Reflections on Sand Talk

Following the recommendation of Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen I picked up Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World ny Tyson Yunkaporta a while back. These are my immediate reflections and thoughts on finishing it.

It took me some time to work through. Part of that was the material is dense in what it brought up for me to think and reflect on. Another is that I was consistently making notes because Yunkaporta’s style brings those thoughts up and trying to catch them can be hard. I may go back through the book sometime down the road and not take notes and just experience the book. However, each time I engaged with it I felt like a dozen little threads of thought erupt with each chapter so I wanted to wrangle at least some of those thoughts.

Something I really appreciate about the book is that its yarns are not simple, straightforward, or easily able to be bullet pointed -except when they are. I kept coming back with every story thinking on the stories that infuse my own life -that of the Nordic Gods, my Ancestors, and the vaettir. The stories of the place I live, and the names and stories of the Beings who lived here long before my Ancestors. Like the stories that infuse his life and understanding I found relating to his stories and yarns through my own.

Yunkaporta asks us to take some heavy, deep, and equally light-hearded and amused looks at ourselves. In doing this, in embracing his way of speaking/writing, and reflecting as I yarned through the book with him, I found a lot of affirmation in my own path as a Heathen, from the way I understand how it unfolds in worldview and the direction it goes. It was also cool to see different cross-currents in thought and direction between our worldviews.

For starters just the concept of yarning as a way of co-creating, co-weaving, if you will, knowledge and understanding, has so many implications for a path where weaving and carving is an active and ongoing co-creative process with the Ginnreginn. Urðr is definitely reflected in yarning. What Yunkaporta calls a yarn between people we might also call a saga or even þing. Yarning and sharing a saga or sitting down to a þing is a co-creative and collaborative working that has certainly changed through time and yet has remained similar enough that we can recognize it today.

The process of encoding meaning through carving, umpan, we call rísta. It is to carve. Umpan is also used to mean writing, now, and rísta easily fits this as well. Much as with umpan, rísta brings the symbolic language to bear to bring and communicate meaning, and to change the carver and who observes and interacts with the carving.

Like the symbols he and the us-twos have brought forward, the Runes are living symbols, because, as with the Aboriginal symbols, the Runes are vaettir.

Much like our own experiences as Heathens, the Aboriginals do not just bring in new ways of understanding or doing things without vetting them. For them, as noted in p62 regarding the ceremony to “open” that first headstone, shaped by multiple Elders and family members, incorporating older elements of the traditional mourning process that had fallen into disuse. The demotic is not a sudden acceptance or made on a whim, arbitrarily. Likewise, we do not just change how we do things. We weigh it against established lore, divination, and what makes sense for us to do with where and when we are, and what obligations and needs we have.

Something that Yunkaporta and the various folks who have contributed to the yarns in the book come to again and again is that we need to move into societies of transition. Our communities do need to share knowledge while maintaining their own unique systems grounded in the diverse landscapes they care for. That is what I and others in my Kindred and tribe are working to do. It is what we are doing at Crossing Hedgerows Sanctuary and Farm. We US Pagans and polytheists are in development of these societies now.

He hits this especially hard here:

“I have previously talked about civilized cultures losing collective memory and having to struggle for thousands of years to gain full maturity and knowledge again, unless they have assistance. But that assistance does not take the form of somebody passing on cultural content and ecological wisdom. The assistance I’m talking about comes from sharing patterns of knowledge and ways of thinking that will help trigger the ancestral knowledge hidden inside. The assistance people need is not in learning about Aboriginal Knowledge but in remembering their own.” pp 144

Yes, absolutely this. I consider Runework, seiðr, spá, taufr, and other such things to be part of it as much as hearth cultus, Ancestral veneration, worship of and communication with with the Ginnreginn, and spiritwork. This is ongoing work: relationship-building, knowledge-building, spirit-building we are doing with the Ginnreginn, and part of doing that is building good relationships with the lands we live on and in.

Heathens here in the US once operated primarily from the locus of ‘if it is not written down it did not exist’, and it is a blessing this is changing. More, Heathens are taking inspiration and understanding of the lore as a jumping off point and perhaps a map, but we, we Heathens and the Ginnreginn, are the arbiters of our relationship together. This includes the world around us. We are coming out of the supremacy of the pen and printer and into the full appreciation of all our faculties.

He says “Kinship-mind is a way of improving and preserving memory in relationships with others. If you learn something with or from another person, this knowledge now sits in the relationship between you. You can access the memory of it best if you are together, but if you are separated you can recall the knowledge by picturing the other person or calling out their name. This way of thinking and remembering is not limited to relationships with people.” pp148-149

This immediately reminds me of Odin’s interactions with and ongoing relationship with Mimir, Saga, Loki, and other Gods. He maintains ongoing relationships with each, drawing wisdom and being the way through which inspiration reaches us through His interaction with Them. If Odin is the Utterer and Inspirer, then it is through Wisdom (Mimir), Stories (Saga), Creativity (Loki), Knowledge (Vafþrúðnir; His Name means “Mighty Weaver”) and so on.

“In Aboriginal worldviews, relationships are paramount in knowledge transmission. There can be no exchange or dialogue until the protocols of establishing relationships have taken place. Who are you? Where are you from? Where are you going? What is your true purpose here? Where does the knowledge you carry come from, and who shared it with you? What are the applications and potential impacts of this knowledge on this place? What impacts has it had on other places? What other knolwedge is it related to? Who are you to be saying these things?” pp149

It is worth pointing out that most of those Odin meets with regularly are relatives or closely related to Him in some way. Mimir is His Uncle, Saga His Wife’s Handmaiden, Lok His Blood-Brother, and Vafþrúðnir while not directly related is one He seeks to test His knowledge and mettle against.

“In our world nothing can be known or even exist unless it is in relation to other things. Critically, those things that are connected are less important than the forces of connection between them. We exist to form these relationships, which make up the energy that holds creation together. When knowledge is patterned within these forces of connection, it is sustainable over deep time.” p149-150.

Yes, and this is true of the Ginnreginn, the Runevaettir, and Urðr Itself. It is true of ourselves and our relationships with one another. It is true of ourselves and our relationship to this world.

There are five different ways in the Aboriginal way of thinking in his yarn (pp 150-152):

Kinship-mind.

Story-mind.

Dreaming-mind.

Ancestor-mind.

Pattern-mind.

He advises in pp 173 to come up with our own words for these.

“They are not capitalized because I don’t want them to become buzzwords absorbed into the marketplace. There are no trademarks in this knowledge. It is not specific to any single cultural group; instead, it belongs to everyone. You should come up with your own words for these ways of thinking if you decide to use them. You should alter them to match your own local environment and culture. This is all open-source knowledge, so use it like Linux software to build what you need to build for a sustainable life. If you want to do this you can use the symbol and your hand now to work through a logic sequence that will help you understand holism and enable you to come to Turtle story later on.

