
Freya Aswynn, who felt a personal
calling to become a priestess of Odin, hails our All-Father. Behind
her stands a secular political "deity" conceived, funded
and built by Northern European-descended folk in the 1800's. Its original
meaning has been largely usurped and perverted by alien peoples and
rootless liberals in the 20th Century. Instead of Nordic-style defiance
of tyranny, to many it now signifies a borderless, Marxist plurality.
An exclusive
interview with Freya Aswynn, author of
Leaves of Yggdrasil
William B. Fox
Originally
published in
Winter, (Runic Era) 2243 (1993) Vor Tru Magazine
under pen name "Thor Sannhet"
Preface
by William Fox
First posted January 2009
Updated 1 May 2012
Back
in 1993 while I was living in the New York City area, I was contacted
by Dan O'Halloran, an Asatru writer and activist with the Ring of
Troth, who said that Freya Aswynn was visiting America from Britain.
Would I be interested in meeting with her to conduct an interview?
I had just received correspondence from Odinic Rite activists in
England who had published one of my articles. They said that they
really liked Freya. When I finally got to meet Freya, I came to
agree that she is a fascinating and colorful individual, and very
likeable on a personal level. She is intelligent and fun to be around.
I also learned that she had also produced many enchanting recordings
of rune chants and mystical musical pieces that one can find today
on YouTube, some of which are listed in the Appendix
below.
As
a rationalist, my main reservation with Freya is that she is a psychic
who is involved with runic divination and other mystical practices
"on the edge" of many ethical, cultural, and theological
issues. I feel compelled to write this somewhat lengthy Preface
to provide additional perspective and avoid misunderstandings. In
addition, please see the references section
below where I link to evidence that some of the people she mentions
such as Aleister
Crowley may have been disinformation agents of British Intelligence
(part of the Mossad-CIA-MI6 nexus controlled by the City of London/Rothschilds),
in which case a person who steers the revitalization of Asatru towards
superstitious "magical" interpretations may wittingly
or unwittingly be "sheep-dipping" (a PSYOPs term) the
movement in a direction that turns off the public, analogous to
CIA-funded "right wing" web sites that "sheep dip"
serious articles about high level corruption with references to
"neo-Nazi" behavior (made to appear extremely obnoxious
by controlled mainstream media) and also to flakey-sounding "UFO"-related
material. (Please see my "Other References" section at
the end of Chapter
38 of my Mission
of Conscience series where I link to such sources
as Conspiracy
Theory with Jesse Ventura - "Area 51" Pt 1/3
[Season 2, Episode 2] or Alex
Jones on UFO and Project Blue Beam (20 Dec 2009) on
staged UFO events to distract and misinform the public. Zionism
is hostile towards every form of nationalism except Jewish nationalism,
and Zionist controlled Mossad-CIA-MI6 knows that Asatru can support
various forms of Nordic nationalism, therefore it wants to infiltrate
and corrupt it. After all, it takes tribalism to stand up to tribalism,
and Jews who enjoy the religious tribalism of Judaism certainly
do not want any competition from any effective form of Nordic religious
tribalism, but instead they want Nordic peoples to act as brainwashed,
atomized, and deracinated individuals cut off from their indigneous
roots and vulnerable to Jewish multi-racial, multi-cultural, neo-Marxist
propaganda.)
I
think that the strongest aspect of Freya Aswynn's book Leaves
of Yggdrasil is the way in which she intuitively connects
natural phenomenon with religious symbolism, particularly in regard
to ancient Nordic traditions. For example, in northern lands with
marked seasons, it is easy for us to understand how mystics symbolically
linked the winter season with the concept of "death",
while spring got connected to the concept of "rebirth"
or "resurrection." The seasonal halfway point between
summer (symbolizing the height of 'life") and winter ("death")
intuitively made sense as a time to try to communicate with the
dead, since it is seasonally halfway between "life" and
"death." Hence, we should not be surprised that "Halloween"
or "All Saints Day" falls midway in this period.
As
two other examples, since lunar cycles typically correspond with
the length of menstrual cycles, it is not a big surprise that so
many pagan religions view the moon as a female entity, such as a
goddess. In addition, since the sun is typically associated with
providing nurturing warmth in cold northlands, Germanic languages
have often given the sun a female gender in their languages, whereas
various Semitic desert peoples, who experience the sun as a harsh
and even destructive force, often think of the the sun as being
"masculine."
These
kinds of insights help us understand the evolution of different
religious systems around the world, starting at the most basic level.
Freya's works also complement those of many other analysts who try
to explain the evolution of religious theologies from a naturalistic
perspective, such as University of Florida professor of anthropology
Dr. Marvin Harris in Cows,
Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture and "Acharya
S." (pen name for D. M. Murdoch) author of The Christ
Conspiracy.
Freya
Aswynn initially approached Asatru from a Wicca background where
she focused on understanding occult symbology. This stands in sharp
contrast to Else Christensen, another female Odinist leader who
I interviewed. Else initially approached Asatru from a mostly
social, political, and ideological perspective.
For
starters, the reader needs to understand important distinctions
between Asatru, the old Norse religion, and Wicca,
or witchcraft.
Asatru
stems from a proto-Indo-European religious ancestor much like sibling
religions such as Celtic Druidism, the early Greco-Roman religion,
and early Hinduism. Each of these religions are like a religious-philosophical
"window" which help scholars reconstruct an earlier common
ancestor, analogous to the way modern European languages are also
descended from a common Indo-European ancestor. All these religions
were also once the mainstream religions of dynamic, self-sufficient,
and viable societies, with full-scale economic, military, cultural,
social, and political capabilities.
Beginning
in the 5th and 6th centuries B.C., adherents of the heroic ancient
Greek religion in Greece (which later evolved into the "Greco-Roman"
religion followed by Rome) developed science, advanced technologies
and a coherent theory as well as practice of viable democratic and
republican governments. (Some sources claim that Greek science began
with Aristotle,
such as it is). The ancient Greeks' brave search for truth was quantum
leaps ahead of anything that was ever produced by the Jews. This
includes that leftist, mystical Jewish religious concoction invented
for export to gentiles called Christianity or that massive paean
to legalistic hairsplitting, word trickery, subversion,
perversion,
and insults to gentiles
created by Jews in Babylonia for fellow Jews called the Talmud.
From
the 3rd to 6th century AD, various pagan Gothic
tribes originating in Scandinavia swept through the Western Roman
Empire and eventually replaced the corrupt empire with medieval
kingdoms. Many historians believe that early Gothic converts to
Christianity generally remained more Gothic than Christian for quite
some time, despite the superficial conversion process following
contact with Christianized Romans.
In
the 9th and 10th centuries, Viking
Odinists called the "Rus" created the Kievan
Rus state and eventually extended their rule across vast expanses
that would eventually bear their name as "Russia."
Scandinavian
Asatruar had ancient traditions of parliamentary government called
Things (provincial parliaments) and Althings (supreme
parliaments for provincial representatives). Their political institutions
survived in various forms across Europe, ranging from cortes
(or assemblies) created by Visigoths in Spain to the republican
Althings created by Norse immigrants in Iceland. They also included
the Novgorod
Republic created by Rus in Russia. Odinists controlled trade
routes ranging from the Caspian Sea to Vinland. They developed their
own runic alphabet, produced rich cultural artifacts, and were also
quick to learn languages and absorb new ideas from other peoples.
Man-for-man,
the Scandinavian Odinists seemed to have significantly higher levels
of combat efficiency compared to most of their Christian adversaries.
Odinist forces were generally adept at handling Muslim armies and
other potential Asiatic invaders. Sadly, after Christianity began
to really sink in among their descendants, Christianized Spain got
overrun by Moors, and Christianized Russia got overrun by Mongols.
As
an important aside, a number of eminent historians and political
analysts have criticized Christianity as a baleful influence that
has tended to weaken societies with forms of mysticism and pacificism.
As some examples, Niccolò
Machiavelli felt that pagan Romans of the early Roman Republican
era were vastly more inherently virtuous than the Christianized
Romans of the latter phases of Imperial Rome. The loss of innate
virtue accelerated as Rome experienced major demographic changes
away from the original Nordic-Celtic Sabian and Oscian founding
tribes and towards swarthy masses from southern areas that began
to fill its cities. Sir Edward Gibbon, author of The Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire, described Christianity as part
of a negative feedback loop that both reflected Roman degeneracy,
and reinforced it as well. It encouraged a retreat from
practical, scientific thinking into childish mysticism and helped
plunge Europe into the Dark Age. Even a Christian priest named Salvian
wrote
in 440 AD how he found Germanic pagan barbarians to be more virtuous
than Christian Romans.
Adding
another interesting perspective, in Rascals in Paradise
James Michener described "blackbirders" or slave traders
who roamed the Pacific in the 19th century looking for indigenous
peoples they could kidnap to work in Chilean mines and under other
forced labor conditions elsewhere in Latin America. According to
Michener, the blackbirders generally targeted Christianized populations
first because they tended to make more docile, programmable, and
obedient slaves, whereas pagans tended to put up much tougher resistance
on both a physical and psychological level.
Adding
another important dimension as well, in his last work The
Antichrist, Friedrich
Nietszche accused ancient Jews of fabricating Christianity as
a psychological warfare weapon deliberately designed weaken the
Roman Empire, partly motivated by a desire to revenge the Roman
occupation of Palestine and destruction of the Second
Temple. Please also see "Commissary
to the Gentiles: The First to See the Possibility of War By Propaganda"
and "A
Real Case Against the Jews" by Marcus Eli Ravage
which builds upon Nietszche's thesis. Ravage was a Jewish writer
who was the Rothschilds’ (the Jewish bankers) approved biographer.
His articles appeared in The Century Magazine, February
1928, Vol. 115, No. 4, pp. 476-483.
Other
historical analysts observe that Jews had already become very powerful
throughout the Roman Empire during the alleged time of
Christ (please see Did
Jesus Exist? by Frank Zindler, American Atheist,
Summer 1998), and in fact dominated the Roman slave trade (please
see the video The World
Masters of Slavery by Dr. David Duke). They claim that
Christianity was principally financed and promoted by Jews during
its earliest phase to help Jews interface better with gentile Romans.
Christianity tricks gentiles into swapping their natural reverence
for their own tribal history of their own ancestors for the tribal
history of an alien people -- the Jews -- much of which is probably
fabricated, as noted by the Israeli scholar Dr. Shlomo Sand in The
Invention of the Jewish People.
Admittedly,
there were gentile confederates of Jewish schemers who had their
own motives for promoting Christianity. They were typically imperialists
like Constantine who wanted to eliminate regional "tribalisms"
and "nationalisms" among conquored peoples that might
support secessionism and hence threaten imperial unity. Christianity
helps psychologically adjust people towards giving their first loyalty
to a centralized, multi-cultural imperial order, particularly in
congested urban environments. It can also provide "social grease"
that facilitates "going along to get along."
There
were also many gentile merchants who wanted to build up in their
own personal wealth within Roman cities, which had become increasingly
multi-ethnic and multi-cultural with the growth of the Roman Empire.
Christianity offered a leftist-universalistic religious-ideological
formula that helped people overlook their tribal-ancestral differences
and remain focused upon doing business with people of other backgrounds
in order to build up personal wealth as rapidly as possible -- but
often at the long term expense of maintaining their own tribal identity
and ancestral community cohesion.
