Hospitality as a Spiritual Metaphor: Part 1

That's one Hel of a Horn! 

As most who are reading this will know, I have been making some changes in my spiritual perspective. I have spoken of the mundane reasons for this, and now I would like to mention a small part of the spiritual. In my quest for knowledge and academic based understanding, I began to feel a disconnect with that energy which drew me to Freyja and the Vanir.  I felt I had lost touch with the earth, which for me as an earth witch left an emptiness and a sense of constant vertigo.

I won't bore anyone with details, but meditating on this and coming to the decision to take a step back from uneccessary demands has enabled me to step back in a way and find a more objective picture of my life and my spirituality. It has also helped me learn a few personally valuable things that I feel the need to share with other pagans and heathens.

Which brings me to this post, exploring the spiritual side of hospitality in the Norse cosmos. I was watching a video today about Tribalism within Asatru, which I will post for those interested at the end of this blog. It got me thinking about the neverending conflict between the Reconstructionist and for lack of a better term Universalist, paganized heathens. I mean this is a positive sense, for I consider myself to be one the latter end of the spectrum. Anyway, I came to the conclusion that defining a heathen becomes a problem when the community cannot decide which values come foremost. It begged the question, which is more important? Tradition and lifestyle, i.e. tribalism, or spiritual belief? I feel that this is the conflict between these two groups.

Obviously I am not suggesting that either shows a lack of regard for tradition or spirituality. But one could make a good argument that recons are in essence attempting to recreate spirituality on a tangible basis, by immersing themselves in a societal structure which serves the spirituality. For the more Universalist heathens and Norse pagans, the practical becomes secondary to the spiritual. Universalists tend to define heathens by devotion to the beliefs and divine powers themselves, whereas Recons and Traditionalists define heathens by their wholeness of integration with both the mundane and metaphysical aspects of Norse culture.

Neither can be demeaned for their personal beliefs. It is plain to see that for both sides their are positives and negatives. Universalists can quickly find cause to demarcate Recons as racists and bigots, when their beliefs about preserving culture and blood heritage are in no way associated with either racism or bigotry. Recons are quick to call out solitary heathens as cyber heathens, or Wiccatru, or any number of derogatory terms which imply a lack of devotion or dedication to the Norse Gods and cosmos, when in truth many Universalists are extremely dedicated to the Gods of the Norse but content with modern social structures which are difficult to escape. It is imperative to understand that negativity on either sides only serves to make heathens look like a band of children unable to "play nice."

Which brings me to the subject of hospitality, in both myth and practical ritual. Anyone who knows the most basic concepts of Norse beliefs knows that hospitality to strangers figures prominently in the myths of both Gods and men, and that much of heathen ritual is derived directly from these. The Viking longhouse is a great example of this archeologically. The giant, open space in which all ate, drank, slept, lived and died in prevented  social isolation in its structure alone. The harsh environment in which they lived created a need for cooperation and dependence, rather than individualization. All aspects of life, be they practical or spiritual took place in this centralized location, in a communal setting.

Ritual drinking combined the need for communal ritual and understanding of the intoxicating effects of mead, the traditional beverage. Whether the myths of  the precious mead sprang from the lifestyle or caused it are debatable,but irrelevant to this discussion. The point is that a variety of factors led to creating a deep spiritual    tradition connecting mead and inspiration. Giving praise, telling of the deeds of Gods and men, sharing the horn with the Gods and ones kinsman or at times the odd stranger, giving blessings to others, all this with creates a sense of fellowship among men and connection to the divine.

This all makes sense on a practical level, but doesn't seem sufficient to explain the overriding theme of hospitality as a value. It seems in nearly every myth, every saga, there resides the presence of this ritualized drinking in a variety of forms, to the point were one questions themselves, "am I missing something?" It is my belief that ritual drink is a metaphor for more. I believe there is another level of meaning beneath the surface. To explain this, I believe I will have to reserve that for my next post. I did not intend for this to become such a long discussion, but I wish to make my ideas very clear. So I will leave it at this for now.

In my next post I will examine the role of females as honored hostess, and server of the divine mead. By examining this I wish to illustrate a deeper meaning behind the ritual, connected with the feminine divine, the earth, and why being hospitable extends into the world of wights and gods, and how this creates a foundation for spiritual/magical power.

For now I leave you with the video I spoke of:

In Frith,
Cena