He goes on to yarn at length about how we can develop ways of knowing, understanding, co-creating. The entire book is this exploration. It encourages the reviving, embracing, and developing of our worldview. It encourages us to embrace old and new ways of understanding and knowledge. It encourages us to bring our relationship to the Ginnreginn and so, the World we inhabit and the Worlds around us, to the fore. In living in this way, he puts forward, we can save the World.

I found Sand Talk hopeful, insightful, and utterly useful for anyone willing to sit and yarn with Tyson Yunkaporta for a while. It is well worth the time. It is my hope that more Heathens, Nordic Pagans, and Nordic animists embrace this more holistic, and integrated way of being.

Patreon Topic 40: Developing Culture

If you want to submit a topic you would like me to write on for this blog or my Patreon, sign up for the Uruz or Thurisaz level or above here on my Patreon.

From Leslie comes this topic:

“Developing culture.”

Developing culture starts with relationships. Meaning builds on meaning. Developing a Heathen culture starts with a polytheist worldview within which is an animist one at its base. The whole world is alive; the whole world is relatable. There are more worlds than this one; those worlds are relatable too. So are each and every Being within Them.

We have a Creation Story, myths, and legends however well or poorly preserved, within the Eddas. What I think is key, with all of our information whether derived from archaeology or especially the written sources, is that we are by-and-large dealing with an oral culture. I think this is also the future of Heathen cultures. Not that writing will not be important; it will, if for no other reason than we are part of a literate overculture which places a (sometimes disproportionately) high value on the written word. Rather, what is going to truly make the various Heathenry communities into cultures is going to be the passing of the worldview, teachings, relationships, and so on to the next generations.

Religious beliefs and worldviews alone do not make a culture. What comes out of them is part of that, too. Over time perhaps Heathen cultures will develop distinct styles of dressing, wearing their hair, decorating themselves and their homes, or any other way we could think of making themselves distinct from the largely Christian American overculture. On the other hand most Heathens blend rather seemlessly into mainstream American culture, regardless of the tattoos on their skin or the jewelry, shirts, and other things they wear.

So if we do not see the wide trends regarding dress, decoration, dance, and other outward signs of a distinct Heathen culture, what would differentiate a Heathen culture from the American Christian overculture? Relationships with and to the land would be a big way. Since most Heathens relate to the world Itself as a Goddess, and have a series of Gods They worship as part of/involved in the world, this is a firm push to develop good ways of living with Her/Them in reciprocity.

Most Heathens engage in some kind of Ancestor cultus. That could, over time, take place with actual mounds we raise on our own lands to Them, and provide powerful intergenerational connections to land, and through that to our Ancestors and vaettir. The vaettir Themselves are another powerful connection that encourages the development of culture, both in relationship with the environment and in relationship with how we live on the land. With a world alive with vaettir, spirits, and connections literally all around us, Heathens engaging with the vaettir can develop unique ways of relating to and living with the land. Already some Heathens, myself included, are working to include indigenous wisdom, permaculture, and similarly aligned views so we live well on the land and with the vaettir here.

As more Heathens engage in lived relationships with the Earth Goddesses, Gods of the land, local Gods, the Ancestors, and vaettir, local and regional cultus is beginning to form. Heathens will likely become even more distinct from one another as this goes on over time. We cannot all relate to the Earth the same way when we are living in different parts of America. Even those Heathens living close to each other not have the same relationship with the environment, the Gods of these places, our Ancestors, and/or the landvaettir.

Another vector for Heathens’ cultural development is the way that relationships within as well as without Heathen communities form, and how those are maintained. Having just written on the concept of frið and grið for my latest Q&A, it seems to me that it is both related to similar concepts found in other religions and also distinctly Heathen. Writ large into how we form relationships, personal and interpersonal, individually and communally, these webs of relationships can unfold in ways we are only just seeing.

TikTok’s latest Norsetok controversies actually show us the dark side of this: flame wars and cults of personality being formed around folks based in clan and Kindred structure. However, it also has shown in the same blow that even Norsetok has staying power, as folks have banded together to work against such things and address power imbalances, unchecked ego, and so on. Twitter and Tumblr Heathen communities before them have gone this way, and likewise so have physical Heathen communities. So, what we may be seeing on a far faster scale in TikTok is a larger trend borne from the way Heathens tend to structure themselves.

Heathen communities tend to unfold around shared interests of being in relationship with and worshiping the Gods, Ancestors, and vaettir. They may or may not share larger interests with the overculture, not unlike a lot of other cultures. There are Christians that play video games like Call of Duty, whereas others reject them as too worldly, or glorifying violence. There are Heathens that play video games like Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla or watch the Thor Marvel movies, while others refuse to engage with them. I expect that as we come into second, third, and in some cases fourth generations of Heathens, we will see similar trends to the overculture in terms of our overall place in things. Some Heathens will trend politically left, others politically right, and this will shift over time with general trends based on where they live, how, and with whom they are relationship with. What I think will be politically distinct for Heathens is that most will still carry some kind of emphasis on a good relationship with the Earth, their local environment, and environmental issues generally, whatever source that comes from for them. More than anything else the interconnected relationships born out of Gebo, frið, and grið that are distinct to Heathenry will have unfolding consequences into how regional variations of Heathenry may come about.

There is a big lack of prognostication in this post on exactly how Heathen cultures will come about, develop, grow, and work. Part of the reason for that is that I have no idea how Anglo-Saxon Heathenry, Continental Heathenry, Slavic Heathenry, and other Heathen communities will develop over time because I am not directly involved in them. I do not have the anecdotes to develop even a broad picture of how those communities could shake out over time. The other reason for the lack of prediction on my part is because it is essentially a fool’s errand. There are some Heathen communities that operate essentially as männerbund (warband), others as communes, others as communally connected yet distinct hearths, and some Heathen communities are organized almost entirely online. Some Heathen communities incorporate some or all of these modes of operation together. Factor that together with the understanding that regional cultus and relationships are being made between local Gods, Ancestors, and vaettir with Heathen communities, and predicting anything other than a very broad-based idea is quickly put full of holes.

So where are we going? I have ideas for my local communities. A lot of us are engaging in local cultus, developing relationships with our Gods, Ancestors, and vaettir in context of where we are and how we live. As time goes on, I think one of the ways we and the overall trend for the Heathen communities are following one another is that there is going to be more involvement in local and national environmental movements. Something I am seeing the beginning of is communities developing distinct aesthetics with regards to clothes, home decor, tattooing, and other forms of decoration. There are patterns in the Heathen community which are in place that will balance devotion and relationship with the Gods, Ancestors, and vaettir. Some, if not most of those relationships will unfold with how we live on the land. I am excited to experience how Heathen cultures will develop, grow, and maintain themselves.

