[main blog post] List of Books on Germanish Belief with Thoughts

[jprussell]

I have put together a list of those books I have read and want to read about Germanish belief/worship/religion. I haven't added all of my thoughts yet, but I wanted to meet my goal of posting this week, and this post is meant to be added to as I go anyhow.

Suggestions on books I might add are most welcome!

Comments

[deketemoisont]

"I've obviously been leaning heavily on Thorsson for years"

Who hasn't?

Answer: Ralph Blum.

I already mentioned him in the other post, but have you read any Don Webb (former Temple leader)? Notwithstanding the "Left-Hand Path" description, which I do think *largely* refers to idiocy, I think his writing's generally pretty good.

[jprussell]

I think I purposely kept away from Blum when I encountered negative views of his approach (such as in Sweyn Plowright's Rune Primer), and I haven't checked in to see if I ought to update that evaluation. Since it's the internet and reading subtlety can be hard, are you saying "Ralph Blum is a worthwhile different perspective to check out", "Ralph Blum is an example of what happens when you don't lean on Thorsson (and that sucks)", or something else?

I've not read any Don Webb, and I'll respond more over there, unless you think he has some good thinking on Germanic religion or magic specifically. Or perhaps the connection was that he gives some good insight into the Temple of Set/Left-Hand Path stuff that folks like Thorsson and Michael Kelly are tied to?

[deketemoisont]

Sorry, I meant

A1) in runic occultism, there's (yet! Growth mindset!) only 4 kinds of people: Flowers; people who lean on Flowers; Germans who only lean on List (whom I haven't read); people who suck (Blum goes here).

A2) that if you read Webb and developed the appreciation I think you might/should, you might no longer regard a Temple of Set affiliation as suspicious (I'm ready to apologize if we find I merely projected my thinking, and I do think adding salt to Webb's writing *can* be useful at times). It is true that you might understand Flowers and Kelly better if you read Webb (or Michael Aquino) than otherwise, but it's not needed if you only want to understand their runes/ogham works.

I'd forgotten to say - I do believe Germanic religion is pretty "LHP" (in a Western and non-stupid sense) as it is:

B1) while they obviously didn't think the jötunn element was better/should be in control, the Sigurdhr-Fáfnir myth already wasn't exactly subtle, and why do the "Aesir" (sometimes up to 7/8-jötunn, IIRC) have so much sex with jötnar (with cases even of female Ás/male jötunn IIRC)?

B2) in Germanic religion, Prometheus/the serpent (a.k.a. the guy who taught us what in other myths we wouldn't be supposed to know) is ... the actual leader! (I should say I have a great appreciation for Týr's mythology as well.) Which is one reason I'd have never given Satanism half a thought even when I was most anti-Christian, and not even had I believed in spirits back then - because I'd know a much better choice.

B3) which linguistic group invented the current Western LHP (with meaningful German and Scandinavian participations)?

[jprussell]

A1) Hah! I hadn't encountered that or arrived at that grouping, but it jives with what I know. I've seen a few rumblings of things maybe going differently, like gullindagan drawing on some early modern stuff that predates the translation of the Eddas into English, and JMG has maybe mentioned doing a translation of Bureus, but I don't think it's very high on his list of priorities.

A2) So, you've unintentionally hit on a topic relevant to the other thread about "how to find occultists worth listening to" where I've had some ups and downs. Very brief (well, by my standards, anyway) backstory: when I first started seriously looking into magic as something to maybe actually try, rather than just something interesting to know about or mine for running D&D, I came at it from a full-on materialist "this is all just archetypes and depth psychology" perspective. I didn't find chaos magic appealing, as I had enough respect for the non-obvious selective powers of tradition to arrive at better/more meaningful/more effective ways of interacting with these archetypes than purely individually-significant symbols, but metaphysically I assumed it was all arbitrary. Also relevant: for most of my caring-about-politics life, I've been pretty far into the anarcho-capitalist flavor of Libertarianism, which I bring up due to what that can tell you about my default take on individualism and authority. In this way of looking at magic, Temple of Set and/or broader LHP, heck even The Church of Satan to some degree, all made a certain amount of sense.

Well, then I read some JMG, I decided to give "actually believing in the Gods and spirits" a try, and some very weird, but very good stuff happened for me. So now I was in a position where a) I believed that spiritual entities called upon in ritual are actual conscious beings that can really influence my life, so I better be careful which ones I talk to, b) actual "worship" of deities, as opposed to just trying to manifest them in your own life made certain sense, and c) folks who had seemingly steered me well (like JMG and his commentariat) had a default negative assessment of LHP groups, practitioners, and philosophies. Oh, and add to this that I was starting to more seriously question the kind of "do what thou wilt" individualism that libertarianism and LHP spiritual paths seemed to share (without looking too deeply into them, of course).

Anyhow, where all of this has gotten me (for now) is that anything LHP should be approached with caution, not necessarily because it is eeeevilll, but precisely because some of what might be most attractive about it to me and my predispositions might be the very stuff that I need to think harder about. An analogy: I managed to make it through school without getting into adderall or other "uppers" beyond coffee, but in the Army, I discovered I had quite the taste for caffeine and tobacco. This makes me think I should probably stay the hell away from harder stimulants, even if some folks find them harmless or even helpful in some contexts.

So, I will likely add Webb and other LHP people who seem reasonable to my reading lists, but I'll be a little more careful around trying out their practices (not that I'll be in the market for new daily practices anytime soon!)

B1) Yeah, this is definitely an element of the myths where I feel like I'm really missing something important. A few Magic Mondays ago, I asked for any resources on "giants" from other Indo-European sources, in part because I think I might have to sneak up on this question to start really getting it. As for female Asynjur with male jotnar, hmmm - you get a lot of jotnar lusting after Freyja, but not consummating, I've always assumed there was at least a lust element in Thjazi taking Idhunn, if not something more (especially if it's a cognate myth with Hades & Persephone, which somehow totally escaped me as a possibility until the last few months when someone else pointed it out), and you get some funky edge cases like Loki as the mare and the fact that Ran and Aegir are kinda-sorta jotnar but also not?

B2) Yeah, the whole "bringer of the secret fire"/"maker of the first sacrifice"/"morally ambiguous trickery for greater good" angle of Odin is one that I am interested in exploring more deeply, especially as some comparative IE myth/religion stuff I've encountered recently has made some connections I didn't think/know to expect. I feel like this whole angle, especially the degree to which it is "left hand", is also linked up with Odin's relationship with Loki, and Loki's roles in the myths at all. Short version of where my suspicions point: Jordan Peterson has praised Christianity's model of evil and how it works psychologically, as represented mythically, and I suspect that Germanic myth has some very useful insights here, especially as regards the ambivalence of "the rationa intellect" as a part of consciousness.

B3) Aww, it looks like a "joke via quiz" didn't go through, maybe it got eaten by dreamwidth security settings?

[deketemoisont]

A1) I have no doubt gullindagan will both find and make stuff otherwise not found easily, but if he doesn't rely on Flowers substantially I will eat a hat. As for JMG's translation, of course if he only translates it it won't have even the slightest smell of Flowers, but if he comments on it Flowers will end up in the bibliography!

A2) "I didn't find chaos magic appealing, as I had enough respect for the non-obvious selective powers of tradition to arrive at better/more meaningful/more effective ways of interacting with these archetypes than purely individually-significant symbols" - Indeed. While Gordon White and Michael Kelly both use chaos magic ideas (well, the former *is* a chaos mage - *plus some other stuff*) to what seems to be good effect to me, I don't know what could lead someone willing to practice magic to prefer chaos magic "pure".

"I've been pretty far into the anarcho-capitalist flavor of Libertarianism" - It gladdens me to hear you recovered. I'd say the Church of Satan fits Right-Libertarianism much better than the Temple of Set, should it matter - the joke has been made that Aquino was a Protestant Satanist, and (of course keeping in mind that they're incomparably smaller than any noticeable branch of Christianity), from my limited knowledge about particularly the CoS (my sympathy for it is much smaller), I think the split between them is bigger than the Romanist-Lutheran one (perhaps I shouldn't compare it to the Romanist-Calvinist one, however).

"folks who had seemingly steered me well (like JMG and his commentariat) had a default negative assessment of LHP groups, practitioners, and philosophies." - Let me be the last one to say they were generally wrong: the recent Western stuff labeled as "LHP" has generally been *painfully* stupid (and at least sometimes worse than that) IMO.

"Oh, and add to this that I was starting to more seriously question the kind of "do what thou wilt" individualism that libertarianism and LHP spiritual paths seemed to share (without looking too deeply into them, of course)." - The vulgar versions (i.e. what you find the vast majority of the time) certainly deserve the scorn! As for the non-vulgar versions, well, I haven't read Crowley, so I don't know the non-vulgar meaning - if any! - of his "Wilt".

"Anyhow, where all of this has gotten me (for now) is that anything LHP should be approached with caution, not necessarily because it is eeeevilll, but precisely because some of what might be most attractive about it to me and my predispositions might be the very stuff that I need to think harder about." - Not that it counts for much, but I'll be ready to apologize should you have that problem. :(

"(not that I'll be in the market for new daily practices anytime soon!)" - oh, I'm sure of that!

