In the Beginning…

So I was having lunch with Edward Butler the day I wrote the first draft of this article and we were discussing cosmogony, the nascent wisdom given via theophany by the Gods to Their individual people. Each cosmological theophany holds within it the wisdom and knowledge to allow the world, its sciences, arts, philosophies, its beauty, and our understanding and engagement with it to unfold. I think it is quite profound the way that the Gods took into account the geography of where our various peoples evolved. You see it reflected in the ritual cycle, in the way the cosmic order, structure, and unfolding is translated into cultural comprehension. I’ve never written much about cosmogony, the order and structuring of the cosmos from the Norse perspective. I think about it, sit sometimes and lose my self in it, but i’ve never actually thought to articulate it in writing. That’s going to be changing because Heathen cosmogony is so richly textured, so beautifully profound, and has so much to offer those of us who practice within its structures that i think it deserves more time and attention.

Our cosmogony begins with a Big Bang. This is a very modern term, and perhaps a bit too prosaic to describe the type of collision conveyed through our mythos. (1) Well before the Gods became, there is violence, a grinding together, there is noise and sound, there is excitement, there is confusion, there is change and exchange — a maelstrom, but a maelstrom with purpose. There is a coming together that resulted in a change of potentiality into matter, and matter into the seed of unnumbered possibilities. Does it happen slowly or all at once in a huge crash? We have no way of knowing for sure, though if we look at the Gylfaginning, and examine the fragments of cosmogonic lore left to us, it would seem to point to a slow interaction over an extensive period of “time.” (Even so, certainly there would be that one micro-second, that tipping point where interaction or collision gave birth to something new). What we do know is that something happens that forever changes the very fabric, the space, and materiality of Being. (It brings potentiality of being into temporality of being). Something happens and it is irreversible. The world of ice and the world of fire collide and from that explosion of oppositional forces the cosmos begins to unfold. This is our starting point. What existed before this? Where did Muspelheim and Niflheim originate? What prompted this collision?–it’s not important. It’s not relevant to the discussion. Our starting point is the engagement of oppositional forces. It’s that tension and what comes from it: its fruitfulness, not where it happened or what preceded it that we are meant to focus on. Our starting point instead is the blinding explosion of force: fire and ice, action and stillness, movement and stasis, heat and cold, expansion and contraction, light and shadow, projection and retraction…and everything in between.

It must be considered that before this big bang, there was the void Ginnungagap. The void is not and was not empty space. It was not unseeing. It was instead potentiality for all being. It contained the spark, the scintilla, the fuel, the awesome, raw, thundering potentiality of being that allowed for the worlds of ice and fire to begin their inevitable collision. The void contained the possibility of what was to occur. I always make it a point to check the etymology of my Norse words and Ginnungagap has a particularly fruitful etymology. The prefix “Ginn-” occurs in several places and refers to holy might. It’s elsewhere appended to ‘regin’ meaning Holy Powers, and “runa” meaning runes. It implies something filled with potentiality, creativity, and power, something sacred and ancient. We almost always translate ‘Ginnungagap’ as ‘Yawning Void,’ but that’s not quite correct. I think a better translation might be chasm or space full of holy wonder, creativity, and potentiality. Of course that’s a bit more of a mouthful. The important thing is to understand that it is not empty and it IS holy, sacred, and eminently creative. There is power in that moment before oppositional forces meet, power and possibility. The gap was the womb of the universe, the alchemist’s cauldron from which the cosmos sprang in its infancy. It is a place of power and of secrets. From the container of the holy, this thing happened that spewed forth being and matter into existence. It spewed forth the raw material from which everything else was formed. It spewed it forth in a way that it *could* be formed.

Another thing to consider with the Gap: in spewing forth into this act of creation, it gave of itself into the process. There was a transmutation occurring in this collision: an essence of one place (the Gap) being breathed, sparked, crashed into different manifestation in another (creation). That moment is a doorway, the initiation of Being and Materiality. Materiality simply wasn’t before this point in our narrative. Materiality had to become before creation could happen. With materiality came the laws of physics. This process is all about laying out the architecture of the cosmos, of existence. As an aside it also gives one pertinent information for the nature of any and all true initiations: it is the crossing of a threshold. It creates irreversible change. There is death, transmutation/dismemberment of being, and restoration into new being. Such a pattern is locked into the fabric of existence from the beginning. Later, throughout our cosmological narrative, when the Gods take form and function and begin moving and acting in Their worlds and ours, we will see this same pattern play out again and again and again (cross-culturally, I might add), but the paradigm is given to us right here, at that very moment the potentiality and cognition of the Gap is forced through primordial collision into transmutation into a new kind of Being: raw matter. Its very nature and substance has been changed. It’s the same with initiation and its effect on the substance of the soul and our awareness. Before this clash there was potentiality; afterwards there are the building blocks of being and materiality.

Now the Gap is a place full of activity but all in potentiality. There was nowhere for that contemplation of pre-creation to morph into result. Without materiality there was no progress. The Gap wasn’t necessarily a place of stasis, but it wasn’t a place of manifestation into actual being, fact, and material substance either. Something had to happen first before that could occur. The architecture had to be set in place for that transmutation. Potentiality had to be urged into transformative action. As an aside, in my work with Odin, in deep contemplation, in journey work, i’ve seen the Gap. It is neither still nor silent. there is awareness, many awarenesses there, and the snapping of synapses (at least that’s sort of how my mind analogized it), lightening cognition going on all around me in the Gap, from the Gap, that which was the Gap itself. There was a fierce delight in this process of cognition and a whirling dance of concepts and colors that I cannot hope to untangle and commit to the flatness of comprehension. It was too fast and dense for me to process. It had a rhythm, a rumbling percussion beat of shifting harmony. It was, as I would conceive of the term, alive. (Though I rather think terms such as “life” and “alive” are far less relevant or meaningful in a place where temporality and materiality do not exist. I don’t know if i’d previously thought of Ginnungagap as silent and still, but after seeing it, after being brought to it by Odin, never again will I have that misapprehension. There is a lot going on there! There was constant cognitive rumbling. In Platonic terms, I think we’d call it the intelligible-intellective plane of Divine activity (thank you, Edward).

Thinking about the Gap and its nature, questions inevitably arise. Was the Holy undifferentiated within the Gap? I would say no since within the Gap from the moment our narrative starts we already have two Worlds moving in tandem. We already have Muspelheim and Niflheim. Nor are those worlds singularities, something I’ll discuss a little further forward in this article. There was already differentiation, a plurality of the Holy. What is Holy? That is a question that philosophers and theologians have been wrestling with since the time of our most ancient ancestors, probably since before we had writing to record the question. I’m no philosopher but I think it’s important to note that within or perhaps encompassing this plurality of the Holy, we do then have holy as an undifferentiated category. I think for the purposes of this writing, I am going to be using that term as what I would like to call a ‘sense category.’ I don’t think that any static definition of “holy” can quite encompass what we’re dealing with here, especially at the Beginning, especially before our Gods took name, and shape, and form.