Patreon Topic 1: Deathwalking Part 2

If you want to submit a topic you would like me to write on for this blog or my Patreon, sign up for the Uruz or Thurisaz level here on my Patreon.

This post continues from the groundwork laid in Part 1 here.

Caring for the Soul Matrix

Some parts of the soul matrix may take care of themselves upon death, especially those tied into the lyke, the body itself, such as the litr (health/vivacity), and önd (sacred breath/sacred energy). Others need coaxing, direction, and help moving on. Now, because the whole soul matrix does not immediately dissolve on the person’s death, each soul part will need respect due to it, and depending on the person, each part of the soul matrix may need to be cared for. For instance, the lyke deserves respect as it is still a part of the person’s soul, so unceremoniously chucking the Dead’s body in a hole disrespects the person’s physical soul part and the rest of the soul matrix as well. Remembering a person well honors a person’s various soul parts, including their munr (memory).

Deathwalking, then, is a process involving the whole of a Being, and to keep this as organized as possible I will be going through the Soul Matrix with ways to do deathwalking with each part of it. Before trying to deathwalk any part of a person’s soul matrix, especially that of a spirit worker or magic worker, do your divination and talk with their community members, especially if they have apprentices, students, and/or living Elders for how best to proceed. It may be they need to do work post-mortem and rather than helping you are interfering.

This is a basic overview of the soul matrix that I work with and my general suggestions on deathwalking with it. I will not be writing much on the particulars of how to do a deathwalk ritual here as I covered that in detail in the last post.

The Lyke

This is the physical body.
Giving the lyke good care after death, eg ritual washing and grooming, dressing and so on, and then a good burial, cremation, or other form of caring for the Dead’s body post-mortem is part of deathwalking. It is among the first steps for both the Dead and those the Dead leave behind in fully reckoning with a death. Hopefully deathwalking steps take place much earlier, eg making final arrangements with a living will, power of attorney, funeral home, and so on. However, most of us find ourselves having to make decisions rather quickly and decisively about how our Dead are to be cared for, so be sure to talk with those you can now and develop plans/outlines for cases where you will be the next of kin or called on to help with final arrangements.

Even here, how a person dies has immediate impact on how their body may be cared for in a ritual context. If their body is damaged beyond repair or if they died of a communicable disease then certain options for viewing or funerals may be entirely closed to you. If a Heathen person died in combat then addressing Odin, Freyja, and the valkyries is sensible when making prayers for the Dead. If a person drowned or died at sea, then prayers should be made for the Dead to Ægir and Rán. If the person died and willed their body to be used for science or medical needs, then prayers and offerings to Eir, Mengloth, and our other Gods associated with healing, medicine, and so on would be excellent. If a person died of illness then prayers to Hela are appropriate; likewise, anytime one worships or works with the Dead and/or Ancestors one should make prayers and offerings to Her.

The Hamr

The hamr is the spiritual double of a person. It could be analogized to the astral body in general occultism.

I find deathwalking with the hamr is usually simple in terms of spirit work. If someone was particularly hamramr, that is, shape-strong, a shapeshifter, they may have one or many forms which were special to them. Giving the hamr good care after death is making prayers and offerings to the shapes their hamr may have taken. I find the hamr tends to hang around at least for awhile after death. As most people’s hamr is just a human shape, then making offerings of food, water, and other things they enjoyed in life are good ways of honoring them and inviting their hamr to move on from their body. If a given person was hamramr then making appropriate offerings to the shape their hamr took may be quite powerful and healing for them. These offerings could be in the form of food, water, and other traditional offerings, and they could also take the form of service offerings. For instance, if a person who died was strongly connected with a raptor then making a donation to a rehabilitation service for them, or for some kind of group that protects them, would be a good offering. Likewise, making prayers and offerings to any Gods, Ancestors, and/or vaettir that are tied to the Beings whose hamr they had is a good way of caring for the hamr in death.

The Litr

The litr is health and vivacity.

I find that the litr is one part of the soul matrix often extinguished on death. I have yet to encounter an instance where one’s litr outlived the person’s body. Were I to help deathwalk this part of a person’s soul matrix I would likely engage in the activity that brought them the most joy, or that they most dearly wished to do before they died. Deathwalking this soul matrix part is, as I know it, accomplished by those who are with the person as they are dying. Letting go of the litr is, generally, what the body does on death. To cause as little trauma to it and any other soul parts during the dying process, the dying person should be allowed and helped to do what causes them joy, to engage their vivacity one last time. When death comes, encouraging the litr, alongside the ond, and the lyke itself to let go will help the other parts of the soul matrix let go and move on. Simply giving permission, letting the person know that they will be alright, and that their loved ones will be alright, may be all they need. If they are having a hard time accepting death they may need to be walked with spiritually on the Helvegen, the Way to Hel, until they are where they need to be or until a God,Goddess, Ancestor, or powerful spirit comes to collect them. Working with the litr, together with the other soul parts in the rituals mentioned in Part 1 should be a big help here.

The Vili

The will, or the Will, the part of the person’s soul matrix that brings power to action.

I find that the Vili is another part of the soul matrix that goes with them in death. Deathwalking here is especially potent in a similar way to the litr: by helping them come to grips with the understanding that they are dying, they will not put their will to surviving at all costs. Deathwalking engages the vili in embracing death in a way that is accepting of the process before the dying person. Fighting with a person’s vili should be avoided for the same reason that you avoid fighting with their litr: you do not want to needlessly traumatize them or their loved ones. Working with the person on accepting they are dying, and helping them through that process is likely the best way forward for most. Now, if the person was a powerful spirit or magic worker, then they may require more prayers and offerings before they go to help disengage from the lyke and other earthbound soul matrix parts. If the person was a particularly powerful spirit or magic worker then the Vili being especially strong and even present after death would make sense because of the time and development of this in the course of their life. It may even work with other soul parts in a similar way, guiding the hamr to act in certain ways on death. Again, do divination and talk with their community members to see if any work on your part is needed.

The Moðr

The mood and emotional content of the soul matrix.

While you could look at the Moðr as exclusively belonging to the physical body, I also see it tied up with soul parts not tied to the body, namely the Vili, Oðr, Vé, and Goði/Gyðja. If someone dies in a particularly harsh or isolating way, their unresolved anger, grief, and/or other emotions may be enough to keep their spirit in a place. Many hauntings may simply be spots of unresolved Moðr from someone whose soul parts are cycling through the same trauma over and over again. I find that offering a way for that emotion to release can solve the issue. It could be offering the spirit prayers or an offering, and at times it can be just listening to them express themselves. Deathwalking this soul part is letting the dying or Dead person express themselves as fully as they need. It is helping them be as emotionally fulfilled as they can be so they can face the next step of their afterlife.

