Twenty years ago I took the first step on a journey that has irreparably changed my life. I began the long journey back to the Gods of our ancestors two decades ago, when I began attending a group meeting that sought to explore the nature of the Norse Gods and Goddesses.

We met every two weeks, on a Friday night, and continued to do so for five years. The meetings began by conducting a series of breathing exercises that had more in common with Yoga, and were designed to help build up the power of the Life-Force within us. We also began to study the Norse myths. But what was important about these gatherings was the fact that we dedicated them to the Goddess, Freyja. Why Freyja? - because she is a Goddess of Love and Joy.

The leader of our group, Robert Zoller, felt it was important that the gatherings be events that were dedicated to joy. I later discovered the importance of this, especially for anyone who wishes to seek the path back to the old Gods of our people. Anyone who decides to begin the journey back to the Gods of our ancestors should be journey filled with joy, love and happiness. It should be a joyous event and not one marred with malice, hatred or any other negative force. I am not speaking of some pacifist notion of joy, which is a surrender to some out-dated idea that the hippies of the Sixties propagated. I am not speaking of some kind of universalistic ideal of loving everyone and everything under the sun, including the Christian idea of "loving one’s enemies." What I am urging is this: that the journey we take that leads us back to our ancestors’ Gods and Goddesses should be based on the love of life, the love of our heritage, the love of who and what we are and the roots that bind us to our Folk, and hence - to our Gods. This should be a joyous trek because it is an exploration of who and what we really are.

Thus, my first recommendation to anyone who sets out on this journey is to dedicate the effort to a God or Goddess that is associated with joy, love and happiness. It does not have to be Freyja; it could be Frey, Idun, Balder, or Frigga. You should make the decision by first looking into yourself and discovering which one of the Gods or Goddesses speaks to you. One will, I promise, but make sure it is a God or Goddess associated with joy and happiness.

I am writing about this subject at this time because this is a time of joy. The period of time that is the Winter’s Solstice or the Yule, is a time of Rebirth. It is when Balder, the Son God, is reborn. There is no other event in the calendar year that is so joyous. This is why the Christians cooped this time of the year to celebrate Jesus’ birth. As I have written in the Book of Balder Rising, the Balder story was adopted by the Christians and incorporated into the Jesus myth. The Winter Solstice was always a time when Indo-Europeans celebrated the rebirth of the Sun, as a time of joy, love and happiness. Our ancient ancestors always came together with good friends and family and celebrated this event with good cheer and merriment. The ancient Iranians’ God of the Sun, Mithras was born, according to their calendar in which the Winter Solstice fell on December 25, on the 25^th of December. The Romans adopted this date and incorporated it into their religious holiday, the Saturnalia, and thus, the Christians adopted it as the day of Christ’s birth. So whether we call our Sun God, Mithras, Apollo, Balder or Jesus, we must remember this time of the years as the happiest time for us because it is dedicated to the rebirth of Balder - the return of the Sun. And, it is a good time for someone who is just setting out on his or her journey back to the Gods of our ancestors - our true Gods - to remember that this journey must be one of joy, happiness and love. And that is why you must dedicate your journey of exploration to a God or Goddess of Joy.

Joy to you all,

Bob Blumetti

Hail Odin! Hail Balder! Hail the Golden Age of Gimli!

As each and every one of us travel through life we must make decisions that will change the course of our future, or so we think. This is the belief in free will. But nothing is free in the universe. Everything we do, we say or even think has a price. Thus, every decision we make will have its consequences. The Norns are believed to weave the threads of our destiny, and some interpret this as predestination. But what the Norns weaves are paths that we can take. There are many crossroads in these paths, and when we come to the crossroad we must make a decision on what path to take. So there is a certain degree of free will involved, but at the same time we are at the mercy of the choices provided for us by the Norns. I consider these chooses, tests in which the All-Father presents to us, to prove our worth. This process is referred to as the Wyrd.

Wyrd is the process by which we are tested throughout our lives by the Gods, through the intervention of the Norns. What destiny lies in wait for us, depends on the chooses we make - what paths we decide to travel. If we make the wrong decisions, then the Gods may choose another to fulfill their plans. Let me give you an example how this can work.

An individual might decide to abandon his traditional religion that he was born into. This most likely will be Christianity. He might then begin to explore other alternative belief systems. If he is chosen by the Gods for their purpose, the Gods will offer him the opportunity to attend a study group or lecture on the old religions of our ancestors. He must decide if he will go and then, if he must make to decision to begin the long journey back to the Gods. He might even spend twenty to thirty years of his life exploring the old religion and celebrating his union with the Gods. In the course of his life he might affect the lives of many others. Perhaps one individual will be convinced by him to join him on his journey back to the Gods. This individual might then prove to be one who can fulfill the plans of the Gods, better then he. It is possible then that the first person will even lost faith in the Gods and turn away from them - even turn back to his own faith - but he will have fulfilled his role in the Gods’ plan. This process is called the Wyrd.

Each individual is born into certain circumstances, with certain abilities and is presented with certain opportunities. His experiences and the way he deals with them can lead him to the Gods and fulfill their plans. He must make that decision and then decide if he is gong to continue to serve the Gods, or turn away from them once he has fulfilled his great part. No one individual is indispensable to the Gods. There are no Moses or Mohammad within the Folk Faith. We are all the Gods prophets, and we can all play great roles in the resurrection of the bond between them and their children. But that is a choice that each of us must make on our own. There is within our individual Wyrd our own road to fulfillment - our individual role to inspiration that brings us closer to the Gods.

Every man (and woman) has his (or her) Wyrd. He has the ability to serve and exercise his genius, to reap his rewards and live and work with the Gods. Within a man’s Wyrd is his destiny and free will, as well as his rights and duties in which he can find happiness and peace.

There will always be a side to the Gods that is beyond our understanding and we must not concern ourselves about this. The Gods will chose to bestow upon us something of their essence, and each of us has the opportunity to learn something of it, but that decision lies within each and everyone of us. This is also part of the Wyrd. The Wyrd can be described as a form of fellowship between us and the Gods, and thus with the entire universe, along the path that we follow through life. In this way we can each play our individual part in the grand orchestra of time and space.

If you seek the Gods, they will hear your call, but when and how they will answer one cannot say. But sometime during your journey, you will be confronted by them. You will have an experience in which you will meet one of more of the Gods (or Goddesses) face to face. You will then be give a choice to chose. But what they will ask you, we can not foresee. When the time comes, you will have to decide.

Let me tell you of an experience I had. This happened twenty years ago when I was part of a study group, researching the old religion. I refer to it as a study group because those of us who belong to our little group were not believers in the Gods. Some of them attended with the intension of simply expanding their knowledge of the universe, others because they had an interest in mythology and still others because they believed in the occult. I personally fell into the second group. I always loved tales about the Gods, and heroes in general, and everything and anything that had to do with European folklore and mythology. After several years we had progressed beyond just studying the legends and were deep into the practical end of forging a link with the Gods. One of the experiences I had was very profound and changed my life forever.

As I said in my last sermon, you should concentrate on a God or Goddess of love and joy when forging your link or bond with the Gods, because the path you travel to them should be a joyful experience. We concentrated on Freyja, and it was Freyja who first spoke to me.

Through a process of Rune meditation and chanting, we were able to put ourselves into a trance-like state. We had done this many times before and had wonderful experiences. I discovered that I was psychically talented and had slipped into a deep trance. While in this state I found myself on a ship. I guess we can call it a Viking ship. I was at the bow of the ship and remember that the ship was made of gold and surrounded by a golden halo. It sailed in a sea of black waters, under a black sky. In the waters floated huge gold icebergs. Then, before me appeared a woman, both beautiful and powerful to behold. She was encased within a halo and she spoke to me. She told me that she was Freyja, and told me that if I would dedicate my life to the Gods, and fulfill a task that would later be revealed to me, she would chose me to spend eternity with her in the Folksvang. She also told me that those that she and the Valkyries chose and took back to Asgard were all those who led a heroic life, and not just those who died in battle. It was the battle of life and the willingness to dedicate oneself to something higher than oneself that was the truly heroic deed. She said there were many ways one could perform this. One way was to remain faithful to the Gods throughout one’s life, and perform deeds in celebration of the Gods. She told me that every person is a child of the Life-Force of the Gods, and that we each have a divine origin, with a divine mission to fulfill according to our individual abilities and perception, but the choice to do so was up to each and everyone one of us. She was now presenting me with my choice. There were many other things she told, me but for now I will simply say that I had agreed to dedicate my life to the Gods, and when I woke from my trance, I discovered a that the room where we had held our meetings, which was always at the same place, was filled with a strange and eerie ether. It seemed that the air in the room was charged with living presence. We could all feel it and it was moving beyond words. All of us admitted to some form of experience while in our own individual trance-like experiences, and we knew that the Goddess Freyja had actually presented herself with us, in that room.

Joy to you all,

Bob Blumetti

Hail Odin! Hail Balder! Hail the Golden Age of Gimli!

"In reality, only a change in the attitude of the individual can bring about a renewal in the spirit of the nations," so wrote Carl Gustav Jung. Jung understood that for a people to change, it must start with the individual. This is why I wrote the Book of Balder Rising, because if our people are to survive the coming collapse of the old order (Western Civilization) then we have got to begin to change the spirit of our people. To do this, we must begin with the individual. By changing the spirit of our people, I am referring to releasing the essence of the Gods which lie dormant within each and every one of us. The Gods and Goddesses are asleep within our very DNA. They are waiting to be called back and once again forge a new bond between mortal and immortal. This process is Balder Rising, and we have got to begin the work on the individual level.

This sleeping essence of the Gods that lie dormant within each of us is the Odin Consciousness. This Odin Consciousness manifest itself in the mythological symbols, folk tales and legends of our Folk. These imagines reside deep within the subconscious and can be tapped and released. They govern the religious, artistic, philosophical, heroic, idealistic impulses that provide the traditional instrument in which we, as a race, nation or Fold, express ourselves as a people. These instruments help us build our culture and civilization. Some might refer to this as the racial memory, and we as both individuals and collective as a people can respond to these archetypes. These archetypes can cause a revitalization of both the soul and will on an individual and collective level. A modern example of this was the Star Wars movie.

When the first Star Wars move was released, millions of our people responded to the archetypical symbolism in the movie without thinking. The themes in the movie Arthurian, Western, Manichaean and acted like a key, unlocking a deep response to those heroic ideals that we all hold dear as a people. The average person did not understand this. They did not necessarily see the connection to Arthurian legends, or Western tales, or even the cosmic struggle between the forces of Light and Darkness that predominate much of our European metaphysical subconsciousness. But whether people understood it or not, they responded to it.

Jung wrote an essay entitled, Wotan. In it he explored on the relevance of the power of the Gods has over our lives through the subconscious mind but individually and collectively. He wrote, "We must go back to the age of myths, which did not explain everything in terms of man in his limited capacities, but sought the deeper cause in the psyche and its autonomous powers. Man’s earliest institutions personified these powers as gods and described them in myths with great care and circumstantially according to their various characters. This could be done the more readily on account of the firmly established primordial types that exercise direct influence upon them. Because the behavior of a race takes on its specific character from its underlying images, we can speak of an archetype, Wotan, as the collective life of a people and by that reveals his own nature. For Wotan has a peculiar biology of his own, quite apart from the nature of man."

What Jung is telling us, is that the spirit of the Gods remained within our subconscious, and thought it was suppressed by the intrusion of Christianity, it still manifested itself by transforming Christianity, though it was still suppressed. But with the modern period of de-Christianization of the West, our people are once again freed from the oppression of an alien cult, and thus this will permit the opportunity for the rebirth of the Odin Consciousness. Jung, as many others who lived in the beginning of the twentieth Century, saw that Christianity was failing and that this would permit a resurgence of the old Gods, especially Odin. The Odin Consciousness has the opportunity to rise once more within our Folk and once again come to dominate the will of our Folk and herald in a resurrection of our Folk once the old order has finally collapsed. This process of rebirth, is Balder Rising. And Balder Rising will permit the resurrection of the Odin Consciousness to once again govern the future course of our Folk.

Joy to you all,

Bob Blumetti

Hail Odin! Hail Balder! Hail the Golden Age of Gimli!

LOVE LIFE! If there are only two words to describe the essence of the Folk Faith, it is these two words - Love Life.

Life is a gift from the Gods. When the Holy Trinity first bred life into the ash and elm and thus created the first man and woman, the most precious gift that the Gods had bestowed upon us life itself. This being the first and most important of all gifts, it is worthy of our most passionate love. It is the appreciation of life that separates s from all other living things. I am not talking about the instinct to survive, but the appreciation of life and all that it means.

