Connecting with the land - Walking the Boundary

It was when I was first researching Plough Monday customs that my attention was first called to consider the old custom of 'beating the bounds'. I had of course heard of it previously, but knowing of the existence of something and actually considering it are not the same thing at all.

When I first heard of Beating the Bounds, Heathenry was unknown to me. After learning about Heathenry, Beating the Bounds took on deeper shades of meaning in my mind.

Heathen world view places the reality where we lives our lives as Midgard. The Gods - the As - reside in Asgard. The '-gard' section of the words mean 'yard'. Literally an enclosure. An enclosure by it's very nature implies a boundary and the drawing of lines. Conceptually one could argue that each time the bounds were walked the boundary of Midgard was reaffirmed.

And why would you want to reaffirm such boundaries?

Because 'out there' was a dangerous place. A line is being drawn between the safety of domesticity and the danger of wilderness both tangible and intangible. Us Moderns may see the beauty and the romance of the wild, but we fool ourselves if we think that that is all there is to it. Our forebears knew better. Midgard is not a physical reality, a quaint name for the world from a barbarian peoples.  Midgard is a concept with shades of meaning.

The boundaries of home are a liminal area and liminality has a very long history of assosiation with 'otherness'. What better place to feel?

Go walk the boundaries of home. Can you feel a tension there? Walk slowly and pay attention, let it sink in for a few hours, a few days; then explore the texture of the feeling the boundary walking has created for you. Can you sense an element of domesticity? Is there a different feeling in those places where the houses are newer?

I personally find it very helpful to have a journal to work through these things. There is something about struggling to find the language to communicate what's inside that forces you to look even closer at it than you would normally.

Urd's Well

Central to my spirituality, by far the biggest gem I found in Heathenry, is Urd and her well. 

The concept of Wyrd is a weird one to solidify in your mind. It is both simple and difficult to grasp, and it is entwined with the Norn's and the well at the root of the World Tree. It is also an incredibly beautiful thing.

Wyrd is often desribed as Karma, which I think does both concepts a disservice. Similarly the three Norns are often desribed as symbolising Past, Present and Future which over simplifies the matter enough that it all becomes a little... Meaningless. 

"That which has happened (or turned)" is certainly very close to simply saying Past. As "Happening (or turning)" is also very close to saying Present, and as Brian Bates points out it is probable that the knowledge of the Greek Fates influenced the thinking that turned the Norns into Northern European versions of the same. And in likelihood both the Norns and the Moira have their roots in the same Indo-European concept. But to say the Norns are the same as the Fates misses some of the subtleties that makes the image of Urd weaving by her well at the root of the World Tree such an inspiring one. The difference becomes most plain when considering "Future" because actually a closer translation is "necessity" or "debt". The third Norn, Skuld, is not simply the Future, she is the Norn of consequence, of conclusions. Skuld is the inevitability of our actions coming to fruition. 

This is where Wyrd sounds a lot like Karma, but truly both have to be taken in their cultural context. Wyrd is most clearly seen in Skuld. All our actions, be they good or bad, have implications, have tangible effects within and without. Our actions literally create the future, as our past has created this moment now. The three Norns are all the guises of Urd, the first Norn. She is both the weaver sitting at the loom, and she is Wyrd itself playing out every moment of every day.

Not even the gods can command Urd, she is beyond even them. Nor is Urd ever given parentage, she simply is, as though without beginning. Urd and her sister-selves weave the threads that hold that pattern of all that is. Endlessly they plaster the root of the World Tree with white clay from the well, being up the World Tree - that is the reality of all that is - layer by layer, just as the days are laid down one following the next. So we glimpse both the creator and sustainer of all that is, speaker of the primal law.

And so having caught a glimpse of one so mighty tucked away, almost inconsequentially within the myths, one wonders why there is no evidence either archaeological or hidden in ancient manuscripts, of Urd ever having been worshipped as a Goddess? It's a perplexing question for me because Urd is the keystone of my spiritual belief.

Some have suggested that all the goddesses of surviving Norse myth are apostates of Frig. I sometimes wonder if all the many Norns are but apostates of Urd and of course some of those are goddesses that most scholars accept were worshipped at some point. Freya is the most obvious example. But if you're a hard polytheist this suggested answer doesn't do it for you at all! It's another of those questions I ponder without any real hope of coming up with an answer.

Regardless of whether Urd was worshipped in ancient times ( and Urth and the Erce of the Anglo-saxon Acer-blot sounds tantilizingly similar, but no doubt linguistically they probably have no connection what-so-ever!) the important thing is that the imagery speaks very powerfully to me today. For me Urd is both the Norn and the Well itself that she presides over. And that well, ah! That well is something very special indeed!

That well is what nourishes the very cosmos itself, the root of the World Tree drawing its sustenance from therein. It is all potential and chaos, and contains all that ever has been. The dew falling from the leaves of the World Tree (actions of the present) fall back into the the well laying quietly below and so all those actions fall back into the well and continue to sustain the World Tree. Just as we see in Skuld, we find the same message echoed again in the image of dew falling from the World Tree: the past feeds the presents, and the actions of our present in turn become the force that shape our future. In truth all is the ever-now, constantly creating and recreating.

Urd is all this. She is the force of Wyrd that binds all together.

This is central to who I am spiritually and gives me both peace and guidance.