Wednesday 30 October 2013

Havamal Snippets 98: How Odin gets 'to have his way' with a woman

I don't know what to make of this verse, so I've had to copy and paste another persons interpretation of it.  Here it is, and it's translated (via bing translator, google translator wasn't much cop) from French, as the author did not have an English version.

The daughter of Billingr refers herself as a man, that she is pretending to desire a sexual relationship as much as Odhinn. She speaks of his behaviour as 'a mistake' or, at least as 'misconduct'. It is therefore still seeming to go account that its proposal is outsized. I guess that this is to permanently convince Odhinn leave quiet for now and that so there will be even more fun with it the next night. His cunning will fully succeed. We must also ask why it considers necessary to resort to such a ruse. I see no other reason Odhinn was sufficiently pressing to make it fear of being raped if she refuses completely. We will see with 102 that Odhinn appears to have well understood, after the fact, that haste has pushed the daughter of Billingr to deceive him so that it expresses by "ef gorva kannar" that we will translate differently from other versions.

It is definitely tricky. 'Misleading' is same slightly strong insofar as it does to defend his freedom to have consensual sexual relations. It is certainly not 'inconsistent' or 'flighty' which again confirms the interpretation of brigd ('break' rather than 'inconsistency') we've seen in stanza 84.



98
Auk nær apni
skaltu Óðinn koma
ef þú vilt þér mæla man
alt eru ósköp
nema einir viti
slíkan löst saman 

"So towards evening,
Othinn, you must come,
if you want to win the maid for yourself;
all is amiss,
unless we alone know
of such shame."

[End.]

Monday 28 October 2013

Alternative Lyrics to Well Known Songs 9 - Tyr's the God of Law

[Pre-amble: This is one in a series of posts which includes an alternative set of lyrics to a well known song.  Each post will also contain a short introduction to the topic at hand, and a brief explanation of the song itself.  A video of the original song will be included so that the reader can listen to the original song while reciting the alternative lyrics at the same time.]



The Song: Tyr's The God of Law (based on 'Wonderwall' by Oasis)
Living a life that is built in harmony with a set of principles and structure is going to be more productive than one which is lived without any kind of order at all.  It's a myth that world beating innovators are the kinds of people who are 'chaotic' and bohemian drunkards who wear dishevelled clothing.  Look at the great innovators and inventors throughout history and it becomes clear that these men had ordered lives that had a solid structure, routine, that they lived by.  Philo Farnsworth was well dressed, Arthur Schopenhauer was well known for following a rigid daily schedule (walking in the afternoon regardless of the weather), and Copernicus tested his results a phenomenal 77 times each(!) to ensure that they were accurate.  That shows dedication to a particular way of living and thinking: an ordered/structured way of living that allowed them to exercise their freedom within a particular framework.  Their discoveries are evidence of the kind of benefits that anyone can gain by having a little structure in their lives, a little self-created law and order.


The Norse God of (amongst other things) Social Order is Tyr.


This is called the Tiwaz rune.  It is the rune which represents Tyr.  It represents single-mindedness, drive, focussing on 'one thing' to the point where all other options either side are excluded.  Remember it whenever you are driving and see a similar road sign.


Here is a sound summary of Tyr's nature from a follower & practitioner of the Norse belief system:
'He is a god of martial skill, moral rectitude, honor, law, social order, bravery, and absolute justice. As shown in the story of how he lost his hand, he is a god who values the letter of one's word as the heart of honor (as opposed to the more Odinic view of the spirit of one's word as central to honor).
[..]The advantages of Tyr's approach to life are many. His unyielding, inflexible nature gives him great power and skill in battle. It gives him high standing in society, honor, and renown. It enables him to effect the binding of the Fenris wolf, and so save the worlds of gods and men from certain destruction. There are disdvantages to this approach as well, though. As mentioned in the section on wunjo, that which cannot bend can be broken. Great, unswerving focus can bring great strength, but it can bring many missed opportunities. To see only the road ahead is to not see those to the side. How the athling relates to, what the athling learns from the mysteries of Tyr is a matter of individual decision. But it is a decision the athling must face, for in making it the athling gains greater control over his own effectiveness in the world.'
(Source: http://www.uppsalaonline.com/uppsala/runes.htm)
Order and stability are great attributes that Tyr enables us to have.  Can you imagine what it would be like living in a chaotic world where there was no civil law, or social law, it would be like Somalia or Detroit, madness!  Then just think what life would be like without biological, or physical laws, or even logical laws, it would be a world of chaos, of madness, and of uncertainty.  Tyrs laws enable us to live a stable life, a structured life that unburdens us of chaos and madness, in which we can do Our Will.  That's what a little law, a little structure does to a life, it allows it to grow.  That's what Tyr gives us.

