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Heidens Jaarboek 2008

HJB 6The Dutch group “Nederlands Heidendom” is getting more and more ‘professional’, which is clearly shown by their sixth “Heathen Yearbook”. As the title says, this is an annual publication and this time it is nicely bound and it has a colour cover. The yearbook has about 100 pages with some nice articles of varried kind. The opening article is a nice and lengthy article about the Yule celebrations and it is written by Boppo Grimmsma. Grimmsma has collected all kinds of information about ancient celebrations, myths and habbits. It is not really new information, but nicely put together and a nice variety of sources is used. Next up is a shorter article by the same Grimmsma about the correct name of the last Dutch pagan kind Redbad. After this follows a lighter part, because there has been an essay competition and all short stories are presented here. The texts varry from descriptions of member of Nederlands Heidendom through the fictional eyes of an outsider to visions of a future in which pagan sacred places are reclaimed. Amusing! Grimmsma again then tells us something about ancient cultic celebrations. The last article is more like the announcement of the second version of a Dutch book about Northern witchcraft and magic, which seems interesting, so I hope I will not miss it again.
All in all a nice publication for a nice price. Of course written in Dutch. Click the link I gave earlier for more information.

Traditie 2008/1

www.traditie.beThe first issue after we moved arrived with some delay, but here we finally have the spring equinox issue, the first issue of the 14th year this magazine is made and also the first issue in the ‘new style’. From this issue on there will be shorter articles by more different writers, more focussed on the present and more variety in the writing style. In short: there will be more participation of members and readers. Fortunately nothing changed about the opening. Herman Vanhove as always opens with a nice and humorous article, this time about his “hammer of Thor”: his photocamera. Next article is anonymous (at least, under pseudonym) and calls for a digital answer to all the rubbish that is published on Youtube and similar canals under the banner of Asatru. Alwin Goethals, our very own mead-brewer, has written an article about mead, its history, its uses and the forms it took. Another pseudonym tells us a bit about the tree as a symbol in our faith and chairman Stefaan van den Eynde does something similar when he describes the habbits surrounding the May-pole in the next article. Founder Koenraad Logghe contributed two texts in a style we are not really used from him. The first is slightly religiously Christian, but makes the bridge to our own beliefs, the second is a “Hávamal” based on a notebook with Western-Flemish sayings that his mother used to collect. Between these two articles by Logghe, there is one of myself about Traditionalism and our Werkgroep Traditie and an interview with Gunther Theys of the Flemish metal band Ancient Rites. Theys takes some distance from the black metal scene, yet the interview is made up with “vintage” black metal kids with “corps paint”… Yet another pseudonym wrote a nice article about the sacred meaning of marriage. Two of the pseudonyms use the metaphor of Taliban to describe certain Christians and also the third anonymous has some quite anti-Christian rethoric. Hopefully this shows us more that some individuals have such feelings while this says nothing about our movement and perhaps it is just because these are the first articles published not written by an almost fixed group of writers.
In any case, the articles are still very interesting, the publication is still about 40 pages and the lay-out looks fine as ever. So, if you can read Dutch and you are interested in “Germanic and Celtic culture and spirituality”, be sure to get in contact with Traditie. To visit the website, click on the cover the of journal.

Tyr journal volume 3 (2008 ultra publishing * isbn 0972029230)

Tyr 3It usually wouldn’t take me almost four months to read a book of this size (530 pages), but moving from one house to another leaves me little time to read. For some reason Amazon still seems to not sell new copies of this journal, while when issue 1 was published, it was available on every corner of the street. Too bad, because Tyr is a nice read for people interested in Northern European mythology, esotericism or Traditionalism (either or not “radical”). There are numerous articles some of which are longer, others are shorter. This volume opens with some “against the modern world” texts and Michael O’Meare says something about “The Primordial and the Perennial”. Alain De Benoist follows with a magnificent article in which he combines Guénon’s idea of “Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power” (like the article is called) with Dumézil’s tripartite hypothesis and makes a very readable and informative text which -unfortunately- towards the end doesn’t keep the high level. Usual contributors such as Nigel Pennick, Stephen Flowers, Joscelyn Godwin, Ian Read, Michael Moynihan and Collin Cleary contributed alright to very nice texts about a variety of subjects. There is an article about Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson and the Icelandic Asatru federation, a long text about the ancient Baltic religion and Romuva, two lengthy and critical reviews of Mark Sedgewick’s Against The Modern World and many other book- and musicreviews. For more details and ordering go to the website of the publisher. Tyr remains a suggested reading.
Link: Ultra Publishing
Read quotes from Tyr here.