B1) (I'll have to look for the female Ás/male jötunn I supposedly remember later.) Sorry in the likely case this part is already obvious to you, but I think you didn't make a remark that makes clear it is, so for the doubt's sake: since you know the AODA/etc. system, do you already think about jötnar as of the telluric current and Aesir as of the celestial? AFAICT, the celestial is older, but that doesn't prevent some of its products from being younger than some of the telluric; a human should access both, but we formed first most directly from the telluric and our ancestors were pretty fracking dumb when we had much less celestial access; the telluric currents makes us move and the celestial makes us control how we move (i.e. I believe the ancient German(ic)s (and a number of other Indo-Europeans) thought the telluric current should be used, under celestial control to the extent possible - in AODA terminology). Right? (AFAICT, Sigurdhr cooking Fáfnir's heart is unsubtle.)

B2) "Yeah, the whole "bringer of the secret fire"/"maker of the first sacrifice"/"morally ambiguous trickery for greater good" angle of Odin is one that I am interested in exploring more deeply" - Same, though I intend as well to deal with Týr as being truly the bright-sky/lawgiver deity.

"I feel like this whole angle, especially the degree to which it is "left hand", is also linked up with Odin's relationship with Loki" - There *is* Flowers' hypothesis of Loki being a manifestation of Ódhinn, but I'd say even if they should be understood as mortal enemies - what about Ódhinn does *not* have the opposition of a bunch of other religions (arguably including Indo-European - it's not unknown elsewhere for the dark-sky deity to be seen as enemy of the bright-sky, usually the boss or the boss' retired father).

"Jordan Peterson has praised Christianity's model of evil and how it works psychologically" - Do you remember a specific source offhand?

"I suspect that Germanic myth has some very useful insights here, especially as regards the ambivalence of "the rationa intellect" as a part of consciousness." - How compatible with Christianity's? And do you have some elaboration on that available, if I didn't take your time excessively already?

B3) AFAICT, what I intended to say (not a joke and without the answer) went out just fine - I meant the modern LHP is IMO entirely a Germanic invention including Britain, Germany, and Scandinavia (I'm highly skeptical it owes anything to 19th-century French "Satanism" - though I know very little about the latter), and that's not unrelated to the previous Germanic religion.

[jprussell]

A1) I have no doubt gullindagan will both find and make stuff otherwise not found easily, but if he doesn't rely on Flowers substantially I will eat a hat. As for JMG's translation, of course if he only translates it it won't have even the slightest smell of Flowers, but if he comments on it Flowers will end up in the bibliography! - Yeah, there's little doubt about that. Again, not like I'm even advocating for getting away from Thorsson/Flowers as a goal, just looking for supplemental viewpoints. Oh, and speaking of folks influenced by Flowers, Scott Shell is an academic runologist youtuber who dared to cite Flowers in his thesis (which might have something to do with his status as an "independent scholar"). He didn't make the list above (yet), because I believe his thesis is in process of getting published as a book, and this was a *book* list, but I've rather liked his videos. He has a focus on continental Saxon material (like the Heliand), but he's very knowledgeable on the Runes and is a practitioner to boot.

A2) Indeed. While Gordon White and Michael Kelly both use chaos magic ideas (well, the former *is* a chaos mage - *plus some other stuff*) to what seems to be good effect to me, I don't know what could lead someone willing to practice magic to prefer chaos magic "pure". - Indeed, Chaos magic strikes me as likely getting some stuff right and having some useful insights (for example, the emotional and semantic loading of every symbol has got to be at least somewhat individually/arbitrarily determined), but JMG's assessment that it goes too hard in "make this compatible with the modern scientific worldview"

It's good to hear that there's an older, more serious branch of what gets called "Left Hand" that has gotten its name tarnished by some grubbier stuff. I'm not surprised, but I had only ever heard that claim from folks who a) had some interest in it (like, say Aquino), or b) I had no way of judging the credibility of. Other than Thorsson/Flowers, I suppose, though I haven't yet read any of his explicitly LHP stuff, he was always pretty careful to mostly put that in another box than the more "mainstream" (hah) Runic/Germanic Religious Revival stuff.

It gladdens me to hear you recovered. - An aside on Libertarianism: the combined assault of JMG's Burkean conservatism and Yarvin's Neo-Reaction and Jordan Peterson's "Centrism" (a milquetoast name for what I think is actually a more profound point: political problems are too complex to solve a priori ahead of time, you actually need debate and experiment and multiple points of view to get anywhere that doesn't suck) have left me with very little idea what good political solutions look like, but with a pretty strong view that anarcho-capitalism misses some important things about how the world and people actually work. Which is tough, because my political-moral intuitions are still pretty strongly libertarian-ish ("do what you want! leave me alone! can't we just make a deal?"). Sorting all of that out is likely going to take rather a few blog posts that I'm not sure I feel either prepared nor secure enough to attempt just yet.

Not that it counts for much, but I'll be ready to apologize should you have that problem. :( - Anyhow, thanks for the apology in advance, but I think I'll be okay - for one, I'm a grown up, and for two, by the time I start engaging with those materials seriously, I'll hopefully have done a heck of a lot of balanced spiritual work that will make me less susceptible to "spiritual speed" or the like.

B1) Sorry in the likely case this part is already obvious to you, but I think you didn't make a remark that makes clear it is, so for the doubt's sake: since you know the AODA/etc. system, do you already think about jötnar as of the telluric current and Aesir as of the celestial? Hmm! I don't think I had yet stumbled upon trying out that manner of grouping, in part because I had been focused more on Aesir = Celestial, Vanir = Telluric (roughly, of course), and/or on individual correspondences. The idea that the jotnar are mainly Telluric is at least going to make for some fruitful meditation. I haven't done a lot in trying to map Germanish myths onto the AODA-style seven element framework, other than assigning Gods for my daily SOP and paying attention to appearances of the material elements. There is definitely something very important involving "above" and "below" going on, with the motif of descent into somewhere watery/snakey/underground/full of the dead and rising up to somewhere bright/glorious/immortal seen very clearly in a lot of myths, especially the core Odin ones, but my meditation plate has been too full to explore very deeply. The Maria Kvilhaug books mentioned above along with HRE Davidson's Myths and Symbols of the Pagan North, which explicitly compares Celtic and Germanish material, are where I'll likely start when I dig in there.

B2) Same, though I intend as well to deal with Týr as being truly the bright-sky/lawgiver deity. Yeah, I get the impression that Tyr is under-appreciated/understood. I've got a new edition of Dumezil's Mitra Varuna on pre-order (coming out in June), which I believe includes Odin and Tyr in his "dual sovereignty" hypothesis, which is something I had gotten kind of close to with an insight during meditation: Tyr is the God of deciding who gets his way, and Odin is the God of getting your way (among many other things for both, of course). Another interesting source of insight on their relationship is Kris Kershaw's The One-Eyed God (I know, I bring this one up a lot). Specifically, if her thesis that Odin was the God of the coming-of-age warband that exists outside of polite society for a time, and Tyr is the God of the adult warriors fully integrated into society, some interesting interactions suggest themselves (including a new way of looking at losing a hand for the trouble of binding the wolf).

There *is* Flowers' hypothesis of Loki being a manifestation of Ódhinn, but I'd say even if they should be understood as mortal enemies - what about Ódhinn does *not* have the opposition of a bunch of other religions (arguably including Indo-European - it's not unknown elsewhere for the dark-sky deity to be seen as enemy of the bright-sky, usually the boss or the boss' retired father). - Yeah, the ambivalence of Odin has always been interesting to me, and I think the idea of Loki as both his best friend/brother and his mortal enemy are a part of that. Because even if you don't see Loki as literally a manifestation/hypostasis of Odin, they're obviously very closely linked in some way - they're blood brothers, they go on quests together, Odin rides Loki's son around, and so forth. More on this a couple points below.

Do you remember a specific source offhand? Actually, wow, praise ridiculous note-taking methods, one of my old, poorly-incorporated digital zettelkasten slips has a reference: Episode 4 of the Jordan Peterson podcast. It also wouldn't surprise me if "Rule 6: Set Your House in Perfect Order Before You Criticize the World" has something to say about it, and it likely comes up at least once, maybe around the Garden of Eden bit or around Cain and Abel, in his Genesis lectures.

How compatible with Christianity's? And do you have some elaboration on that available, if I didn't take your time excessively already? - Hahah, no worries on "excessively taking my time", I've been worrying that I've been giving tl;dr responses likely to alienate you and anyone else who stumbles on them. So, trying to be somewhat brief, and recognizing that this likely deserves at least a blog post, here are some thoughts:

Peterson argues (briefly) that the Christian conception of the Devil, especially as elaborated in Paradise Lost and The Inferno, is a wonderful example of what happens when the individual, especially as represented by the ego and the rational mind, is not balanced by other forces properly. He simplifies the Jungian archetypes to Good/Bad Masculine (more society), Good/Bad Feminine (more nature), and Good/Bad Individual (the mediator between the two). God the Father is Good Masculine, the Holy Ghost/Mary is Good Feminine, Jesus is Good Individual. The parts of the material world that draw you to worldly wealth and power are Bad Masculine, the parts that draw you to worldly pleasures are Bad Feminine, and the Devil is Bad Individual. Basically, the Devil looks at the Feminine and Masculine, sees only the bad, rejects the Good, and says "F*** it, I'll do it myself". Peterson argues that the genius of the elaborated Christian view is that it recognizes the very tendency to fall in love with your own creations and elevate them above Being, and become convinced that you can do anything because you are so smart and powerful, and that this can start from some noble places, but easily go to some bad ones ("wow, it sure sucks that babies starve to death --> better medicine --> forced eugenic sterilization and killing" to take an overly short and simplified example).