So whether it's a weekly routine for exercises, or a monthly routine for sorting your financial accounts, or a yearly routine for your allotments & wild-fruit picking (blackberries during August in the UK), or whatever it is, have a little order in your life; and importantly, make sure that 'you' choose them, that they are 'your' laws that you will stand by, just like Tyr did when he said he would give his right hand if Fenrir broke free of his bonds.

Tyr puts his hand in the mouth of the giant, ever-growing wolf Fenrir.


Play the music video above and sing along with the alternative lyrics given beneath.


# Tyr's The God of Law #
To day is gonna be the day that Tyr's laws will enable you,
to act how you wanna act now but you're deficient in the laws that will,
give you the rigid stability to live your life as you wanna do.

Gladly you take his book of laws and then go and regiment your life.This day and every other day you live your life so stoicly.
The growth of your life is proof that the rigid laws of Tyr have bettered thee.

And all the laws that Tyr did give are obliging.
And all the laws that Tyr did give are binding.
There are things that you could not have done without with Tyr and his book of laws.
In all certainty,
it's Tyr's rigid laws that bettered thee.
So 'member y'all,
Tyr's The God of Law.


To day is gonna be the day that Tyr's laws will enable you,
to act how you wanna act now but you're deficient in the laws that will,
give you the rigid stability to live your life as you wanna do.

And all the laws that Tyr did give are obliging.
And all the laws that Tyr did give are binding.
There are things that you could not have done without with Tyr and his book of laws.
In all certainty,
it's Tyr's rigid laws that bettered thee.
So 'member y'all,
Tyr's The God of Law.

In all certainty,
it's Tyr's rigid laws bettered thee.
So 'member y'all,
Tyr's The God of Law,
In all certainty,
it's Tyr's rigid laws bettered thee.
It's Tyr's rigid laws bettered thee.
It's Tyr's rigid laws bettered thee.

[End of lyrics.]

Sunday 27 October 2013

Havamal Snippets 97: What Odin think's when he gazes on an attrative woman

Having ones way with a good looking woman means more than a peerage to the man in this verse.  Interestingly, as this poem is called supposedly written by ‘The High One’, which is one of Odin’s names, it’s highly likely that this is how he feels about women, i.e. on some occasions he is almost besotted with them.  Yet as some other verses attest to his attraction to them is tempered by his awareness of their character.  Take these few lines from verse 90 for instance:
    The love of women
    who are deceitful in spirit
    is like riding a smooth-shod horse
    on slippery ice,
This shows that despite his occasional carnal desire for them he is well aware of what their character is like, meaning that he is not pedestalizing them like White Knights do.

97
Billings mey
ek fann beðjum á
sólhvíta sofa
jarls ynði
þótti mér ekki vera
nema við þat lík at lifa         

[2] I found her in bed,
[1] Billingr's kinswoman,
sun-white, asleep;
a jarl's delight
seemed nothing to me,
unless I could live with that body.

[End.]

Friday 25 October 2013

Men of Yore: Nicolas Appert

This is another in a series of posts about men from history who have either achieved great things in one form or another by pushing boundaries: either in themselves or in society or science or exploration of some form.  Boundary pushing and growth is what men do, it's their nature: to grow and push outwards.  We, as men, are the frontiers men, the first to discover/uncover new territory, in a metaphysical sense (i.e. including both material and the immaterial) that is later colonised and 'civilised' by the rest of humanity.