If we love life then we are laying the foundation of a new Asgard on earth, and that’s really what the New Age of Gimli is all about - the rebirth of the Gods through the resurrection of Balder. It is our love of life and our holding that life to be precious that is the force that will ensure that Balder rises from the Netherworld and ensure the return of the Gods. By loving life we are recognizing that the Gods reside within us. By holding the gift of life high, we are saying that know the worth that was passed down to us through the ages by our ancestors, and thus, who value that biological worth and will pass it down to our children and descendants. It is the act of living according to this understanding - appreciating the worth of our existence and thus loving life - that we are honoring the Gods, and thus ensuring Balder’s resurrection. In this way the Gods and Goddesses will walk among us once more, here on Midgard. By living lives in which we celebrate our love of life, we are building a new Asgard in Midgard. By living a life in which we honor the gift of life, we are giving nourishment to the Gods.

The love of life is embodied in the Idun’s Golden Apples. The secret of her apples is celebrating living with joy and happiness, honoring the Gods, and helping our kind and kindred. In this way we are truly building a new Asgard which is the meaning of the New Age of Gimli. The act of living a life where we love ourselves, our heritage, our history and culture, our family and friends, our children and future, our Folk and the Gods are the power that resides in the Golden Apples, that gives everlasting life to our people. It will ensure our immortality in the next life. The way we live in this world will determine the way we live in the next. You make your own afterlife by the way you live in this life - so live a life of joy and happiness. In short - LOVE LIFE.

Now I am not preaching that we should become hippies and love everyone and everything, including our enemies who seek our destruction. I am not telling you to abandon our other emotions, including hate. It is good to hate your enemies, because if you love your enemies, you are then living a life of blind ignorance - which is the essence of Hoder - the blind God who killed Balder, his brother, through the trickery of Loki.

It was through Hoder (blind ignorance) that Loki (destruction and chaos) was able to kill Balder (the Life-Force of our Folk). So we must be on our guard (Heimdall) at all times and seek the protection of Thor, while we work and strive to build a new world - the New Age of Gimli - here in Midgard. This can be accomplished through the love of life (Balder) and by the love between a man and a woman (Frey and Freyja) the love of one’s kind and family (Frigga) and the love of justice and order (Tyr) and the love of wisdom and truth (Odin).

Joy to you all,

Bob Blumetti

Hail Odin! Hail Balder! Hail the Golden Age of Gimli!

I have often been asked about the place of predestination and free will within the belief structure of the Folk Faith. Any discussion dealing with destiny and fate immediately brings us to the Norns and their place in the cosmological structure of the universe. They rule over the role that we, the Children of the Gods, play in the great scheme of life.

The Norns are female supernatural figures. The reason they are conceived as female is because of their nurturing nature. They weave the destiny of each individual. This creative forces, like all creative forces in the universe, are female in nature. Their weaving process is like that of the embryo being nurtured and obtaining form within the woman’s womb. It is giving life and determining the nature of all individuals. This means that they are associated with our DNA and genes. From our past we are formed, and what we inherit will give form to the life we lead and thus shape the future. Past, present and future are interconnected. It is the gene pool of our Folk. The Norns are both the spiritual force that constructs a road that we will journey down, as well as the physical link between our ancestors and descendants, from which we inherit the abilities needed to make the right decisions, persevere and achieve success.

Our genes speak to us, and they will influence us by shaping the way we react to situations that will arise. This happens on both the group level and the individual level. It is through our genes that the Gods communicate to us, and it is because of our genes and DNA that we might be chosen by the Gods for a special mission or task in life.

There are three primary Norns: Past, Present and Future (Urd, Verdandi and Skuld). They live by the well of Urd, but they are not the only Norns. There are other Norns as well, both benevolent and malevolent, who could assist or reverse a person’s fortunes. In fact, each of us has an individual Norn that guides us through our journey through life. This is the origin of the Christian concept of a guardian angel.

The Norns are said to cut wood, which means that they carve the Runes that will control the life of each individual. At birth, Norns visit each child as it is born and will cut Runes to determine the events that the child will face in its life as it grows and matures. Some of the Norns might find favor with the Elves while others are closely associated with the Dwarfs. This can determinate the nature of each child. This can explain why some individuals excel at whatever they try and while others are constantly faced with defeat and disappointment. Some individuals will live lives of toil and hardship, while others experience charmed lives. The Greeks and Romans called the Norns the Fates, and the Romans had a Goddess that was native to Rome, named Fortuna. She was the Goddess of luck, and if she smiled on you, you would experience good fortune throughout you life, but if she ignored you, bad fortune would follow you throughout your live. All our Indo-European ancestors believed in female forces that controlled the destiny of our lives.

Odin knows what roads that each of us will travel because he has given an eye so that he could drink from Mimir’s well. He might chose us for a task, but it is up to each and everyone of us to decide if we are worthy to carry out a task or overcome an obstacle, but we must prove ourselves worthy. The Norns might weave a road for us to travel, but will we have to make the decisions that will determine in what direction we will travel. The road they weave for us is not straight and direct, but has many crossroads along the way.

As I mentioned before, each of us has an individual Norn that weaves the path that we travel in life. As a child growing up in Catholic school, I remember the nuns telling us that each of us has a good guardian angel, as well as a bad angel. The former is constantly leading us down the straight and narrow path, while the latter is trying to convince us to do evil. I even remember the nuns telling us to sit on the left side of our desk-seats to let the good guardian angel sit with us, because our good guardian angel is always on our right side.

Today there is a growing fascination with angels. The shelves of your local bookstore is filled with books about angels. Angel-lore tells us that angels are not cute, little creatures with wings, sweet faces and delicate features, but are often great warriors and fierce beings. They are usually represented as a combination of male and female features. Even fierce warrior-angels like Michael and Gabriele are depicted with female-life features. The reason is simple - what our ancestors understood about the Norns was incorporated into the lore of angels.

Norns are female entities, but they are also fierce. One should not seek contact with one’s Norn. The Norns are a powerful force and we should respect them and honor them, but to actually see one is a frightening experience. If you should see your Norn, it will be depicted as a terrible beast, and it will mean only one thing - danger! It could very well mean that you will soon die or suffer great harm.

Twenty years ago, when I was first involved in my study group, exploring the Norse religion, led by Robert Zoller, I had an interesting and frightening experience. One night, I had a horrible nightmare. I was dreaming that I was swimming in a black ocean. I was under water and the water was black as pitch. I could see nothing, but I had a terrible sense that some great danger was after me. I could not see it and all I could do was desperately swim as fast as I could. I could not see the surface either, but I tried to swim in the direction that I thought was upward. As I struggled, I sense that the danger that was following me was fast approaching, catching up to me. It was then that I look down, behind me I saw a great white shark racing toward me with jaws open wide. I continued to struggle, desperately trying to reach the surface, but my efforts were futile. In seconds the huge jaws engulfed me and snapped closed about me waist. The next thing I knew, i was sitting up right in bed, covered with sweat and screaming. I woke my entire family that night and I could not get back to sleep.

In the nights that followed, I continued to have nightmares about sharks, though nothing as terrible as what I experience that first night. Even today, twenty years later, I still fear having dreams about sharks. Now there is a point to this story - or two points to it.

First, exactly one year to the day I had that dream, I was crossing Park Avenue in New York City. It was night and it was raining and when I reached the corner, I did not want to try cross the avenue on a red light, as some people were doing. So I waited for the light to turn green. The light changed and proceeded to cross, making it half way across the avenue, to the island that runs down the center of Park Avenue. When I stepped off the island to finish crossing the street, being as careful as I could because it was raining, I was suddenly engulfed by the headlights of a van that was turning onto the avenue. The van hit me straight on and I went flying fifteen feet through the air, landed on the asphalt and rolled until I finally came to a stop. As I laid there in the rain I heard people rushing toward me. I opened my eyes and saw the driver getting out of his van, and without thinking, I tried to leaped up, screaming bloody murder how I wanted to rip him apart. Everyone was startled at first by my incredible "resurrection." They must have thought I was seriously hurt from the collision and did not think I was able to move, let alone try and jump up. Well, they were eventually able to restrain me, and convinced me to remain still, as I could have internal injuries. When the ambulance finally arrived, I was still sitting on the wet street. The medics told me that I should not have gotten up and walked around. I told them I did not walk about and that I had landed right here. They looked at where the van was, then at where I landed and then at each other and could not believe that I was throw so far without any visible injuries. Needless to say, I agreed to go to the hospital for x-rays. I was released later than night because I was uninjured. Except for some minor pain in my right arm, (I landed on it and rolled) I was completely uninjured.

It was not until I told my study group, several of weeks later, that they reminded me that it was exactly one year to the day when I had that terrible dream with the shark. After discussing the incident, we had come to the conclusion that the dream could have been a warning of some kind of what would happen one year later. Was it a test? A warning? Or could it be something more? We did not knew for sure. But there is one other interesting aspect of this tale.

Seven years earlier, when I was attending school in Boston, I had gone to the beach during the summer. I was up to my chest in the water and the water was very crowded, when suddenly dead silence had descended over everyone n the water. There, swimming among us was a shark. Its dark back fin was sailing through the water, moving in and out and around the people. No one moved and I know I was too frightened to move. The year was 1976, and I had just seen the movie Jaws. The shark was about twenty feet from me, but I could clearly see it was about ten feet long, though everyone swore afterwards that it was a thirty foot great white. Fortunately, the shark did not brother anyone. I felt that the shark was looking for me, and after it passed by me, it quickly swam out to sea once more. As soon as it departed, pandemonium swept over the beach and we all scrambled to get on dry land once more. The life guard told everyone it was probably a harmless sand shark, but all anyone could say was that it look reminded them of Jaws.

I have done a great deal of meditation on these experiences and I have come to the conclusion that my dream was some kind of warning from my Norn. The accident that I experienced a year later might have been some kind of ritualistic, transforming event that the Gods had conducted. Was it their way of causing a soul-transforming event (a death and resurrection ritualistic initiation of some kind) that would set me on a new course that would eventually cause me to write The Book of Balder Rising? I wonder? But one thing I am sure of - the experience was powerful and is still as real to me today as if it happened yesterday.

Joy to you all,

Bob Blumetti

Hail Odin! Hail Balder! Hail the Golden Age of Gimli!

I recently saw a show on the History Channel about the Oracle of Delphi in ancient Greece. This most holy sites of the ancient Greek religion was located on the side of Mount Parnassus. It was considered by the Greeks to be the center of the world, or the Navel of the World. A sacred stone known as the omphalos (navel)was located in the sanctuary. The stone was the one that was given to Cronus by Rhea, to swallow in place of the infant Zeus. A series of temples, a theater and a treasure house were constructed there in honor of the God, Apollo, who conveyed oracular messages through a female medium. Apollo, like Balder and Frey, is a Sun God. Long before the Hellenist Greeks occupied Greece this site was considered a holy site in which the Gods, especially Pan, would communicated with mortals. In the Greek religion it was believed that Apollo killed Python at Delphi and then underwent a purification at the site. Apollo claimed the site for his own. This site so became the most venerated shrine for the Hellenist Greeks.

Throughout the centuries thousands of people would make pilgrimages tot he site for the opportunity to present their questions to the Oracle. They sought the advise of Apollo. The Oracle was always a female. Just as among the Norse, the Greeks believed that women possessed what we moderns have come to refer to as "Woman’s intuition." The Oracle would sit in a small room, on a tripod over a sacred chasm. She underwent a careful ritual of purification. She would go into a trance and reveal the wisdom of Apollo to the questioner. The questioner had to undergo a complex ritual that included presenting a offering of a scared cake, goat or sheep before consulting the Pythia (Oracle). The Oracle was the supreme authority on religion and only two other Gods were represented at Delphi, Dionysus and Athene. When she spoke her words were copied down by a group of priests. If Apollo’s answer was negative, sometimes she would not speak at all. Other times her answers were confused or misleading. When Croesus, emperor of Lydia, consulted the Oracle when he was considering a campaign against Persia, he was told that he would destroy a great empire. He did - he destroyed his own.

The importance of the Oracle of Delphi continued to provide religious guidance to people even under the Romans, but was eventually closed down in 385 A.D. by the Christian Emperor Theodosius. But the site had ceased to function before this date. When Emperor Julian, who fought against the spread of Christianity and tried to restore the old pagan religion, he was given Apollo’s answer, which was the last prophecy given at Delphi. Julian was told: "Tell the king this; the glorious temple has fallen in ruin; Apollo has no roof over his head; the bay leaves are silent, the prophetic springs and fountains are dead."