I give all that as background, because I think it's a pretty good analysis. I'd add the caveat that it's an especially Faustian conception of evil, and it doesn't account for Steiner's Ahrimanian evil (that is something I need to look more into). All that being said, to the degree you accept that Loki is (at least sometimes) a mythic representation of evil, I think that the view complements Peterson's analysis of the Devil. Actually, tying into your response to B3), a suspicion I have, but haven't followed up on, is that part of the Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity, was that views of who the Devil was and what he was about became more Germanish (but this may be impossible to sort out, especially since you can pretty easily argue that Loki was Satan-ified by the time the Eddas were written down).

What is interesting about the Germanish take to me? Well, for one, the Highest God is bros with this evil! They have a lot in common. This evil gets shit done - sometimes very necessary stuff, like recovering Idun or Mjolnir. And yet. . . he still leads the armies of Chaos on Ragnarok. He causes as much strife as solves (if not more). You string his stories together into a kind of "fall" (as Gaiman did in his recent adaptation). Whatever he is, whatever he's about, it is not the lasting harmony of conscious beings that the Aesir seek to uphold. Maybe one difference between Odin and Loki is that Odin steals stuff to make it available where needed (Promethean!) whereas Loki steals stuff to deprive the world of it (Luciferian!), or Odin strives for higher spiritual ends, whereas Loki strives for more material ones.

As I said, I haven't done enough reading, meditating, writing, or just plain thinking on this one, and I originally formulated the idea with a conception of Gods as only archetypes and myths as "just" evolved sense-making tools, and I haven't fully re-examined it in light of my current beliefs.

B3) AFAICT, what I intended to say (not a joke and without the answer) went out just fine - I meant the modern LHP is IMO entirely a Germanic invention including Britain, Germany, and Scandinavia (I'm highly skeptical it owes anything to 19th-century French "Satanism" - though I know very little about the latter), and that's not unrelated to the previous Germanic religion. - Oh man, dumb dreamwidth noob moment here. On a journal of which I'm the admin, there's a "select" radio box at the bottom of every comment for moderation. I saw your question, then a radio box that said "Select", and I though you were going for something like "Which linguistic group invented the modern Western LHP?"
A) Germanic
B) Western Germanic
c) English
D) All of the above

[deketemoisont]

A1) I know about Scott Shell already! (Thanks to you.)

A2) "make this compatible with the modern scientific worldview" - Even then, did they need to largely dump mythology and choose to take nothing seriously?

Well, I'm someone with an LHP (for certain values) interest and no credibility whatsoever! Sure, Flowers has been pretty good at compartimentalizing, but I think one can see the links, and I think they do fit.

"mainstream" - Kek!

"Centrism" - But IMO more importantly "make sure you actually can manage yourself before you try to manage any other people".

"very little idea what good political solutions look like" - These days I tend to "there are no good political solutions, what we need is to make better people".

"Sorting all of that out is likely going to take rather a few blog posts that I'm not sure I feel either prepared nor secure enough to attempt just yet." - I'll wait patiently!

B1) About whether the jötnar, Vanir, or both are mainly telluric, one could think (among other things):
B1.1) if you interpret the trifunctional hypothesis in this case as meaning the Vanir were the deities of "most people", they'd be actually in the middle (in Daoist terms, Person instead of Heaven or Earth);
B1.2) historically, there's a hypothesis that fairly early Indo-Europeans absorbed an agricultural people in the Danube Delta, early enough that it affected the later branches we know about in general - perhaps both the Vanir and jötnar being in the mythology reflects 2 different fusions (1 Germanic-specific)?
B1.3) if I'm wrong you'll know - how many Vanir who are nothing else do know about? Every Van I remember is a Van by origin who becomes treated as Ás, or, arguably, one of the Aesir by origin who becomes the reverse (treated as Van) - sorry I'm about to make a very dumb question, but does the mythology actually contain, if I may, Vanir-as-such?

"my meditation plate has been too full to explore very deeply." - in part Dolmen Arch, do I remember right?

I definitely need to read Hilda Davidson. Might muster the will to read Maria Kvilhaug someday - I admit how she dedicated a book to her husband was great.

B2) "The One-Eyed God (I know, I bring this one up a lot)." - And you'll be right until we read it!

Thanks for the JBP reference.

"I've been worrying that I've been giving tl;dr responses likely to alienate you and anyone else who stumbles on them." - I won't try to speak for a single other person, but I too have a Moldbug habit.

"The parts of the material world that draw you to worldly wealth and power are Bad Masculine, the parts that draw you to worldly pleasures are Bad Feminine" IMO: compatible with Greek philosophy, but not Indo-European religions closer to the original. What do you think?

"the Devil is Bad Individual. Basically, the Devil looks at the Feminine and Masculine, sees only the bad, rejects the Good, and says "F*** it, I'll do it myself"." - Huh, very interesting. I might be biased due to thinking it describes me ...

"very tendency to fall in love with your own creations and elevate them above Being" - Similarly to your comment below: I don't think this describes his own Bad Feminine (arguably not even the Bad Masculine, just the Bad Individual, who apparently tries to be a rejecter of the other 2 Bads).

"it's an especially Faustian conception of evil" - Just to make sure: you mean this evil has Faustian characteristics, not at all that it's what a Faustian would consider evil, right?

"I think that the view complements Peterson's analysis of the Devil." - Do you mean in the sense of Loki being someone who wanted to make a better order?

"a suspicion I have" - I do as well.

"Well, for one, the Highest God is bros with this evil! They have a lot in common." - Undoubtedly they have much in common, but "are" they still bros? If those myths should be understood as representing cycles, maybe they should be seen as sometimes bros and sometimes not?

"steals stuff to deprive the world of it (Luciferian!)" - Is Satan actually like that? Leaving aside a possible interpretation in which he's faithful to Yahweh, if the serpent was Satan, didn't it/he want to make stuff available? (You read "The Tower", so you know what I mean.)

"Oh man, dumb dreamwidth noob moment here." - Kek!

[jprussell]

Dagnabbit, I apparently can't edit comments after they're replied to, even as the admin, so, my apologies for the unclosed italics tag - that's what I get for trying to be all fancy with my html.

A2) Agreed! It strikes me as "I have to do it differently/make it my own/break from tradition no matter what." I can recognize this tendency, as I have a lot of it myself (see below on the Dolmen Arch).

Also, "there are no good political solutions, we need to make better people" - I think I've also absorbed a lot of that from JMG, and the rule of thumb "if you're not willing to take even tiny steps in the direction you're asking policy to take, maybe go jump in a lake" comes in very handy.

B1) Some very interesting points here.

B1.1) That's an angle I hadn't exactly considered, though it's an interesting one. If taking that assumption and mapping it onto the AODA-style seven elements, you might say that the Vanir then were more of the four elements than of any of the three spirits, which has some interesting implications, but also might overly downplay their link to Spirit (of whichever direction).

B1.2) I think there's at least two different historical fusions of some significance between PIE speakers and historical Germanic speakers, but I'm wary of overly-neat identifications like "the Danube-merger is where the Vanir came from, and the Nordic Bronze Age merger is where the Jotnar came from". Not that there might not be a lot of truth to those identifications, just cautious treating them as exhaustive, especially with examples like the Romans and the Sabines, which we have pretty good reason to think is both recent (for the Romans) actual history as well as a mythic echo of whatever led most PIE folks to have myths of warring tribes of divine beings that came together to some degree.

B1.3) Hmmm, you know, I think you might be right that none are presented as "just Vanir" in the implied "end state" of the myths we have - instead, there are parts of some of the stories where they are explicitly called out as Vanir at that point in time (like Frey, Freyja, and Njord). A metaphor that came to mind as I was thinking this over while getting my daughter's lunch ready for tomorrow is that "Vanir" might be best thought of as something like "one side of a large extended family". So, like, everyone is all married/adopted/otherwise accepted into the Aesir family, but everyone knows what "that side of the family" is like. This also hits on the wider idea that I'm pretty sure our modern brains must handle categories differently than ancient Germanish folks did - I mean, Frey was a Vanir, an Aesir, an Alf, a human baby that grew up to be a king and then went away again over the sea, and so forth. That ties us in knots (me, at least, with my Gygaxian desire to taxonimize the supernatural). I don't have a good answer of what the right way to handle this is, other than as good themes for meditation!

B1.4) Yeah, mostly Dolmen Arch, but keeping my toe dipped in the Druid Magic Handbook waters. My current default meditation schedule is 3 days of Dolmen Arch themes (I'm hopefully wrapping up the second grade next week), one day of scrying (currently working through the Ogham), then three days of meditating on the scrying. If something really makes me go "whoah" or if I have a crazy dream or a divination that needs more attention, I'll skip one or more days of the Dolmen Arch work and pick up where I left off. One of the things I've realized is an important lesson for me to learn from JMG is "pick a system, do it start to finish no matter what" - so I'm keeping up with as much of DMH as I can safely with a baby and a small child until they're old enough, and then I'll do the more advanced stuff. In the meantime, the Dolmen Arch is something that didn't initially appeal to me all that much, but I have been finding super rewarding (my take on Revival Druidry in general has undergone a pretty big transformation from something like "that's silly, why would anyone do that?" to "Yeah, well, I guess I'm on my way to being a druid now, whatever else I might be or become".

