Authors: Brian Bates
A dynamic and pervasive world of spirits coexisted with the material world in Anglo-Saxon culture. The spirits, manifestations of forces pertaining to wyrd, were invisible to most humans, although they played a prominent and superstitious role in the everyday lives of Anglo-Saxons. But the spirits were visible to the sorcerers, because sorcerers were people naturally endowed with perceptual abilities beyond the normal; abilities to see, hear and experience things which we would probably consign to the realms of the paranormal or madness. These abilities were recognized, cultivated and nurtured as evidence of a person’s fitness for admission to the world of sorcery. The sorcerer dealt directly with spirits and operated as a mediator between the world of humans and the realm of spirits. The Anglo-Saxon spirits seemed to give identity and form to many phenomena in life which contemporary psychology recognizes but often fails to deal with directly: coincidence, deep-seated fears, psychic experiences, prophetic dreams and nightmares and other aspects of ourselves that remain unconscious. Recent developments in existential psychiatry and the new psychotherapies have begun to look for ways of working directly with these forces.
There is, of course, an enormous gulf between the psychological worlds of Anglo-Saxon and modern societies. Yet there are enduring features of human existence which seem to change little with the passage of time and it is to these facets of life that a past philosophy can speak with clarity and relevance. The Way of Wyrd is a work of psychological archaeology, but I believe it to be more than of merely historical interest. As a way of personal transformation with philosophical and spiritual power, it strikes to the heart of many modern concerns with the vitality of a living system
In researching Anglo-Saxon sorcery and mysticism, I pulled apart and examined the many strands of evidence in conventional scientific fashion. It was a process of rigorous analysis which gradually revealed the dimensions and psychological parameters of Anglo-Saxon sorcery. But in writing this book, I wished to present a vital sense of the whole; to reconstruct and make accessible the Way of Wyrd in a form which would provide some sense of this organic, holistic, spiritual approach to life and power. I chose, then, to present the research in the form of a documentary novel in which each event and detail of the teachings is reconstructed from the Anglo-Saxon evidence.
In constructing the book, I first mapped out the sequence of events which characterized a typical process of training and initiation, culled from Anglo-Saxon material and confirmed by comparative evidence from other disciplines. Each facet of the teaching, element of the philosophy and significant event was anchored to a specific segment of Anglo-Saxon material. The evidence was analysed and then written out into narrative form. Each chapter in the book represents my interpretation and commentary on a particular dimension of the Anglo-Saxon material. All along I endeavoured to remain faithful to the primary data for Anglo-Saxon sorcery; comparative evidence was used to investigate and analyse, but not to impose meanings.
Then, to bring the material to life, I set it against the imagined story of how one man was led into the world of the Anglo-Saxon sorcerer. In choosing an appropriate story, which would carry all the documentary evidence I had prepared, I went back to the original Lacnunga manuscript with which I had begun my investigations. Historians have suggested that the original author of the Anglo-Saxon magical/medical manuscript was a scribe or cleric attached to a Christian monastery. I therefore took as the background of the book a historically documented mission which in the late 600s travelled to the still pagan South coast of England. I have told the story of The Way of Wyrd through the eyes of a scribe attached to the mission; a man whom I imagine to be the original creator of the Lacnunga manuscript. This book documents a Western way of spiritual liberation by chronicling the path the author of the Lacnunga might have followed in gathering his material—by becoming a sorcerer’s apprentice and entering the Way of Wyrd.
‘WASTE-DWELLER, why do you spin your spell?’
The sorcerer’s voice rasped from gaping fangs as he crouched over the sick woman like a giant wolfman. He looked awesome, wrapped in an enormous grey wolf-skin, the wolf-head resting on top of his own so that he towered at least seven feet tall.
The Spirit House was crowded with the entire population of the settlement, including children and even babes-in-arms, but no one moved or made a sound. People sat still as carved icons, fire-shadows dancing on faces crammed three deep around the walls. Inside the Spirit Circle, bounded by ropes suspended from stakes pounded into the earth floor, only I sat next to the sorcerer, dry-mouthed, gripped by the imminent presence of the pagan powers of darkness.
Firelight crawled over the giant wolf-skin, glowed on the snake-clasp at the sorcerer’s throat and brought the gold-wrought eyes of the wolf-head glittering into life.
