~ THE TURNING OF THE WHEEL~
Autumn Equinox 2012
In this Edition:
Hex Announcements
Runic Reflections: Thurisaz
New Heathen Music from Blood of the Black Owl
The Sayings of the High One: Portland, OR Neofolk Show 9/27/12
~ Hex Issue 11 is Here! ~
Support Hex! We are a community-supported
not-for-profit publication. You can support us by heading to http://hexmagazine.com/subscribe/ and ordering magazines, CDs, and prints, and by spreading the word to all like-minded folk!
Hex will no longer be publishing as a biannual publication,
but issues 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 are still available and make for awesome reading!
We also have copies of the acclaimed Hum of Ullr’s Bow CD.
Stay tuned for the Heathen Erotica edition, as well as a number of very special projects!
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Hex Folk Market (http://www.hexfolkmarket.com) is here! Join our online market
community in celebration of folk ways and sustainable living. Browse through
our selection of international merchants or set up your own shop for
free!
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Leather Bound Limited Edition of Issues #5–8 + CD!
An edition of 13 (only 2 left!), and signed
by the artisan (Jason Hovatter) and editors of Hex.
Each copy is $100 + shipping. Available at http://hexmagazine.com/subscribe/
It’s first come…first serve!
Note: Issues Five and Six are no longer available except as part of this compilation.
All proceeds go to Hex Press to support its continued effort to provide folks
with an excellent volunteer-based, community-supported, not-for-profit
publication.
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Feeling Hexy?
Hex is putting out an initial call for Heathen Erotica. For a side project, not a regular issue. It
will be published when we get enough material.
Accepting submissions for stories, poetry, art, photography, recipes, whatever. You can submit under
your own name or a nom de plume. The usual high standards of quality apply! IE: if it’s smut, it better be really good smut!
Send submissions to submissions@hexmagazine.com
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• Thurisaz •
Old English Rune Poem
Thorn (Thorn) is extremely sharp, for any warrior
to grab it, evil; excessively fierce
to any man who among them rests.
Old Icelandic Rune Poem
Thurs (Giant) is woman’s illness,
and a cliff-dweller
and a Vardhrun’s husband.
Old Norse Rune Poem
Thurs (Giants) cause women’s sickness;
few are made cheerful by adversity.
~ Rune poem translations by Sweyn Plowright
http://www.mackaos.com.au/Rune-Net/Primer/
The process of personal, psychological, or spiritual growth is not linear. Nor is it particularly logical, logic being largely alien to the domain of the deeper psyche. The expectation that one’s progress be secure in the arc of predictability is a sure means to achieving frustration and discouragement. Fits and starts are the order of the day.
If our flaws and weaknesses are the thorns in which we lie then they can be seen in two aspects. First of all, of course, as scourges, wounding forces which pierce us, weaken us. We become entangled in their clinging vines. Thus the familiar refrain of the person in suffering: “why is this happening to me again?”
Second, however, those same thorns are forces of wakening. The pain becomes so severe that it changes something inside. We become willing to break out of the comforting straightjackets of habit and grim expectation. The thorn breaks the skin, and eventually we take this as a pointing finger, calling on us to examine ourselves.
Thus the thorn, the pain and suffering that harries us through life, becomes an agent of its own healing. The stinging nettle stands out as a symbol of this process: its fine needles may hurt the skin, but they also stimulate the immune system and ultimately make their victim stronger.
Thorn therefore gives us the gift of willingness, contained – concealed – within the armor of hurt. In breaking us down, it can also refine and condense our spirit.
The old Heathens knew that things move in cycles. And so, finally, we hit bottom, in whatever form it takes. Sometimes “bottom” really isn’t that bad, and sometimes it is disastrous, but whatever moment it comes, it is the point of rebound, where we no longer acquiesce to business as usual and become willing to stand out into the uncertainty of change.
And so we begin to claw our way clear of the thorn bramble and its cruel ministrations. We begin to admit to ourselves the places where we too share responsibility for our suffering, even if only through our inaction, innocence, or confusion. We come to recognize that we must change ourselves, because it is impossible to rid the world of all thorns, and crazy-making to arrange our lives to avoid every single briar patch.
This is the gift of Thorn! We come to regard ourselves, to work on ourselves, to deepen ourselves. It inspires us to become human.