The Önd

The breath, spiritually akin to chi, ki, or pneuma.

This soul part goes with the person when they die. It is the circulation of spiritual energy, and in my view has ties to all the soul parts while we live. It is part of how we engage with our other soul parts. For instance, someone who works with their önd on a regular basis can engage their óðr in a deeper way because it is done with intent, and the development of skill in doing so.

The Huge

Thought. The way we think, the paradigms of understanding we have, and the worldview we hold.

This soul part goes with the body, generally speaking, unless enough parts of the soul matrix hold together after death. Deathwalking this part of the soul before death is working with the dying person in a sacred way, engaging with the Moðr, and helping the person understand as best they can that they are dying. For a person who has died but has kept their Huge active, this could be as simple as speaking with the Dead at their funeral, inviting Them to join the Ancestors.

A common trope I have heard as both a priest and funeral assistant, one which I get quite angry with, is that funerals are only for the living. No. They are liminal spaces where those who are Dead are mourned, remembered, honored, and invited to join the Ancestors. They are where the living can receive closure, come together in community during loss, and engage with the Dead and one another to grieve and do the right things so the Dead are let go. What does this have to do with Huge?

Sometimes a spirit will stick around if it feels that it needs to stay for the good of a loved one. Final rites, including blesssing the dying, and funerals, allows for the spirit to understand that it no longer needs to stay. That it has, in fact, transitioned from one state of Being to another. This is part of why I advocate for folks to give their prayers orally rather than only in one’s head or heart. Sometimes the act of hearing, the effect of working with one’s önd to communicate a message to a Being who can no longer call on önd as we do, can impart the understanding that a person is Dead. Likewise, the making of prayers, the giving of offerings, lighting of candles, and reykr (burning sacred herbs to cleanse/consecrate/bless) for the Dead. Not only are these made on Their behalf, it is also for us as a bridge to communicate and/or work with Them. Working with the spirits of Mugwort, for instance, we ask the Mugwort to bring Her cleansing and Her ability to communicate to bear so we can bring cleansing to an area, place, or Being. Deathwalking with the spirit’s soul matrix in ceremony not only cleanses and brings the lyke to a state that the Dead person may pass on, it can help bring each soul part to grips with its reality and aid in the disollution of the soul parts that need to go, and the passing on of the soul matrix that remains.

The Munr

The Memory. This is the living memories of the person, and, in my view, those memories that live on after we die.

The Henry Adam Bellows translation of the Hávamál, Stanzas 77-78 illustrate this well:

77. Cattle die, | and kinsmen die,
And so one dies one’s self;
But a noble name | will never die,
If good renown one gets.

78. Cattle die, | and kinsmen die,
And so one dies one’s self;
One thing now | that never dies,
The fame of a dead man’s deeds.

Deathwalking with a person’s Munr is listening to their stories before they die, if you can. After death, it is passing on the stories that best capture their life, the stories that enable them to live long after the Earth has reclaimed them. To a certain degree our Munr are interconnected. We do not determine history on our own, and likewise, our memories cannot be made in isolation. Remembering the Dead, then, is also tied to community. Deathwalking can occur with a person’s Munr at their funeral and a post-funeral feast, and it can occur in the private sharing of amusing anecdotes, songs, and stories of a person’s life.

The Goði/Gyðja

The Highest Self.

In my understanding this is one of the soul parts that will certainly stay around long after a person is dead. The Chieftain that guided the person, that they may or may not have been striving to be, may not respond to the dead person’s name after death because it is moved on from that. Deathwalking the Goði/Gyðja is done by doing well by the soul matrix as a whole. It is engaging the dying person well, if you have the ability to, and when a person is dead, to do the vigil, rites, prayers, and offerings well by them.

The Fylgja/Fylgjur

The Follower, or Followers.

The Fylgja holds an interesting place in Heathenry. On the one hand most folks equate it to the fetch, and yet, it appears in a number of different ways. As I understand it fylgja, or fylgjur, are part of the soul matrix because, much like our hamingja is built in community so our spiritual Elders, allies, friends, and acquaintances are made in community. Since I understand it in this fashion I can only touch on how I might work with the Fylgja-as-fetch: namely, by making prayers, offerings, and thanks for its work. While I follow a similar line of thought with regards to fylgjur-as-spirits-in-community the relationship held between the Dead and the Fylgja/Fylgjur is different. This is where obligation comes in, and understanding the person needing the deathwalking as clearly as possible. Where there are questions this is where being a good diviner and having good diviners as backup or to reference if you are too close to the Dead is a good idea.

My view is that deathwalking is done with the Fylgja/Fylgjur rather than to the Fylgja/Fylgjur. These are spirits with independent existence from any one person’s soul matrix. When I am dying part of my deathwalk will be to be sure that the vaettir with whom I am aligned, have worshiped and worked with ove the years are done well by. This means prayers, offerings, and speaking with Them as I can, or having another do it in my stead. This may also mean carrying over certain relationships with my family, Kindred, apprentices, students, and so on. For instance, my Runes will go to my apprentice that I brought into Runework. He can then pray to Them, work with Them, honor Them, and build different ties in this form that continue our relationship. When a person is dying or has died, a simple form of deathwalking with the Fylgja/Fylgjur would be to ask Them to be present at the vigil, the funeral, and so on. To help inform the passing on of the Dead’s Munr. To help honor well the Lyke and other soul parts of the person, and to be involved.

The Kinfylgja/Kinfylgjur

My view of the Kinyfylgja/Kinfylgjur is along similar lines to the Fylgja/Fylgjur. Treating these spirits well, inviting Them to the deathwalking, the vigil, funeral, and so on is important not only because of the ties of friendship, initiation, and/or community. Kinfylgja/Kinfylgjur are what the word says on the tin: They are spirits, Followers, that are Kin. Relatives. This may refer to Ancestors, to animals or plants especially tied to a person’s family, or to initiated lineage. Treating Them with respect and bringing Them into a person’s deathwalk is not only respectful, They may be actively angry with a person or the family if excluded.

The Megin

Personal might/power.

Often tied to honor, this idea of Megin is the power one has and the ability to put one’s power to use. Each person holds Megin, but how they are able to express it, use it, and work with it differs person to person. It can refer to your ability to do something, guided by the Vili. It can refer to the pull you have socially. Power expressess itself in a number of ways, some overt, eg the ability to move weight, and others subtle, eg the ability to move people to emotion. It can also refer to spiritual power employed in magic. A person’s Megin may not go away when a person dies. The effects a given person has or can exert on a community post-mortem can be quite a testament to the ongoing effects, or ongoing work, their Megin is engaged in.

