~ THE TURNING OF THE WHEEL~

Feast of Bread 2013

In this Edition:

Hex Announcements
Runic Reflections: Othala
New Art from Markus Wolff!

~ Hexy Discounts! ~

We’re very pleased to be able to let you know
that a number of Hex items are on sale…

Issues 7, 8, and 9 are 20% off normal price.
All art prints (including a new edition of the Tree of Life) are 20% off.
Winter Songs: By the Hum of Ullr’s Bow CD is 50% off!

All available at http://www.hexmagazine.com/shop/products

Support Hex! We are a community-supported not-for-profit publication.
You can support us by heading to http://hexmagazine.com/shop/ and ordering magazines, CDs, and
prints, and by spreading the word to all like-minded folk!

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Hex Cookbook Project

We are now Accepting Submissions for the Hex Cookbook Project! Thistlemoon (aka The Leftover Queen, http://www.leftoverqueen.com) and Hex’s own Arrowyn Craban Lauer are putting together a cookbook full of seasonal and traditional European recipes.

We want your old family recipes, traditional favorites, or recipes with a modern twist on a traditional theme. We would love recipes that come with folklore, family stories, or historical background about the dishes or their ingredients. Bonus points if you have wisdom to share about traditional nutrition, farming practices, and the like!

Please only submit recipes to which you hold copyright, or which are in the public domain. It is acceptable to submit recipes that are inspired from published ones, but you will need to credit to the original.

Check our recipe guidelines and send your submissions to: recipe@hexmagazine.com.

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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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• Othala •

Old English Rune Poem

Ethel (Homestead) is over-dear to each man,
if he may there justice and courtesies
enjoy in a mansion in frequent prosperity

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

Appreciate what you have. A mansion, prosperity, justice, and courtesies are all easily appreciated. There is more to life than these, however.

The Eddic poem “Havamal” advises us that, no matter how threadbare our dress, we should never be ashamed of ourselves, but rather that we should walk with as much dignity as we may bring to bear. The same principle applies to the idea of the homestead.

A well maintained dwelling will always be a good one, even if it is old and rickety. The investment of energy in keeping things clean, bright, and comfortable repays dividends no matter how threadbare the lodgings. Resist the temptation to compare one’s one hovel to the mansion down the road; what matters is the spirit in which one occupies one’s home, regardless of how exalted or humble it might be.

Likewise, do not be impressed by the size or magnificence of a dwelling, but by the way in which it is dwelt. A person of sour spirit and mean character brings even the most wonderful home into ill repute. A warm, generous, and wise person, on the other hand, can make her meager home into a celebrated destination.

The buildings that house institutions of power hide endless hypocrisies behind pretty mottos and imposing forms. Architecture can be a kind of psychological warfare in the wrong hands, designed to distract us with the great lie that money makes the man (or woman).

Not only do such buildings intimidate and impress, but they fool us into devaluing our own relative stature in the world. This is both manipulative and destructive, of course.

These principles do not only apply to architecture and the act of living therein. Can I take pride in myself despite my limitations? Will I waste my energies and dishonor myself by dwelling on my shortcomings? Or will I appreciate the good in myself and attempt to cultivate more of the same?

Even if I can never be the “best” (whatever that means) at whatever it is that matters to me, it is nonetheless worthy to be the best that I can be. Conversely, if I decide that gaudy facades, false glamour, and empty words are to be my dwelling place – well then, the joke is ultimately on me.

Not only will I eventually earn a sorry reputation, but every time I rely on surface impression I erode my self-faith just that little bit more, letting my true spiritual homestead slip that much further away. How much better to just be oneself, to occupy the real-world homestead and seek to make the best of it as it is!

Othala lies, then, in this down-to-earth attitude toward one’s persona, the psychological mask within which one dwells. When we withdraw our energies from the cultivation of brittle surface forms, from false conceits, from the madness of keeping up appearances, we can begin to sink down into our own bedrock.

Thus the process of becoming a human being begins, an authentic individual, well-earthed and comfortable. Not perfect, and not needing to be. Confident but not defensive; possessed of a creative spark forged from simple honesty.

To live in this psychological homestead is a true comfort, one that far surpasses the cult of mere appearances. Yet, of course, we can never entirely escape the cult of mere appearances. This too, is part of our essential nature. But we do not have to entirely escape it, either.

For acceptance of our flaws is part of the process of building a comfortable and fitting psychic homestead. Kindness is an important part of any household; why not so with ourselves, too? We were not made to be self-punishing automatons.

“There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so,” thus Hamlet assures us. If so, then indeed any home might be a wonderful mansion, any person a great hero, any experience a source of learning and inspiration.

If we want to find a good home it is up to us to learn how to see and how to seek and most of all, how to sift through our experiences for the small graces and epiphanies that quietly await us everywhere we go. These will be the bricks and mortar of our comfortable domain.

Often this rune represents for me the whole spiritual inheritance of Heathenry. This too we must make a fit dwelling, not allowing it to be sacrificed to the cult empty appearance. As we strive to avoid being “impressive,” and delve instead into our individual and idiosyncratic natures, our spiritual heritage will become ever more fertile and profound.

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New Art from Markus Wolff: Walpurgisnacht

This stunning new work by acclaimed Heathen artist (and musician, and Hex Magazine editor) Markus Wolff is available in a limited run of 50 lithographic prints with dimensions of 18″ x 24″. A wild invocation of Walpurgisnacht revelries both past and to come!

Purchase here: http://johngoff101.wordpress.com/category/markus-wolff/

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By the Hum of Ullr’s Bow: Winter Songs Compilation CD
On Sale: Half Price (From $8 to $4)

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

Order your copy here:
http://hexmagazine.com/shop/products/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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