Basically we have a plurality of Holy Beings within the sense category ‘holy’. What do I mean by ‘sense category?’ Rather like one of the circles in a Venn diagram, a sense category is the space within which a thing functions. For instance, if we consider Muspelheim a sense category as well as being one of the cosmological “worlds,” we must first parse out all the things that Muspelheim contains and *means*. What role does it play in our narrative? Once that has been determined it becomes clear that when we refer to Muspelheim in this creation story, we’re not just referring to the “world of fire,” but to the fullness of meaning that can be found in this entire category. Here, we have the category of “holy” and that begs the question of what is holy? what does it mean to be holy? what are the essential elements of ‘holiness’ particularly when there is nothing of humanity nor even yet named Gods by which to determine such differentiation. We might also ask why is the Gap holy? Is it holy in and of itself or simply a container for that which is holy? What does it mean to be holy? Is it holy in itself or rendered holy by what it contains and by its function? Is there a difference? Is the holy with substance or without? Does it matter?

I don’t have answers to most of those questions. I do know that the word ‘holy’ comes from the Old English ‘halig’ which means hale, whole, and complete, entire unto itself. by that rubric alone, Ginnungagap may be consciously construed in a semantic sense as ‘holy.’ It is the ultimate entirety of everything, before differentiation into materiality, before the articulation of the universe, before…everything. I think, however, that is only one aspect of what it means to be ‘holy,’ perhaps a fundamental one, but still only part of the picture. We say a thing is holy when it is filled with or touched by the Gods. Are the Gods holy? Or do They rather render that which They touch, use, and with which They interact holy by contamination? Are things reserved for the Gods holy as opposed to sacred (reserved for divine use)? I will be discussing the difference between ‘holy’ and ‘sacred’ in a later article, but for now, know that as we contemplate the Gap, this is one of the questions that logically might arise.

Part of what we must parse out in this narrative is the effective difference between substance and materiality. All things conceived of have substance but not all things have active materiality. I would posit that substance contains the potential for materiality but is unfettered by temporality whereas materiality is connected by its very nature to temporality. It is raw substance — the Idea—given form. The question then arises of whether a fundamental change in nature occurs in the transmutation of substance into materiality. If we accept the Gap as holy, as a fundamental and largely unchanging axiom, then the equation shifts ever so slightly: there’s potentiality and then there’s the creation of matter. The integral nature of the substance is changed through the act of creation and the holiness that was an unconditional and accepted theorem then translates into that which was created, i.e. matter as potentiality. The potentiality for holiness exists then in created matter.

Furthermore, what does it mean that life began as an explosion of oppositional forces? Complementary forces might be a better way of putting it (and you see it echoed throughout our theological narrative). It’s not just opposites that we see in Niflheim and Muspelheim, but complement. These two worlds balance each other out. Before I continue, I want to pause for a moment to note that while we are dealing with oppositional and complementary forces, we are not working within a binary system. I’m going to say that again because with the influence of almost two thousand years of mental colonization by monotheism, and working as we are within a diasporic religion made up primarily of converts from monotheisms, it bears repeating: we are NOT working within a binary system. Binary systems are simply not sustainable, not in a cosmically sound, well ordered, organic theology. (To give you a very prosaic analogy: try sitting on a stool with two legs). We have so much more here than just simple binaries. There is so much more nuance and richness of structure. While it may seem that we have only two players and the Gap itself at this point in our narrative, each of those places contains a multitude.

Firstly, there is all that is contained in Muspelheim — this sense category of “Muspelheim,” and all that is contained in the sense category of “Niflheim.” That right there gives you a plethora of beings and forces and concepts and powers to contemplate and we’re going to be doing that in just a moment. But over and above these two basic units (which are themselves divergent worlds full of life and being and potentiality), we have the space in which they dance, the place where they meet, that moment in the fabric of becoming. We have what happens at the microsecond they meet and what the two of them together produce. We have the rhythm and sound, movement and dance. We have the denizens and raw matter within each world. We have that which is creating, that with which they create, and the things, events, and spaces that are created. There is no stopping point to it. Perhaps the two worlds are still in conversation, still in union, still colliding and vying and fighting for dominance, push-pull of creation unfolding, even now as I write this. We always think of creation as something that happened a long time ago, because we ourselves are tied to temporality, to the here and now, we experience time as a limitation when the Gods themselves are beyond temporality, and rhythm of the cosmic unfolding even more so than that. But creation isn’t a one time event. It’s a process that began and continues to unfold therefore in some way, shape, or form, fire and ice are still engaging. So while the worlds each partake of place and order on the Tree, so too do they continually continue the work of that Big Bang. What this means, one of the many things that it means, is that we are part of that process too. That sizzling fermentation of the Big Bang, the moment of creation is still happening right now. It has never stopped happening. It propels and fuels creation again and again and again.

We have within Ginnungagap these two worlds or sense categories: Muspelheim and Niflheim. They are called worlds and that means they contain an interlocking network of ecology and environment, of culture, society, and nations. Niflheim seems to be the older of the two worlds and exists in the “north” of the Gap (though without temporality and materiality, spacial location is relative and open to conjecture). The etymology of “Niflheim” simply means (in Old Norse—all my etymology is old Norse unless otherwise specified) ‘the dark world.” The primary denizen of this world that we know of is the great dragon “Nidhogg” which means “the one striking full of hatred.” The Voluspa 39 (2) describes Nidhogg as one who drinks the blood of the dead and eats corpses. Later, when the Nine worlds are formed, Nidhogg takes on a slightly more active role in harassing the denizens of the World Tree but for now we should focus on its connotations of death and decay. Death is both ending and beginning. It is transformation. Decay, so necessary to our world (imagine if nothing ever decayed, including our bodies, including compost, including road kill) and its cousin fermentation are all types of transformative destruction. This is what Nidhogg personifies as a holy Being: transformative destruction, wasting nothing, maintaining the whole. In the poetic forms of the creation account that we have via the Edda, there is much talk about poison and venom within Niflheim and I interpret this as fermentation, decay, and transformation. It all breaks down the substance of what is and then transmutes it into something else.

