On Frith and Wyrd | Home | Clergy Program | Contact | Join | Links | Member Services | Organization | Our Faith | Resources | On Frith and Wyrd William Bainbridge Discussions of Wyrd as it conditions our lives often center around the phenomenon of the significant deed. While the sum total of people's actions in the world might sometimes appear to us more or less as stochastic white noise out of which vague and contradictory patterns emerge, transform themselves, thumb their noses at us and are reabsorbed into the Web Of Meaningless Probability, some of those actions, both our own and others', exercise a clear and continuing influence over the course of our lives, occasionally out of all proportion to their physical effects. Of course, it is true that one of the marks of what we think of as wisdom consists in the aptitude for discerning patterns and significance where others see none, and some even say that Wyrd is so tightly woven that there really is no such thing as chance or randomness at all, a view with which I have some sympathy, but which I have no ability to verify even to my own satisfaction. Nonetheless, we certainly perceive some acts and events, human and divine, as authoritatively influential in both a physical and metaphysical sense, and our lore amply supports this; Bauschatz's The Well and the Tree is effectively about little else, in fact, and it is one of the best examinations of Wyrd lore that we have. In a sense, our blots, sumbels, oaths and other characteristic practices can be seen primarily as mechanisms for creating times, places and frameworks wherein we can influence our Wyrd by means of especially significant acts and speech, though we frequently fail to recognize and take advantage of those opportunities. An act is impossible without a relationship. That is, an act is perceived through the change in someone's or something's state of being, which could not happen unless there were some degree of relationship between the subject and object of the act. Sometimes, the relationship seems to be simply physical: two people/things exist at the same time, in close enough physical proximity for one to change the state of the other in some way. Sometimes, it can be primarily a matter of mind; one reads something, for example, that alters the course of one's life by causing one to see that life in different terms. To non-materialists, it even appears possible for such intellectual acts, as well as emotional and spiritual ones, to take place without a direct physical link at all. With acts that we perceive as highly significant, though, the relationship, and the change in states we experience, often exist on many levels, including levels that are unconscious or that we only imperfectly perceive, let alone understand. Ordinarily, the more levels on which we are related to someone or something, the more significant we perceive that person's or thing's acts or changes in states to be. And of course, the more extensive the relationship between the subject and object of an act, the more likely it is that the actor's state of being will be changed by the act, and by the change in the relationship between actor and "actee" that is a consequence of the act. One of the fundamental perceptions we have of Wyrd is the tendency of acts to ripple out in all directions from the point at which they take place, creating consequences far beyond what was intended or perceived at the time. Eric Wodening entitled one of his books, We Are Our Deeds, and in a very real sense, who we become over our lives is a function of our understanding, acceptance and/or rejection of the consequences of our interaction with that part of the web of being with which we have come in contact. Indeed, it could be argued that the "great work" of being Heathen is to become aware of an ever-wider sphere of those consequences, and to become ever more skillful at crafting our interaction with the world so as to produce consequences that appear to us as constructive--and through so doing, to become "truer" to what we see as the appropriate way for people, or at least for us, to be and act in the world. We do the right things through becoming the kind of people who do right things, and it is the conscious, deliberate doing of right things that strengthens our will and increases our power to become that kind of person. For example, in "Oaths: What They Mean and Why They Matter," Winifred Rose discusses the use of formal oaths or boasts in order to increase the beneficial effects on one's own character and Wyrd of performing worthwhile acts. So for a Heathen, the highest good is found in acting in relationship to others, not sitting quietly and contemplating the universe, although doing so occasionally might turn out to be an effective aid in learning to live in a "true" way. If acting in the world is something of a Heathen spiritual and moral imperative, then, it becomes extremely important for us to place ourselves in circumstances where significant and "right" acts are possible. In the modern world, this is not always as easy as it sounds. Western societies are large and complex, and apart from families, relationships are often temporary or depersonalized. Many people, for example, spend most of their waking time at work, where their actions are guided much more by professional expectations and economic necessity than by moral or ethical judgments of right and unright conduct. People move more readily than was the case in previous centuries, and often have only passing or no relationships with neighbors and members of the local community, giving rise to a feeling of being anonymous in society. This effect is heightened by the cultural adherence to an economic ideology whereby a person's value is determined by what he or she can sell him-/herself for in an impersonal, and often inhumane, marketplace. Thus, many people feel, or at least seem to act as if they feel, that what they do that is not for money does not much matter, and what they do for money need not be subject to any particularly rigorous set of spiritual, moral or ethical standards, so long as there is no controlling legal authority making it against the law. An additional problem is that the size and complexity of modern society makes it less comprehensible in human terms. In order for an act or event to become significant for us, it is not enough that it result in a change in our state of being; we must somehow be able