For centuries it was believed that the reason for the demise of Delphi was its termination by the Christian emperor, but recent archeological evidence has revealed that this was not the reason for the fall of Delphi. The History Channel show on Delphi revealed that the chasm over which the Oracle sat and revealed the word of Apollo actually secreted toxic funds that when inhaled in small among caused the person inhaling them to fall into a trance and suffer hallucinations. When was revealing in the show was that Delphi sat directly on, not one fault line, but two that intersected exactly at the place where the Oracle sat. Chemical testing provided evidence that proved that when a earthquake struck in 358 A.D., it caused a geological shift that shut off the fumes, thus putting an end to Delphi.

Well, of course, the archeologists on the show tried to claim that there was a simple scientific reason why the Oracle fell into trances and thought Apollo spoke to her. It was the result of intoxication from the fumes. So there was nothing supernatural about the site, "yada, yada, yada."

As I have wrote in The Book of Balder Rising, the Gods speak to us in many ways. One way they can speak to us is through mediation and another way is through dreams. They have even provided us with the runes as a devise to communicate with them. It is even possible that the Gods might appear to us, but there is another way the Gods speak to us. Remember, the Gods represent the forces of nature. If they want to speak to us, they can do so through the use of the natural laws of the universe. This is exactly what Apollo did at Delphi. He created two fault lines to intersect at that spot and caused the right combination of different fumes to emit from the chasm that he created. He would speak to the Oracle through the inhalation of the fumes. It is interesting that a terrible earthquake struck the site during the years when the alien faith of Christianity was spreading throughout the Classical world, and causing our ancestors to abandon the Gods. It was not the Christian emperor that closed down Delphi in 385 A.D., but Apollo who closed it down in 358 A.D., when the earthquake struck. His last message was to Emperor Julian in 360 A.D., when he sought Apollo advise.

Our ancestor throughout ancient Europe communicated with the Gods through natural forces. Delphi was only one site, but there were many other sites. In Scandinavia the island of Gotland was always considered to be a holy site where the Gods would communicate to us. In Sweden Uppsala was the most important site in all Scandinavia. All across Europe, place like Stonehenge, Glastonbury, Cadbury Castle, Elsinore, Mount Alba, Harz Mountains, and hundreds of other sites, many of which was cooped by Christianity, and used by the Church to build their churches and Cathedrals. But even today we hear of Europeans who claim that some female spirit appears, usually at a sacred spring and speak to them. Modern-day people will interpret the sighting through their Christian understanding of the universe and believe that it is the Virgin Mary who speak to them.

What we moderns can learn from the past is that the Gods have many different way they can speak to us. However they chose to speak to use, we can learn to communicate with them through the use of the runes and runic mediation. 

Joy to you all,

Bob Blumetti

Hail Odin! Hail Balder!

SERMON NUMBER SEVEN: RECIPROCITY

I want to apologize for not having written a sermon for five months, but the most remarkable series of events have occur. With the help of Ralph Berger, I was working on formatting The Book of Balder Rising for publication. Ralph had finally completed the editing of the manuscript in May, and so, the project that I had been working on for the last ten years had finally been completed. We hope to have the book in print by the beginning of the year 2004. The twelve months preceding May had been a very difficult time for me. I almost lost my mother last September, and four people very close to passed away. I also wanted to move and found it very difficult finding a suitable piece of property. I was renting an apartment, and the building I lived in was deteriorating rapidly due to the delinquency of care by the new owners. Despite their delinquency, they were raising the rents by 20 percent. I needed to move, but rents were rising rapidly everywhere. I decided it was better to buy, but I could only afford a co-op or condominium in today’s housing market. I had been looking for six months and found nothing worthwhile. There was a great deal of pressure and stress building in my life and I was in a black mood. But everything changed once the manuscript was finally completed.

In May, my sister discovered a house for sale by owner next door to her house. It was a handy-man special and thus, I was able to purchase it at half the market price. I have now moved into it and working on making the necessary renovations. I am close to my family, and once again financially secured. My mother now has the entire family caring for her, and the stress has been eliminated. I consider the incident of the house becoming available just after the completion of the manuscript to be nothing less than a miracle.

Twenty years ago, I made a pledge with Freyja. I promised to write a book dedicated to the Gods. I spent all those years, meditating and studying. The inspiration that eventually came to me set me on the course of writing The Book of Balder Rising. I have made the book available to the public on the Internet, and soon it will be available in book form. I truly believe that I have been rewarded by the Gods for fulfilling my part of the pack that I made with them.

This is the nature of the relationship between the Gods and their children. In ancient times, when our ancestors practiced the Old Time Religion, an individual would make a sacrifice to a God or Goddess. In doing so, he would than promise to perform some deed in the name of the deity, in return for a favor. If the individual fulfilled his part of the bargain, he would be rewarded in some way. Twenty years ago, I had undergone a wondrous experience while under a trance. The group I was involved in had been meeting for several years. Our little group had forged a powerful link with the Goddess Freyja. On one occasion, we actual evoked the presence of the Goddess. On another occasion, while under a trance, I found myself on a ship, sailing an ocean of black waters and gleaming, golden icebergs. Freyja appeared to me and made certain promises if I would dedicate my life to the Gods. I agreed, and that was the beginning of my trek along a path that I have followed over the last twenty years.

I do believe my recent good fortune is the result of my fulfilling my part of the bargain I made with Freyja. I do believe that we, the children of the Gods, can reforge the lost bonds with the Gods of our ancestors. The Gods can once again play an important and real part in our individual lives, as well as the life of our Folk. This is the purpose of my book, The Book of Balder Rising. I plan to write a second book in the future about the Volsung.

In the last sermon, I explained how your group should chant the rune, Wunjo, over and over. Remember that while chanting the rune, your group should be sitting in a circle, holding hands. Once you have completed this exercise, you can than move on to the next step. Hopefully, your group has both men and women members. As I said before, you can do these exercises as an individual, but the Folk Faith is the faith of our people, as these exercises are best practiced in a group. The group should not be exclusive to one sex, and you are about to discover why.

Joy to you all,

Bob Blumetti

Hail Odin! Hail Balder!

In America, we celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of the month of November. Despite the politically correct interpretation that the Pilgrims were thanking the Indians, or American aborigines, the truth was that the Pilgrims were thanking God for helping them get through their first year, or winter, in the New World. The interesting fact about Thanksgiving is that it probably originally took place in the spring, after the winter months. But we celebrate it on the last Thursday of November–why?

The custom of giving thanks was originally celebrated in Europe around the second to the last full moon of the yearly cycle. This usually fell around the end of November, or the beginning of December. People gave thanks for their harvest, for the eventual return of the sun or the rebirth of Balder in Northern Europe. This is probably why, in America, we began celebrating the act of giving thanks to God at the end of November. And it’s also why its celebrated on Thursday, or Thor’s Day. As we know, Thor is the Protector, and giving thanks to our protector on his day, seems appropriate. Remember also, Thor is also a God of fertility, and so we give thanks to Thor for the bounty that he has provided.

Our people have preserved, without realizing it, many of the customs of the "Old Time Religion." This has been done through what is referred to as, racial memories. Much of the knowledge of the old ways have been consciously repressed, but subconsciously, they continue to influence our actions and thoughts. When the early Christian Church waged a propaganda war on the Old Time Religion, it deliberately incorporated many of the old customs and rituals into its new religion. Thus, the old pagan practices were preserved, though transformed into a Christian way, by the Christian Church. One example of this is the depiction of the Christian God as a powerfully build, old man with white hair and beard. This image was taken from the statue of Zeus in the Temple of Zeus that once existed at Olympia. The practice of transforming pagan customs into Christian customs went on for centuries until the Europeans forgot where the customs originated. And so, we moderns began celebrating Thanksgiving at the end of November and on Thursday, without realizing its pagan origins.

We are living in a most wonderful time. Those of us who have rediscovered the Gods of our ancestors, have been called to reestablish the bonds with the Gods who gave birth to our Folk. We should give thanks for this most wonderful gift–the gift of knowing the truth. But we should also give thanks for our family, friends and kindred. We should give thanks for our good fortune, and surviving those hardships that we must all face in the great journey of life. Giving thanks is important, for it reminds us of the links we share with our Gods and Folk. And there is no reason why we can not continue to continue this most wonderful, modern holiday, and give thanks to the Gods, especially Odin, for sacrificing his son Balder, to Thor for his protection and bounty, and prepare ourselves for the rebirth of Balder at Yule Time, on Thanksgiving Day. Like the Pilgrims that settled in the New World, we too are pilgrims–the New Pilgrims–setting out to build a new world. This new world is actually Gimli, and it will be the a new age–one in which the guiding spirit will be Balder, whose spirit will facilitate the return of the Gods and Goddesses of our people.

Joy to you all,

Bob Blumetti

Hail Odin! Hail Balder!

I recently received an e-mail asking me, now that we know that Balder will return, how will he return? The question might seem a sensible question on the face of it, but it really reflects a state of mind of someone who has read the Book of Balder Rising through a Christian vision. This is understandable. As one who has been raised a Catholic, I found myself constantly having to check my own perception of things being clouded by my Christian religious traditional up-bringing. It is difficult to truly change the way one thinks as well as feels when seeking a new religious spirituality.

When I wrote that Balder will rise from Hel and that his resurrection will herald the return of the Gods, I believed I made it clear that I was not referring to some kind of "Jesus" prophecy--predicting that Balder will appear in human form and walk the world claiming he is some kind of messiah. Balder is not Christ, though elements of the Balder tale was burrowed and incorporated into the Jesus myth. When Christians, especially European Christians, pray to Christ, they are really praying to the God Balder without realizing it. This is why I explained that Jesus was transformed from a heretic Jewish prophet into a neo-pagan deity by the early Christians, at least by the followers of Paul, who had dedicated himself to converting the European pagans, and thus transforming Christianity. Other pagan Gods, such as Adonis, who was born in human form in a place called Bethlehem, were also incorporated into the Jesus myth, as well as Mithras, who was born on December 25. But Balder is not some kind of pagan Christ who will rise and judge us, condemn the sinful and set-up some kind of mythical paradise on earth, ending history for all time.

When Balder rises from Hel, I am not prophesying an actual, physical event that will take place on a certain date. I am speaking of the rebirth of the Balder-Force, which is the Life-Force of the Gods restored to us. This Balder-Force will exist within each an everyone of us. This spiritual force has existed and will always exist within each and every person of European ancestry, just as the Life-Force of other Gods continues to burn within each individual of other races. Each race or people was given form and substance in the most ancient times by different pantheon of Gods. Within our Folk, the strength of the Life-Force of our ancient Gods decreased because our people turned to an alien religion, but that Life-Force did not die out. But now, as Christianity is declining, that Life-Force has the opportunity to reassert itself, but this can only happen if we make a conscious effort to restore the conscious bond with the Gods that created us.

The Life-Force of the Gods fill us, and for this reason, the Gods exist within us. Their influence has been warped, but now we have the opportunity, by turning to the Folk Faith, to awaken the Gods that sleep within us. We can do this by celebrating the Gods, by creating new communities based on this celebration of the Gods. These new communities must be filled with the joy of life, the love of ourselves, each other, our families and ancestors and the children that we bring into the world. By living this way, we will be living pure lives, but physically and spiritually, and it is this way of life that is the Balder-Force. And it is with this Balder-Force that we will awaken the Gods once more, and together, we will be able to face the dark ages that are approaching and threaten to engulf, not only our people, but the entire world.

Your progression with the rune chanting should eventually bring your little group to a point where you will begin to discover that the effects will affect your life outside your group. If you have continued to do as I have described, your group should begin to notice that your gatherings are taking on an spiritual or other-worldly air. Eventually you will begin to feel the Life-Force coursing through each of you as you hold hands and chant. You might even notice that the atmosphere in the room or place where you have been holding your meetings has taken on a special feel. This is because the site has become charged with the Life-Force of the Gods. Your group must decide, based on the individual experiences of the members of the group to decide to begin the next step. This is meditation. Once your group has completed its chanting, you can then fall silent and, while remain in your circle, holding hands, keep your eyes closed and fall into a relaxed position. Many different things can begin to happen.

Some of your members might experience visions. This could come in the form of images that you might see appearing on the insides of you eyelids. Electrical charges can be seen on the inside of your eyelids, and they might eventually form shapes and even visions of things that happened in the past, or of happenings that could take place in the future. Your members might even experience out of body travel or astral projection. This is the state of the shaman--the Odinic Force. When your group does eventually reach this point, you will find that you have suddenly appeared at the foot of the Rainbow Bridge.