Nicolas Appert


Nicolas Appert was a chef, confectioner and distiller in the town of Chalons-sur-Marne when the French Revolution broke out. During the year of 1795, the French government of the time (called the 'Directory') became alarmed at the difficulties of supplying edible food its many armies scattered across Europe. Preserving food, so that it can be stored through the winter or carried long distances to marauding armies, was an age old problem. Before it attracted the attention of the French, this problem had been solved largely by drying, smoking, fermenting, pickling or soaking in brine. None of which also preserved the taste of the food, or was a hundred percent certain. Food still went 'bad'.
Appert took up the challenge. He also wanted to win the 12,000 franc prize that had been offered to anyone who could invent a way of preserving food in such a way that it would be easy to transport and not degrade or spoil. It took him 14 years of experimentation, but in 1810 he was ready to demonstrate the "Appert Method" and take home the money. Published in 1811 his book on food preservation became a best seller, even though it was titled "L'Art De Conserver, pendant plueieurs annes, Toutes les Substances Animales et Vegetales". (The Art of Preserving All Kinds of Animal and Vegetable Substances for Several Years).
The principle that Appert discovered was that food such as soups, fruits, jams or stews could be prevented from decomposing it they were first sealed inside a bottle or jar and then immersed in boiling water for several hours. He had to exclude all air and hold the jar tightly closed with cork, wire and sealing wax for this to work properly.
Appert could never explain why his method worked - he never knew, but the success of his discovery could not be denied. With his prize money he set up a bottling factory (which was still in existence in 1933) that kept the French soldier, and many others, supplied with fresh, easily transported food.
Meanwhile, across the channel, the English were at work improving on Appert's method. The problem was the glass bottles, which frequently broke. Peter Durand took out a patent in 1810 to use metal containers which were easy to make and hard to break. He covered iron cans (which would rust) with a thin plating of tin (which is not attacked by water), and invented the "tin can". By 1813 Durand was supplying the Royal Navy with a steady stream of canned meat.
Canning was a slow process in Appert's time. The cans of food had to be boiled in water for about five hours to make them completely sterile. But in 1860 it was found that adding calcium chloride to the boiling water made it possible to raise the temperature of that water more than 28 degrees Fahrenheit. This higher temperature worked better and faster. Canning became healthier and safer.
By 1819 canning arrived in the USA, but nobody wanted canned food until the outbreak of the civil war, when it was suddenly put on a crash mass-production basis. It took war to popularize the technology, something the revolutionary French would have appreciated.
Source: http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/bc/ahp/MBG/MBG4/Appert.html
Having quality food all year round is something many of us may take for granted.  We might walk into shops and supermarkets and pick up cans and packets of food of the shelf and put them in our basket not thinking of the processes that were used to treat/preserve the food and then put it in a convenient sized can.  Yet those processes had to be created, refined and developed, by men.  It is commonly individual men working off of their own backs experimenting in their own time and using their own resources to come up with the new tools and techniques we use in the world, and canning was no different.  Nicolas Appert, a sweet maker by trade (not exactly a macho/butch occupation I might add), got the food preservation ball rolling by developing the containers and methods (pasteurization, years before Louis Pasteur discovered the process).  The ball was then picked up by other men who took the principle and developed it.  That is how things get done: by men doing what they want, what their will is, and then allowing other men to learn from them (either passively by hearing about it on the grapevine, or actively by speaking to them).  Personal Will is the key ingredient, ie doing something because it's what you want to do, regardless of the consequences (eg regardless of whether it makes you a millionaire or it makes you a pariah).



Check out some of the other entries from the 'Men of Yore' series:

[End.]

Wednesday 23 October 2013

Havamal Snippets 96: Be attracted to a cunning woman and you may be left dissatisfied

This is one in a series of very short posts containing snippets from the Havamal text (which can be found in full here - http://www.beyondweird.com/high-one.html).

Why post snippets of an old pagan text here, in a blog that's supposedly about the Androsphere? I’m posting them because they contain helpful everyday advice that is applicable in the modern world e.g. being aware of your surrounding environment, drinking alcohol responsibly, how to score with women. And for many of us, it is part of our heritage that goes back to Proto-Indo-European (PIE) beliefs that stretch back 4000 years or more.

