It Lies Within: Thoughts on Spiritual Materialism
by Laure Lynch
(Note: This article was printed in Idunna in 2002 or 2003--I think--under a slightly different title. It was my first published Heathen article. I present it here not only for the historical value, but because it has a few worthwhile things to say about spiritual materialism--a danger we all face, especially those of us who like to accumulate cool spiritual bling!)
Long ago, our spiritual forerunners in Scandinavia and on the continent maintained hofs and harrows in which to honor and commune with the Gods. As Christianity crept across the face of Europe, many of these holy places were destroyed, usually beyond recognition. The great Irminsul pillar of the Saxons fell to the axes of the Frankish invaders, the holy temple of Uppsala was raized to the ground—and last, in Iceland, when Thorgeirr the Lawspeaker proclaimed the island’s conversion to Christianity, the holy statues were consigned to the depths like Andvari’s gold.
Despite these acts of sacrilege, Heathenry survived, and today, like our spiritual ancestors before us, we still use altars, shrines, or harrows as focal points to help us connect with our gods. These can be fairly plain—such as a table or dresser top, covered with a nice cloth, that serves as home to a devotional statue, and perhaps a candle or two. Or they can be elaborate, displaying handmade ritual tools that powerfully evoke the traditions of the past—a hand-carved horn, a rune-etched wand, an exquisite offering bowl of hammered metal. But whether simple or ornate, all shrines and harrows serve as visual and tangible reminders of our connections with our Gods. A shrine can even become a lens that focuses the intensity of the love and dedication we feel towards a Deity into an energy vortex, a place of power that attracts that Deity and other good wights, thus aiding us greatly in our spiritual journey. The creation of such a center of devotion in one’s home can be an act of might.
On the other hand, the destruction of one can be a nightmare.
Not long ago, I had what I at first took to be a nightmare about the destruction of my own altar. Mine is one of those that tends towards simplicity. I believe in collecting special ritual tools as they come to me, or in making my own when I can, and both pursuits can take years. So in the meantime, I use what I have: a sturdy round table (which is actually a huge drum) spread with a pretty dark blue cloth, a couple of dark blue candles in glass, a chalice (I don’t have a drinking horn yet, because I want to devote time and attention to preparing and decorating my own), a little vase of flowers. The one item on the altar I highly value and treasure is my statue of Odin, the God who has claimed my heart and soul and is the breath of life itself to me. My statue is the full-color one by Oberon Zell, showing Odin in His guise as Wanderer, brandishing Gungnir, clad in His characteristic blue-black cloak and floppy, wide-brimmed hat, and flanked by His two wolves, Geri and Freki, while His ravens, Hugin and Munnin, perch on His shoulders, whispering what they have witnessed that day into their Master’s ears. Besides the fact that it’s a work of art, the statue is precious to me because it called to me to buy it months before I was even aware of Odin’s influence in my life. Its presence in my home became an increasing focal point for me until I finally broke down and created an altar for it, and I believe simply having it around was one of the things that triggered the process of my opening my heart and mind to Him.
However, the statue came with a warning from the artist that it was extremely breakable, especially the spear, and in the course of moving it one day I did accidentally knock it against something, with the result that the tail of one of the wolves broke off. I fixed that with super glue, and it was none the worse for wear. Yet, from that point on I was paranoid about the statue’s safety. Even though my altar is set back against a wall, pretty much out of the way, I got into the habit of carefully watching anyone who came into my computer/meditation room, warning them if I thought they were getting too close to my altar. I was terrified at the idea of my statue breaking. And then I had this dream.
In the dream, I had moved to a different house, and instead of the 3-legged drum I use as an altar now, I had some kind of table. My daughter and I were standing in the doorway of my room arguing about something, and either she or I slammed the door shut. When the door was slammed, the altar collapsed like a house of cards, and the statue shattered. I screamed, heard my daughter ask what had happened, and quickly locked the door because I didn't want anyone to know the statue had broken. Then I ran over to look at the damage, to see if it was fixable. But the head had broken off, and the outer part of the entire rest of the statue had completely crumbled, so that all the details were gone and only bare porcelain (or whatever material it’s made from; I think it’s called hydrastone) was showing. But the funny thing is, the body of the statue had also expanded, as if it had puffed out when it shattered. Only the severed head was still intact.