to comprehend the connection between the act and its consequence, and the nature or character of the change that has occurred. In people and gods both, there seem to be limits to the complexities by which something can be characterized and still remain comprehensible, though at least some of the gods and some of us continually strive to expand those limits. In traditional societies, the individual is tied to the community by many and close relationships, through which a person can see his/her actions reflected in their effects on others, just as a good concert hall has a lively enough acoustic response to allow the musicians to hear and adjust the music they are playing. The modern world, by contrast, can sometimes seem like a vast, dead space, where one shouts into the emptiness without ever hearing much more than a muffled and indifferent hint of a sound to indicate that one exists at all. Because modern mass societies have grown beyond the limits of natural human comprehensibility, they tend to abstract, and thereby impersonalize, things more readily and extensively--we must deal in abstracts because we are no longer in near enough relation to the things themselves to understand or deal with them individually. A functioning tribal/traditional society, on the other hand, depends very heavily on not abstracting certain significant people, relationships and things into impersonal cost-benefit analyses, or evaluating them on the basis of abstract theories, ideologies, or even moralities; things remain very personal, and therefore, comprehensible in human terms. One can see Frith, then, as the organic structure of meaningful relationships that, in the Germanic Heathen societies, made the world, and the individual's place in it, comprehensible, and thereby made possible the significant acts that were essential in increasing one's store of megin, or spiritual power, and in working out one's Wyrd. Frith established a series of concentric circles of decreasingly meaningful relationships, carrying with them a decreasingly extensive set of obligations and expectations, as one moved from the center to the periphery. The most significant relationships were those of family, clan and very close friends, with the relationships among tribe or local community members following closely after that. Next came members of the greater ethnic/cultural group, to the extent that differed from the tribe. From the innermost circle to the wider, duties and expectations were personal; the distance between the clan member and the ruling chief, council or king was measured in a very few links sealed by bonds or, often enough, oaths of loyalty and obligation running in both directions. The circle of the clan was naturally limited by blood and marriage relationships; that of the tribe by the tribal structures, common origin, mysteries and shared participation in tribal life; and that of the ethnic/cultural group by the shared history, values and world-view that defined and informed the group. Beyond that group was the utgard, where an entirely different set of laws, principles and relationships held sway, for which the individual was rarely responsible. In the same way, traditional relationships with the divine world were often distinguished according to the strength and closeness of the bonds between gods/spirits and the individual or group. In Heathenry, the gods themselves roam the worlds seeking after answers to the great questions of life, but at the same time, craft their deeds according to a hierarchy of relationship based on the history of past deeds and the affinities between their, and our, natures. The ancient Heathens knew well, probably much better than most modern people, that the world is a vast and mysterious place, containing a virtually infinite array of levels of understanding and meaning, and many different sets of laws, peoples and gods; but they also believed and understood that the gods and spirits bound closely to their own lives, histories and characters were best suited to the kinds of ongoing interaction that would prove meaningful and constructive to them. The relationship was not abstract, based on a dispassionate comparison of theologies, ethical and philosophical standards and projected afterlife benefits, but rather, was intensely and intimately personal, and could never be duplicated by simply deciding to practice a different religion. As noted previously, although Wyrd is the weaving together of the sum total of past and present acts and their consequences, some acts appear to stand out as having especially significant consequences. This, too, was understood in a very personal way in ancient Heathenry. They wanted to improve their lives just as much as modern people do, but understood much better than modern society that the state of our lives, and the way in which we experience that state, is generally a reflection of the state of our characters. In order to obtain respect and a secure position within their society, it was necessary to become a strong, self-reliant and wise person, and that required experience, megin and "luck," all of which could be obtained through acting well. One started out with a given set of determining conditions, or orlog, that were the result of inheritance and the community into which one was born, but just as one's orlog at birth was the totality of all the causes that had been laid down to make things what they were, so it was possible to lay down one's own causes, in the form of significant acts, to be woven into the fabric of one's character, that would increase one's inner strength so that one could hope to bring about positive outer changes in one's life. However, the significance of an act depended upon a context of meaning that gave it significance: that is, a set of people who would understand and be affected by the act, and a world view and value system in which the act was both right and powerful. Frith is thus the natural and indigenous Heathen response to Wyrd. Wyrd was and is how Heathens saw and see the world as functioning, and Frith is how the ancient, and some modern, Heathens try to make it function in ways that are constructive for themselves and, ultimately, for the world and Wyrd as well. Deeds without inner power fail, or fall into the Well without appreciably helping shape the world-tree that draws its sustenance from that Well. Lives without inner power are blown, as leaves fallen from that