B1.5) On Maria Kvilhaug - Yeah, Seed of Yggdrasil is, um, daunting. On the other hand, the bits and pieces I have dipped into have been fascinating. Idhunn in Poetry and Myth was likewise fascinating, but also insanely frustrating because it's literally a transcription of some video lectures she gave, and those are not as logically organized as I would prefer a book to be. She seems to go a bit farther than I would in treating the Gods as metaphors for elements of human consciousness/souls (and maybe as only that?), but her takes make for great meditation fodder. As I think someone on a Magic Monday put it, her translations of every single Old Norse name discussed to its literal meaning is worth the price of admission alone.

C) On JBP's take:

C1) "The parts of the material world that draw you to worldly wealth and power are Bad Masculine, the parts that draw you to worldly pleasures are Bad Feminine" IMO: compatible with Greek philosophy, but not Indo-European religions closer to the original. What do you think? - I agree that that particular mapping is more heavily Greek/Christian, and less fitting with what we know of other IE religions, but that all still have both Good and Bad Masculines and Feminines. Thjazi would be an example of the bad masculine in a more "brute force" way, the various female trolls are more about messing you up than tempting you into sin, and so forth.

C2) "the Devil is Bad Individual. Basically, the Devil looks at the Feminine and Masculine, sees only the bad, rejects the Good, and says "F*** it, I'll do it myself"." - Huh, very interesting. I might be biased due to thinking it describes me ... Well, Peterson's whole re-making of Solzhenitsyn's point that the line of good and evil runs down every human heart is in part that this describes (at least part) of everybody. The good side of the individual sees the Bad and asks "how can I bring some of the Good into the world to heal it/make it better." It's the degree to which the individual over-estimates himself and under-estimates the goodness outside of him that he shows the evil side of the archetype.

C3) "very tendency to fall in love with your own creations and elevate them above Being" - Similarly to your comment below: I don't think this describes his own Bad Feminine (arguably not even the Bad Masculine, just the Bad Individual, who apparently tries to be a rejecter of the other 2 Bads).

That's correct as I understand it. The Bad Masculine's failure mode is trying to control everything to the point that it is sterile, dead, and/or crushed. The Bad Feminine's failure mode is to devour, break, smother, or absorb everything. As the mediator between the two (order and chaos), the Individual is showing the Good archetype to the degree he recognizes the power, importance, and necessity of the two forces he's balancing. He shows the bad archetype to the degree he sees himself as the imporant, powerful, necessary part, and the other two forces as mere tools/servants/enemies.

C4) (Heh) "it's an especially Faustian conception of evil" - Just to make sure: you mean this evil has Faustian characteristics, not at all that it's what a Faustian would consider evil, right?

Ah, here, my attempt at brevity left out some nuance I was trying to convey. I think that Milton's Satan, the most fully developed presentation of the "character" is both super-Faustian in the sense of "only Faustian culture would make this kind of bad guy this sympathetic" as well as "only Faustian culture would push this kind of evil this far this 'effectively'." Another way to maybe put it: Milton was Christian and spiritual enough to recognize that Satan was fundamentally wrong in a way that turned everything he did toward evil, but he was Faustian enough to reeeeaaaalllly sympathize and not be entirely happy with his conclusions (that's my read anyway, as far as I know, Peterson doesn't know Spengler). I think the nature of how members of Faustian culture regard this kind of evil is a bit funky - after WWII and some of the other horrors of the 20th century, most Faustians have grudingly accepted that "we can go too far," but they/we just can't quite accept that the problem was in the trying to go as far as possible, rather than in the choice of which compass bearing to follow.

C5) "I think that the view complements Peterson's analysis of the Devil." - Do you mean in the sense of Loki being someone who wanted to make a better order?

Okay, so, here, I think I need to clarify a few things before going further: 1) When I first came up with this line of thinking, I was deep into Peterson's neo-Jungian interpretation of things as I've presented in very rough form above, 2) I also thought that all of these archetypes were basically extremely deep and subtle evolutionary psychology, rather than stories about external spiritual Beings with agency outside of how they influence human behavior, and 3) I was pretty sure that Loki was evil, if you had to make one judgment over the entire body of the myths.

These days, I still find Peterson's archetypal framework helpful for providing insights, but I think it risks missing subtleties, especially since myths are almost by definition about more than one thing all at once, I do believe the myths are about actual external spiritual Beings, and I still lean toward Loki as mostly evil (I don't pray to Loki or make any offerings), but I have more sympathy for folks who see Him as a positive figure and point to the good things that come from his actions (even "leads the armies of Hell against the rulers of the Cosmos" results in "rebirth and possibly new golden age" in Ragnarok!)

So, what I meant when I said I thought the view of Loki was complementary was that if you accept Peterson's analysis that "Luciferian evil" is pride in your own ability to understand things, fix things, command things, and a rejection of the helpful stabilizing of the Good Masculine and the rejuvenation of the Good Feminine, then I think Loki gives you further insight into what Luciferian evil is like, especially how it grows and develops from more-or-less on the side of Good to full-on "Enemy of Existence". With Lucifer/Satan, we don't really get much about what him being God's favorite and highest angel was like - what did he do that was helpful? how was he different from other angels? what problems did he solve? The fact of his rebellion is presented as this one, singular thing, and everything else comes from there (maybe Milton gives us more of that than I remember, I haven't read Paradise Lost since high school, and I was a slacker who didn't give it the attention it deserved). Loki, on the other hand, we get to see maybe from the very beginning (if you buy that Ljodhurr is a hypostasis of Loki) helping Odin and Thor on their world-defining quests, then you see Him do some stuff that screws up, but that He fixes, then you see Him go too far and become a full-on "Enemy of Existence" (again, apparently). Maybe this is all an over-long way of saying "I think if you meditated on myths involving Loki with Peterson's understanding of evil in mind, or vice versa, you'd get some good insights."

C6) "Well, for one, the Highest God is bros with this evil! They have a lot in common." - Undoubtedly they have much in common, but "are" they still bros? If those myths should be understood as representing cycles, maybe they should be seen as sometimes bros and sometimes not?

Indeed! The idea of "mythic time" is a tricky one, especially when it comes to Germanish myths, because there seem to be so many stories where things "were done" or "will happen" - they confuse with explicit chronology, while still almost certainly demanding to be understood outside of day-to-day concepts of how time works. I don't know that I had considered the idea of Loki and Odin's relationship as representative of cycles, but that's worthy of some meditation, I think. My current working approach to trying to understand mythic time in the Germanish myths is that the stories are told chronologically/narratively, because that's how we experience events, but the whole breadth of any one story, and especially multiple stories about the same God, are meant to convey a sense of "character", and when it comes to multiple Gods, of the relationships between them. Like, if you met me and my wife today, the sense you got of our relationship would be informed not only by how we met, but also by what our wedding was like, the fights we've had, the trips we've been on, the jobs we've worked, the times we've helped each other when we were sick, raising kids together, and so on. All of that is baked into what our dynamic is like, but the only way I could try to communicate it to you would be to pull out stories that illustrate those contributing factors and tell you as many of them as I could - because focusing just on that one fight we had would give no more an accurate picture than would focusing on just the way we met. In myth, since the relationships we're talking about are through spiritual/divine/cosmic beings, it would make good sense if they included cyclical elements.

C7) "steals stuff to deprive the world of it (Luciferian!)" - Is Satan actually like that? Leaving aside a possible interpretation in which he's faithful to Yahweh, if the serpent was Satan, didn't it/he want to make stuff available? (You read "The Tower", so you know what I mean.)

Yeah, as theologically necessary as "Satan is just doing the job Yahweh gave him" might be, I agree that almost no one in the Faustian west ever thinks of him like that. As for the role Satan/the Serpent is playing in Eden, it gets hard to say what his motivation was. Even if you accept Hotel Concierge's interpretation that God's reaction was one of fear, a punishment to prevent humans becoming too much like him, and even if you accept the (maybe?) implication that humans could have done so/maybe will do so and that might be a good thing, is that because the Serpent wants humans to have those things, or because he wants to spite God? The Miltonian version is that he's trying to screw up God's new favorite thing, humanity, as an act of spite and rebellion. When it comes to the Garden of Eden myth, I'm even more indebted to Peterson than in other areas, as he's devoted a lot of time and attention to it - his Genesis lectures went a long way to convincing me that there was something worthwhile in the Old Testament, whether you literally believed in Yahweh or not. Those lectures are rather hard to pick and choose from, and I found much easier to jump into after digesting his Maps of Meaning lectures/the book (I tried starting with those in the first place, and that was a mistake). Briefly, the key insight I got from him is that a lot of what seems arbitrary or perplexing about the Old Testament Yahweh, what makes him seem tyrannical or what have you, makes a lot more sense if you think of that figure as the ancient Hebrew's best attempt at conceptualizing of "this is just what the world is like" and then thinking about how to deal with that fact.

[deketemoisont]

B1.2) "I'm wary of overly-neat identifications like "the Danube-merger is where the Vanir came from, and the Nordic Bronze Age merger is where the Jotnar came from"." - Yes, even though I might be willing to believe that Germanic history only involved 2 major absorptions, I wouldn't even then try to assign to each a myth.

B1.3) "This also hits on the wider idea that I'm pretty sure our modern brains must handle categories differently than ancient Germanish folks did" - In Freyr's case, Van and Ás is relatively straightforward, and I - not knowing the "human baby" myth - don't think he was considered a human by the same people at the same time? (Like the Welsh and Irish deities demoted by Christian chroniclers? And just maybe, he *was* a human before being declared divine?)

B1.4) "my take on Revival Druidry in general has undergone a pretty big transformation from something like "that's silly, why would anyone do that?" to "Yeah, well, I guess I'm on my way to being a druid now, whatever else I might be or become"." - At the first point, you had a Germanic polytheism interest, but considered Revival Druidry silly?

B1.5) If Seed of Yggdrasil is the better-organized one ...

C2) "It's the degree to which the individual over-estimates himself and under-estimates the goodness outside of him that he shows the evil side of the archetype." - While I'm sure this is whhat JBP meant, I'd read something rather more specific - I, as a supposedly-recovering biophobe, have had a tendency to look at *gender characteristics* and only see negatives.

C4) "they/we just can't quite accept that the problem was in the trying to go as far as possible, rather than in the choice of which compass bearing to follow." - I think in this there's a difference between the nominal and factual: nominally, Western intellectuals have adopted ideologies calling for *not* trying to control things (see things like "Third-Worldism" or James C. Scott's works), but the generally seen in practice has invoved charging as aggressively as possible in different directions from the previous, yes.

C5) "(even "leads the armies of Hell against the rulers of the Cosmos" results in "rebirth and possibly new golden age" in Ragnarok!)" - I think you're quoting an argument by Violet Cabra I read as well; if yes I don't buy it, based on what I said about (what I think was) the opinion on jötnar: they're part of the cosmos, and can be useful to (say) humans, *as long as they aren't making a lot of decisions* so worshipping them's right out. (That said, of course, even if I'm correct about the historical opinion, that in itself places no restriction on current practictioners.)

"I think if you meditated on myths involving Loki with Peterson's understanding of evil in mind, or vice versa, you'd get some good insights." - Seems certain. For now I'll say that when JBP talked about reason unmoored from anything else, he used Set as an example, and the Temple of Set regards Set as precisely the cosmic principle of consciousness (that said, the Temple does value non-rational phenomena, as I understand)! (And I might need to listen to the first 4 JBP podcast episodes again - I'd been sleepy for quite some time in the bus ...)

C7) "I agree that almost no one in the Faustian west ever thinks of him like that." - Apparently not even non-Western Jews! (I'd thought that was Judaism's main/most formal opinion, but tried to check before writing the previous comment, and it seems neither religious Jews in general nor Cabalists do.)

"Even if you accept Hotel Concierge's interpretation that God's reaction was one of fear" - Absent horrendous translation error, I don't know how one can think anything else! (Also, see "they had iron chariots".)

"or because he wants to spite God?" - Well, is it established that that would be wrong? :)

"The Miltonian version is that he's trying to screw up God's new favorite thing, humanity" - Well, sure, but do you just trust his enemy? :) (Less facetiously: yeah, that's the version we have, mostly, and it does correspond to the comparison you made between Ódhinn and Loki, which had been your point.)

"his Genesis lectures went a long way to convincing me that there was something worthwhile in the Old Testament" - While I don't disagree with that in the meaning I think you intend, I'm actually pretty favorably predisposed these days towards it as historiographically relevant (the tragicomical angle being http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=6791&IBLOCK_ID=35 )!

"Maps of Meaning lectures/the book (I tried starting with those in the first place, and that was a mistake)" - If the huge book is the more accessible version ...

"Briefly, the key insight I got from him is that a lot of what seems arbitrary or perplexing about the Old Testament Yahweh, what makes him seem tyrannical or what have you, makes a lot more sense if you think of that figure as the ancient Hebrew's best attempt at conceptualizing of "this is just what the world is like" and then thinking about how to deal with that fact." - That has merit for considerations in our time and may help explain later Judaism (which, like later Christianity, I might say involves rationalization before growing discomfort with certain parts of the books), but I think it smuggles in a real monotheism which I think didn't exist while at least part of the "Old Testament" formed. (Before, "the specific deity they worshipped is an unmitigated borehole [by *our* standards, notice]" seems ... pretty normal to me.)

[jprussell]

B1.3) In Freyr's case, Van and Ás is relatively straightforward, and I - not knowing the "human baby" myth - don't think he was considered a human by the same people at the same time? (Like the Welsh and Irish deities demoted by Christian chroniclers? And just maybe, he *was* a human before being declared divine?)

So, it's not 100% agreed that Scyld Scefing = Freyr, and I'm blanking a bit on where that equation is argued clearly (modern practitioner books have a bad habit of just presenting conclusions/interpretations without enough "showing your work"). Further complicating matters is exactly the issue you bring up, because I think Scyld Scefing is mostly spoken of in sources written down by Christians (like Beowulf and Saxo Grammaticus), but Freyr also maybe had some associations with human ancestor cult. All of which is to say "deified human", "being with both divine and human characteristics in different stories/places/times", and "euhemerized God" are amongst the possible explanations that would be reasonable.

B1.4) At the first point, you had a Germanic polytheism interest, but considered Revival Druidry silly?

So, it went kind of like this: when, via ESR, I started playing around with the idea that magic/religion might "work" without being "really real" (the all-in-my-head materialism I mentioned before), the arguments of strict reconstructionists made sense to me: if we're trying to get a procedure to work that we don't really understand, our best bet is to copy as best as we can what folks did who did seem to get it to work. Looking back, I also think I found the "authenticity" of trying to "get it right" emotionally satisfying as a substitute for belief/personal experience of the "there there". Also, ESR recommended Isaac Bonewitts, and I was likely influenced by his disdain for "mesopagans" (his term for revivalists prior to the late 20th century Neopagan movement). So, I saw Revival Druidry as something new, made-up, and not even "real Druidry". JMG's arguments that "it works" trumps authenticity, combined with his example led me to soften on Revival Druidry, but I still wasn't drawn to it. His credibility eventually got me to try daily magical practice as a test of the hypothesis "what happens if I do these things and try really hard to be open to the possibility it's not just in my head", but I didn't start with Druid practices (originally the Heathen LBRP, meditating on the Eddas, and a three-rune draw). After having a spiritual experience a few weeks in, I started taking things mighty seriously indeed, and prayer, meditation, and divination led me to the belief that the balance of the telluric and solar currents in the SOP was more what I needed, and that sucking it up and doing "not what I would pick for my special snowflake self" was actually an important part of it. So I started the Druid Magic Handbook kind of like "okay, I'll do this for a while, but it's not where my real spiritual home will be long term", but I've found more and more to like about Revival Druidry from the inside, and have found it more compatible with my developing understanding of what Heathenry means to me than I expected.

B1.5) If Seed of Yggdrasil is the better-organized one ...

Yes, exactly. Exactly.

C2) While I'm sure this is whhat JBP meant, I'd read something rather more specific - I, as a supposedly-recovering biophobe, have had a tendency to look at *gender characteristics* and only see negatives.

Ah, okay, I see what you mean now.

C4) - I think in this there's a difference between the nominal and factual: nominally, Western intellectuals have adopted ideologies calling for *not* trying to control things (see things like "Third-Worldism" or James C. Scott's works), but the generally seen in practice has invoved charging as aggressively as possible in different directions from the previous, yes.

Yeah, exactly. Take my old favorite anarcho-capitalist libertarianism: "Wait, sometimes giving up top-down control and letting individuals work things out themselves leads to better outcomes and more freedom? Better get rid of ALL top-down control and let individuals work out EVERYTHING between themselves." Even when your school of thought is about the superiority of emergent complexity over individual rational understanding, you/we have to push it as far as it can be imagined going.

C5) I think you're quoting an argument by Violet Cabra I read as well; if yes I don't buy it, based on what I said about (what I think was) the opinion on jötnar: they're part of the cosmos, and can be useful to (say) humans, *as long as they aren't making a lot of decisions* so worshipping them's right out. (That said, of course, even if I'm correct about the historical opinion, that in itself places no restriction on current practictioners.)

Ah, okay, I'm not actually sure where I would point specifically for that way of thinking/interpretation - I associate pro-Loki/pro-Jotnar worship with Raven Kaldera and friends (it's unclear to me if Galina Krasskova worships these beings, or is just willing to work with folks who do). I think that Ocean Keltoi on youtube has at least tried to share the point of view sympathetically. For my part, my read of historical practice is that I don't think Loki or the Jotnar were worshipped (maybe occasionally placated?), and for a while, for the reasons I mentioned above, that led to me not even considering it as a valid form of practice. Now, I'm much more open to the idea of non-historical forms of practice, but I'm still not convinced worship of Loki or the Jotnar is a good idea, in part because of comments like JMG's that all the Loki worshippers he's met have been jerks, and also because I am not at all happy with my understanding of what's going on with either Loki or the jotnar in myth. So my current take is to be respectful, but not to call on those Beings.

C5.1) Seems certain. For now I'll say that when JBP talked about reason unmoored from anything else, he used Set as an example, and the Temple of Set regards Set as precisely the cosmic principle of consciousness (that said, the Temple does value non-rational phenomena, as I understand)! (And I might need to listen to the first 4 JBP podcast episodes again - I'd been sleepy for quite some time in the bus ...)

Yeah, JBP's reading of the core Osiris myth (killed by Set, put back together by Isis, fathers Horus who avenges/revives Him) seems like to really fit JBP's model. . . but I don't know Egyptian myth in enough detail to know if he's glossing over things, interpreting them to fit his framework, or what. If by "consciousnes" we mean "awareness", as in "the ability to pay attention to things", JBP associates that with Horus. But, of course, "consciousness" is one of those tricky words.