Slowly, carefully, the sorcerer settled into an attacking position opposite the woman, humping his back like a hunting wolf. The woman sat stiff and straight-backed, her scrawny body clamped by fear. Her head bobbed and weaved to avoid the Wolfman’s glinting eyes until, twitching, she dropped her head and stared at the ground as if spellbound by the floor straw. In the smoky light I could see the grotesque growth at the bridge of her nose and the flesh around her eye, puffy and angry with infection. Abruptly the Wolfman howled, hoarse with emotion:
‘Spirit, why do you dwell on this woman’s face? You have snatched this woman’s soul and left your battle-scars on her face. Without her soul this woman is dying. Where are you now? Where do you lurk, nursing her soul like a flesh-ripping carrion eater? Are you prowling the forest like a dealer in death? Are you on Dodda’s Ridge? Grendel’s Pit? Eagle Mountain? Or are you lying low, like a wounded fox, in stagnant ditchwater? For an evil sickness, voyaging far from home, you have outstayed your welcome. Wherever you are hiding, I shall hunt you down!’
There was a short silence, punctuated only by the hiss and snap of the fire. Suddenly, without warning, the sorcerer ripped off the wolf-skin and rolled into a hunched shape next to the woman, his back humped and head pressed between his knees, his elbows projecting out from his sides.
‘Leave me alone,’ he said, in a high, shrill voice. Astonished, I darted a furtive glance around the room; serious faces watched the proceedings intently and I choked back a nervous laugh.
The sorcerer leapt back into his wolf-skin.
‘Leave you alone?’ he snarled, stalking menacingly back and forth in front of the woman. ‘You are leaving, banished to the Land of the Dead from whence you came!’
He threw off the wolf-skin and jumped back into his humped position.
‘What are you going to do?’ he squeaked, again impersonating the wart-shape.
The Wolfman leapt to his feet, his eyes flashing like dragon-flame before they disappeared beneath the wolf-head.
‘I am going to hunt you down,’ he howled.
The crumpled wart-shape again stared at the empty wolf-skin.
‘Why are you hunting me?’ it squeaked. ‘Who summoned you?’
‘Worthy spirits summoned me, for you are a burden. You are a waste-dweller trespassing where you are not wanted. You are a menace, to be driven out,’ ranted the Wolfman, strutting around the Spirit Circle, the massive wolf-skin swaying from side to side.
I glanced back at the woman’s face, almost anticipating a reply from the little wen sitting imperiously on her nose. In a mead hall the charade would have been greeted with roars of laughter as worthy drinking entertainment, but in the smoky Spirit Circle the proceedings were haunted by the choking chill of danger.
The Wolfman turned his attention back to the woman.
Squatting in front of her, he slipped a hand inside the wolf-skin and, like a conjuror, produced a beaded leather strap. He handed this to me and pointed towards the woman’s head. I scrambled to my feet and knelt behind the woman in order to tie back her long hair. I had been expecting such a task for, though totally alien to such rituals, I was sitting inside the Spirit Circle as the sorcerer’s assistant. But suddenly becoming the centre of attention terrified me and my hands trembled like the limbs of a frightened rabbit. The woman’s hair slipped out of the loop before I could tighten the knot and the audience stirred impatiently, pushing against the hemp-rope barrier of the Spirit Circle. Blinking sweat from my eyes, I tried again; this time the knot held and I tied it back firmly.
Again the sorcerer dipped into the wolf-skin and this time produced a large linen sack from which he drew handfuls of spiky leaves, still fresh and green. Quickly and skilfully he folded them together, intertwining the stems, and rubbed them vigorously between his palms. I could hear him murmuring in a strange, high-pitched voice, as if he were singing to himself.
‘Little wen, little wen, you have stolen this woman’s soul. She is now as hollow as a rotten tree, but not for long, not for long.’
He padded softly up to the woman and tipped his head on one side, the glittering eyes of the wolf-skin glowing craftily. Then he addressed the spirit in a high, wheedling tone.
‘Little wen, you should return home to the waste-lands, where you will be happy.’
Suddenly he slapped the pack of crushed leaves directly on to the woman’s face and she swayed back with the impact. The Wolfman glanced at me sharply and I moved quickly behind the woman to give her support, holding her head in my hands.
