International Issue #2 | 2018-2019 E. V. America | Europe | Russia | Asia
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International issue #2 | 2018-2019 e. v. America | Europe | Russia | Asia Warha — also known as R/y rune in Icelandic Futhark or k in the Anglo-Saxon Futhork. In pagan traditionalism it is means death or end, including the time of the End of the World. © Svarte Publishing, 2019 © Authors Cover: Slavic traditional mask and festival character performed by «Окрута». ISSN-Free CC-BY-SA It is allowed to share the issue and quote texts and fragments while maintaining integrity and immutability. Foreword to the 2nd issue 5 EUROPEAN TRADITIONS What Does It Mean to be True to the Aesir? ……………... 9 A-I-U and Stillness: A Commentary on Herman Wirth’s Study of the Year-Wheel ………………………….. 18 Nordic Bracteates: Unique Source of Knowledge on Nordic Tradition …………………………………………. 31 Wotan and the Black Sun …………………………………… 46 The sources of the Roman Private Ritual …………………. 49 A Travel Toward Neoplatonic Mysticism: a Philosophical Itinerary ……………………………………. 67 The metaphysics of Chaos…………………………………... 149 SLAVIC PAGANISM Nuances of the Russian term “язычество” ……………….. 159 Statements of Slavic-Russian Rodnovery ………………… 162 Rites of Slavic paganism ……………………………………. 166 Baba Yaga the Bony-Legged, the Ancient Dark Forest Mother of Slavic Myth ……………………………………… 177 Closer to the Folk, Nature and Gods: Pagan downshifting experience in the Ukrainian Steppes ………. 192 Spiritual Self-Knowledge in Modern Slavic Paganism ….. 201 We born to die ………………………………………….......... 207 Victim and sacrifice: tradition and modernity …………..... 210 Reconstruction and regeneration ………………………....... 214 Modern pagan rating of russian historical figures (from field studies) …………………………………………... 216 ASIAN PEOPLES The Kalash people and their Identity ……………………… 237 3 TRIBUNE Reclaiming the true european identity …………………….. 247 Askr Svarte conversation with Wodfræca Werewulf ……. 250 Liber Niger Solis: An Aeonic Astrochymical Grimoire of the Black Sun ……………………………………………... 267 Remaking the Sutton Hoo Whetstone: The Ansell-Roper Replica and its Context ………………... 269 The Seed of Yggdrasill: Deciphering the hidden messages in Old Norse Myths ……………………………… 273 AUTHORS ……………………………………………………... 277 We are glad to welcome the readers of our almanac. The “Warha” almanac has been published in Russia since 2015 and the latest issues are published once a year, summing up all the best texts about pagan traditionalism, as well as presenting fresh translations, interviews and original texts to the public. This fall will be the sixth issue. The first English-language issue of the “Warha” almanac was released in 2017 and it was a trial attempt. And now, two years later, we are ripe for the second volume in English. This issue comes out in a difficult time of general fragmentation, fake-news and shameless propaganda from all sides. We conceived our almanac as a kind of bridge or a space of acquaintance, dialogue and exchange of opinions and skills between Russian-speaking pagans and traditionalists on the one hand, and Europeans and Americans on the other. We are different, the traditions of our peoples and in our lands sometimes differ very much. And there is nothing wrong with that. Nevertheless, we are all pagans, which means that we have something in common in the depths of our philosophy and mystical experience. And historically we have faced with similar threats, for example, with globalization and its iron pace of regional identity destruction. First globalization by the name of the Cross, then by the name of Technology, Market and Media. Therefore it seems to us that any platforms where are an opportunity to look at other pagans and see the general, see the grounds for dialogue, are already make sense. In the Russian version we have published many translations of European and American authors. In the second edition of the English-language collection, which is much richer than the first, we collected a lot of materials from Russian authors, attracted the participation of our European friends and like-minded people from North America too. 5 Both versions of the almanac are volunteer non-profit projects from the very beginning. From year to year we invest money in it not really worrying about profit. Ideas for us at the first place. Therefore anyone can download this issue and share it with co-religionists. Or you can print any number of copies of this almanac by yourself and distribute it, if you are a publisher. Unfortunately, such altruism has some inevitable downsides. So, we are forced to present you the texts in the author's edition such as they were provided by volunteers-translators. Therefore, we invite in our team of enthusiasts an interested proofreader for future editions. Finally, we would like to separately thank all the authors and organizations who responded to our