Christianity offers the only dominant philosophical view points in the Androsphere, represented by bloggers like Free Northerner and Simon Grey. Christianity, and indeed the other monotheisms from the region draw, from the mythologies of the PIE culture. For instance Noahs flood is a replication of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the story of the Angels rebelling against God in the bible is just a copy of the Giants rebelling against the Gods, which is present in both the Greek and Norse religious traditions, as Arthur Schopenhauer pointed out in the eighteenth century:

    The downfall of the Titans, whom Zeus hurls into the underworld, seems to be the same story as the downfall of the angels who rebelled against Jehovah.
    The story of Idomeneus, who sacrificed his son ex voto, and that of Jephtha is essentially the same
    Can it be that the root of the Gothic and the Greek language lies in Sanskrit, so there is an older mythology from whith the Greek and Jewish mythologies derive? If you cared to give scope to your imangination you could even adduce that the twofold-long long in which Zeus begot Heracles on Alcmene came about because further east Joshua at Jericho told the sun to stand stil. Zeus and Jehovah were thus assisting one another: for the gods of Heaven are, like those of earth, always secretly in alliance. But how innocent ws the pastime of Father Zeus compared with the bloodthirsty activities of Jehovah and his chosen brigands. {page 220}
Source: Schopenhauer A. (2004), 'Essays and Aphorisms' (Hollingdale translation), London, Penguin.

So, instead of offering you snippets of second-hand wisdom from the Bible, I will offer you snippets of first-hand wisdom from the (probably) older and much more concise Havamal text (roughly 5,000 words compared to the 190,000 words of the New Testament).

My own thoughts are in italics.


I'm not sure on the meaning of this verse.  It might mean: Though a man may desire a woman, and may wait for her most patiently, it doesn't mean that he is going to get her.  If she is wise/cunning then she may just be playing/using the man for her own betterment rather than for the mans betterment.  This highlights that men should be wary of trying to have relationships with sly/cunning/devious women because they will leave you disappointed.

96
Þat ek þá reynda
er ek í reyri sat
ok vættak míns munar
hold ok hjarta
var mér in horska mær
þeygi ek hana at heldr hefik      

That I proved
when I sat in the reeds
and waited for my love;
[5] the wise maid to me
[4] was body and soul --
but still I do not have her.


[End.]

Monday 21 October 2013

Alternative Lyrics to Well Known Songs 8 - Ferdinand the Second

[Pre-amble: This is one in a series of posts which includes an alternative set of lyrics to a well known song.  Each post will also contain a short introduction to the topic at hand, and a brief explanation of the song itself.  A video of the original song will be included so that the reader can listen to the original song while reciting the alternative lyrics at the same time.]



The Song: Ferdinand the Second (based on 'Buddy Holly' by Weezer)
This time around we have an historically themed song for any Spanish or Iberian Nationalists who happen to frequent this blog.  It includes references to Spanish Champions such as Ferdinand the Second and Isabella, the Knights of Santiago, the Knights of Calatrava, Manus Dei (the Hands of God), and the Reconquista.  (And not forgetting a mention of everyone’s favourite fifth columnists the Marrano Jews!).

Ferdinand the Second was a Spaniard and a King who retook Spain from the invading Moors.

The Reconquista was one of the efforts by Nationalists during the Medieval period to retake Their land back from invaders.  The situation required Nationalists to act because the Roman Catholic Church did nothing to help them.  The Roman Catholic Church was too busy using the abomination known as indulgences to extract money from the population to pay for the Churches lavish furnishings (those jewel-encrusted solid-gold crucifixes don't come cheap ya know!).  In fact the practice of the Roman church then is comparable to the practice of the State today: both simultaneously bled the native population dry of money whilst allowing foreigners to invade and genocide them.  If you compared the old priestly caste to the modern priestly caste then you probably wouldn't be able to fit a proverbial cigarette paper between them.

In the end it was Nationalists who defended Europe and Christendom from foreigners and foreign belief systems.  White Nationalists took their land back by using Military Orders (like the Knights of Santiago) who were a continuation of a Pre-Christian tradition: a small dedicated group of professional warriors (called Hearthmen or hirð  in the Nordic culture) would do most of the fighting and non-professional would be used as a support force.  I think this is worth noting because it means that the Military Orders should not be grouped together with the rest of the immoral Roman Catholic Church, and should not be judged as Anti-White.  Nor, on a side note, should Shamans be mistaken for priests.

