Interview With Freya Aswynn

An  interview with Freya Aswynn, author of
Leaves of Yggdrasil

by William B. Fox
Originally published in
Winter, (Runic Era) 2243 (1993) Vor Tru Magazine
under pen name "Thor Sannhet"

Preface

Back in 1993 while I was living in the New York City area, I was contacted by Dan O'Halloran, an Asatru writer and activist with the Ring of Troth, who said that Freya Aswynn was visiting America from Britain. Would I be interested in meeting with her to conduct an interview?
I had just received correspondence from Odinic Rite activists in England who had published one of my articles. They said that they really liked Freya. When I finally got to meet Freya, I came to agree that she is a fascinating and colorful individual, and very likeable on a personal level. She is intelligent and fun to be around.

Hávamál

Hávamál

The Sayings of Hár

1

The man who stands at a strange threshold,

Should be cautious before he cross it,

Glance this way and that:

Who knows beforehand what foes may sit

Awaiting him in the hall?

2

Greetings to the host,

The guest has arrived,

In which seat shall he sit?

Rash is he who at unknown doors

Relies on his good luck,

Voluspa :The Song of the Sybil

The Song of the Sybil

(W H Auden & P B Taylor Translation)

Heidi men call me when their homes I visit,

A far seeing Volva, wise in talismans.

Caster of spells, cunning in magic.

To wicked women welcome always.

Arm rings and necklaces, Odhinn you gave me

To learn my lore, to learn my magic:

Wider and wider through all worlds I see.

Horned Gods

Horned Gods

By Ron McVan

As long as a people live, their gods are immortal. The gods and goddesses of our folk help us to navigate that great mystery of life which manifests from the One. No true pagan has ever been gnawed by doubt about the divine nature; only those who betray the God within and sacrifice their soul to an eternal alien, and thereby the eternal unknown......

Tolkien and the Northern Tradition

Tolkien and the Northern Tradition

By Kveldulfr Gundarsson
J.R.R. Tolkien was a Professor of Anglo‑Saxon at Oxford for twenty years and, for some time thereafter, a Professor of English Language and Literature (his specialization was the West Midland dialect of Middle English). These positions required him to be fluent and deeply versed in Old English and Old Norse language and literature and to be a first‑rate philologist ‑ an expert in Germanic language and myth. His essay "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics", for instance, has been one of the most influential writings in the scholarly study of that complex Anglo‑Saxon epic.

A Fairy Tale

Varg Vikernes "Perþ" (fairy tale)

I

Once upon a time, in another world and another place out there in space.

I was young and curious, sought and searched for answers to the most unbelievable questions. I grew up in a noble family and was educated to become a knight. I traveled far and searched for honour and fame - like all knights do. I found both, but I never found happiness. There was too much injustice and cruelty out there for me to be happy. It is only the fools who are happy.

Famous and honoured as I was, I thought it my duty to end all injustice in the world. I knew it was the gods who were behind this and therefore decided that I should find them and crave answers to why they were so cruel and unfair. Why they let young boys get cut down on the fields of battle; why they let innocent infants die of disease in the crib; why they let plague and sickness ravage; why they let some live like slaves their whole life, only to die filthy and old in their beds. Why were they so cruel?

Ultima Thule

ULTIMA THULE

by Robert Blumetti

From Northern Europe to India, most cultures possessed a memory of a once and lost Golden Age that existed in the primeval past, when men and women possessed superior powers of mind and body and lived in harmony with the natural environment. In the Middle East , the Garden of Eden of the Old Testament is an obvious reference to this lost Golden Age, when people lived side-by-side with God. The Egyptians of antiquity spoke of a time when the Egyptian people were ruled by a race of God-kings. In Babylonian mythology there is a reference to three ages, each lasting thousands of years. The first and oldest was a Golden Age that existed before the Great Flood. The ancient Iranians have a reference to a Golden Age in the Avesta texts. It describes a thousand-year reign of King Yima.