We
see a similar pattern today among white corporate leaders within
the American Empire who only care about maximizing short term profits
and avoiding conflicts that might in any way jeopardize their immediate
annual income goals. These executives are unwilling to support a
public stand against threats to the long term stability and productivity
of America such as allowing open borders before tidal waves of Third
World illegal immigration, allowing AIPAC continued control of American
foreign policy, and permitting "political correctness"
brainwashing of American school children. They are indifferent to
the fact that Nordic Americans have been undergoing a form of slow
and steady "stealth genocide" for the last 150 years,
as noted on my Reconciling
Libertarianism and Nationalism web pages as follows:
One rough rule of thumb for Nordic decline can
be found in the reduction in the number of people with blue eyes,
since this is a recessive genetic characteristic commonly found
among Nordics that quickly becomes submerged when they interbreed
with other peoples. According to the Wikipedia article on eye
color:
A 2002 study found that the prevalence of blue eye color among
Caucasians in the United States to be 33.8 percent for those
born from 1936 through 1951 compared with 57.4 percent for those
born from 1899 through 1905. Blue eyes have become increasingly
rare among American children, with only one out of every six
or 16.6%, which is 49.8 million out of 300 million (22.4% of
white Americans) of the total United States population having
blue eyes. The plunge in the past few decades has taken place
at a remarkable rate. A century ago, 80 percent of people married
within their ethnic group. Blue eyes were routinely passed down,
especially among people of Western and Northern European ancestry.
On
my Oslo-Utoya
7-22 web page, I also explain how historic declines
in Nordic peoples in proportion to overall populations of countries
like Germany and France have had a profound impact on the character
of social, political and economic instituations, that is, away from
decentralization and productive innovation towards centralization,
corruption, and stagnation, and we see a similar trend in America
today with the rise of the police state, destruction of the world-leading
industrial base created by WASPs in the 19th century, and the hijacking
of American foreign policy and its privately owned central bank
by highly criminal alien interests.
Getting
back to our discussion of Wicca, in contrast to the major ancient
Indo-European religious siblings consisting of Asatru, the Greco-Roman
religion, Celtic or Druidic religion, and the early Hinduism of
the Aryan settlers of the Indus Valley, Wicca has never really been
the mainstream religion of any self-sufficient, viable society,
unless one equates it with the ancient Celtic religion or some kind
of underground preservation of a natural religion approach in the
fact of dogmatic Christian oppression. The ancient Indo-European
religions that I have just mentioned comprise coherent, integrated
religious-philosophical systems with deep cultural, historical,
and social roots that are the topics of very serious scholarly research
at major universities around the world, whereas "Wicca"
rarely receives this kind of serious attention.
What
passes for modern Wicca today frequently consists of a mishmash
of many different philosophical strands. They might include feminism,
"New Age" nature worship, "Green" eco-leftism,
Magic Show entertainment, Occultism, "Do-your-own-thing"
Hippie counterculture, political correctness ideology, and costume
re-enactment. Add some sprinklings of various pagan religions, to
include borrowings from ancient Celtic, Greco-Roman, and Nordic
mythology, and this exotic brew then gets served up as "Wicca."
What
is usually missing are strong ethno-racial roots from an authentic
indigenous white folk culture. Unfortunately, most Americans are
mixed up racially and ethnically. They are brainwashed by controlled
national media, our federalized education system, and a high
greed corporate culture divorced from chivalrous free enterprise
principles. They are often clueless about what they are missing.
They are analogous to baby monkeys who have been raised all alone
with chicken wire and terry cloth "mothers" in animal
behavior labs, provided as surrogate forms of "contact comfort"
in lieu of real mothers. These monkeys have no idea what a real
mother and real siblings should look and feel like. Similarly, most
American gentiles have become so habituated to multi-racial, multi-cultural
junk culture and alien, Jewish-created Christian religion that they
have no idea that they are really cultural and religious orphans.
Many Wicca groups reflect this multi-racial, multi-cultural confusion.
Please
also bear in mind that just because female practitioners of Wicca
often call themselves "pagan" and "witches"
does not mean that they automatically get a free pass among all
other pagan religionists. The word "witch" has had different
meanings in many different social contexts. There are "good
witches" and "bad witches" just like in the movie
Wizard of Oz. On dark side, a "witch" can connote
a malevolent, shrewish, anti-social female with criminal inclinations.
As
they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Bad
witches were no more popular in ancient pagan times in Europe than
in the Christian era. One can find anecdotes involving pagan Romans,
Greeks, and Norsemen who hunted down and killed nasty witches just
like Christian descendants who came much later, although Christian
witch-hunters of later eras generally did their murderous work on
a vastly larger and much more indiscriminate scale.
It
is also very possible that the distinction between "good"
and "bad" witches can be primarily a matter of political
perspective. Just as "one man's terrorist" can be another
man's "freedom fighter," it is also quite possible that
one country's concept of an "evil heretic" (or "witch"),
that is, some woman who deserves to be offically condemned by the
state in court and burned at the stake, can be another country's
national heroine and warrior saint. I can think of no clearer illustration
than the story of Joan of Arc, which I have graphically
illustrated in the Appendix below.
Even
though Freya Aswynn is a UK citizen, and is concerned about indigenous
European religion, one can make the case that the basic philosophical
structure of Asatru can be as American as apple pie. It is very
similar to the deistic and naturalistic viewpoint held by President
Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine, and the founders of the Unitarian Church,
except that it also provides a sense of tribal folk roots for individuals
who want to liberate themselves from Christian masochism, extreme
liberalism, and white self-hating universalism.
Speaking
of Thomas Jefferson, as he got older he moved ever further to the
right. He created an Anglo-Saxon grammar book and felt that Americans
should not only learn about the old Anglo-Saxon traditions, but
should also read the ancient Greek and Roman classics. Conversant
in many languages, Jefferson knew ancient Greek well enough to read
Homer without a dictionary. He felt that by temperament, the peoples
of northern Europe were better fitted for viable republican and
democratic forms of government than peoples from elsewhere in Europe.
He even remained an explicit racialist, and stated that whites were
vastly superior to blacks in advancing civilization. He was also
very strongly critical of Jews and Christianity.
In
Chapter
eight of the book, The
Religious Attitudes of the Indo-Europeans, author Dr. Hans
Gunther describes how Thomas Jefferson exemplified fundamental Indo-European
religious attitudes. However, Jefferson did not explicitly call
himself an Odinist or Asatruar although he talked about "Nature's
God" in the Declaration of Independence. This is probably because
the modern incarnation of the old religion had not yet been resurrected
as an openly practiced religion. In addition, openly professing
pagan sentiments would have been suicidal for Thomas Jefferson's
political career in a mostly-Christian society. In fact, Jefferson
took quite a lot of public flak as it was for simply inviting Tom
Paine to the White House shortly after he published The Age
of Reason, which made a bold frontal assault on both the Old
and New Testaments. While in the White House, Jefferson also went
through the four Gospels with a pair of scissors to cut out all
supernatural events, thereby creating The Jefferson Bible.
However, he limited the circulation of this work during his lifetime.
To
be fair, we must recognize that paganism as well as Christianity
both have degenerate forms. I provide diagrams that explain this
in more detail in my mutualism
vs. parasitism article.
The
most degenerate forms of religion incorporate criminal elements.
I view the word "criminal" as being roughly equivalent
to the sociobiological term "parasitic," which is also
roughly equivalent to the religious term "Satanic." 
I
can show you examples of both pagans and Christians who have all
the dark qualities of being degenerate, criminal, parasitic, and
even "Satanic" at the same time. I can also show you examples
of pagans and Christians who honestly strive to be the very opposite
of all these things.
I
view the Asatru revival as a final phase of the Protestant Reformation
in which the Nordic peoples return to what should be normal and
natural for them. According to the classic work The
Dispossessed Majority by Wilmot Robertson, the Protestant
Reformation primarily took place in those parts of Europe with majority
Nordic populations, therefore it reflected an underlying Nordic
ethos just like Asatru. Therefore, while I reject most Christian
theology, I believe that time-tested practices that have evolved
within mainstream Protestant (and Unitarian) Churches are usually
a very good guide for how Asatruar should conduct themselves if
they want to reconstruct viable religious communities.
The
Protestant Reformation emphasized intelligent, thoughtful, individual
interpretation of religious writings, and so should we. The best
parts of the Protestant Reformation discouraged impulsive, superstitious,
or malevolent behavior, and so should we. Protestants generally
act with decorum in their religious services, and so should we.
Lastly, many Protestants provide valuable social services and encourage
responsible citizenship, and so should we.
Imagine
if Thomas Jefferson could be brought forward in a time machine to
today, as well as someone like the former Christian minister William
Gayley Simpson, who wrote the classic rightist work Which
Way Western Man? What approach to Asatru might we explain
to both of them that they would respect? Whatever that approach
is would probably be a good guide for how we should go about recreating
Asatru for the modern era, as we try to combine "the best of
the old with the best of the new."
The
greater theological freedom in a natural religion like Asatru can
be both a blessing and a curse. One might compare it to the "Mama's
home cooking" alternative to patronizing a McDonald's franchise.
(In other words, Asatru is "Mom and Pop" and Christianity
is like "McDonald's" or "Burger King") With
this greater freedom, Asatru can be custom-tailored to be quite
a bit better --or conversely a "greasy spoon" can make
it quite a bit worse--than what one gets with the standardized "Christian
franchise" product.
Incidentally,
if one looks really deeply under the hood, as Archarya
S. (D. M. Murdoch) has done in her book The
Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold, one finds
that Christianity has so many pagan elements within it that the
conventional pagan vs. Christian dichotomy is actually a false and
misleading one. Please also see Archarya's Christianity
Debunking Links web page.
In
addition, if one looks even deeper under the hood, one
finds that the philosophical structure of a natural tribal religion
such as Asatru corresponds much more closely to a scientific, naturalistic,
and sociobiological approach to religion than Christianity. In my
1992 talk titled Asatru
and Christianity; Similarities and Differences made
with my colleague Oak Thorgeir before the Leif Erikson Society of
New York, I noted that there is an amazing congruence on
an abstract intellectual level between a natural tribal religion
like Asatru and the view of reality offered by works such as A
New Morality From Science: Beyondism by Dr. Raymond Cattell,
Sociobiology: The Synthesis by Dr. Edward Wilson, A
New Theory of Evolution by Sir Arthur Keith, or even the works
of Charles Darwin. In essence, these scientists have been rediscovering
with modern terminology what our ancient tribal ancestors understood
on an intuitive level who lived much closer to nature and direct
common sense experience than we do today in our highly artificial
urban environments heavily manipulated by alien-controlled mass
media.
One
very important point I need to emphasize is that many leading ancient
Greek, Roman, and Norse pagans tended to have a rationalistic view
of the world, whereby they often refrained from mixing supernatural
religious occurences with their secular accounts of history. In
contrast, ancient Jews were much more disposed towards mixing the
supernatural in with history in both the Old and New Testaments.
Ancient
Nordic pagans often acknowledged their religion to be a kind of
poetic mythology meant to inform the soul, but not to be taken literally.
That is a very difficult attitude for many Christians to understand,
who are typically deeply programmed to believe that Jesus, Yahweh,
and other Christian deities answer prayer and validate Christianity
by giving them forms of supernatural aid.
In
fact, there is a kind of abstract, rationalistic mentality towards
religion found among Nordic peoples consistent with the way that
Dr. Lothrop Stoddard characterizes them in his chapter The
Nordic North in his classic book Racial
Realities in Europe. Whites from many other parts
of Europe often find this mentality very hard to understand. When
many people listen to Freya perform a rune chant they probably think
"Well, maybe this is poetic and musical, but how can it help
save me like Jesus?" In contrast, many "Nordic types"
(like myself) take the attitude that there is more than enough to
inspire religious awe in the natural order of the cosmos, and it
is selfish, childish, and even degenerate to try to invoke a Supreme
Being to break natural law with supernatural intervention. Breaking
natural law can be every bit as criminal, dishonest, and psychopathic
on a philosophical level as an attack on "scientific reality"
as the behavior of people like bank robbers and pedophiles who strive
to break human laws designed to protect their societies against
parasites on the street level. Therefore, by conditioning people
to desire supernatural intervention, Christianity encourages natural
law-related criminality ("natural law criminals"), narcissicism,
selfishness, and other forms of psychopathic behavior on a religious-philosophical
level. It also encourages childish emotional retreat from the open
and honest acknowledgement of the rule of natural law.