The Roman Catholic Church did not protect it's nations from defence against invaders, it was Nationalists who did this.  Iberian Nationalists retook their homeland from the Moors, Balkan Nationalists Vlad Tepes of Wallachia and Stephen the Great of Moldavia fought bravely against the Ottomans, and Russian Nationalist Ivan the IV of Moscow threw off the Yolk of the Mongol Horde.  Nationalists, not Christians, are who we have to thank for a White Europe.  Always remember that whenever you happen to walk past a Cathedral, or Church, or indeed read a Bible and not a Koran, that it was Nationalists like Ferdinand the Second that allowed Christianity and Christians to continue to exist in Europe.


# Ferdinand the Second #
What's with these Moors they've invaded my land?
What do they want from us?
What did we ever do to these Moors,
That made them invade us?

Ooh ooh, know I hate the Moors.
Ooh ooh, and know Spain is mine.
Ooh ooh, and that's what God has said.
Ooh-eeh-ooh I am Ferdinand the Second.
Oh-oh and she's Isabelle the First.
This is Spain and it's only for the Spaniards.
Let's kick these Moors right out.

Knights Santiago and Calavaro,
are the known as 'Manus Dei'.
'cause 'Reconquista' is such an order,
straight from the mouth of God.

Ooh ooh, know I hate the Moors.
Ooh ooh, and know Spain is mine.
Ooh ooh, and that's what God has said.
Ooh-eeh-ooh I am Ferdinand the Second
Oh-oh and she's Isabelle the First.
This is Spain and it's only for the Spaniards.
Let's kick these Moors right out.
Kick these Moors right out.

Bang bang knock down the door,
Knock down the door of Castle du Moor.
Oh know what do we see,
Look it's another Marrano Hebe.
We can't trust them not to stick,
Another traitorous blade in our back.
Chase 'em and a chase 'em and a chase 'em out.
Chase 'em all out these Judas goats.

Uh oh oh uh oh oh.

(And that's what God has said.)
(And that's what God has said.)

Ooh-eeh-ooh I am Ferdinand the Second.
Oh-oh and she's Isabelle the First.
This is Spain and it's only for the Spaniards.
Let's kick these Moors right out.
Kick these Moors right out.
Kick these Moors right out.
Kick these Moors right out.

[End of lyrics.]

Friday 18 October 2013

Men of Yore: Edward Jenner

This is another in a series of posts about men from history who have either achieved great things in one form or another by pushing boundaries: either in themselves or in society or science or exploration of some form.  Boundary pushing and growth is what men do, it's their nature: to grow and push outwards.  We, as men, are the frontiers men, the first to discover/uncover new territory, in a metaphysical sense (i.e. including both material and the immaterial) that is later colonised and 'civilised' by the rest of humanity.



Edward Jenner
Edward Jenner (17 May 1749 – 26 January 1823) was an English doctor who popularised a vaccination for smallpox and became the father of immunology.
Edward Jenner was born in Berkeley, Gloucestershire on 18th May 1749. The son of a local vicar he was interested in natural history and medicine from an early age. Aged 14, he began his training to be a doctor in Chipping Sodbury, Gloucestershire before completing his training in London. He studied at St George's Hospital under surgeon John Hunter and was influenced by his philosophy of seeking new discoveries - "Don't Think, try"
In 1773, Jenner returned to his native Berkeley to become a general practitioner. In his spare time, he pursued his study of native wildlife and also new developments in medical science.

Jenner and Vaccine for Small Pox
At the time, one of the most feared diseases was smallpox. The disease was common and killed up to 33% of those who contacted it. At the time, there was little known treatments or vaccinations that could prevent it.

Jenner was interested in the observation that milkmaids who were in close contact with cows, very rarely contacted the disease. With this revelation, Jenner was interested in testing a theory that inoculating humans with a strain of the cowpox virus could protect them from smallpox through the immunity from the similar, but much less dangerous, cowpox strain.

This practise of using a cowpox virus had been tried on odd occasions before, for example farmers such as Benjamin Jesty had deliberately arranged cowpox infection for their family. However, these unofficial tests had not proved anything to a sceptical medical scientific community.

