Rite of Passage

Photo by Tapio Kotkavuori

On 5th of December of 2005 CE I got an email from the U.K. It wasn't an everyday email, but a sponsorship into the Rune-Gild.

I had previously been a lot in contact with Fellow Ensio Kataja, who had given his thumbs up regarding my wish to affiliate with the Gild. I had previously Worked with the Finnish Rune Workshop of the Gild back in the mid- and late 90's CE. It was run by N.N., then Steward of the Baltic of the Gild. Back then I was not officially affiliated with the Gild, and due to my life circumstances, I didn't affiliate with the Gild even after completing the Nine Doors of Midgard-curriculum in 1999 CE.

This time, more than five years later, I felt that the time was right. I was going to officially affiliate with the Rune-Gild. In an inspired state of mind, I got an idea about going to do the entry rite into the Gild at old Uppsala, the famous ancient pagan center in Sweden. I had been there few times before and something intuitively told me, that it would be an ideal place to do my rite of passage into the Gild.

I had just appropriate few days off from my studies at the university of Turku, so the trip to Sweden was possible considering my schedule. It was completely another thing to book a trip with such a short notice, though. As I got the idea, I had about five hours till the time my ferry from Turku, Finland, was to leave to Stockholm, Sweden, at 9 pm on Tuesday evening.

I made a call and inquired about free cabins. The Viking Line ship Isabella was pretty fully booked, and in the category I was looking for there was only one free cabin left. I thought about two minutes of my impromptu idea to go to old Uppsala, and decided to go for it. I booked the cabin and started to pack my luggage. I took things needed in the entry rite, some of them at the time without remembering that I needed them in the rite. One of those items was the Poetic Edda.

There was magic in the air. I had grasped the moment in an unusual way to everyday life and I was on my way to the place where Óðinn had been honored since ancient times.

It was at the harbour where I realized that I needed the Poetic Edda in the rite. It was one of the things that made me feel in the spirit of dagaz that all kinds of corners of my consciousness were focused to this trip as a whole.

I found my cabin number 9206. The huge ship left the harbour and started to push over the Gulf of Bothnia, into the night over the dark sea between Finland and Sweden. The rite of passage had formally begun... (although, actually, it had begun already when I had grasped the moment of inspiration and decided to go to Uppsala to do the rite).

There I was, doing my solitary rite of passage. The deeper the ship got into the darkness of the night, the deeper I felt that everything I was experiencing was a mirror of my very being. I was out of my ordirary everyday environment, "I was not supposed to be there". Shaking the established patterns of one's universe with such acts at appropriate times carry a magic of its own.

With utter dedication and seriousness about what I was doing, I felt the meaning and holiness of my effort, my self-sacrifice for my Self. I felt the meaning of that effort between natural birth and death. I did remember my Self. I was facing the Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans. I experienced aletheia.

I thought about the entry-rite and did read through its Finnish translation that Fellow Kataja had done. I decided that I wanted to sign the rite form at Uppsala and I wanted it to be also in English for my sponsor. So, I translated the rite back into English in the night in my cabin. I wrote the rite to the last pages of my diary and took those pages off.

It was pretty late as I finally got asleep. I was just in so inspired state of mind that it seemed impossible to get some sleep. I reflected on things, I did read and write my diary, and I also did read some Poetic Edda.

The ship was at Stockholm early the next morning, at 7.30 am local time, one hour behind Finnish time. I had no exact idea on how to find my way to the central railwaystation to get to Uppsala, but that was solved soon, though. After some half an hour after arriving to Sweden, I already sat in a bus that was heading towards Uppsala.

It was another ride in the darkness. This time not upon the sea, but through forests and large open fields. They looked so timeless in the morning mist that I was able to think what the area had looked like several hundreds of years ago. I was reading the Poetic Edda, the section of Hávamál, and looking at the views. It all looked and felt like from the book I was reading. My rite of passage was like from the book, mythical occasion in itself. And so it was. I felt the eternal truth of myths; how suprarational consciousness expresses itself in a timeless manner through myths. I was living mythical experience true myself, on my rite of passage. The closer I got to Uppsala, the more I felt Óðinn to be resonant with my consciousness.

