TEUTONIC MAGIC the Magical & Spiritual Practices of the Germanic Peoples
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TEUTONIC MAGIC The Magical & Spiritual Practices of the Germanic Peoples By Kveldulf Gundarsson © 1990 by Kveldulf Gundarsson.All rights reserved. Originally published by Llewellyn Publications Inc. This PDF format electronic edition © 2002 by Kveldulf Gundarsson, published by Freya Aswynn. All rights reserved. This document may not be re-sold, reproduced, copied, freely exchanged, or distributed to others via the Internet or by any other means, without permission in writing from Freya Aswynn. No part of this document may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing from Freya Aswynn, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Published by Freya Aswynn www.aswynn.co.uk The Wisdom of Odhinn Here are written, for those who have the strength to grasp them, the hidden secrets with which our ancestors ruled wind and wave, fire and earth and the minds of men. For nine nights the great god Odhinn hung on the World-Tree, pierced by his own spear, the winds between the worlds blowing cold about him. At last he saw, in a blinding moment of might, the runes written at the great tree’s roots. He took them up: great in power, great in wisdom, growing ever in might and lore from the secret his sacrifice won him. He taught the mysteries of the runes to his children among the human race, and these songs of might were sung and carved on wood and stone from Ger- many to England, to Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland, wherever the Teutonic peoples walked in their bright paths of battle and hidden wisdom. Though stilled by the kristjan church for a time, the secrets of magic lived on, passing in whispers through the ties of love and blood. Only in this last century, by the work of a few hid- den heroes, has this wisdom been recovered. Now, in this book, it is set out as fully as possible for those who dare. Learn how to use the ancient runic magic of Odhinn: how to read the future written in the runes, how to write and chant the songs of power so that you yourself may shape the windings of your life. Learn the secrets of magical poetry, of ritual, of the Teu- tonic herbs and trees of enchantment, of the Nine Worlds and the ways between them, and of faring forth in the spirit to learn things hidden and work your will. Learn of the gods and wights known by our ancestors, whose might will aid you in your magic and your life: Odhinn, Thorr, Freyja, Freyr, Tyr; the elves and dwarves; the spirits of your family and those who follow you. Take back the might of your ancestors, that you may grow in strength and wisdom and aid in the knowledge and healing of the earth. Acknowledgements Teutonic Magic is dedicated to the members of my first rune class, Erik (Eirikr) Malmstrom, Larry Pettit (Asgar), and Judith Pruett, who listened to this book in its first lifetime as a collection of scribbled notes and found it worthy of continued existence. I would like to thank Edred Thorsson for his kind permission to use his translations of the Rune Poems in this book and for his encouragement and assistance in bringing it into being. Thanks are also owed to Patricia Paterson, Gloria Calasso1 and Hendrix Tolliver III of the Athanor Bookstore, who twisted my arm until I started doing the teaching work which led to this book; and to my endlessly supportive parents, who paid all the library fines incurred in two years of research. 2 Contents HERITAGE OF MAGIC: OUR TEUTONIC PAST........................................................................................................ THOUGHT AND CULTURE RECLAIMED: AN INTRODUCTION............................................................................... SECTION I: THE TEUTONIC WORLD 1: THE NINE WORLDS OF YGGDRASIL.................................................................................................................... 2: URHDR’S WELL: THE WORKINGS OF WYRD..................................................................................................... 3: THE TEUTONIC MAGICIAN: BODY, SOUL, AND MIND.................................................................................... SECTION II: MAGICAL THOUGHT AND WORKING 4: EARTHLY HISTORY OF THE RUNES.................................................................................................................... 5: MAGICAL HISTORY OF THE RUNES.................................................................................................................... 6: RUNIC THEORY: LEARNING THE RUNES........................................................................................................... 7: RUNES OF THEELDER FUTHARK.......................................................................................................................... 8 RUNIC RELATIONSHIPS........................................................................................................................................... 9 READING THE RUNES............................................................................................................................................... 3 HERITAGE OF MAGIC: OUR TEUTONIC PAST The word “Teutonic,” which once referred to the members of a specific Germanic tribe, has now come to encompass a heritage as large and varied as Northern Europe. One thinks of the Germans as Teutonic; but so, too, are the descendants of the Vikings, the Anglo-Saxons, and even the Normans. If any of your ancestors came from Northern Europe, you yourself are probably heir to the old thoughts and ways of the Teutonic people, long forgotten though these may have been in the rushing modern world. If not, you are still part of the culture they helped to shape, a speaker of a language that grew out of the world-view of the Anglo-Saxons for the sake of telling what they held true and understood. The ways and works of our Teutonic heritage lie just below the surface of the world we know, like gold forgotten beneath the grass covering a mound. It is up to those whose blood and souls ring with the old songs, who feel the secret might of the runes and hear the whispering of our ancient gods, to bring this treasure forth into the light of day again. The working of the magic and worshipping the gods of our ancestors are two of the most important first steps in requickening our hidden roots: only by matching wisdom and works can aught of worth be achieved. But to work the magic rightly, you must first know more of the minds from which it came and the world giving birth to its might. This book Contains both a practical guide to the working of Teutonic magic and some clarification of ways of thought which the modern world has largely forgotten, but which the mage who wills to reclaim the ancient might of our Teutonic ancestors must learn again. THOUGHT AND CULTURE RECLAIMED: AN INTRODUCTION In the life of the person who follows the old ways of the Teutonic people, there should be nothing unholy, no time at which you shut yourself off from an awareness of the workings of your soul simply because the thing you are doing is not openly magical or religious in its goal. Rather, you should be aware of the presence of the gods in everything. When you weed your garden or plant a window box, think of the body of Nerthus, Mother Earth, in which you dig; when you eat a hamburger, give thanks to Freyr and Freyja for their bounty which fattened the cattle and ripened the grain for the bun! The more fully you can know how the gifts the gods have aided you in every aspect of your life, the closer you will be to them as you use these gifts. The same holds true for meditating on the runes: as you think on the workings of their various powers in every aspect of your life, you will become more and more adept-not only at reading the staves, but at using them in ways which work more directly upon the part of the world you can see. Closely related to the duality of holy/unholy is the question of good and evil. The West has inherited a great deal of its own viewpoint on this matter from the Middle East, in which it is a frequent practice to separate being into absolute Good and absolute Evil. The problem with this, of course, is that when absolute concepts are applied to the relative world, they are generally applied according to local prejudices. The effect of this can be seen in, among other things, the incredible psychological devastation wreaked on the Western world by the declaration: “Sexuality is evil; absence of sexuality is good.” The first, and most important, re-turning of thought back to the ancient ways comes in dealing with the duality of sacred and profane as seen by the modern world. The terms themselves come from Latin roots; rooted in Anglo-Saxon, the words become “holy” and “unholy,” having very different meanings and connotations. Holy comes from a root meaning “healthy, whole,” showing that in the Germanic mind something holy is not cut off from the physical world, but rather is strong in both the earth and the worlds of the soul which are woven into it. Something unholy is not simply mundane or “non-spiritual” in the way that a profane thing is; it is something sick or flawed. To hallow a place or item is not to set it apart from the world- it is not taboo or untouchable in the sense of the Judeo-kristjan (Norse spelling of Christian) “sacred”-rather, it is filled with such a power of holiness as to ward it from any unholy-warped or woe-working-wights. Rather than this extreme and absolutist view of good and evil, the Teutonic peoples viewed right as being that justice and correctness which maintains a living society, while wrong was injustice, incorrectness, or anything breaking the bonds of fairness and law on which society is founded. This 4 Teutonic belief in right as justice and fairness is one of the foremost Germanic contributions to civilization as a whole, especially when you see it as the main barrier against Western civilization’s advance into totalitarianism: the deep-rooted belief that “no one is above the law,” that neither private people nor the government has the right to step outside the bounds of the legal system for any purpose and even a king or a president can be brought before the courts if due cause exists.