The Wanderung

Wanderung (Ger)= migration, peregrination of peoples.
Neorxnabode= the Greening Home.
wyrdhe= evolve, develop.

We are in a time of Wanderung when the plight of the Eorth has sent a scattered people wheeling about in the Searuvel, casting about for a way out of it, like wild men in a wasteland who seek Neorxnabode. It is the new Menning they seek. The Lode calls to them, it draws them, but the Menning cannot be found in the Wasteland-- it must be made, and they must do this, but they know not how. And so they wander a mazey way through the Searuvel, daunted at every turn.

But as they grope their way, they find each other and band together, and share the knowledge they have gathered, found at hand or seen but dim, a patch of the puzzle glimpsed in the Mistryne.

And so, stepwise, they wyrdhe beyond the Searuvel, become free to dwell in the Menning as they make it about them, become the Men they are meant to be, a new thing upon the Eorth-- the Wise Warders of Edhlifrith, the Meaning of Mankind, their rightful stead in the Edhli.

Land-nam for Free Edhli

'Land-nam' is to edbespeak umrun (re-claim environment) and also to ednim (reclamate) it, for the free Edhli; that is, to ward it from harm, under Edhlifrith (Nature-protection), so that it can begin to heal. This is helped by rousing the Land-dryg (wight) of the neighborhood from his dreaming. When he is busy in the doings of Edhli, he lies wound-up in the land as a dreaming whorl. But when he is aroused, he unwinds to rise rampant as a winged Orm (serpent), to ward the land and waters from harm. A bindrune for this is the ea-rune (a vertical stave balancing a 'w') topped by a small ing-rune (diamond-shaped), as this is belike to the shape of the risen Dryg. It can be malled (painted) on a bole or stone, which warns men that this land is under frith, but also to call the Dryg to one's mind so that he can be reached in the twyrymet (dual space) of his dreaming, where immynd (imagination) and Edhli meld. Here, one feels the helgoth (sacredness) that edgalders (reenchants) the land.

The Shaggy Saga

(word-help beneath)

The Lodestone was fostered, deep in the Wolken, like a bairn in the womb, over long time. In time, the Wolken called to the Twayne, to their marrow, so soft and still it called to them. And they were drawn as if blind into its mistryne, going by feel only, and the murmuring of their blood, toward the Lodestone, a long and wayward faring through the Twyrymet. They neared its stead, in the midstead of the Wolken, and it was made known to them that this great madhom was not theirs to have, but they must bring it to the Allwight. So they together lifted it from its seat and set it in their heads, and sought the Allwight in the Myrkwood where he lived wild and free, frisking about the Edhli at play, diving in and out of body-shapes of all life-kinds in endless frolic, falling from one to other as samen-flowod flows twixt them, as it flows about the whole knit-working of the Edhli. He had learned all there was to be known of the whole of life, the hungers and fears, and winning in gladness and losing in sorrow, in all his kinren, his bredhern. He was beloved child of the Wolken, free to play as he would, but never straying far from its hearth.

When the Twayne came to him, he saw that the worsening Dilgoth meant that he must cherringe to something never seen before, and that he must fare forth from the life he had known, but he could not. But the Wolken spoke soft and still to him and he saw his way ahead and took the first step.

The Twayne, who bore the Lodestone inside them, came themselves to him, one to either side of him, and he bowed to anfon their gift while they raised their hands to clasp about his head, and by the will of the Wolken the Stone was dubbed into his brain and settled there, thorough-melding it. Now much that was worked over long time in the Wolken now worked quickly in his brain, edmaking his ferth, bringing his being and knowing and life-drang under a new mynt, to fight the Dilgoth so that the Edhli could live on, that all life could live. And when this Cherringe was fulfilled, the Allwight had become the Drygand, Halleth of the Edhli, and so to the Twayne now, he dubbed back the Lodestone to their brains, and there was something to it now of the Drygand, so that as it melded to their own selfness, it edmade it to a greater Self, a Eormen-self of the Edhli-mind of Wolken and with the new mynt of the Drygand. And Wildiar and Bilewit, for so they were named, became free Thanes to the Drygand, his first Drygandalfs, helped always by the Lodestone to fight for the Sake of the Edhli, and for the new Menning, the only hope for Edhli and Man.

And so these three went everywhere, offering to gift the Lodestone to everyone fit and willing to undergo the Cherringe, to wights of the lands and waters, and alfs, and to men, who then became Drygandalfs. They told man-kind of the Dilgoth and of the Edhlifrith Sake and of the new Menning to come.

That is how this great Cherringe of Wyrd began, out of fearsome plight and need, to stop the Dilgoth, to make a new Menning of Edhlifrith on Eorth, so that Life may live.