In the South of the Gap (again, metaphorically speaking — spacial location would of necessity be relative), there is the world of fire, Muspelheim. The etymology here is more vexed. It most likely refers to the ‘end of the world,’ which it was, just as it was the beginning of the new. It ended the stasis that existed before the worlds met. It was the hot sparks of Muspelheim that ignited the fermentation that led to the clash, that led to the moment of creation. These two sense categories, which everything they each contain within themselves met and through that synergy something new, something different was brought into being. The primary Being associated with Muspelhiem is the Lord of Fire: Surtr. His name means “the Black One,” ostensibly a reference to the soot, and smoke, and ash that comes as a byproduct of fire. Some of the sources (3) associate Him with volcanic activity and this makes good sense: lava is the lifeblood of the earth. (It is unclear whether Surtr is synonymous with the Being Muspel, or whether this is yet another Holy Being existing in Muspelheim. I tend to think they are synonymous). Fjolsvinnsmal (4) also references a female Fire Being named Sinmara. The etymology of Her name is vexed. Right away, it’s interesting that we have a pair of Beings in Muspelheim but only a dragon (Nidhogg) mentioned in Niflheim. The gendered pairing of one makes good sense in thinking about the elements inherent in reproduction. I choose to look at Nidhogg as the balance to that binary pairing, as transformative, non-binary gender that also breaths its magic into creation. Dragons are serpents after all, serpents reptiles, and many reptiles can shift gender. I’m not going to belabor this here, but I look at these Beings as carrying the potential for creative expression by Their very nature and order in these worlds. There is also the fact that fire here represents the creative, active force driving this transformation and ice represents the cold, still, unmoving force resistant to change, but very focused on maintaining ordered space.

Fire symbolically represents synergy, pushing forward, evolution, expansion, adventure, heat, destruction, explosion, creativity, with Ice representing stability, integrity, solidity, ordered space, cold, lack of movement, stasis, structure, and silence. If you think about this pairing of worlds, one may continue this list of complements almost exhaustively. Creation is always, always a matter of the push and pull between these two forces. You see this mirrored in religious traditions too: there is almost always tension between those who want the tradition to be unchanging and those who want to radicalize and push and bring forth change. It’s from this grinding synergy that traditions organically evolve. This necessary synergy is worked right into our creation story. Fire is the one constantly changing constant in the cosmos. In some ways it echoes the theories of Heraclitus. To sum it up very, very simply, Heraclitus conceived of the world as everliving fire. He gave us the phrase “war is the father of all,” meaning that “opposites are necessary for life, but they are unified in a system of balanced exchanges. The world itself consists of a law-like interchange of elements, symbolized by fire.” (5) In order to maintain active, and productive order, there must be some measure of discord, something to strive against. This is the nature of growth and evolution.

In the sense category or world of Niflheim, there is the river Hvergelmir, which means “bubbling cauldron.” Here our story becomes a bit more complicated. It will continue to become so as we introduce more variables, more moving parts, more players in this primordial drama…and we’re going to be doing just that. This is the primordial spring, the source of all the ancient rivers of the worlds, a collection of waters called “Elivagar”. Simek notes that these rivers are he proto-sea surrounding the world. (6). That makes a certain sense to me. Water provides nourishment necessary to life materially and symbolically. Fire expands the boundaries of creation, water from Niflheim nourishes it. It nourishes it by means of eleven rivers: Svol (cool one), Gunnthro (thirst for blood/battle groove), Form (I couldn’t find any etymology for this), Finbulthul (mighty wind/speaker), Thul (murmur/roaring one), Slid (dangerously sharp), Hrid (stormy weather/tempest), Sylg (Devourer), Ylg (She-wolf), Vid (Broad one), Leipt (lightening), Gjoll (loud noise). Note that the names for the most part do nothing to conceal the potential danger inherent in such primordial powers. The raw forces of creation must be mediated, first by the transition from idea and substance into material and temporal being, and then by the Gods Themselves as they craft and transform the material building blocks into our cosmos. By themselves, they can be poison—too much, too fierce for mortality to hold. There must be mediation. (7).

I’m not going to delve into the eleven rivers right now. I’ll likely come back to this in a future article. I do want to note that in a way, the spatial orientation given for these two worlds within the Gap makes a certain kind of sense: fire leaps up, devouring and transforming, opening up all it touches, purifying it, consecrating it while rivers rush downward, not up (usually). I think the spatial divisions of Niflheim being located in the North and Muspelheim in the south reflect the inherent nature of what these worlds represent.

Now, we have the Gap. In it, Niflheim and Muspelheim are interacting. This is where things get really interesting. All of these rivers flowed far from their source (where they flowed is not clear, perhaps into the Gap itself). The venom in them hardened to ice. There was already transformation occurring, preliminary transmutation. Because the rivers didn’t stop their flow to accommodate the ice, there was a constant flood of drizzle carrying more venom. This venom froze into rime and more ice and rain and roaring winds, the latter perhaps created by the moving musculature of the rivers. The longer this process continued, the more of this brine was created. This brine is important. This primordial substance, this primordial ooze gives rise, gives birth, to the first Beings of creation. As Muspelheim and Niflheim moved closer (and perhaps this creeping ice was the cause of that spatial shift), sparks and heat from the world of fire, leapt out into the world of ice. The synergy of this contact melted the ice, transformed the rime, added something heretofore unseen. There was a moment of alchemy, a moment’s collision of complementary forces, and substance and idea, potentiality moved from the Gap, through the threshold of fire and ice interacting, into the material world. Materiality came into being in the form of the first Being, the hermaphroditic, proto-giant, Ymir. But that is a tale for another day.

For now, let it suffice to say that the universe is a symphony unfolding. I cannot help but think of music when I think of the Gap. There is rhythm there. The first time I was in Zermatt, and I heard the glaciers singing, (they do sing and groan and chant if you listen with your heart and gut), I was reminded of the crackling sounds, the roar of the Gap. That interplay of oppositional/complementary forces gives us a point and counterpoint in a grand cosmic fugue. The initial big bang may be likened to a symphony warming up, playing the first somewhat dissonant note as all the musicians tune and align their instruments and then the music begins. Creation is not a quiet thing, it is not a meek, well-ordered event. It is a rush of power loosed into being. And then power having taken form becomes subject to wyrd, power having taking form becomes potentially erratic and subject to chance. Wyrd becomes an active force with the birth of materiality and temporality. It too, begins its unfolding. Power having taken form takes on a life of its own. and soon comes temporality and spacial structure and matter begins to take shape. The next article in this series will discuss the first primordial being Ymir, the eldest being of whose essence all things in the created worlds partake, and the sacred cow Audhumla, both of whom evolved out of that primordial brine.

Notes:

1. Right away we’re confronted with the issue of cosmogonic time. Essentially, at this point in our narrative, we’re dealing with timeless moments. Temporality as such is not yet a player in our tale. It doesn’t exist. It’s not a factor in these first initial unfoldings of creation. To quote Edward Butler (who had the dubious pleasure of reading my initial draft), “Platonists were of the opinion that the sequence of events in a mythic narrative should be understood as a kind of stacking of timeless moments upon one another, so that instead of a linear unfolding of events, we get a kind of layer cake effect in each moment, which is a cross section. Part of what a cosmogony is doing is founding and grounding time itself. The first moments have to be timeless because time isn’t yet. But things that happen when time isn’t can’t have happened “then,” “before,” or “now.” They have to be happening now. ” (Private mail with E. Butler on March 8, 2015). It’s crucial to understand, really understand that while we may be forced by the constraints of language to use qualifying adverbs, to position our narrative temporally, in reality temporality did not yet exist, was not yet a factor in the discussion.

