Hex Magazine » History

Saplings in time: A Heathen Tale

Harvest — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 06:37:58 +0000

More than any others in my piece these lines unify and express the theme of genius loci – spirit of place – and they do so, significantly, both in terms of the central Victorian landscape and my Northern European spiritual heritage. For if Germanic Heathenism, the religion of the god Woden, originated in one land, Northern Europe, then naturally it will be a religion replete with Northern European associations. Indeed, natural and desirable spiritual evolution notwithstanding, the entire form and content of the religion are ideally derived from this source. How far can we, or should we, nativise our religion in Australia? There is something complex, problematic, and interesting when North meets South. What happens when opposites meet? When fire and ice clash and intermingle is there creation or destruction, or both? Is there a possibility of a marriage ...

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Review: Georgia Through its Folktales (Michael Berman)

Reviews — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 21:27:57 +0000

This book is unlike most compendiums of folktales for two reasons: firstly, the relative obscurity (in the English language at any rate) of the subject matter; and secondly, the unique and fascinating reflective threads with which the stories on offer are bound ...

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Review: Barbarians to Angels: The Dark Ages Reconsidered (Peter S. Wells)

Reviews — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 21:45:12 +0000

I’ve always pined for the Dark Ages of Northern Europe, and never been able to justify it – let’s face it, the “barbarian” tribes have been brought into thorough disrepute by the dour Roman commentators of the late Empire. What a pleasure, then, to discover a book that dismantles those jaded opinions with wit and ...

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Review: Runic Amulets & Magic Objects (Mindy MacLeod & Bernard Mees)

Reviews — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:16:02 +0000

This book is essential reading for anyone interested in runes or indeed European cultural history. Macleod and Mees decline to adopt the recent fashion in academic circles for dismissing the idea that the runes had any kind of magical significance, just as they refuse to pretend that different regions were hermetically sealed from one another. They steer a balanced path between emphasising the many mundane applications of the runes and their magical function, and indeed the book focuses on the latter, as may be inferred from the ...

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Review: Beowulf & Grendel: The Truth Behind England’s Oldest Legend (John Grigsby)

Reviews — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 08:05:33 +0000

The poem known to us today as Beowulf has been something of an enigma since it first began to receive serious scholarly attention almost two hundred years ago. That it survived into the modern era at all is nothing short of miraculous, but many of the allusions contained within the text would seem to suggest that it is the sole surviving component of a much larger ...

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