In 1796, Jenner tested his theory by inoculating James Phipps, a young boy of 8 with cowpox blisters from the hand of a milkmaid who had caught cowpox. The young, James, contacted a mild fever, but, to Jenner's relief, when he gave James Phipps variolous material, he proved resistant to this mild form of small pox. He wrote in 1801

'It now becomes too manifest to admit of controversy, that the annihilation of the Small Pox, the most dreadful scourge of the human species, must be the final result of this practice (BBC Smallpox)

To Jenner, this immunity to Variolation was proof that the cowpox inoculation gave immunity from smallpox. Thus, Jenner had provided a relatively safe way to immunise people from the deadly smallpox virus.

"The joy I felt as the prospect before me of being the instrument destined to take away from the world one of its greatest calamities (smallpox) was so excessive that I found myself in a kind of reverie"
- Edward Jenner

Jenner went on to test in theory on a further 23 subjects - all of which gave the same results. After some delay, his research was published by the Royal Society to a mixture of scepticism and interest. After this, Jenner gave up his medical practise and devoted himself full time to immunisation work. He was given a grant from Parliament to support him in his work. This involved setting up the Jennerian Institution a society concerned with promoting vaccination to eradicate smallpox.

This would eventually be successful, in 1840, 17 years after Jenner's death, the British government, in an act of Parliament, banned the use of variolation and provided the cowpox inoculation free of charge. By 1979, the World Health Organisation (WHO) had declared smallpox extinct - a remarkable achievement of which Jenner's ground-breaking work on immunisation played a key role.

His reputation led to his appointment as a physician extraordinary to King George IV and was made a Justice of the Peace.

He died in January 25 1823, after a stroke from which he never recovered.

It is said, through his work on vaccinations, Jenner saved the lives of more people than anyone else.

Citation : Pettinger, Tejvan. "Biography of Edward Jenner", Oxford, www.biographyonline.net - 25/01/2010

10 Facts About Edward Jenner
1.Jenner was the first doctor to vaccinate people against smallpox
2.His treatments were sometimes initially laughed at. In 1802, a cartoon showed people with cow's heads, after Jenner had vaccinated them!
3.The vaccine was developed after he inoculated a boy with tissue from a dairymaid's fresh cowpox lesions. 1796 he inoculated a young boy with matter taken from a dairymaid's fresh cowpox lesions
4.In 1980,(nearly 200 years after Jenner first discovered vaccine) the World Health Organisation declared that smallpox had finally been eradicated from the world, though some samples were kept under laboratory conditions.
5.Jenner was keen on fossil collecting and horticulture.
6.In 1805 he was presented with the "Freedom of the City"for the discovery of the vaccination from the Lord Mayor and Corporation of London.
7.He learnt surgery under John Hunter's who encouraged Jenner to experiment. His favourite saying was. 'Don't think, try'
8.Jenner earned his MD from the University of St Andrews in 1792.
9.In 1821, he was appointed Physician Extraordinary to King George IV.
10.He was fascinated with wildlife and birds, and in the last year of his life, presented a paper on the "Observations on the Migration of Birds" to the Royal Society.

Source: http://www.biographyonline.net/scientists/edward-jenner.html


Edward Jenner is the man that rid the world of Small pox, a disease that could either kill you or leave you scarred for life, like the man in the photo beneath.  Note that the photo was taken only a hundred years ago.
 
Small pox sufferer, 1912 USA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SmallpoxvictimIllinois1912.jpg)
His attitude of practical experimentation is the reason that he had success in developing the vaccine.  He got out there into the field, so to speak, and tried things out, rather than just staying in a laboratory theorizing all day.  This practical attitude can be summed up in his favourite saying "Don't think, try", a similar saying to Davy Crockett who came up with the phrase "Go ahead, jump".

The photo above is also a reason why the hedonistic & narcisistic ideology of 'enjoy the decline' that seems to abound in the manosphere/androsphere should be kicked into the rubbish bin, because it actively wants people to suffer such diseases, to suffer such illnesses and discomfort.  Civilization defeats diseases like smallpox, plague and the inordinate number of waterborne diseases by developing hygeine, developing prognosis methods, and developing cures.  Anyone who wants to Enjoy the Decline and want Civilization to fall should relocate to Haiti, where there's plenty of waterborne diseases for them to enjoy.  For the rest of us, let us give thanks to men like Jenner who eradicated Smallpox from humanity and made our lives more pleasant.



Check out some of the other entries from the 'Men of Yore' series:

[End.]