2.Poetic Edda

3. Simek, p. 303

4. Stanzas 26, 30

5. http://www.iep.utm.edu/heraclit/

6. Simek p. 73

7. This comes up again in the story of Odhroerhir as well. This powerful, incantational, creative force is lethal until it has been purified through the act of creation. Here we have a poisonous mead of inspiration that essentially carries a body count. It was created from the crushed body and soul of Kvasir, and brought death and misery to anyone it touched. Only through the alchemy of Odin and Gunnlod’s union could it be purified through the bodies of two shamans, and rendered safe for graced consumption.

Sources:

* Poetic Edda

* Prose Edda

* Edward’s Butler, (2014), Essays on the Metaphysics of Polytheism in Proclus. NY, NY: Lulu Press.

* Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Heraclitus page: http://www.iep.utm.edu/heraclit/

* Rudolf Simek, 1993), Dictionary of Northern Mythology. Cambridge, MA: D.S. Brewer.

Holiness, Good, Evil, Ethics, and Fate

Segomâros Widugeni in Nemeton Segomâros

The Two Words for Holy

In most Indo-European languages, there are two words for “holy”. In Old English for example, the word “halig”, which once meant “holy, whole, health giving” was complemented by the word wíh, which meant “sacred, set apart, belonging to the realm of the Gods”. In German, the exact same pair of words was “heilig” and “weih”. In Latin, the words were “sanctus” and “sacer”, while in Greek they were “agios” and hieros”. ¹

It is not clear that forms of these words existed in early Celtic, or in historical Gaulish, though it is likely they did. Words that seem to convey such a meaning are in the list below:

Noibos: Sacred, shining, separated out, of the realm of the Gods.²

Slanos: Holy, safe, whole, sane. ³

Iaccos: Safe, good, cure, treatment, salvation.⁴

Good and Evil

Here are some words for good and evil. The exact breakdown of which words refer to moral good versus evil, as opposed to non-moral good or high quality versus badness or uselessness, is not known.

Mati: Good, favorable, complete. ⁵

Drucos: Evil.⁶

Dagos: Good.⁷

Waxtos: Bad.⁸

Concepts of “Honor”

The Gaulish peoples, in common with the Celtic peoples in general, set great store by personal honor and reputation. Despite this, there is no single word for honor, but rather a number of words, that collectively describe the desirable person: someone of strength, victorious and prosperous, but sharing what they have, living by truth, integrity, loyalty, virtue, and above all with a good reputation.

The following list of words for aspects of “honor” and virtues is the ultimate child of the virtues found in Audacht Morainn, as interpreted by Alexei Kondratiev, translated into Gaulish using Delmarre and Matasovic. It also owes much to a list of virtues created by Maya St. Clair, in the Gaulish Polytheism Community. It should be pointed out, however, that Maya is an Irish Polytheist.

I also should take time to recommend the work of Christopher Scott Thompson on honor in the Gaelic world. It can be found on the web, particularly the website of the Cateran Society. His other work is available on his website. His work has only indirectly informed mine, but his understanding of Gaelic honor concepts in undoubtedly superior to my own. The work of Michael Newton, particularly the Handbook of the Scottish Gaelic World, should also be mentioned here. Again, there is no direct influence, but it will help give understanding of how honor-based societies worked in practice.

Eniequos: Face, honor.⁹

Boudi: Victory, prosperity.¹⁰

Clutos: Fame, a good reputation.¹¹

Nertos: Strength, vigor, power, spiritual power.¹²

Uīros: True, Just, Truth.¹³

Uīroionos: Just, Fair, Equitable, Accurate, Exact, True, Rightful, Appropriate, Due, Sound, Apposite, Straightforward.¹⁴

Uīridos: Virtue.¹⁵

Rextus: Law, right.¹⁶

Uosedlâ: Firmness, calmness, steadiness.¹⁷

Couīriâ: Loyalty, sincerity, good faith.¹⁸

Dilestos: Firm loyalty.¹⁹

Oigetocariâ: Guest friendliness, hospitality, generosity.²⁰

Inrextus: Integrity, inner rectitude.²¹

Comsamaliâ: Even-handedness, fairness, impartiality.²²

Ueliâ: Modesty, honesty.²³

Galâ: Valor, courage, ability.²⁴

Trougocariâ: Compassion, pity.²⁵

Uariâ: Duty.²⁶

Uissus: Knowledge.²⁷

Destiny and Fate

Ideas of “Fate”, Toncnaman, were inherently related to the verb toncet, “he, he, it swears”. The essence of it is that Fate was “that which is sworn”, while to swear was to destine. This leaves open who was doing the swearing. From other evidence, we can probably conjecture that it was most likely Lugus and Rosmertâ, though that will be discussed further in the chapter on deities and spirits.²⁸ & c”, https://www.academia.edu/7242277/Further_to_tongu_do_dia_toinges_mo_thuath_Mi_a_dyngaf_dynged_it_and_c]

Toncnaman: Fate, destiny.²⁹

Uatus: Prophecy, divination, poetic inspiration.³⁰

Animals

We do not have enough evidence to say if the Gauls had animal totems in any meaningful sense. Some tribes appear to have animal names, but most did not. Personal names sometimes contain animal elements, but other times do not. Certainly, animals were powerful residents of the Gaulish mental world, and could serve as symbols of deities and various qualities. Here is a list of some:

Milon: (Small) animal.³¹

Artos: Bear. Fertility, prosperity, and the products of the forest. Associated with the Goddess Artio.³²

Turcos: Boar. War and hunting, hospitality and feasting. The Otherworld.³³

Taruos: Bull. Strength, ferocity, virility. Symbolic of sky and healing deities, especially Taranis and Grannus

Bous: Cow. Fertility, nurturance, motherhood, the moon. Associated with the Goddess Sironâ, who is called Bouindâ (White Cow), and Damonâ (Great Cow).³⁴

Garanus: Crane. Water, wetlands, protection, wealth, robs warriors of the will to fight, ill-fortune, death.³⁵

Boduos: Crow. Battle, death. Accociated with Cathboduâ.³⁶

Cû: Dog. Hunting, healing, death, protection. Associated with several deities, especially the Matres and Nodens.³⁷

Uolcos: Falcon. The Heavens. Associated with Taranis, note also association with the Uolcoi tribe, one of the more powerful tribes in Celtic Europe, with multiple divisions in different regions.³⁸

Gabros: Goat. Fertility, sexuality, abundance. Associated with Lugus, by adoption of Greco-Roman Mercury symbolism.³⁹

Gansi: Goose, swan. Protection, warlike aggression. Associated with several warrior and healer deities.⁴⁰

Epos: Horse. War, battle, sovereignty, beauty, speed, sexual vigor, nobility, fertility, wealth. Associated with Eponâ above all, but also with Taranis, and other deities. ⁴¹

Esox: Salmon. Wisdom, knowledge. ⁴²

Natrîx: Serpent. Wisdom, Underworld, death and rebirth, healing, but also greed and negative forces. Associated with Sironâ but also often depicted as a chthonic monster and enemy of the Gods. Snake-monsters are killed by Taranis, but possibly tamed by Cernunnos.⁴³

Caruos: Deer, stag. Fertility, the forest, the wild, abundance, the Otherworld. Associated above all with Cernunnos.⁴⁴

Elâ: Swan. Shape-changing, Otherworld, often presented as a beautiful, shape-changing maiden.⁴⁵

Lore of the Soul

We have only a few words associated with concepts of the soul, enough to say that the concept of the soul had a bit to do with ideas of breath, the mind, and also the name. We do not have enough to really be sure of any details.

