The Nine Noble Virtues: a Modern Take - Self-Reliance (Cross-post)

Originally posted HERE.

The Nine Noble Virtues are a modern invention, so it seems my title is redundant. However, little seems to have been done to bring the concepts themselves from the past into the present.

I do not consider the NNV to be a historical reference. I do consider them to be a modern way of understanding cultural and even subconscious values that were stressed, if not perfectly, by those peoples lumped together as Norsemen.

This series will explore my thoughts on these values and, hopefully, start conversations about them in a modern context.

Self-reliance may be one of the most misunderstood concepts, in my oh-so humble opinion. We look at it from the highly individualist perspective of western culture, rather than the tribal lifestyle that the Norse peoples lived.

This means that we like to take the Libertarian road, where we would all do just fine so long as we were left to our own devices. But that's not how humanity has ever survived. We are horrible at being on our own.

Did you know that the top two factors in surviving in the wilderness are 1) being able to create fire, and 2) having someone with you? Even one other person can be the difference between life and death. So why would we need self-reliance?

Because self-reliance doesn't mean going through life alone. It has more to do with not being what is often referred to as a "sheeple." (Read Ralph Waldo Emerson for more.)

That's right. This isn't about growing your own food and building your own homes. Barn-raisings were a thing, and for good reason. That's a lot of work, and many hands make it better.

But if you don't think for yourself - understanding the group's mindset, but still looking at it critically - you are just a mindless body for the society. Mindless bodies don't make history. Mindless bodies don't make a society grow. Mindless bodies don't call out injustices and point out logic holes.

Thinking for yourself, being able to use your mind as an individual, makes you an invaluable part of any group. It doesn't replace the group, and the group doesn't replace it. Society isn't a machine, needing virtually identical cogs to function. It is a living, growing - dare I say enlightening - structure that should be promoting growth from all of its members.

Growth doesn't come from conformity. It comes from being slightly different. Small mutations in genes lead to new species. Small mutations in thought lead to new ideas, inventions, better ways of living... and, of course, STORIES!

Because stories feed us in ways that cannot be explained by biology. Stories feed our souls, and new stories are not created from static thinking.

So be self-reliant, not in some crazy, build-your-own-roads kind of way (unless that's what you really want...). Be self-reliant in that you consider ideas in your own way, you look at messages from the media and political propaganda with a critical eye. Those things that you've been fed by social conditioning? Think about them again, and be your own self in your beliefs.

The Nine Noble Virtues: a Modern Take - Industriousness

This was republished from HERE.

The Nine Noble Virtues are a modern invention, so it seems my title is redundant. However, little seems to have been done to bring the concepts themselves from the past into the present.

I do not consider the NNV to be a historical reference. I do consider them to be a modern way of understanding cultural and even subconscious values that were stressed, if not perfectly, by those peoples lumped together as Norsemen.

This series will explore my thoughts on these values and, hopefully, start conversations about them in a modern context.

Industriousness is an interesting subject in the modern sense. We like to believe that, in most ways, we are more lazy and less productive than our forefathers had been, and that we should get back to the good ol' days of hard, honest work.

However, numbers do not lie. Thanks to the advantages of technology, we produce more than ever before with less physical effort.

And that seems to be the crux of it all. Less physical effort.

We used to have to move our bodies to do everything. We had simple machines to help with the task, but hand-sewing and machine sewing are two very different animals. There are even machines that knit for us!

The truth of the matter is, we didn't used to work all that hard, either. Historically, the Jewish literally didn't even cook on Saturdays, and the good Christians ate cold food on Sundays... after spending all day at church. Yeah, all day.

Have you ever read the poem about what day you do what chore? This was COMMON! For families with eight or nine kids! I have two kids and we have to run a load of laundry every day to keep up.

Why? Because we change our clothes every day. And bathe every day.

Historically, bathing was a once a week or once a month activity. You had maybe two or three outfits for everyday, and a good shirt or dress for your religion day.

Clothes were made sturdier, yes, but they also were worn every single day for a whole week, unless something majorly dirty or damaging happened to them. Women wore aprons because aprons are easier to wash and mend then dresses.

And fun was spending an entire day travelling a few miles away for a barn raising, potluck and dance. Three days spent just to socialize! And that kind of thing happened a lot.

The problem isn't that we are lazier. We just have more efficiency, but with the same idea of what it means to work hard. Industriousness needs a redefinition, and this is my suggestion for that.

Industriousness is doing what you can in the current social system with your resources. It is acknowledging that intellectual and managerial work is just as valid as physical work, and vice versa. In many ways, it also means understanding the ways that work and production and income have grown, sometimes in vastly different and opposite ways.

Industriousness is about making yourself a part of a successful local and larger economy, improving the lives of those who are dependent on you and interact with you, and instilling your values of a productive life on those who come after you.

This can mean a person who works two jobs to support their family, but it can also mean the spouse/partner who stays home to keep all the balls in the air on that end. It can be a blue-collar worker who sweats through their shift, or the HR manager who makes sure employees are paid and treated fairly. It can be the loyal worker of 40 years, or the protesters who urge governments and companies to respect that loyalty.

Industriousness has become more complex as our society and economy have grown, but the value of working for the betterment of your kith and kin has not.

The Nine Noble Virtues: a Modern Take - Honor (Cross-post)

Cross-posted from Kali-Ma: The Dark Side of Paganism blog.

The Nine Noble Virtues are a modern invention, so it seems my title is redundant. However, little seems to have been done to bring the concepts themselves from the past into the present.

