Aslaug's Axe Shed

Having to write this post irks me, but the events of this weekend really forces my hand.

Apparently, at least one of my readers (name isn’t important…let’s call him X for lack of inventiveness’ sake), appears to have believed that my blog entry was about my faith being ‘gutted’ by reading the books I blogged about last week. He first wrote me an email stating how he believed that this was probably how things happened, and how he felt Catholics had come closer to the truth about divinity than others. His Email was highly aggressive, but I chose to believe I had read it wrong, or at LEAST that he didn’t mean it to be. I reread it a few times but it did not seem less aggressive any of the subsequent times, and when I answered him, I tried to point this out while at the same time explaining that my faith had in fact not been gutted. That I had, if anything, been reaffirmed by reading books that trivialized my beliefs and feeling that this was an uncomfortable thing. Had I simply shrugged it off, it would have been a different matter, but thinsg that are close to my heart were twisted into a largely unrecognizable shape, and I did not like that.

That’s not ‘losing faith’ or having one’s faith ‘gutted’. That is, if anything, a strong confirmation of personal belief. I tried to explain this in my return email as well.

The main topic of X’s first email was that I should, to use his own words, examine the reasons for my faith. He also claimed to understand exactly what the author was trying to get across, which I find hard to believe since X is American and therefore hasn’t had a chance to read these books yet. They have, as far as I’ve been able to determine, not been translated into English. Furthermore, as I EXPRESSEDLY stated several times, the author herself explains what her goal was in the epilogue of each book; namely to write a fictional story of what COULD have happened. In that regard, her book is the exact same kind of story as AVC, with the one caveat that mine dealt with history, and hers deals with religion. But both are fictionalized stories, set thousand of years ago. Nonetheless, X felt certain that what she really attempted was to prove how the old norse faith was wrong, and how I was in fact worshipping human beings. He then went on to explain the benefits of Catholicism…including the willingness of Catholics to admit to having done wrong. To X’s credit, he did acknowledge that certain parts of his own faith made him uncomfortable…but he then went on to use an expression that struck me as particularly unpleasant…

He said: “In your case I will counsel you to look carefully at your reason for your faith.  Just because what you believe in is more comforting does not make your faith right.”

For the life of me, I couldn’t find any single reason for writing that, unless he was telling me that my faith was, in fact, wrong. Something which I consider a gross personal insult, since neither X, nor any other human being has the right to tell me such a thing. If my faith is right or wrong, it is up to me to find out…alone…through my own actions. Nothing so far in my life…NOTHING whatsoever…has shown me that my faith is wrong for me. MANY things have shown the opposite to be the case.

I tried to explain this to X in my return email as well, while reminding him that his style had been rather aggressive. He exalts his own beliefs, while telling me that mine are wrong. But I also pointed out in my email to him, that while I found his statements aggressive, I didn’t think he meant them to be.

I really thought X was trying, in a rather strange way, to express some kind of support.

Turns out I was wrong.

This morning when I got up there was a second email from X, who starts by saying that I didn’t understand his message correctly.

He then goes on to write: “What I am saying and to some extent asking you to look as your reasons for you faith could be for the wrong reasons.  Just because your faith are comforting is not what is wrong.  What I am asking you to ask your self is, is simply just because what you hear or think fit your wants and needs could be wrong.”

He then goes on to explain how he acknowledges Darwin’s teachings and how the Catholic Church ‘burnt itself’ with Gallileo. He then speaks of how ‘evil’ he thinks it is that many Christians takes Genesis ad verbatim and tries to force others to think that is the only way to see the world, before he continues with:

“I am not trying to insulting you, I commend you for having your faith.  I am only hoping to get you to consider where your faith is place could be incorrect.”

And finally, he pulls out the big hammer and smacks me between the eyes with it by saying:

“Don’t look at yourself as evil, maybe a little miss guided a little.  Though miss directed would be a better description.  You have faith, which is very good.  Just in wrong direction.”

I think the last time I’ve had anyone be this grossly disrespectful towards me was the last time Jehova’s witnesses turned up at my doorstep, refusing to go away until I threatened to call the police. That happened over twenty years ago.

If X thought he was being helpful, I have to SERIOUSLY disappoint him because I feel violated by these emails of his. He’s openly proselytizing…OPENLY attempting to convert me. Something I have expressed my revulsion of on a LARGE number of occasions.