C7) Apparently not even non-Western Jews! (I'd thought that was Judaism's main/most formal opinion, but tried to check before writing the previous comment, and it seems neither religious Jews in general nor Cabalists do.)

Huh, I didn't know that either. Interesting.

C7.1) " Absent horrendous translation error, I don't know how one can think anything else! (Also, see "they had iron chariots".)

I'm not saying I necessarily buy this, of course, but a potential reading would be the Snowcrash explanation: monoculture is overly susceptible to memetic infection, and so it was actually better for mankind to be scattered. Alternatively, the thought that getting everything you purpose, having nothing withheld, might be bad for you. But then, I also tend to feel like the motives attributed to Yahweh in the Old Testament are often weaker than symbolic/archetypal readings often get you.

C7.2) Well, is it established that that would be wrong? :)

Well, not necessarily, but the JBP answer would be that even if Yahweh deserves it, spite as a motivation is poisonous and bad for you, but it's addictive.


C7.4) While I don't disagree with that in the meaning I think you intend, I'm actually pretty favorably predisposed these days towards it as historiographically relevant (the tragicomical angle being http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=6791&IBLOCK_ID=35 )!

Yeah, ever since I read about Schliemann finding Troy by a careful reading of the Iliad and the discovery of the Tel Dan stela, I've felt like Western civilization over-corrected from a naive reading of the Bible/Homer/other legends as 100% accurate history, and my default position is that if folks went to a lot of effort to write things down that they thought were super important, they likely got more of it right than we might think.

C7.5) If the huge book is the more accessible version ...

Again, yeeeaaaahhh. In the book's defense, every chapter is divided into sections, and every chapter/section has a brief summary of the points being made within that chapter/section, so despite being massive and complex, it makes good use of organizational/layout tools to help understanding.

C7.6) That has merit for considerations in our time and may help explain later Judaism (which, like later Christianity, I might say involves rationalization before growing discomfort with certain parts of the books), but I think it smuggles in a real monotheism which I think didn't exist while at least part of the "Old Testament" formed. (Before, "the specific deity they worshipped is an unmitigated borehole [by *our* standards, notice]" seems ... pretty normal to me.)

So, this actually brings up an interesting point that's been lurking behind a lot of the discussion of Peterson's analysis - despite his opposition to some of its political manifestations, he is firmly a believer in the myth of Progress, and it pushes a lot of his analysis in a more linear, teleologial direction than maybe it should. So, he looks at the likely historical henotheism of the folks who wrote/told the first bits of the Bible (or maybe outright polytheism for the reeeaaallly old bits) as a stepping stone on the way to a more sophisticated monotheism. He sees the development of myth and worship from polytheism (lots of separate little hierarchies of value) as leading conceptually to henotheism (yeah, all these different hierarchies of value exist, but unites them?) to monotheism (okay, okay, so what's the real highest-highest value). His (probable?) commitment to materialism makes him frame all this in psychological terms, and he doesn't have any more exciting/nuanced metaphysical explanations available to him(like Neoplatonism's carefully-worked-out, complex monism).

On the plus side, I think the habit of looking at such a weird, messy book as the Bible (or any other collection of myth) and approaching it as "whatever's in here is actually good, or at least a lesson about the good, no matter how much it looks like it's not" can lead to some really interesting and non-obvious insights (see for example JBP's take on how the flood-as-mankind's-fault gives insights into how the damage caused by real floods can at-least-kinda be our fault). The obvious danger here, of course, is becoming overly literalistic and dogmatic, and not looking for truth and wisdom anywhere else.

D) Maybe at this point I ought to just write a post on Peterson and how he's influenced my thinking about myth and we can take the discussion over there!

[deketemoisont]

B1.3) "All of which is to say "deified human", "being with both divine and human characteristics in different stories/places/times", and "euhemerized God" are amongst the possible explanations that would be reasonable." - One may think Freyr was a human promoted by polytheists and "demoted" by Christians.

C5) "(it's unclear to me if Galina Krasskova worships these beings, or is just willing to work with folks who do)" - https://www.northernpaganism.org/shrines/loki/writings-for-loki/a-prayer-to-loki.html

"(maybe occasionally placated?)" - Correct me if I'm wrong: people don't seem to have found evidence of that, even though it seems to make sense, right?

C5.1) "If by "consciousness" we mean "awareness", as in "the ability to pay attention to things", JBP associates that with Horus. But, of course, "consciousness" is one of those tricky words." - Yeah - I think the meaning's core for Setians is "individuality".

C7.1) "But then, I also tend to feel like the motives attributed to Yahweh in the Old Testament are often weaker than symbolic/archetypal readings often get you." - I'm not saying this is wrong, but see "later rationalizations".

C7.6) "despite his opposition to some of its political manifestations, he is firmly a believer in the myth of Progress" - I think he self-describes as classical Liberal, and thus a rather unsubtle Progressive/modernist who objects to the "post-" part (and even then, even I might think original postmodernism was worth paying attention to, and what has no upside at all is "vulgar postmodernism").

D) I didn't mean to make work for you, but you *did* boast you'd write 52 articles this year ... :D

[jprussell]

B1.3) One may think Freyr was a human promoted by polytheists and "demoted" by Christians.

Indeed! Also, much like Freyja, since their "names" just mean "Lord" and "Lady", there's the further possibility that initially distinct figures got merged/conflated/confused at various points.

C5) https://www.northernpaganism.org/shrines/loki/writings-for-loki/a-prayer-to-loki.html

Thanks for this, I likely ought to have put it together. I suspected she did, but she's even-handed enough in most of her writing to acknowledge folks who don't and what their reasons are without obviously putting them down or calling them wrong. That prayer makes me slightly uncomfortable from a JMG-inspired "get consent for folks you pray for" standpoint.

Correct me if I'm wrong: people don't seem to have found evidence of that, even though it seems to make sense, right?

As far as I know, that's correct, and that's certainly what I was implying. I've been meaning to take another look at comparative evidence from other religions to get a feel for what (if any) worship was given to Beings treated negatively in myths. Of particular interest would be looking at Hades or similar figures from other mythologies to get a handle on whether Hel ought to be worshipped. She's an unusual case in the myths, and the arguments for why to worship her make a certain amount of sense to me, and the arguments for why not worshipping her may be due to a Christian-derived bias are also plausible, but I haven't dug into it enough to have a sense, so for now, I don't actively worship Her, but I also try to be respectful.

C5.1) Yeah - I think the meaning's core for Setians is "individuality".

Ah, okay, then yeah, my understanding of JBP's take would be that he is, indeed, an archetype of individuality, but of all the bad side of individuality, with Horus as the good side (and with both together a full representation of what any given human individual is actually like).

C7.1) I'm not saying this is wrong, but see "later rationalizations".

Indeed. I suppose for myself I'm not quite sure how to handle the alternatives between 1) the idea that myths were inchoate, partially formed intuitions about those later rationalizations versus 2) the idea that myths can mean a lot of things and maybe those rationalizations are one of those things, but they're not exhaustive, versus 3) those rationalizations are the product of different thoughts and a different age that have little to do with what the myths/early stories/early practice meant to the folks telling/doing them. It seems to me like Option 1 (of which JBP is a big fan, via Jung) might often be plausible, but also like applying it universally only makes sense if you believe in Progress.

C7.6) I think he self-describes as classical Liberal, and thus a rather unsubtle Progressive/modernist who objects to the "post-" part (and even then, even I might think original postmodernism was worth paying attention to, and what has no upside at all is "vulgar postmodernism").

Yeah, I think that's fair. I get the impression he has sometimes bumped into the borders of why this worldview might be missing some important stuff, or be mistaken in certain ways, but he still seems pretty committed to it.

D) I didn't mean to make work for you, but you *did* boast you'd write 52 articles this year ... :D

Fair enough!

[deketemoisont]

C5) "Thanks for this, I likely ought to have put it together. I suspected she did, but she's even-handed enough in most of her writing to acknowledge folks who don't and what their reasons are without obviously putting them down or calling them wrong." - I *have* thought she's more reasonable than Raven Kaldera - but ... faint praise even if true?

"That prayer makes me slightly uncomfortable from a JMG-inspired "get consent for folks you pray for" standpoint." - Well, YES, but if you worship Loki, how's the Lokasenna not gonna be involved?

Note also that Kaldera/Krasskova's ideas about deities in general *right now* don't involve a whole lot of concern for human consent about them:

"At the same time: where I work, what I do, where I live, whether or not I can have any particular partner, sometimes what I eat and drink and wear are all dictated to me. How much sleep I get, and what friends I may have are impacted by Odin’s ownership of me." - Galina Krasskova, http://kenazfilan.blogspot.com/2010/08/filan-and-krasskova-on-ordeals-and-god.html .

(Can I say about someone *absurdly* more experienced than I: she's doing *Odin* worship quite wrongly?)

"She's an unusual case in the myths, and the arguments for why to worship her make a certain amount of sense to me, and the arguments for why not worshipping her may be due to a Christian-derived bias are also plausible, but I haven't dug into it enough to have a sense, so for now, I don't actively worship Her, but I also try to be respectful." - Although it's been said her dead subjects will fight the Aesir's, I have similar inclinations - for one, I don't have a source on hand, but I've read arguments I considered convincing that the Germanic afterlife was distorted into Valhalla-centrism and that goind to Helheim originally wasn't supposed to be considered unfortunate; and you might want to consider https://lyricstranslate.com/en/therion-helheim-lyrics.html (if you don't know it already - but in any case you have heard about Thomas Karlsson already, right?).