Given the ways Megin can find expression there are only so many ways I can write on deathwalking and Megin. A person might invest quite a lot of Megin in a given craft or items, such as Runes, ritual tools, and items that have deep connections with certain Gods, Ancestors, and vaettir. They might also invest a lot of Megin in the running and operations of a community, though this will intersect with Hamingja as well. Deathwalking Megin, then, is how we work with a person’s might or power and the things it is invested in, in a healthy way. In the case of a community, it is continuing the community’s operation in a good, healthy way, or, if it is not going to outlive this person, to dissolve it with grace. In the case of their things, it is making sure anything they want to be passed on is done so in a sacred manner. For those that are not meant to be passed on, they may wish to take them to the grave or pyre. Burial with one’s prized possessions is an ancient practice, so knowing the person, especially having a list from them in their will or other documents is something I recommend everyone put some thought into. Not only will it help your transition, but having a will and other documents in order to wrap up your estate and disposition will make putting your affairs, including your soul matrix, into as easy an order as possible for everyone you leave behind. You can put in writing how you want any items attached to your soul matrix taken care of, including who they go and how, and make the job of anyone doing your execution of your will and/or any deathwalking that much easier.

The Hamingja

Group luck/power.

Where Megin was power built on one’s own, Hamginja is built in community. It is what we inherit from our forebears, and affects the shape of our Urðr. It is built within the relationships we build well, harmed by the relationships we neglect, and can grow quite strong if we do the work necessary for it to. Each oath kept, each work done that helps the community adds to one’s own and others’ interwoven hamingja.

Deathwalking this part of the soul matrix is honoring the ties they hold and clearing debts a person may have to those in their community. It is atoning as best they can for wrongs done, and acknowledging the things they need to do before they die. It is also, crucially, celebrating the things their life has allowed Hamingja to do and what they have done with their Hamingja. Deathwalking a person’s Hamingja is calling on their community to carry the Dead’s Hamingja well, since this soul part will live on long after death. If a person is dying I would include a part where the person intentionally acknowledges their Hamingja as taking place in and residing not only in themselves, but the loved ones and communities they were part of in life. If they were initiated, in addition to calling on their Kinfylgja, reminding them that live on in the lineage they are part of. Post-mortem deathwalking rites should remind the community and reinforce their mutual responsibility in carrying the Dead’s contribution to their hamingja forward.

The Vé

The sacred place, or, in terms of the soul matrix, a person’s sense of, sensitivity to, and aptitude in working with the sacred.

This part is deathwalked in the rites performed, the sacred objects treated well, and the person’s involvement in the rites. Whether you are doing a deathwalking with someone who is dying or someone who is Dead, the way to involve the spirit is to give them sections where they themselves can take part. Giving a section of a funeral or memorial rite where the Dead is given space to speak can be powerful not only for the attendees, it can be equally so for the Dead.

Crucially for deathwalkers, if a person’s sacred places were violated while they were dying or after they die, deathwalking them can also mean righting wrongs here. Disposing of sacred items in a good and sacred way can avoid a lot of heartache and gives closure to the Dead. Encouraging families who suddenly now have to handle a lot of sacred materials can be a challenge, particularly if the family has no connection or interest in the religion of the Dead. Depending on how acrimonious the relationship was, a deathwalker may need to do some corrective work, or at the least hear the grievances of the Dead whose Vé has been violated.

Good ways of taking care of a person’s Vé would involve taking good care of any shrines or holy places they tended, and taking care of the items that were part of their cultus. As in the section on Megin, this may be figuring out what goes where, or how. It can also be who takes care of what items, or in the case where there are traditions around a dead person’s spiritual items being disassembled or passed on, to do everything one can to honor that. Community connections will be critical here, particularly if a deathwalker has been called in from the outside to provide support. If you do not have the ability to handle the sacred items, either because of your own taboos or those of the religion, then your job is to find the people who can and be sure things proceed well.

The Oðr

Frenzy. The ability of a person to enter into altered states of consciousness, and sacred states.

Deathwalking the Oðr of a dying person could be helping them achieve their altered state as they are dying after anything they have needed to say has been said. Uniting their soul matrix through song or guided meditation, engaging in ritual, calling on their Holy Powers, and so on can help them transition from life to death much cleaner than they might otherwise. It can also give the soul parts places to go (eg Hugr concentrating on the next step), things to do (eg Oðr engaging them fully in the process of dying), and ways to pass on the soul parts that need to be passed on, (eg parts of the Lyke if they are donating, passsing on Hamingja and/or Megin to their community members, and expresssing gifts of Oðr such as a final poem, song, or workings).

Your average person may not need much in the way of direct deathwalking help, since this soul part is not worked with by most people and generally leaves on death. If the person was a poet, worked a lot with altered states, and/or was a spiritual specialist, then directly deathwalking this soul part in ritual may be needed. Again, depending on the particular taboos a person could be under, someone who is in their community, an Elder, co-religionist, or student may need to be present if not running things to be sure things are done correctly.

Deathwalking this portion of a person after death can be quite dangerous -I put the word frenzy as the first thing because it may well be the thing you encounter with a person whose Oðr is still around after their death. If they were particularly potent in working with the soul part you may need to do some serious spiritual work, especially if there is no one available to do the work from within their religious group. This can include contacting and securing the help of Gods, Ancestors, and/or vaettir the person was tied to in life and is after death. This can also include disassembling, destroying, or reducing harm from objects or tools tied to their Oðr in life, and workings they did while alive that now need to stop. It may also be simply giving space in ritual for their frenzy to be expressed, to be heard, and/or for that gift to be passed on. As with most parts of deathwalking this is going to need to take a willingness on the part of the deathwalker to be careful, to do their due diligence in speaking with the dying or dead person’s community, and doing follow up to be sure the right rituals and actions are done.

The Örlög

One’s personal thread in the tapestry of Creation.

Deathwalking this soul part is tied up in the same rites of remembrance and care mentioned in this and the previous post. Honoring a person’s life and death is part of deathwalking the Örlög. Deathwork can take the form of helping the dying person to die well. Deathwalking this soul part for the Dead to be being sure the Dead is well-remembered and the rituals around their death and final disposition of their soul matrix, and anything they may have left behind or wanted to pass on, is done well.

The Urðr

The tapestry of Creation.

As with Örlög, this soul part is tied up in the rites of remembrance and care. Whereas Örlög is one’s personal thread in the tapestry, Urðr is the place where that thread is and the way this thread fits into the overall tapestry. Each person affects the tapestry differently over the course of their lives, and acknowledging their place in things, as with Örlög. Unlike Örlög, which is about each person’s thread, Urðr is the way each thread interweaves with each other. So, while deathwalking this soul part can be done in similar ways to the Örlög, emphasizing the person’s impact on and relationships within a given community during any vigil, ritual, or memorial is important. Understanding ourselves as being bound up in this great tapestry is a comfort to many. It may help a deathwalker to acknowledge a person’s place in Urðr, and that their time to find their place in that tapestry is at an end for this life.