I woke up at that point and found myself lying on my back, breathing hard. First, I looked over at my altar and was relieved to see that the statue was perfectly ok. Then I sat up, trying to calm down and center myself while I began to ponder the dream. It may well have been “only” an anxiety dream, related to my fears about the stature breaking. But all of my dreams involving Odin have had meaning…so, what did this one mean?
Pondering the dream, I found myself thinking of Thorgeirr the Lawspeaker.
Iceland’s conversion to Christianity, at the Althing of 1000 CE, is traditionally credited to the threat of persecution from Olafr Tyggvason, the proselytizing King of Norway, but the island’s exposure to English and German influences would probably have led to conversion eventually anyhow. Beginning in around 980, Iceland was visited by a series of missionaries, but they met with little success. Their names are recorded in the Icelandingbok and the sagas—Thorvald Kondransson, Fridek, Stefnir Thorgilsson, Thangbrand, Thormod—and their missions followed a similar pattern: each one would arrive in Iceland, succeed in converting a handful of prominent men, become the object of satire from the resident skaldic wits, get involved in a fights resulting in a few deaths or in the destruction of property, and finally be forced to flee Iceland in disgrace, returning to their patron (who was frequently King Olafr) with complaints of contentious islanders. In Stefnir’s case, his violent and wanton destruction of sanctuaries and images of the Heathen Gods led to his being outlawed to Iceland, and to the passage at that year’s Althing of the fraendaskomm (“kin shame”) law, which required families to prosecute their Christian kin if they committed blasphemy against the Gods.
After Thangbrand’s failure, King Olafr doubled his efforts. He closed Norwegian ports to Icelandic traders and imprisoned the few Icelanders living in Norway—some of whom were relatives of leading Icelandic Heathens—threatening to kill them unless the island converted to Christianity. These actions had a drastic effect on Iceland; it was a major tenet of the island’s foreign policy to maintain good relations with Norway, as it was their major trading partner, and many Icelanders had family ties with Norwegians. Icelandic Christians, encouraged by these developments, began to loudly demand the conversion of the entire country, and the abolishment of such religious traditions as the hallowing of assemblies by Heathen rites. A delegation of these increasingly vocal Christians traveled to Norway and ransomed the hostages by promising King Olafr to convert their homeland. Back in Iceland, the Christian chieftains moved to separate themselves increasingly from the existing government systems, which were still controlled by Heathens. Swiftly, the country was divided into two separate and hostile camps, and the threat of civil war began to loom.
According to Ari’s Íslendingabók, matters came to a head at the Althing of 1000, as those who had kept troth with the Norse Gods squared off against the Christians. Both sides swore that they would not live together under the same law, and the encounter threatened to escalate into open warfare. In typical Icelandic fashion, mediators intervened, and the matter was submitted to arbitration.
The Christians called for Hall Thorsteinsson of Sida to act as their negotiator. But to the astonishment of both Christians and Heathens alike, he turned the task over to Thorgeirr Thorkelsson. A constitutionally elected law-speaker from Ljósavatn in the Northern Quarter, Thorgeir was also a Heathen goði, but with close ties to the Christian community. Both sides finally agreed to submit to his arbitration. However, before he would even consider making such a momentous decision, Thorgeir went “under the cloak” to consult with the Gods. The advantages of conversion--treaties, peace and prosperity—needed to be weighed against the value of keeping troth to the Gods under threat of violent destruction and bloodshed for the land and her people. What would be lost by converting, and what might be preserved? So Thorgeir lay down and spread his cloak over him, and remained there without moving for a day and a half. The next morning he arose and announced that the entire gathering should proceed to the Law Rock. Once everyone was assembled there, he announced his decision: that all of Iceland should be under one law because, “It will prove true, if we break the law in pieces, that we break the peace in pieces, too.” He proclaimed that all men in Iceland should be immediately baptized and become Christians, but that certain Heathen practices, such as sacrifice to the old Gods, should be allowed to continue in private.
