Good afternoon, readers! Today is November 10, 2019, and it's nearing 11:00 in the evening. Friday was the Octave of All Saints Day on the Western Rite Orthodox Gregorian calendar, and the Feast of the Holy Archangels on the Eastern New Calendar of the Orthodox Church.
Perhaps I should clarify, for anyone unfamiliar, what I mean by Western Rite Orthodox. I belong to the Eastern Orthodox Church, which uses primarily the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the Liturgy of St. Basil and the approach to faith in the writings of the Eastern fathers. However, this is not to the exclusion of saints and liturgies in the West prior to the Great Schism between East and West in 1054 A.D.
"Western Rite Orthodoxy" refers to those liturgies, prayers and devotions to saints in Western and Northern Europe prior to the aforementioned Great Schism. We're talking about specifically Western, regional liturgies and prayer traditions that developed in a way that was unique from the traditions of the Slavic, Balkan, Greek and Middle Eastern countries.
This article is about the journey I personally continue to undertake, as an Eastern Orthodox Christian of Western ancestry. As such, I believe fully in the teachings professed by the Eastern Orthodox Church, and in the truth of her liturgies and prayer traditions. In so doing, however, I agree with St. John Maximovitch (also called St. John of Shanghai), Archbishop of San Francisco from 1962 to 1966, who was canonised (British spelling) as a saint in the Orthodox Church in 1994. He said: "Never, never, never let anyone tell you that, in order to be Orthodox, you must be Eastern. The West was fully Orthodox for a thousand years, and her venerable liturgy is far older than any of her heresies."
To clarify, the Eastern Orthodox Church holds that certain ideas that came about in the West between 1054 and the present are erroneous, hence St. John's reference to heresies. But this article is not about those ideas. This article is about the fact that sometimes, in my experience as an Eastern Orthodox Christian, I have encountered an assumption from Slavs and Greeks that their Eastern European cultural context is the only one in which Orthodoxy can be validly practiced. The answer to that unjust and wrong assumption is what St. John Maximovitch said, quoted above.
After much historical research, I found out that the liturgical traditions and prayers of the Church prior to the East-West Schism were much more diverse than many people in the Orthodox Church think. I list here, once again, the many various forms of the Divine Liturgy (i.e., Mass, some of which come from particular Western regions and their Christian culture within the original Undivided Church: the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the Liturgy of St. Basil, the Liturgy of St. Mark in Egypt, the Liturgy of St. James, the Liturgy of St. Gregory, the Sarum Rite in the British Isles, the Ambrosian Liturgy, the Mozarabic Liturgy, the original Roman Liturgy. . .to name a few. There are more on the list.
That being said, my question on this journey continues to be: "Where can I find the culture and regional devotions and daily practices that go with those Western liturgies?" As I have said, I want my own cultural frame of reference in which to practice the Orthodox faith. I have found the answer to that question, partially, in the Rule of St. Benedict of Nursia. English Orthodox spirituality has a very Benedictine character, from the earliest times. It also has a monastic character, meaning that it is based on certain prayer services done during the day with specific Scriptural readings. Daily work is integrated into and with those prayer services.
My questions about these cultural roots became more intense just recently, when I found out that I am not of the heritage that I thought I was! I thought I was of Irish blood and ancestry. As you will read from my previous posts, I am in fact of Norman, Anglo-Saxon, Welsh, Scottish, German and Dutch ancestry. Some of my ancestors lived in Ireland at various times, but my blood is not, strictly speaking according to my family tree, Irish.
The difficulty about all of this is that I was clinging to the Irish Celtic traditions of the Church, certain traditions particularly preserved from Ireland, as a source of finding my Western cultural niche in the Orthodox Church. I felt a strong connection to things Irish. This manifested in my ability to play and sing Irish music, particularly Irish Christian music, as part of the music ministry job I do and as part of my own devotions. Finding out that I didn't have the blood, ancestrally, that underpinned that Irish connection and ability to play the music was a discovery that actually shook me to the core. It partially undid the work I had done trying to get my soul healed from previous wounds, inflicted on me by a couple of former spiritual fathers who were overzealous and harsh in trying to drive Western "errors" out of me. (The so-called errors were not really that erroneous. The priests who were trying to guide me at the time were just poorly educated about the pre-Schism West).
For me, truth and integrity are central. So, if I am playing an Irish seán-nós (traditional Irish) hymn such as "Ag Críost an Síol" (Christ's Is the Seed), feeling the power of the music, and believing that my ability to interpret it comes from the innate connection to Ireland through my own blood; then, the discovery that I have no real Irish blood seems to render me a fake, a phony. Whatever I do in the Spirit, it must be true! Truth above all things! So, I really got thrown for a loop, once I looked at my actual family tree and heard about some DNA tests that my family members had gotten through ancestry.com.
