An Act of Seidhr
I was born to those who loathed me, although they did not yet know it
Taught hymns unto a god who would delight in my destruction.
Confirmed and consecrated to religion that despised me.
Yet I am blamed for leaving it. The fathers call me faithless
To promises I never made. They remonstrate against me.
Decry they, as a scandal, on the fact that I, a heathen
Am living as a heathen would. Well then. Let’s hear the charges.
Let there be no past or future. Only different kinds of present.
Let layer pile on layer till the shape that is eternal
And built of the all the places that the years have or will see me
Is visible at last. If then you think you recognize me
Speak then, and not before, on my apostacy. Now follow:
The roads we are retracing in my history are weary.
The first seed is mere fantasy. The sort that every student
Of Middle Earth and Narnia and Player’s Handbook conjures.
I thought this merely fiction, never would have thought to worship,
So understand that I intended no idolatries. They happen
When I’ve not been this version of me nigh onto a decade.
Behold the me long-past, who by experimental mouthfeel
Is fitting names together. And perhaps you ought to hear them—
Hear then, of Mistolin, who is the Wolf Behind the Sunset,
(May he give us Rest From Grieving and the shelter of his kinship.)
Cruel Barrolan, of Sunrise, strong and prouder than the mountains,
(May He Who Howls the Morning Light appeased be, and ignore us.)
Dark Fenruoq, the Hidden Name, who with the dead is waiting,
(For Death is known to everyone. His name must be familiar.)
Of Firiel, the Spider of the Moon and of Night’s Wisdom,
(Hail Mother, Full of Moonlight, from whom secrets are unhidden.)
And Setirov, her only son, of Wind, of Inspiration
(The Breath of All the World, tornado death could not extinguish.)
Fair Kataranya, Laughter in the Lightning, in the Thunder,
(The Lightning that is Love, the archeress of Bolt and Blessing.)
Great Hrakulotha, Lord of War, of power and protection,
The Boots that Crush the Thin One (whose true name must not be spoken.)
And Narwahye his bride, Lady of Peace, who rules the hearthfire
(Hail Narwahye, in whose presence no violence can happen.)
Of Dahfui, her sibling, foe and student of her husband,
(The Many-Colored, Ever Changed and Changing Flame of Courage.)
Origyen of the Forests, fearful lord of fear and harvest
(The Fruit Tree in the Wilds, that may be tasted but with danger.)
Odurum, Lord of Vengeance, seething on the holy mountain,
(The Lord of Endless Anger, may his Eye turn not upon us.)
Amruoq, lord of journeys, and the watcher of the crossroads,
(May our ways be swift and easy. May we find what we are seeking.)
Heimos and Venias, unknowable to minds or mortals,
(Of Time, Eternity, and What the Dead Keep from the Living.)
Arcoreas, The Conquering Cold, of every face of Winter,
Virility Without Fertility, (and those who have it.)
And half-mortal Ishamantaru, of the Sun of Heaven
(Glory to Ishamantaru, in the highest of the heavens.)
Remember all these names of gods. As they are clothed with story,
As all the men I used to be mythologize about them,
They soon enough will grow to more than names. And we will see them
Achieve the transformation of my selves both past and future.
A few years further, in the shadow of some dread cathedral,
Extravagantly wondrous, of the Ba’al of the Christians,
There is a version of me. He is weary of the shadow
Of the wondrous worldly temple to the Ba’al of the Christians.
(The irony is that the faith they walk by and don’t look at
Is perfectly designed to give salvation to the many
They use it to oppress. But that is my concern no longer.)
He’s hungry every minute, he is on starvation rations.
He’s as cold as he is lonely. He is weary of the crossroads:
For every minute of the years he’s lived here, in the shadow,
He has hung upon the crossroads, but never has he seen there
A road that leads to any refuge one like him might shelter.
Yet here at least he lives beyond the shadows of his parents.
Yet here at last he’s said out loud the truth that he was born with.
And here he’s learned a lesson quite apart from that intended
On Abstract Artifacts, Reference, Necessary Naming,
On how a story told is Ontologic extra Layer,
On how the purpose of the human mind is to make meaning
And once a meaning’s made, why, it remaineth made eternal.
His time here is not lengthy. Soon will Multiple Sclerosis
Work hand in accidental hand with lust to break his prison
And he will learn the loneliness that all his life was used to
Is but one more illusion of the Ba’al of the Christians.
On bench much-disregarded, in the shadow of the summer
In a city dedicated to the god I had abandoned—
Yet another variation of the Ba’al of the Christians—
Sits a me that is deciding. Merely inches from the traffic,
Yet years off from the meaning of the choice that he is making.
He has witnessed, in his labors, tempting titles as they passed him:
“The Shaman’s Call” “The Hidden Paths” “The Book of Self-Becoming”
And others, cheaply printed, to disguise their grains of wisdom
As self-psychology, and facile fortitude, and folly.