In
my Preface to my interview
with Else Christensen, a very astute lady originally from Denmark
who published the newsletter The Odinist, I describe how
she told me about how Danish newspapers reported once that when
the Fundamentalist Christian Evangelist Billy Graham first came
to Denmark, he was shocked to learn that only 5% of the population
goes to Church. Scandinavians often tend to be reserved and austere
people with a certain quasi-atheistic, rationalistic mentality that
is not exactly "Bible-thumping" and "Holy Roller"
in character. Hard, cold environments tend to produce tough peoples,
and as another good example, check about the online series The
Mongolian Wolf at coldsiberia.org about the ancient
Mongolian religion which evolved among another people who were also
genetically sculptured by a very hard and cold enviroment. It has
a lot of interesting philosophical similarities to Asatru. Note
also the sympathetic attitude expressed towards this religion by
the Norwegian author of this web site.
There
is another extremely important point that I need to make here. I
agree with Else Christiansen that Odinism or Asatru involves vastly
more than anything to do with chants, religious symbolism, or ceremonial
ritualism, which actually should only play a relatively small role
and not be the "tail that wags the dog." Asatru embraces
the full spectrum of the religious, ethnic, and cultural "common
law" and traditions of the Nordic peoples. It encompasses their
history, their indiginous social and political institutions, heroic
values -- everything that makes up the vital essence of who they
are, right down to the DNA level. Religious symbolism should only
be meant to support a sense of "folk community" and "ancestral
heritage" and not the other way around.
Seen
from this perspective, as a universalistic religion invented by
Jewish aliens, Christianity may be viewed as a form of counterfeit
substitution for a real folk religion, much like the way Jewish
pornographers -- by their own admission (please see "Jewish
Professor Boasts of Jewish Pornography used as a Weapon Against
Gentiles," davidduke.com) -- deliberately push
hedonistic self-centered indulgence in erotica in the place of deeply
committed romantic and reproductive relationships as one of many
subterranean efforts to subvert gentiles.
There
are many other important examples of Jewish subversion today I should
mention so that readers can better grasp the overall pattern. The
Rothschilds / City of London / British monarchy controllers of Obama,
the U.S. Department of Energy, and Mossad-CIA-MI6 not only deliberately
poisoned the Gulf of Mexico and Gulf States during
the British Petroluem (BP) crisis, but also
employed the Stuxnet virus to cause the release of
enough radiation to not only wipe out much of Japan, but also threaten
populations around the northern hemisphere with extinction or serious
genetic mutilation and intergeneration genomic instability. (Please
see my series titled "Aerial
Dance of Mass Death and Genetic Destruction" Week-by-week Fukushima
radiation and fallout projections and companion articles").
This is part of their utterly psychopathic, if not lunatic, global
depopulation agenda. Please see the Leuren
Moret archive for more details about how radiation
released into the atmosphere from such sources as nuclear plant
melt-downs, nuclear plant routine
emissions, exploded
DU munitions, and bomb testing have dramatically reduced fertility
and increased miscarriages and deformities around the world. Jewish
heads of pharmaceutical companies deliberately insert toxins into
our vaccines (Please see Chapter
36: Swine Flu Biowar of my Mission
of Conscience series). They place Trojan Horse
DNA disruptors into GMO foods, and add harmful chemicals to public
drinking water and food (please see my False
Flag Pandemic Alert page). They have also attacked
indigenous Nordic homelands, both through the economic subversion
of Iceland (please see my "Iceland
Gets ENRONed, Then Goes for `1776'" series) and
the strong likelihood that Mossad-CIA-MI6 used Anders Breivik as
a patsy on 22 July 2011 (please see my Oslo-Utoya
7-22 False Flag Terror web page).
After
perusing my sources, it should become clear to the reader that Nordic
peoples -- and related white groups -- are the targets of total
war being fought against them on all levels, ranging
from the physical and medical level, to pyschopolitical warfare
waged against the innermost sanctums of our social, political, economic,
and religious institutions.
In
terms of internal affairs that involve Odinism and Asatru, I think
that we should be on guard against practices that reflect degenerate
or superstitious forms of paganism, particularly when they involve
the exercise of official duties by religious leaders. Many pragmatic
pagan philosophers in ancient Greece, Rome, and old Scandinavia
felt the same way.
For
starters, I generally disapprove of fortune-telling and other forms
of "divination" as standard contemporary religious practices.
It
is one thing for religious leaders to engage in personal counseling
where they gather information and make reasonable extrapolations
from the facts provided to them. This is perfectly legitimate and
often highly desirable. However, "divination" goes far
beyond this. It usually means the religious leader claims to have
psychic powers that enable him or her to make judgments and prophesies
in the absence of gathering adequate facts and making logical inferences
based upon those facts.
We
need to qualify this point further. On the one hand, it is usually
very desirable for individuals to conduct scholarly studies of magical
practices, ancient rites, and occult symbology for anthropological
and other social science research purposes.
However,
we cross the line when religious leaders try to mainstream these
things into contemporary religious practices. This can create many
very serious conflicts of interest, particularly where the soothsayer
feels incentives to promote his or her craft for money and religious
status.
In
the long run, it is much better to encourage people to have a strong
work ethic, conduct research, and engage in rational long term planning
rather than try to "get lucky" by relying on the intuition
of a fortune teller whose capabilities can not be scientifically
verified.
I
decided to go along for the ride when Freya volunteered to perform
some runic divination with Oak Thorgeir in the informal setting
of my apartment. After all, I consider myself a journalist even
if I might not qualify as an ongoing amateur anthropological field
researcher.
Looking
at things from Freya's perspective, I can see how she might feel
like she is between a rock and a hard place in dealing with a hard
core rationalist such as myself. After all, to the extent that she
possesses special psychic abilities, she might feel as if she is
being unfairly condemned as unscientific by some people if she displays
her special abilities, and conversely unfairly condemned by others
if she fails to share her clairvoyant gifts with the public and
lets them go to waste. To her credit, in the interview she talks
about how she does not conduct Rune divination for money and ultimately
seeks to empower individuals to have more control over their own
lives. She also explains why she is not a conventional "fortune
teller."
Divination
is actually very common in modern society at the highest levels.
Many readers may fail to recognize its contemporary forms compared
to ancient practices only because they have become more subtle.
Nevertheless, they are very real, and often practiced on a massive
scale with disastrous results. The following are four examples:
*
Rather than using tarot cards or Runes, Christian Zionist leader
John Hagee uses the highly cryptic Book of Revelations as his medium
to come up with ill-founded prophecies that have helped squander
trillions of dollars of American taxpayer money and hundreds of
thousands of lives in misadventures for Israel in the Middle East.
Please see the article "Confronting
the Cult of the `Corpulent Man'" by Michael Collins Piper.
Please also search for "Christian Zionism" in the Rev
Ted Pike archive to understand why even a conservative Christian
minister can find Hagee's Christian Zionist approach to be un-Biblical,
repugnant --and against America's legitimate national interests.
*
Former Army intelligence officer Captain Eric May has uncovered
consistent Kabbalistic and Masonic-related numerological patterns
behind the dates of likely CIA-Mossad "false flag" or
"inside job" terror attacks, to include 9-11, the 11 March
2004 Madrid subway bombings, and the 7 July 2005 London bombings.
Please see my Mission
of Conscience series for more details.
Incidentally,
infiltration of Asatru by Jewish supremacists, Jewish collaborators,
and Jewish
owners of major media is a serious problem. Many of these people
would like to twist Asatru theology in the direction of Kabbalistic-type
numerological practices, neo-Marxist political correctness ideology,
and other goofy things, so much the better to try to discredit Asatru
in the eyes of hard-headed business and political leaders who might
lend it serious forms of financial and social support. These fifth
columnists also want to take the focus away from Asatru's roots
as the religious "common law" of the Nordic peoples, so
much the better to help keep whites rootless and on the ropes relative
to the extreme
tribal solidarity behind raw Jewish
supremacist power. In his classic work The
Religious Attitudes of the Indo-Europeans, Dr. Hans Gunther
observes that indigenous Indo-European religions have been relatively
less superstitious compared to most other religions of
the world. Please see my article "Asatru:
Questions and Answers" that comments upon Dr. Gunther's
interpretation of Asatru. Please also see my
commentary regarding question 23 "What is the preferable
function of religion in a society?" in my "Have
You Been Brainwashed?" quiz where I discuss the common
sense nature of the natural religion concept.
*
Having been a stock broker for ten years, I can vouch for the fact
that most Wall Street investment decisions based on technical chart
analysis and "follow the news" speculation (probably comprising
at least half of most short term decision-making) are no more scientific
than the use of rune-casting or tarot cards, all of which contribute
towards irrational market booms and busts that help distort the
American economy and undermine long term American economic competitiveness.
*
The same kind of mentality that is addicted to divination is probably
also at high risk for gambling addiction. In both cases, people
are surrendering their lives to dubious hopes of fortuitous outcomes
disconnected from verifiable facts and logic. I view the rapid growth
of Las Vegas and the spread of Indian gambling casinos and state
lotteries across America as a sign of very serious decadence in
American society. Many research studies show that gambling per se
does far more damage than good to society. See, for example, the
articles "The
Human Toll of Gambling: Destroyed Dreams and Lost Lives,"
and "A Case
Against Legalized Gambling."
Regarding
other types of potentially degenerate Christian and pagan practices,
I strongly object to any involvement by Asatruar in casting hexes,
curses, and spells as an official religious practice for the same
basic reasons that most Protestant churches vehemently object to
conducting a "Black Mass" or some latter day version of
medieval Catholic rites of damnation. While it may be true that
there are honest and sincere people who feel that they have psychic
abilities, and furthermore they honestly feel that there are certain
evil people who need to be publicly identified and punished by whatever
means possible, it is also true that various types of "fortune
telling" and "sending" can be easily exploited by
con artists to exploit ignorant or superstitious people for criminal
purposes, particularly when they are working with criminal confederates
who covertly help their predictions come true to develop "street
cred" (street credibility) among their "suckers."
It is much safer for society over the long run to try to stick to
facts and logic and rational and transparent processes than to start
going down various "voodoo" religious pathways.
I
believe that Asatruar should keep their religion intellectually
justifiable, and make explicitly clear the difference between religious
subjectivity and scientific reality. I strongly object to worship
of idols and icons for the same reason that Protestants cast out
idolatrous statues of saints and streamlined other worship practices
during the Protestant Reformation.
We
should also object to any use of pagan religion by fringe elements
of society who try to use it as unconventional cover for criminal
activity or for outrageous activities that shock the sensibilities
of the local community. Contrary to "Hollywood pagan"
images fed to us for sensationalism by controlled national media,
we should keep in mind the point I have alluded to earier in this
Preface, namely that a number of scholars such as Sir Edward Gibbon,
author of the Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire, and Nicolo
Machiavelli, an Renaissance authority on republican government
in antiquity, both described ancient Roman and Greek pagans who
were inherently more self-disciplined and virtuous than Christians
who came later.
Lastly,
we should object to the expropriation of symbols and cultural artifacts
related to my religion by agents of the United States Government
for malevolent, partisan political, and Zionist-related purposes.
We should also object to "Hollywood-Nazi" distortions
created by Jewish-Hollywood that misrepresent indigenous Nordic
culture and religion.
