ecosophia | The Heathen Golden Dawn -- a Request

I think most of my readers know at this point that longtime reader Sven Eriksen and I are hard at work on a system of Golden Dawn magic designed for Heathens, building on the Heathen Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram presented in an earlier post on this journal. That's well under way at this point; the Heathen equivalent of the Middle Pillar exercise will be posted here next week, and a book on the subject -- working title Gullna Dagrenning: The Heathen Golden Dawn -- is in the works as well. The goal of the project is to give Heathens who want to practice ceremonial magic a tested, powerful system of self-initiation into a version of Golden Dawn magic that calls on the powers of the Aesir and Vanir rather than the Judeo-Christian names of God, and relies entirely on Heathen symbolism.

The basics are already solidly in place. Obviously the magical rituals and the meditations will be reworked to invoke Heathen powers and use Heathen symbolism; just as obviously, the runes will be the basic symbolic alphabet and the core divination system. The one question we've got -- and here's something where my Heathen readers can help us out if they're willing -- is what else belongs in the mix.

In the Hermetic GD, the "what else" included a lot of astrology and alchemical symbolism, as well as the Tarot. In the Druidical GD -- the system presented in my book The Celtic Golden Dawn -- the "what else" included herbal alchemy, sacred geometry, and medicinal herbalism, since these are all things that have been part of the Druid Revival tradition since its early days. The question in our minds is what the "what else" should be for the Heathen Golden Dawn. There'll be rune lore, more rune lore, and still more rune lore -- oh, and did we mention rune lore? ;-) -- but what else should a Heathen ceremonial magician study in the course of his or her self-initiation? Your suggestions are welcome.

Oh, and one other thing. Our best guess as to how to say "Golden Dawn" in Old Icelandic is Gullna Dagrenning. If any of my readers know their way around that language, and can either confirm that for us or correct it, we'd be most grateful.

Many thanks for your help!

Current Mood: enthusiastic
Current Location: somewhere in Midgard

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From: (Anonymous)

Study:
- The poetic Edda and prose Edda including the old Norse, as English translations often miss the important bits

- Fairy tales, unbowdlerized, eg. as per 1812 Brothers Grimm and French, English and Scandinavian equivalents. They have deep heathen roots.

Deeds to build Hamingja:
- Museum visits, pilgrimage to Heathen sacred sites, pilgrimage to graves of your own ancestors, handling of artifacts, preferably authentic, but replica if that is not possible. The adept will be the wanderer.

- A practical skill, such as naalbinding, lucet, brewing, green woodworking, or metalwork-jewellery

- A martial element, eg HEMA

- A healing art, eg herbalism

- Anonymous acts of kindness, goodwill and charity, done individually and physically (real deeds, not money to 'charities').

From:

ecosophia

Hmm. You can't learn martial arts out of a book -- trust me, it's been tried, by me in my callow days among many others -- and some of these seem to me to be more appropriate to a general guide to Heathen spirituality than to a handbook for training Heathen ceremonial magicians. Still, thank you, and we'll consider them.

From: (Anonymous)

How did the fellows who followed your Academy of the Sword do it? Were they already skilled at some form of fencing and built on top of that?

I am quite curious about the reconstruction of HEMAs in general -- it seems like at the beginning, a lot was dependent on participants' prior knowledge of "living" martial arts, such as Pankration dependinh on Judo/Jujutsu?

From:

ecosophia

Everyone I know who's taken up Thibault's system either had a background in some other combat art or learned from someone who did. As for the revival of historical martial arts, that's my understanding as well; you have to have a background in some kind of combat art already to make it work. Fortunately there are a lot of living combat arts, and now that the European martial arts have been well and truly revived, there are some first-rate teachers and practitioners that people can study with.

From:

ritaer

I was surprised to find that Sacramento CA has a group that teaches German long sword. (Sacramento Freifechter) Having read some of your explanations of the role of geometry in Renaissance swordsmanship I was pleased to see one of the instructors explaining how the angle of the sword affects the area that is being defended. Anyhow, there are many European heritage groups in different parts of the US and they are probably a good place to look for language instruction, folk dance and other traditional activities from Northern Europe that a student might want to incorporate into their practice.

Rita

From:

ecosophia

Very true, but that's not something Sven and I can put into a book -- well, other than offering a suggestion to those who are interested.

From: (Anonymous)

Hi JMG and Sven,

I’m certain that a healthy Heathen is most likely a happy Heathen.

With that in mind, a section on Heathen medicinal herbalism seems a fine idea.

Hmmm. Perhaps a mead recipe or three? Instructions on preparing traditional offerings, updated for the present time?