Sitting back on his haunches and pushing the leaves against the woman’s face with his left hand, the sorcerer slowly raised his right arm above his head: rows of eyes flashed in the firelight, following the gradual rise of his empty hand and watching his white fingers spreading apart above the wolf-skin. Suddenly his hand held a large object. A gasp whistled around the packed darkness and my stomach lurched sickeningly for he was grasping the enormous claw of a bird. Three huge, black eagle talons glowing menacingly in the flickering firelight.
The sorcerer moved the claw slowly towards the woman’s face. Her eyes must have been open, for I could feel her head straining to keep the approaching object in her line of vision. She began to tremble violently and when the hideous stump touched her she whined and whimpered like a sick dog. Clamping the leaves on to the woman’s face with the eagle claw, the Wolfman began a strange writhing, crawling dance, his body weaving slowly, silently, the wolf eyes locked to the woman’s face. He chanted again, his words a wet cackle,
I begin my singing,
and begin my chanting.
Mighty spirit sitting at earth’s rim,
wrapped in eagle feathers,
Mighty wind-winger,
Stallion of the sky,
Lend me your power
that fares over Middle-Earth
and the affairs of men.
His voice reverberated inside my head like a chanted Mass and the room began to spin before my eyes. The Wolfman’s voice faded to a hoarse whisper,
My words wing from Eagle-Spirit,
Sharp-eyed dealer of death...
Under the Eagle’s claw may you wither,
Under the Eagle’s claw may you dry and drain
Like barley in a bail, and water in a pail.
May you become as small as linseed grain,
And become so small that you become
Nothing at all.
Silently, like a spectre, the humped wart-shape appeared at the Wolfman’s side. I thought that my eyes were playing tricks and shook my head to clear the dual image, but the wart-shape remained, not moving or breathing but staring directly at the Wolfman. I had not even had time to take in the physical appearance of the monster when suddenly the Wolfman shivered, jerked violently and was thrown to the ground, the eagle’s claw dropping from his hand. The room burst into uproar and immediately the spirit-shape disappeared. The Wolfman’s body convulsed and writhed dangerously close to the fire, and I scrambled over to him and forced my right leg between him and the fire as a barrier. The sorcerer’s body was bent backwards like a hunting bow and under the wolf-head his face gleamed woad-blue as he gasped and gurgled for every breath.
Feverishly I struggled to snap open the snake-clasp which secured the wolf-skin around his throat, but it was stuck fast. Desperately I whirled around, peering through swirling fire-smoke for help, but at that instant the sorcerer’s knees slammed into his chest, shot away from him and he sprang to his feet like a willow whip. The heat of the fire burned into my leg and I jumped away with a yelp. I crawled back to my place on the edge of the Spirit Circle, watching the Wolfman in utter astonishment and unable to believe that his desperate choking had been merely an act.
Stepping away from the woman, the sorcerer paced around the fire again and began to hum. The audience fell silent immediately. Barely audible at first, the Wolfman’s humming rose higher and higher in pitch, then became loud, harsh and plaintive, as if he were pleading with someone. People around the packed room took up the refrain the Wolfman had established, the humming gradually rising and falling with increasing power, the sounds vibrating against the walls and echoing into the roof-beams. Soon the audience began to sway back and forth, clapping in time to the rhythms, the smoke from the fire seeming to break up the movement of their bodies into small staccato jerks. The effect was spellbinding I raised my hands and began to clap with everyone else.
While the noise continued unabated, the sorcerer turned back towards the woman. He seemed to have changed tactics. Squatting purposefully in front of her, he took another linen bag from inside the wolf-skin. Pulling open the drawstring, he carefully tipped out about a dozen irregularly shaped stones, each about the size of a man’s fist, and arranged them on the ground, apparently laying them out in a set pattern or sequence. When he had finished I could see that each adjacent stone interlocked with neighbouring cavities to form an unbroken ring
The sorcerer reached again into the sack and brought out a small glazed pot, painted with a mass of angular symbols, which he placed carefully in the centre of the small stone circle. Each movement was carefully controlled and precise, even elegant, and utterly compelling Not once did I take my eyes off him.