In
her interview, Freya talks about possible forms of perversion and
degradation of the ancient and once highly revered swastika
symbol that was exploited for political purposes in the 20th
century by Hitlerites. As another example of abuse of artistic works
related to my religious heritage, in Chapter Six of Sgt
Skull's Field Manual, author Tom Chittum provided the following
June 21, 2003 news item:
BAGHDAD (Reuters) ― U.S. troops psyched
up on a bizarre musical
reprise from Vietnam war film "Apocalypse Now" before
crashing into Iraqi homes to hunt gunmen on Saturday, as Shiite
Muslims rallied against the U.S. occupation of Iraq. With the
strains of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" still ringing
in their ears and the clatter of helicopters overhead, soldiers
rammed vehicles into metal gates and hundreds of troops raided
houses in the western city of Ramadi after sunrise as part of
a drive to quell a spate of attacks on U.S. forces. There was
nothing secretive about Saturday's robust sweep through Ramadi,
100 km (60 miles) west of Baghdad, by soldiers of the First Battalion
of the 124th Infantry Regiment who psyched themselves up at a
base on a musical moment redolent of Francis Ford Coppola's 1979
film about the Vietnam war. One unit of troops dragged half a
dozen men from their homes as women wailed. They seized weapons
and a computer disk. A U.S. military spokesman said on Saturday
that 90 Desert Scorpion raids had captured 540 people.
Our
ultimate goal should be to try to work with Asatru to become more
"normal" and to strive to live in a healthy community
that supports family values.
We
should also develop a community of religious realists who are ideologically
and ethnically motivated to provide a serious counterweight to Christian
Zionist lunacy.
Much
of American society as been hijacked by alien Jewish theology via
both Christianity in general and Christian Zionism in particular.
It has been brainwashed by neo-Marxist political correctness and
misled by self-anointed false prophets of the world like John Hagee.
It
is time for our people to come home to sanity and normality.
All
this having been said, let us proceed with my very informal interview
with Freya Aswynn.
[EDITOR'S NOTE (in 1993): The purpose of in-depth
interviews published by Vor Tru is to document important
personalities and viewpoints in various areas of the Asatru movement.
All interview subjects are given the opportunity to proof their
talks for errors and to correct unintended statements. The views
expressed by interviewees do not necessarily reflect the official
views of the Asatru Alliance or even the personal views of its office-holders,
representatives, or members.]
THOR: Good evening. I am Thor Sannhet. It is Friday
night, just after 10:00 PM on the 12th of March 1993, and I am with
Freya Aswynn, and with me also in my quaint apartment sharing some
bottles of mead is Oak Thorgeir. We are going to conduct an interview
of Freya for Vor Tru magazine for this upcoming 2243 spring
issue. By way of introduction, I just want to say, welcome to America!
Now that we have visited sites in Manhattan ranging from Central
Park and the United Nations to the Statue of Liberty, what is your
immediate impression, Freya?
FREYA: My immediate impression, what struck me
immediately, is that the streets are so clean. Some parts of the
subway are dirty, but the streets themselves are so much cleaner
than in London. I also was pleasantly surprised to see a substantial
amount of white people in New York. I didn't expect that. I expected
New York to be pretty well dark. But no, it is fine. The only other
complaint that I have is that it is bloody cold! As cold as a witch's
tit!
THOR: A Wiccan witch's tit by chance?
FREYA: Or an Asatru witch's tit. Whichever. Tits
are tits. Witches are witches.
THOR: How well have you been treated by the Ring
of Troth and the Asatru Alliance?
FREYA: Like royalty! Like the first lady of Asatru!
THOR: I understand you had a mishap during your
four day stay in Ottowa, Canada just before coming here, but it
came out for the best with a Valknut tattoo!
FREYA: It was a complete disaster.
THOR: How so?
FREYA: A lot of things went wrong. I can not even
remember most of them. The main things that went wrong were that
Andy [Biggins of the Ring of Troth] ordered books, Leaves of
Yggdrasil. They did not arrive. They just disappeared. No more
to be seen. The tapes I ordered from L.A. They didn't arrive. And
the poor bastard in L.A. paid $40.00 for a 24 hour shipment by UPS,
and the f- -ers did not arrive. So that is a dead loss. Then I decided,
I met the pagan community.-there, which is a friendly, happy community,
partly Wicca and partly Asatru, but the distinctions are absolutely
unnoticeable. They are a very fraternal community. Everyone gets
on well. I met this woman Dana. A Wiccan high priestess with Asatru
leanings. And she does tattoos. Now I always thought I ought to
have a Valknut. Right on my chest. I have been putting it off for
a long time, partly because Lionel is going to kill me if he finds
out that I have a Valknut on my chest. Because always I mentioned
it. "No tattoos! Don't ever get any tattoos!" And it has
always been a bone of contention. No tattoos. But the opportunity
was there. So I opted for a Valknut tattoo, which was a DRAAMMAAA!!!
What happened was I got the kindred standing in a ring around me
and the tattooist. I stripped off to the waist. They were chanting
"Odin!" to draw the power of Odin into me. Well, Donna
burnt in the tattoo. She made an impeccable stencil of the Valknut
taken from my Valknut ring. And she printed it on my chest, and
then started zzzzzzzzz tattooing it. IT HURT LIKE F- -!!! Anyway,
that was the sacrifice. The worst thing was to come. For some reason,
the stencil got turned over. And all of a sudden, Donna said, "It
is all wrong. The lines don't connect." And I went absolutely
ape s- - berserk. I was screaming around the house. Half naked.
Half screaming, "Odin! Odin!! What!?! You bastards!!!"
I just went completely mad. There. I was with half an aborted Valknut
on my chest. This to me was the worst thing. that could happen.
I offer a Valknut to Odin to be carved on my chest, and the bastard
was wrong. It was complete collective hysteria until one bright
bugger picked up that book of Edred [Thorsson], The Nine Doors,
and said, "I can't see anything wrong with it. It is exactly
on Edred's book. And he put the book across the unfinished Valknut
and said, "Yeah, so what the f- - went wrong?" So someone
grabbed the stencil and said, "Look, you turned it over."
It was visible on both sides. It was seeing through paper. So the
mystery was resolved. I sat down again, and Donna finished the tattoo.
And I now I am having a sacred Valknut tattooed over my heart, chacra,
as a sign of my dedication and my pledge to ODIN!!! Forever! Odin!!
EENS EN ALLTYD!!! ["Once and Always" in Dutch]
OAK THORGEIR: [Raises his mead horn] ODIN!!
THOR: ODIN!!! [He pauses to toast and then lay
down his mead horn] Now, wasn't there a problem with a meeting hall
that got burned down to top things off?
FREYA: Yes! Later on I found out that there had
been more mishaps. I was scheduled to speak before about a hundred
people. A thousand dollars of tickets were sold, which of course
the idea was that would pay a substantial amount of the cost that
the Ring of Troth incurred getting me over here. And of course some
of it would have ended up in my pocket, not that I am worried about
that. I wouldn't give it a thought. But, Friday afternoon, while
I was in transit from JFK [International Airport] to Ottawa, that
hall burned down. The tickets had to be refunded. And all that money,
basically, went down the tube. So nobody has got f- - all. Another
sacrifice on the pyre. So we had a sacrifice of blood, and a sacrifice
by fire. Then we had a sacrifice by air, the mail did not arrive.
The tapes and the books. Only one more element to go.
THOR: You yourself, Freya, seem to be unsinkable, and we
are glad to have you here, and you are still going strong. And I
think that actually with your stay in New York we are back on to
an auspicious start. Let us talk about the other ways that you feel
that Odin has put His mark on you. What are they?
FREYA: Well, I have some runes in my hands. I have
got an Odal [or Othila] rune and an Ansuz rune clearly marked in
my hand. And that is the main mark I consider as Odin marked me.
The other one is an inherited defect in the right eye. I have had
five eye operations to correct it. And it looks better, but it is
still a mankey eye. And the other synchronicity is the date of my
birth, which is completely Odinic. It is Wednesday, the ninth, November,
"Nove" is nine in Latin, in the old Anglo Saxon ways it
was the Blotmonath, the month in which the blood sacrifices were
performed. And of course in the sign of Scorpio, which is Odinic
in itself. And I was the ninth child out of the fourteenth. This
altogether I found out when I first started exploring Asatru. And
looking at my personal [aspects]. What compels me to this path?
What is the intent, devotion, and attraction to Odin specifically
more than any other God or Goddess? As a woman, as a Wiccan woman,
I should be more in touch with Goddesses. But no, it did not work
out that way. It was Odin, and it always will be Odin. He has marked
me. I am his.

A distinguished Runic Ambassador from England
visits
the United Nations Headquarters in New York City
THOR: Can you give us a biographical sketch of
the process that you went through to dedicate yourself to Odin?
FREYA: Well, basically, I was born with certain
psychic abilities, in a family which did not accept that. So at
an early age, I was fostered in different families. At the age of
ten I was locked up after a considerable amount of physical and
other abuse. I know nowadays it is a fashion, everybody has been
abused and can remember things, but in my case it actually was true.
After spending nine years locked up, I came out at the age of 19,
and within two months I was involved in spiritualist circles where
I received some elementary training in mediumship, clairvoyance,
psychometry, and I studied astrology, generally the occult. The
occultic discipline. From there I moved on to the AMORC and I was
a member of AMORC [Ancient Mystical Order of Rosicrucis] for seven
years. After that, I went to England specifically to seek out Wicca,
of which I was very interested. I arrived in England, I didn't know
a soul, but within three days, I ran into people who directed me
to Alex Sanders, who initiated me in his coven. After that I went
back to Holland. Three months later I moved to England, again for
a major occult festival. And I met Lionel Hornby, also known as
Ravensong, who is a Gardnerian witch. So via him I got involved
in starting a Gardnerian coven. Now in that coven, we invoked the
old gods. Those gods were, for the main, Greek, Roman, Celtic. Fairly
soon after, I was initiated and working in Wicca, with those gods,
I went along with the ritual, and I performed as a high priestess,
but very soon after, something was lacking. These gods were not
my own. And I started looking at my own sources. Wodan. Donar. Freya.
I did not even know about Odin, Thor, and Freya. So, at one time
there was a situation in the coven in which a situation arose between
Lionel and a guest, a female guest in that coven. This for me was
basically it. Wicca is too much centered around sexual attractions
and fertility magic. I could not accept that. So, at that day, after
I had had a massive row with me husband, I broke with Wicca the
same evening, emotion- ally I made a break, I went down to the basement.
I rolled out my blanket, the way the Red Indians do. I went down
to the basement and started calling on Wodan. The whole night I
started calling on Wodan. My own God. My own ancestry. My own blood.
Me own bones. F- - Wicca! F- - them! Bugger the lot of them. Wodan!
Wodan!! Wodan!!! It was then that I made the contact. A week later
I had made a Valknut ring, for me especially. And I did a blot.
And I swore my allegiance to Odin forever. And I have been true
until now, and I will always be true. That is how I met Odin. That
is how I made the contact with Odin as my personal guardian and
Allfather.

Freya made it about Manhattan and managed to avoid getting
mugged
...with a little help from Sannhet to the right, in this Midtown photo.
THOR: Weren't you in Iceland in 1985?
FREYA: Yes.
THOR: And you got to meet Sveinbjorn Beinteinsson.
FREYA: Yes. I was in Iceland, and I met Sveinbjorn
for a short time. However, we could not really communicate. He did
not speak English. I did not speak Icelandic. And although we had
a translator, the conversation was very, very general. He obviously
did not know me from Adam. At that time I was not as well known
as I am now. I was just one of the many. I did not feel that he
paid particular attention to me. He gave me a copy of his record
and signed his book, and I wrote my name in his guest book, and
that was basically the end of the matter.
THOR: Did not word spread in Icelandic towns about
your abilities with runic readings?
FREYA: Oh, hell, yes. Yes. Yes. I stayed there
for three weeks basically doing readings and living off it until
the money ran out. I had a ticket for three weeks, but I just let
it expire. And stayed another three weeks. Some people just bought
me another ticket to get me out. I did an interview with a local
paper, which got the stuff out in the open. Freya Aswynn, volva,
doing the readings, which of course they had not seen somebody like
me for at least a thousand years. There's plenty of tarot readers
and astrologers, but a genuine volva who actively works the old
ways, the Icelanders had not seen it for at least a thousand years.
I must have been the first one after so many years. So I made my
mark there.
THOR: Let us talk about the role of women in Asatru.
Do they have superior psychic abilities compared to men?
