From his seat in Asgard, Odin, observed the Norns at the base of Yggdrasil, and envied their skills and their foresight. The god twisted his will toward the undertaking of coming to know the Runes. The native home of the runes is the Well of Urd with the Norns and since the runes do not reveal themselves to any but those who prove themselves worthy of such fearful insights and abilities, Odin hung himself from...
Sometimes a symbol finds you before you understand why you needed to see it. There exists a diagram, deceptively simple in its geometry, that has appeared across centuries in forms both sacred and profane. Three points arranged in a triangle, with a circle at the center where all three meet. You might recognize it from medieval manuscripts, carved into church stones, or sketched in alchemists’ private notebooks. In Christian tradition it’s called the “Trinitarian Shield,”...
Initiation—an evocative term that conjures images of secret rites and profound transformations—has intrigued anthropologists and scholars of religion for generations. As Joseph Henderson wisely noted in his seminal work, Thresholds of Initiation, “Initiation more than any other body of knowledge has suffered throughout history from the fate of continually being forgotten and having to be rediscovered” (Henderson 2005: 1). In 1909, a remarkable resurgence of interest in initiation rites occurred, thanks to Arnold Van Gennep of the Ecole Sociologique in […]...