Anatiâ: Soul.⁴⁶

Anatlâ: Breath.⁴⁷

Anman: Name⁴⁸

Kommen: Memory.⁴⁹

Menman: Thought, mind.⁵⁰

Mentyon: Thought.⁵¹

Reconstruction, Revival, and Styrofoam Cake Syndrome

Rev. Tamara L. Siuda in Kemet Today

Back before I became Nisut, when I was mostly teaching people Kemetic religion face to face, I experimented with taking some students via a combination of mail correspondence and occasional telephone calls. This was before we had video chats and reliable email and a permanent streaming Internet, and it worked fairly well despite sounding like the slowest thing ever to our modern tech minds.

I had a student who came to me from a personal practice of Kemetic religion, one we’d probably label now as “Kemetic reconstructionism.” He was serious about making sure that his religion matched the ancient religion as closely as possible, down to teaching himself how to cook ancient foods, create his own ritual clothing out of the proper kind of linen, and teaching himself the ancient language as best he could. He was intelligent and very well educated, eager to know everything and sincere in his practice. He worked very hard at getting his rituals just so, from the proper timing to the proper gestures and offerings. I had a great deal of respect for the amount of effort he put into the craft of his religion, even if I did not always agree with his methods, or think that the gods would punish him if he used six figs for his Sweet-is-the-Truth offering instead of seven, because one fell on the floor when he was moving the platter into the shrine room.

For years, I simply indulged his obsession with “getting it right,” offering him academic sources to find out more about the fuzzy areas he wasn’t sure about, divining when he felt that something wasn’t correct and needed correcting, or reassuring him that his best efforts really were not ruined by one tiny mistake. During our time together, my own practice took on more of a form, from being strictly devotional to growing into its own temple and its own, living form of that ancient religion he wanted to reconstruct. At some point, I introduced the Rite of the Senut, the central daily ritual that every member of the Kemetic Orthodoxy shares in, and I remember him being very excited about it. He couldn’t wait to try it out, and several of our phone calls were involved with his describing to me how he’d tracked down the proper sort of libation jar, and how he was working on the proper sorts of offerings to match up with the sources I’d provided for the ancient part of the rite. He understood that Senut wasn’t entirely ancient, but for his part, he wanted to make sure the ancient part was “authentic,” so he was putting much effort into getting it all into place before he would try Senut for the first time.

We went back and forth over offering bread. I mentioned that the standard daily offering loaf was either a small, unleavened loaf like a modern lavash or pita, or a cone-like cake baked in a terra-cotta pot. He researched everything he could get his hands on about ancient breads, trying out various recipes, but ultimately being upset that he couldn’t re-create the shape of a particular loaf of bread he’d seen depicted in a tomb painting. I provided the archaeological context and even showed him how he could make a terra-cotta bread mold to duplicate THAT loaf of bread, if it was that important to him. I pointed out that there are modern cookies and biscuits that have the exact same shapes, if he was worried about his baking skills. Nothing seemed to satisfy.

One day I got a message from him asking if he could call. The conversation went something like this:

“You won’t believe what happened! I got the bread right and I did the Senut! But I have a question.”

“Congratulations! I’m really glad. I know you’ve been working at it for a long time. What’s the question?”

“Remember how I was having trouble with the bread loaf?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Well, I was at Michael’s looking for some paint so I could retouch the hieroglyphs on the offering table, and I noticed that in the floral section, they had these styrofoam cones that were exactly the same shape and size as the bread loaf in the Petosiris painting….so I bought one and painted it so it looks just like the loaf there, and I used it in my offering! But now I don’t know what to do with it now that I offered it.”

“You eat it.”

“…what?”

“It’s an offering loaf. The bread is an offering of life to the gods, and once it’s reverted to you, then you eat it.”

“But I can’t eat it! It’s made out of styrofoam!”

I tell this story as a funny anecdote, but it illustrates something very important at the heart of Kemetic “reconstructionism,” or any reconstructionism or revival or whatever you want to label a modern polytheism based on an ancient one. There’s an important difference between what an ancient polytheism does — or how one acts in that religion — and why one acts in that way. Is the importance of the offering bread that it is shaped or colored a certain way, or offered on a certain kind of plate, or made with a certain kind or number of ingredients? Or is it important because it’s bread? Or is it simply that the gods are given a food item?

The Shinto poet Matsuo Basho, who also lived during a period of thoughtful, intense polytheist reconstructionism, wrote: “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old. Seek what they sought.” When I came to my work with Kemetic Orthodoxy, despite that Basho never worshipped the same gods that I do, I took his advice to heart, and it has remained with me since. It is just as important to know the how of one’s polytheism, as it is to know the why. Rituals are important to us as polytheists, often to the exclusion of creed or belief, whether we are the polytheists of today or five thousand years ago. Going through the motions of a ritual with neither a purpose nor an understanding of the meanings of those motions is pointless. Especially for post-Enlightenment polytheists, for whom the cult of Reason has been given its own, large altar by the secular world we also live within, the idea of doing rituals just to make them look like someone else’s rituals is absurd. If we do not believe in commandment or creed, why should we then demand such requirements of the way our polytheistic practices are done? We must be wary not to replace the gospels of the “book religions” with new gospels by archaeologists, ethnographers, ancient writers, or even the paintings of bread in a tomb. If we are to succeed at living religion, we must live it, not merely copy it from a model.

Even the psychological and other benefits of making our rituals to resemble those of the religions from which they are derived must be balanced against their purposes and intentions. Our offerings need to be offerings, not pictures (or styrofoam models!) of offerings, if they are to be offerings and not simulacra. For as serious as we take ourselves, we need to be careful to avoid false equation, or only a surface rendering, of the important subjects of cultic practice we seek to study or to engage in. Knowing the why of our religion just as well as the what of it becomes a crucial balance, and the way in which we breathe life into our practices. It is how we create living religion instead of spiritual theatre, and how we approach the real gods who exist outside our minds in an equally real way.

