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Utgard Online Magazine of the Northern Tradition is ©1998-2009 Skergard

Issue #1 March 1998

Lyfsteinar #1: What the Hel Does that mean?

by Widdershins

Good question. Come and sit beneath my branch of the World-Tree
and I'll explain. A "leifsteinar" is a stone, like the one I'm holding.
The name means "herb-magical stone"(in Icelandic even!), thought to
have mystical healing powers. Sometimes they were carved with runes
or other signs. These date from a time in Iceland when the practice
of earth-loving religion was under a not-so-subtle assault by the
Catholics.
Lyfsteinar is also the name of this column, which will be a regular
feature of Utgard Online Magazine (assuming my wildly Vanic
views don't get it pulled). This column is aimed towards the many and
varied followers of the Northern Ways who do not consider themselves
"Asatru". All hate mail will be relished and shared with the readers
provided it's insults are inventive enough. Questions may be sent to
widdershins@skergard.org and I will answer them as best I can, if
they are good ones I'll address them in the column.
Most of this issue's column and likely most of the rest of the
columns the editorial staff lets me write (HAHA) will be on issue dear
to my heart, the practice of the Northern Art, Vanic Craft.
You may be asking yourself "Is this the same as Norse Wicca?". The
honest answer (and the only one I'll give) is maybe yes and maybe no.
It doesn't mean taking a few prewritten rituals taught by the local,
ever-so helpful Gardnerian adept, and plugging in a few Norse god-names
for Divine Potluck every Thorsday, you (and hopefully I) can do better
than that! Neither does it mean taking anything that notable neopagans
like Gardner, Buckland and Finch wrote and promptly tossing it to
Niflhel because it is "tainted by dastardly unscholarly Wiccan thinking".
Simply put Vanic Craft is an attempt to place the real worship
of the sexual earthy ecstatic Deities and the associated magical arts
that go along with it into a coherent form. So.....who are the Goddesses
and Gods of the Vanatru neopagan?
The Vanir are the OTHER tribe of Gods worshipped in the ancient
Northlands, the Deities of Old Europe, the Divine Powers that oversaw
such areas as sex, herbs, fertility, good harvests, and the common
people. Shreds of the lore that remained after the witchfires and
conversions by the sword died down (insofar as they did or ever have)
was written down, and naturally it concentrated on the Aesir side of the
Old Religions. Truth was (and still is) the Vanir were just too dangerous
to allow to survive. Wise women in villages dispensing age-old cures
and transvestite priests of fertility gods, orgies, trancing and the
Cults of the Mother Earth,and her daughters and sons, simply had no place
in "One Europe Under the (only) God".
There were countless local deities, usually in pairs, that dotted the
face of Old Europe, but the five most important for the nonce are the
principle Vanic Deities. Not surprisingly..the majority are female.
A word about the diagram below. The Vanic pentacle depicted below
should not be construed as in anyway Satanic or LHP. Simply put, SaTaN
means "Adversary" in Hebrew, and the Goddess-energies of Vanism are
the inimicable Adversary of the Male Judeo-Christian Creator-God. Moreover
there is a good deal of meaningful symbolism bound up in the Vanic pentacle
below (which is a reversed variant of the classical wiccan pentacle).

You are probably wondering...what the Hel IS that thing? Why is it
upside down from the ones I've seen? Well, in the North the Realm of the
Ancestors (the true source of primal spirit) is in Hel, where SHE is..i.e.
down. The Matriarch of the Vans gives birth to twins, a son and a daughter,
Nerthus and Njord, who are also lovers (like many classic fertility
deities) and they in turn engender another generation of twin
brother/sister lovers, Freyja (The Lady) and Frey-Ing (the Lord).
These are the principal Divinities (though by NO means All of) the
Vanic Family. Next column........what to do with the thing....and some
other thoughts.


Dancing Widdershins on Frigg's Day, 13 th of the month..while Mani reigns
full in the sky.
Skertru!

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