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Northbound Soul: My Path to Heathenism
Northbound Soul: My Path to Heathenism
Author: Odins Raven
Faith is a powerful word. One that can be confusing uplifting and disheartening all at once. Also a word I have struggled with for some 10 or more years of my young life.
My first memories of encountering this beast called faith are of my childhood years in Sunday school. Something about it always felt empty and wrong to me, I couldn't be sure at the time why it was, but it never made me feel happy or that I had some place to belong in Christ's little world. As a matter of fact, church made me feel more empty and less of a person the more I went.
So at the tender age of 8, I quit, and my beloved and tolerant grandparents never made me go to church again. For years. that thing called faith was out of sight and out of mind in my life, I had moments where I thought I understood Christianity, but they were fleeting and soon replaced by my emptiness and confusion towards monotheism.
From a very young age I loved magic. I remember when my grandmother (the saint who raised me as her own because my mother was too young to take care of me) would tell me old wives tales, superstitions and the like she had learned growing up on Nova Scotia's south shore. I can still recall to this day one thing that sparked my love for magic.
One day, as I looked at the pink clouds of twilight, my grandmother said to me "Pink sky at night, sailors delight; pink sky at morn, sailors warn". Right then and there I think a part of me knew that it wanted to know more. I wanted to be able to read nature, to be able to know things without science interfering and to understand the secrets of the divine.
That was the seed for what would become an underlying theme in my life: I love the supernatural and seek to know as much as possible.
At times, as many people do, I felt like I didn't belong. I wanted to live in another world… one with magic, swords, heroes and monsters. Unlike many, I never grew out of this.
I was considered a poor reader and I was held back a year because of it. However, thanks to a very skillful teacher, I came back with a vengeance and an extremely overdeveloped reading skill for my age. My sudden ability to understand and devour books fueled me onward to absorb as much reading material as possible. Books became my doorway into the worlds I wanted to be in… worlds full of magic and wonder, worlds that didn't leave me feeling empty within.
Growing up wasn't always easy, but it never is. My love of books, over developed I.Q., and tendency to dislike normal kids, set me apart from the other kids. I remained faithful to the things I loved.
My love for animals that the Christian world reviled helped to press me forward My own namesake was a source of much malign interest from bullies and mean children. My namesake was also from where my love affair with ravens came.
They were unloved, feared and hated by the so-called normal people just because no one understood them. To me, I was a raven deep down. Hated, mocked, reviled because only a rare few saw me for what I truly was.
My first true dabbling in the occult occurred long after elementary when I first came to high school at the age of 13. Role-playing games (although not occult in nature) helped me to exercise my imagination in ways never before possible and opened doors other children had long attempted to force me to close. However the true first meeting between the occult and me happened when I discovered a book in our school library.
It was a thick dusty old thing, well worn and with that smell of old books that is like a siren's call to avid readers. I can't recall its name (strangely), but I do recall that it was an encyclopedia of the occult, magic and supernatural. I devoured as much of its information as I could. I spent many a lunch hour in the school library reading this wonderful book over and over while envisioning myself battling the demons within, casting the spells and using the magic.
The next year of school I was disappointed to see my beloved old book gone. Perhaps it was fate; perhaps it was the wyrds way of telling me I needed to grow. The lack of that book pressed me to begin my study of other occult matters.
It was that same year my book went missing that I stumbled on a work about Druidry in a bookstore that was going out of business. That book opened my eyes. The things I long dreamed of could be real. The things I wished to be had been all along waiting for me to find them.
It wasn't long after, I purchased my first book on the runes. Though it was bereft of much information about the Norse gods, my love of mythology helped fill in the gaps. I still followed a basically druidic path at the time and was starting to look into the Celtic gods, but something about the runes and the gods of north awakened something inside, something that lingered deep in my heart.
For the next two years, I studied the occult and beliefs of countless pagan faiths from online sources, with many of my friends who were Wicca and, of course, in my beloved books.
Sadly, that same year I discovered what some would call a pagan pretender. There was a charismatic young man at my school who was popular among the punk and Goth crowds. A man who had many friends and started to teach them about Wicca and its beliefs.
Soon however, my close friends started telling me that he had shown them secrets and also had revealed that he was the incarnation of a hero… and now an evil entity, who had in a past life been his brother, was trying to destroy him.
This is how I discovered that this pretender was using terms and idea's from popular novels mixed with magic and faith to trick my friends into thinking he was something greater then he was.
Now I will admit I've always had a temper, and though I consider myself cool and collected, when my temper does show it tends to be strong. When I found out about this man and his lies and his perversion of faith in order to raise himself higher then others, I was livid with rage. I wanted him to pay. I wanted the wolves of the wild hunt to stalk him and teach him the meaning of fear. I wanted gods to punish him and teach him never to use faith in such a crass and sickening way.
My rage and fury brought me for the first time to the gods of the north. I put aside my druidism and stood before Tyr and asked him to bring his justice to this false witch and save my friends from what was a cult in its infancy.
A few months later this false witch no longer came to school. My friends. who had pushed away from me because of my avid opposition to the false witch, started to forget him and act like themselves again. I know not what Tyr did and I do not care to know. However that was a turning point that made me realize my heart and soul had always belonged to the gods of the north.
It was sometime after this when I started to realize that my emotions were a source of strength. My anger towards the people who hurt my friends and loved ones was natural and to be encouraged. I dusted off my old book on the runes and started to collect many more about heathenry and the northern mysteries.
I had, at last, found my place and it was standing with the gods of my ancestors.
I think I always had a close tie to the north without knowing it. I had long loved winter and deep inside had always known I was one of Odin's Ravens. Later, I would discover -- as I had long suspected -- that a Raven was my fetch animal.
As Odin journeyed, so did I journey. I have attempted to grow in my wisdom, yet there is wider experience still into which I can grow.
This wanderer yet has many more travels ahead of him, but he knows in his heart that he does so with the gods of the north.
ABOUT...
Odins Raven
Location: Somewhere outside Halifax, Nova Scotia
Bio: My name is Chris Crowe but folks call me Raven for one reason or another. Ive been practiceing one form of pagan faith or another for the last 10 years of my life. Though I love the northren mysteries I have long studied the beliefs of countless other pagan faiths. My patron god is Odin and goddess is strangely as it may seem Skadi. Anyway this is me well as much of me as Im willing to give.
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