Yet as I mentioned, often the process of rising up from the thorn bed, of becoming resistant to the barb and the dart, is neither linear nor sure. We make advances, our hope and confidence swelling. Then a set-back strikes, and brings with it all the old stories of inevitable pain. Our precarious faith topples back into the abyss.
Here, then, is the fine art that the Thorn teaches: learning to let go of how we think things should be. Because if I do not expect my process of change or healing to be a perfect, smooth, ego-gratifyingly linear experience, I will hardly be disappointed when it reveals itself to be rocky, circuitous, and turbulent. I will realize that set-backs are a normal part of my spiritual progress. They are a sign that I am on my way.
Everyone faces adversity at some time in their life; soon or later we all lay ourselves down on a thicket of sharp points. Looked at in this way, the rune Thurisaz is simply a reminder to us, a helpful sign and warning of the dangers of living. It is neither good nor bad; like pain, it merely is, and we are the ones who must decide how it might affect us.
If the Norse and Icelandic poems’ references to women’s sickness or illness are indeed an allusion to morning sickness, then that seems a wholly appropriate image for the rune. It tells us that Thurisaz makes mothers of us all; our suffering impels us to give birth to new growth and new life.
I may not recommend that anyone rush to grasp the Thorn’s cruel point…but we must not forget that even when things seem dark, the very fact of our struggle should be cause for renewed optimism and faith for a different day ahead.
And although his connection to the rune seems historically tenuous, from a poetic perspective this might be the moment when Thor, that god of cataclysmic healing, enters Thurisaz’s story.
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New Heathen Music from Blood of the Black Owl:
Light the Fires!
“It is a humbling and shamanic experience, a stark one far removed from anything but nature itself…a sound that is historic and transcendental.”
~Ave Noctum
CD format. Packaged in Glass Throat Recordings’ exclusive 6″ x 6″ six panel Deluxe Gatefold, featuring a soft touch Aqueous flood with a spot varnish effect!
Blood of the Black Owl’s 4th full length offering Light the Fires! rises and shines upon lifting the spirit’s veil, through the spiritual teachings of the six directional path and the sacred breath within us all.
A soundscape to help surface, understand and heal an ever increasingly egoic nature of programmed disconnection, a sickness we as a species carry within an unbalanced circle of spirit, rooted deeply into a fragile cyclical self. It seems, we are no longer a human being and have become the human doing! The crafting of Light the Fires! offers a medicinal musical, aiding in the clearing of poisons found to feed this ego. A ritual of musical restoration seeking balance towards this great and vast four quartered circle of life.
As the feathers of this sonic sigil uplift to the breath of Father Sky and the blood drips stewardship to the Mother’s womb, the Blood of the Black Owl is offering to hold up a mirror to the self, facing the shadows of ego head on! It is to share the light, through the understanding of dark, allowing growth and reflection upon being once again.
An honoring voice awakening to the survivalists, to those connected ones aware and to the seekers of the flame whom fight the silent battles….
Light the Fires!
Available from Glass Throat Recordings:
http://glassthroatrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/light-the-fires
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The Sayings of the High One:
Portland, OR Neofolk Show 9/27/12
Join us for some beautiful, atavistic, and inspiring neofolk: Thursday 9/27/2012 6:30pm @ The Lovecraft, 421 SE Grand, Portland, OR
Expect an atmosphere of stone, oak, and bone, woven from string, wood, steel, and lungs.
Featuring the following performers (including two of Hex’s editors!):
Waldteufel ~ The trance-formative Deutsch-Cascadian masters of Earth and Sky.
Ironwood ~ Australian animists perform epic songs of death, love, mystery, and longing.
River ~ Lush and flowing acoustic music, resonant with the mead of inspiration.
More information via Facebook event page:
https://www.facebook.com/events/503069799722342/
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By the Hum of Ullr’s Bow: Winter
Songs Compilation CD is still available!
Bands on the compilation CD include:
• A Minority of One • Allerseelen • Andrew King
• At the Head of the Woods • Beastianity • Hamramr • Irij
• Ironwood • Ruhr Hunter • Sangre Cavallum • Sieben
• Steve von Till • Svarrogh • Waldteufel • Wardruna
You can read more about the artists here:
http://hexmagazine.com/harvest/winter-songs-cd/
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Until Winternights, may you and your
household be blessed and kept. Hail!
~ HEX Magazine
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We are currently looking for:
• submissions
• funding
If you are interested, contact: info@hexmagazine.com
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