Appreciatively,
OtterGirl

From:

ecosophia

I'd considered herbalism, not least because there's a fair amount of lore from the Old English end of things, so it's interesting to see that popping up in the first two comments here. As for the others, thank you; we'll consider them.

From: (Anonymous)

I think there needs to be some kind of ceremonial framework specifically for interacting with ancestor spirits included.

From:

ecosophia

Since it's Golden Dawn-based, there'll be ample raw material for working with spirits of various kinds. If I may ask, why do you consider ancestral spirits particularly relevant for a Heathen ceremonial magician?

From: (Anonymous)

Ancestor veneration is as big a piece of the puzzle in Heathenism as it is in Shinto. It makes sense to me that a Heathen ceremonial magician would have a big toolkit for relating to the Alfar and Disir. Also, your ancestors are a big part of your Hamingja, which is also related to reincarnation.

From: (Anonymous)

Absolutely. I'm from northern Sweden and both the Kven (swedish-finnish forrest people) and the Sami (indigenous to northern scandinavia) have stories of places where the sprits of your ancestors dwell. They've been called shadow people and they often dwell in a mountain or a hill. It's different for every family.
These are old stories, and I've heard of them from my mother who in turn heard them from her grandparents and great-grandparents. These power sites are where you go to communicate with your ancestors. Before the genocide of animists the christians brought from the south not even 200 years ago, most people had a drum in their house with symbols written on them. These were used to journey in between worlds. Brining this drum to your kin-hill and do a journey there you could contact your ancestors.

Regarding the name of this heathen GD system, I don't know Icelandic but in swedish it would translate to "den gyllene gryningen."

From:

ecosophia

Fascinating. Thanks for this.

From: (Anonymous)

Not a proper Heathen myself but wondering whether the use of magical staves/sigils from the Icelandic grimoires could be of some use. The grimoires seem to provide some healing methods as well... Seidr comes also to mind but I'm not sure whether its oracular/trance nature would be suitable for a GD system. Anyway, I defer to those more knowledgable than I, and look forward to the whole project!
Manuel

From:

ecosophia

Seidhr isn't an option, as Golden Dawn magic doesn't work well with most kinds of trance work. On the other hand, the Icelandic grimoire literature might be a great place to look for raw material, so thank you for the suggestion!

From: (Anonymous)

Have you read this poem describing a Swedish heathen rite?
I find in more plausible than those descriptions made by christian missionaries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trollkyrka

What else? Those rune stones have a lot of snakes and dragons so they must have been important symbols.
And I Think our foundness of strongman play goes a very long way back.

Fädernas gudasaga by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Rydberg is a great book but I can,t find any translations of it.

Best luck

Sven-Anders

From:

robertmathiesen

There is a "retold for the young" English version of Rydberg's _Fädernas gudasaga_: _Our Father's Godsaga: Retold for the Young_ (Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2003). I have no idea whether it's any good.

English translations exist of most of Rydberg's work on Norse and Germanic magic and mythology, including _Teutonic Mythology_ in 3 volumes and _Magic in the Middle Ages_. You can download them from the Internet Archive (archive.org).

From: (Anonymous)

I just looked in my dictionary, and have a few comments on "Gullna Dagrenning".

Gull- does translate to "gold", but according to my dictionary it's a noun, not an adjective. The best I can find as an adjective is "rauðr", which usually means red, but there is a note that it is frequently used to refer to the color gold as well.

I can't find "Dagrenning". I can find "Dagr", which means day and includes dawn. I can also find a word "Dagmál" which means a three hour time centered on sunrise. I think that may fit better than "Dagr".

Also, what case did you want this in? I assume nominative, in which case it would look like Rauðr Dagmál.

From: (Anonymous)

Thanks for asking.

Some part of the tradition of seeing into & traveling in the spirit world might be good. This could be analogous to Path Work through Yggdrasil.

Good luck & please keep up the good work!

From:

hwistle

Definitely! Yggdrasil and the Nine Worlds sounds to me like a must... The Heathen World Tree has always felt like home to me and it's what really pulls me towards the Heathen tradition...
Manuel

From:

ecosophia

The Golden Dawn tradition, which is the basis we're starting from, has a very rich body of lore around scrying and traveling in the spirit vision, so that's easily done. :-)

From: (Anonymous)

Dear JMG, an approach for working with the local spirits of the land would come in very handy indeed -- I'm thinking of a practical application of the Norse/Germanic lore Claude Lecouteux has collected in Demons and Spirits of the Land and The Tradition of Household Spirits, for example.