I have covered deathwalking about as exhaustively as I can without specific questions or scenarios to explore, so if you want me to dig into this further sign up my Patreon for the Uruz, Thurisaz, or above level here on my Patreon.

Patreon Topic 6: New Generations and Rising Gods

If you want to submit a topic you would like me to write on for this blog or my Patreon, sign up for the Uruz or Thurisaz level or above here on my Patreon.

From my first Raiðo supporter comes this topic:

“Topic idea would be about the rise of the old religions, and the increase in activity from the Old Gods, especially among Millenials and Zoomers. What’s your take on why the Gods have chosen this time to rise again? Do you think something is going to happen in the future?”

Before digging into the question, it’s important to note that the Gods have been around and receiving active cultus for longer than just the 60s. It is just that the 60s was when a large chunk of modern revival occured. 

When it comes to why the Gods have chosen this time to rise again? I do not think the Gods waste an opportunity. So many folks are open to the very idea of the Gods, let alone worshiping Them, and resources are easier than ever to access. When I first made a Wiccan friend my first year of high school there was very little on Paganism online, and to find anything useful I had to wade through a lot of bullshit to find it. Fast forward a few years to when I became a Pagan in 2004 and books were easier to access than ever before, while reputable sources were coming online and engaging in ongoing blogging. Livejournal was in full swing, and Blogger and WordPress were being developed and would unleash the next generation of polytheist and Pagan writing. To be sure, there is still bullshit to wade through, but it is far easier to have open dialogue with our coreligionists on what is ice cream, what is bullshit, and how to separate one from the other.

I think in part there is a new surge of interest from our side and the Gods are hopping on that with both proverbial feet. I also think that there are times of upheaval we are in the middle of, plain to see now, but years ago if you posited something, eg that the Just in Time (JIT) logistics/delivery systems were incredibly vulnerable and all it would take would be a trade war, disease, or a small series of disruptions to see major disruption in economic and supply markets, you would have been laughed at, called a doomer, or (Gods forfend with pearls a-clutched) against Progress.

Right now a lot of folks are looking to the Gods. Some are looking to Them because something about a Marvel movie hit just the right way, but a little off. Some are looking to Them because they were looking into their ancestry and found something powerful there. Some are taken up by the Gods. Others find the Gods because they find Them fascinating, mysterious, powerful. Others are found by the Gods and rather than deny the relationship, choose to engage in it wholeheartedly.

I do not think that it is so much that ‘something is going to happen’, but that something is always happening and that it is up to people to listen to their Holy Powers and to one another, to think, and then to act. There is always a war over the horizon. Indeed, the United States of America has been embroiled in an official war for the last 20 years coming up this September in 2021. Out of the 244 years it has been around we have been at war or at conflict for around 219. Do I think larger global occurrences are going to occur? Of course. The COVID-19 virus is a major global pandemic. It will not be the last. I think we have the opportunity now to decide the course of how generations will live by how we, individually and communally choose to live now. This decision is made from each person, each community, each State/province, each country, and globally by the outcomes, the consequences, of all these choices. Each moment we make a choice to live well we have a choice to live as well as we can within the interconnected web of Being, Úrðr. It is up to us to live well within the life that we have, to live well with our Holy Powers, to live well within our communities, and to encourage those communities to good action that they may ripple outwards.

Frigg

You walk in majesty

Your keys’ heavy cadence

Announcing Asgard’s chief

 

Walls adorned with Your work

Skilled hands wove sacred stories

Erected each in power

 

The flax lays waiting

Gold threads of Úrðr gathered

Before Your distaff

 

About You handmaidens wait

At hand and heel attended

Your Will is done

 

Fensalir’s high seat

Holds hale the holy Vefarúrðr

Creation in Your hands

Polytheist Relationships with the Land, Buildings, and Homes

In a lecture held by James Howard Kunstler and William Fulton at the Congress for New Urbanism, both men go over in brief their experiences with and of urbanism as they grew up through it over the last 50 or so years. One of the striking things just listening to these two talk is how drastic the landscape changed in each others’ times being alive. Kunstler recalled experiencing what he called Central Park being the most lively and beautiful it has ever been after the financialization of the economy took place with the destruction of downtown NYC’s neighborhoods as a result, to the destruction wrought by urban planning in Auburn, NY in Fulton’s hometown. Throughout their lectures both men dug deep into the understanding that their relationship with the land and to the land fundamentally changed as urbanization dismantled peoples’ relationship to the land. What I appreciated about both is they both provided context to how each place looked historically, with Kunstler taking a detour to look at Buffalo’s progress over the last 100 years or so. The buildings that were torn down to make room for the new settlements went from places where one could walk, and as Fulton spoke, talked about how the landscape essentially went unchanged once the major highway cut Albany off from its residential zones, causing the zone to wither.

While the history of these places and their relationship to the burgeoning booms of the 40s and 50s are interesting in themselves, what it says about peoples’ relationship to the land is even more interesting to me. Kunstler roundly mocks people for the notion of building multistory food farms in city centers, and his primary reason for is that it is throwing a lot of resources at a problem while providing no long-term means for maintaining these structures. He points out that the urban areas are primarily for urban activities, and that the outskirts of cities and beyond, the rural areas, are the ones we have always historically grown the majority of our food in. That we are trying to get the cities, especially the multiplex cities to do this, is actively fighting against the point of having cities. This is not to say Kunstler is against folks growing their own food or urban gardening, but that we are ignoring the point of cities by trying to have the city do the job of rural areas by introducing ‘urban farming’ to them. For him this is no more apparent than these multimillion dollar projects of vertical farming.

Think about this for a minute. For the most part the cities’ soil is trapped under Gods-know-how-much concrete, steel, asphalt, and wood, and what soil is able to be gotten to may need quite a lot of remediation before it is ready to grow healthy food in. So this means, just on the basis of having enough soil to have enough for a multistory vertical garden, that much of that would have to be trucked in from somewhere else. The vertical gardens of the kinds that Kunstler was showing that are being proposed are massive, requiring millions of dollars in material and labor just to get built and Gods-knows how much more in maintenance. With climate change and peak oil both bearing down on us such projects are, in a word, untenable. Whether looked at from a cost perspective or a sustainability one, we have neither the treasure nor the resources to do this on the kind of scale that those who propose such techno-fixes would propose. We would be far better to retrofit rooftops to develop solar and wind energy, and retrofit the structure of the rooftops themselves to be able to be grown on and recycle water, use greywater systems, and develop top-of-building gardening and raising of animals. We have the technology available right now, the retrofits would cost the a small fraction of what it would to build wholly new vertical farming facilities, and it would have the potential of giving entire communities the ability to feed themselves far better with no space lost within them to what would probably be out-of-city/state developers.

