Ratatoskr

We often hear about the animal spirits that live in the great world tree of the Norse Mythology, Yggdrasil, the Eagle at the top, the Dragon at the bottom and in the middle the Squirrel named Ratatoskr/Ratatosk, which is said that he carries messages and ocasional insults between the Eagle and the Dragon and to many other inhabitants of the area and also to the rest of the Nine Worlds.

Ratatoskr knows all about Yggdrasil and its surrondings, and also knows about all the hidden places in the Nine worlds, all the passages from one realm to another. This animal is a powerful symbol in the Norse Shamanic practices of old,  it is the symbol that links each sacred being in the Norse mythology by peaceful means, avoiding trouble, avoiding unecessary danger, he is also the symbol that links each realm, just as the Squirrel moves from one tree to another, silent, watchful, without drawing attention, discreet, always with eyes open, so too the Shamans of the Norse/Germanic peoples must do that when travelling between the Nine worlds, but also a lesson to take by all the others who must travel in this mortal realm, searching for food, a place to live, hunting, or whatever one must do into places he or she doesn't know and where extra careful is necessary, always attentive, alert, for possible dangerous threats.
In ancient times people often adopted the behaviours of animals so that they could better adapt to the dangers of living in the wilds, and the Squirrel was one of these animals, having the ability to avoid trouble, hid, blend in the surroundings, a constant struggle to survive, always watchful.

Also Ratatoskr represents a guiding spirit who helps shamans and shamanic practitioners to walk between the Nine realms, teaching to think first before acting, when people are in places they don't know of, its best to assume that it is a dangerous place, and the best thing is to be attentive, avoiding any kind of trouble whenever it is possible.

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The Male Moon and the Female Sun

The Moon has always been of great importance since time long lost in memory, while humanity was still young and looked at the skies for guidance, not only with their deities but also as something to mark the passing of days so they could move from one place to another and count the distance by the passage of the moon. The moon was the first thing to be used as a calendar, in a time when agriculture didn't exist yet, so there was no need to relie on the phases of the sun, the Sun calendar only came during the Neolithic era, when it was requeired to mark the time for planting and harvest, thus beginning the agricultural cycle, that is why that the Moon was the first thing to mark the passage of time, because before agriculture was invented, humans were hunters and nomadic, they moved from one place to another most of the times during the night, avoiding being seen by predators or other humans from other tribes that may attack them. We know this because the oldest lunar calendar ever discovered yet, dates to the Aurignacian period during the Paleolithic era, around 32,000 years ago, the item has a series of Moons, from crescent to full, carved in a snakelike line on a piece of bone, it might have been a portable calendar that would have been carried by hunting trips or in great journeys, as in a way to know how much time had passed, or how much time it takes from one place to another.

The Moon was of such importance for early humans, that there has always been Moon Deities, since the discovery of the oldest archaeological sites that had marks, monuments, paintings etc.. about the Moon, every religion and every pantheon, before the coming of the religions based on abrahamic beliefs, had a Moon deity. According to the old beliefs and shamanic practices of old, the Moon deity is Male, of course there are as much Male Moon deities as there are Female ones, but in most religions from different parts of the earth, the Moon is Male.
Nowadays we are used to see the Moon Deity as Female, but that is because of the link between female menstrual cycles and the lunar cycles and modern pagans associate the moon to the female energies, but this also happens due to the cultural subjects that Wiccans adapt to their beliefs, for the first pagan religions to be study after some centuries hidden under the Christian veil, were the Greco-Roman beliefs, assumptions about the male side being rational and the female side being irrational, wild, and Wicca being the most popular neo-pagan religion these days, the Moon tends to be seen as Female.

In the Norse/Germanic pagan beliefs things are inverted, the Male deities tend to be more aggressive and wild, acting without wasting time thinking about the consequences, more passionate, aggressive, for example Odin as a god of war, wrathful, offensive, or Loki who does things without thinking in the consequences that might come from his actions, too impulsive, some times not knowing why he did the things he often does, or the god Freyr, with much passion, losing his mind for those he loves, doing everything for them, while the female side is more civilized, thoughtful, self-contained, more concerned with the welfare and good nutrition of their children, but they can also be very cold and protective.
In the Norse/Germanic pagan beliefs, Sunna is the Goddess of the Sun, casting brightness, the oposite of her Brother Mani, the god of the Moon, which has a more obscure behaviour, but he is also very enthusiastic with a playful spirit, however that isn't often seen.

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Bindrunes (Bandrùnar)

I have been talking about the runes and the power and purpose of each one of them as you may read all about the runes in the Lable called "Runes", where you actually have to go after you read this post to know each one of them so you will be able to make Bindrunes if you don't already know them and how to work with the runes.

