~ THE TURNING OF THE WHEEL ~

Feast of Bread 2012

In this Edition:

Hex Announcements
Runic Reflections: Fehu
New Heathen Music: Ein Skopudhr Galdra & Mistsorrow
Stella Natura: Music Festival 21-23 September, 2012
The Road to Thule: New Novel by Dave Lee

~ Hex Issue 11 is Coming! ~

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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~ Hex Issue 11 Will be the Last Hex ~

I am very sad to say that Issue #11 Fall/Winter 2012 will be the last consecutive bi-annual issue of Hex Magazine.

We will still keep the newsletter running for the foreseeable future. We also plan to publish periodic special projects, such as the planned Heathen Erotica issue, that will be published on an irregular as-we-get-content schedule. Therefore, we are still very happy to receive submissions.

The Hex website and store are still open for business and we have lots of goods for your pleasurable consumption. We still need your support. Go to: http://www.hexmagazine.com/subscribe

The reason for this choice is simply that I want to be able to spend more time on my own personal projects…my art in particular. As does Henry. Bi-annual publication is an extremely energy- and resource-consumptive endeavor.

We’d like to take a moment to express our gratitude for all the energy and goodwill that our submitters and subscribers have poured into Hex over the last 6 years…we had a great run!

Regards,

Arrowyn Craban Lauer
Administrator // Editor // Art Director
Hex Magazine

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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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• Fehu •

Old English Rune Poem
Feoh (Money) is a comfort to humans all;
But each one should deal it out abundantly,
If he wants before the Lord to chance judgement.

Old Icelandic Rune Poem
Fe (Money) is kinsman’s quarrel
And flood-tide’s token
And necromancy’s road.

Old Norse Rune Poem
Fe (Money) causes kinsmen’s quarrel;
The wolf is reared in the forest.

~ Rune poem translations by Sweyn Plowright
http://www.mackaos.com.au/Rune-Net/Primer/

Money tends to be bound up with intense feeling – particularly anxiety. It is essentially a symbol after all, onto which we are free to project a vast array of significances. Its spectral touch can thread throughout lives, throughout history itself. It is the justification for an infinity of injustices, absurdities, and cowardice.

Is money really so bad as all that? The Old English Rune Poem, after all, suggests that it is a comfort for everyone. A comfort yes; but in their own ways, hard drugs and manipulative scheming are also comforts, tools by which truths are avoided and looming fears deferred.

“Each one should deal it out abundantly:” if this advice or observation was felt necessary by the runic poet we can conclude that this ethos, though at one level rather trite, was not always considered or obeyed even among the poet’s contemporaries.

So we might follow in the path suggested by the Old English Rune Poem and propose that Fehu’s worth lies in the way that we choose to relate to wealth in our lives. So far as money – and by that I really mean any kind of relation of exchange – is used as a substitute for other, inner, processes, it becomes a danger and the root of gratuitous conflict.

Consider this: the ultra rich are often just as precious (pardon the pun) about money as the ultra poor, grasping at it fearfully, meting it out grudgingly. If we wish to use material plenty as a substitute for emotional well-being, honest and loving relationships, or ethical conduct, then we can never have enough money. Money will never be able to completely drown out the innate call back to our most fundamental truths.

This is a lesson that the upwardly mobile sometimes discover, although more often they seem to lose it amid an orgy of shallow consumerism and frantic commercial grasping. The emotional toll that poverty often extracts cannot be exclusively paid down with material things when better times come.

And sometimes it is the poorest who seem to be the most content, perhaps because in poverty the diversions and illusions of money are less available, forcing an increase in self-awareness. This is not to say that it is in anyway a joy to be poor; as it says in the Old Norse poem “Havamal”:

his heart doth bleed who has to beg
the meat for his every meal

Regardless of how much or how little each of us has, money is a distraction. It lets us forget that the whole of our experience is grounded in projection. By that I mean that everything I experience is finite, limited in perspective, fallible. I can only ever perceive a narrow slice of reality.

Fortunately our projections are often accurate enough that we can survive and even thrive. But they’re still projections, and if reality were to shift without our noticing we might find ourselves in all kinds of trouble. Unfortunately, when our projections do not align with reality we are very good at improvising workarounds – excuses, justifications, nodes of rigid belief, inflexibilities. We tend to be less talented at accepting the real circumstances, embracing the humility and effort they require.

As money, Fehu presents an exemplary metaphor for the all-pervasive challenge of reflection and action: of withdrawing ourselves from lazy acceptance of the status quo, of being sufficiently attuned to the world around us that we do not confuse knowing something with simply being used to it.

Insofar as wealth implies exchange and relationships the rune is pointing us to consider our place in the causal web of existence. It is inviting us to act with a sense of consequence that goes beyond the psychic wasteland of disposable culture. It is inviting us to consider that relationships, though often invisible, are more real than things (and we are ourselves a kind of thing).