There is another aspect to this that Kunstler did not touch on, and that is “Who is going to get displaced to make room for these? Who will benefit from this kind of development?” Just looking at the sheer amount of money such infrastructure would require I doubt, very highly, that any of the cities that could use such buildings would get them. If they did, in all likelihood it would generate one of the knock-on effects that the ‘urban farming’ initiatives are building in Detroit: gentrification. Sure, the buying up of and developing of properties is needed in the city. It keeps neighborhoods’ prices from depressing and creating a cascade effect in them. Yet, for many cities that are seeing a resurgence of affluent out-of-towners coming into the city and snatching up abandoned or especially foreclosed homes, it is pricing some folks, especially poor people of color, out of their own neighborhoods.

All these shifts, whether we look at the last 100 years in our own cities, towns, villages, and neighbrohoods, or across the board in how American living and commuting habits have changed since the introduction of the American highway system, provides insight in how we live on and with the land. There was a dynamic shift in how cities, towns, and villages were planned when we transitioned from horse, oxen, and waterways to trains for commuting and development. With the development of and later transition to the automobile these same places went through another shift, with the dominant feature being the main roadway arteries between various centers of industry at first, and more recently finance.

Just taking a look at US-12 here in Michigan shows how powerful these shifts are. The modern US-12 was part of two different and very old Native American trails, the St. Joseph Trail and the Sauk Trail. Both were footpaths for Natives here prior to European settlers arriving. It has always been a major thoroughfair for trade, and in the 1940s it was developed into expressways and freeways. Truck traffic still continues, but it has never really recovered from what expanding the highways have done to it. The aftereffects of the boomtown years can still be seen since US-12 is dotted with old, run-down tourist attractions from the 1970s and before, and the thriving antique shops throughout its run through lower Michigan.

As the train systems were demolished and automotives became our primary mode of transportation, many of the neighborhoods built up along the railroads died the same way our main outlets for shopping and commerce in suburban areas have been declinining since the 2008 financial crisis. Stores are shuttered, and entire areas that had once been full of life with residential communities growing in tandem along the railway, or in our case the main roads of cities and towns, went into foreclosure and short sales. Mom and Pop stores were replaced by larger companies or by centralizing stores in the same way that Wal-Mart, Kroger, and Meijer operates now. Those places that could not be replaced still remain as rotting husks of buildings displaying what once was a thriving place.

It is very sobering to think that automobiles have only been around since 1885, and in the time since, massive use of automobiles have only been around since the 1920s. So the main transportation method we take for granted today has only existed at most for about 133 years, and mass automotive use for 98 years. Before then we had mass transit in the form of electric streetcars, steam ferry, and trains. Before then we had horse, oxen, sailing ships, and of course, our own feet. With that in mind, what we have designed in America is an entire layout in cities, towns, and villages for a way of life that has only been with us for about a hundred years at best and is highly energy and resource intensive to create and maintain.

What does this mean for a polytheist view on these things?

We are bound up in the land we live on. Many of us worship Gods of the Earth, fertility, and local Gods. We worship our Ancestors, and the vaettir are all around us. Most of us don’t live anywhere near our Dead whether that is due to the amount of moving around automotives allow for, for personal ambitions, or the need to find steady work. For my family part of living well with our Ancestors is, where we are able, to live alongside Them. In this case this can mean something as small as an urn getting a place at an Ancestor ve, or as major a work as a burial mound being constructed so we can house our community’s Dead. The vaettir are all around us, no matter where we live. It is in our best interest to align well and live well in gipt fa gipt with all our Holy Powers.

If we are going to live well on the Earth with the Holy Powers we need to develop, revive, and encourage ways of life that align with the Earth’s ability to replenish and live well. We need to reduce or eliminate waste wherever we can, and to design our living arrangements so that we are not just extracting resources without Gebo. We have the cities, towns, villages, and neighborhoods we have now. I would have us retrofit what we can in these places and replace what we need to for a sustainable future now while we have the resources to do so. Whatever we do the work we put our hands to needs to be for the best for the environment and future generations who will live there.

This approach to how we plan and maintain our cities, towns, villages, and neighborhoods brings living with our Holy Powers out of abstraction and into our physical spaces, into lived everyday relationship with Them. It brings our concerns surrounding how we live in our everyday lives and asks “How can we best honor the Gods, Ancestors, and vaettir of this place?” with every decision. It forces us to acknowledge that there are living relationships with Holy Powers to be had regardless of where we are, or with what part of our lives we are engaging with. Water treatment facility? Likely at least one, if not many Gods to be worked with in that, and many vaettir as well. The city square? Public life is acknowledged as having a spiritual dimension, even if not everyone appreciates that spiritual dimension. Parks and streets alike teem with spirits. Designing our living spaces with care will ultimately benefit the community and the bonds we hold together with our Gods, Ancestors, and vaettir. Planning for environmental impact, developing ways that honor our communities and making them places people want to live will help our communities thrive and grow resilient together.

Planning our living spaces does not have to be terribly jarring. We can orient future repair and maintenance projects to make everything as walkable as humanly possible in our cities. We can encourage repair and reuse where we now are encouraged to throw things away and just get a new thing. Encouraging people to live above their businesses where they could would help cut down on wasted space. Developing various districts that make use of locally harvested foods and goods, especially those closest to the our cities and towns, would bring resiliency into these places and in reciprocity, resiliency to those growing and processing these things. Developing intentional interdependent relationships in cottage industries between city, town, and villages with those in rural areas can strengthen bonds between them. Doing this will keep goods and money circulating within and between communities, strengthening bonds and the resiliency of all of those within these relationships.

Encouraging these kinds of investments in our own communities might require modifying entire swathes of building codes depending on how strict they are and the kinds of buildings and industries in a given area. It might require folks to reevaluate how we buy things, how we consume things, and from where we get the needs and wants of our lives. Looking into community efforts to not only put together recycling collections, but composting, can save a lot of space in landfills better put to use in fields and community gardens. Folks will need to decide on where it is best to put their energy. I think that creating more walkable, interconnected, and interdependent places will encourage people to be more active in their communities and develop tighter bonds with their neighbors and the spaces everyone in a community shares.

It is worth thinking about what a climate change and peak oil future looks like. Do not go for doom and gloom; give yourself room to explore the full breadth of human technology and innovation we are privileged to live with in this time. JMG noted in a recent interview he gave that we are not bound to a single time or place in terms of the technologies we can adopt to face the future, and actively encouraged folks to explore what technologies we could make best use of in an age of decline. So yes, that means at some point looking look at what it means to live with intermittent, and perhaps eventually little to no electricity. Look at what it may mean for us to live with little to no gas because much of it would be out of our price range. Once you look around yourself and really see how much work fossil fuels are doing for you, and what climate change can mean for your area, take a breath.