You can certainly tell that you have arrived at an old pagan city if the main statue greeting you at the main busstation is a combination of shamelessly happy and completely nude figures of a man and a woman. More than that, they are both somewhat purposefully exaggerated in their expressions, shapes and sizes.

It was a little adventure in itself again to find the right bus to old Uppsala, which is located some 10 kilometres away from the modern city of Uppsala. Not too many people shared my destination. I was checking my maps and was looking for the streetnames. When the street with Valhöl in its name appeared, I knew I was not too far away from my destination. And sure enough, I saw tops of the mounds behind the trees in that dark, misty and rainy morning. The trip that I had started some 12 hours before had reached this point - I had finally arrived at the old pagan centre of Uppsala.

What a wyrd moment.

I walked next to the first mound and picked an oak twig that I found. I decided to use that in the rite and later make runes from it. I walked around the church that is right next to the mounds. The same pieces of runestones were still there, just like the last time I visited the mounds about seven years ago.

I focused my mind to the rite, reflected on it and on the meaning of my trip to Uppsala. When I was ready, I walked to the Thor's mound, the biggest of the three mounds. I checked all the items needed in the rite. The moment to begin the rite was there.

Veit ek, at ek hekk vindga meiði ánætr allar níu, geiri undaðr ok gefinn Óðni, sjálfr sjálfum mér, á þeim meiði, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rótum renn. Við hleifi mik sældu né við hornigi, nysta ek niðr; nam ek upp rúnar, œpandi nam, fell ek aptr þaðan.

There are no words to fully describe what went through my consciousness as I did the rite. My whole being was energized. I experienced that runes opened in their mysteries to my consciousness, being patterns of my consciousness. I linked my Work with that of the Rune-Gild. I greeted Óðinn with my whole being and dedicated myself to my Work in the Gild.

It was a windy, cold, and somewhat rainy morning too. Some locals who did jogging or had went out to walk their dogs did see me standing with my drinking horn on top of the two mounds where I did the rite. I finished the rite on Óðinn's mound and signed the rite form there. So it was done, and so it had begun.

I did some walking in the surroundings and saw the mounds once more before visiting Odinsborg café next to the mounds, then taking a bus back to new Uppsala. I wrote few cards at the railwaystation before getting my train to Stockholm.

I spent the rest of the day mostly at old Stockholm. I walked a lot and thought about runes, the Gild, and my initiation in general. I visited shops and cáfes. I enjoyed Stockholm's atmosphere and practising some Swedish. When the evening finally arrived and I was able to crash into Viking Line Amorella's cabin number 6213, I knew I had a wonderful day. I had joined the Rune-Gild, and I had done so with a very appropriate rite of passage.

Reyn til Rûna.

Horizon: infinity

We have left the land and taken to our ship! We have burned our bridges - more, we have burned our land behind us! Now, little ship, take care! The ocean lies all around you; true, it is not always roaring, and sometimes it lies there as if it were silken and golden and a gentle favourable dream. But there will be times when you will know that it is infinite and that there is nothing more terrible than infinity... Alas, if homesickness for land should assail you, as if there were more freedom there - and there is no longer any 'land'!

- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

Book Talk

I met my books' publisher recently. I promised to submit her the first draft of The Left Hand Path, the English translation of the original Finnish Vasemman Käden Polku, soon. I did it today. The draft is not about the entire book, so there is still plenty of work with it. It has taken much longer to get the book translated than was originally planned. I have just been way too busy with my studies on pedagogics and with other projects to get the translation already completely done (I have been happy being busy though). As a general rule, things take their time and reach completion at the right time if one just keeps busy working for them.

In the meeting we also put another project a step forward, something that has been talked about every now and then. My second book, Saatanan Mustat Nahkasiivet, eli Sodoman 104 päivää, eli San Franciscon päiväkirja, a travel book with an initiatory twist, is most likely turning into an audiobook later this year. If the stars will be in so weird positions as they are often in H.P. Lovecraft’s stories, the audiobook might get published even before the translation of Vasemman Käden Polku. We’ll see.