Samos, Giamos, Bitouesc – Summer, Winter, and Worlds

Segomâros Widugeni in Nemeton Segomâros

The ancient Gaulish worldview can only be known in general outline, and then mostly from linguistics. We have no great literature in Gaulish, as we do in Greek, Latin, Irish, and Welsh. We have only inscriptions and what can be pieced together from comparative studies. Still, given the paucity of evidence at our disposal, it is surprising how much we can know. We can get ideas of seasons and cosmic principles, of Three Worlds in space, of directional symbolism,, good, evil, honor, destiny and Fate, animal symbolism, and the soul. Together, these comparative scraps of evidence allow us to sketch the lineaments of a worldview.

Cosmic Principles:

Built into the Celtic languages and worldviews are two great cosmic principles that exist in a system of complementary duality. Each is needed to complete the cosmos. Neither by itself can support life and wholeness. We have no direct evidence as to whether the Gauls had words for such principles, but linguistic reconstruction suggests that the words existed in Old Common Celtic, so it would be surprising if the words didn’t survive into Gaulish.

Here, we use the terms from Alexei Kondratiev’s Apple Branch, with meanings taken from Kondratiev, the Brothers Rees’ Celtic Heritage, and a touch of intuition.

Samos: The cosmic principle of the summer, the light, daytime, the Upper World, the living, order, the tame, and the mundane.¹

Giamos: The cosmic principle of the winter, the dark, nighttime, the Lower World, the dead, chaos, the wild, and the magical.²

The alternation of these principles, in the form of day and night, or summer and winter, or waxing and waning moons has profound meaning. It is the means by which time and the calendar are generated.³ It determines which spiritual influences are dominant at any time, and which activities are of good omen.

The Three Worlds:

Modern, Irish-based Celtic Reconstructionists tend to use the three worlds of Land, Sea, and Sky in their practice.⁴ They base this on well-founded mainstream scholarship of early Irish cosmology, which finds the belief reflected in the Irish epic the Táin Bo Cualigne, as well as in various oaths and prayers. ⁵

There is evidence for this same belief among the Gauls as well, in the form of Strabo’s famous quote that the Celts on the Danube “feared nothing so much as that the sky might fall on them”.

Celtic linguists recognize native words for “Heaven”, “Earth” or “the World”, and “the Deep”, in the Celtic languages, that have similar connotations to Land, Sea, and Sky. These include attested words in Gaulish⁶ The archaeological evidence of Gaulish sacrifice, while ambiguous and of many types, reveals at least two kinds that are most likely to celestial and infernal deities.⁷

With that in mind, we can sketch the outlines of a cosmic system. Essentially, it consists of Sky, This World, and the Deep, with the possibility of a World Tree linking them, though this last is conjectural. It resembles the system of Land, Sea, and Sky closely, though I see no reason not to use the Gaulish terms for these things, since we have them, and their connotations are quite different from any words in English.

Albios: The Sky, home of celestial deities, celestial bodies, with connotations of light, purity, and Truth, source of power for the Samos principle⁸

Nemos: Sky, another word for Albios, above, though perhaps more restricted in meaning to the physical sky.⁹

Bitus: This world, home of humanity, animals, plants, and various spirits, acted upon by the Upper and Lower worlds.¹⁰

Mori: Sea, another word for Dumnos below, though definitely more restricted in meaning to the watery sea.¹¹

Dumnos: The Deep, home of Chthonic Deities, spirits of the dead, and certain dark spirits, connotations of darkness, fertility, and mysterious power, source of power for the Giamos principle. ¹²

Bilios: A tree, by extension the World Tree, linking the Three Worlds. Conjectural.¹³

Celestial and Chthonic:

According to Delmarre, there were also attested Gaulish words for “celestial” or “uranian” and “chthonic”.¹⁴ This supports our argument here that the Three Worlds and two cosmic principles were important elements of Gaulish cosmology. That there were words for worlds, descriptive terms for things from above and things from below, and differences in ritual in some places and times, all suggest the centrality of a cosmic system emphasizing the shining Heavens, the dark Deep, and the world between them, over which they alternated influence.

Ueronados: From above, pertaining to Albios, celestial.¹⁵

Andernados: From below, pertaining to Dumnos, chthonic, infernal.¹⁶

The Directions:

The orientation of the directions in Celtic cultures is well-accepted in Celtic linguistics, and in Indo-European linguistics more broadly. The person at the center stands facing East. The West is behind him or her. The South is to the right hand, and the North to the left hand. The South is of good omen, and the North of ill omen¹⁷ The system below reproduces all that, and adds my own conjecture that the East, being the place of sunrise, is to be associated with Samos, while the West, being the place of sunset, is to be associated with Giamos. I also add ideas from the Brothers Rees on the importance of the Center. I do not use the rest of the Irish directional system preserved in The Settling of the Manor of Tara, because I find little convincing evidence of its being known in Gaul.

Are: East, before, in front of, direction of Samos. ¹⁸

Dexsiuos: South, at the right hand, favorable.¹⁹

Eri: West, behind, rear, direction of Giamos.²⁰

Tutos: North, at the left hand, unfavorable.²¹

Medios: Of the middle, central, the center.²²

1 Alexei Kondratiev, The Apple Branch: a Path to Celtic Ritual, pp. 97-104; Alwin and Brinley Rees, Celtic Heritiage: Ancient Tradition in Ireland and Wales, pp. 83-89

2 Kondratiev, The Apple Branch, pp. 97-104; Rees and Rees, pp. 83-89

3 Rees and Rees, pp. 83-89

4 Erynn Rowan Laurie, Aedh Rua O’Morrighu, John Machate, Kathryn Price Theatana, Kym Lambert ní Dhoireann, Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism, in: Telesco, Patricia [editor] (2005) Which Witch is Which? Franklin Lakes, NJ, New Page Books / The Career Press ISBN 1-56414-754-1, p. 85-9.