Joy to you all,

Bob Blumetti

Hail Odin! Hail Balder!

SERMON TEN: HOW TO TOUCH THE GODS

First, let me say that I have no intentions of trying to convince you, to believe in the existence of the Gods. What I hope to accomplish at these meetings is to help you to discover the existence of the Gods for yourselves. I want you to touch them, and be touched by them--to experience them and be moved by them, both spiritually and physically, just as I was twenty years ago.

When I am asked, if I believe in God, or the Gods, I can truly say that I don’t believe in them. What I do say is I know there are gods---because I have been touched by them, I have spoken with them, and you can do the same.

Can this truly be done? Am I crazy? Well--the only way to answer these questions is for you to experience, what I experienced, for yourselves.

But how do we do this?

This can be done through Stadha-galdr. This discipline is heavily indebted to the work of 20^th century runic magicians of Germany who developed a system they called Runeyoga. It is based on the writings of Siegfried Adolf Kummer, Friedrich Bernhard Marby and Karl Spiesberger. They have provide us with a guide of practical experiments, invaluable clues, and ritual formulas, which are the basis for what we are going to be engaged at these meeting.

We must remember---that gestures and postures form some part of almost every metaphysical or magical school of thought. They can be seen in the simple folding of hands in prayer, to the extremely complex system of positions, practiced in Indian yoga. Through the proper acts and rituals, we can transform ourselves--our very bodies--into an awesome magical tool--both individually and collectively--that can tap into the cosmic forces of the runic powers, which is the Life Force of our race.

This can be done through the Stadha-galdr practice of:

1) Control of the body through posture.

2) Control of thought through song and sound.

3) Control of breath and breading.

4) Control of emotions.

5) Becoming aware of the runic realms of the 9 worlds of Yggdrasill, that within the ourselves.

6) Control and direction of the will.

Each of these aims should be striven for in turn, until all six have been mastered, but the last, the direction of the will, is the most important, but to achieve this we must first master the other five.

Here, I must stress vigorously, that the body should not be viewed as something evil or as an enemy to be defeated or whipped into submission, but rather as a source for great and holy energy, which can be harnessed and directed, only in harmony with the will. Our flesh and blood, our DNA, our bodies that we inhabit, are Midgard, the realm of man, and what we hope to obtain at these meeting i nothing less than entry into Asgard--the spiritual realm of the Gods.

But first, we must understand why we can do this.

In the beginning, the gods created our race. This was done when the Holy trinity---Odin, Vili and Ve, also known as Odin, Hoenir and Loki, created the first man and woman. In the Voluspa we read:

"Unitl the Aesir, mighty and loving, came from the host to the coast;

on the land they found of little might, Askr and Embla, yet unfated."

Askr was the first man, made from the Ash tree, and Embla was the first woman, made from the Elm tree. It is important to understand that we do not take these words literally. What is important to understand here, is that, unlike the Semitic bibles, the first humans were made from living entities, not from dirt. These living entities---trees, or tree---is symbolic of the Life Force of the gods. The universe is held together by that Life Force, which is the Yggdrasill. Odin gave them the breath of life, the spirit that is the divine spark in all of us and that all-pervasive force that penetrates and animates the universe. Hoenir gave them the power of inspirational ecstasy, which is the pure and irrational power that is the magical faculty of the Gods and men. And Loki gave them their external qualities of appearance, movement and health.

It is these forces that we hope to tap into at these meetings, which will help us direct the power of the will. This can be manifested in four ways: the will, the spirit, luck and the fetch.

The Will is the conscious will and intellect, and a powerful will can project and even reform our personal essence in another location, in an almost physical manner. This is the phenomena known as astral projection and astral vision, which is done by directing the spirit through the force of the will.

The Spirit is the personal aspect of the image-forming essence in the cosmos. This is the realm of images which bridge the nine worlds, and acts as a matrix between the spiritual and physical realm of existence. The force that feeds this process, is called Luck.

Luck is actually a complex entity that is a shape-changing force, or power, and can be considered your guardian spirit--the Norns, which controls your destiny. This force may be increased continuously by ritualized magical actions and deeds of honor.

The Fetch is the storehouse of all this action, and is symbolized by the Norn--and its quality is specific to the internal nature of the individual. It interacts with all levels of the personality, impairing the fate, or Norn, of the person, in accordance with past action. It is the repository of all past actions, and accordingly affects a person’s life.

Now that we have answered the question of how do we do this, we must ask the question of why?

The truth is---we are living in a time of great change.

The old order is in an advanced state of decay. The world as we know it, is rapidly falling apart. The West is in a state of decline and the forces of darkness are rapidly spreading across the world.

We stand in between the turning of the ages. The previous age is fading into the past, as Loki is rallying the forces of destruction to assault the old order, plunging the world into chaos. The darkness and oppression of the great winter is quickly overtaking the ordered world of the previous age. We are entering a time of the giants, when the ents will rule over mankind, shattering the institutions, traditions and nations that gave meaning and hope to our people and ancestors. We are entering a new dark age–an age of chaos--the Age of Fimbul.

The previous age was one in which the Gods of our ancestors spoke to us through the facade of an alien creed. They existed in a semi-comatose state, because we had constructed a screen between us and them–the facade of an alien creed–Christianity. But now that Christianity is fading, the old Gods are beginning to wake up once more. They are preparing to throw off the yoke of the foreign garb of a false identity, and speak to us once more in their true forms.

Our people have passed through two ages. In the first, they were born, but scattered and separated into different nations, tribes, ethnic groups and even civilizations. The Gods of our ancestors soon took on different names and were worshiped in various ways, depending on the environment in which our ancestors settled. Thus, the old Gods took on many guises and different forms. Our ancestors tried to give order to the many different interpretations of their Gods, but eventually the confusion grew worst, until finally, a creed, completely alien, won out in the confusion of faiths. Because they were weakened, they eventually succumbed to the alien creed.

But the Life Force of the Gods, that gave birth to our people, could not be denied, and soon the alien creed was transformed by the spirit of the old Gods. The Gods that gave birth to us still spoke to us, but instead of speaking to us in a confused matter, through various identities, they spoke to us through an alien identity. But even this would not last, and that alien creed is now fading away.

But now, we are no longer divided into various nations and tribes. Within America, we have come together as one people. Even in Europe, there is a coming together of the many different nations and nationalities of our Folk. A time of unification is dawning, and the opportunity for the Gods of our ancestors, to speak to us once more in their true form, is upon us. And this time, they will speak with one voice to all our people.

But there are great dangers. The turning of the ages, when one age dies and another is born, is always a dangerous time. Chaos rules and within the confusion, Loki has the opportunity to lead our people astray. If he is successful, his father, Sutur, will lay waste to everything, and fearfully, the devastation could be so great, that we might, as a people, never rise again. If that is so, the Gods will not return and there will be no rebirth, and hence the bright light of enlightened humanity will never again bless this world with such wonders, capable of being manifested only through the soul of our Folk. Darkness will rule and the gifts given to us in the beginning of time, will be lost forever, and humanity will revert back to the level of the beast that roams the wilderness.

But hope still burns bright, and we have only to fan its flames to transform it into a beacon that will serve as a light, to blaze a path through the darkness, and unleash the regenerative powers of Balder. For in the Netherworld, Balder and his dear wife are preparing to return. They can see the light which has broke through the roof of Hel, like a translucent stairway, for them to ascend back to the world of the living. All that awaits their return is our call–our call for them to return and once more give new life to the old Gods and Goddesses, so that we might re-forge those bonds that once united both mortal with immortal, and thus, herald in the new age, the Golden Age of Gimli.

Joy to you all,

Bob Blumetti

Hail Odin! Hail Balder!

SERMON ELEVEN: WE ARE A LIGHT AGAINST THE APPROACHING DARKNESS

We and see the approaching winter and we know that we must stand fast and be a beacon against the terrible darkness that is about to sweep over our world.

We can see that our leaders and governments have been inflicted with the blind ignorance that is Hodur. We can see that our people have fall under the spell of Hodur’s ignorance and are blinded to the truths that have guided our ancestors for thousands of years. We know that they are now prey to the trickster, Loki, who will lead the forces of chaos and destruction that will sweep over the world and level all that we know. Therefore, we raise our voice in this age of decline. To the East, North, West and South, we call to our people, calling on them to abandon the weakness that has invaded our minds, hearts and souls, and proclaim our rebirth!

Open your minds and reject the ignorance that has blinded us to our true identity. Reject Hodur and all that he stands for and ready yourselves to live the life filled with the love and beauty that is Balder. Open your eyes so that you might see and listen and learn of the truth that will drive away the darkness that has clouded your minds, and let the light that is Balder, the same light that is the Life Force of our Folk and the Gods who created us, fill your heart, mind and soul.

We challenge the wisdom of the waning age–the age of chaos and decline.

We demand reasons for the false rationale and ideology of the present age, that demands submission and suicide, and instead, we are governed by the laws of nature, of growth and development that leads us on the road to strength and greatness.

Never will we prostate ourselves on our knees, or on the ground, groveling before alien Gods and false ideologies. For no God would ever demand that we humiliate ourselves before him. Instead, we stand up right, with arms outstretched, calling on the Gods, on Odin, Vile and Ve, who gave order to the universe, who created the physical laws that govern all things, to hear us, for we are great and proud, not humble and meek.

No false doctrines, created by the mind of man and written by the hand of man, shall enslave our hearts, minds and souls. No false dogmas shall stifle our lives and make us slaves to false morality–the morality of the weak.

Though we seek no enemies and wish no one harm, nor do we help those who do not belong, but instead work together, united as one people, with our Gods, and march along the path that leads to success and happiness.

We stand fast, holding high the standard of the strong and great.

Doctrines describing right and wrong, good and evil, were invented to created confusion and chaos, as weapons to knock open the gates of Asgard, and destroy the Life Force that gave us life and gives us hope for the future.

Creeds that declare they are built upon divine law are false and immaterial. No dogma written by the hand of man must be taken as divine. Spiritual truth shines from within our souls, not from the pages of a book or the mouths of false prophets. The truth of the universe lies within the natural laws, which were created by the Holy Trinity when they slew Ymir and fashioned order from his chaos.

We do not believe in a God, or the Gods, because a book tells us to–we know that our Gods are real, for we have searched within ourselves, and have discovered them within us.

Though the world changes, and ages come and go, our collective soul, which shines with the Life Force we share with the Gods that gave life to us, continues to shine, even when we are blinded by ignorance. We have only to open our eyes to let that light fill our minds and hearts with its joy and happiness.

We refuse to permit false doctrine to blind us to the truths that hold the universe together and keep chaos from destroying us. Whatever has been proven false, we reject and discard, flinging it into the void of darkness of false gods, doctrines and philosophies.

The most dangerous lie is the belief based on faith. It leads all who follow it down the path to destruction, like sheep to the slaughter. We seek knowledge and truth, and that can only be found from within our hearts, souls and minds. It can only be found by looking inwards, seeking out the Gods that dwell within us and touching them.

"Love your enemies" is a poison that has been injected into our hearts and minds by our enemies. We love ourselves, our friends, family, kin and kindred, who love us back. We reject all who hate us, and reject all who reject us. We seek to live in love and happiness, and to do so, we must live and work among those who love us. We seek to harm no one, but will never submit to others who might seek to harm us.

It is unnatural to expect the victim, who has been brutalized, oppressed and persecuted, to love those who have sought to destroy him.

Seek not to make enemies where none exist, but neither should we roll over and permit those who hate us to destroy us. Do not let hate govern your actions and your lives, but do not let false doctrines of loving your enemy weaken you with blind ignorance.

Do not walk in the darkness that is Hodur, but instead, walk in the light that is Balder, for his light is love. So walk through life with Balder’s love in your hearts–love for your Folk, for your friends, family and kin, and especially for yourself.

Life is a great journey. So make the most of it. Be happy and do things that will make you happy, but do not that which will harm others or yourself.

There is no heaven and hell. There is no reward or punishment in the afterlife. The life you lead in this world will determine the life you lead in the afterlife–so lead a good life. The life you live now, will echo in eternity.

Hail the strong, for they will rule themselves. Damned are the meek, for they will be dictated to by their oppressors.

Hail the powerful, for no enemy can harm them. Damned are the weak, for they will be ploughed under.

Hail the brave, for they will dare great deeds. Damned are the humble, for they will be destroyed and forgotten.

Hail the victorious, for they will be right in all that they do, because might does make right. Damned are the defeated, for they will be slaves to those who win.

Hail the ruthless, for the weak will cower before them. Damned are the weak-willed, for they will cursed.