Think about all the technologies we put down because fossil fuels have done so much of the work for us and have taken us out of relationship with the world around us. Our food, our water, how we relate to physical work itself. How we relate to one another. Not everyone can or will farm just as not everyone can or will work metal or wood. There will still be need for writers and artists, laborers, and organizers. There will still be need for folks who know how to make infrastructure, or to design sustainable developments in the places we live. We will still have need of trade, we will still have markets, and we will still have need of means of exchange in some form. We have had cities longer than we have had fossil fuels.

If you think about it, that is damned exciting. If you work with moneyvaettir (money spirits), imagine bringing that dimension of respect for the power of exchange and the power a cultivated relationship that these spirits can bring to trade. When we no longer have our debt-based money system as the primary arbiter of relationships we give space for our relationships with one another to grow in different ways. If you worship Gods who care about governance, imagine bringing the lessons of your Gods to bear in local government work, in layout for the treatment of water, sustainable rain harvesting, or building codes. If you worship Gods who hold theaters as sacred to Them, rebuilding or encouraging a revival of local theater troupes might be a powerful form of devotion. Guilds for craftspeople can be a powerful source of devotion, whether to Gods of the craft, Ancestors (such as masters in the craft who have died), and the vaettir associated with the craft or to crafting in general. Just carrying on a craft or art in general, regardless of skill, can be a form of cultivating relationships with the Gods, Ancestors, and vaettir associated with it.

When we allow ourselves to understand ourselves in relationship with our Holy Powers and one another not only in abstract ways, but concerete hand-to-mouth ways, our perspective changes. My understanding of Freyr changed when I recognized and worshiped Him as the God who blessed my asparagus with fertility. When I recognized the asparagus, each stalk a vaettr, as being in relationship with Him, it was a profound shift. Freyr could no longer abstractly be a God of fertility; His fertility was absolutely rooted in my soil and that has fed my family since we began to harvest it. Holiness is rootedness. The mead that I brew is related to many Gods and vaettir, and many of my Ancestors would have brewed their own drinks for their Gods, Ancestors, vaettir, and community. By taking up and engaging in the craft I have engaged in devotion with Kvasir, Gunnlodd, and in different ways, Odin. Likewise, I have worshiped different Ancestors I may not have engaged with, and the vaettir of the mead that I have developed has blossomed into a good, reciprocal relationship.

Through living our religious worldviews, in bringing these ideas of relationship, reciprocity, and wellbeing into our relationships with the lands we live on and the Beings we share this world with, we can avoid the devastating results that business-as-usual visited on Kunstler’s NYC and Fulton’s Albany. We can offer new ways forward in relationship of our societies to the lands we live on. Our neighborhoods may be more walkable, self-sustaining, and resilient. The very way we lay out these things can radically change. Our current ways of doing things are less than 150 years old. We can make our places that we live sustainable again. Arguably, it is one of the biggest shifts we could take so that our societies are in better alignment with Nature.

When it comes to peak oil and climate change we are looking at less is more. A simple example of this in action is a cob building. They can be constructed throughout most of the continental United States from local materials. Cob itself is a combination of soil, clay, and straw. The walls and ceiling are fashioned into multi-foot thick structures, often made in the footprint of the land they are built in. The placement below the frost line and thickness of their walls allows them to regulate heat effectively in most climates, with wood stoves, rocket stoves, and similar devices serving to heat them in colder climes.

Cob homes require very little in regards to fossil fuel inputs for their construction or maintenance due to being made of local all-natural materials, and can be fashioned by hand. Cob homes have lasted for hundreds of years as they were built. Contrast this with the average stick-built home not lasting well past a hundred years that requires massive inputs of fossil fuel powered machines, lumber, plastics, and so on just to build and even more to maintain. Cob homes can be built multistory, and can be built with basements as well.

Now, cob will not be useful in every situation, or even most urban situations where the layout of a city has been in place for a significant investment of time and capital. The same issues with soil quality that makes the question of whether an urban garden is a good idea applies to the fashioning of a roof and walls. Even putting aside issues of quality of the soil, the particular requirements for a home in the city may be too small for cob to be effective. Wattle and daub, made in similar fashion to cob with thinner walls due to its wooden ‘skeleton’, may be another house construction method with a long-term future. As with cob, wattle and daub can be made by hand and with local materials. As with cob, it has the ability to scale up and down for different building sizes. Unlike stick-built methods which require sizeable sums of lumber input, wattle and daub requires small amounts of timber with no need for processing pieces. Where neither cob or wattle-and-daub methods make sense, retrofitting homes and places of busines can still make dramatic impacts on energy use, repair, and development of spaces for different uses.

We could be much closer emotionally and spiritually to the places we live and work if we made them by hand, scaled them to our needs, and oriented them to maximizing our liveability in them. If we generated power locally, took care of our water and soils with an understanding that everyone in the community is part of the environment, we could not help but understand ourselves as living with the world around us. Making our communities easier to live and work in, making them more sustainable and resilient to climate change, peak oil, and other predicaments facing us, will benefit us and our descendants.

Engaging locally means our ways of doing things are much more accesible and doable at this level. Rather than fight with entrenched interests at the State and national level, we can encourage positive development where we live. We have the opportunity to be living examples to our neighbors, and encourage the spread of ideas further by showing that the things we are passionate about can be done. In regards to our polytheist religions, we can show the living our our religions and the values by embodying them. So yes, we are going to face push-back and set-backs will happen. The clear challenge to us is not that we need to reinvent the wheel but to put it to effective use.

By taking up the challenge of engaging in good relationships with the land, air, water, buildings, and homes as polytheists, we allow for our future with each to be better. By engaging with the land, air, water, buildings, and homes with respect, with devotion to the Gods, Ancestors, and vaettir of our urban, suburban, and rural areas, we develop better working relationships with each. By asking “How can we best honor the Gods, Ancestors, and vaettir of this place?” with every decision, we are mindful of our place in things, and open ourselves to the work before us. As we let the work each place asks of us to develop these relationships, this teaches us how to better to do the work.

Both Kunstler and Fulton spoke about how their ‘relationship with the land and to the land fundamentally changed as urbanization dismantled peoples’ relationship to the land’. It took less than 100 years for us to hit this point in our relationship with the land and all that has been built on it, much of it through fossil fuels and overextending renewable living Beings like our waters, forests, and land. By engaging with the land, air, and water in this healthier, more wholistic way, we are given the opportunity to repair our relationship to and with them. In taking up the challenge of repairing our relationships with and to land, water, and air, we can each weave threads that fundamentally change the tapestry of our society’s relationships with them for the better. Wherever you can and however you are able, start weaving your threads. There are no insignificant threads to developing better relationships with our Holy Powers.