It has been amusing to think about who I would like to get to read the audiobook. Jouko Turkka would be great. Jari Tervo, Vesa Vierikko, M.A. Numminen and Ruben Stiller would be splendid choises too. A good friend of mine, Ensio Kataja, Finnish senior of the Rune-Gild and the author of Riimujen Viisaus, suggested that Heikki Kinnunen would be the best pick. Tommy Tabermann would undoubtedly make a soulful interpretation of my nietzschean poem Säkenöivä Tähti that is part of the book too (page 124). Just a thought of that cracks me up.

But maybe I should ask if our president, Mrs. Tarja Halonen, would do me a favor here. She sort of owes it to me after receiving a free first edition copy of Vasemman Käden Polku from my publisher and after getting my vote for her presidency, both in 2000 CE and today, when she was elected for her second term (by the way, my American friends might be curious about why Conan O’Brien has been gung ho for our president’s second term. You can read about it from here).

Oh well, I guess I will transform the book into an audiobook myself. Unless you come up with some superb suggestions (you can drop them in the "comments" below).

When it comes to other books I am associated with, I am pleased to tell that Musta Kana, the Finnish translation of a classic grimoire La Poule Noire (with my foreword and covers), a charming little book of magical fiction, is again available from Voimasana, and that my recently released intra-Temple of Set book Aletheia I is still available for setians.

My current writing work includes (in addition to getting The Left Hand Path completely translated) another translation project (more of that later this year) and writing my forthcoming Aletheia: In Search of Self-Remembering. Before I am going to drop some of my own thoughts about aletheia here, you might find Martin Heidegger's interpretations about the same concept interesting. You can read about them from here.

These musings were served to you mainly by the staff of my third floor of consciousness on a day they have been doing their job pretty well.

Amor Fati

My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing other than it is, not in the future, not in the past, not in all eternity. Not merely to endure that which happens of necessity, still less to dissemble it - all idealism is untruthfulness in the face of necessity - but to love it...

- Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

Terra Hyperborea Reviews and Notes

Here are some reviews of my CD Terra Hyperborea:

A review on Aural Pressure’s site.

A review on Crucial Blast’s site (you need to scroll down a bit for the review).

A review on a Russian site, with some pictures from the video Underground Tunnels.

The CD contains the track 700 000 Years that was played nationwide by Jukka Mikkola on YLE’s Avaruusromua-program on 23rd of September last year.

For those of you who would like to learn more about Linnavuori (the place where the video for Underground Tunnels was filmed and that is also talked about in the leaflet of the CD) I suggest to take a look at the website of Liedon Vanhalinna. The flash-presentations location number 8, the summit of the hill, is especially worth studying. The website gives a good extra depth to the significance of Linnavuori as the place where the CD was magically sent to the world as the 3rd Y.M.I.R. of the Order of the Great Bear. The webpage is available only in Finnish, but non-Finnish speakers might still enjoy the great visuals of the flash presentation.

Terra Hyperborea contains 8 dark ethno ambient tracks, the before mentioned Underground Tunnels-video and an 8-page color leaflet (its text portion can be found from my last year’s blog at Voimasana's page). This hyperborean Working of sonic magic was published by Gemina Stella and it is distributed f.e. by the above mentioned Aural Pressure in the U.K., Crucial Blast in the U.S., as well as by Cold Spring Records in the U.K., and Some Place Else in Finland.

Considering the level’s of consciousness, this sonic Working is focused somewhere between the 4th and the 5th floor, with a firm link to the culture and its collective powers involved.

How to make Philosophy with Jogging Shoes

There are times when Nietzsche resurfaces with force in my life. I guess it is one of those times again.

The good old blasphemer was the first who got me very passionate about philosophy. I devoured Nietzsche's works as a teenager like a crazy road lizard and fueled my rebellious fire with the explosive power of his words. Now when I look at it, about 20 years later, I think I barely understood too much about what I did read.

Nevertheless, Nietzsche’s spirit has walked with me ever since. It’s a long way from the first time I did read Also Sprach Zarathustra or gave a long and appropriately passionate presentation of his philosophy in high school. But no matter that I know the subject somewhat better now, I still ultimately get inspired about Nietzsche’s thoughts for the same reasons that I did also in my teens.