Hail the courageous, for their lives will be glorious. Damned are the daydreamers, for they will waste their lives.

Hail those who place their welfare, and the welfare of their kin and kindred before aliens and foreigners, for they will prosper and be fruitful. Damned are those who placed the welfare of others before their own kind, for they will be condemned to oblivion and live in slavery.

Hail those who are hated by their enemies, for that hate is a measure of one’s greatness. Damned are those who help those who despise them, for they are their own worst enemy.

Hail those who dream great deeds, for they will become great and mighty. Damned are those who preach lies as truth, for they are a curse to all who follow them.

Joy to you all,

Bob Blumetti

Hail Odin! Hail Balder!

SERMON TWELVE: 

OUR PLACE IN THE ORDER OF THINGS

The three monotheistic religions see God as someone with a master plan, who has laid down the law and demand that everyone obey his laws, and if they don’t, they will suffer the most excruciating pain for all eternity. Ironically enough, everyone who happens to be unfortunate enough to be born in a part of the world that has never heard the "divine word" is damned along with those who heard it and rejected it. Thus, God, who is suppose to be all-knowing and infallible, has deliberately created billions of people whom he has damned to Hell. He is all-knowing and infallible–so that means he knew that billions of people would never have the chance to be saved, as well as those who he knew would choose to reject his law, and thus, they would be condemned after death. Why? Why would God do such a thing? Well, the followers of monotheism like to say, "We can never know what God does, or why he does it, but we have got to have faith." This is poor comfort for those billions burning in Hell. Of course, that doesn’t concern those who know that they are saved.

Pagans do not believe in a God who is concerned with suffering and pain. We don’t see God as a great judge, passing judgement on everyone, condemning billions to eternal suffering. We don’t fear God or his wrath. We know that God does not inflict pain and suffering on us. We know that the terrible things that happen to us are not the "will of God." The monotheistic God is a God with a plan, and we are all suppose to be a part of his plan–whatever it may be? He is supposed to have created us so that he can torture us–torment us with temptation. He created the Devil to temp us away from him and made us weak so that the great majority of us will fall victim to the wily ways of Satan. He then deliberately makes our lives a living Hell by sending earthquakes, tornadoes, fires, floods, hurricanes, disease, storms our way, to test our faith, all the while killing thousands even millions in wars and plagues, and our clergy try to reassure us that it’s all part of "God’s will" and that the fallen are "in his hands." But if God is in complete control of the universe, why does he send such horror to torment us? Is this the behavior of a truly loving and merciful God?

For us, the Gods, by whatever name you refer to them as, are a balancing force is the universe. They represent the natural laws of science that act as a balancing factor in nature to counter the chaotic and destructive forces that are represented by the giants. They are far too powerful a force to be concern with the pain and suffering, or salvation, of every little individual on the face of the earth. But that does not mean we cannot tap into their power to help us in our lives. It does not mean that we are completely disconnected from the power that is the Gods, which maintain order in the universe, to help us succeed in everything that we do.

We pagans, followers of the Folk Faith, realize that the universe is ruled by the physical laws of science, and that the actions and reactions of nature, are the opposing forces of chaos (the giants) and order (the Gods). We were not created out of dirt to be tested and judge. We were created from the same Life Force that holds the universe together–the same Life Force that is the essence of the Gods, and that we are part of the life-changing, evolutionary process that holds the universe together, that keeps the planets rotating around the sun and the sun, along with the billions of other stars, rotating around the center of the galaxy, and propels the galaxy, and the billions of other galaxies, through the vast, limitless void of space. This means we are part of nature and ruled by the same laws of nature that governs all living things on this planet, and perhaps on other worlds. And because we are part of the Life Force, the action-reaction of order and chaos, that governs the universe, all our actions contribute to one or the other. By the way we live our lives, and the decisions we make every minute of the day, we either contribute to the chaotic, destructive forces that are the giants, or contribute to the ordered force that is the Gods. There is no sin or breaking of commandments, but the simple fact that the environment that surrounds us, the society we live in, the way people interact with each other and treat each other, are all determined by the way we act. If our actions are destructive, then we will live within a chaotic destructive society, but if we live by the golden rule, then we will live in a healthy, orderly and progressive society.

The Gods have set up the rules by which the universe works. If we adjust our lives according to those rules, we will benefit from them and eventually, we, both individually and collectively as a people, will become great. And over time, in generations from now, our children will become God-like.

This is the truth that we must understand–we are governed not by commandment, of which we will be condemned if we break, but should live by the simple golden rule of treating people in the same way that we want them to treat us, but at the same time, we recognize that if others treat us badly, we will not tolerate it. Thus, we hate no one, and seek to do harm toward anyone, but we are not pacifists, for pacifism is permitting others to dominate or harm, you. Thus, we do not sit around praying for God to intervene for us, but we do seek to forge bonds with our Gods, so that we can tap into the Life Force that we share with them, and thus help us in our actions, and give us the power to succeed. So we do not sit back and accept fate without doing anything about it. We know that we must act in a productive way if we are to be successful in life and all things that we do. We know that we can only be successful by positive thinking, backed up by positive action.

We do not believe in sin, because we have no commandments to break. We understand that there are right and wrong actions, and when we make mistakes, we don’t pray for forgiveness, but instead,we accept the fact that we are not perfect and recognize that we did wrong and make a promise to ourselves and loved ones, to try not to do it again. We know that mistakes are part of life and we can actually learn from them and grow–becoming a better person by trying not to repeat our mistakes. Thus, while we should own up to our mistakes, and when necessary, make amens for the wrongs that we might do, we should not feel guilty or shame, especially if we truly recognize the wrong that we did. In fact, we should even talk about it to others, as a lesson in teaching others, especially our children and young people, as examples of what not to do if they want to lead a happy and successful life. We all know that it is often better to confess our mistakes then to keep it bottled up inside, permitting them to fester and eat away at your mind and soul with guilt and shame.

The problem with the monotheists is that they are intolerant of anyone who disagrees with their interpretation. Monotheists claim that anyone who disagrees with them is condemned. Even among themselves they cannot agree and have a long history of hating each other, waging wars against each other and persecuting each other. Christians have always considered Jews, the children of the Devil, because they rejected Christ, and Jews consider anyone who does not belong to the chosen people, inferior. Even among Jews and Christians there is disagreement. Orthodox Jews disagree with Conservative Jews and both disagree with Reformist Jews, and of course there is the Hasidic, and even they don’t agree. The Christians are even more divided. Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox Christians all disagree. Catholics believe all Christians who do not belong to the Catholic Church are condemned to burn in Hell. Orthodox Christians believe the same about everyone who does not belong to the Orthodox Church. They are all condemned to burn in Hell. Protestants consider both Orthodox and Catholics to be heathens and "pagans." Then there are the Muslims, who are also divided and war among themselves, they consider everyone else heathens, who can be killed, enslaved, raped and tortured with impunity because they do not believe in Allah. Of course, all this is insane.

As pagans we do not hate any other faith, even the monotheistic religions. We respect all religious beliefs, even if we disagree with the interpretation, we respect the religiosity. For most of the people who practice these faiths are basically good, or seek to do good, but their faiths are wrong. Most people just want to lead good lives, and we can respect anyone, no matter what they believe, who just want to lead good lives. The ancient Romans made it a custom of trying to associate their Gods with the Gods worshiped by other people. There were certain practices that the Romans abhorred, such as human sacrifice and homosexuality, but as for the actual Gods that other people worshiped, the Romans tolerated and even adopted them into their own pantheon of Gods. As a pagan I have no problem with saying a prayer to Jesus, because I know that the spiritual essence of the God, Jesus, that is worshiped, is essentially a God of peace, and I can associate Jesus with Balder or any other God of peace.

Joy to you all,

Bob Blumetti

Hail Odin! Hail Balder!

SERMON THIRTEEN:

RELIGION AND THE FOLK SOUL

Religions flow from the soul of a particular people like rivers from a spring. They are the expression of the soul of the race that gives birth to them. They are the expression of a particular people’s spirituality and flourish within the genetic landscape of that people, and kindred folk, who gave expression and form to the spirituality. All religions are thus the manifestation of the way a people or race views the universe and environment they live within, and gave birth to them as a nation. This is just as true of all the pagan religions as it is of the more universalist and especially the monotheistic religions.

Christianity originated as a breakaway Jewish cult based on the teachings of the Essence-cult leader that we call Jesus. He preached a heretical variation of Judaism that caused the Jewish leaders to condemn him and sentenced him to death for his heresy. But Christianity did not die with Jesus for several reasons. First, his followers claimed that Jesus was divine, the son of God and that he rose from the dead. They were able to do this by incorporating the many different spiritual beliefs that existed in the Classical world among the many different pagan religions. The idea of virgin birth through impregnation by a God was the foundation of both the Roman state and the Roman religion. Romulus, the founder of Rome, was born of a Vestal Virgin who was impregnated by Mars, the God of War. There were many other incidents of different religions, claiming that a demigod, born of a human female and fathered by a God, during the Classical period. Hercules is just one more example. But just as Jesus was born of a God, he rose from the dead like a God, just as Balder does, and many other Gods. Thus, the early followers of Jesus kept alive their cult by incorporating pagan ideas and belief systems into their Jewish cult, thus transforming their belief system into a non-Jewish religion. At first, the cult remained destined to remain insignificant and obscure, existing within the peripheral lunatic-fringe of Jewish society, that is, until a Jew, who possessed Roman citizenship, converted to the new religion.

Saint Paul had converted after claiming he had a vision in which Jesus spoke to him and told him to go out and convert the pagans to Christianity. I will not go into the entire story of Paul’s life and mission, but it is important to make the point that Paul tirelessly preached among the Greek Celtic and Roman populations of the Roman Empire. During his lifetime and afterwards, his followers began incorporating pagan ideals and belief systems into the Jesus cult, creating the image of Jesus that has come down to us to and giving birth to a paganized version of Christianity, as opposed to the followers of Saint Peter, who wished to preserve the distinctively Jewish character of Christianity. One example is the issue of baptism verus circumcision. The latter custom was a common tradition among different Semitic peoples, but considered barbaric and an abhorrent practiced by the Romans and Greeks. The Jewish followers of Saint Peters wanted to make circumcision a fundamental principle, just as it is within the Jewish religion, for anyone to convert to Christianity. Paul knew that would sound the death-knell of Christianity. If Christianity was ever to spread among the non-Jewish population, he had to replace the custom with the common pagan practice of baptism, as a means of conversion. The entire story of John the Baptist was probably manufactured by Paul and his followers to justify the practice and its replacement of circumcision.

As Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire during the next, several hundred years, it continued to be transformed by paganism. Even the date of Jesus’ birth, December 25, was borrowed from the religion that worshiped the pagan Indo-European God, Mithra, who was born in human form on that date. Everything from the idea of the Holy Trinity, the Mother-Goddess worship of Mary, the image of Jehovah which was taken from the face of the great statue of Zeus in his temple, to adopting the name of the head of the Roman pagan religion as the head of Christianity, Ponteix Maximus, helped to transform Christianity in accordance to the racial soul of the Roman people. By the time of Emperor Constantine, Christianity had become a religion that was more pagan than Semitic.

But as the Roman Empire divided both politically and culturally into two halves--the Latin West and the Greek East--so too did the spirituality of Christianity. The western half of the Roman Empire was culturally and racially Roman/Celtic/Germanic, while the eastern half was culturally and racially Greek/Oriental/Egyptian. The former was more racially unified, as the Romans, Celts and Germans were all Indo-European peoples sharing a similar spirituality and original ancestors that once inhabited Europe thousands of years in the past. The religions they worshiped and the Gods they celebrated were really the same Gods that their ancestors worshiped, and thus the spirituality they instilled within the new Christian religion was pure and vibrant and strong enough to survive the collapse of the political order when it came about in 476 A.D., but it was different in the east.

In the eastern half of the Roman Empire, there was a greater mixing of peoples, cultures and religions that were fundamentally different. The form of Christianity that rose in the east, that is often referred to as Greek or Orthodox Christianity was actually more Oriental, as opposed to the Occidental form of Christianity that appeared in the western half of the Roman Empire. Thus, its spirituality was not as strong and thus never had the life-vibrance of expansion that Roman Christianity had. Even after the political collapse of the Western Roman Empire, Roman Christianity not only survived, but continued to expand into regions that were never under the control of Rome. Soon, Germany, Scotland and Ireland were all converted, and eventually, in the next five to six hundred years, Scandinavia, Poland, Hungary, the Baltic States, and parts of the Balkans were converted in turn. The story of Greek or Orthodox Christianity was very different.