From:

mesosylvania

I don't consider myself a heathen, so feel free to disregard my response, however I do love the runes and intend to work though the Heathen Golden Dawn after I finish the Druid Magic Handbook.

My idea was to include some sort of study of and construction of magical/sacred poetry and incantations. This seems to be a strong thread through Heathen and Germanic practice, and something I have interest in exploring.

From: (Anonymous)

I certainly agree on the importance of songsmithing and runesinging. Especially using alliteration and the types of verse represented in Havamal. Much to learn there!

From: (Anonymous)

Would some type of weather magic be appropriate?

Given heathen lore relation with the seas and harshness of winter, it seems suitable.

From: (Anonymous)

I live in NE Minnesota and there is a wonderful school called the North House Folk School in Grand Marais. https://northhouse.org/ It is dedicated to preserving the old ways of both the Scandinavian Immigrants and indigenous Anishinaabe by providing classes taught by experts in their fields. The classes include old world timber framing, net making, nalbinding, rosemaling and herbalism, story telling and music for example. For the New World, the classes include indigenous herbalism, meat curing, canoe building, weaving with local birch and grasses, songs and drum building. It is just a wonderful place and the intructors, course descriptions and reading lists might be a good resource for ideas as to what practical knowledge a good heathen should know.

As a side note, this folk school is growing by leaps and bounds and is so busy that other small communities and Indian reservations in NE Minnesota have started similar schools or weekends of instruction. There is a definitely a desire around here to work with the hands and have a connection to our ancestors through work, foods, stories and song.

From: (Anonymous)

Here's another vote for herbalism. I'm also hoping that there will be incorporation of Yggdrasil into the Golden Dawn system.

I don't know Old Icelandic, so I' don't know if these websites are worth anything for the translation of Golden Dawn into Old Icelandic, but I found these in a quick search:

https://www.indifferentlanguages.com/translate/icelandic-english/gullna
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dagrenning

DJSpo

From: (Anonymous)

A layout of the sacred ceremonial space and the symbols in it.

Maybe some faery and spirit working. Thinking of something akin to Solomonic magic.

From:

andrewbwatt.com

Seems to me that sailing, knot work, braiding, and tablet-style weaving could all play a role in the "other stuff" that Heathen Golden Dawn'ers are supposed to know.

For example, for sailing and navigation: although the Behenian Stars are possibly Arabic rather than Viking in origin, they are STILL the fifteen or so most obvious stars in the northern celestial hemisphere, and many of them are obviously bright even in urban conditions.

There have to be a half-dozen knots, hitches, and bends that a competent sailor has to know, too; I learned about twelve in my sailing school days. A Heathen should be able to find a lake somewhere where they can take sailing lessons near them, and learn to keep one eye on the sky, one eye on the water while keeping one hand on the boat, and one hand for themselves, strikes me as an advanced but related skill.

What about braiding, too? Whether hair or cord, this is a powerful magical tool, working with color and motion; learning some braiding songs or plaiting songs would add more sound. Related to this, I believe that drop-spindle spinning work was related to magic in the Viking world — and producing your own woven yarn for the purpose of learning knots (and Naalbinding!)

And while we're on the subject of cording lore — even today the Swedes, the Finns, the Norwegians and the Baltic/Bothnia traditional people like the Sami are famous for embroidery and tablet-weaving. Every tablet weaving pattern I know of involves learning some (not exactly complicated, but certainly precise) mathematics, mostly forms of addition and subtraction, and developing pattern recognition skills. It's a mind-expanding skill to be sure.

Add in the dyeing and the yarn-making, and you have access to a range of powerful tools — woven bands on the sleeves of robes or tunics (let me know and I'll help design a pattern for a T-tunic that can be gridded in the book) for protection or rank within the society; a belt for the tunic woven with runes, geometry, and emblems of protection to signify both rank and focus of interest; colors to indicate specific areas of training or development. (There's also the building of the tablet loom [or drop spindle] itself, which teaches some basic carpentry and tool use).

I note that these skills I've mentioned have an already-recognized usefulness in most of the Heathen communities I know of — but that much of the weaving, spinning and naalbinding skills are frequently relegated or designated as "women's work"... (and that a good many of the Heathen men I know engage in mead- and beer-brewing). So requiring string, yarn, weaving, and rope skills are a good way to bring a certain gender-balance to the practitioners.

Some basic blacksmithing might be another related skill... but setting up a forge to do metalwork is both expensive, and dangerous for beginners to do from a book alone. So, some of the Heathen GD's training might have to include something about "learning to ask an expert for help," and "learning to take a class." You CAN learn weaving from a book (I did it), but it's much harder to learn metalworking that way, I'd think.