C7.1) "but also like applying it universally only makes sense if you believe in Progress." - Possibly, but I'm sure I still have Progressive thought in my mind, and it makes me think we aren't a whole lot like the people that wrote this stuff, therefore JBP's putting a *lot* of himself and his much more recent influences into it (with admittedly pretty interesting results?).

C7.6) "he still seems pretty committed to it." - Might there be things he thinks he can't say? But, I dunno, he actually seems fairly transparent to me? (And has been argued to have become a trans-parent to many people?)

[jprussell]

C5) I *have* thought she's more reasonable than Raven Kaldera - but ... faint praise even if true?

Quite.

Well, YES, but if you worship Loki, how's the Lokasenna not gonna be involved?

Yeah, I suppose that's somewhat begging the question to be like "wow, the fact that you worship Loki in exactly the way I'm uncomfortable with makes me uncomfortable about the idea of worshipping Loki."

Note also that Kaldera/Krasskova's ideas about deities in general *right now* don't involve a whole lot of concern for human consent about them:

"At the same time: where I work, what I do, where I live, whether or not I can have any particular partner, sometimes what I eat and drink and wear are all dictated to me. How much sleep I get, and what friends I may have are impacted by Odin’s ownership of me." - Galina Krasskova, http://kenazfilan.blogspot.com/2010/08/filan-and-krasskova-on-ordeals-and-god.html .

Ooooooh yeah, now that you link it, I think I read that piece a while back when someone else from the Ecosophia community linked it. It's weird, because I find what she's talking about *incredibly* creepy/gross (though not as gross as Kaldera's practices detailed here: https://archive.ph/TbVMW), but can't *really* fault her reasoning or feel justified in condemning folks for doing something in private by themselves or only with fully-consenting adults. So, I dunno how much is me being a prude (though it sounds like for Krasskova, it's not *exactly* sexual, at least not always), how much I ought to trust my instincts, or what.

(Can I say about someone *absurdly* more experienced than I: she's doing *Odin* worship quite wrongly?)

Well, folks on the Thorsson/Flowers "Odian" end of things, who seek to *emulate* Odin rather than to "worship" Him, would certainly say so. My own experience is consistent with the idea that He expects and demands respect, but also expects you to learn from His example.

[jprussell]

Whoops, forgot to reply to the whole comment!

C5.2) Although it's been said her dead subjects will fight the Aesir's, I have similar inclinations - for one, I don't have a source on hand, but I've read arguments I considered convincing that the Germanic afterlife was distorted into Valhalla-centrism and that goind to Helheim originally wasn't supposed to be considered unfortunate; and you might want to consider https://lyricstranslate.com/en/therion-helheim-lyrics.html (if you don't know it already - but in any case you have heard about Thomas Karlsson already, right?).

Yeah, I also feel like the evidence we have for "Valhalla = end-all, be-all of desirable afterlife" and "Helheim = where gross losers go to suck for eternity" is likely late, skewed, and not a terribly accurate picture of how pre-Christian Heathens, except maybe very late ones, looked at the afterlife. Add in the Western Occultism lens and a belief in reincarnation, and things get even messier. For what it's worth, in The One-Eyed God (again!), Kershaw floats the idea that the notion of a feasting hall for the honored dead warriors of the tribe likely originally meant "all adult men", since all adult men would serve as warriors when needed. This belief getting narrowed and made more exclusive would be consistent with the warrior-class becoming more exclusive.

As for Thomas Karlsson, I think maybe someone shared the same link before, but I basically only know what Wikipedia can tell me. Do you feel like his writings (as opposed to his lyrics) are worth checking out?

That song's pretty rad, I'll have to check out at least the rest of the album, if not more Therion. Thanks to "Survive the Jive", I've been enjoying Wolcensmen lately, which is "dark folk", and so not as hard, but still high-quality music made by a practicing Heathen about relevant topics.

C7.1) Possibly, but I'm sure I still have Progressive thought in my mind, and it makes me think we aren't a whole lot like the people that wrote this stuff, therefore JBP's putting a *lot* of himself and his much more recent influences into it (with admittedly pretty interesting results?).

Yeah, that's a fair point. That's one thing JMG has gotten me a lot more comfortable with - it doesn't necessarily matter if what I get out of a myth is the same as what the folks around when it was written down got out of it - what matters is if it puts me in touch with spiritual truths, and since those insights can be guided by separate, conscious Beings, "different but still right" is a valid outcome.

C7.6) Might there be things he thinks he can't say? But, I dunno, he actually seems fairly transparent to me? (And has been argued to have become a trans-parent to many people?)

I don't think it's a matter of him feeling like he can't say things, and more like that as good as he is at following the implications of things out to their uncomfortable conclusions, I think there's a few places he can't/won't see things because his worldview is still pretty fundamentally that of a Western Liberal Materialist Scientist. For example, he sees School of Rome-derived "limits to growth" thinking as inherently anti-human and dangerous. His counter-proposal is to be smarter about spreading the industrial capitalist opportunity around, because historically, richer countries have taken more steps to preserve the environments within their borders than they did when they were poorer (see: reforestation of England, establishment of national parks in US, and so forth). As JMG would be the first to admit, *yes* many "environmentalists" are actually Stalinists or other flavors of control-freaks, and JBP's not wrong to pick up on that, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the idea that we live in a finite world with finite resources and thus the long-term carrying capacity for humans might be far lower than where we are now is wrong. " The opposite of one bad idea. . ." and all that.

And heh, I see what you did there.

[deketemoisont]

"It's weird, because I find what she's talking about *incredibly* creepy/gross (though not as gross as Kaldera's practices detailed here: https://archive.ph/TbVMW), but can't *really* fault her reasoning or feel justified in condemning folks for doing something in private by themselves or only with fully-consenting adults." - Eh, I don't question (taking claims at face value) they have a right to do so, but that doesn't by itself prove they aren't making the world worse - I think "condemning", in this sense, is quite fitting.

"So, I dunno how much is me being a prude (though it sounds like for Krasskova, it's not *exactly* sexual, at least not always), how much I ought to trust my instincts, or what." - I wouldn't classify myself as a prude for having a problem with that; and, well, Kaldera also made a claim about it not being always about sex, but I might say the difference from the guys at National Geographic is that they aren't having sex while doing it (technically, some of the stuff about cultures on National Geographic omits sexual content Westerners would dislike, but well ...).

"My own experience is consistent with the idea that He expects and demands respect, but also expects you to learn from His example." - I don't have any problem with the idea of his demanding respect, but I think he sounds like a pretty non-authoritarian (not to be mistaken for "nice") boss in the myths. (Of course, the culture that worshipped him had slavery, but that's a problem nearly any religion arguably "has" by our standards.)

C5.2) "Add in the Western Occultism lens and a belief in reincarnation, and things get even messier." - Just to make absolutely sure: you know that there's explicit mention of reincarnation in ancient Europe, right? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_Er .)

"The One-Eyed God (again!)" - No complaints here!

"Kershaw floats the idea that the notion of a feasting hall for the honored dead warriors of the tribe likely originally meant "all adult men", since all adult men would serve as warriors when needed." - Makes sense, but I might want to ask about half the population!

"Do you feel like his writings (as opposed to his lyrics) are worth checking out?" - Was wondering about whether you had a better-informed opinion, actually. I read and heard a few interviews with him, but read none of his books. He helped spread Sigurd Agrell's Uthark Theory, which I think has merit, and I think so do some of his LHP interpretations (e.g., if I may just throw another Therion song at you, see The Blood of Pingu - sorry, I mean Kingu; what I mean is, again, "telluric current"); but to me he sounded like "pompous windbag too fixated on a supposed antinomianism and paying too much attention to the lower nature*", i.e. a Thelemite stereotype?

*: note that his people having started from modern Scandinavians, frankly it's possible they need even *more* lower nature than what their LHP training may give them, but I'm definitely not Scandinavian, so even if that's true, I can't assume it relevant for me.

"That song's pretty rad, I'll have to check out at least the rest of the album, if not more Therion." - I'll recommend Secret of the Runes and the 3 subsequent albums; the ones before are less symphonic and the ones after less metal IIRC. (Lyrics-wise, at least some of the albums before are no less well-written occult-wise, though they may be about parts of occultist you'd be (I am) less interested in; I think some of the later ones go away from occultism.)

"Thanks to "Survive the Jive", I've been enjoying Wolcensmen lately, which is "dark folk", and so not as hard, but still high-quality music made by a practicing Heathen about relevant topics." - Bought Fire in the H...wite Stone - thanks! You know, Therion's a fairly well-known metal band that you did hear a bit about before, while, notwithstanding Dan Capp being well-connected enough to have called a bunch of other musicians, I think he's still pretty obscure; so, let me try to repay that - have you heard about Farya Faraji already (I just remembered I hadn't actually bought any of his albums.)? His work isn't mainly about religion, but there are themes from a bunch of religions, some of his YouTube videos debunk wrong impressions about musical history, and you might want to check the songs in Echoes of Byzantium Vol. I (as per the Bandcamp track list), and Thrymskvidha and The Varangians, including his commmentary.