tree, from one event to another without bringing--without forging--meaning out of those events, or bringing strength to other lives. The web of relationship built on Frith gave people ways and paths by which they could acquire that inner power for themselves and their deeds, and could strive to empower others with whom they were bound in that web; and it can do that for us as well, if we can somehow find ways to restore the same kind of power and meaning to our relationships with our chosen Heathen friends and fellow-travelers. But if we would have for ourselves the benefits of this ancient and empowering way of relating to one another, we should not delude ourselves that we can have it entirely on our own, modern, terms. For human relationships of Frith to bring their full measure of meaning and power to our deeds, they need to be with real humans, not abstractions we create in our heads to substitute for the people we do not have the time or energy to seek out. The abstract "community of the faithful" of Christianity was never something that marked the relationships or thinking of Heathens living in real clans, villages and tribes. For laws and guiding principles to confer the power of Frith upon our acts, they must come from the traditions, judgments and consciences of the Frith-bound community, and must reaffirm loyalty and commitment to that community, rather than coming only from our individual perceptions of what is right under the circumstances, and affirming principally our individual right to say and do whatever we think best. For our deeds to shine with Frith-born power so that they claim their right to help shape the course of Wyrd herself, they must really do something, something that echoes from the frithstead's walls, changing the perceptions and lives of those within. Words were important, and were remembered, in the ancient communities that lived by Frith, but deeds were always what spoke most truly and finally. And for modern communities of Heathen folk looking for inspiration to our ancient and honored traditions, Frith among them, to find and grasp the power and the faith to form such relationships, live by such laws and principles, and perform such deeds, we will have to expect them of one another, expect them with the unabashed passion, fierce gazes, long memories and unyielding life-affirmation of the Heathen ancestors we toast so resolutely at sumbel. In Heathen religion, many, probably most of us do not suppose our gods to be absolute, exclusive, or even universally superior manifestations of the divine in its interaction with humanity. We generally recognize, in fact, that there are other levels of reality, including "spiritual" reality, beyond them, and other relationships between peoples and gods that have some or many similarities to our own. Our lore tells us that the gods are also subject to Wyrd, in more or less the same way we are; they can influence it in various ways, but cannot change the fact that everything that has been done, including their own deeds, will bring about consequences through the implacable operation of cause and effect. We profess our loyalty to and trust in these gods, not because they are all-powerful or promise us goodies, but because we perceive--we know--that the bonds between them and us are unlike any other religious or metaphysical links we have known or could forge with other religious truths or divine beings in their depth, breadth, intimacy and appropriateness to our own lives and ways of understanding life. In the religious/spiritual realm, then, they are our kin and our "clan," the innermost of the concentric circles of Frith, where lie the heaviest obligations, the most extensive expectations, and where the smallest acts or changes of one can affect and transform the whole set of relationships. As we spend years in this state of Frith, our understanding of them increases with our commitment, and at some point it becomes virtually unthinkable that the bond could be arbitrarily severed. They become a part of us; we hear their voices in our words and thoughts, and sometimes also believe that they feel and change the world through our hands. This is the kind of religion our tribal ancestors practiced, and it is the antithesis of the spiritual mall that is so much of contemporary religion. Here, too, our power to sense, experience, understand in some degree and even touch and change Wyrd, ours and that of the spiritual tradition of which we are a part, lies in the depth, complexity and rootedness of the relationship between our gods and ourselves. It is the relationship that gives our religious acts significance and transformative power, not a particular set of theological beliefs or liturgical formulas. Although Frith is often translated as "peace," it means that only in a very specialized sense: for Frith to remain whole and powerful, the relationships within the frithstead must be maintained correctly, which is to say, according to the traditional laws and principles, with due concern for the rights and dignity of the individuals concerned, but with the interests of the frithstead accorded the highest consideration. The peace within the frithstead that this creates is not simply the negative type of peace in which conflict is rare, but connotes rather the positive state wherein the frithstead's members are actively committed to the common weal. In the same way, the laws and traditions of a frithstead are not merely negative strictures prohibiting destructive or obnoxious conduct, but contain many far-reaching and demanding pronouncements on how the people should live, the kinds of things they should do, what the frithstead expects of them. This state of dynamic inner "peace" is possible only when, and because, there actually are traditional laws or principles of conduct that the folk accept, and against which they are willing to judge one another's and their own conduct; and the state of Frith is not merely desirable but essential because the relationships within the frithstead are so much a part of its members' lives that they either cannot or will not arbitrarily sever them without grave cause. There are, if anything, more conflicts inside a frithstead than outside of one, because what the people do within it matters so much more to one another than what outsiders do. But within a frithstead, the resolution of such conflicts through the common traditions itself becomes a celebration and