This official tolerance towards covert Heathenism only endured for a few years, but by then a precedent had been set in favor of tolerance as opposed to persecution. And in the wake of Thorgeir’s decision, the memory of the Gods and the old ways not only lived on but thrived. For the typical Icelander, kin was of the greatest importance, and the Icelandic passion for genealogy made them proud to claim descent from their elder kin, the Gods—a pride which comes down to us in the wealth of surviving literature.
The next several centuries produced the Codex Regius, in which many of the lays that comprise the Poetic Edda are preserved, along with Snorri Sturluson’s Edda and Heimskringla, and the numerous Icelandic family sagas with their stories of the old days and the old heroes. Free from persecution and from concerted attempts to wipe out any surviving trances of the old ways, in Iceland the Gods endured in the hearts and minds of the people.
What did Thorgeir see as he lay “under the cloak” for a day and a half at the Althing? I wondered as I searched for meaning in my disturbing dream. Did the Gods speak to him? And if so, what did They say? Did Skuld perhaps, as Gundarsson speculates in Road to Valhalla, show him a future that reassured him that Iceland’s peaceful conversion would work towards the preservation of the old religion, rather than its destruction? We cannot say for sure what he saw, what he was shown. However, legend tells us that when he returned to his home in the north of Iceland, he did not destroy the images of the gods from his own hof. Instead, he took them to a glacier-fed waterfall—Godhafoss, or the Waterfall of the Gods--above a lake, and cast them over, to sink into the deep waters beneath, trusting that the loss of these statues meant neither the loss of the Gods, or of his troth with Them. They were, after all, only statues, only images. They were focal points to remind him of his connection with the Gods, but that connection would survive without them, because it was within him, in his heart. Which brings me back to my dream.
The map is not the terrain, the saying goes. In a similar vein, perhaps we sometimes need to be reminded that the image is not the God, and the hof or harrow is not our faith itself, only one of the many tools we use in practicing it. It isn’t that I had forgotten this, really. I never actually thought that the statue was Odin Himself (a conclusion which would have been too silly for words). Odin is many things to me—my God, the love of my life, and giver of the breath that nourishes my body and soul, the ecstasy that intoxicates my mind, and the inspiration that sets my spirit on fire—but a statue is certainly not among them! I knew this. However, my dream showed me that I was in danger of placing too much importance on the statue, of losing sight of the fact that it was merely a focal point, nothing more, and that its loss, if it should occur, would mean the loss of a beautiful thing—but again, nothing more than that.
It’s nice to have these tangible reminders of our faith that we can see and touch—the expensive statue, the exquisitely designed harrow, the hand-carved drinking horn. Without question, they are valuable reminders of our faith and aids in maintaining it—but we need to be mindful that they are only things, and like most of the external trappings of our lives in this materialistic society, we invest them with too much importance. This habit can lead to spiritual materialism, a very real danger for all spiritual people, not just for us as Heathens. If you were suddenly stripped of every external perk you enjoy as a result of belonging to our 21st century culture—your career, your education, your clergy status if you have it, your home, your possession—what would be left? That is the part of you that must be so sure in your devotion to the Gods that your faith in Them would survive the loss of everything else you’ve ever known. Our connection to the Gods is within—in our hearts, in our blood, in our souls. And as long as we remain mindful of that, it can never be taken from us—as Thorgeir proved.
Sources:
Nyal’s Saga
Teutonic Religion, by Kvedulfr Gundarsson
Wotan: The Road to Valhalla, by Kvedulfr Gundarsson
A History of the Vikings, by Gwyn Jones
Viking Age Iceland, by Jesse Byock
Icelendingabok – Ari the Wise, c. 1130
(c) 2002
wodandis@gmail.com