5 Loughlin, Annie, Sources for the Three Realms, http://www.tairis.co.uk/cosmology/sources-for-the-three-realms

6 Delmarre, Dictionnaire de la Langue Gauloise, pp. 37-38; pp. 76-77; pp. 150-151.

7 Jean-Louis Brunaux, The Celtic Gauls: Gods, Rites, Sanctuaries, pp.119-125

8 Xavier Delmarre, Dictionnaire de la Langue Gauloise, pp. 37-38; Rees and Rees, pp. 83-89; Kevin Jones, A Consideration of the Iconography of Romano-Celtic Religion with Respect to Archaic Elements of Celtic Mythology, http://www.summerlands.com/crossroads/library/kevin_dissertation.html; Ceisiwr Serith, Deep Ancestors: Practicing the Religion of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, pp. 25-34

9 Xavier Delmarre, Dictionnaire de la Langue Gauloise, pp. 233-234

10 Delmarre, pp. 76-77; Rees and Rees, pp. 83-89; Serith, Deep Ancestors, pp. 25-34

11 Xavier Delmarre, Dictionnaire de la Langue Gauloise, pp. 228

12 Delmarre, pp. 150-151 and others; Rees and Rees, pp. 83-89; Serith, Deep Ancestors, p. 25-34

13 Delmarre, p. 75; Serith, Deep Ancestors, p.25-34

14 Delmarre, p47, 315

15 Delmarre, p. 315

16 Delmarre, p. 47

17 Serith, Deep Ancestors pp. 33-34

18 Delmarre, p. 52; Rees and Rees, pp. 122-123, 173-185; Serith Deep Ancestors, pp. 25-34; Raimund Karl, The Court of Law in Iron age Celtic Societies, pp. 8, 16

19 Delmarre, pp. 142-143; Rees and Rees, pp. 122-123, 173-185; Serith, Deep Ancestors, pp. 25-34; Karl, The Court of Law, pp. 8, 16

20 Ranko Matasovic, Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic, p. 118; Rees and Rees, pp. 122-123, 173-185; Serith, Deep Ancestors, pp. 25-34; Karl, The Court of Law, p. 8, 16

21 Matasovic, p. 387; Rees and Rees, pp. 122-123, 173-185; Serith, Deep Ancestors, p. 25-34; Karl, The Court of Law, pp. 8, 16

22 Delmarre, p. 221; Rees and Rees, pp. 122-123, 173-185

Adbertos Yemoni – The Sacrifice of Yemonos

Segomâros Widugeni in Nemeton Segomâros

This document is written in my own rather crude, simplified dialect of Gaulish, in 2010. I still use long and short vowels, which are essential to the rhythm of it, though not the official metre. I wrote it during a long and boring meeting, in which I was not expected to speak. I have not checked the vocabulary in Delmarre’s Dictionnaire de la Langue Gauloise, nor in Matasovic’s Etymological dictionary of Proto-Celtic. In any case, this is an artistic conceit, and not to be taken too seriously. The myth is proto-Indo-European, from Bruce Lincoln’s Death, War, and Sacrifice, and not Celtic, though Ariomanus is a real Gaulish name, found in inscriptions in Pannonia and Noricum. I’m using him here as a stand in for the proto-Indo-European Manu.

The poem is written in a rather simplified Saturnian metre, for the first 4 stanzas, though the last is non-metrical. I use too much repetition to make it work, but it works nonetheless. The scheme is essentially four lines per stanza, each line of 13 syllables, divided into half-lines separated by a caesura. Each half-line has 7 to 8 syllables. It alliterates fairly adequately.

So, on to Adbertos Yemoni:

Wer noxtion cinton                  nebuwânt bitus tirroswe
Nebuwânt in wiryî                   sâwelios lugrâwe
Nebuwânt ander nemon                caitoi abonâswe
Nebuwânt ander nemon                sleiboi swâ lânoiwe

In noxtiobi cintobi                 buwânt tri cawâroi
Buwântyos Aryomanus,                Yemonos, Tritiosc
Buwât bous co eyobi                 myolkobous co eyobi
Tri cawâroi bousc                   in noxtiobi cintobi

In notxtiobi cintobi                tri cawâroi âwont
Cawâroi âwont bitun                 es credê Yemoni
Seueyon credon swâ                  Yemonos adbertât
Sueeyon bîwin                       in noxtiobi cintobi

In noxtiobi cintobi                 cawâroi adbertânt
Aryomanus adbertât                  Yemonon adbertât
Sueeyon bratren                     Aryomanus adbertât
Bratren adbertâtis                  in noxtiobi cintobi

Au eyon cnamobi                     krakus âwonto
Au eyon cîcî                        talamun âwoto
Au eyon waitê                       morin âwoto
Au eyon anatlî                      weton âwoto
Au eyon râdiyins                    nellus âwonto
Au eyon enequon                     sâwelion âwoto
Au eyon anatiyin                    tenon noibon âwoto


On the first night                  there were not world or land
There were not, in truth            sun or moon
There were not, under heaven        forests or rivers
There were not, under heaven        mountains or plains

In the first nights                 there were three heroes
Who were Aryomanus,                 Yemonos, and Tritios
There was a cow with them           a milk-cow with them
Three heroes and a cow              in the first nights

In the first nights                 the heroes made
The heroes made the world from      the body of Yemonos
His own body, so                    Yemonos sacrificed
His own life                        in the first nights

In the first nights                 the heroes sacrificed
Aryomanus sacrificed                Yemonos he sacrificed
His own brother                     Aryomanus sacrificed
The brother he sacrificed           in the first nights

From his bones                      the stones were made
From his flesh                      the ground was made
From his blood                      the sea was made
From his breath                     the wind was made
From his thoughts                   the clouds were made
From his face/honor                 the sun was made
From his soul                       the sacred fire was made

Caring and Exchange in Relationships

Tess Dawson in Spring and Stone

We people are social creatures. As such, most of us have one other being in our lives—a child, a friend, a sibling, a partner or spouse, an animal companion—that we communicate with on a regular basis. For most of us, that even means that we may see someone we care about at least once a day or come into contact with them through phone or internet. We have relationships, connections, associations, shared time and shared experiences, with these beings that we interact with frequently. Strong relationships are built over time and with effort, and through caring for another, and through exchange with one another. This is true of human relationships as well as deepening relationships with deities and ancestors.

There’s a tricky balancing act in relationships here that wavers between two ends of a spectrum. While one end looks “self-serving”, and the other end looks “self-sacrificing,” they can end up resulting in the same potential dysfunction when they have their roots in mistaking exchange in a relationship as caring in a relationship. Exchange and caring are not the same thing and are not interchangeable. One is a Lego and the other is a K’nex and you can’t use a K’nex rod where you need a Lego block even though K’nex and Legos can both can be used to build things.

Caring about someone else in a relationship doesn’t involve “Hey, I did X for you and now I see you as obligated to do Y for me.” For instance, Tina and Rufus are two kids hanging out together in a park. Rufus is putting stickers on his scooter and Tina wants one. She says to Rufus, “Hey, I gave you a gum in math class. Can I have a sticker for my bike?” Sometimes Tina might not even say “Hey, I gave you gum in math class” but she’ll be thinking of it when she asks Rufus for a sticker, and there’s an expectation that Rufus will remember the gum, and then because of it he will share his stickers. This kind of exchange, like what Tina and Rufus had, can and does happen in most relationships. It can be a good and useful thing, and it can foster relationships, but it’s not to be confused as caring for the other person.

