Let’s listen to a tale from the last PARADIGM SHIFT and start to pull ourselves into the work.

I will confess to inadequate scholarship for the high worlds, and freely admit that I do not have the funds for the books that I intend to investigate. Interlibrary Loan promises me all kinds of things then leaves me high and dry. Gragas is the principal source I would like to read, the so-called “Grey Goose Laws” that were the original legal code of Iceland and very much a part of how this saga functions. Tidbits about these laws are in other sagas as well. They came from the old pagan way of life, and as Iceland moved into Christianity, the chaos of a new conceptualization of law is in the forefront of everyone’s mind.

The censors seemed different in Iceland being so far from the big world of the church, and the entire rigamarole had to be more Václav Havel while also not. What we are dealing with here is a very subtle sinister business of insider-outsider-insider winking at the law and the expectation that magic itself would remain fundamentally competent, which it didn’t.

I admit I am not convinced that the new drug magic reveals the same WHIPPETS as the old school circus, so I am emboldened enough to try to just say stuff imperfectly before the evanescence of psychic perception carries it away forever. Even now I do not remember what some of my spirit guides discussed in the heyday of UNION in the Bowery that are now being repeated REMEMBERED in the historic district of Tacoma. I made no notes of that exciting period, though urged to, and much of it now lies in the thought effluvia of Little Italy which I shall perhaps one day visit again and recapture. APOLLO stalks New York and my guides could see many deaths and me WEALTHED UP in not.

Furthermore, I have read my way through about a decade of Current Swedish Archaeology. This is a wonderful journal that allows one to work for free. Bus rides! They are the best. Archaeology is a joint project of many data points causing a continuous development of the field, and individual data points soon come to resemble a repetitive motion disorder of tenure, while some of it has gorgeous pictures of dragons. We will have to see about painting some of these dragons. Perhaps on a ship. But the rest of it is mostly, we found graves, shards, the remnants of cultivation, and we do not know what it meant that the graves were slightly askew of the houses, nor do we have linguistic or cultural cues of adequate extent to extrapolate things in extreme precision. In the end, I would rather have Current Swedish Archaeology than not, though not to the extent of stultification. HERE WE STAND.

So we are going to have to notice some things, imagine others based on how medieval life was in similar places based on the physical culture, and extrapolate from the recent world of the extant shamanic culture of the Mayans.

This will be an imaginative reading of some elements of the Bandamanna Saga, and probably much misconstrued, but why not try to find an explanation for some of the understated motives within the baldness of the text? The full text can be examined here: https://sagadb.org/bandamanna_saga.en

It is also coming at a very difficult time. A wild man bearing the Valknut on his chest (OOF-DAH!) has just stormed the Capitol building. Fortunately, he was wearing horns as well, was nicely naked to the waist, and had a lot of publicity arranged for our STUNT.

I should point out that I do not countenance fascism or racism or sticky stuff in the wrong place, but PAIMON requires a bit of GAME here if we are going to keep calling him with Norse power.

Bandamanna Saga is the only saga that is set definitively after Iceland’s conversion to Christianity in 1000 A.D. Thus it has much to reveal about the paradigm shift that the people were facing and perhaps shed light on our own predicament as the new sorcery comes into fuller scope. I am speculating based on experience and a general grasp of medieval lifestyle. Yes, a research paper would be nice, but I thankfully don’t have access to libraries that cost money that is SLIDING INTO HOUSE.

The first thing to notice is the name of the saga itself, Bandamanna, or The Band of Men. After reading, confusion is encountered as the band of men referenced only appears in a tiny part of the saga whereas the rest of it describes the various doings of a man called Oddr, his father Úfeigr, and their arch-enemy Úspakr.

The denizens of literate civilization are inured to the strangeness of arranging our thought patterns by the arbitrary business of the alphabet, while those of us trained in the older methods are familiar with the idea that the alphabet was invented by G-d as a holy instrument with magic power. This concept appears in not only our own Hebrew, but also Sanskrit, the Scandinavian runic alphabet, and the Mayan language of the Yucatan. So the weird off-ness of the title is no doubt at least in part related to the letter itself.

The Christian teaching loudly proclaims: I am the A and the Z. (Omega was Z back then.) So Jesus owned A and Z. We are giving him that. It would appear that as these cunning folk sought to place this saga in a very significant location in the corpus, they had to avoid both the A and the Z owned by that other god, and settle for the B, the next letter after A, as if to say Read this one first. So here we are with a message in a bottle.

I don’t know how many of these folks also read Hebrew, for the letter B is the very first letter of the Torah and is considered sacred. BREISHIT. In the beginning. This would be a red flag to any Jew. The fact that the Icelanders identified Troy as the birthplace of Thor leads me to believe that they had access to quite a bit of knowledge of the ancient world via the RUBRIC of the Islamic traders, and so probably did mean to reference the letter B — though only to the cognoscenti.