But he remembers names, once sculpted out of idle insights.
And he remembers theses, once aborted but still potent.
And he knows how completely he cannot believe in nothing.
Whatever futures would have come, if but he had decided
To disregard his longings and endure in sun-bleached silence
The weary ostentation of the Ba’al of the Christians,
Of them I cannot speak. Some paths are better left abandoned.
In the semi-solitude of being solely still awakened,
Of midnight in the bedroom, he is practicing, he’s stumbling.
He has had no actual training, no techniques of meditation,
And he must by trial and error slowly grope his spirit trance-ward.
It matters not how long it takes—a year, less than a minute—
He finds a path eventually. He builds it out of memories.
Through lion’s den and culvert, under road, across the alley,
By sex and stone and symbolism through the mesocyclone,
Then rising from strange waters, under strange stars, to a lakeshore
Not as he’s seen with waking eyes. For this place is its spirit.
A great black wolf is waiting there, whom he is not expecting.
At first he does not realize with whom he’s covenanted—
For covenant they make: the one to be a god, the other
To have the kind of god he needs—but soon he will remember.
God takes him there, submissive, worshipful, and sacramental,
Or rather God takes me, for at that moment I become me.
And in my God’s new name I claim the place that I remember
And never will behold in flesh again. I have no need to.
In ages past (How many? At least four, ere Common Era)
Some philosophic wrestling with the world that was purported
The world to be as shadow-puppets, of ideas eternal.
If that be so, then what would follow if one learned to master
The fashioning of shadow-puppets, and of their performance?
In ages past (How many? Enough that we don’t remember)
It was believed by those who might as well be my ancestors
That poetry and magic were the same thing: to speak verses
Was to speak spells as well, and that is why it’s called ‘Enchantment.’
In ages past (How many? None can say. More than are counted.)
There was a river. Those who lived there knew a God of Sunset,
A Black Wolf of the Sunset, and the God of Rest From Grieving.
They argued that the soul was many-parted, like the body—
Or rather that the body was itself a part. Their pharaohs
Lay mummified for just this reason, that might last forever
The soul-part that was body. Now, I am no Khemetic.
And I will have no access, after death, to preservation.
I am a poor wayfaring stranger, and my world is woeful.
When I am free from earthly trails, this body drops, abandoned
With neither funeral nor headstone to commemorate it.
But on that ancient river soul had other parts, especially
The name was such a part, perhaps the very most important.
And I do well remember what I learned when I was living
Beneath the dread cathedral of the Ba’al of the Christians
On Naming and Necessity. So if my name’s remembered
Let it be my true name, the Son of Wolf, that lives forever.
Let layer pile on layer till the name that is eternal
And built of the all the deeds that I have dared to do, the stories
That I have told by fireside, by the highway, under sunset
Is all there is of me. What else is there I’d wish to salvage?
And if it grow to more than name, why that is as intended.
For this is transformation of the self both past and future.
Behold the real me, then. See the me that is named truly.
It’s in this name he does the things that matter. He sees visions
Of far green country, over western sea, and he sees offered
A peace that is eternal, on white shores, under dark forests,
Which he declines, with gratitude. There’s work that must be seen to.
He dreams of godly bargaining, of recipes for cunning.
He’s told that he will be a slave to secrecy and seidhr.
He leads a man he loves to Winter, and a God to worship.
He shows a man he loves the Moonlight, and a Gracious Goddess.
He finds a man to love, though sadly only at a distance.
He dedicates a pathway to the dead who seek for guidance
(Eternal rest grant unto them, Lord Setirov the Wind-guide.)
He finds a man to love, and he becomes his slave in earnest
As once had been foretold. And of that man he learns deep secrets.
He reads that on the clouds is written Vengeance, next to Courage.
He smites in name of Winter and of Windstorm and of Vengeance
The land that has betrayed him. And he waits for it to perish.
He’s given, as if by coincidence, a fireside story
And place to tell it plus a thousand more. His voice will echo
Beyond the world material. And there his name is written.
At last he finds a place to rest, with men he’s found to love him.
He makes that place his temple, and his refuge for the grieving.
(For the unloved and the weary, there to taste of Rest from Grieving.)
He seals it as safe haven with the hearthfire of Narwahye.
He’s guarded it with padlock and the ire of Hrakulotha.
And Mistolin his Father there did dwell with him, and love him
Even the days when he could not believe that he deserved it.
…and if that be apostacy, why, excommunicate me.
Condemn me to be heathen for attempting to be heathen
And succeeding. I want nothing from the Ba’al of the Christians.
In these I place my soul, and everything my soul has cherished
Where you, resentful entropy, will have no power to touch it,
Where there is no past or future, only different kinds of present.
In the Name of Mistolin. So Saith the Son of Wolf. So Be It.