affirmation of those traditions, elevating and ennobling not only the conflicts, but also and much more important, the individuals and the community. The traditions become much more than rules for keeping people out of mischief; they become living symbols of people's bonds with one another, with their gods, and with their own higher aspirations and inclinations. And because the traditions have grown organically out of the frithstead's collective experience, inheritance and link with its gods, unlike many of the laws and ordinances passed by modern governments by majority vote, they have a natural, deep and many-layered significance to the people, permitting them to see, understand, accept and finally affirm the connections between the traditions, their actions, and Wyrd. Thus, the right relationships by which a thriving frithstead is marked are, like the significant acts they engender, links between the individual and Wyrd, making it possible for that individual to transform his/her life and orlog in ways not available to those living anonymous lives governed by cost-benefit analyses. From this, it can be seen that, though the word, "Frith," is ubiquitous within modern Heathenry, the thing itself is extraordinarily rare. This should not be taken as a condemnation; our Heathen ancestors were born into frithsteads, whereas we have had to build up our Heathenry with our own hands, on unsure foundations and rather hostile cultural terrain. But the child has been born, and enough of us have devoted to it enough years and committed enough of our lives for us to say that it has been claimed, sprinkled and given a name; so, it is Wyrded. It has an orlog, but as it is yet young, what is laid upon that orlog is extremely significant, and will affect its destiny decisively. Thus, among our most significant acts are the decisions we make as to which of the Heathen traditions we have laid claim to we will actually incorporate as living parts of our shared Heathen lives, and which we will only talk about on the Internet and drink to at sumbels. As a new religious expression, we have not yet made that decision about Frith, but it is not too early to say that some conditions of that decision are becoming clear. Frith is not well suited to impersonal service organizations modeled after modern corporations or forms of association popularized by universalist religions such as Christianity. Such things can sometimes be useful, but they are too tepid and do not cut deeply enough to forge the meaningful, life-transforming links with Wyrd that Frith demands. Frith does not require more scholarship, study or discussion before we can begin to practice it. We know quite enough of the lore to be able to see what it is. In fact, that is precisely what intimidates many of us; we know enough to understand that its waters can seem frigid and foreboding, now that we have become accustomed to the hot tub of consumer-friendly religion. Frith does not coexist with ideology or abstract theories of religious community. It is personal, not abstract; it makes its decisions one person at a time, and once they are made, they aren't called into question if the person decides to think differently about something, so long as the person acts truly. Real Frith can neither be created nor have its primary expression over the Internet. It is intrinsically inimical to life lived in the spiritual chat room, where the only possible deeds are disembodied words on a screen, the only faces are concoctions of parentheses and colons, and the most we dare expect of one another without embarrassment is a modicum of originality, adherence to a vague and ill-defined sense of etiquette, and a degree of respect for the list rules and one another's privacy. Frith requires red blood, and that we look one another in the eye. And finally, Frith does not mean that we should all get along; it means that we should all stand, and act, for something real and meaningful, and that those of us who find ourselves standing for enough of the same important things should stand together, in years- and lives-long commitments without constantly weighing the benefits against the costs. This is not to say that Frith with other Heathens is necessary to the modern practice of Heathenry, though Frith with the gods probably is. In the hands of the old Heathens, the frithstead was an extremely powerful tool by which they could touch the living fabric of Wyrd. Like all powerful tools, it can be dangerous; not everyone wants to touch Wyrd, and of those who want to, probably not everyone should be touching it. We do not always know what we really want, of course, or what is good for us, but by coming to Heathenry, we have said, to the gods and to the other Heathens here, that we want in some measure to restore and enter into the kind of relationship that existed between these gods and the Heathen Germanic peoples. That relationship was carved into Wyrd in red runes, whose staves spelled "Frith"; and there was little or no difference in character or extent between the obligations and expectations between folk and the gods, or the laws and traditions that reflected them, and those between and among the folk themselves. Some years ago, Edred Thorsson chided those who criticized his darker spiritual wanderings with the observation that they were condemning the kind of thing that had attracted them to the Northern tradition in the first place, and there was some truth in that. It is, in a way, like that with us and Frith as well. Periodically, modern Heathenry stares ambivalently at this gleaming sword named "Frith," left lying like the golden tafl-pieces of the gods after Ragnarok, with which our Heathen forebears once slew the dragon called "Web Of Meaningless Probability," and wonders, "Shall we pick it up?" Well, yes, indeed; shall we? | Home | Clergy Program | Contact | Join | Links | Member Services | Organization | Our Faith | Resources | This page was last modified on Thursday, 20 March, 2003 at 22:51:14 This site, and all documents copyright © 1995-2004 The Troth, except where otherwise stated. All rights reserved, especially those of print or electronic publication for public distribution, whether or not that publication is for profit. For more information or to obtain permission, e-mail [e-mail]. The Troth collects some information about you as you browse our site, and some more if you join us. Read our Privacy Policy for more details.