Consequently, Fehu provokes an attitude in which we eschew simple, closed off explanations, interpretations, and responses to our experiences. It provokes us to be curious, to be open-minded, to look for ways to expand our understanding. It castigates us when we decide to focus only on the evidence that supports our opinions, when we decide to ignore anything that contradicts our cherished beliefs.

Everyone is enslaved by money – regardless of how much or little they have – so long as they do not accept the challenge that Fehu presents. Only by surpassing something can we truly come to lay claim to it. Only by stripping something of our illusions can we appreciate its truth.

The Old English Rune Poem emphasizes the importance of generosity. In this it anticipates Game Theory, which provides mathematical proofs for the principle that co-operation is always more efficient than competition. The more we circulate, the more integrated we become in our world. The more our lives are sheltered by webs of relationships, the less we flee from awareness into the empty universe of disconnected things that contemporary commercialism evokes.

The rune poems mention the place of strife – between family, no less – in all of this. So I would like to offer a challenge – to detach whatever anxiety, anger, or resentment you might have from the circumstances or people that provoke those feelings. And recognize these emotions as helpful messages and reminders to you from your unconscious. It is waving and shouting and crying “listen to me!” Do so.

Fehu comes first in all of the rune rows. Its emphasis on the importance of relationships, inter-connections, courage, curiosity, and epistemological humility certainly makes an excellent point of departure in our exploration of the runes that follow.

Ken Robinson says, “if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” Fehu is a reminder that the ultimate thing you are seeking to “come up with” is nothing more or less than your Self. There is no higher reward, so be willing to embrace the challenge!

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New Heathen Music from
EIN SKOPUDHR GALDRA & MISTSORROW
Digipak Split CD
Released by Aurora Australis Records

Ein Skopudhr Galdra unfolds a hypnotic journey of living ritual.
A dream that drifts into shadow, darkness, ecstatic fury.
Coiling and uncoiling in psychic shadow,
avant garde, atmospheric, and extreme influences
pulse through atavisms of mystery and the old god Woden.
For fans of Dead Can Dance, Hawkwind, and Emperor.

Mistsorrow perform epic neo-classical passages
against the hum and grind of melancholic atmosphere.
Steeped in natural beauty, against a reeling resonance,
like the sad song of the horn against the mist…
Echoes of Neptune Towers and Burzum´s Dauði Baldrs
can be heard in the distance.

Digipak CD (limited to 500 copies) available from Aurora Australis Records at
http://www.aurora-australis.com.au/releases/AAR_007.htm

Also available as a digital download at
http://einskopudhrgaldra.bandcamp.com/

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Stella Natura: The Light of Ancestral Fires
Three days and three evenings of music located in the
Sierra Nevada’s Tahoe National Forest Desolation Wilderness:
September 21-23, 2012

Stella Natura: The Light of Ancestral Fires will be held at Shinnyboo Creek Resort in the high Sierras, in the heart of Tahoe National Forest’s Desolation Wilderness. This 160 acres of private property is lush with greenery thriving around every bend, with towering pines shading the trails and paths that lead you to the south fork Yuba River rushing over rock formations into gushing waterfalls and tide pools.

Tickets and more information at
http://www.ancestralfires.org

Confirmed Artists:

The Road to Thule: New Novel by Dave Lee

The Road to Thule: A techno-magical dystopian novel set in a flooded world, with songs.

“Souls such as ours bear within them the terrible energies of cosmic fire and ice, the anvils of the giants. We are of the Allfather’s brood, and were forged for something greater, something that reality shatters on. You are of that bloodline, Alex, and you will come to know it.”

Exiled from his pleasant life in the heathen Kingdom of Wessex, Alex Tyler embarks on a journey through the flooded British Isles’ archipelago of tiny nations, to the far North. There, he is swept up into the power of Thule, masters its secret magical technology and becomes the warlord who will save his people.

As Wessex and the other nations of the British Isles lurch into outright war with monotheist fanatics the Pure Light, the outcome will depend on two strange technologies. The problem is, one of them is deadly for any but a tiny, genetic elite to use, and the other, only Thule knows about.

Keywords: English Heathenism, flooded world, magic, weird technology, dystopia, pagan culture.

Warning: Contains sex, violence, singing, and English Heathenism.

Plunge into the richly-realised English Heathen world of the Kingdom of Wessex, its customs, religion, law, aesthetic culture, rituals, and technologies that bridge science and magic.

Enjoy the nuked remnants of the Vatican! See the words to songs that are already being recorded by Fire and Ice!

Read the first five pages (and buy the book) at http://www.lulu.com/shop/david-r-lee/the-road-to-thule/paperback/product-20179119.html

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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 Autumn Equinox, may you and your household be blessed and kept. Hail!
~ HEX Magazine

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