I answered him briefly, sending off a second email telling him I wanted no further discussions on religion with him because of that. I also pointed out that before he tried to convert me he might want to get something straight. Namely that by Papal edict from the hands of John Paul II…the Pope so many people seem to think was an angel in disguise…I am unsavable. I have done something to myself which means that I belong to the ONE  SINGLE minority that can’t be saved, because I have willfully cast away my soul. Strictly speaking, I am even forbidden from entering a Catholic church.

Nevermind mass murderers, satanists, rapists and pedophiles. They can all be saved if they fall to their knees and ask genuinely for salvation. But I can’t, because I willfully undid God’s creation. Ergo, I am…by Pope John Paul II’s (the man some people seriously wanted to receive Nobel’s Peace Prize…) edict, the pinnacle of evil in the flesh.

I did not ask to be converted. I wrote what I did on my blog to vent some steam. NOT to invite people to try to get me to subscribe to their faith. Most of you, thank the Gods, have shown me an amazing amount of support and kindness since the original post. I was touched and warmed by posts on my forum made by Nicolai, Kellan, Frazikar, Karou and Yamara…and I have received other shows of support. Valaina offered to get on a flight from England if I could wait two weeks with my bl??t, so that she could be there for it! Instead, we agreed to do it just before the fall equinox where she’s in Denmark anyway. But she was willing to fly over here, just to support me in doing this rite.

That’s how friends react! That’s how good people react. By seeing I was upset and offering genuine support, rather than pity. And by showing respect for what I consider sacred.

NOT as X did…by jumping on a wrongly perceived chink in my armour, trying to convert me!

I will leave this with one of the last statements of X’s second email:

“I have for many years wondered if the Catholic faith was started incorrectly.  Did God want us to reaffirm our Jewish faith?  Only time will tell.  Heh, I still can’t help think of a quote of Albert Einstein about, I think Buddhism, being a ‘perfect’ faith.  Perhaps their all right?  I don’t have the answer.  But your are correct in not insulting or saying the faiths of others is wrong.  To do sow would only belittle yourself.”

I strongly urge you, X, to look at that one more time…and then next time you feel the urge to tell me that I am ‘misguided’ or ‘misdirected’ and that my faith is wrong, then you REMEMBER that line, yourself!

I’m sure you’re smart enough to then stay quiet.

Thank you

I brought the books back with me today, and I explained to Pia why I couldn’t read them…and how it was affecting me to do so. She was quite understanding, especially once I’d explained the reasoning behind it, and she said she could see my point. She wasn’t upset at all, not that I had really expected her to be. But still, it’s never nice to have to say no thank you to the kindness of others, for any reason.

So there it is. Now I just need to find a time to do a small bl??t to acknowledge the hands of the gods in this.

Thank you all for your support since last night. It’s greatly appreciated.

…but I don’t expect people to bother reading it.

In fact, unless you are interested in some SERIOUSLY unorthodox religious contemplation, DO NOT read on. If you do, don’t say I didn’t warn you. I am writing this because I have to get it off my chest…I have to, because it’s nearing midnight and I can’t sleep otherwise. And I have work tomorrow. I need to do this, and so I will.

Again, I don’t want to preach. I really do not want to. It flies in the face of everything I believe in. I must not…cannot…tell others what they should believe in or how to believe. It is wrong, and I will not do it.

But today and tonight, I have understood something for the first time in my life, and I am sitting here, with tears running freely down my face and my heart pounding so hard it feels like it’s going to vacate the premises through my eardrums. My throat is constricted, my sight is blurry and I am not taking the time to check if I type this properly or not. If I make a hundred or more spelling mistakes in this post, then so be it. I have to get this off my chest before it tears me apart…

It all started earlier this week, at work. One of the secretaries there, a young woman named Pia, was quite astounded when she learned I’m a practicing heathen. She’s asked a few interested questions since, wanting to know a bit more about what it all means. I’ve tried as best I could to answer her objectively. I think I’ve done a reasonably good job at keeping it light-hearted.