Rebirth of the Gods

THE REBIRTH OF THE GODS
by Robert Blumetti


The old order is in advanced decay. The world as we know it is rapidly falling apart. The West is in a state of decline and the forces of darkness are rapidly spreading across the world.

We stand between two ages—the wheel turns. The previous age is fading into the past as Loki is rallying the forces of destruction to assault the old order, plunging the world into chaos. The darkness and oppression of the great winter, Fimbul, is quickly overtaking the ordered world of the previous age. We are entering a time of the Giants, when their chaos will rule over mankind, shattering the institutions, traditions and nations that gave meaning and hope to our people and ancestors. We are entering a new dark age–the Age of Fimbulvetr.

Wolf-The Call of the Wild

WOLF – THE CALL OF THE WILD
 By Andrea Haugen
From her book, The Ancient Fires of Midgard

One of the animals that has left the strongest impression in the human
psyche is undoubtedly the wolf. The lupine has always been recognised
as the symbol of freedom, the image of the wild man and the wild
woman – our wild nature within.

Heroic Ethic

Heroic Ethic

By Ron McVan

"A happy life is impossible, the highest to which a
man can attain is a heroic course of life."
.............................Schopenhauer

Heroism may be considered the epitome of all the Aryan values, the single most life expression of sacrificial will, transformation and vitalism, so explicity exemplified throughout Western Euro-mythology and folklore. The hero occupies that sacred precinct through which he begins a new aspect of self evolution between man and the divine. It is the deed of the hero to bridge these realms as he stands before his gods, the seeker and the found, the outside and the inside of a single self-mirrored mystery.

In the purest tradition, the hero is not content with the limitations of mere human existence as his adventures serve to elevate him well beyond the common state of man. His journey, is a journey along the path of a valorous and fearless choice which he views as his personal quest and destiny. The very crux of the hero's venture is his own self-realization and clear sense of purpose found through the crowning reunion with his "hamingja", a term used by the ancient Norse to denote "the god-self" in man.

When the Trees Were Silenced: Hagalaz' Runedance

Otto Rahn And The Quest for the Holy Grail

By M. SABEHEDDIN

Otto Rahn (1904-1939), described as a gifted young author and historian, was one of this century’s truly fascinating figures. Prior to his mysterious death, at age 35, he wrote two books about the Cathars of southern France: Kreuzzug gegen den Gral (“Crusade Against the Grail”) and Luzifers Hofgesind (“Lucifer’s Court”). Myth and legend continue to shroud both his life and tragic death. While his books influenced such authors as Trevor Ravenscroft and Jean-Michel Angebert, they were never translated into English. In the 1982 best selling book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Otto Rahn’s name appears in a small but intriguing footnote.

Otto Rahn believed that he had found the location of the Holy Grail Mountain, the Montsalvat of legend, in the Cathar mountain fortress of Montsegur in the French Pyrenees. He was, says Prof. Joscelyn Godwin, “largely responsible for the mythological complex that associated the Cathars and Montsegur with the Holy Grail and its Castle.”

WHY PRIMITIVISM?
by John Zerzan

Debord biographer Anselm Giap referred to the puzzle of the present, “where the results of human activity are so antagonistic to humanity itself,” recalling a question posed nearly 50 years ago by Joseph Wood Krutch: “What has become of that opportunity to become more fully human that the ‘control of nature’ was to provide?”

The general crisis is rapidly deepening in every sphere of life. On the biospheric level, this reality is so well-known that it could be termed banal, if it weren’t so horrifying. Increasing rates of species extinctions, proliferating dead zones in the world’s oceans, ozone holes, disappearing rainforests, global warming, the pervasive poisoning of air, water, and soil, to name a few realities.

SEIZE THE DAY
by John Zerzan
The rapidly mounting toll of modern life is worse than we could have imagined. A metamorphosis rushes onward, changing the texture of living, the whole feel of things. In the not-so-distant past this was still only a partial modification; now the Machine converges on us, penetrating more and more to the core of our lives, promising no escape from its logic.