C7.1) "what matters is if it puts me in touch with spiritual truths, and since those insights can be guided by separate, conscious Beings, "different but still right" is a valid outcome." - I might be too Progressive (and maybe secondarily too history-minded) to remember that as often as I should, but it does appear to make sense.

[jprussell]

Eh, I don't question (taking claims at face value) they have a right to do so, but that doesn't by itself prove they aren't making the world worse - I think "condemning", in this sense, is quite fitting.

I wouldn't classify myself as a prude for having a problem with that; and, well, Kaldera also made a claim about it not being always about sex, but I might say the difference from the guys at National Geographic is that they aren't having sex while doing it (technically, some of the stuff about cultures on National Geographic omits sexual content Westerners would dislike, but well ...).

Yeah, I guess I don't have a specific theory of how they're making the world worse with these actions, just a negative gut reaction, and I don't feel like I'm knowledgeable or experienced enough to rely on that gut reaction in this field. It's further complicated by the fact that I've found some of their books rather helpful. Still, it does set off my "by their fruits ye shall know them" alarm to tread carefully.

I don't have any problem with the idea of his demanding respect, but I think he sounds like a pretty non-authoritarian (not to be mistaken for "nice") boss in the myths. (Of course, the culture that worshipped him had slavery, but that's a problem nearly any religion arguably "has" by our standards.)

C5.2) Just to make absolutely sure: you know that there's explicit mention of reincarnation in ancient Europe, right? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_Er .)

Thank you, I did, but embarrassingly enough, I only learned about this about a year ago when I finally got around to reading The Republic in its entirety. I was *shocked* to discover that the most famous work of Western philosophy has a super weird, super detailed discussion of reincarnation for the finale. I was then amused that when I went looking for discussion of it, *every* academic article was like "what weird symbolic point was Plato trying to make here?" and absolutely no one took seriously that maybe he (and/or Socrates) was trying to present what he believed to be accurate information about how the world works that might help you live a better life.

Makes sense, but I might want to ask about half the population!

Indeed! Maybe dead women are too busy being called up by necromancers to prophesize about the future to get a dedicated place to hang out.

Was wondering about whether you had a better-informed opinion, actually. I read and heard a few interviews with him, but read none of his books. He helped spread Sigurd Agrell's Uthark Theory, which I think has merit, and I think so do some of his LHP interpretations (e.g., if I may just throw another Therion song at you, see The Blood of Pingu - sorry, I mean Kingu; what I mean is, again, "telluric current"); but to me he sounded like "pompous windbag too fixated on a supposed antinomianism and paying too much attention to the lower nature*", i.e. a Thelemite stereotype?

Ah, sorry not to have been able to help you out there. More and more it's becoming clear to me that just about every occultist is a mixed bag in some way. The very best you can hope for seems to be "you had your head on straight and did everything right, but you followed a spiritual path that doesn't suit me so well" (like, e.g. Dion Fortune and seemingly JMG).

*: note that his people having started from modern Scandinavians, frankly it's possible they need even *more* lower nature than what their LHP training may give them, but I'm definitely not Scandinavian, so even if that's true, I can't assume it relevant for me.

Heh, yeah, I hadn't exactly considered the cultural element here, but that does make good sense. In my own work, I've gotten the impression that I do indeed need to get more in touch with the Telluric current, but have been consistently getting the lesson "it's not just about sex! calm down and pay attention to what else is going on here."

I'll recommend Secret of the Runes and the 3 subsequent albums; the ones before are less symphonic and the ones after less metal IIRC. (Lyrics-wise, at least some of the albums before are no less well-written occult-wise, though they may be about parts of occultist you'd be (I am) less interested in; I think some of the later ones go away from occultism.)

Thanks much for this.

Bought Fire in the H...wite Stone - thanks! You know, Therion's a fairly well-known metal band that you did hear a bit about before, while, notwithstanding Dan Capp being well-connected enough to have called a bunch of other musicians, I think he's still pretty obscure; so, let me try to repay that - have you heard about Farya Faraji already (I just remembered I hadn't actually bought any of his albums.)? His work isn't mainly about religion, but there are themes from a bunch of religions, some of his YouTube videos debunk wrong impressions about musical history, and you might want to check the songs in Echoes of Byzantium Vol. I (as per the Bandcamp track list), and Thrymskvidha and The Varangians, including his commmentary.

You're welcome, and thanks for this! I had not heard of Faraji, I'm checking out his stuff now. Poking around, I was like "wait, is that the Misirlou I think it is?" and sure enough! I had no idea it originated as a folksong, I only knew the Dick Dale version and its many homages.

C7.1) I might be too Progressive (and maybe secondarily too history-minded) to remember that as often as I should, but it does appear to make sense.

I bring it up at least as much to remind myself as anything else!

[deketemoisont]

Did you mean to reply to

"I don't have any problem with the idea of his demanding respect, but I think he sounds like a pretty non-authoritarian (not to be mistaken for "nice") boss in the myths. (Of course, the culture that worshipped him had slavery, but that's a problem nearly any religion arguably "has" by our standards.)" ?

C5.2) "Thank you, I did, but embarrassingly enough, I only learned about this about a year ago when I finally got around to reading The Republic in its entirety. I was *shocked* to discover that the most famous work of Western philosophy has a super weird, super detailed discussion of reincarnation for the finale. I was then amused that when I went looking for discussion of it, *every* academic article was like "what weird symbolic point was Plato trying to make here?" and absolutely no one took seriously that maybe he (and/or Socrates) was trying to present what he believed to be accurate information about how the world works that might help you live a better life." - Unfortunately, I didn't learn about it long ago either; first heard ancient Europeans believed in reincarnation and thought that was New-Ager projection, then heard about it without that specific source, then that extremely clear source. While most of his work doesn't have a lot to do with the subject, a historian that outright said classical Europeans seem to have believed in reincarnation is Philip Matyszak (didn't read his books; heard him on Radio War Nerd, where he was great).

"Indeed! Maybe dead women are too busy being called up by necromancers to prophesize about the future to get a dedicated place to hang out." - Kek!

"Ah, sorry not to have been able to help you out there." - No problem; enough occultists drew my attention for a long time, and I also need to go back to some non-occult reading!

"The very best you can hope for seems to be "you had your head on straight and did everything right, but you followed a spiritual path that doesn't suit me so well" (like, e.g. Dion Fortune and seemingly JMG)." - I'd have understood you saying this about JMG - until you said you were practicing the Dolmen Arch work!

Just listened to Fire in the White Stone with the proper attention. It's beautiful; that said, between my not-so-great familiarity with older English, poetic sensibility of a stone (if that's not a wholly unjustified insult to the noble race of stones), and having wrongly thought the short story would be within the digital album, I won't pretend to have understood all of it!

[jprussell]

"I don't have any problem with the idea of his demanding respect, but I think he sounds like a pretty non-authoritarian (not to be mistaken for "nice") boss in the myths. (Of course, the culture that worshipped him had slavery, but that's a problem nearly any religion arguably "has" by our standards.)" ?

Ah, sorry, I likely shouldn't have quoted this, as I didn't have anything to add. I agree, Odin seems pretty anti-authoritarian, even in the myths, and yeah, pretty much every agricultural culture for most of history had slavery of one kind or another.

C5.2) Unfortunately, I didn't learn about it long ago either; first heard ancient Europeans believed in reincarnation and thought that was New-Ager projection, then heard about it without that specific source, then that extremely clear source. While most of his work doesn't have a lot to do with the subject, a historian that outright said classical Europeans seem to have believed in reincarnation is Philip Matyszak (didn't read his books; heard him on Radio War Nerd, where he was great).

Thanks for the recommendation, I might have to check him out. There are some kinda-sorta references to at least a limited kind of reincarnation in the Germanic sources. This is one of those areas where I've read a bunch of modern stuff, but I don't yet have a good handle on the source material. I think Davidson's The Road to Hel is gonna be a good source for this.

"Ah, sorry not to have been able to help you out there." - No problem; enough occultists drew my attention for a long time, and I also need to go back to some non-occult reading!

Yeah, it's tough that there's so much to read and so little time. I find the constraint of "I can only meditate on so much" a helpful (if painful) limit on how much occult material to read in a given amount of time.

I'd have understood you saying this about JMG - until you said you were practicing the Dolmen Arch work!

Hah, fair enough! As I mentioned upthread, I have changed my mind somewhat on Revival Druidry as a practice, and I find that a helpful part of what I'm doing, at least for now. Where I part ways with JMG is more around the specifics of the Welsh Druid Gods, who have, at least so far, had no role in my spiritual life. Also, Heathenry is pretty central to my own spiritual practice, and almost entirely absent from JMG's.

Just listened to Fire in the White Stone with the proper attention. It's beautiful; that said, between my not-so-great familiarity with older English, poetic sensibility of a stone (if that's not a wholly unjustified insult to the noble race of stones), and having wrongly thought the short story would be within the digital album, I won't pretend to have understood all of it!

I also wouldn't go so far as to say I understand it, especially since it apparently is largely based on personal spiritual experience. I haven't read/listened to the Novella yet, but maybe I should. I also rather like the other Album and the EP (Songs from the Fyrgen and Songs from the Mere). I especially find "Sunne" (the theme for "Survive the Jive") useful - I try to sing the chorus from it when I first see the risen sun and have some privacy, and it makes for a good praise song/prayer.