Bad Place”, at all, but instead largely comes down to us from the 14th century writings of Dante Alighieri. Dante’s Inferno, part of his Divine Comedy, has successfully cemented the vision of Hell for the last seven hundred years. Before Good Ole Dante, the “underworld portion” of the Judeo-Christian afterlife was variously referred to as Sheol, tartaroo, Hades, and Gehenna. Of those four terms, two (Sheol and Hades) translate literally as “The Underworld”: directly equivalent to Helheim. The other two, tartaroo (sourced from Tartarus, the name for the deepest level of Hades), and Gehenna, are the only ones which remotely hint at any sort of “afterlife torment for evil-done-in-life”, or evil in any sense, for that matter, and even that vague association is exceedingly tenuous.
“Concerned with Death” does not mean “kill them all, and let Nidhogg sort them out”. In fact, almost without exception Deities of Death are also Third Function Deities: deities primarily concerned with life-giving matters, such as fertility, generally from an agricultural perspective. While Dumezil largely formulated this “grouping” of deities based on studies of the proto-Indo-Europeans, if we call the Second Function (“warrior power”) what it truly is—earthly sovereignty—we can readily apply these functions to almost any culture. Eliade explains the connection between this Third Function and Death in Patterns of Comparative Religion:
“Agriculture as a profane skill and as a cult touches the world of the dead on two quite different levels. The first is solidarity with the earth; the dead are buried like seeds and enter a dimension of the earth accessible to them alone. Then, too, agriculture is preeminently a handling of fertility, of life reproducing itself by growth. The dead are especially drawn to this mystery of rebirth, to the cycle of creation, and to inexhaustible fertility. Like seeds buried in the womb of the earth, the dead wait for their return to life, particularly at those times when the vital tension of the whole community is at its height—that is, during the fertility festival, when the generative powers of nature and of mankind are evoked, unleashed, and stirred to frenzy by rites and orgies…As long as seeds remain buried, they also fall under the jurisdiction of the dead. The Earth Mother, or Great Goddess of Fertility governs the fate of the seeds and that of the dead in the same way. But the dead are sometimes closer to man, and it is to them that the husbandman turns to bless and sustain his work.”
Mircea Eliade, Patterns of Comparative Religion, 1958
We know for certain, from both the archaeological record and later folklore and ethnography, that Hel was patently associated with this Third Function, likely going all the way back to the bloomin’ Neolithic in Scandinavia and the other Germanic lands. In archaeology, we find this evidenced at the Alvastra Pile Dwelling in Sweden (and elsewhere as well), and in folklore and ethnography, we find it echoed down to us in the tales of Holda/Hulda/Holle, and the traditions of Perchta, the Perchten, and the Wild Hunt.
The original 19th century “Goths” were Romantics, and so is Hel. Don’t get my use of the word “romantics” in this sentence twisted: I am not referring to the “romantic nationalism” which gave rise to the majority of the pseudo-history which we are currently battling in modern American Heathenry. No, I’m using that term in its more classical sense: “conducive to or characterized by the expression of love“. The idea that we don’t have “Deities of Love” in the Norse Pantheon is an absolute historical fallacy, largely fed by modern American Heathenry’s base in nazi propaganda. After all, Deities of Love seriously get in the way of promoting a regime of hate. That we might remotely have such a thing has since been deemed “preposterous”, because clearly those kinds of deities are “weak”. Now, if you cannot see the nazi ideology hidden within such sentiments, let me pull that wool out from over your eyes and shine forth the light of clarity:
“I suggest you to do war but never love, because in war either you live or you die, but in love, neither you live nor you die.”
–Adolf Hitler,
Is that clear enough for everyone?
As Connla so deftly pointed out in last week’s post, modern American Heathenry was birthed by nazi propagandists, who promoted Gods of War who are “distant” and “uncaring” and Valhalla as the “ultimate afterlife location” precisely because these concepts promote the necessary “battle hardness” required to maintain a racist, genderist, other-negative-ist, genocidal regime. As a consequence, the resident “Norse Gods of Love”–Loki and Hel–have found themselves demonized in modern American Heathenry, because they literally get in the way of a regime of hate.
Yes, you read that right: Loki and Hel. The earliest archaeological depictions of Loki inform us that He was originally a God of Fire, and, therefore, also of passion. In fact, we find the slightest evidence of this even in the later Voluspa, where we read:
Breath they had not, inspiration they did not have,
–Voluspa 18, My Own Translation
Passion nor voice nor goodly hue;
Breath gave Odin, Inspiration gave Hoenir,
Passion gave Lodhurr and goodly hue.
The word used there, which I have translated as “passion”, is actually lá, which translates literally as either blood or warmth. “Heating or warming of the blood” was the original definition of passion. Like it or not, numerous scholars, based primarily on etymological evidence (which is a bit difficult to disprove!), have identified Lodhurr as none other than Loki, therefore: Loki, Giver of Passion. And if you look at the stories in the Lore about Loki, we find that theme, as well as the theme of “doing anything for love” echoed over and over again. Most of the time, His love for the other Gods is precisely what got Loki “in trouble” in the first place, whether said trouble involved making really stupid deals with Dwarves (for Skidhbladhnir, Gungnir, and even Mjollnir), or stupid deals with “giants” (the walls of Asgard, and the “Sleipnir incident”). Even the tale of Loki’s imprisonment in the Kettle Grove is ultimately a story of loving sacrifice: you try holding a bowl over your Beloved for millennia, to protect them from acidic venom, after having watched your children kill each other, and get back to me with how that isn’t a story of loving sacrifice, won’t you?
Hel’s lessons, too, are those of loving kindness, for ultimately, that is what Hospitality is. We find this even in the Lore as well, though most somehow choose to ignore it, I guess in the same way that too many Christians ignore Christ’s commandment to “love one another”, while focusing on spewing hatred. What is inconvenient to the current regime, even when encoded in a “religious text”, gets either wholesale ignored, hidden, or reframed. All of those things have happened to both Hel and Her Father, Loki.
By these standards–as a Goddess of Love and Loving Kindness–Hel is probably the least “dark, edgy” Goddess in the entire Norse Pantheon. In fact, those accolades should likely belong to Her Mother, Angrbodha, instead. But, yeah, She is Goth, if by that you mean “hails from or is depicted primarily in Gotland”. She does have Her “dark, edgy” side, as Perchta, but that’s a whole ‘nother discussion for a whole ‘nother blog post. The moral of this diatribe? Never judge a person by their wardrobe, nor a Goddess by Her enforced stereotypes. Ultimately, that is the true Ministry of Hel: love, protect, and uphold the Outcasts; remember the Dead; practice Mercy. I am proud to be Her “dark, edgy, and goth” minister.
Hail Hela, full of grace,
–Michelle Iacona, Reclaiming Hel
The Dead are with Thee;
Blessed are You to those who are Lost.
Holy Hela, Queen of Helheim,
Care for us Outcasts,
Now, and at the hour of our death.
O, Sweet Hela,
Find those who are lost.
Save them from their wandering;
Lead all souls to where they belong,
Especially those in most need of mercy.
Enda er, ok enda skal vera.