FIRE and the FOG

FIRE and the FOG
by Stephen McNallen

When I first approached Asatru back in the late 1960's, what attracted me was the panache, vigor, and passionate assertiveness of the Vikings. Bold and free, it attracted my testosterone-laden teenage soul like a magnet I...and it still calls to me, after all these years. My spiritual evolution has added to, rather than changed, that early, naive impression.

HIGH C's of TREASON

HIGH C's of TREASON
By Ron McVan

"The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and woman submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments."
......................William E. Borah

(Constantine) Today's Christians still venerate the Roman emperor Constantine to saintly status as the Great Christian liberator. In truth, Constantine was far from saintly throughout his life. The nature of Constantine's conversion to the Christian faith has long been a matter of dispute. Though he used the banner of Christianity to secure power and reek havoc and slaughter upon his pagan enemies, he refused to be baptised until he was on his death bed.

10 Myths of the Middle Ages

10 Myths of the Middle Ages

By J Frater

The Middle Ages spanned roughly the 5th century to the 16th century – a total of 1,100 years. During the time following the Middle Ages (which is often referred to as the Enlightenment), the previous millennium was criticized and condemned – just as we now condemn the actions of some during the Victorian Period (sexual prudishness for example). Many of the writers of the newly invented Protestant movement harshly attacked the Middle Ages because of its Catholicity. Unfortunately many of the myths and misconceptions that sprung up at the time are still believed today. This list aims to set things straight.

The Path Toward the Sacred

The Path Toward the Sacred

by Alain de Benoist

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Renaissance was genuinely a re-naissance, a rebirth. "It involved," as Ernest Renan said, "seeing Antiquity face to face." Yet that rebirth was not a journey backward nor a simple resurgence of the past, but on the contrary a point of departure for a new spiritual adventure, a new adventure of the Faustian soul, henceforth triumphant because finally awakened to itself. Today "neo-paganism," likewise, is not a regression. It is, on the contrary, the deliberate choice of a more authentic future, more harmonious, more powerful -- a choice that projects into the future, for new creations, the Eternal from which we come.

SPIRITUALISM THE HIGHEST FORM OF POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

SPIRITUALISM THE HIGHEST FORM OF POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

THE HAU DE NO SAU NEE MESSAGE TO THE WESTERN WORLD

The Hau de no sau nee, or the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy, has existed on this land since the beginning of human memory. Our culture is among the most ancient continuously existing cultures in the world. We still remember the earliest doings of human beings. We remember the original instructions of the Creators of Life on this place we call Etenoha -- Mother Earth. We are the spiritual guardians of this place. We are the Ongwhehonwhe -- the Real People.

Back to Paradise

Back to Paradise

By Richard Heinberg
Paradise: A Lost Global Civilisation 

Standard views of human history leave little room for a lost paradise. But it seems that each year brings fresh evidence suggesting that our knowledge of the ancient human past is sketchy at best. For example, the recent discovery of a carved bone flute in a Slovenian cave, dated (by current estimates) at between 43,000 and 82,000 years old, suggests that humans have had music – and probably language and art as well – for a very long time indeed. What were people thinking and doing for all those millennia?

Wisdom for the Wolf-Age:A Conversation With Dr. Stephen Flowers

Wisdom for the Wolf-Age:A Conversation With Dr. Stephen Flowers

by Michael Moynihan

One of dominant paradigms of modern society is fragmentation. In the world of popular culture this translates into dazzling distractions and endless ephemera, while in the world of academia it engenders over-specialisation and an unspoken refusal to even attempt to understand the “bigger picture,” especially from a metaphysical perspective.

In this atomised environment, anyone extolling a cohesive vision that is marked by traditional values – not to mention high standards – automatically becomes an anomaly. So it is the case with Dr. Stephen Flowers, who is the rarest of breeds: a scholar with spirit, one who is single-minded yet open-minded. For more than a quarter-century he has dedicated his energies toward unraveling the mysteries not only of the ancient symbolic alphabet of the Runes, but also of the deepest realms of the Germanic myth and culture from which they arose. For Flowers, this quest is summed up in a single word, RUNA, which is the old Gothic language form of “rune” and was equivalent to the Greek term mysterion (“mystery”). It was in the early 1970s that Flowers heard this word audibly whispered in his ear, and since that time he has tirelessly pursued a path of understanding its implications.