First, let’s examine the official account of how Iceland bowed to the yoke of Christianity ACCEPTED THE INEVITABLE: FIRE TRIALS.

This is a serious bit of magic, and does involve one of my favorite miracles, the Viking Fire, which I suspect is being abused by highfalutin’ Buddhist ATR conversion situations, while we have this kind of fire available after twenty years of mostly solitary practice at GENGHIS KHAN’S Cabala, Solomonic magic, and miss cat’s Lucky Mojo. There are many tales of women experiencing fire anomalies as both divination and spell work, and I don’t want people selling the old work out too soon, while also not.

And an attenuated albeit neuro-directed version of the Viking Fire is speculated to be relatively available in your local LSD electric outlet, not to mention the internet. This could be schizophrenia — or maybe some tropes in schizophrenia are maladjusted magical experiences that we wish would go away. Sadly I had just completed the work of the Golden Dawn grade of 2=9, the Air Grade of Theoricus, and concluded that There is no God but man, when candles began acting funny.

One of our callers advises everyone to THROW THOSE WANKERS INTO THE GROUND WIRE. 

Sagadb.org’s version is an 1882 translation into English by John Coles.

Here is how it begins:    “Úfeigr was a very wise man, and the greatest of counsellors; in all he was a great man, but his pecuniary circumstances were not always easy. He owned a deal of land, but few chattels; he withheld from no man a meal, although what was wanted for the housekeeping had first to be provided.”  

“He owned a great deal of land, but few chattels.” Now here we have to go back to my ill-fated ODDLY FATED 2005 NEA-sponsored trip to Guatemala to see what might be meant here, and I am only guessing, but probably not far off the mark in some cases.   

The highland Maya of Guatemala were targeted in a take-down in the mid-eighties involving first of all, a bunch of sting operations to get them involved in striking the capitalists and inciting war; oh some planted Cuba stuff that was maybe communist or maybe just appealing to uneducated teenaged boys; revolutionary and counter-revolutionary activities with Israeli go-betweenism according to Martin Prechtel, who lived through it; lots of guns; the names of the American old money set associated with sorcery weaving through the gossip; send-ups of the Peace Corps; and a bunch of Protestant missionary efforts funneling cash into the area for those willing to give up the old ways. And who knows what ever happened with the drugs?

As usual, I am going with the idea that where the world goes, sorcery follows — but not far behind. What we had was a group of people who lived off grid with shamanic magic that worked; incoming new technology that could partly supplant old magic — for who wants a life expectancy of 39? — and a crazy grapple of the system to get everyone into the international monetary economy. No more self-sufficient yet hungry farmers who worked in barter, making much of their own household goods and items. The humble fare of home-grown potato tamales with black beans and chilis is now a requirement of those tiny bags of Cheetos that cost $money$ and WORKING FOR THE MAN IN DRUGS.

It is also the steady lure of exciting new technology, lifestyles, and being in the swim of THE WORLD. I don’t blame them, but I am interested in us all having a more balanced and reasonable approach to What is God?   It is the get-rich-quick scheme of dumbing down humanity’s comprehension of the biomass’s spirituality that we are lamenting. What the old ways face is also a slow strangulation of perceived relevancy and competency over many years.  

The Mayans take my breath away. Everything they do is steeped in a rich aesthetic sense, down to the selection and placement of objects in the common areas of the home. How did they get that sponge to look so perfect next to the spigot? It is a healing calling in in from an ancient sense of the world. Only the shamanic Catholics had it. The Protestants kept their lives as ugly as the Americans.  

As we look at Úfeigr, let us imagine that he is an old pagan being starved in the new monetary economy that is preferential to the Christians and that his son Oddr has decided to break with the old ways and get with it, man. As the text states of Oddr’s complaint against his father, “You show me very little honour, and I am not useful in things you want me for.” Again, the Maya. Every household procedure has an ancient K’iche’ prayer, hand gesture, and breath pattern associated with it. This is how they put power into their lives, tasks, and objects. If Oddr has decided to be a Christian, he would not be putting power into his work and it would not be satisfactory to his father or the gods. Yes, you can plough a field and gather the hay, but if you do not sing to the sheaves, FREYR will be infuriated LOST and these sheaves will not speak to or work with the ones that are next to them or the workers on the farm.  

A circuit of divinatory and operative capacity needs constant and steady maintenance as well as careful exclusion of those who wish a different world and can be tempted to deny the Holy Ghost. Here we have the carpet-baggers of THE CHURCH in to steal the assets of the families who clung to the old ways until the end. Magic that works also has to FUND fake it till you make it which is perhaps why they built the churches on top of the temples. It was known that it would be thus and the civil disobedience of naming a son “Od” — perhaps in honor of a certain BAD GUY called Odin — would be answered in the ensuing era that all knew was coming.   