FREYA: I do not know whether they have superior
psychic abilities per se. I know of some very gifted men with psychic
abilities. But on the whole, women have more time to develop their
abilities in the home with other women whereas other men are either
going out a Viking or are going out to work. It is more of a social
[condition]. I do not know if it is a genetic disposition that women
are predisposed by nature to be more psychic or whether it is a
social issue that women simply have more time to develop their psychic
abilities. I am not one hundred percent convinced this is the case.
I have met too many men who are gifted.
THOR: How does a woman go to Valhalla?
FREYA: The same way as a man. You die in battle.
Alternatively, I am quite confident, that when my time comes, Odin
will just wrap his cloak over me and sneak me in the back door.
THOR: But did not women have a major level of status
in the old Viking society that would merit a reward in the hereafter?
FREYA: I think so. If you look at the religion,
any religion, is a reflection of the social and ethical values of
a people. We only need to look at contemporary positions of women
in Nordic countries, not per se Iceland, but everywhere, to see
that she was held in equal regard to men. Only in the oldest Germanic
tradition, women were thought to be superior to men, certain women
at least. And as such, one could deduct from there that women had
their place in Valhalla. The myths were written up relatively late
by male, mostly Christian scholars, who of course, it was not in
their interest to promote feminine interests, let alone feminine
mysteries. But I am quite confident that I have earned my seat on
the mead bench in Valhalla and not as a servant either.
THOR: Here, here. What would you suggest for women in Wicca
who are looking at Asatru?
FREYA: I would suggest that they study the Vanic
mysteries. Frey and Freya, the lord and lady of nature. It is a
nice way in, and an overlap between Wicca and Asatru. Or probably,
Vanatru.
THOR: How does the Odinic path differ for a woman
as opposed to a man?
FREYA: It is harder.
THOR: How so?
FREYA: The sacrifices involved. The fact that there
are more men on the Odinic path than women would say that it is
harder. Especially if you totally dedicate your life to Odin as
a woman. It is extremely hard.
THOR: Can a woman still have children and enjoy
family if she has dedicated herself to Odin?
FREYA: Within an Asatru community, an extended
family situation, this would be possible. Within society as it is,
I am afraid not. One would preclude the other.
THOR: Is that simply because of economic factors?
Does it put a squeeze on women financially to try to be heathen
activists and at the same time try to have a family?
FREYA: The family would suffer. And as Asatru is
a family religion, if a woman decides to have children, those children
have to come first and foremost, because those children are the
future and the heritage of the folk. I can not have anyone or anything
come first. Odin comes first.
THOR: But did not you make a personal decision
to not have children before you found Asatru?
FREYA: Absolutely.
THOR: So that decision was for personal reasons
before you came to Odin?
FREYA: That decision was consciously made for personal
reasons because I wanted to be involved in magic and occultism,
and the same reason stands, you can only do one thing good. But
unconsciously I believe that decision has been guided by Odin.

Oak's pet pooch Dane stole the show by climb-
ing a tree. Since Dane could not smile like Oak
or Freya, he stuck his tongue out at the camera
THOR: You made that decision with
your first husband who died a long time ago?
FREYA: Yes.
THOR: When did he die?
FREYA: In 1972.
THOR: Apparently you had an operation to not be
able to have children?
FREYA: I had the operation. I had no sex before
that time, anyway. There was no need for an operation.
THOR: So you had the operation on what date?
FREYA: The 14th of February 1975.
THOR: You had a ...
FREYA: A platonic relationship with me husband,
yes.
THOR: I see. Can you describe the influence that
your membership in various occult organizations such as the Order
of the Temple of Orientalis (OTO) or the llluminus Order Thanatheros
(IOT) have had on you?
FREYA: Well, the OTO did not have a lot of influence
on me. Of course I have studied Crowley, and I was particularly
impressed with Liber Astarte which is a magical technique
described in Magic in Theory and Practice [by Crowley]
which is purely designed in longstanding magical training to get
a kind of mystical union of consciousness with ones chosen deity.
It involves about a six month discipline in which you immerse yourself
totally in the mythology, the colors, the attributes, the sounds,
the smells, any kind of correspondence with that deity you can find
until you make the contact. This was the main influence of Aleister
Crowley that I picked up on. This is the path of devotion rather
than magic. The path of mysticism rather than casting spells. The
path of transformation of consciousness to the level of communication
with Odin.
THOR: Could you describe -
FREYA: The IOT. I meant to talk about the IOT.
The IOT, the membership of the IOT is for so-called chaos magic.
It is based around the principle of chaos from the physical physics,
like quantum physics, the law of probabilities, and the manipulation
thereof. One of the aspects of chaos magic that attracted me, is
that in chaos magic, they develop the techniques that are employed
to achieve possession and trances by the god forms and achieve direct
communication. This is what the IOT has to offer. This is the technology
I went in for, to learn, to adopt, and to teach, and to spread in
Asatru. I joined all of these organizations basically to rip off
their technologies and adapt it to our people. And I have never
made any bones about it. The leadership of the pact, the IOT, knows
exactly why I joined. My allegiance is to Odin. Not to any specific
magical order. But like Odin, I gain knowledge wherever it is to
be found. Odin himself goes on a quest for knowledge. He accepts
knowledge of giants, Vanir, whatever beings he meets. He accepts
the knowledge. So do I. Any knowledge can be applicable to Odin
to the service of Asatru. And I don't give a damn where I get it
from.
THOR: What can Asatruar learn from many of the
esoteric pagan orders? For example, would you distinguish Asatru
as being more heathen than pagan or is there a problem of Asatruar
intermarrying with Wiccas?
FREYA: It depends which aspect you look at. Pagan
and heathen mean exactly the same. Heathen means dweller of the
heath. Pagan comes from the Latin paganus which means dweller
of the countryside. So linguistically in the meaning of these words
there is no distinction. However, in practice we find that pagans
are softer, more goddess-oriented, working with the moon, the tides,
with nature. The heathens are more warrior. Outspoken, and more
socially active in the sense --they will basically go to battle
for what they believe in. You can't see many Wiccans doing that.
The intermarriage between Asatru and Wicca is certainly possible.
Again, from the Vanic perspective. And maybe at this point it is
better to speak of Vanatru and Asatru. Asatru particularly, refers
to the Aesir. Vanatru refers to the Vanir. And certainly, interrelated,
intercrossing, and intermarrying between Wicca and Vanatru is absolutely
possible. I myself am Asatru. I have been in a common law marriage
with a Wiccan for the last fourteen years, and we have a system
of mutual support which is absolutely fantastic. I have no problems
with it.
THOR: What would you consider a reputable source to learn
about Wicca?
FREYA: Well, a reputable source is basically Stewart and
Janet Farrar. They have written some very good introductory books.
And Vivien Crowley who wrote an excellent thesis about Wicca, an
old religion in the new age, which is one of the best books written
on the subject. But personally, I feel done with that.
THOR: Here in New York City a lot of Wiccans are
homosexuals. Is there a place for that in Asatru?
FREYA: Traditionally, there might have been. We
know from historical sources that in the Frey cult, in Sweden, cross-dressing
was practiced by male priests of Frey. Whether or whether not homosexual
activity was absolutely implied we do not know. There are certain
aspects of the darker side of Seidr in the mythology and the sagas
which would imply that these practices went on. And from a Vanic
perspective, yes, I have met a Frey's godi in Iceland, Uti, who
was a homosexual, and I personally have no problems with that. However,
if I would meet a homosexual who professed to be an Odin's godi,
my hair would raise on end.
THOR: Why is that?
FREYA: Because Odin is just too masculine. Frey,
yes. Odin, no way. Thor, no way.
THOR: What can Asatruar learn from other Indo-European
religions such as Druidism or the Greco-Roman religion or early
Hindu faith?
FREYA: I honestly do not know. I have never looked
at those religions. I am basically not interested in them. I am
totally 100% Asatru.
THOR: But don't some of these other faiths show
a common Indo-European ancestry?
FREYA: Yes, but I am not interested in Indo-European
ancestry. I am interested in Nordic ancestry. I am a Frisian. I
am not an Indo-European.
THOR: Isn't Indo-European taken to be synonymous
with Nordic?
FREYA: Certainly not. Indo-European encompasses
everything from Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, India...
THOR: Well, the theory, as I understand it, is
that the Indo-European peoples [were originally] spread from Scandinavia
across Eastern Europe and into the steppes of what is now Russian
and Northern Eurasia.. In the Ynglinga Saga, Odin comes
from Asgard, which is east of the Don, which of course is deep inside
modern day Russia. People who were very Nordic spread from those
kinds of places down into the Indus Valley. The Dorians, Achaeans,
and Ionians who founded ancient Greece and the Italic invaders and
Sabines and Oscians who founded Rome and the Roman Republic had
a similar Nordic-related, possibly a part Celtic or Alpine genetic
background.
FREYA: Probably. But I do not consider it relevant to modern
Asatru.
THOR: In other words you are putting more emphasis
on the mystical aspects of Asatru?
FREYA: Yes, absolutely.
THOR: But how would you describe the character
of your own Rune Guild?
FREYA: It is early days yet. It is only a year
ago since Edred [Thorsson] installed me as Drighting over England
and Holland. And since then we have done some work. We have about
thirteen members. And, the work we do is mainly to be transformative
magic. Doing rituals and ceremonies for the Gods to get closer contact
and communion with the Gods. And to develop the individual personality
within the priesthood of Asatru, generally and specifically, the
Rune Guild.
THOR: What has your relationship been with the
Ring of Troth?
FREYA: I am a member of the Ring of Troth. And
I support it. They have been very good to me. There are many specifically
within the Ring of Troth, my closest friend is Kvedulfr. And I hope
to do a lot of good work with the Ring.
THOR: What was your feeling about the situation
that developed with Edred Thorsson?
FREYA: I have no comment. I owe Edred my loyalty
as well. I will not take sides.
THOR: What has been your relationship with Kvedulfr
Gundarsson, since he has been in England pursuing his Phd studies?
FREYA: Kvedulfr and me are as close as brother
and sister. We are on the phone. He visits me. He helps me out with
my correspondence course. He helps me out in any way possible. He
has been extremely supportive, and I am very grateful to the Gods
that Kvedulfr is there. I would not manage without him half the
things that I am doing.
THOR: What has your relationship been with the
Odinic Rite of England?
FREYA: Virtually nonexistent for the last six years.
They are not a practicing magical order. I have not really that
much with them in common. However, I will support them. I will speak
for them. I will turn up at meetings when I am specifically asked
to do it. And against the outside world, I am a member of the Odinic
Rite. I will stand firm with them in the shield wall, if needs require.

Ring of Troth member Dan O'Halloran on the right enjoying
himself.
Oak is on the left, also having entirely too much fun. So is Freya
(center).
THOR: Why did the Odinic Rite split in two fairly recently?
FREYA: There was an argument about The Book of Blots.
Who had written it. Who put it out. I wasn't involved in that argument.
My position, again, is that the leader of one faction of the Odinic
Rite, Stubba, professed me. And as such, I owe him. I have a bond
of blood with him. But I am the one who professed Heimeist, the
leader of the of the other faction of the Heimgest, the leader of
the other faction of the Odinic Rite. So I owe him equally allegiance
and blood brotherhood. So I will not take sides in this argument.
THOR: How do you feel about such practices as fire-walking
in the Odinic Rite?
FREYA: I do not know anything about it. I was not
there.
THOR: I understand that you promote a balance between
respect and tolerance for alien races and cultures and loyalty to
our own folk?
FREYA: Absolutely. The Germanic people always put
loyalty to kin above everything else. Loyalty to ones immediate
family, and the village, the tribal group, and the country you live
in. That is first and foremost.
THOR: Does that go back to the earliest times?
FREYA: That goes back to Tacitus' time, to
Germania [The Agricola and the Germania by the Roman
writer Tacitus]. And of course undoubtedly the same would go in
the Viking Age, and in Anglo-Saxon England. Loyalty to kin is first
and foremost. That is how any nation survives.
OAK THORGEIR: Freya, on the subject of different
organizations, do you have any initial thoughts on the Asatru Alliance,
and what you have learned of it?
FREYA: Well, I do not really know very much about
the Alliance. From what I gather, that the diversity between the
Alliance and the Ring of Troth are mainly concerned with mundane
matters, like politics, one is too liberal, the other is too conservative.
I think that people should learn to live with those differences
in the expression of a faith, but the overall transcendental factor
should be the service to Asatru, to the Asafolk as a whole, and
the worship and service of the Gods. Unity on the level of cooperation
and sharing of resources. More interaction and more contact between
the Troth and the Alliance. It is too silly for words. If Catholics
and Protestants can join forces under the banner of one Christianity,
I do not see why we as Asatruar can not do the bloody same. We should
not be squabbling with our own kin.
THOR: I understand that you have friends back in
England who are of a variety of racial and religious backgrounds?
FREYA: Abso!utely. Each to their own. "Do
what thou willt" shall be the whole of the law. As long as
they leave me alone with my worship, I have no qualm with anyone
else.
THOR: Apparently you have been involved in some
controversy, when there was an effort to have a Negro act as Odin
in a Wagnerian Opera performance in England. What was that all about?
FREYA: Me and another member of the Rune Guild
once had a conversation, in private, and we said that the greatest
degradation for our folk would be --ah, I had better not say this
--let us put it this way, we would consider it very offensive if
a Black man were to try portray Wotan in the Ring. Coincidentally,
three weeks later, this bloke comes up to me smirking all over his
face, with a newspaper article. A Black man was playing Wotan in
The Ring in this Scottish Opera Das Rheingold.
Now there is certainly a place for Black people in Wagner. Alberich
could be Black. Svartalfe. And even earth mother Erda could possibly
be black, the dark goddess [Editor's Note: Based on what factual
sources?]. But not Wotan. That to me was a personal sacrilege and
an affront. And I had to get off my ass and do whatever I could
to stop this by any possible means.
THOR: Would that be as ridiculous as having a white
man play Malcolm X?
FREYA: Of course it is just as ridiculous.
THOR: Did you organize some picketing?
FREYA: Yes, I did. Yes, I had the pickets out from
Scotland all the way back to Oxford, with the help of the Odinic
Rite. In the later stage, when everyone saw it was safe, they all
came out of the closet and joined me. But initially it was only
me on me own sticking my neck out.
THOR: Apparently you got smeared by some press
accounts?
FREYA: Absolutely.
THOR: What did they say?
FREYA: They said I was a Nazi terrorist. They blamed
me for a bombing in 1982. And they said I was wanted by the Dutch
police for Nazi terrorist activities.
THOR: What kinds of papers made these accusations?
FREYA: It is a magazine called Searchlight,
which is basically an anti-fascist magazine. It spends its time
and money hunting down fascists and seeing racists under the bed.
No, we do not need to theorize who funds that paper. In Britain
it is well known.
THOR: How would you compare Odinism and German
National Socialism?
FREYA: Well, I do not think there is any comparison
possible. National Socialism was in the first instance a reaction
of Christianity against the Jews. An economic phenomena of Germany
in the 20's. It has nothing to do with Odinism. Odin is God of Victory.
He would not back Hitler. Hitler was a loser. From the start.
THOR: What about in terms of the tribal democracy
that the Asatru Alliance promotes?
FREYA: There was no tribal democracy in Nazi Germany.
It was basically a fascist regime where the law was laid down from
above. No democracy at all.
THOR: What about the way the Nazis treated your
own people?
FREYA: Well, exactly. My father fought in the Resistance
and won a cross, the equivalent of the V.C. cross.
THOR: The Victoria Cross?
FREYA: Yes, I think so, yes. He was a Resistance
hero. So were a few of my uncles.

THOR: Did the Nazis treat the Dutch
badly in terms of taking foodstuffs out of the country?
FREYA: Initially, not too bad. It was only when
they started to round up the Jews and the Dutch started hiding them,
and started a railway strike in February 1941, to prevent the trains
being ridden, you know, these special trains they had, that the
Germans really stomped down on the Dutch and took the gold out of
the country. They took the resources, the money, everything they
could lay their hands on. They treated the Dutch abominably. Absolutely
disgusting, considering that the Dutch on the whole are more Germanic
and Nordic and Teutonic than the bloody Germans who are half mixed
anyway. You look at those Nazis. None of them look the part. Heydrich,
that was about it. The rest, they all looked like bloody mongrels.
THOR: More Alpine than Nordic?
FREYA: Well, Alpine and all bits slung in together.
THOR: You refer to Dr. Karl Jung in Leaves
of Yggdrasil. Was not he involved with Nazism?
FREYA: Well, I do not know if he was involved with
Nazism, but he was certainly was the man, who during the Third Reich,
ran the Volksgerundheit, which is basically, what do you call it,
national health, I suppose, for mentally psychiatric patients. This
of course was after all of the Jewish psychiatrists were removed
from the scene.
THOR: You talk about his work on archetype analysis
and many words that he used such as the collective unconscious.
FREYA: That is absolutely, completely valid. Jung
is one of the greatest thinkers of the century. And he brought the
psychoanalytical movement directly into mainstream occultism and
mysticism. My biggest gripe I have with him is in that night in
1936, if I am correct in his book Civilization in Transformation,
he wrote a defamatory article called "Wotan" in which
he more or less implied that Wotan, Odin, was the controlling power
behind Hitler. That I do not accept. I can never accept it. The
first time that I read that I was so outraged, so in a state, that
when I went to sleep, I actually went out on the Astral and had
a significant dream-type experience in which I met Jung in the British
Library and I slapped him across the face for this insult. And unfortunately,
consecutive authors, like Jean Houston, one of the main promoters
of esoteric psychology and humanistic transcendental psychology
in the United States, now, has quoted exactly this quote in her
book The Search of the Beloved, she quoted Jung and she
supports it. People keep repeating this s- - without really looking
at it, what Odin really stands for.
THOR: After the war, didn't Jung undergo some ideological
changes?
FREYA: Well, he probably did. He obviously had his job
to think of like everybody else. After the war, nobody did anything.
Nothing happened. Who was going to own up to it? Ich habe nicht
gewusst. That is what we say in Holland. Don't trust any German
over the age of fifty.
THOR: It sounds from your description of London
that the British Government has gone entirely in the opposite ideological
direction.
FREYA: Yes. Yes. Britain is f- -ed.
THOR: Well, doesn't a lot of that have to do with
what you call the "Loony Left" in Britain...
FREYA: Well, yes it does. This is the extreme excess
of the Labor Party, however, the official Labor Party they tried
to disown it now, promoting all ethnic minorities, and weird things,
like you can not say "black board" or "black bag"
or "bye-bye black sheep," they outlawed it all. You can't
tell Irish jokes. Because that is racism, let alone Jewish jokes.
The fact is that the Irish and the Jews are the best about their
own jokes. They are always spouting them about. But we can't do
it because it is absolutely and completely racism. Everything is
called racism. If you tell an Irish joke, it is racist. What is
racist about it? The Irish are not a different race to us. It is
nonsense. Complete utter nonsense.
THOR: How does the liberal white middle class feel
about the [late] Islamic leader Khomeini's desire to bump off Salmon
Rushdie. Isn't he still in hiding?
FREYA: Yes.
THOR: Are the liberals condemning that [as much
as they love to condemn any form of white racism]?
FREYA: I think that they are lip-servicing to condemning
it. But to be totally honest, the British Government should not
stand for that. The British Government should not expect that one
of its citizens should have to spend a whole life in hiding, just
being intimidated by Iran. I think it is a great act of cowardice
not to go in there and not sort them out. It is bloody ridiculous.
THOR: When will the white middle class in England
start showing some folk cooperation in economics and politics for
their own kind?
FREYA: As long as they have got their paychecks
coming in, and their little council jobs and civil service jobs
safely, and go to the weekly therapy classes, they do not give a
f- -ing damn. As usual it is up to the working class to sort out
the s- -.
THOR: You have been involved in other forms of
activism, for example to save the White Horse stone. What is the
significance of the White Horse Stone?
FREYA: The significance of the White Horse Stone
is that it is the burial place for Horsa of Hengest and Horsa. They
were one of the first English, Anglo-Saxon settlers of this country.
And they were pagan. That stone commemorates that battle and one
of them who died there. [Editor's Note: An army of Angles, Saxons,
and Jutes from northern Germany led by the two brothers Hengest
and Horsa defeated an army of Britons at this site in 449 AD and
Horsa was killed at the height of the battle]. It is being reclaimed
by the Odinic Rite as a sacred site for Odinists to meet. However,
it is fair to say that Wiccan groups also meet there. It is pretty
well shared. And there is no conflict.
THOR: Well, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes were
Odinists when they first came to England, were they not?
FREYA: Yes, this was firmly within the pagan period.
THOR: But before they came, England was called
Briton?
FREYA: It is England because of "Ing"
[Ingavonnes or the Angles of the region of Angeln --Editor].
THOR: The Odinists, who came in, took it over?
FREYA: Initially they were invited in by Vortigern,
a local Celtic chieftain to fight the Picts and the Scots [when
Britain was abandoned early in the 5th century by the Romans the
country quickly degenerated into chaos --Editor]. And Vortigern
made promises he did not keep. So the Saxons just said, "Up
yours, here we are, we are going to stay here. We are going to take
this land." And they did.
THOR: Why do many Englishmen insist on calling
themselves Odinists and do not use the term Asatruar?
FREYA: Because they do not want to be aligned with
Iceland. Everybody takes the term Asatruar from the Icelandic Asatruarmen,
who first mentioned it, and so far as I am concerned, I have no
problem with that. But the English want to distinguish themselves
in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, not the Icelandic-Scandinavian tradition.
OAK THORGEIR: Doesn't the word Odinists to some
degree invalidate the other Gods and make them just singly Odinists?
FREYA: This is problem with the term "Odinist."
This is why I personally prefer "Asatru." However, I AM
AN ODINIST! I worship and will extol Him above any other God or
Goddess.
THOR: How did the Vikings themselves relate to
indigenous peoples. Do you see a streak of tolerance there?
FREYA: All I can say is that Lionel Ravensong saw
a program on television while I was out, which dealt with the celebration
of the Columbus business, and referred back to the Viking ships
arriving here in 1991. And it drew a comparison that when the Viking
ships arrived here in this age, the Indians were there dancing,
clapping, and applauding, honoring the Vikings. Whereas during the
Columbus celebration, the Indians objected. They demonstrated. They
tried to stop it. And quite rightly so. Our people had friendly,
respectful relations with the Skraelings. Columbus and his people
wiped them out. Polluted them. Infected them with diseases. Forcefully
converted them to Christianity, and stole away their wealth and
their natural resources and destroyed their tribal structure, something
our people, the Vikings, never did. They might have fought them
on the battle ground, yes, sure, but the Indians like a good fight
as well. They are warriors. We are warriors. You meet on the battle
ground and you respect each other. Even although you fight.
THOR: Some people get confused when they see symbols
like the swastika in Leaves of Yggdrasil and song titles
like "Panzer Rune" in your recent album. What are you
trying to accomplish by resurrecting this imagery?
FREYA: I am not resurrecting any imagery. The imagery
of the swastika is an integral part of our folk tradition as well
as other people's. The Red Indians use it. The Tibetans use it.
The Greeks called it the gammion. They used it. It is simply a pictographic
representation of the sun and in the Nordic tradition specifically,
the hammer of Thor. And I am not going to compromise to anyone.
Not to be able to use the symbols of my folk, shared by other people
as well. The Indians, the people from India, in Leceister and Bradford,
still paint it. They pray to Krishna. They use the swastika quite
heavily as a solar symbol, and I will be buggered if I am not going
to do the same. So far as "Panzer Rune" that was a title
track given by Dave Tibet on record. I just did the chanting. I
had nothing more to do with that, what he called it, that was his
business, it was his record.
THOR: [In the song title] "Swastikas for Noddy;"
"Noddy" means what?
FREYA: Noddy is an English children's figure. Out
of sheer bedevilment Tibet started treating this character as a
god just for fun. That is David Tibet.
THOR: I see. Well your book has certainly received
high acclaim from many Asatru quarters. Valgard Murray, the editor
of Vor Tru, says that it is the only Llewellyn book that
he carries, yet oddly enough, Llewellyn stopped printing your book
for a while. Why was that?
FREYA: Well, I suppose it was an economic reason.
They can not print everything at any given time. They are like everyone
else and have only limited resources. They can only print according
to their means.
THOR: How many copies have you sold to date?
FREYA: About 5,000 from Llewellyn, and about a
1,000 from a private edition. And of course there is the new edition
out. Apparently there is another 5,000 on the market right now.
THOR: Was there a write-in campaign that helped
to get the new printing?
FREYA: Yes, when I found out that I was going to
go to the States, I had some British book source asking Llewellyn
when it was going to be reprinted, because I had my students complain
that they could not get my book. And Llewellyn said in June. And
I wrote to every Asatruar I knew and said, "Give Llewellyn
hell. Get their asses in gear. That book should be out when I corne
over to the States." Blimey! It is in their interest. They
are making most of the money out of it. All I get is a lousy 10%.

Freya wore the Wulfing Kindred's Valknut button gift
while seeing Lady Liberty with Oak (right) and Thor
THOR: What kinds of letters have
you received from readers of your book?
FREYA: I have received lots of letters. I have
never received a negative feed back letter. I have had so many letters
acclaiming it. One of the nicest ones, people usually write that
it is the best book on the runes yet, or it is one of the best,
equating it with people like Edred Thorsson, but the nicest letter
I had was from somebody who wrote that in this book, you could feel
the Gods speaking for themselves. And that is the nicest complement,
and the most valuable complement I have ever had, because in actual
fact, this is true. The Gods do speak for themselves, and so far
as is possible, to be fed through my consciousness, and be interpreted
and put in the proper language, English. And the inspiration and
the spirituality involved in it are directly derived from the Gods.
That is not me. That is Odin, and some other Gods.
THOR: How did the book evolve into its final form?
Didn't it start out as some notes?
FREYA: It started out as a magical diary. I went
through runic meditations and kept a record. Then I started giving
weekend runic seminars at my house. Usually I was so carried on
by it that I got in a trance and the information was passed through.
Someone put a tape recorder on and taped the bugger and it all became
part of the book.
THOR: You have claimed that many of the ideas,
as you just said, have corne to you in a trance state.
FREYA: That is absolutely correct.
THOR: And what happens when you go into a trance
state?
FREYA: Well, it usually happened that I was giving
a talk on the runes, and starting with the Futhark or talking about
the Gods or talking about Odin, talking about our religion, and
I got really involved, and then He just takes over. My eye goes
back. And I start really talking hyperactively, pushing out a lot
of energy, and I can talk and talk and push it all out as quickly
as is possible. And usually I do not remember half of it afterwards.
I am not unconscious though. I am conscious. I know what goes on,
and I totally surrender and cooperate with that.
THOR: How does altered consciousness differ from,
say, the Hippies who are into drug use?
FREYA: I do not know. I do not use drugs. Shamanic
people use drugs for spiritual purposes to achieve a trance state.
And I think that as long as the drugs are naturally grown by mother
earth, I can not see no problem with it. If they are chemically
manufactured, that is where absolutely I draw the line. Anything
mother nature grows; mushrooms, pot, booze, goes. Anything manufactured
and dealt with on the street, no bloody way.
THOR: Do you see a real scarcity of any form of
mind-altering drugs, natural or otherwise, in the old Nordic religion?
FREYA: There was some evidence that mushrooms were
used. Aminitus muscara certainly. Although not for the berserkergang
the aminitus does not have that kind of working. It is a hallucinogenic
and probably was used in the same manner that native Americans used
peyote. And of course pot was burned in the sweathouses. They just
threw it on the hot stones in the fire and smoked, and people breathed
it and got stoned.
THOR: What is the evidence for that?
FREYA: The evidence is basically archaeological.
THOR: Cannabis has been found in digs?
FREYA: Yes. In the smoke pits. Don't forget it
wasn't a drug culture. was another herb that grew. They might have
put all sorts on it: parsley, I don't know what the hell they used.
Cannabis is just another
THOR: It really is not openly stated in any of
the sagas, is it?
FREYA: The mead of inspiration, the Bragi's Cup,
there is some indication that that was a combination of mead, apple,
and cannabis. There are some old recipes floating about. But there
are other people who know more about this than I do, such as Richard
Dufton and Bernard King, and they reckon, yes, this was the Bragi's
Cup. Definitely cannabis was one of the ingredients in it.
THOR: That is something that would take a lot of
scholarly research to try to get a definitive opinion on one way
or another. Cannabis mugroot, plant.
FREYA: I just take the other's scholar's word for
it. Let us face it. Mead is a bloody drug. Alcohol. It spins the
mind off.
THOR: Yet unlike people who claim to be divinely
inspired with "The Word," you are surprisingly non-dogmatic
in your approach. You appear to have no fixed guides to runic divination.
FREYA: Well, you can't have a fixed guide to runic
divination. Divination is inspirational. You can not tie inspiration
down to structure. Inspiration comes and goes. You can not tie it
down to any structure or dogma. As soon as it becomes dogmatic,
it becomes dead letters, and the inspiration is gone. The spirit
is gone.
THOR: In astrology they do have structure.
FREYA: Yes, of course, you have a structure, and
I have a valid structure. I work within the runic system. I have
certain outlays I feel comfortable with. Astrology only has a structure
in so far as the mathematical and the planetary configurations appear
in the sky. The interpretation, of it, how it applies to an individual
life, is not structured. There are no hard and fast rules. Like
a runic divination, you start talking what you pick up, and that
is the way it goes. It triggers the mind into a state of clairvoyance
from which you pick up information.
THOR: This is different from fortune telling?
FREYA: Of course it is. Fortune telling is bull
s- -. You can not do fortune telling. Wyrd is not that fixed. The
wyrd is a main blue print of your life. But within the parameters
of your own individual wyrd, you can shape that wyrd to a very large
extent. This is the way of the warrior. Not slavishly submitting
to the laws of fate, but actively intervening. Actively battling.
Actively taking control of your own life. Control of your own will.
Shape it to the best of the abilities and the best possibilities
you have.
THOR: What is your concept then of shape changing?
FREYA: Shape changing I have experimented with.
It is basically a technique I employ by projecting my consciousness
out in the shape of an animal and then do some business.
THOR: But it is not an actual physical change;
it is more a psychic change?
FREYA: It is a psychic change. An emotional change.
If you go deep enough into it, you will find yourself growling,
snarling, or whatever that animal noises make.

Freya quaffs a horn of mead and squints an eye as she
tunes into the Odinforce and divines runes for Oak
THOR: Did you not have an experience
where you chased off a male pursuer?
FREYA: Yes I did, yes, I was walking along, this
was in 1981. I was not into Asatru, I was just generally into the
occult. And this male of a certain hue spoke to me and was quite
friendly, and pleasant, and I had nice chat, and then he started
getting personal. Making suggestions. And I just couldn't get rid
of the bugger. He started following me. I started walking harder
and harder, and he followed me. At one point I got so fed up, I
just invoked Horus, shaped my astral body, my force field around
me, in the shape of the beak of Horus and the wings. I turned around
180 degrees and faced him head on and chased him all the way back.
That was my first experience with shape shifting.
THOR: You talked about how the Gods need us and
we need the Gods, could you explain this?
FREYA: Well, this is a fairly mystical concept.
The Gods can not find expression for Their will and Their movements
on this plane without the intervention of humans. Without us, the
Gods do not exist. They have no way of expressing themselves. The
Gods work through the human consciousness. Transformation of the
human consciousness, and their own personal aims of development
and growth and gaining more power on the inner planes. Each time,
when we do a ritual or a devotional, we invoke the God and we concentrate
on that God. We give it life-force by our attention and our emotion.
And we charge that God form, and it feeds back to us. It is a symbiotic
relationship.
THOR: How does that symbiotic relationship relate
to the concept of meta-genetics that apparently you like and that
Steve McNallen has written about? FREYA: Meta-genetics,
the concept, the Hamingja, the oversoul, is in the blood. The blood
gets transferred by the genes. Therefore it is absolutely essential
for the purest dedication in the worship of the Gods to keep the
purest genetic line. This is true for every nation. This is true
for the Voodoo people. It is true for African people. For Nordic
people. For everyone. The Gods are the mythological ancestry. You
keep your line as pure as possible. Because if the race dies out,
the Gods die out. And this is not only the prerogative of the Nordic
race. Each race should be aware of that.
THOR: How did the runes Ansuz and Wunjo come to
shape your last name of Aswynn?
FREYA: I was given the name Freya in the Craft,
and I needed a surname to go with it. Especially when I went public,
and I just asked Odin. And just those runes came up. Aswynn. Ansuz.
Wunjo. Aswynn. That is it.

THOR: Can you explain the special
meaning of Ansuz and Wunjo in this context?
FREYA: No, I won't. No I won't. That is to each
individual to decode.
THOR: I see. Well, what are some of the most significant
runes to you now that you are willing to decode?
FREYA: Ansuz, of course. First and foremost. Wunjo,
Othila, Eiwaz, and, Gifu [Gebo in the elder Futhark or "Gifu"
in the Anglo-Saxon Futhark] is paramount in my life.
THOR: How is it paramount?
FREYA: It is the gift, the giver, and the receiver
all being one. The gift transcends the giving and receiving. Gifu
is the unifying rune of the consciousness. Between me and Odin.
Gifu is all.
THOR: Is there another rune that you would like
to talk about?
FREYA: Well, yes. Othila, of course, is a very
important rune. It represents the folk collective. The establishment
of our folk traditions, and our own ethnic and spiritual heritage.
Othila, if you look at it, is composed by two runes. An Inguz and
a Gifu. The gift of Ing. Ing being the God of fertility and ancestry
transmitting the gift of consciousness to the next generation. Gifu.
Inguz. Then of course there are the dark runes of the Goddesses.
Hagalaz, Isa, Nauthiz, collectively Urd, Skuld and Verdandi. Of
course Pertho, the rune of Wyrd, the rune of space, and Jera the
rune of time. These are the runes for divination and the shaping
of ones individual web of Wyrd.
THOR: It was interesting to me when earlier you
told me that you have not tried to cash in on your runic readings
by setting up a fortune-telling shop.
FREYA: Of course not. That would debase the runes
to the market place. Someone with a deck of cards telling fortunes
for the public for a few quid. No, no way would I do that. That
is not the way the runes are meant to be. Not by me at any rate.
When I do a rune cast, it is a sacred act, I am communing with the
God or Goddess to that particular person. That is something that
I can not sell on the market place. It would be prostitution.
THOR: What is your understanding or relationship
to Gods such as Loki in addition to Odin?
FREYA: I have always ignored Loki, mainly because
Lionel already was linked with Loki, and he caused enough mischief
for me and Odin to clear up. But fortunately, Kvedulfr taught me
a main lesson in this respect. If you invoke Odin, you will sooner
or a later have to invoke Loki?
THOR: Why is that?
FREYA: Because they are blood brothers. It says
in the story in Aegir's Hall that every time Odin is offered a drink,
Loki must be offered one as well. So whenever you call on Odin,
you must give some kind of acknowledgement to Loki. If only to shut
the bugger up and stop him from interfering.
THOR: Do you see Loki as being truly evil?
FREYA: Oh, no. No. A pest, certainly. But evil,
not particularly. No more than any of the others. Odin is pretty
nasty in his dark side. He is a right old sod.
THOR: What about Surt?
FREYA: Surt is evil. Surt is total, unmitigated
destruction. Loki is transformation. Loki is chaos. Loki is the
bugger factor. The unknown variable that comes in and screws things
up for everyone to learn. To rebuild. To test. Challenge. Surt is
just total destruction. No purpose at all.
THOR: What about the Gods who are at the other
end of the scale? That are edifying. Such as Heimdal or Thor?
FREYA: Heimdal is very important. He is essentially
the opener of the way. Especially if you work with higher trance
states and traveling, then you have got to acknowledge Heimdal as
the guardian of the bridge, otherwise you will not pass. Thor, is
just nice. Thor is the one you invoke when you have got a bit of
trouble going on. Then you call on Thor. He does the business. He
is very protective. Very friendly. And very, very close at hand.
He is really with his people all the time. Protective, you know.
Defensive. Very very nice. But Odin transcends them all. Odin is
just cosmic consciousness. Odin is just all.
THOR: What direction would you like to see Asatru
develop in the future?
FREYA: I want to see more development of traditional
magic. Platform magic. Seidr. Galdr. All sorts of traditional magic.
Reconstructed from the sagas with the help of looking at other people's
traditional magic which has not been wiped out. But more magic as
an individual group to raise the consciousness of the individual.
They will raise the consciousness of the folk.
THOR: To a Westerner who is trained to think in
rationalistic terms, how would you define the term "magic"
that you practice?
FREYA: Well, there is a set definition of magic
as an act of will for a specific result which is the Crowley definition.
Magic is the art of causing coincidence and the will, and this is
all true, but personally for me, the way I practice magic, is purely
for transcendental purpose. My magic is geared to get a closer communication
and unity with Odin. That is all my magic is aimed at. Not casting
spells or gaining money or gaining favors. It is purely in terms
of the transcendence of consciousness. And to me the aided consciousness
back to the folk, to inspire, to teach, and to bring the people
closer to the Gods. So actually this is mysticism, not magic. Magic
is a technology of how to cast spells. How to do certain working.
Mysticism ought to be the aim of magic.
THOR: How would you describe the art of Galdr?
FREYA: It is verbal magic. It is anything to do
with poetry, incantations, mantra-type runic chants. Or create an
altered state of consciousness.
THOR: I see. How would you describe Seidr magic?
FREYA: Seidr magic has more to do with the feminine
mysteries. This altered state of consciousness by deep trances and
sitting out, sitting on a platform, hanging on trees, anything.
It is on the sharp edge of magic. And sexual magic would be a part
of Seidr.
THOR: What about this "sex magic" that
we have heard about? How do you feel it can be used or abused?
FREYA: How can it be used? Again, I can not really
speak from experience, because I have never met --well I have met
the person I would like to experience this with, who is Bernard
King, but it did not work out. In other traditions, sexuality is
used as a method to elevate. ones consciousness to a higher plane.
Again the object being the communication with the Gods, to use that
energy of the life force directly for the communication. And inspiration
with the Gods. But it has to be done on such a high transcendental
level of consciousness elevation that I have not found the proper
person with whom I could celebrate this mystery. I still hope. As
time goes on.
THOR: This is different from using it as a tool
for promiscuous relations as opposed to practicing family values.
FREYA: Of course not. It has nothing to do with
promiscuity. The priest and priestess are in sacred union like a
God and a Goddess, and you just can not achieve that with everyone
on a promiscuous level. You might be lucky if it happens once in
a lifetime.
THOR: What is your concept of what is called "sending."
FREYA: AHH!! Sending. Well that is basically creating
a physical structure like an animal or a hat or a series of runes
or a bowl or whatever, and you charge that, as a receptacle for
an indwelling familiar spirit, a servitor, that you then can send
off to do your bidding. That is a sending.
THOR: I am aware of a lot of primitive cultures
such as the Native Hawaiians who engage in sending. [Editor's Note:
Thor worked on a documentary film project that covered elements
of the old Hawaiian religion. According to Thor, an excellent source
is Na Po'e Kahiko: The People of Old by Samuel Kamakau,
Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii, 1964. Samuel Kamakau lived in the
1800's and is an authentic source on pre-contact pagan Hawaiian
religion. In chapter six "Magic and Sorcery" Kamakau discusses
the "sending" practices of dreaded kahuna'ana'ana who,
among other things, prayed people to death. Of course these practices
had a distinctively Polynesian as opposed to Nordic flavor to them.
If you ever visit the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, check it out].
FREYA: This [sending] was done in Iceland.
THOR: So apparently it has been done by peoples
across the globe.
FREYA: Across the globe. We call it the sending,
they call it something else.
THOR: Do you see this as something that is on the
periphery of Asatru?
FREYA: It is not on the periphery of Asatru. It
is right in the center of it. Like Odin has his Huginn and Muninn
as his familial spirits. We all ought to have a couple. One of them
guards your house when you are not there. Another one looks after
your finances and your daily business. Another one is there to attack
enemies. To divert enemy attack coming in. They are practical mechanisms.
THOR: So this is creating a kind of spirit force?
FREYA: Yes, yes.
THOR: Like a force field?
FREYA: A force field, yes, but with indwelling
elemental spirits. You create an environment for them to dwell in.
And give them a foothold on this plane. In return, they will do
what you ask them. But you have to be nice to them. You treat them
more or less as pets. You do little blots for them. For example,
this is linked with alfarblots. People had elves. They put honey
and milk outside the door to please the elves. The elves looked
after the farmyard. The elves looked after the household. This is
basically the same principle.
THOR: Apparently you will continue writing books?
Can you describe some of the book projects?
FREYA: The Shadow of Yggdrasil [is one
of them]. The Shadow of Yggdrasil is basically an attempt
in the future to define the meaning of Asatru in terms of certain
political slurs that have been leveled at it. I intend to trace
down the historical origins of anti-Semitism and Nazism, and prove
beyond any doubt that they are not a part of Odinism or Asatru.
To put things in perspective. That is not part of our folk fate.
It does not have a place in Asatru, and never had a place in Asatru.
The term shadow comes from Jung again, that part of the subconscious
which is suppressed. People do not want to acknowledge. The same
way, if you look at a tree in the sun, that tree will shed a shadow.
Likewise Yggdrasil, the cosmic tree, will have its its shadow side,
the darker side. That has to be illuminated. It has to be exposed
to the light. The light of reason. The light of understanding. To
eliminate this erroneous concept that Asatru is Nazi.
THOR: There is another book project--
FREYA: Roots of Yggdrasil. This will go
into more technology of sorcery, sending, of sigils, of practical
magical workings in daily life, and also it will contain an in-depth
analysis of the inner meaning of Wagner's Ring as a narrative of
an initiation process seen from the perspective of Wodan or Wotan.
That has been in preparation.
THOR: You have been very active in terms of musical
recordings. Can you describe your most recent albums?
FREYA: Well, I have done Fruits of Yggdrasil,
which basically was purely intended to express what I feel about
my faith and Odin in particular. Shades of Yggdrasil is basically
a re-recording of that. A revamped version after the original sold
out. It is a celebration of Asatru. It is empowerment of the runes.
And of course it is my own feelings expressed in song and voice
about Odin. Certain songs convey my soul. In that record I opened
up my soul to the folk. To show the beauty of the worship of Odin.
THOR: Do you think there a place for recapturing
some of the sublime kinds of hymns that we often hear in a Christian
church, except that we adapt them to Asatru lyrics. I understand
that Christians have ripped off some beautiful hymns from pagans
and heathens. Is it possible that we can do the same thing [back
to the Christians]?
FREYA: I do not think so. The taint would always
be there. If you wanted to take a Christian tune and put Odinist
words in it, I mean, the taint would still be there. I could not
get it through my throat. The only way to do it is to start from
scratch and write your own hymns with your own music. We have got
enough quality musicians and song writers. Like Kirby [Wise]. I
mean, we do not need to borrow from Christianity. I wish someone
would write me a real hymn of Odin, expressing everything about
his sublime, majestic consciousness. I would gladly put it out on
a record. Any challengers? Vor Tru should forward any mail
on this.
THOR: Could you describe some of the people you
are currently working with in London? For example, Bernard King
apparently has come out with --
FREYA: Ultima Thule.
THOR: Yes.

O'Halloran displaying his Thor's Hammer amulet
FREYA: Well, that book --Bernard
has been working on the concept of Thule for a very long time. He
has written a trilogy called The Keeper Trilogy which has
to do a lot with the Thulian concept, he also wrote Asatruar novels,
retelling the Ynglinga myths and Staruadder and other heroes. He
has done a marvelous job on that. But at the moment I do not know
whenever I will Dan tried to charm Freya with his over-sized Thor's
Hammer ever cooperate with this man ever again. There has been great,
great personal disappointments which prompted me to sever at this
point. I am looking more to Kvedulfr for cooperation on the level
of the correspondence course and the direction of Asatru in England.
THOR: How is your time preoccupied these days?
FREYA: Well, in the correspondence course. Answering
the students. Writing more letters. Writing on the next book. And
running a housing association as managing director and financial
administrator.
THOR: You own or run your own cooperative, as I
understand it.
FREYA: Yes.
THOR: Is this what you direct or is this something
else that you do?
FREYA: No, it is the same cooperative.
THOR: I See. What does your correspondence course
cover that is not in Leaves of Yggdrasil?
FREYA: At the moment it is difficult to say. The
original correspondence course was written mainly by me and Bernard.
It is now in the process of being re-written by Kvedulfr. I have
not seen his latest work yet, but it is bound to be absolutely good.
A lot more. It is basically for people who are on their own who
want to know more about Asatru, who want to find a safe guide into
different types of magic of Asatru. To do their own rituals. To
do their own workings. To gain their own understanding of the runes
without being taught by me what this rune means or what that rune
ought to do. They are given a framework to develop their own intuitive
and magical abilities to the greater service of the Gods and the
folk. And unfortunately this correspondence course does not come
cheap. The production of it costs a hell of a lot of money.
OAK THORGEIR: How does one get involved in this
correspondence course?
FREYA: You sign up for it.
OAK: Write to you directly?
FREYA: Write to me directly. It is a twelve month
course in all basic Asatru magic and lore.
THOR: And the address is BM ASWYNN, London, WCIN
3XX, England?
FREYA: That is correct.
OAK: What is the cost of the course?
FREYA: The cost of the course is nine pounds per
lesson. For the American market, I set it up where they can order
three lessons as a block for sixty dollars. But of course they do
not have to order these lessons every month; they can do it twice
a year. Unfortunately, it costs a lot to make them. To print them.
To typeset them. This is just the cost. And the amount of time that
goes into them. This is just the cost. And the amount of time that
goes into it, I have to make some money out of it to cover the time.
THOR: What is next on your agenda here in America?
FREYA: I am going to Phoenix to meet up with the
Troth with some Troth kindreds to do some work shops and some practical
work on Seidr, Galdr, and more advanced forms of magic. The way
I understand it, a lot of good work, a lot of advanced magical work,
has been accomplished in the Troth, and I will gladly get involved
in that.
THOR: And then you are going on to San Francisco.
FREYA: Then going on to San Francisco to the Ostara
thing which is run by the Ring of Troth. Again, I will be doing
workshops, lectures, readings, and have a good time with the folk.
THOR: Can't argue with that. Those of us with the
Vinland Kindred of the Asatru Alliance have had a good time with
you, and can only wish that this visit to the U.S. will be an extraordinarily
memorable, productive, and happy experience for you.
FREYA: Thank you.

A threesome
consisting of Lady Liberty, Freya Aswynn and Thor
Sannhet face our sacred Northern European lands across the ocean
* * * * * * *
William B. Fox is a former Marine Corps officer
with experience in logistics, public affairs, and military intelligence.
He is an honors graduate of the Harvard Business School and a Phi
Beta Kappa graduate from the University of Southern California. He
is also publisher of America First Books at
www.americafirstbooks.com
|