Wolken= the cloud-being of all Edhli (=living Nature) which wraps the Earth.
Mistryne= mystery.
Twyrymet= a melding of Edhli and Wolken in a liminal consciousness-space.
Madhom= a treasure-object.
Samen-flowod= the shining life-fluid that runs throughout the Edhli; the misty mind-stuff of the Wolken.
Kinren= creatures.
Dilgoth= the current Extinction Event.
Cherringe= change, conversion.
Anfon= receive, accept.
Ed-= 're-' in Old English.
Ferth= psyche.
Drang= force.
Mynt= an aim, intention, purpose.
Halleth= heroic warrior-savior.
Eormen= vast-entire.
Wildiar= wild animal. Bilewit= simple, pure, sincere, just, gentle, gracious; a good wight.
Sake= a cause, claim.
Menning= a culture-civilization.
Edhlifrith= Nature-peace, -protection; 'Ecology'.
Wyrd= the trend of things.
Plight= danger, risk.

Think Piece

I think that the strong Neo-primitivist urge of the Neopagan/New Age movement is problematic in that it turns us toward a lost past instead of the present and future, and it creates a lot of wannabeism that is futile because we cannot become anything like authentic tribal people in the innocent, naive, Noble Savage mold in which we imagine them. The appeal of the the urge to go back to a simpler, nonharming, integrated, spiritually fulfilled and saner culture is understandable in these times, but this ideal state, if it ever existed as we imagine it, is out of our reach, and we couldn't fit ourselves to it if we could reach it. It becomes ever more distant and vanishing as modern civilization progresses, in the way the world changes inexorably, and we can never recover what has been lost or destroyed. We can't go back, even innerly, because we are shaped by the world we live in, which is radically different from that even not too long ago. We have to accept that our nature, our mentality, is novel. We don't have to like it, but it is where we are, and wanting, trying, to go back, is not going to work. But we don't have to passively succumb to the fatal trend of civilization-- we do have some independence from our environment, some freedom to assert some resistance to its influence, so we can influence our own thoughts and feelings and desires, our behavior, our influence on others. Personal transformation, a major idea of the New Age movement, may be an unrealistic goal for all but a few, but we can still try to make the best of what we cannot help, try to 'turn ill to good'. Specifically, we can try to take advantage of our Postmodern unmoored fragmentation of identity and psyche and world-picture to try to save our Biosphere and our species. In this regard, I've been thinking about personal transformation. It is certainly the major idea in the Shaggy Mythos after Ecology. Two thinkers about transformation have had a particularly strong influence on me. The first is Robert Jay Lifton, a 'psychohistorian', whose concept of Protean Man as a characteristic, iconic figure in the traumatic twentieth century was the first major idea to really change my worldview when I first went to college at the end of the Sixties, and it has stayed with me more than any other basic intellectual concept I was exposed to then. Then, in the last few years I came across anthropological theorist Anthony F. C. Wallace's writings about Revitalization Movements and Mazeway Resynthesis as a response to historic/cultural trauma of the sort that Lifton studied, but with different results. You might want to look up these authors and their work.

The reason I mention these thinkers and their ideas is that the Mythos has been shaped in its organic evolution by ideas such as these, which I have sought down every byway I could find. And so there is ideology inherent in the elements of the Mythos, inextricable from it. The long, halting, inchoate growth of the Mythos has been driven by material unearthed in my researches, in my reactions both conscious and unconscious to it, and in the creative interplay of the conscious and unconscious. I suppose this is my kind of shamanism, the only kind I seem to be capable of, and also the closest I can get to scholarly analysis, since I lack a sharp, orderly, complexly capacious scholarly mind. So when you read one of my pieces written in mythic language, like the foundational myth of the Shaggy Mythos which will be the next post, be aware that there is an embedded ideology-- not that I am some rigid, doctrinaire ideologue, but that an ideology has evolved organically together with the Mythos, though I don't like to state it baldly, as it detracts from the magical mystery of myth-- it's deadly, really. But I just want you to know that there has been a lot of dithering and worrying about what was good for the ecological mythos and what was not, and especially about having it be cohering and practical and something that worked, despite being not really a true authentic, organic creation like a visionary revelation, but a thought-out, tinkered-with, agonized-over fiction invented for a specific purpose, which I suppose is to help one engineer, as far as one can, personal transformation through a coherent system of mythic icons, toward ecological salvation.

The Helg-sagen of the Shaggy Sagenverden (Hieros Logos of the Mythos)

The helg-sagen/sacred myth of the Shaggy Sagenverden/mythos is the telling of the Drygand's Cherringe/conversion from being the Allwight/Pan-chimaera into being the Drygand/magic-magic thing, who is the great halleth/hero of the Edhli/Biosphere, the inbodyer of Edhlifrith/Ecology, fighter of the Searuvel/Evil Machine, bringer of the Edhli-menning/ecological civilization.

You will soon have this telling.

To Shift the Wyrd of Eorth

We must shift the Wyrd of Eorth, for the overbiding of the Edhli and of our own. Without the Drygand's Eored of Alf-drengs, his DrygandAlfs, the deathly Searuvel cannot be shifted into the Edhlimenning-- and we must be of a strength of strength-enough to work this Cherringe over the Eormen-Eorth.

Overbide= survive.
Eored= a force, band, troop.
Dreng= warrior, thane.
Eormen= immense, whole, universal.
for further word-meanings, read other shtooks.