On the other end of the same spectrum, sometimes a person will confuse caring as “giving,” especially in “giving” more than they really want to give or can give. It’s not really “giving” because it’s not a gift: a gift is given with no strings or obligations attached; and it’s not actually being “self-sacrificing” because self-sacrifice is a matter of giving up something to help others. Instead it is a willful extension, or in many cases a willful overextension of one’s efforts and resources. Sometimes people don’t realize it, but this kind of intentional overextension is actually done with the desire for an exchange. This isn’t really done out of caring no matter how much that party stresses “But I did it all for you! I was just being nice!” For instance, Tyrone often takes notes for Nik because Nik likes skipping class—it’s a morning class and Nik doesn’t do mornings. Tyrone even lets Nik cheat off of him for the test, and Tyrone does a good lion’s share of the work when they’re partners on projects. Nik didn’t ask for Tyrone to do all of this, but he’s not refusing Tyrone’s efforts, either, and Tyrone keeps doing these things. Tyrone thinks he and Nik are good friends. When Tyrone suddenly has to go out of town one week, he’s seriously angry when Nik didn’t think to take notes and help him out just as he’s been helping Nik. Tyrone had been expecting Nik to reciprocate even though he didn’t ask Nik. He thought Nik had his back, and he’s angry to find out that after all he did for Nik, Nik was “just using” him. Nik just thought Tyrone was a “nice guy,” and thought of Tyrone’s efforts as gifts, free and clear of obligation. Nik doesn’t understand now why Tyrone is giving him the silent treatment.

Another example of this secondary end of the spectrum would be when Veronica says to her son Jules, “I brought life to you, and you don’t want to come to dinner this weekend? Fine. I’ll be ok, don’t worry about me, here, alone, with this turkey I cooked for you getting cold. You go and have a good time. No, really, I mean it.” In this example, Veronica stated “Hey, I did X for you” as “I brought life to you…” and, even if it isn’t explicitly stated that “Now I see you as obligated to do Y for me” she still sees Jules as obligated to visit her.

Sometimes, too, what can appear as a reciprocal exchange can end up one-sided. In Tyron’s case he chose to overextend himself and think of himself as “being giving,” but he was angry at Nik for not reciprocating: remember, a gift is freely given without expectation of reciprocation. Or, there’s Veronica’s case: Jules must figure out what Veronica’s cloaked demand is, cope with Veronica’s emotional appeal, and then decide whether or not he can or wants to comply with the demand. I say “cloaked demand” here not so much because the demand is unknown—sometimes it is, and sometimes it’s not, and sometimes although it isn’t explicitly stated it can still be glaringly obvious. I say “cloaked demand” more because the demand itself is cloaked under Veronica’s misdirection of emotional pleas and overextension, and further hidden under the appearance of kindness and request.

Make no mistake, Veronica is not requesting Jules to visit, she’s demanding him to visit, and she’s couched it carefully in terms Jules cannot refuse without looking like a Bad Person, but all the while she misdirects the matter so that it looks like she isn’t being demanding. Veronica doesn’t want to admit she makes demands because she believes that making demands means she’s a Bad Person, so she makes the demands but tries to compose those demands so that they are less obvious to herself, to Jules, and to anyone else watching. Even though Veronica has posed herself as the poor lonely mother who is a victim of her son’s potential callousness if he refuses her demand, she’s actually exhibiting controlling behavior that leaves Jules more at risk of being a victim than herself. Veronica could be doing this consciously to influence Jules into doing what she wants, but there’s also the possibility that Veronica is at least partially oblivious to what she’s doing. Often it’s both: some part of her is aware of what she’s doing, and some part of her isn’t, but she may never even admit it to herself.

Of the two ends of this spectrum “self-serving” and “self-sacrificing,” they can both result in the same thing: mistaking exchange as caring when they are not the same thing. One end of that spectrum is a little more obvious and honest in its demands for an exchange, like Tina and Rufus, but still runs the risk of confusing exchange and caring. However, like at the other end of the spectrum, like Tyrone towards Nik and Veronica towards Jules, there is also a desire for exchange of some sort. Veronica in particular dresses up exchange so as to make it look more like caring, and thus she confuses the issue for herself and for Jules. She does this to make Jules feel more keenly the stress of the demanded obligation so that he will comply and she’ll get what she wants. There’s less emotional leverage between Tyrone and Nik, but Tyrone still overextends himself and expects Nik to reciprocate without being upfront with himself and with Nik about his expectations.

Furthermore, sometimes that redirection is so good that like in the example of Tyrone and Nik, Tyrone may not even be able to see it himself. If Nik doesn’t fill the demand that Tyrone thinks he’s obligated to fulfill, Tyrone may end up becoming resentful and thinking he does “all the work” in that friendship. Tyrone’s misdirection may work so well that even he buys his own illusion. Tyrone’s resentment has its roots in believing his own misdirection instead of realizing the problem lay in his confusing his one-sided exchanges with Nik as caring, and in compounding the problem with emotional misdirection. The same is true of Veronica towards Jules; in this case, Veronica tells herself that her caring is unrequited, when really it is her not-quite-so-honest and inappropriate exchange which is unrequited. The caring may or may not be there, but that’s a different issue entirely from exchange.

It’s easier to see this kind of confusion in others at first than it is to see it in ourselves, but at least if we admit it and know that it can be there within us, we know to keep an eye out for it. When we do, we’re more likely to catch this sort of thing if and when it happens within our own behavior and then we can consciously decide if that’s really how we want to behave in our relationships or not.

In caring, being kind, you actually have to put the needs of the other being above your own, if only for a short time, without the expectation of exchange and without being resentful if the other party cannot or will not reciprocate. An act of complete caring without the expectation of exchange is rare. An act of exchange without caring is much more common than an act of caring without expectation of exchange. However, most people will admit to caring at least a token amount for someone with whom they have some kind of regular exchange. Sometimes even just regular, habitual acts of exchange over time can eventually lead to a caring relationship: a friendship can arise from one neighbor offering to shovel snow for another neighbor in exchange for dinners over the course of a winter. The act of caring and the act of exchange are both valuable and necessary acts in relationships. Caring is indeed more valuable, but that does not make exchange worthless or no good. Quite the contrary, exchange is a vital part of relationships, it’s just a different part of relationships than caring. Caring cannot substitute for exchange; nor can exchange substitute for caring. Most of the time acts in relationship exhibit a combination of both caring and exchange, even though the two are not the same thing.

Needing exchange and wanting exchange are not bad in themselves and will not alone make someone the dreaded Bad Person. (Demanding and forcing exchange at the expense and harm of another person, however, is more towards the territory—if not completely in the territory—of being a Bad Person, depending on the acts and the circumstances.) But dressing up what is more of a desire for exchange in the mask of “caring” will place a barrier of dishonesty between the parties in a relationship, and prevent a person from interacting in that relationship in a more honest, genuine, and authentic way, and it will prevent the very thing a person usually seeks to do in the first place: deepen that relationship. This is an important thing right here. The deities and the ancestors see through all of this artful misdirection that we put ourselves through, and when we’re not honest with them and not honest inside our own heads with ourselves, we end up not deepening those relationships as we claim that we want to. We could be cheating Them and ourselves out of what could be “the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”