What are Bindrunes? Well, as the name indicates it is the union of the runes in one specific symbol in order to bind the power of those runes together so they may work and help in specific tasks instead of having separate runes. Normaly, and what is most seen, it is the binding of 2 runes only, but it is possible of course to bind more than just two, in some cases you can even bind 9 to 13 different runes.
Bindrunes are very easy to make, if you have a specific wish, if you need to protect someone you care for, if you need inner strength, or whatever you might need, be that strengthen the mind and help in memory, logic, emotion, enlightenment, strength of will, courage, clarity of thought and so on, you can make your own bindrune with the specific runes for those purposes, of course you need to take into account, that you may only ask for the power of those things that will help you to become a better person, keeping your freewill, because no rune will help you in any task that you might have ahead of you, no rune will make things for you, asking for protection for a loved one or yourself is one thing, asking for wealth, great power and an easy life or easy work is another, you only get those wishes if you work hard, if you have the strength to carry on, the will, the spirit, the intelligence, you may only ask for the simple things to help you achieve what you really want, having those, it is up to you to know how, when or with whom will you use the gifts given to you. Also another thing that you have to keep in mind is that Bindrunes can only be used to help people, not to harm them, trying to harm someone with bindrunes it just doesn't work.

You can make a drawing, a painting or carving the rune in any item you want, a piece of paper, or wood, even at the walls of you home, you can carry the bindrune with you and hope that is will help you in this things you wanted, after you have carefully chosen the runes you want for the purposes you need, so before you do any bindrune, you need to know each one of them and what are the powers, the gifts of those runes. Bindrunes might work after you creat them, but of course there is always the need to "awake" those powers, like in ancient times, when shamans used chanting to cal upon the powers of the runes or the bindrunes.

Bindrunes are very special because they are of our own creation, of course there is the possibility that another person might have a similar or equal symbol, that is common when binding 2 runes, but the more runes you bind and creat a new symbol, the less it is likely that someone else has the same symbol.

For a bindrune to work properly some people still use chanting, they cal upon the name of the 2 or 3 or more runes, each of the name chanted for a few seconds, a long sound, or chanting the initials of each rune creating a name for the symbol, for example, you are trying to bind the rune Algiz with Berkana, so you will chant the name of the first rune and after that you will tell the purpose of it, what is that you want from it and tell it that you will bind it with the other rune and you say the name, after that you chant the name of the next rune and you do the same process, after you have finished in telling what you want from those runes you chant in the end the initials of each rune so it might sound like Alg.... Ber... or Algi...Bera... and thus you creat a name for it and in your mind you visualize the binding of those runes in just one, you visualize the symbol you have created while calling upon the runes. Of course there are other ways, but this one is the easiest, the safest and more personal, and i'm not here to make things hard, my purpose with this post is to reach everyone and try to explain things in a way that everyone will understand.

There are also very personal bindrunes, where you bind the runes equivalente to the initials of your name, to reinforce your personality and emphasize the positive qualities and skills that you have.

If you are not sure how to bind runes and for what purposes, i will give you an example, someone that you love or care about and that person will travel and you want the person to be safe, you might use the rune Raido which is the rune for travelling and you can combine it with Berkana which is a rune of protection, of course there are other runes of protection, but some are for female, othets for male, others give protection in specific cases, so you have to be careful when choosing the runes to bind.

Note: The image to illustrate this post is a photography work taken by Ana Teresa, you can see more of her works here --> https://www.facebook.com/AnaTeresaPhotography


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Póvoa de Varzim - Norse Pagan Past

It's no news that the Norse and Germanic culture spread so wildly throughout Europe and even got to Portugal, the last European country by the sea. For obvious reasons Portugal as always been the favorite European country for all the Europeans to settle and make a living, since the neolithic times that many diferente peoples from Europe went there, fertily soils for agriculture, warm weather, during the winter too harsh to the north but nothing that the people weren't used to, great strategic places, soils filled with diffrent types of ore, abundance of wildlife and game, rivers filled with fish and by the sea for fishing, a rich land where Celts, Iberians, Lusitanians, Swabians, Vandals, Vikings, and so on settled and prospered. Portugal has deep roots in the Celtic, Germanic and Norse culture, and the people lived with such culture and religious beliefs for almost 2500 Years before christianity conquered the land, possibly more, for the historical records began in a time where Portugal was already with such cultures in the ancient past of the land.

In this post i will talk about the Portuguese past with the Norse/Germanic culture, because in most historical maps, i have seen the routes of the Norse people voyages, but seldom do those routes pass in Portugal, and today i will show you one more proof that the Norse/Germanic peoples came there, settled, built, traded, farmed, lived and left a lot of descendants.