Greek or Orthodox Christianity only survived because the political structure of the Eastern Roman Empire survived. Its political authority was more Oriental and Semitic, and thus, Orthodox Christianity never expanded, and in the next five hundred years it actually shrank as the political boundaries of the Eastern Roman Empire, or as it came to be referred to as, the Byzantium Empire, shrank. Eventually, the Byzantium Empire was reduced to a third-rate power and Orthodox Christianity all but collapsed. It only survived because it was eventually adopted by the Russian Slavs to the north. And after the last remnants of Constantinople fell to Islam in 1453, Orthodoxy was reborn as a purely Slavic or Russian religion, and thus was instilled with a new European racial spirituality.

The rise and growth in power and strength of Western Christianity, and the decline and withdrawal of Eastern Christianity before the rise and advancement of Islam, are reflected by the zeal and determination of Western Christianity, which was purely European, and able to halt the advancement of Islam and eventually turn back the Semitic tide, culminating in crusades in Spain, Sicily, in the Holy Lands and eventually the exploration and conversion of North and South America. In the east, Byzantium fell and the Muslims burst into the Balkans and continued to threaten Europe right into the 17th century, but were eventually halted and turned back by Western Christians. Orthodox Christianity survived because of the transfer of its center of spirituality from Greece to Moscow. The Russian/Slavic European soul gave it new life and prevented it from completely becoming extinct. The new Russian state prevented the Turks from extinguishing Orthodox Christianity within its empire by applying force and pressure. But unlike Western Christianity, which was totally European, both racially and spiritually, it never became a great expanding religion.

Islam originated deep within the Arabian Peninsula. Its spirituality reflected the soul of the Semitic Arabic people. When it burst upon the stage of history, it swept aside the declining power of Orthodox Christianity, but was stopped by Western Christianity in Western Europe. Islam remained a powerful force, expanding into Central Asia and India and eventually reaching as far east as present day Indonesia. But Islam eventually reached its apex as it overran the confines of its Semitic base. The Semitic Arabic people migrated and settled throughout North Africa and Central Asia, and even moved into Spain. But over the passing centuries, the Semitic population assimilated and disappeared within large sections of the Islamic world. In places like Indonesia, India, Central Asia, Iran and Spain, where the Semites either remained a tiny minority or disappeared entirely through intermarriage, Islam eventually retreated or was transformed. In Iran, where the mixed population was not Semitic, Shiite Islam was born and spread to other regions, while most of the Semitic world remained loyal to Sunni Islam. Other divisions also rose in India, in Lebanon and North Africa reflecting the different ethnic divisions within the world that Islam conquered.

Islam remained vibrant and expansionist, but its apex had passed it by. Unable to expand into China and Western Europe, it continued to expand against the declining power of Orthodox Christianity until the center of Orthodox Christianity was transferred to the young, vibrant Russian nation. Islam eventually began a period of withdrawal and decline before the advancement of Western European Christianity.

From 1 A.D. to 500 A.D., Christianity split into Roman and Orthodox Christianity, reflecting the split between the Latin/Celtic/Germanic Western Roman Empire and the Greek/Oriental/Egyptian Eastern Roman Empire. Because the former was racially spiritually more homogenous, Western Christianity evolved into a new and vibrant spirituality, due to the incorporation of European pagan spirituality that transformed Western Christianity. But Orthodox Christianity remained spiritually divided, a mixture between Greek/Hellenism and the more Semitic and Egyptian spirituality. This prevented the Orthodox Church from becoming a stronger force than the political authority and thus remained subservient to the Emperor, while in the West, the political authority decline and disintegrated as the Western Church continued to grow strong and outlived the Western Roman Empire’s secular authority.

From 500 A.D. and 1000 A.D., the Western Church grew stronger and was responsible for the resurrection of the secular authority of the Roman State. The Church remained the dominate power until 1500 A.D., while in the East, the Orthodox Church remained subservient to the secular authority of the secular power of the Byzantine Empire. Orthodox Christianity declined before the expansion of Islam and its only expansion was into the Russian Kiev Empire, which remained weak until after the decline and eventual fall of the authority of the Orthodox Church (1000-1500 A.D.).

It was during the decline and fall of the Orthodox Church that Orthodox Christianity was able to transplant its center of spirituality to the purely European Russian Empire and removed its center from Constantinople to Moscow. Afterwards, Orthodox Christianity experienced a minor resurgence with the rise of the Russian Empire (1500 to 1900 A.D.). Though the Muslims conquered the Balkans, they could not completely wipe out Orthodox Christianity among the peoples of Greece and the Balkans, because of the transfer of the center of Orthodox spirituality outside of the authority of the Islamic World, to Russia.

Between 1000 A.D. and 1500 A.D., Western Christianity became a powerful force that continuously drove Islam back, from the Iberian Peninsula and Sicily and the Holy Lands during the Crusades, and even challenged its hold over North Africa. The spirit of Western Christianity was purely European (Latin/Celtic/German/Slavic). It had incorporated the essence of European paganism into it, creating a new European religion, motivated by the soul of Europe. This culminated in the expansion of Western Christianity throughout the world.

Between 1500 A.D. and 2000 A.D., Western Europe began expanding beyond the borders of Europe, bringing Western Christianity with it throughout the world. North and South America was converted in the 16 and 17 centuries, followed by Africa and Asia in the 18 and 19 centuries. But even as Western Christianity was spreading throughout the world, the seeds of its own destruction had taken root. This took the form of the chasm that resulted from the Protestant Reformation and the conversion of non-Europeans to Christianity.

In the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation began with Martin Luther. In the next hundred and fifty years, Europe was rocked with one religious war after another, culminating in the disastrous Thirty Years’ War that almost depopulated central Europe. The split in Western Christianity caused the Protestants to abandon the old Christianized pagan ceremonies, customs and traditions that had been incorporated into Christianity one thousand years early, and turn back to the Old Testament, thus becoming more Semitic and eventually secularized. Since then, Christianity has become progressively more secularized. In the 20th century, even Catholicism underwent a secularization after Vatican Two. The result has been a steady decline in Christianity throughout the Western World, and especially in the West’s homeland, Europe. This trend was accompanied by a second trend–the "browning" of Christianity.

Beginning with the conquest of South and North America, Western Christianity began converting non-Europeans to their faith. Both Protestant and Catholic Churches have spent a great deal of time and resources in spreading the Christian faith to Africans, Asians and American aborigines. As a result, in the 21st century, about 80 percent of all Christians are of non-European ancestry. This has caused tremors throughout the Christian world. The same paganization that took place two thousand years ago, when Christianity was first brought to Europe, has been taking place in the last five hundred years, beginning with the incorporation of customs, traditions and rituals of the pagan religions of the American aborigines into the Christian Churches of South and Central America. This same process is taking place in Africa and Asia as hundreds of millions of Africans and Asians have converted to Christianity. The result is new spiritual chasms appearing in Christianity. Even within the "unified" or "universal" Catholic Church, there is a division appearing, as the Church in Africa is becoming distinctively Africa, while the Church in India is becoming distinctively Indian, and the same is true of the Catholic Church in every part of the world until eventually, they will have nothing in common with each other. The end result will be its collapse into separate churches, while in the European homeland of Christianity, both the Catholic and Protestant Churches have declined to the point that only about 20 percent of Europeans today, still consider themselves Christians, and most of them are over fifty-years-old.

In the United States, the Christian Churches have both declined and resisted decline at the same time. If this seems confusing–let me explain. Among the European-American population in the United States, Christianity has been declining in importance for the last fifty years. But at the same time, the churches have been replacing their declining constituencies with immigrants from the Third World. Today, the Catholic Church in the United States in more than 50 percent non-White. The same is rapidly happening to the Protestant Churches. Even the Mormon Church, with its high birthrate among its originally all-White membership, has become about 50 percent non-White, as it has conducted a rigorous campaign of conversion among Third World populations.

As the constituency of the Christian Churches become more and more diluted from the diversity of races, nationalities and cultures, the original Folk Soul of Europe has lost its spiritual hold over Christianity, thus weakening its spirituality. Our people have turned away from what has become an alien religion. They no longer find a spiritual solitary within the Christian Churches. They have begun searching for a new spirituality and many have turned to Eastern and other exotic cults. Others have sought to try and resurrect the old spirituality that once existed within the Christian Churches. Many Protestants have turned to an evangelical form of Christianity, in hope of recapturing the lost spirituality. The same has been true for Catholics. Many have turned to Churches that have resurrected pre-Vatican Two customs, rituals and the all-Latin Mass. But their efforts are too little, too late, and cannot reverse the tide of diversity and multicutluralism that is transforming every aspect of Western Civilization. The poison has seeped too deep into the institutions. Our people have lost contact with the Gods of their ancestors, even though the bonds they shared with them were through a Christian filter, it was enough to ensure their spiritual vitality. But today those bonds have been cut and our people are adrift.

Today, Islam is experiencing a revival. It is partially due to the vacuum that has been created with the spiritual and moral decline of the West. Islam was born of the Semitic Folk Soul. It conquered a large section of the old world, passing beyond the ethnic and geographic boundaries of the Semitic homeland. Non-Semitic populations were conquered and many, though not all, were forced to convert to Islam. This diluted the spiritual power of Islam and began a long decline. This decline was accelerated after another non-Semitic group of people, the Turks, invaded the Middle East and converted to Islam. They were a fierce, brave and determined race of nomadic warriors from the steppes of Asia. The Turks established a great empire that was centered in the territory of the old Byzantine Empire, and stretch west to include all of North Africa (except for Morocco), the Sudan, Arabia, parts of Persia, the Balkans right up to the gates of Vienna, the northern coast of the Black Sea and the Caucasus. But the Turks were not Semites and their soul was alien to the spirit of Islam. Thus, as soon as the Turks established their great empire, decay and decline rapidly set in, and the Ottoman Empire lingered on for four hundred years only because of the rivalry of the European powers, who actually fought to prevent anyone European power from conquering then and thus upsetting the balance of power in Europe.

Turkish domination of the Islamic world helped to smother the spirit of Islam. The alien race and its alien Folk Soul caused the Islamic world to remain weak and divided. Eventually, the European powers carved up the Turkish Empire and divided the Islamic world among themselves as part of their colonial empires. But with the decline and fall of Europe and the Turkish Empire, Islam has been able to reassert is spiritual identity. The Semitic Folk Soul has been unleashed and Islam is now a great force for change. But that change is destructive. It has been unleashed by the Loki effect that has plunged the West into a state of helplessness due to its domination by the Hodur effect–blind ignorance. Thus, the rise of Islam and especially Islamic terrorism and militancy, is part of the horde led by Loki in his assault on Asgard. The Loki effect caused weakness within the West, by striking the leaders of the West with ignorance about the true nature of the world, blinding them to the threats that the West face. Loki is now marshaling the forces of chaos and destruction to assault the gates of Asgard. We are now suffering through the great winter, the Age of Fimbul. Soon the forces of Darkness and Light will cancel each other out and a new age of darkness and barbarism will reign supreme. But there is still hope that our people will survive the coming conflict and darkness, but to do so, we must turn to Balder. For only through Balder can we survive and begin the task of rebuilding a new civilization, heralding in a new age–the Age of Gimli.

Joy to you all,

Bob Blumetti

Hail Odin! Hail Balder!

SERMON FOURTEEN: SEVEN DEADLY SINS?

Christianity claims that the basic human desires are sinful. It name seven desires and refers to them as the seven deadly sins. They are: pride, greed, anger, envy, sloth, gluttony and lust. There was never such concept as sin among pagans, and these seven desires were not necessarily consider sinful or even bad. In fact, to a pagan, these are just normal desires. Whether they are good or bad is determined by how we behavior and why.

Let us take greed. At first thought greed is wrong, and in some context it is, especially if one is willing to hurt his friends, family, neighbors and kin in the name of possessing great material possessions. The reason for this is simple–no man is an island onto himself. If we are to be happy and live a good life, a prosperous life, we need to be concern with the community we live within. The welfare of the community, which means your neighbors, should be as important to you as your own individual welfare. This is also true of the welfare of your friends, family and kin.

We are all ruled by an inner voice that motivates us on a subconscious level. It is the need to preserve our genetic make-up. Sociobiology claims that this inner voice is actually our DNA, or genes, speaking to us. It is the first primordial need to pass on our genes to the next generation. This desire is firstly manifested in our own individual need to improve out material welfare. This usually takes the form of being successful and having the ability to buy a better home, clothing, foods, means of transportation, supporting a family, the ability to entertain ourselves, to protect ourselves from enemies, the climate and so forth. Thus we want more and will seek the means obtain more. This is fine and there is nothing wrong with this desire. It is only when we will do anything to seek greater wealth, even if it means causing harm to the society we live in, to our family, friends and kin that this desire is wrong, because in the long term, we are causing harm to ourselves. By harming our environment or community, friends, family and kin, we are creating conditions that will create harmful conditions for the preservation of our genes and could even make our individual living condition worst.