From: (Anonymous)

Natural navigation (ie, using the human body as instrument and dead reckoning) and star lore, perhaps.

From: (Anonymous)

Interesting. I live near the Arctic circle in Scandinavia and have some thoughts on this:

1) Staying-warm-magic? My wife knows how to sent extra heat to body parts, most notably in her hands and feet. She says it's a mental process (it really works: her bare hands outside at minus 20 C, can and still make warm my own freezing cold, glove-covered, hands warm...).

2) I guess that there must be some sort of magic that can help to energize human being during the very dark winters in northern Scandinavia?

3) Magic related to see/navigate in darkness?

4) Magic related to food preservation for long winters?

5) And additionally, I think that dowsing might be deep rooted. It's even used by my town-administration to find the water pipes, which weren't mapped accurately when they were put in some 30 years ago. Personally I have found it hard to believe in dowsing both due to lack of direct experience and my scientific background. However, last winter I got a quite interesting data point: We had massive amounts of snow in my rural village so the landscape, including small brooks were hidden under the snow. It was also very cold, and my neighbor needed to dig up a frozen private water pipe that crossed the town water pipe on a small road (where the frost goes extra deep during cold winters). In order to not get blamed for destroying the town pipe, we had to ask the town-administration to put up marks for the town-pipe. I knew quite well where the pipe crossed the road (within 5 meters), but the town guys didn't ask for help, and instead just arrived, marked where the strongest flow was felt (by using dowsing), and started to dig -- without knowing that there also was a small brook in a culvert some 20 meters down the road from where the town-pipe crossed. So, the excavator destroyed the brook-culvert with great precision, instead of finding the town-pipe...

From: (Anonymous)

Can u include big pictures for those of us slow on the uptake?

Dashui

From: (Anonymous)

Hello JMG,

I believe that Siethcraft, galder craft, and rune magick should definitely be included in the book. An overview of the 9 realms would also be a great addition as well as some of the shamanic practices.

Ian

From:

walt_f

Given the number of stone labyrinths to be found along Scandinavian coastlines, a ceremony or two using labyrinths might fit in very well.

I can't tell you exactly how, though. I'm no Golden Dawn initiate. In my own idiosyncratic practices, I use walking or otherwise tracing labyrinths as a step outside. I visualize the center as a space as unbounded mentally as it is bounded physically, especially with respect to time. Such traverses are often said to symbolize death and (re)birth, but stepping out of time isn't just about those, even though from that perspective those particular landmarks do tend to grab your attention at first.

This practice (just about my only one that qualifies as actual ritual) would seem to mesh well with Heathen mythology's emphatic embrace of time and change. I wonder if it could be useful and suitable for workings involving preparing for, making, or reflecting upon life transitions; remembering or invoking deceased friends or ancestors; letting go (e.g. forgiveness) and welcoming in (e.g. new tasks or companions); or otherwise setting long-term intentions.

(Because a labyrinth is literally a delineated pathway, there have been some attempts to expand it into a sort of alternative Kabbala, e.g. identifying an archetype/symbol/planet/color/divine being/element/numeral/etc. with each of the seven arcs and/or various other features. While I've been working a bit in that general direction myself, seeking to feel and differentiate any specific qualities centered at each of the four wall termini and "ruling" their respective four quadrants of the figure, I don't see a lot of value in taking that idea too far. The path has a richly meaningful rhythm as it is—for instance, the inward path starts out left turn, right bend; left turn, left bend; right turn, right bend; right turn, left bend... And as an ideographic symbol, the whole thing, walls, path, center and all, represents wholeness to me and is easily taken in as a whole.)

From:

moondog79

I am so very glad to see you are doing this. As one who only a week ago discovered your Celtic Golden Dawn book, purchased a copy, and has been going through and practicing it this week -- this morning, I happened to Google "heathen golden dawn" and came across this post. I searched that term because I realized how important I perceived your work to be in melding the Celtic and Golden Dawn traditions and wondered if anyone had done similar work with the Germanic tradition. And to my pleasant surprise, I am once again turned to you.

My initial reason to wonder about the heathen connection is because over the last few years I've found myself drawn to that realm. My ancestry (if that matters at all) seems to be a fair mix of Celtic and Germanic, so I am wishing to explore what seems a better fit for me. Again, I am very pleased to learn you are doing the work I feel needs explored. I plan on continuing the Celtic Golden Dawn study to its completion as I eagerly await the Heathen Golden Dawn book to be published.

From: (Anonymous)

Im looking forward to the release of this project. and hope its arrival will be soon.to that end , what is the update on when this may drop ,as for what could be added i would like to see some in depth path-workings with YGGDRASIL..