It is the spirit. An uncompromising spirit of an individual will and its profound value and significance. The burning need to overcome oneself. The braveness of the heart. The dynamism. All of that as an essential key to one’s very being, one’s innermost nature. That spark of desire for sovereigty of self through practise of will has always been dear to me. It has also been a good key to the fourth floor of my house of consciousness.

Nietzsche said somewhere, that the best thoughts occur while walking (there must be a link here to his question how can anyone become a thinker if he does not spend at least a third of the day without passions, people and books?). I have noted that there is some truth in this. I could add that some of the best thoughts occur to me also while running. Using the categories of the five levels of consciousness that I wrote about earlier in this blog, I think I can say that I have been spending some good time at the fourth floor of my house of consciousness pretty often while walking and running. I think that if you resonate with Nietzsche’s philosophy of hammer, you might find some odd resonance with it and jogging for a number of reasons.

There is something similar in the spirit of Zarathustra’s residing on the mountains and jogging, especially if it means long distance running. Both are in a way beyond ordinary environment of daily things. In both you are often alone. Just you and your solitude, your effort, your spirit that gives you the power to carry on. Love of feeling the limits and powers of one’s being and of overcoming them.

I have sometimes thought, that after a long run and experience of ”runners high” the great physical feeling that follows is somehow similar to the radiant feeling of power of Nietzsche’s philosophy. There is expanding feeling of power and happiness in both of them.

Well, or maybe it's just me. I have been running this month already about 150 kilometers (ca 93 miles), alone in the darkness of cold nights at outskirts of Turku (remember that we have minus celcius degrees, ice, snow and werewolves here in Southern Finland at this time of the year). It has been lovely. And perfectly suited besides studying Nietzsche. After all, isn’t his philosophy of will to power very organic, a sort of non-metaphysical trancendence in its nature? (as R.J. Hollingdale noted in A Nietzsche Reader).

If there is an eternal recurrence of some kind (one of Nietzsche’s more metaphysical ideas), I guess I am experiencing such regarding Nietzsche’s influence on my thinking currently. With jogging shoes.

Nietzsche as Pope

How can anyone become a thinker if he does not spend at least a third of the day without passions, people and books?

- Friendrich Nietzsche, The Wanderer and his Shadow

The Five Floors of the House of Consciousness

One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence, but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness... No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.

- William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

If you wondered about the "five floors of the house of consciousness" mentioned under the name of the blog, you can find the answer to the question from my second book Saatanan Mustat Nahkasiivet, eli Sodoman 104 päivää, eli San Franciscon päiväkirja. If you prefer to read about the subject in English, I hint you to study Dr. Robert S. de Ropp's masterpiece The Master Game.

Briefly speaking, these five floors are:

1) Deep sleep without dreams

2) Sleep with dreams

3) Waking sleep (identification)

4) Self-transcendence (self-remembering)

5) Objective consciousness

De Ropp summarizes the nature of these floors by writing that nature guarantees that man shall experience the first, second and third levels of consciousness. These are necessary for life, for the maintenance of the physical body and the perpetuation of the species. She does not guarantee that he shall experience the fourth and fifth states.

This blog is about my notes from these five levels of consciousness. This means that I might cover quite wide range of subjects here, all the way from the "profane" to the "sacred" (I put these concepts to quotation marks because I see that they are very much interwoven, not entirely contrary to each other). Throughout these notes there is a thing that binds them all together: my effort to remember myself. As such, I hope the notes will be of some use for others with the same personal aim. I summarize this effort of self-remembering with the concept aletheia. It is, as a daemon, the love of my life and I will most likely return to her many times here.

For the New Year

I am still living, I am still thinking: I have to go on living because I have to go on thinking. [...] Today everyone is permitted to express his desire and dearest thoughts: so I, too, would like to say that I have desired of myself today and what thought was the first to cross my heart this year - what thought shall be the basis, guarantee and sweetness of all my future life! I want to learn more and more to see what is necessary in things as the beautiful in them - thus I shall become one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: may that be my love from now on! I want to wage no war against the ugly. I do not want to accuse, I do not want even to accuse the accusers. May looking away be my only form of negation! And, all in all: I want to be at all times hereafter only an affirmer!

- Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals