The Gods created a chain strong enough to bind Fenrir and had to resort to trickery to persuade him to let them put it on him. They made a wager with the wolf that he could not break free of the chain. Fenrir was dubious about their promises to free him afterwards, but agreed to participate when Tyr placed His hand in the wolf's mouth as a pledge of good faith. Fenrir strained with all his might but could not break loose. The Gods then refused to release him and the ravening Hunger was bound. But Tyr lost His right hand in the furious wolf's jaws for betraying the oath.
When does Desire transform into Hunger? When does a positive, motivational power metamorphose into an inward spiral of greed and consumption? When the thing Desired becomes more important than the evolutionary motive underpinning the Desire. When we cling onto things instead of principles. Yet because the Desire is founded upon a principle rather than a thing, the thing can never satisfy and thus more and more is demanded to sate the craving, in ever huger and more monstrous forms, a downward trend that can never be satisfied, but can only become greedier, hungrier and more desperate.
Possessiveness is the Key which transforms Desire into Hunger: the urge to possess instead of to experience, to allow matters to flow and take their own course. This is a Mystery of the fehu rune. Funds (or Desire) must flow, not be hoarded, in order to avoid the curse of the Dragon's gold.
Fenrir is the ultimate Form of the addictive personality. This is something that many magicians are tainted with, it is the very thing that draws some to magic in the first place. It is something that needs to be overcome, to be chained as Fenrir was by the Æsir. The alternative is a form of lycanthropy, where the werewolf-self will lie low for a while, yet continually reassert itself in new displays of obsessive and addictive behaviour that make a mockery of our claims of higher consciousness and Self-awareness.
It must be remembered, however, that it was necessary to bind Fenrir with trickery and that there was a price to pay. The noble deed, the sacrifice of the hand of Tyr, is a part of this realisation. Our greeds, our jealousies, our possessive streaks, will always remain with us. They can only be chained by placing our hands willingly in their mouths and those chains will only hold so long as we remember this: we possess absolute freedom, but as we seek to evolve beyond the bestial toward the divine, we must establish our own order, binding some of our freedoms so that others may flourish. Our appetites cannot all have an absolute free reign without undoing the progress we have made.
Rediscovering Sorcery
At this stage of Initiation, you will be applying your energies to understanding the great Mysteries of your own Self and the Universe in which you find yourself. You will be busy integrating the various aspects of your soul and unifying your consciousness so that it may touch truly Divine levels of inspiration. You will have succeeded in ordering your daily life so that everything ticks along just so, allowing you to pursue your magical studies in the most effective way. Although life will always have its little ups and downs, everything will tend to go just as smoothly and as comfortably for you as it possibly can. This is useful, but can also be an extremely dangerous state of affairs if you are not careful.
It is very important for you to continue to test your limits. At this stage of Initiation this can be a very difficult thing to do, because your psyche will (hopefully) be firing on all cylinders, and the Universe will tend to fall into line with your Will almost automatically, giving you a smooth ride. This is great news for your personal development, you will be able to progress by leaps and bounds, but the risk is that you will start to lose your edge. You need some resistance in your life to strike sparks off. So how to find it without making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself? You certainly don't want to take a step backwards, after all.
You find it be deliberately seeking out opportunities to practise sorcery. You find these opportunities by seeking to help people. There are, however, a couple of very important points to be borne in mind here. Firstly, make sure that the people want your help. Secondly, be careful what kind of help you choose to give. Never forget that you are always a factor in your own magic and you will be changed by everything you do. Assisting someone to pass their exams, recover from an illness, or increase their store of hamingja (luck), can only reflect well on you. Cursing someone's neighbour for taking their parking space could have dire consequences, tainting you with someone else's petty squabble that you should have no part in.
But those important considerations being made, most magicians will begin focusing a lot of their energy on helping others at this stage in their initiatory path. They don't really need to work sorcery for themselves any more, things just tend to click into place around them. But they can keep their skills honed and their edges sharp by Working on behalf of others. Note that contrary to what some may say, there is no reason why you should not charge for such services if you do so ethically and reasonably, because you will certainly be paying a price yourself. You will be exposing yourself to change and challenge. But this, of course, is precisely the purpose.
There is another factor at work here as well, of course, which is crucial to the Work of this chapter. Sorcery is an expression of your Desire. It is a statement of your belief that the world should be different in order to approach the idealised model in your head. True Sorcery is an expression and manifestation of your sense of Beauty, Purpose and Justice. It embodies those three principles of Eroticism, Sovereignty and War. So when addressing any situation, always ask yourself what is your highest Desire.
Crafting Bizarre Artefacts
You can also continue to keep your magical muscles in trim by marrying them with your general creative urges and creating bizarre and beautiful magical artefacts and tools as expressions of your Initiation. Many magicians who approach this initiatory level find that their creative impulses begin to express themselves in very potent ways. Some will write, some will paint, some will sculpt, some will create music, but I have never yet met an effective magician who was not also tremendously creative. When the mind unites, the floodgates are opened. This too is an expression of Desire, an urge to manifest the Beauty of the Other.
This creativity need not be limited to recreational or entertainment purposes, nor need it be focused upon teaching. It is possible to display your Initiation as an example to all by crafting symbolic items which will enhance your magical world. Let's consider a few ways in which this can be done, along with a few historic examples.
You will be completely familiar with all of the techniques of magical practice by this stage. You will already have established a working set of tools to suit your needs, so you no longer face the pressing need to find or fashion such things quickly. This therefore means that you now have time to begin fashioning your ritual space and tools at your leisure, to become something really and powerfully representative of your aesthetic. It doesn't matter if it takes you eighteen months to complete an item, because you can use the one you've always used previously in the meantime. So you may decide to continue working on an old coffee table, whilst in your garage you are crafting an ornately carved and painted altar which will ultimately take its place. You may be painting or embroidering beautiful wall hangings depicting dragons and mythic scenes which will inspire you and fuel your magic when they are finally finished and hang on the walls of your ritual space. Now is the time to carry out all of those long term, intricate tasks that were always so impossible and distant in the early, 'rush hour' period of your Initiation.
This is also the time when you can think outside of the box and really express your magical creativity. You can craft artefacts which are truly unique and bizarre for specific purposes. These may be wands, amulets, cups, tables, or items of clothing. Anything that expresses your purpose. Some of the wild and wonderful magical items found in fantasy role-playing games come to mind as examples. But probably the most bizarre example comes from real life. I am talking, of course, of the infamous Necropants. These trousers were made from the skin of a dead human being.
The skin was taken in a single piece from the waist downwards, dried and treated, and made into a pair of leathery trousers of a particularly grotesque appearance. These were supposed to ensure a steady stream of coined money to the person who wore them. If you search online, you will readily find a photograph of the particularly gruesome Necropants on display in the Icelandic Museum of Witchcraft and Sorcery. I hasten to add that I am certainly not suggesting that anyone today fashions a pair of Necropants, but don't be afraid to be bizarre and creative in less gruesome ways.
Loki and Tangential Tantra
We referenced Loki earlier as the trickster and mischief-maker among the Æsir, the God who would invariably get the other Gods into trouble, but whose skills and sharp wits would inevitably be required to get them out of it again. We also posited that Loki may actually be a projection from Odin Himself, a kind of 'shadow-self' who introduces the element of the random and unexpected into one's path.
At this stage of an Initiate's development, the interjections of Loki into initiatory Work will start to become really noticeable. You will find that your magic quickly brings the results you ask for, but that bizarre and unlooked-for side-effects and synchronistic events that bear little connection to your original purpose also begin to increasingly manifest.
Some might argue – and this would certainly have been the case with those Edwardian magical pioneers such as Aleister Crowley and the good gentlemen and ladies of the Golden Dawn, to whom reason and conscious control was paramount – that this is an unwanted and undisciplined phenomenon and something which should be avoided and stamped out at all costs. Today, following the contributions of the Chaos Magic schools to magical thought, we are free to think quite otherwise.
In actual fact, the further we advance, the more prevalent these unforeseen happenings (termed 'tangential tantra' by Kenneth Grant) will become, not less. For as we unify and harmonise the various parts of our souls, so we can expect an increasing amount of new material to be offered up to us from the deep, dark places in response to our magic, alongside our actual anticipated results. This is not a failing, nor a weakness, but a signification of our personal development.
What kind of manifestations can we expect as tangential tantra? These will be entirely unique to the individual, a chain of synchronicities that will lead – if followed – to a new Understanding, something that would not otherwise have been attained. Expect them to be strange and bizarre. They will also very often be keyed to Desire. On one occasion, without going into details, the sight of a homeless woman asking for change in a London alley led me on a pilgrimage spanning over a year and taught me the Mysteries of the Banshee and the essence and worship of the Celtic Goddess Badb.
These tangential tantra, like the mischievous machinations of Loki, will throw you off your intended course, compelling you to follow their lure. But this is why they have been given to you: if you follow them, you will uncover new Mysteries that are now beckoning to you and which you would not otherwise have discovered. If you disregard them, the deep places of your psyche will assume you are not interested in their input and will cease to communicate with you, turning away and undoing all of the work you have put into your Self-development. If you're not going to listen to the deeper parts of yourself, it's best not to awaken them in the first place, for – like Loki – they can become nasty.
Reading Life's Runes
The Initiate will have become very familiar with reading runes in divination in order to trace the developing patterns of Wyrd in the World. But now it is essential to reach one step further, a step which is quite logical and which should be obvious to those who have performed the rite emulating Odin's sacrifice and rune-winning in the last chapter. You must now learn to read the patterns unfolding in the world directly and then extrapolate backwards in order to discover the runes at their root. This will transform the whole field of time and space into a picture book which your magically sensitised vision may read.
Some runes are easy to read. For instance, any matter of motion will involve raidho, money matters will invoke fehu. So you should be able to begin this practice very easily and readily. Other layers and patterns underlying the processes of life may be more subtle, requiring a more intuitive touch. And don't forget that every situation is multi-faceted. Every happening will have motives and past influences which lie behind it. Try to discern these, and soon you will be carrying out your own rune-castings, entirely within your own mind
This level of runic awareness and perceptual ability will stand you in excellent stead for the remaining Work.
The Fetch in the Flesh
The fetch has already been described when discussing the soul lore of the Germanic peoples. There it was said that:
The fetch surrounds and touches the other parts of the soul, but is not itself a part or a possession of the individual. It is an essence which is transpersonal, spanning generations. The fetch may appear to a person in three forms: (a) as an animal; (b) as an entity of the opposite sex; (c) as a geometric shape.
The fetch is of enormous importance to the Work of this chapter and those beyond it. It is vitally important that you learn to communicate with the fetch and heed its advice. So far, so mystical. Yet you may be surprised to learn that the fetch will generally manifest in a solid, living form and will turn your life on its head in doing so.
If the fetch chooses to appear as an animal, then you will recognise the otherworldly character of that animal and will be able to deduce its message for you. If it appears as a person of the opposite sex, you will feel a strong affinity for that person and their arrival will be heralded by a series of meaningful synchronicities; you will need to develop matters from there. Your interactions with the fetch in this form will be more complex, since it will be capable of speech. In its final form as a geometric shape, the fetch will attract your attention with a recurring image or design in which a particular shape is dominant. You will then be drawn to follow that shape; it may lead you off your expected course, indicating another way to go, or it may simply dominate your thoughts, turning them in a particular direction. In all cases, it is up to you to make the effort toward effective communication.
What, then, does this mean? Are we to interpret the speech of every tom, dick and harry as a message from a supernatural entity linked to our soul and to our ancestry? Not at all. It is essential to have developed a sense of due proportion and a subtle awareness of what constitutes an otherworldly communication and what does not by the time you reach this stage in your Initiation. If you cannot do so, go back and work thoroughly through all the preceding chapters again until you can.
Also, it would be a fallacy to assume that the fetch permanently incarnates itself within a given person, animal or thing. I am not saying that this can never happen, but I am certainly saying that it is unlikely in the extreme. The fetch will adopt any number of guises in order to get its messages across to you, speaking perhaps a single sentence through a given host at a time, then leaving that host to his / her / its own devices, probably utterly unaware of having been utilised as a supernatural mouthpiece. It is up to you to distinguish and understand such messages when they come.
The question may be asked whether the fetch may embody an erotic component, given its frequent manifestation in the form of a person of the opposite sex. It may do so, of course, and that erotic element may in itself prove to be initiatory in nature. But this should not be assumed as a given, it will not always be the case. For an example where the erotic emphasis is definitely present, we need look no further than Sigurd, the heroic exemplar utilised throughout this book. This will be discussed much more thoroughly in the section of this chapter entitled 'Desire as the Engine for Immortality', which folows shortly. But before you think you have a cosy handle on this concept, let me throw you a particularly barbed question for your consideration: does Sigurd's fetch manifest in and speak through Brynhild, or Gudrún, or both?
The Effects of Death on the Soul Complex
Bef
ore proceeding to address the vexing question posed above, it is first necessary to consider the constitution of the soul in Northern lore once again, most especially the effects of the process of dying upon the various parts of the mind / body / soul complex.
The lyke, the physical body, dies of course, since it is bound to Midgard and is discarded when the soul withdraws to other worlds. The elements which make up that body are then broken down, decomposing in order to be reused in the ever-changing material realm. The soul will build a new lyke around itself when it is reborn.
The hyde, that shaping influence which gives form to the soul's manifestation, withdraws from the body it has shaped. It is this withdrawal of the hyde which triggers the process of decomposition as the underlying structure is removed from the body. The hyde departs with the immortal parts of the soul and will begin shaping a new home when the soul is reborn in the world, establishing itself in a new physical envelope and moulding that body to reflect the individual's qualities.
The athem, the life-force which animates the body, is also removed from this plane, sustaining the soul as it fares across the bridge to the higher worlds. Upon its departure, the body of the deceased becomes mere matter, with no life of its own. The many tiny life forms and bacteria which co-exist with a body in life, now begin to break down the structure.
So far, all of the parts we have mentioned have been connected either directly with the physical body, or with its shaping and animation. Now we begin to examine the invisible parts of the human complex, such as the hugh and the myne, thought and memory. These certainly don't remain within the physical shell, they can be presumed to depart to the higher or lower realms on Yggdrasil, along with the other invisible parts of the self. I suspect in most cases that these functions then remain in the immaterial realms, along with the part of the soul which is truly transcendent and immortal (see later). Certainly, when the soul is reborn into a new life, it brings very little of the previous life's thoughts and memories back with it, though occasionally something may be carried across. I have the hunch that the more coherent and integrated the personality is within life, the more cohesion and direct memory there will be between incarnations. This continuity of conscious identity and memory is one of the highest aims of Initiation. In any case, the hugh and myne will always remain available to the greater Self in Asgard, or will at least be accessible in the freezing halls of Hel, where the redundant and dormant aspects of accrued experience slumber until needed.
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