Let us imagine that this father and son agreed to disagree, and that when the time came, Oddr resolved to leave the family farm and strike out on his own as a Christian. What would his father do?   

“Oddr grew up in his father’s home until he was twelve years old. Úfeigr, as a rule, showed coldness towards Oddr, and loved him but little. The report was afloat that no one round about there was better accomplished than Oddr. One day Oddr spoke to his father, and asked him to provide him with money, saying, “and I will go away from here. It is this way,” he continued, “that you show me very little honour, and I am not useful in things you want me for.” Úfeigr answers: “I shall not stint your means beyond your deserts. This I shall do, observing all fairness, so that thou mayest know how far such an arrangement may avail thee.” Oddr said that that would make but a poor support for him, and thereat they dropped the talk. The day after, Oddr takes a fishing-line off the wall, and all fishing tackle, and twelve ells of cloth. He now goes away and no one wishes him farewell.”

What a cold father! There is a literary trope in Germanic literature called “the sluggish youth.” Beowulf was such a youth. It is devised so that the great transformation into a hero can be exciting, kind of like Clark Kent turning into Superman by the mechanism of the handy telephone booth costume change, now obsolete.

But was this father so cold?   There is the question of what to do with a family farm. Times are getting harder with the price of goods in barter no doubt going down with all of these expensive new items that can probably in some cases only be bought with currency unless Christian. Then there’s that bit of being elbowed as you walk down the street. It is not illegal but it is not in keeping with lawfulness. No doubt Úfeigr could use that capable son on the farm and who cares about the Jesus situation?   

Not only that, is Oddr the first-born son? Inheritance in Iceland was varied, not strict primogeniture, and how things went in patrimony was probably sensible if considered in the light of what is most useful. How big is the farm? How varied and well-situated the land? What access to fresh water, sea, or grazing meadows? How much forest? How sheltered from the wind in winter? How many people can it support at what labor requirement? I don’t know, but there is a subtle business of paternal power involved in the apron strings of inheritance, and how a man wields this power is a test of his character. I have said before that 100 acres can support 40 while 10 acres cannot really logistically support 4 unless the farm is in an absolutely perfect situation. And who has a family of four in the absence of modern mores and effective contraception?

It is said that “no one round about him was better accomplished than Oddr.” That says a lot. He would be an excellent support for his father on the farm. At the same time, how many sons does Úfeigr have? This tale does not tell, and if there are too many functional and effective males on that estate, they will begin to fight each other. This is clear in all of the sagas.  

So this finest of sons really does begin to cut the apron strings himself, knowing all of these things that we in the modern world have forgotten.  

Let us imagine the day that everyone was dreading when Oddr made that break: One day Oddr spoke to his father, and asked him to provide him with money, saying, “and I will go away from here. It is this way,” he continued, “that you show me very little honour, and I am not useful in things you want me for.”   

This was in the day when men were taciturn and didn’t show anyone the tender side. Life was too hard, and everyone was relying on them to do many truly difficult things, even die, in pain and hardship, and it all needed to be smooth. This complaining crap only makes things worse.   

Úfeigr probably didn’t have enough silver money to do anything for his son on account of barter economy and embargoes, so Oddr made a bit of a stink and took the fishing gear that was probably pointed out with a wink, in full knowledge of the entire estate who no doubt knew of his departure — no one said goodbye, not even the women — though I trow they wished him well.

This finest of sons went into town, and took out a loan on his father’s good name. Within three years, his hard work paid back the loan, and with his capacities and ceaseless labor, Oddr was on the road to a steady and wonderful prosperity.  

NOT FOR LONG, PRETTY BOY.

I still remember how it was when I was twenty-two and had just graduated college. I was a studious, serious and proper young lady — a squeaky clean Mormon who didn’t touch a drop! — being introduced about the town by my proud Papa, a pillar of the community who knew everyone who was anyone Latinx. These fine people, some of whom had attended Harvard or Yale, or served in some President’s Cabinet or something, or earned a million bucks, and were thereby in charge of the place, always gazed at me with hypnotized indulgence. It was my skin, I now know. My twenty-two-year-old skin. It exuded the finest of effluvia called UNSHREDDED TELOMERES ARE HERE. Genuine youth and not the skin cream kind. The entire world gives you an extra helping when you are young just because it is wonderful to be in your presence, especially if you are diligent and honorable and playing by the rules that are otherwise shades of grey or maybe plain stupid — but that we all like to believe in.

Oddr is now established and in some ways, the indulgence is over. Now he has to adult.

And that is when the trouble starts, for it is one thing to do all the right things, and that is, in fact, most of it. But it is another to know how to handle yourself in THE WORLD, and that is something that often can only be WITNESSED by having the advice of your Dad — the old man — and that is something that Oddr has lost in this dispute about religion.