Tuesday…Tyr’s day…she asked me, if I wanted to borrow three books she had read. They are called Freja’s Saga, Idun’s Saga and Saga from Valhal, respectively, and they are fictionalized accounts of a bronze age culture in Scandinavia. As I had heard of these books and I had heard they were well written, I gratefully accepted Pia’s offer to borrow these books so I could read them for myself. I got them today, and I started reading the first one, going home on the train. I was not disappointed. The author is quite capable, and she writes in a style which is easily read and direct in its language. I found it enjoyable…but also a little disconcerting. I was reading a book about a culture that would later become venerated as deities.

My deities.

The main character in the first book is the young priestess Freja, who belongs to the Vanir tribe. She is sent to negotiate a deal with the chieftain of the Aesir tribe, Odin, and his two sons Tor and Balder. Everything goes wrong. War breaks out. Horrible deeds take place. People are killed.

People…

Not Gods…

People…

And though it doesn’t show on a medium as sterile as a computer screen, I am crying my eyes out right now. These stories are well written, but I cannot read them. I can’t. I’m hurting inside from having read myself just over half way through the first book. Not because of the story, because it is an INTELLIGENTLY written book. The author’s claim is that since the Scandinavian storytelling tradition was oral until the high middle ages, the old sagas and the oldest tales are long since lost. But that fragments survive, in placenames no one can explain such as ‘the woman’s island’, ‘Thorsh?¤lla’ and the likes. We don’t know why these names are…

But they are…

The writer is a perfectly capable, modern human being and she is writing these stories to do just that…to tell a story. But in doing so, she’s punching someone like me in the face.

Pia didn’t know this when she let me borrow these books. She did so with the most honest and kind intentions…but I can’t read them. Everything constricts in me from trying.

To me, the Gods are real. I can turn around in the bus and the old woman sitting behind me could be Loke in disguise. The man across the library who looked at me as if he could see right through me, when I went to get a book I needed for work last thursday could have been Odin. I will never know, but that is part of the world as I perceive it. I can stand atop the hill where my most recent bl??t took place, and spread out my arms…and on a clear summer day I can see twenty or more miles in all directions. In a country as flat as Denmark that is a rare thing…and while I stand there, I can feel the power of the land beneath my feet, and I can sense the spirits all around me. I can feel them, intangible, often drowsy as they are after generations of slumber while being almost forgotten…but they are there. The wind slamming into my face at that hilltop, after we had shared the mead with the local powers…the bubbly elation I suddenly felt, for no apparent reason, as I walked down from that hill after the bl??t was completed…it is there and it is real.

People sometimes laugh when I tell them I am a practitioner of the old ways. Sometimes they laugh because they don’t know any better. Then they come back later and ask…and sometimes, they laugh overbearingly, because they think they have all the answers to the world locked away on their laptop at home. Let them. I believe. I believe fully, and firmly and strongly and I will not be shamed, for standing by what is right and good for me. I will not bow my head and pretend to be something I am not.

If life has taught me one lesson…it is always to stand by what I really am!

When I pray…and as the Gods are my witnesses, I do pray…I can feel their presence. I can see how often what I ask for help with finds some strange…often convoluted way of solving itself. Time and time and time again I have experienced this.

Or I can stand there, alone…as I did four years ago…for a winter solstice bl??t, the HOLIEST TIME of the ENTIRE year for me…down by the water, here by the fjord where I live. I was standing there, at almost nine o’clock in the evening, barefoot in snow, in late december, bringing a very modest and very humble offering of bread, meat and ale before my Gods, and suddenly, the sky above me cascaded with dozens…dozens of shooting stars.

And yet I live in a country where religious faith is often seen as strange, or at the very least as something only people of moderately inferior intellect entertains. In fact, only a week ago, a university professor went national with a spanking new, scientific research paper spanning some four hundred and fifty pages if I recall correctly, which stated without fail that atheists are by nature far more intelligent than people with any kind of religious belief, and that countries where widespread faith still holds on are generally populated by people of grossly inferior intellects. Needless to say, he sparked some debate with that. Considering it was the same twerp who two years ago made a similar ‘scientific’ paper, stating that men were, from nature, born thirty percent more intelligent than even the smartest women, I don’t place much store on his nonsense.

But still…faith is not something one ordinarily speaks about too loudly around here.

Anyway, back to the books this all started out with.

As I’ve said several times, they are well written. And Pia, the secretary from the museum, offered to let me borrow these three books because she wanted to do something nice for me. However, tomorrow, I’m going to have to let her have them back, and I will have to explain to her why.