Solar Symbology in the Chronicles of Narnia

Solar Symbology in the Chronicles of Narnia
by Christopher Knowles

Far from being the dour hermit of Evangelical propaganda, CS Lewis was a much more complex and fascinating character. His eccentric personal life has come under scrutiny in recent years (his only marriage came in his late middle age and was an immigration scam, he also never fathered any children) and his religious eccentricity has never really been a secret. He once wrote to a friend, "I had some ado to prevent Joy and myself from relapsing into Paganism in Attica! At Daphni it was hard not to pray to Apollo the Healer. But somehow one didn't feel it would have been very wrong - would have only been addressing Christ sub specie Apollinis." Lewis biographies are rife with this kind of enthusiasm.

Lewis' first novel in The Chronicles of Narnia series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, tells the story of the four Pevensie siblings- Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy - sent away from London during World War II to the countryside to stay with a kindly professor named Kirk.

Giordano Bruno: The Forgotten Philosopher

Giordano Bruno: The Forgotten Philosopher
by John J. Kessler, Ph.D., Ch.E.


In the year 1548 an Italian boy was born in the little town of Nola, not far from Vesuvius. Although, he spent the greater part of his life in hostile and foreign countries he was drawn back to his home at the end of his travels and after he had written nearly twenty books.
When he was thirteen years old he began to go to school at the Monastery of Saint Domenico. It was a famous place. Thomas Aquinas, himself a Dominican, had lived there and taught. Within a few years Bruno had become a Dominican priest.

Here We Stand by Sol Invictus

Here We Stand

Here we stand, on some lost and lonely shore
All that's left to us, empty thrones and broken swords
Shall we watch the sun throw itself into the sea?
Shall we open our veins and bleed?

Here we stand alone, empty days
Here we stand alone, never saved
See the world, watch her shake with rage
At this mass of fools, who mock her holy stage
She will spit them out like so much dust
For this is the age of gold, not blood or love

Here we stand alone, empty days
Here we stand alone, never saved

See the horseman ride in from the sea
See the Wildhunt through the trees
A hand shall come down and tear out the last page
The final act of the final age

Asatru…The Way of Our Ancestors…Calling Us Home

Asatru…The Way of Our Ancestors…Calling Us Home

Asatru is an expression of the native, pre-Christian spirituality of Europe. More specifically, it is the Way by which the Germanic peoples have traditionally related to the Divine and to the world around them.

From Iceland to Russia, from the frozen north of Scandinavia to the Mediterranean, the Germanic peoples wandered and settled over a span of thousands of years. Today, their descendants are spread around the world. We may refer to ourselves as Americans or English, Germans or Canadians, but behind these labels lurks an older, more essential identity. Our forefathers were Angles and Saxons, Lombards and Heruli, Goths and Vikings - and, as sons and daughters of these peoples, we are united by ties of blood and culture undimmed by the centuries.
We are free to shape our lives to the extent allowed by our skill, courage, and might. There is no predestination, no fatalism, no limitations imposed by the will of any external deity.

We do not need salvation. All we need is the freedom to face our destiny with courage and honor.

We are connected to all our ancestors. They are a part of us. We in turn will be a part of our descendants.

We are also linked to all our living kin - to our families and to every man and woman rooted in the tribes of Europe. They are our "greater family."

We are connected to Nature and subject to its laws. The Holy Powers often express themselves in Nature's beauty and might.

We believe that morality does not depend on commandments, but rather arises from the dignity and honor of the noble-minded man and woman.

We do not fear the Holy Powers, or consider ourselves their slaves. On the contrary, we share community and fellowship with the Divine. The Holy Powers encourage us to grow and advance to higher levels.

We honor the Holy Powers under the names given them by our Germanic/Norse ancestors.