What about pride? Sherlock Holmes once said the modesty is no virtue. If one is good at what one does, he should be proud of it and take credit for it. False modesty is just as wrong as false pride. Be proud of who and what you are. Be proud of your ancestry, your ethnicity, of your individual worth, of your abilities, achievements, and success. Know your worth and proclaim it.

Then there is gluttony. Is there really anything wrong in the act of eating? We need to eat to survive. So what is wrong with that? All living things must fight for nourishment to survive and pass on their genes to the next generation. So there is nothing wrong with the desire to eat and drink, but if by gluttony we mean over indulgence, then there can be case to be made. The Folk Faith believes we should be healthy, both spiritually and physically. So we should eat in moderation for health reasons. If we eat too much, we will simply get fat and that is not healthy. And we should be careful about what we eat. There are no dietary restricts in our faith–for that is nonsense. Ee are governed by the golden rule and that rule dictates that whatever we eat, we should do so in moderation, for too much of anything is bad or unhealthy for us. It is that simple.

Now let us look at anger. This is another one of those desires that could be a good or bad thing. If someone does us harm or threatens us, we should get angry. You would be a fool not too, and you would not live very long if you don’t, because people would take advantage of your. But we should not let our anger control us. There is a saying: Don’t get mad–get even. What this means isn’t let your anger control you and cause you to do something foolish. Instead, control your anger and plan your revenge, and defense, against letting those who seek to harm. It is often a very good idea to disguise your anger with stealth. Don’t let those who seek to unnerve you see that you are angry. This will have two results: first they won’t have the satisfaction of "pissing you off," and secondly, they will not be expecting you to take your revenge when you are ready to do so. They will be off their guard. But there is a warning concerning anger. Don’t let it cause you to lose control and thus cause harm to those you love–the very people who you would never want to hurt. That is the greatest danger of uncontrolled anger. But anger under control, is self-preservation. The thing to realize is that we must remain in control of ourselves at all times.

Envy is not necessarily bad because it can motivate you to be more ambitious. So long as your envy doesn’t turn into jealousy, to be envious enough to want to do as well as others is a perfectly normal reaction. Just don’t be obsessed by this desire.

Lust is the sexual desire. The self-righteous religions will try and convince you that your basic sexual desires are somehow wrong. Nonsense! Without lust, there would be not reproduction. The Christian Church has created "Original Sin" to make us feel guilty about our sexual desires. But as with everything, certain sexual acts are wrong because they interfere with reproduction and could be detrimental to the passing on of our genes, and this are counter to the advancement, improvement and expansion of our Folk. But don’t confuse the sexual act with lust. Lust, so long as it does not cause you to betray you family or lead you into wrong or harmful behavior, is perfectly normal. In fact, one should be lustful with those you love, especially with your mate. That will ensure a healthy relationship and marriage.

Finally there is sloth. Well, there really is very little to say to defend slothfulness, especially if we mean by it to be too lazy to defend or better yourself. We need to be responsible to ourselves, family, friends and kin to do what is necessary to survive. So if we are too lazy to live up to our responsibilities–yes, then sloth is wrong. But if we simply mean that we spend time to "chill out," or simply to take a vacation or rest from the stress and grind of the everyday routine, there is not only nothing wrong with it, but it is necessary to prevent a nervous breakdown.

If you read the "myths," whether they are Norse, Celtic, Greek or any other myths, you will discover that the Gods are guilty of committing all seven of the deadly sins. Does that mean the Gods are evil? Well, that was the logic of the monotheists, but the truth is there is no sin. The lessons we must take from the "myths" or tales, is how the Gods act and why. The tales are not to be taken literally. But they are man’s attempt to explain the forces of nature and the laws that govern nature, which is the contest between the force of order (the Gods) and disorder or chaos (the Giants). The truth is, our Gods act like us. They have human quality, or should I say, we have Godly qualities, because we share the same Life Force as the Gods. The same Life Force that fills the universe.

We have to ask ourselves, does anybody really believe these urges are sins? The answer is no. In the 20^th century there was a movement to humanize Christianity. In the Catholic Church, the Second Vatican Council set into motion reforms that stripped away the rituals, traditions and even many of the beliefs that were part of Catholicism for centuries. It was claimed that these devices were borrowed from the old pagan religions, and this is true, but it was also the foundation upon which the faith was based. As I’ve said before, Christianity was successful because it paganized itself, adjusting to the old pagan religions of Europe. But now, Christianity, both Catholicism and Protestantism, have begun humanizing their faiths so they can "keep up with the times." They have been secularized by what is referred to by many as "Liberation Theory," which is just another name for Marxism. Thus, Christianity, at least in the West, (though not in the Third World, where the reverse in happening) is being strip of its spiritual essence–which was the essence of the old pagan religions. It now has more in common with Humanism than religion.

We who belong to the Folk Faith are not advocating a new religion based on man’s natural instincts and nature, and science, but are seeking to reconnect with the old religion that was based on man’s nature instincts, nature, and science. Let us face the fact that more and more people today do not believe in Christianity because they DO NOT PRACTICE IT. Come on! How many of you agree with the Vatican? How many of you practice birth control? How many of your agree with your church leaders (Protestant or Catholic), most of the time? Not every many. But most people are still AFRAID to come right out and say, "I am no longer a Christian." Well, at least in the United States. In Europe, people are more honest. Up to 70 and 80 percent of Europeans admit that they no longer belong or believe in Christianity. But in America, people are still afraid of the wrath of God. Even though most people no longer believe in what their religion teaches, they are afraid to admit it to themselves, never mind to others. But I have to ask you to ask yourself, why do you continue to support a religion whose beliefs are contradictory to your beliefs? Why do you continue to support churches whose leaders are perverts, practicing and engaging in sexual behavior that you find abhorrent and sick? Why do you still belong to a church whose members are alien to you, and whose values are foreign to your values?

I know many Catholics who have trouble accepting the new mutliculturalism of the Catholic Church. They go to their local church and discover all the priests are from Africa, Asia and Latin America. They hear they clergy preach about the revolutionary struggle of the masses in Third World countries, and speak, not only with alien accents, but with an accent that is suspiciously common to that spoken in a "Gay Pride Day" parade. They know deep down that their religion no longer has their base interest at heart, but they FEAR admitting it to themselves. The reason for people to continue to belong to a religion that is harmful to them, their family and kin, their heritage and culture, is simple–they are practicing a GUILT-RIDDEN religion.

Joy to you all,

Bob Blumetti

Hail Odin! Hail Balder!

SERMON FIFTEEN: THE DEVIL AND HELL

It seems that only the Christian faith has a devil, which is called Satan, and he was created to frighten its followers into towing the line. The Muslims vaguely refer to the devil, but they use the term Satan to refer to earthly evils, such as referring to the United States as the "Great Satan." The Jews don’t have a devil at all. The devil is a Christian invention, and the philosophical foundation for the belief in Old Nick is based on both the Jewish Gnosticism (paganism), the Christian Old Testament and the Indo-European religion of Zoroastrianism of ancient Iran.

From the Old Testament, the Christians borrowed the Genesis story of Adam and Eve and the expulsion from paradise. The serpent, who the Christian associate with Satan or the Devil, tempted Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge, disobeying God’s commandment and thus causing their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. In the body of myths and tales that make up Jewish Gnostic teachings, which is based on ancient Semitic or Hebrew paganism, we learn of the tale of the "Angel Rebellion." This rebellion was led by God’s favorite angel–Satan. He led a rebellion against God by the vast majority of angels. Satan was able to convince trillions of angels to rebel against God and a handful of loyal angels, but God being God–you know–all powerful, the Angel rebellion was doomed to fail from the very beginning. Hey! Afterall--God knew about it before he even created the universe. After all--He is God!

Finally, the Christians were influenced by the Zoroastrianism, which was a religion practiced in ancient Iran. The Iranians were Indo-Europeans, related to present-day Europeans. They believed that there were two equal forces at work in the universe–Good and Evil or Light and Darkness, which is actually closer to the opposing forces of the Gods (order) and Giants (chaos). The two opposing forces were in conflict and all things were in the service of one or the other, including the different nations and races of mankind. In the end, there would a final battle, but Good, or the Light, would win out. This is not too different from the tale of Ragnarok or the final battle between the Gods and the Titans in the ancient Greek pagan religion.

In the Jewish Old Testament, we can read of God calling all his "sons" together and among them was Satan. This makes one wonder if Satan and Jesus were brothers?

The Christian Gnostics of the Middle Ages, known as the Cathars, believed that Jesus was never born in human form, but was a spiritual deity, a servant of the Light, and that the material world, which was created by Jehovah, is totally evil. Since the Bible refers to the Devil as the Master of the World, and since the world was created by Jehovah, the logical conclusion was simple–Jehovah and the Devil were one and the same. Of cause, the Church could never tolerate such heresy, and so unleashed a crusade to exterminate the Cathars. It was known as the Albigensian Crusade, in which a million people were killed in Europe.

The modern day version of the Devil or Satan, ruling over Hell, and tempting mortals to break God’s laws and thus damning themselves to eternal suffering in the fiery pits of his dark domain, has been used very successfully over the centuries to keep people in line. They created Satan and gave him a domain to rule–Hell. Hell was fashioned from pagan Netherworlds and referred to as Hell, from the Norse Netherworld called Hel, or the Greek Netherworld, Hades. From his Dark Domain, Satan is tempting mankind to commit sin. The Christians are always warning each other about "Looking out for Satan, the Prince of Hell," or "Satan will lead you down the dark path," or "If you give in to the Devil’s temptation, you’ll be damned to burn in Hell for all eternity." But even this incarnation of the Devil as the tempter of man evolved over time among the Christians.

The Devil was originally an angel whose duty was to report the transgression of man to God. In time, the Christian Church began to associate pagan deities with the Devil. He was associated with Dionysus or Pan, who was part Goat, the Roman God of Light, Lucifer and Loki. He was made to look like a goat with hooves and horns, like Pan, who was also the God of Fertility and Fecundity, or it was claimed that he was a trickster like Loki, the God of Fire, who could look beautiful or handsome and change his form.

The early Christians worked hard to transform the Gods of their pagan ancestors into devils and demons. They claimed that the pagan rituals were actually "black magic," though the Christian Church employed the same rituals for their Christian Mass and ceremonies. They were transformed into devils, bogeymen, demons and witches, while the Christian Church co-oped the pagan rituals and ceremonies and created saints to replace the many different Gods. Odin’s great hunt was now referred to the Grim Reaper in search of victims, and Freyja and her followers were called witches who consorted with the Devil. The image of Pan, half goat and half man, the Greek God of fertility, was transformed into the Devil. The Devil has been visualized as looking like a goat, with horns and hoof-feet, who fornicate on the Black Sabbat with those who worship him. In the ancient Hebrew pagan religion, Satan was the Lord of Fire–a Fire God. In the Old Testament, he referred to as a fallen angel and even as one of the sons of Gods. He was associated with the Roman God of Light, Lucifer, who inspired enlightenment, the bringer of light, associated with the air, the morning star and the east.

The truth of the matter, we don’t need no stupid Devil. As pagans, we realize that good and evil is in our actions. We are responsible for what we do, and not some supernatural boogeyman leading us astray. All our actions contribute to the forces that either give order to the universe or contribute to chaos and destruction. The life we lead will not only create conditions that we must suffer or enjoy in this life, but will be suffered or enjoyed in the next life.

Joy to you all,

Bob Blumetti

Hail Odin! Hail Balder!

SERMON SIXTEEN: LOVE AND HATE

The Folk Faith is a religion of love, joy and happiness. I never tire of repeating this. It is destructive and counterproductive to dwell on hate and sadness. Life is short and we should spend as much of our lives enjoying it, and that means enjoying each other’s company and the good things in life. We should celebrate life, because when we do, we are celebrating the Gods, and thus strengthening the bonds that unite us with them and with the universe. But we are not blinded by the fact that there is great destructive and malignant forces in the universe that seeks to inflict harm and suffering on us, and even destroy us. We do not advocate a false concept of love, which includes the love of a whipped dog, who cowers and begs at the feet of his oppressors.

