Publications available from Wyrd's Well Press:

So, you are interested in Northern spirituality? There are many resources you can use. There are the great poems written in Iceland in the middle ages, the Eddas - at least we think they were composed in Iceland, nobody's sure. They reflect an understanding of the deities of the North, that will have been shared by people in Scandinavia and much of Britain (and generally in tune with these of many of the area of Europe now represented by the Netherlands, Germany and others, extending east to the regions to which the Rus gave their name) over the centuries before Christianity gained a hold. There are other resources, from archaeology and folklore. But the best resources of all, if you live in Northern or Western Europe, are the land itself, the sky and the sea, the way the trees grow and the way the birds and animals speak to you. Northern spirituality is associated with the Goddesses and Gods of the Eddas, but its roots lie with the early people who worked with the land, and started to alter it: people, spirits, land and deities together constructing awareness of being, self and community.

 

Wyrd's Well is producing a series of booklets about Northern spirituality, or Heathenism... This series is offered to assist your growing awareness of Northern spirituality. Each booklet contains a guided meditation or a ritual, sometimes both. These are practical guides to Heathenism today.

 

Understanding Wyrd: The Norns and the Tree is a short introduction to the cosmology of Heathen spiritual practice. It includes a meditation or 'pathworking' to help you conceptualise the Norns and the Tree, interpretation and discussion of the Wyrd of the Northern deities and personal orlog, and a ritual for the Norns.

£4.00 (includes postage in UK)

(Illustration: Yew tree. Image © J Blain, 2000.)

 

Wights and Ancestors: Heathenism in a living landscape

Wights and Ancestors is currently out of print and will be reprinted shortly. Please do not attempt to order it just yet!

"Heathen polytheism exists within a cosmological and conceptual framework in which people, gods, giants, elves, landspirits and other beings are all engaging with wyrd, the fate of the world. There is no single source of power or knowledge, rather beings exist and coexist on many levels in the 'nine worlds'. While people live much of their lives in communities within an 'innangard' of what is known and familiar, this exists in tension with the worlds around and the unknowns that they represent.

Moving between the worlds occurs in birth and death, dreams and trance, and the beings that may be met with have their own understandings of the meeting, and their own wyrd to fulfil."

Includes... descriptions of beings, and ways in which they are conceptualised within Heathen (Northern European pre-Christian) thought; a meditative process to facilitate contact with nature spirits; discussion of 'shamanism'; respecting 'sacred sites', places of the ancestors...

 

56 pp. Photos from Britain, Norway and Iceland.

Wights and Ancestors is currently OUT OF PRINT.
A second, and longer, edition is in preparation and I plan to make this available via a 'print on request' service in 2012-13.

 

(Cover photograph: Avebury. Image © J Blain, 2000)

 

Before ordering, CHECK AVAILABILITY at www.wyrdswell.co.uk/booknews.html.
To order, email Wyrd's Well for further information.