We practice Asatru by honoring the turning of the seasons…the ancestors…the Divine…and ourselves - in everyday life.


Asatru is about roots.

It's about connections.

It's about coming home.

Our Place in the Order of Things

OUR PLACE IN THE ORDER OF THINGS
by Robert Blumetti

The three monotheistic religions see God as someone with a master plan, who has laid down the law and demand that everyone obey his laws, and if they don't, they will suffer the most excruciating pain for all eternity. Ironically enough, everyone who happens to be unfortunate enough to be born in a part of the world that has never heard the "divine word" is damned along with those who heard it and rejected it. Thus, God, who is suppose to be all-knowing and infallible, has deliberately created billions of people whom he has damned to Hell. He is all-knowing and infallible–so that means he knew that billions of people would never have the chance to be saved, as well as those who he knew would choose to reject his law, and thus, they would be condemned after death. Why? Why would God do such a thing? Well, the followers of monotheism like to say, "We can never know what God does, or why he does it, but we have got to have faith." This is poor comfort for those billions burning in Hell. Of course, that doesn't concern those who know that they are saved.

Sun of God

Sun of God

by Ron McVan

Amid the radiant orbs, that more than deck, that animate the sky,
The life-infusing suns of other worlds…..
The enlighten’d few…..
they in their powers exult, that wondrous force of thought,
which mounting spurns this dusky spot, and measures all the sky.
James Thomson - 1746

The sun as symbol of both God the creator and of his representative son, to the Egyptians, was a symbol of immortality, for, while the sun died every night, it rose again with each ensuing dawn. From the sun came the concept of the Trinity which finds its way into all the great religions. Trinities in every instance represent the threefold form of the one Supreme Intelligence. When Christians proclaim that one cannot find the father except through the son Jesus Christ, it is that Jesus, as solar deity, not unlike Baldur of Euro based Wotanism, or Lugh and Bel of the Celtic pantheon, or Apollo of the Olympian pantheon, or Ra, Horus, or Thoth-Hermes of ancient Aryan Egypt all likewise serve their respective religion as son of God, teachers of spiritual truth and bearers of light.

Apollonius of Tyana

APOLLONIOUS OF TYANA
By Ron McVan

"There is no death of anyone, but only in appearance, even as there is no birth of any, save only in seeming. The change from being to becoming seems to be birth, and the change from becoming to being seems to be death, but in reality no one is ever born, nor does one ever die. It is simply a being visible and then invisible; the former through the density of matter, and the latter because of the subtlety of being----being which is ever the same, its only change being motion and rest. For being has this necessary peculiarity, that its change is brought about by nothing external to itself; but whole becomes parts and parts become whole in the oneness of the all." ......................PLATO

Love Life!

LOVE LIFE!by Robert Blumetti
LOVE LIFE! If there are only two words to describe the essence of the Folk Faith, it is these two words - Love Life.

Life is a gift from the Gods. When the Holy Trinity first bred life into the ash and elm and thus created the first man and woman, the most precious gift that the Gods had bestowed upon us: life itself. This being the first and most important of all gifts, it is worthy of our most passionate love. It is the appreciation of life that separates us from all other living things. I am not talking about the instinct to survive, but the appreciation of life and all that it means.

We are a Light Against the Approaching Darkness

WE ARE A LIGHT AGAINST THE APPROACHING DARKNESS
by Robert Blumetti

We see the approaching winter and we know that we must stand fast and be a beacon against the terrible darkness that is about to sweep over our world.

We can see that our leaders and governments have been inflicted with the blind ignorance that is Hodur.

We can see that our people have fallen under the spell of Hodur's ignorance and are blinded to the truths that have guided our ancestors for thousands of years. We know that they are now prey to the trickster, Loki, who will lead the forces of chaos and destruction that will sweep over the world and level all that we know. Therefore, we raise our voice in this age of decline. To the East, North, West and South, we call to our people, calling on them to abandon the weakness that has invaded our minds, hearts and souls, and proclaim our rebirth!