I do not consider the NNV to be a historical reference. I do consider them to be a modern way of understanding cultural and even subconscious values that were stressed, if not perfectly, by those peoples lumped together as Norsemen.

This series will explore my thoughts on these values and, hopefully, start conversations about them in a modern context.

I'm starting with Hospitality because it is my favorite. When I first learned about it, a chord was struck within me and I began to work out my thoughts and feelings on the idea, immediately. The first thing I noticed was that hospitality takes the place of charity.

From a historical context, there are some texts that talk about situations in which hospitality was used or abused, which gives us a strong basis for believing it was important. The "why" is a little trickier. There are just some things that people don't think to write down because, within the culture, it is so obvious that explaining it would be redundant.

We can extrapolate ideas from the way hospitality is talked about. Many of the texts focus on providing food and shelter and, when looking at the weather conditions of that time, that makes sense.

Skadi, Goddess of snow
and blizzards, with Ullr

To me, hospitality is a social exchange. You extend the generosity of your home and resources to save lives. Yes, that's a bit hyperbolic, but when you think about how people would get caught in snowstorms, or lost without food after travelling for weeks, it's not too big of a stretch.

And the sharing of resources means that there is an exchange of obligations. The host is obliged to actually take care of the needs of their guest to the best of their ability. The guest is not only obliged to respect the host's offerings, but to eventually pay that generosity forward.

In this way, a family might host travelers on and off for several generations. Then, the son may go travelling, himself. If he finds himself in a bind, he doesn't have to feel bad about asking for hospitality - his family has paid that obligation off many times over.

Think about what that means. By fostering generosity and hospitality, you are not obligated to feel SHAME if you require hospitality in return.

Imagine how different it is to see the giving and taking of charity and other forms of aide as both sides of a social obligation. Those accepting charity would be just as respected in their role for PROVIDING THE HOST WITH THE OPPORTUNITY TO MEET THEIR SOCIAL OBLIGATION.

On the other hand, serving a guest, because of the importance of the obligation, becomes an HONOR instead of a menial action. The host and server does not give food and drink with head down and a meek expression. She (for it was usually the matron of the household) holds her head high and gives her guests the offerings of her generosity.

By changing the way we look at hospitality, we take something that was often shameful or belittling and transform it into something bigger and better. In many ways, it is a sacred act to contribute to this exchange of obligations.

Odin the Wanderer

Let us not forget the number of gods who walked the world, visiting humans and taking of their hospitality, as well. Each guest could be Odin or Zeus in mortal garb.

Extending the hospitality of your home and resources can and should be a spiritual/holy/sacred act.

Gratitude & Generosity

As parents, we try to invoke in our children a sense of gratitude and generosity. We ask them to say thank you. We coerce them into sharing. And we do so because we know that they could have it worse.

At the same time, we work on keeping that knowledge from the kids. We don't share with them the stress and efforts that go into providing them with a good life. We ask them to be grateful on faith, because we say so.

How do we help our children to understand, thereby giving them the belief that they should be grateful and generous? How do we make their sharing more then an empty gesture?

My exploration of Heathenry includes the study of the modern interpretation of Heathen values, the Nine Noble Virtues. One of these is the virtue of hospitality.

Hospitality is the concept of opening your home to those who need/ask it. But unlike the Christian concept of charity, Heathens believe that receiving this generosity invokes a debt of honor and reciprocation.

It was not unusual for a host to ask a favor of his/her guest, such as aid in a building project, hunting, killing a human or animal menace, and more. The host was expected to only ask for that which the guest was capable of providing, while the guest was expected to fulfill the request without hesitation. Beowulf is actually the story of such a request.

But why would this be acceptable, to demand a boon from a guest?

It all comes down to resources. Hosting a guest requires the provision of foods, bathing items, bedding and entertainment. To be able to host a guest, one has to have these things in reserve, that is, in addition to what one needs for the family to survive.

To be a guest is to strain anothers' resources. But it isn't just the use of resources and the cost of the disposables that a guest uses.

To be a host, one doesn't just provide food, but also the plates and utensils to eat and serve the food, the kitchen, pots and pans to cook the food. It isn't just the pork, but the salting to have preserved it. It isn't just carrots, but the herbs to flavor it. Add in the years of experience to develop cooking technique, and a simple meal can have a huge investment by the host. An overnight guest requires an extra space and bedding which the host must acquire and maintain.

So generosity isn't just about the resources consumed, it's also about developing and maintaining the ability to be a host. All of these are taken into account when considering the debt of a guest.

Now, it isn't as though they walked around with a ledger. It was about the spirit of that. They also took into account that a host may someday find themselves a guest. In the cold, harsh northern climate, this could easily be a matter of survival. So, the spirit of generosity to others became about a social debt that everyone owed each other for survivals' sake.

But how does this apply to teaching children?

We can talk to our children about the efforts required to get things. Talk to them about how paying the electric bill let's us charge handheld games, and the cable & internet bills give us tv and that website we love to visit.

Talk to children about how paying our bills allows us to share those benefits with their friends when they visit, and how they share it with us when we visit.

Talk to children about money (it's important to let them experience that knowledge... before they are dropped into the world of paying their own bills) and time, paychecks and bills. How much time does mom and dad have to spend at work to pay for the internet the kids use every day? How much time & money would they save if they spent x amount of time without the lights on?

If kids get an allowance, talk to them about how much time they spend earning it, and talk to them about how much they use on top of that.

You don't have to be accusatory or call them lazy mooches. Just show them the facts, bit by bit, and they will begin to understand the work and effort that they would have to do to get that thing you bought them.

And then, maybe, they will be truly grateful.