I don’t know how to explain this. Except…to say it as it is. That it is painful for me to read stories where the foundation of my understanding of the world I live in is trivialized. To her it’s a good story…to me, it’s painful to read.

The equivalent, for easy comparison, would be for a Muslim to read ‘The Satanic Verses’. For Salman Rushdie it was a good story. For a Muslim, it’s blasphemous.

Another comparison would be if I were to write a book about the middle eastern goat herd Jahve who advised the local kings, and whose advice was heeded and later allowed the King’s people to escape bondage in a land where they built tombs to dead kings so large they rivaled mountains. Later Jahve’s son, Ise, became a carpenter but turned out to be such a jolly nice bloke that people started listening to him, which in turn made him feel he could help make the world a better and nicer place for all of us. This idealistic approach to life then led him onto a political career which eventually made him so unpopular with the powers-that-be that they decided to make a public example of him by executing him for treason in as bloody and gruesome a way as possible, so as to ensure no one ever behaved nicely towards one another again. And unfortunately, some of Ise’s friends decided to make a fast buck by forming a political party that used his name and face for symbolism, but which in truth only helped promote a different form of fear and prejudice.

It might be a bloody good book…but I’m FAIRLY sure a lot of Christians would sit there with a knot the size of a basketball in their stomachs when halfway through it. No matter how many elements I would include from the Bible, in a rewritten form, to make it as ‘recognizable’ and ‘authentic’ as possible, it would still feel like a solid punch in the gut for many Christians, because I would be turning their God into a simple human.

When I say that my gods are not infallible…when I make light or jest about it…or simply state it…I mean it. The Gods are not infallible, because we are not. And I do not mean to say that we created the Gods and Goddesses…certainly we didn’t! But if they were infallible, they would not have created creatures as fallible and divisive as us. Surely, the gods are able to make mistakes…and to learn…and to better themselves. They can feel emotions. Anger, hate, sorrow and pain…but also love, gentleness, compassion and generosity.

But to me, these books were painful reading. The author obviously had no intention of inflicting emotional turmoil on her readers. She did not mean to write something that hurt or upset people, and the epilogue to each of the three books shows this to be the truth without a shadow of a doubt, because she fully explains how the author simply felt it was the kind of story that needed to be written because Scandinavia lacks the heroic epos that for instance the Greeks or Italians have in their prehistory, because their story-telling tradition was written, rather than oral.

However, noble as her intentions may have been, I just can’t read these books. I can’t see Freja as a mortal woman. I can see her as one of the powers. A deity, a goddess…with failings and frailties, like all the gods and goddesses have…but not as a mortal. Not as someone who grows old and dies, no matter how many apples she eats. And the same goes for the others.

Somehow, I feel like someone decided to test me…

And as my gods don’t generally go for testing the faith of heathens, I think I had BETTER remember to bring a sacrifice to Loke next time I bl??t. In fact, I think I may have to bl??t before equinox…

I have to get this taken care of. And I think it has to be a very serious sacrifice next time…

And I’ll need to find some help for it…

As some of you…
okay, let me rewind and try that again…

…uoy fo emos sA

*ahem* *clears throat*

As you probably all realized by now, I’m getting a book published. It’s a small publication, but it still means I’ve reached one of my goals in life. Hopefully it won’t be the only book I get published but if it should be, I can at least still have the small, private satisfaction that I at least did it once. The book in question, as I’m sure no one has missed, is Amat Victoria Curam, and it will be published by Mike Regan who runs the Raccoon’s Bookshelf. Once all the proofing and final editing is done, and once I have the interior artwork, and it has been printed, I will make sure to leave a permanent link somewhere on this front page, so that people can see where to go to buy it.

That said, I am coming to the end of a long road. A long road that started one year after my surgery, where I was rehospitalized for a few weeks for matters I shall spare you all the details of here. While I was hospital that summer, I was bored so witless it defies reason. I was close to crawling out of my own skin as I spent the second summer in a row, camped in a hospital bed for two weeks plus. The second time, I even had to endure  constant hot-and-cold flashes as the surgeons had removed a patch of eight inches by five inches of skin from my left thigh…

Don’t look like that. It’s what they do when they transplant skin around the body.