Póvoa de Varzim is a city in northern Portugal with a rich past, a place that has been permanently inhabited since pre-historic times, where the inhabitants of that área used to live in the mountains, protected from agression of other tribes, but the need for food was great, for in the mountains with nothing but cold, snow, frost and harsh storms, it is hard to farm and hard to hunt, so very early in history, the people from that área settled near the sea and small fishing villages started to apear. This place was Celtic land, and later the Swabians settle there also and centuries after the Vikings arrived. The norse writing system ( the runes ) was the first thing that was passed down to these people, in a period even before the vikings, more than 1500 years ago. In this reagion of northern Portugal the people adopted the runes not only as a form of writing but also to mark each family, instead of having a coat of arms, they had runes and other runic symbols such as the combination of runes. as you can see at the right of this post, the first image shows some of those runes and combination of runes that were also to represente spots, houses, family names, fishing tools and all kinds of stuff in a community. In the past, these were used to remember things and were known to be the only writing system that the people of Póvoa had, because many inhabitants did not knew how to write in the Latin alphabet, for the northern regions were hard places to get to and the Romans had much trouble going in there. These symbols had great utility, even merchants used it in trading, to mark an event, a selling, and so on, and these were read and recognized like we today read and recognize names written in the Latin alphabet.

Some of these symbols can still be found in the First Church of Póvoa de Varzim (first church since 1757) and in the Lapa church, the chapel of Santa Cruz in Balazar, in some religious places in north-western Iberia to where they went for praying, and are still very lightly used by some families. Thousands of these symbols existed in the former first church of Póvoa de Varzim (until 1757), but these were destroyed with the demolition of the church. The people of Póvoa wrote their marks in a kind of registry when they got married.
The symbols were passed down from father to son. In Póvoa’s tradition that lives until today, the heir of the family is the youngest son and a mark is given, a runic symbol, to the other children it was also given the same mark but with traces, known as «pique». Thus, the older son would have one pique, the next would have two, and so on. The youngest son would not have any pique, inheriting the same symbol as his father. The younger son is the heir because it was expected that he would take care of his parents when they became old. Also, unlike the rest of the nation, it is the women who governs and leads the family, this is also due to the fact that men passed most of the time at sea fishing.

It is importante to remembre our roots, to remembre who we are, and for the people of Póvoa de Varzim, this Norse past is somethign very importante that they hold on to, even today we can still see these markings in the well known
Portuguese stone sidewalk style as you can see below, you might want to click the image to enlarge.
 

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Runes - The Universal Secret Language

When we talk about runes, the first thing that comes to mind. is associating these with the Germanic/Norse writing, which nowadays for neo-pagans it hadbecame something banal or even funny to write with runes any word in any language. But in reality the runes were used as a system of an ancient language with magical purposes, and not just to tell a story, or to make sence in random sentences.

Naturaly we associate the runes with the Scandinavian and Germanic peoples, for during the time of the Saxons and the Vikings, while they spread terror all over Europe, their culture and ways of writing was also spread into the regions they conquered, and the runes became an exclusive mark of the northern peoples. However, this was so, because Europeans already lived in a time where christianity was spreading and before that, the Romans had invade most of Europe and forced people to their own culture and tradition, and most Europeans forgot and lost their ancient traditions, their ancient religions and magical symbols, because in truth the runes were European symbols not only of writing but also to for different types of religious works, magic and divination, actually, it was seldom used for writing.

The runes are an ancient system of ideograms of sixteen, eighteen or even twenty-four characters, each rune is a combination of straight lines vertical, horizontal and inclined. Tradition tells us about ancient runes as a secret language known only to the initiated in their mysteries. The word "Raunen" associated with the word rune means "murmuring" or "Whispering", making a clear allusion to the transmission of a secret oral knowledge.

Runes are often found in Scandinavia, Great Britain, Germany, and all the other countries where the Norse people settled, but the runes are also found in Central and Northern Portugal, Northern Spain, France, Italy and so on, it is something to be expected because in truth, germanic tribes were in these places, especially in Portugal and northern Spain, because the Portuguese, in ancient times the Celtic Lusitanian people, shared a germanic culture and languege, and in fact they were Celts and Germanic for almost 2000 years, and after the romans came and went, northern Portugal was still germanic for at least 300 more years, so it is perfeclty natural to find runes in these mediterranean regions, but it isn't that natural that these runic symbols are from an era way before the Saxons and the Vikings, like i said, almost 2000 years of Celtic and Germanic culture, the runes in Portugal, northern Spain, Italy and so on, are from a period between 1500-700 B.C. and some runes are even older than that, which we are led to believe, that these symbols might have been used by so many Europeans in times more ancient than what we think, for we also know about the Ur-Runes, runic symbols similar to the runes of the Elder Futhark that we know today, the symbols that preceded those runes.

