~ THE TURNING OF THE WHEEL ~
Winternights/Samhain 2011
Hex Issue 9 Autumn/Winter 2011 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!
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Call for Personal Narrative Submissions: Marriage!
The personal narrative theme for Issue 10 of Hex Magazine (Spring/Summer 2012) is Marriage! Take it literally, take it figuratively, but either way share your story of joy! Submissions due Winter Solstice 2011.
Submission guidelines are available at
http://hexmagazine.com/submit/guidelines/
And don’t forget: the much anticipated Hex Folk Market (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, and signed by the artisan (Jason Hovatter) and editors of Hex. One copy is very, very special (see photograph below).
Each copy is $100 + shipping, except the special edition which is $150 + shipping. If you want to order send me an email: arrowyn@hexmagazine.com. It’s first come…first serve!
Note: Issue #5 is sold out – this is a small reprint run.
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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•Gebo•
Old English Rune Poem
Gyfu (Gift) for men is adornment and complement,
support and dignity; and for all the dispossessed
forgiveness and sustenance, who would otherwise
have nothing.
~ Rune poem translations by Sweyn Plowright, http://www.mackaos.com.au/Rune-Net/Primer/
Hand it over, give it away, pass it on, let go for goodness sake. We clutch and grasp at the brittle shape of our certainty, our belief, our conviction. We seize upon every island, every bulwark of “thus it is,” instinctively, reactively. The more enigmas that life presents, the more tempting it is to retreat into the attitude of forceful control.
Gebo counsels us to resist this all too human tendency, this desperation that always leads into the arms of futility: for ultimately death relieves us of everything, whether we will it or no. Surely it is better to face our mortality with honesty and give away the rigid urgency of our articles of faith? What would it mean to radically embrace the teaching of Gift?
First we must ask: who is the recipient of our gift, of all the protective pretenses that we gather about ourselves? It is not a specific person. We are not “letting them have it;” likewise, to create a scapegoat for our troubles paradoxically mires us deeper into our netting of shadow-control. We are handing over to something both more and less concrete than any human being, any human idea, anything human at all.
No…what we hand over we hand to Wyrd itself, the fabric of this world in which we live, the endlessly adjusting and evolving webwork of cause and effect which imprisons and frees each of us all at once. So long as we cling to our rigidity, our need for control (be it control over belief, action, or meaning), we live in denial of our place in the web, in the roots and branches of the world tree, Laerad.
And so long as we court this denial…we are no longer reverent to that which is divine. And what is divine? Everything is a part of the web. Everything is at home amid the eves of the Tree. Everything is nourished by the water of the Norns. How can we conclude that anything is not divine in this infinitely outstretched living cosmos?
Our fear drives us to divide the world into discrete elements, to force fluid currents into tiny boxes. We try to redeem our anger by denying the sacredness of its object (even when that anger is self-directed!). Some part of us never forgets the impossibly recursive divinity of the world that engulfs and nourishes us…yet all too easy it is to paper over that memory with cavalier faith in the narrow horizons of our finite faculties.
Is this the way? No, says Gebo. The way is to let go and give. For only then may we receive. And in receiving the sacred current of the waters of wyrd we are given more than we could have ever forged for ourself from our articles of brittle “certainty.” There is great honor in the gift, in the act of gift giving, but it requires wisdom for us to achieve that lofty goal (and even when we know what it can be…still we can drift away from it again, or allow it only partial presence in the tapestry of our lives).
Is this a radical set of propositions? Of course. Must it be taken with a sense of perspective? Of course. But let us not water down the challenge of Gebo because of skepticism, or fear, or distrust. The gift is made first, in good faith; only then can anything be received. For we are as inherently integrated within the cosmos as everything else; my action towards any other is an action towards myself.
Or so it seems to one who makes a habit…of hanging from trees.
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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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: Issue Six Almost Gone! :
Issues One, Two, Three, Four, & Five are sold out!
We are running low on copies of Issue Six, get in while you can.
Order at:
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Until Yule, 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 in applying or have any suggestions,
contact: info@hexmagazine.com
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Due date for Autumn 2012 submissions is Spring Equinox 2012
Support your community while exposing like-minded
folk to your goods and services…
Advertisements must be relevant to HEX readers, and inclined toward a Heathen aesthetic. Prices listed are for completed AD files. If you need additional graphic design, we can help. Just contact us about our design fee.
AD space is now available in the newsletter for $10 a run.
Contact info@hexmagazine.com if you are interested.
>I< HEX >I<
> Please forward to all interested and relevant parties <
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