Trust me, it hurts worse than anyone can explain in plain words, but I’ll try anyway. It feels like someone is constantly cutting your leg…and like a knife is being inserted every five or six seconds, between each joint in your spine. Then it feels like you’re being doused in cold water, only to be pulled out and instantly immersed in boiling ditto…

Not particularly pleasant, as I’m sure you can tell.

But while I was there, couped up in bed, looking out at a beautiful Danish summer, I picked up a pad of paper and a pencil, and I doodled a bit. I drew a lot back then. I won’t say I was particularly good at it, and my marriage had pretty much wrecked my desire to draw since my ex kept generously reminding me of how bad I was at it…

Truth be told, she was brilliant herself, so by comparison, I did suck something fierce, but it still took away the fun in a hobby I had enjoyed since I was a kid. I remember pretty distinctly, I was trying to draw something I had always had problems with: a corinthian helmet. I don’t know why but that shape has always eluded me. I tried again and again and again…

Eventually, several sheets of hopeless doodles later, I stopped and looked at this pad of paper for a long time in between two flashes of pain.

Let it never be said that pain can’t clear the mind. It certainly did for me.

I grabbed the pen again, removed the last doodle-page and, after reminding myself that there were other uses for paper except drawing, I wrote down something that would change my life for the better. I can’t remember exactly what I wrote, word for word, and it was in Danish anyway, but I do remember it roughly. It went something like this:

Setting: Columbus, Ohio.

Main characters: [insert lots of scratched over names here] Gabrielle Ryder (equine, bronco, attitude) [Insert more scratched over names here] Jean LeBrun (second generation french, Vixen, gray, “me”)

Supporting characters: ZZ Studios crew. Parents (Rank jerks).

Story: [Insert blank line here]

I looked at that for a while and put it aside, probably because of some horrible fluid hospital meal being brought in for me to eat/drink (I think hospital food has the same reputation everywhere in the world, really).

I didn’t really think more about this for a day or so. Then, the following day, I picked it up again and looked at it. As opposed to my earlier attempts at writing, this didn’t look stupid 24 hours after I got the idea. I had only just started frequenting James Bruner’s forum, and I was hopelessly nervous about everyone and everything. I did post a few comments now and again, but I was scared half to death of opening up towards the others on that board.

When I got home from the hospital, I looked at the paper again and I tossed it on my living room table, telling myself I must be nuts…

“Who would read this?”

“Come on, you really think you can write? Reality check!”

“You’re hopeless, useless, stupid…”

In other words, all the voices that Jean struggled with through Transitions I came up to haunt me. Not for the first time, but luckily, it was one of the last. Not THE last but…one of them at least.

A few days later, I was sitting by my computer again. I was in a serious amount of pain as I had just removed the bandage from my leg, and I was looking at something that, at the time, didn’t look like it would EVER look like human skin again. I tried to think of something else, knowing full well I’d just get depressed if I kept concentrating on that, and instead, I logged onto the internet. I found a thread on James Bruner’s now defunct forum that I wanted to comment on, so I did…and went to bed. The next morning when I got up, there was an Email in my in-box from someone calling himself ‘the Silver Coyote’. I feared it might be a spam-mail, but didn’t do anything with it before making myself some breakfast. Working my way through my first three cups of tea that morning I finally remembered I had seen this ‘silver coyote’ at James Bruner’s forum and I decided to read the Email in question.

The rest is history.

Now I am at the threshold of completing the Transitions trilogy, and frankly, it’s a somewhat bittersweet feeling. It’s been a part of my life for years now, and what’s more, it’s been an important part of my development as a human being since my surgery. It started as catharsis…but it’s become so much more.

I’m very happy that is the case. I’m very happy that I’ve grown as a person. I owe my proofers, both past and present, a big debt of gratitude for that, too.

The thing is, where do I go from here? What do I do now?

Having spent some time on the train lately, talking to Bastion (the webmaster, in case any of you forgot), he suggested I actuall write Witchhammer…the story that was filmed as part of Transitions II. I think I will, to be honest. I already started it once, but I’m going to go back and use the prologue only, in a slightly changed version, and then take the story in a different direction. It’ll be good fun to write, and I hope you’ll all be interested.

Once Witchhammer is done, however, I am considering writing something non-furry to post on this site…

It’s all in the future, of course. Things may change many times between now and then.

Lots of things are happening these days, though…I’ll be writing again soon I think. Until then, stay happy everyone