However, there are three things that I am urged by the Holy Spirit to consider in my journey, as I pray desperately for the restoration of what I believe to be a lost connection and lost power. Those three things are: (1) The DNA Haplogroups of the English, Irish, Scottish, and Northern European Germanic people are almost the same! According purely to DNA, I could still be just as Irish as any person who was born and raised in Ireland. (2) I am actually American anyway! There are a host of American ancestors and their ways to consider. (3) The most important point: All ability and power does not come from the connection of my blood, as I thought, but rather from God. Getting used to that idea is taking some time for me, because I have believed for most of my life that our talents and proclivities are inherited through blood.
I have been on a desperate journey since I came back from visiting my family in Alabama, where I found out that my whole idea of who I was ancestrally was a bunch of blarney. I have explored many things, searching for that Western Christian cultural context: Anglo-Saxon runes and traditions connected with them, lives of the Saints of the British Isles and Northern Europe, Scandinavian folk practices which actually seem to be more rooted in Protestant ideas than in surviving ancient Norse culture, and various Celtic prayers in their indigenous languages from Ireland, Wales, and Scotland.
The music of the non-Celtic ancestors is not so easy to find and connect to as the Celtic music. The voices of the Old Ones (ancestors) in those non-Celtic cultures seem hard to find, except, as I am discovering, in the writings of the Western saints of those countries, such as Venerable Bede.
There is another aspect to all of this. I have a side to my soul that is earthy, a side that needs seasonal celebrations, earth-based ceremonies and related paraliturgical devotions as part of my daily walk in Orthodox Christianity. The Russians, Balkan people and Greeks have those things in their day-to-day lives. I do not! However, finding the real thing in the cultural history of the British Isles and Northern Europe is very difficult. It is easy to find things based on dubious Theosophical scholarship and Romantic ideas. It's easy to find things that have little to do with Christ. I have had to wade through a lot of reeds in the marsh.
But there is a light that has appeared at the mouth of this cave into which I have descended. That light is the Light of Christ, and the fact that He, His Mother and the saints are more than willing to guide me on what is true, and what is false.
I do not believe in avoiding the pursuit of knowledge out of fear that it might lead me out of my faith, or cause me to stumble. God's got me in the palm of His hand, first of all. He's not going to drop me! Secondly, I have a very sound understanding of what the fathers and mothers of the Church teach, versus what they do not. I have an equally sound understanding about what is based on real history versus what is Theosophical speculation and nonsense.
That being said, I decided to look into the lore of Norse and Anglo-Saxon runes, culturally compare the symbolism of both cultures' approach to the runes, and explore the mythological understanding and insights therein regarding human experience in daily life.
Looking into mythological lore for psychological insights is nothing new. The Irish monks recorded and revered much of their country's lore and mythological stories, because they believed that those stories held some basic truths about life and development of the inner self which rang true for everyone, being complementary rather than contrary to the Gospel. Hellenic myths were preserved by the Greek Christians in much the same vein.
With a bit of research, however, I found out in a fairly short time that rune symbolism is rooted more in Romantic and occult ideas of the 19th century than in early medieval Norse and Anglo-Saxon culture. I'm still researching this, but I have not found any evidence thus far, for example, that the Anglo-Saxon rune Wynn--a P-shaped rune--really symbolised the idea of joy to the Anglo-Saxons of Venerable Bede's time. In fact, by the time of the Anglo-Saxons' conversion to Christianity, all the evidence points to the idea that they had dispensed with even writing in runes, much less using them as mystical symbols. Their swords were inscribed with Latin prayers; the symbols on those swords were crosses, not runes. Some swords had relics in them. For evidence of this, read the book by medieval history authority Ewart Oakeshott on medieval swords, Records of the Medieval Sword.
As for rune divination, neither casting runes nor reading cards is something a Christian needs to do. For one thing, God speaks against divination strongly in Deuteronomy, Leviticus and in the books of prophets such as Daniel and Hosea. God considers divination an abomination. Here is a strong passage from Deuteronomy, Chapter 18, verses 9-12: 9 “When you come into the land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. 10 There shall not be found among you any one who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, any one who practices divination, a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, 11 or a charmer, or a medium, or a wizard, or a necromancer. 12 For whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord; and because of these abominable practices the Lord your God is driving them out before you.
The problem with using rune letters for divination could not be more clearly stated than that! But the other problem with it is that God has given all human beings free will, which blows the whole idea of divination to hell anyway. If we have free will, then how can our fate be fixed according to a spread of rune letters or cards? We have many potential futures according to our God-given choices we make based on our God-given reason. So, I just want to be sure my readers know that in reading about rune symbolism according to medieval sources, I was not using them for any kind of fortune-telling.
As for the mythological origin of the runes, the ordeal of the god Odin (or Wotan in Saxon nomenclature), I think the story holds some interesting insights, such as the idea that one can gain wisdom during times of fasting, suffering and self-sacrifice. However, being Christian, I naturally do not believe in the myth itself any more than I would believe that the Greek god Apollo drives the sun across the sky in a chariot. Also, being Christian, I find that while a pagan story about a god hanging on a tree and sacrificing himself for knowledge is interesting, what Odin did pales in comparison to what our Incarnate Lord Jesus Christ did for us on the Cross. I wonder if some of the Vikings who converted to Christianity thought the same thing.
I think that God gave us brains and intellect, and most symbolic ideas about things such as rune letters, animals, etc. are all simply man-made. There are numbers that are symbolic of certain ideas in the Bible, and animals that behave certain ways in the Bible. But most of the symbolic meanings of animals, for example the association of owls with wisdom, are man-made. But does that mean that God cannot use them, or that He has no part to play in the usage of these ideas? No! Again, God gave us reason and intellect, and the ability of scientific observation. He gave us the ability of self-realisation and reflection, and the ability to name things and apply meaning to nature and situations around us. It was, after all, Adam who named the animals in the Book of Genesis.
So, I approached the Anglo-Saxon runes and their mythological symbolic meanings from this standpoint.
I then decided to be very creative and use certain runes, symbolising certain ideas such as prosperity and good health, as part of my Harvest wreath decoration for the front door this year. I fashioned the runes out of the stems of daisy pom-poms, flowers that are symbolic of love and happiness, and then put my handmade rune letters onto the wreath. At the top of the wreath, I fashioned a Chi Rho symbol in honour of Christ as the Lord of the Harvest, Who gives us every good thing.
I enjoyed fashioning the rune wreath decoration, because I had creatively invented my own little home folk practice in observance of the Harvest. I spritzed the wreath with holy water and prayed to Christ for special blessings for this harvest season.
Later, though, I wondered if Christ looked favourably upon my use of the Anglo-Saxon runes and their Victorian-invented symbolism in this way. The reason I wondered about it is that I got a headache down the center of my forehead through to the bottom of my nose, and my left wrist started to ache. A lot of times, if something isn't right spiritually, I get a headache and a constricted feeling in my nose or throat. I call these headaches "heresy headaches."
Between consulting my husband about this matter and praying to Christ about them, the answer I got was simple: because the Victorian-invented symbolism is basically a bunch of occult nonsense, one cannot take the runes in that context and use them in prayer, any more than one could insert a Sanskrit verse about the Hindu god Ganesh into the middle of Psalm 23 while praying it. (By Psalm 23, I refer to the psalm as most people in the West know it with KJV numbering, "The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want").
So, if I use runes in any way, it must be in the context of Christianity, for writing the actual Anglo-Saxon language. Any symbolism of the letters needs to be derived from a Christian source. I will therefore check out the actual Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem from the 9th century, when Anglo-Saxon England had long been Christian, to discover that Christian, non-occult association.
I am reminded of Christ's words to Martha in the story of Mary and Martha: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. 42 But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.”
I still have a way to go before these spiritual difficulties of mine are resolved, particularly the feeling of disconnection regarding my ability to play and sing Irish hymns in the fullness of the Spirit, and the seeming severance of the connection I had with those ancestors (who technically would have been Norman Irish anyway, if they ever lived in Ireland at all). This feeling of disconnection has made a fissure inside of me that now must be filled, and I must find a way to fill it according to what the Lord wills. I also have a long way to go before I discover the Christian customs actually associated with seasonal celebrations in Northern European tradition from the sixth century to 1054 A.D. I still feel very much adrift, regarding the cultural context of my faith. Adopting Slavic customs just because I married into a Serbian Orthodox family is not enough. That's nice, but I have my own blood and my own ancestry. All the ancestors should be honoured, mine and my husband's.
As I said before, I need my earth-ways and little ceremonies, customs in my daily life that aren't just my own invention, but passed down with the wisdom of my ancestors. I don't know when or how I will find those! These things might seem minor and insignificant to other Orthodox Christians, but my soul is naturally sacramental and ritualistic, not just in church but also at home. My soul is also naturally earthy. I cannot be all spirit-focused to the exclusion of my body and the earth on which I live.
May I be like St. Brendan, who was also adrift in a boat, and yet found the Isle of the Blessed.
I end this post with the hymn I mentioned before, "Ag Críost an Síol" (Christ's Is the Seed). This hymn illustrates well the message of the Irish and British saints.
Blessings to all who have read this article, and pray to God for me!