The Initiate #1

The Initiate #1The Initiate is a rather pretentious title of a new “Traditionalist” magazine. The editors start to explain the variety of meanings that the term has and then follows a nice collection of articles. There is quite some Northern mythology in the issue, such as in the not too good article The Great Triad and Norse religion by Martin Häggvist. There are some political (New Right) edges here and there which may make the magazine suspicious to lefties and non-political Traditionalists alike, but I don’t have the idea that this part weighs too heavy on the project. The magazine is well printed and bound and the editors seem aligned to the Rune Gild and surrounded organisations. I haven’t read the whole issue yet, but The Initiate at first sight seems to be an interesting initiative.

Links: The Initiate, Integral Tradition Publishing

Symbel, a journal of early Germanic studies

Besides that there are interesting things to read there, Ensio Kataja’s “blog” is a good way of keeping up to date with things happening in and around the Rune Gild (Ensio is the main man behind the Finish department). Like on 20 April 2007 the new Rûna Magazine was anounced (the magazine of Ian Read, I am unfortunately still waiting for it), on 26 March you could read about the first issue of the Symbel journal of the Woodharrow Institute. Woodharrow is an initiative of Stephen Flowers of the Rune Gild and with Symbel the Woodharrow Institute aims for the young scholars not specialised in ‘Germanic matters’. However the magazine says that the journal is for members only, non-members can also order the publication. It is not cheap, $ 15,- (USA) or $ 20,- (elsewhere) for a 84 paged A5 photocopied publication, but for the money you get four long articles and some bookreviews. The magazine opens (after some introductionary words) with Stephen Wehmeyer who used recent theories on the old information on Germanic magic. Next up is a translation of the famous Magnus Olsen article On Magical Runes. A very promising text came from the hands of Glenn Magee who wrote about the ‘Germanism’ of Theologia Germania. Michael Moyhnihan shows the (young and) interested student where (s)he can follow Germanic studies. I just got the magazine, so I haven’t read much of it, but when I have, I might review it in the book reviews section. Since it is quite a wait (I placed my order in april) and because the first issue supposedly is from “fall 2006″ already, I decided to ‘announce’ it nonetheless, so that the interested reader can take action. For more information click on the cover to go to the website of Woodharrow and fill in the form.

Tyr 1 (magazine) * Johua Buckley & Michael Moynihan (editors) (2002 ultra publishing * isbn 0972029206 / issn 15389413)

I bought the second volume of this book/magazine in 2004 when I was in Seattle. I had been in doubt before doing so. The articles didn’t seem too interesting and the cd just alright. I am glad that I bought it, because the articles proved very interesting and the cd very good. Then I was in doubt whether or not to buy the first 2002 volume. When I finally decided to do so, I found out that it is no longer available and hard to get second hand, at least, in Europe. In the end I bought a second hand copy via Amazon.com for (I believe) $ 25,- including shipping, coming close to the new price. I already noticed that the prices can go way up. When I write this, Amazon has only one second hand copy for the price of $ 95,03!! Everyone in doubt, I can advise to get your copy, but look around to avoid paying incredible prices.

The first volume is a little bit thinner than the second one (286 pages) and has no cd. The cd in the second volume was a brilliant marketing stunt by the way, because it seems that every kid around, suddenly became a “radical traditionalist” like the editors of Tyr. There are some nice articles in Tyr 1. After a nice preface, an alright article of Stephen Edred Flowers about ‘integral culture’ follows. Collin Cleary then writes about Knowing the Gods, an article in which the writer shows himself very “Traditionalistic”. He sure has some points, but I don’t agree with him everywhere. Alain de Benoist has interviewed Georges Dumézil a long time ago and an English translation can be found in Tyr. There are articles about Northern mythology, such as Steve Pollington on Odin/Wodan, and Moynihan with a very well written article about the figure of Hagen and the Nibelungenlied. Alby Stone follows the footsteps of Dumézil, noone else than Joscelyn Godwin writes about Evola and there are less interesting articles about the Goddes Zisa, mountaineering and Herman Lönns. After an interview with Ian Read, Collin Cleary has a lengthy article about the 1960’ies TV-seriers The Prisoner. This name is smacked around my ears way too often but Cleary lit a burning desire in my to watch it! The journal closes off with (mostly lengthy) book- and musicreviews with not the most typical titles. So my conclusion can only be that this journal is surely worth a read and I advise you to be quick if you don’t have a copy of either volume. Since we now live in 2006 and the previous volumes are of 2002 and 2004, I can only hope that volume 3 will see the light of day soon.
(6/8/06 -4-)
Read quotes from Tyr here.