It isn't hard to know why the runes remained an exclusive mark of the Germanic and Norse culture, because the cold north was the last one to be christianised, and by the time it was, the famous Saxons and Vikings already had spread their culture to a great level, all the other European countries were conquered by the Romans and later by the christian faith and were under the influence of such culture and religion for so many centuries that there was plenty of time unfortunately to forget their ancient traditions and symbols.

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Locmariaquer Menhir

There are some famous megalithic monuments all over Europe, one of those is the extraordinary Menhir of Locmariaquer, the tallest menhir* of the world, in Britain - northern France, just a few miles from Carnac.

Nowadays it is fallen into the ground, it is believed it went down by an earthquake or a lightning strike, and is was broken into four pieces. When it was erected it had 23.50 m high and its thickness was 4m, weighing over 350 tons.

 People can still feel the telluric current in this place, and near this menhir there is also a megalithic construction, which might had concentrated the energy emitted by this menhir. Scientists know today that this menhir was an antenna radiating subtle energies for the dolmens and menhirs around it, such energies so similar to the microwaves that today we know so well. This menhir emits magnetic waves that intersect with the telluric waves in the region, causing plenty of rain in the area that has not always a meteorological origin.

* The tallest menhir still standing nowadays is one near Plouarzel also in Britain northern France, with 12m high.

Leif Eiriksson - The first European in The New World

I know it wasn't Columbus day by the time i wrote this, but its been a long time since i have written about anything related to the Norse culture and history. So i will be writing about Leif Eiriksson, the first European to step into the unknown New World later called, America.

During the Columbus day, we celebrate the great achievements of this man, no doubt about about it, he really accomplished something extraordinary, however, this day also means the extinction of so many people and cultures, or the events that led to that by the Spanish during this time and the years after when the Portuguese found the south America which was a very hard time to all the indigenous inhabitants all over the Americas.

Nowadays we know of a man who step into this new world 500 years earlier than Columbus, Leif Eiriksson, a Greenlandic settler, the real European ( that we know of so far ) to first enter the New World.

Who was Leif ?

Leif was the son of Erik/Eirik the Red ( Erik Thorvaldsson ), the famous Norwegian, outlawed from his native country for manslaughter, and then fleeing to Iceland to escape justice. When Eirik arrived there, he married Thjodhild, who bore him four children, one of those was Leif, before he was involved in other killing acts, and was outlawed once more. By this time, he fled further west into Greenland, where he remained for three years, waiting for his sentence to expire, and he was the first Norse man to make settlements in that land. After those three years, he returned to Iceland, telling other about the new land he found, which led to more settlers to go there and inhabit the territory. He returned to Greenland, where he built a farm at Brattahlíð near Narsarsuaq today.

Like his father, Leif was an explorer and had already sailed by this time to Norway, where he became the Hirðman* of King Olaf Tryggvason. While Leif was in Norway, he was converted to Christianity, haven't he done so, he would probably had an horrible time before he was killed, for King Olaf often tortured those who didn't want to be christianised, or would torture until they accepted. However his father, Eirik, remained pagan till the end of his days.

Leif knew that there was a land far to the west of Greenland, for another sailor called Bjarni Herjólfsson, had seen the sight of it, and of course to Leif this was an irresistible adventure, and so he mounted hos own expedition. According to legend, His father would also join him in his quest if he hadn't fall from his horse when riding towards the ship, he took this as a bad omen and remained in land. 

It isn't clear into which places he first sailed about into this New land, but it is clear that he went to Newfoundland, where he gave the name of Vinland, the place where he and his crew  built a settlement, which was later named Leifsbúdir after him of course.

Leif returned to Greenland with some grapes and also timber, which was scarce in Greenland, and this need of having wood to build, led to many more voyages into Vinland, however no one remained there to make a living, for they always return to Greenland, back to their homes.

Vinland wasn't empty of course, and there are many accounts of interections between the Norse people and the natives of that land, to whom the Norsemen called Skrælingjar. Leif's brother Thorvald is thought to be the first European to initiate contact and of course the first European to kill the people he met.

All of these findings had little importance to the Norse people by this time it seems, however people talked about it, so it is possible that Christopher Columbus on one of his voyages to Iceland, had heard about Vinland and the other lands to the west, and so he decided to start his own adventure.

Leif finally settled on the family farm in Greenland with his wife Thorgunna and their son Thorgil. It is said he was a wise man who spent his days converting people to the new religion, much to the consternation of his own father who was still a pagan man, however, this was of much delight to his own mother, it was she who built ( or asked to ) the first church in Greenland, Thjodhild's Church.

Leif isn't as well known as Columbus, but in many places his voyages to Vinland are celebrated, as Leif Eiriksson's Day

* The king’s Hirðman was some kind of bodyguard and also an adviser of the King, incorporated into the army.

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