appeal from Russia, Europe and the USA. Together we have a good collection of articles. If we can repeat it this year, the English version of our almanac will also become annual. And we also invite new authors to participate. All our contacts are listed at the end of the volume. Enjoy reading. Askr Svarte 6 “Ásatrú” is a modern coinage meaning “true to the Aesir.” In Old Norse, Aesir is the plural of áss, which is usually translated “god.” In order to understand what it means to be “true to the Aesir,” we must put into question this translation into “god” and “gods.” Indeed, ultimately we must liberate ourselves from the idea of “god” in order to understand who the Aesir are, and our relationship to them. Throughout this essay, I will therefore avoid the very familiar terms “god” and “gods” and instead use “áss” and “Aesir.” This is in order to accustom my readers to the fact that we are dealing with an idea that has become quite foreign to us. Some of us say that we “worship” the Aesir – though we will also have to put this idea into question as well. In any case, what may definitely be said is that adherents of Ásatrú relate to the Aesir as something other, and far greater, than themselves. Let us therefore begin by exploring what the difference is between human beings and the Aesir. We will find that this is not as easy to define as one might think. Could we distinguish ourselves from the Aesir by saying that we are “mortals”? No, for the lore teaches us that the gods are mortal, too. We have mortality in common with them. It is foretold that several of them will die at Ragnarok – including Odin, Thor, and Frey. The idea that humans are “mortals” and gods “immortals” is Greco-Roman, and foreign to the Germanic tradition. Indeed, in our tradition the Aesir are not only mortal, but vulnerable in ways that make them seem hardly different from human beings. Several times in the myths, various Aesir are captured, bound, and tortured (even Odin suffers this fate; see Grimnismal). Often they have to bargain their way out. Unlike human beings, the Aesir enjoy eternal youth. But they are not naturally endowed with it: they derive eternal youth from Idun’s 9 apples. As the famous story of the theft of the apples by the storm giant Thiassi illustrates, the Aesir will age if deprived of them. (Fundamentally, this is no different from human dependence on, for example, exogenous hormones.) Could the difference between the Aesir and men be that the former possess special, occult powers and the latter do not? There are several major problems with this proposal. First, there are a whole host of non-human beings in Norse mythology who possess such powers. Thus, they are not exclusive to the Aesir. Probably the best example is the jötnar, usually translated as “giants.” The trouble here is that the giants are not giant; they are not gigantic in stature. In fact, their physical descriptions do not make them distinctively different from the Aesir (except that some of them – only some – are described as being particularly ugly). The giants possess physical and supernatural powers that put them on a par with the Aesir. Indeed, they often get the better of the Aesir (at least temporarily). The giants and the Aesir are also capable of interbreeding. The two groups are so close, in fact, that one might as well speak of them as constituting just two different varieties of “gods” – like the Aesir and the Vanir. And yet we do not worship the giants. Other beings in Norse myth possess superpowers – including the elves and the Norns (who mark out the fates even of the Aesir). A yet more significant reason to think that the possession of superpowers does not define the difference between Aesir and men is that men can actually acquire most of those same powers. In fact, based on what has come down to us, it is difficult to say with confidence which of the “divine” powers human beings cannot acquire. Rigsthula tells the tale of how the áss Rig (aka Heimdall) sired the various social classes of humankind. The child of Rig, who is the first of the nobility, is named “Lord,” and we are told that Rig taught the boy runes (Rigsthula, 34). Of course, this could mean simply that he taught the boy how to write in runes, but later passages suggest more than this. The youngest son of Lord is called King (clearly the first of the royals, as opposed to the mere nobles). King “learned runes, runes of fate and runes of destiny, he learned spells to save lives and dull blades, to calm storms” (Rigsthula, 41).[1] We are also told that, like Sigurd, he learned “the language of birds.” And he 10 learned further spells “to put out fires, to calm sorrows and induce sleep” (Rigsthula, 42; the context implies that this is magical knowledge). Amongst the spells known by Odin, and enumerated in Havamal, are those used to dull blades, calm storms, and put out fires (Havamal, 148-154).