Zen Odinism – or What We Do and Why We Do It : by Steve and Lyn

 “What do we do and why do we do it?” Not unreasonable questions you might think, but in my experience these are the questions that belief often experiences as uncomfortable. Most of us coming to the heathen path will have been exposed (if only in a nominal sense) to some other form of religion - probably Christianity. So how do we move from the position of feeling inspired by a mythology/literature/ideal which isn’t part of the mainstream of our society, to the place where we can formally pay homage (if not worship) to those things which are given form by the new philosophy we have embraced, and what should that exercise entail?

Lying at the heart of the question of what our spiritual expression should look, feel or sound like is ultimately our view of what the divine is. Are the Gods and Goddesses distinct beings, or are they encultured personifications of principles experienced in the universe (or are they both?) and what do we think these beings or principles want from us. Is our simple acknowledgement of these beings or ideals the manner in which their presence is made more manifest in the universe.

There is a zen saying that in order to undertake the path of awakening one needs “great faith, great doubt and great courage”. In pondering the conundrums facing the heathen or pagan seeking to live in the 21st century, I thought that this was quite an apt summary of what we are seeking to embody in the hearth of Odin the Wanderer.

The small number of us who meet to celebrate the turning of the year are moved at a profound level by the weightiness of the Northern aesthetic- its emphasis on honour, its sparseness and sense of stoicism - the Gods, Goddesses and Wights that we honour and follow are clearly within the Northern Mythos- for us meeting on the land this makes sense at a primal level. Now this is all sounding fairly normal for anyone who has been to a blot or a hearth before, but what one might be struck by, is that  - hey, we don’t say a lot, we spend most of our time sitting down and we also (gasp) spend some of our time laughing.

But how is this zen?, and why zen and Odinism?

As to the ‘how’, we deem what we are doing as being zen related. Zen is the Japanese translation of Chan which in turn is the Chinese translation of Dhyana i.e. meditation. Now meditation can mean many things but I think the ideas of mindfulness, awareness, wakefulness and quiet receptivity are at the heart of the experience I am pointing to. In practice this means that after acknowledging the elements and directions and welcoming the Gods, Goddesses and Wights, we spend most of our time listening both to the inner stirrings of ourselves and to the spirit of place.

As to why zen and Odinism, - at a simple level it’s a syncretism we like! We are not an over-talkative bunch and we feel somewhat burnt-out by either reconstructionism or magical go-getting. At a philosophical level, however, I think that there are deep connections between the concept of the way of the warrior as developed under the inspiration of Zen (“Bushido”) and the path of spiritual warriorship that the heathen path seeks to encourage. The concept of Runa or mystery also requires acknowledgment of the incompleteness of our spiritual vision, and of the limits that language places on us. This sits well with the type of zen mind attitude encouraged through working with apparently nonsensical koans (read the Rune poems recently?).

Now to some this may all sound like new age wooliness, but all I offer in our defence is that we are not saying that anyone else has to do likewise, and that due to the historic gaps in our source material, many of us are inevitably splicing our heathenry with hermeticism, Wicca and Christianity without being conscious of it. If we have to splice -and I think that we must because it is impossible to erase 1000 years of ancestral experience - then let’s do it consciously and explicitly rather than claiming a feeble historic precedent. We are not living in the same world that our heathen forbears inhabited and we can’t reconstruct it absolutely, so let’s run with that and dwell in the now rather than trying to occupy what is gone.

To sum it all up, we are trying to find out what we think via the paradigm of the Northern Gods and Goddesses. Within the framework of the Nine Noble Virtues and using the deities as exemplars, we are trying to find a means of connecting to our spiritual selves in a way which resonates for us – and that means accepting the things we have learnt from other traditions rather than trying to eradicate them (a fruitless task) from our well of memory.

For us, Odin and Frigga embody the search for wisdom and understanding. When in the Grimnismol Odin says “Over Midgard Hugin and Munin both Each day set forth to fly: For Hugin I fear lest he come not home, But for Munin my care is more” he is saying that memory is the most valuable of assets. This doesn’t mean, can’t mean, only certain memories – it means everything of value which has been learned by our ancestors and, crucially, by ourselves.

Odin wandered Midgard, watching and learning. We want to do the same and we see this as the meaning of our hearth. So we do what seems to us best to create the conditions that make this possible.

Hence the silence…

The Poetic Edda translated by Henry Adams Bellows, Dover Publications, Inc, Mineola, New York 1923/2004