We cannot love everyone and everything in this universe. It is ridiculous to love those who seek your destruction. To love someone who hates you and wishes to do harm to you, is insane. Love is a quality that should be used with discrimination. Love those who love you! And hate those who hate you! Do not go seeking enemies, and try to make friends among all whom you associate, even among those who are alien, who do not belong to the Folk, or do not believe as we do. We can respect everyone, even if they are different. But if we are to survive, we must recognize that not everyone we meet in life feels as we do. Most will be indifferent to us, and some will be downright hostile and feels threatened by our very existence. It is best to waylay anyone’s suspicions by being honest and forthright, showing respect to all as individuals and treating everyone with the same respect that we expect from others. But if this not work–be on your guard!

People always talk about a universal love as the foundation of a better society, but the truth is that universal love has never been a motivating force in which to built a society. There have been many movements claiming to be motivated by love for our fellow man, but they have all proven false. The reason is simple–to raise the ideal of some form of universal love above all other emotions is unnatural and impossible to accomplish. All "love movements" have turned toward killing those who disagree with them, or at best, hating those who disagree with them. Even the so-called Hippie movement of the Sixties, which was suppose to be motivated by universal love and peace was filled with hatred for all who disagreed with them and eventually turned to violence.

The Folk Faith does not claim that there are good and bad emotions. Everything depends on how it is used. Love is wonderful. Everyone knows this. To be surrounded by those who love you is wonderful. But to love those who hate you in insanity and will insure your eventual destruction. Do not waste your love, for anything that is used too often eventually loses it value. Love those who love you, with all your heart, as strongly as you can, but never turn the other cheek toward those who hate you or wish to cause you harm.

Hate is an emotion that is part of our make-up as human beings.  Like everything else, it is neither good nor bad.  If you hate people who are different from, because of race, color, creed, nationality or any other feature, simply because you do not like them, then this hate is wrong.  If you hate someone because they are more fortune than you, or because they are more successful than you, this hate is also wrong.  But it is natural to hate someone who seeks your destruction.  It is natural to hate someone who has deliberately made your life miserable.  it is natural to hate someone who has caused you harm, or your loved ones harm.  this, after all is all too human.  But the question is, what do you do about it.  Defensive hate will help you to be on guard against your enemies, but it is always wrong to act on this hate.  It is wrong to try and harm someone simply because you hate them.  This is the difference between defensive hate and aggressive hate.  The form is necessary to protect yourself from harm, by not fooling yourself into thinking someone whom you know hates you, does not wish to harm you.  but it is always wrong to act on hate, especially if there is not reason to do so.

It is important purge your mind of all negative thoughts and feels.  Like attracts like.  What your mind sends out returns a hundred times.  What you obsess over will manifest itself in your future.  There are ways to challenge you negative emotions and thoughts so that they can be purged from your orlog.

The Folk Faith is not built upon some false doctrine, but on human nature. Thus, we recognize that as humans, we possess the power to both love and hate with a deep intensity. It is harmful and destructive to force yourself to try and love those who hate you. It is unnatural to love your enemies. Since we are a religion based on what is natural, we consider it harmful to suppress what is natural. To love everyone only cheats your love toward those who deserve your love. You should release your hatred toward your enemies, and this can be done through ritual and ceremony. These rituals help to cleanse yourself of your hatred and obsessions with your enemies and release any pent-up hatred that will interfere with you appreciating those who deserve your love, and this includes the Gods.

Joy to you all,

Bob Blumetti

Hail Odin! Hail Balder!

Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was born in Ukraine in 1831. In 1875 she created the Theosophical Society in New York City. Two years later she published Isis Unveiled, which was based on a mixture of Western mythology, Eastern religions, mysticism and Egyptian occultism. In 1888 her second book, The Secret Doctrine was published. The thesis of Blavatsky’s doctrine was an outline of evolution that exceeded anything that Charles Darwin claimed. She claimed that there was series of different races that devolved into the imperfect races of today, and that the present-day state of the world was witnessing a spiritual struggle between various races, of which the Aryan race was fighting in the service of the Light. She told her followers that she based her Secret Doctrine on the "Stanzas of Dzyan," which she read during her travels in the Himalayas. She claimed that deep within the mountains, in caves and caverns, there existed monasteries in possession of huge libraries containing such manuscripts. Other centers of secret learning and knowledge were hidden in Agartha and Shamballah. The Dalai Lama of Tibet claimed the city of Shamballah was hidden beneath the Himalayan Mountains. It was the capital of a subterranean kingdom and its inhabitants possessed superhuman powers, that included telepathy and telekinesis and referred to themselves as the Greta White Brotherhood. They controlled a power source that was called the Vril or Fahot, and used this power to remain hidden from the rest of the world. They educated Blavatsky about the Vril, telling her that it was a reservoir of endless power that existed in the human organism, as well as throughout the universe. But to tap into its power, one had to undergo initiation and learn how to harness its power.

The Theosophical Society believed that this Great White Brotherhood lived among us, but remained hidden, waiting for the West to prove itself worthy of their assistance. If this idea of a superior race of Thule supermen seems strange, now is it any stranger than the Jewish belief of a Messiah who will appear and purify the world, setting up a millennium after conquering the world, or the Muslim notion of the "Hidden Iman," an Ismaili belief in the arrival of a great leader who will unite all of Islam and conquer the world in the name of Allah? Even in India there is the Hindu belief in the Nine Unknown Men of India who are secret Masters that guide the progression of world history and the human race. The Rosicrucian English author, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote of a subterranean race of supermen, who in possession of a secret source of power that he called, Vril, in his novel The Coming Race (1871). According to Bulwer-Lytton, the Vril was an unlimited source of energy that resided within the human organism. It lies dormant to all but those who have been initiated with the knowledge on how to master its power, and make themselves masters over all nature, possessing powers of telepathy and telekinesis. Bulwer-Lytton referred to them in his book as the Vril-ya.

Madame Blavatsky claimed to describe how God created the universe through a cyclical process in her book, The Secret Doctrine. She outlined the regenerative process of cyclical rebirth of the universe that is in many ways similar to the cyclical theory of the origin of the universe, in which the universe is created in this Big Bang, then expanses until it reaches a point of ultimate expansion and then begins to retract until everything is compressed into its original form, only to repeat the process in another Big Bang. She describes a process of primary unity in the first part of her book entitled, Cosmogenesis. In it the divine being, still unmanifested, differentiates itself into multiple conscious beings. This can be considered the mysterious All-Father, evolving into first, the Divine Trinity of Odin, Vili and Ve, and then later into the multiple Gods and Goddesses, each being a separate and unique part of the universal divine. Madame Blavatsky claims that this divine being first manifested itself through an emanation into three Logoi (Odin, Vili and Ve), which she claims created time, space and matter. From this process seven evolutionary processions followed in which fire was created in the first, air in the second, water in the third, earth in the fourth and the other cycles witnessed the creation of ether. The first four cycles were an expanding process followed by three contracting cycles that reflected the cyclical process in which everything contracted back into the primal unity only to start the process all over again. She described the mechanism for this process as something called Fohat (Vril). It was a universal agent used by the "Sons of God" (the Gods) to create and uphold the universe, just as in the story of how Odin, Vili and Ve slaughtered the original life-force entity of Ymir, giving it new form and order and creating the universe in the process. Blavatsky claimed that this force was a combination of some form of electricity and solar power (electromagnetism) combined with the will of the Gods which gave order to the universe, canceling out the negative chaotic forces of the giants. This "electro-spiritual force" was the foundation of physical science.

According the Blavatsky, in the beginning, the universe was a bipolar conduit representing the opposites of matter and spirit, male and female, fire and ice. It was the attraction of the opposites that caused the Big Bang that formed the universe. This was the creation of life–the birth of Ymir, from whose chaotic essence the ordered universe was formed by the Gods. But it is sexual opposites attracting that is the key to evolution, progress and advancement. All improvements and advancements are achieved by union of the male and female, the bonding of pure opposites which released the primal life energy that is the cause of their polarity and thus generates improvements within each succeeding generation.

Blavatsky’s four previous manifestations of can be identified with the realms of Muspellheim, Asgard, Vanaheim and Midgard, which can be respectfully associated with fire-dragons, the Gods, the Giants, and mankind. The previous root races can also be associated with Bergelmir, who survived the flooding of the world by Ymir’s blood, in a ship. The ship is a structure that requires organized effort, thus symbolizing the orderly process of the Gods. As the Gods slaughtered Ymir, and began fashioning the ordered universe from his remains, Bergelmir tapped into their power to build the ship and thus survived. We can interpret this by understanding that the survivors of the great flooding of the Black Sea did not kill all the ancient Aryans or Atlanteans, and by using the power of the Vril to assist them, many of them were able to survive that great catastrophe. We can also reckon that the third race as the kinsmen of the giant Thrudgelmir, who were the first to propagate themselves through sexual reproduction. The first race she called the Astral Race and the second race she referred to as the Hyperboreans, corresponding nicely to the kinsmen of Ymir and Orgelmir, who were both androgynous.

In the second section entitled, Anthropogenesis, she explained the grandiose plan of the universe and man’s place within it. She claimed that humanity was far older than was presently thought during her time, and that humanity was an integral part of the spiritual and biological evolution of the universe. She felt that mankind was originally made up of purely spiritual beings and then devolved in each stage toward a more materialistic form of existence. There were four previous manifestations of man, the last being what has been described as the Atlanteans. They controlled great psychic powers (the Vril) and was a race of giants (six to seven feet tall), of great beauty and grace and possessing a superior technology. Their civilization was destroyed in a great flood. The three previous races were proto-humans and more spiritual than physical in existence. The first she referred to as the Astral root-race, the second as the Hyperborean, which had dwelled in a vanished polar continent, and the third as the Lemurians, which lived on a vanished continent in the Indian Ocean.

We should not take her claims literally, but interpret them as attempts to understand the evolutionary process that humanity has passed through. She was inspired spiritually, but without a corresponding understanding of the scientific knowledge interpretation can be distorted, and thus the forwarding of lost knowledge is distorted, but no less valid. With the destruction of the Atlantean civilization, which was the ancient Aryan civilization that existed around the coast of the much smaller Black Sea, the survivors were scattered and dispersed across the face of the Eurasian continent and became the Ind-European tribes that spread west into Europe, south into the Middle East and India and east, across Asia, into China and eventually passed across the Bering Straits into North America.

Blavastky’s Secret Doctrine can be summarized by the belief in an omnipresent God-entity who is immutable and universal, and his essence is the life force that she refers to as Fohat. This is an electro-spiritual force which gives order to the universe, is understood as the laws of nature, and has been called by the name Fohat or Vril. The All-Father created the universe by use of this primal fire as a source of energy, Fohat or Vril, by whisking it out of the chaos of fire and ice, the manifest and unmanifest forces, thus setting up the evolutionary laws of nature by which the universe, and everything in it, the Macrocosm and Microcosm, are ever growing and changing. This process describes the coming together of the ice of Niflheim and the fire of Muspellheim, causing a reaction (the Big Bang) and thus initiating the creation of the chaotic force of Ymir. The Great Bovine, the nurturing force (the Fohat or Vril) caused the creation of the first Gods, who in turn, attacked, slaughtered, and then refashioned the universe (Ymir) giving it order and structure.

The universe is not progressing toward an end, but is cyclical in nature, whereby all creation is subject to the process of destruction and rebirth. Lastly there is fundamental bound between all mortals and the Gods who created them. Races were created by their individual collection of Gods, and they share the life force with those Gods that created them.

Joy to you all,

Bob Blumetti

Hail Odin! Hail Balder!

From Northern Europe to India, most cultures possessed a memory of a once and lost Golden Age that existed in the primeval past, when men and women possessed superior powers of mind and body and lived in harmony with the natural environment. In the Middle East, the Garden of Eden of the Old Testament is an obvious reference to this lost Golden Age, when people lived side-by-side with God. The Egyptians of antiquity spoke of a time when the Egyptian people were ruled by a race of God-kings. In Babylonian mythology there is a reference to three ages, each lasting thousands of years. The first and oldest was a Golden Age that existed before the Great Flood. The ancient Iranians have a reference to a Golden Age in the Avesta texts. It describes a thousand-year reign of King Yima.

The most fully developed legend of a Golden Age is found in the Hindu text of The Doctrine of the Four Yugas. Each Yuga being a different age, referred to in Sanskrit as Krita or Satya Yuga, Tretu Yuga, Dvapara Yuga and Koli or Sitya Ygua. The first of these Yugas was a Golden Age, but things got progressive worst in the following ages as the human race gradually lost its links with the Gods. Legends like this also existed in both the Greek and Norse mythologies, which speak of a Golden Age that was lost, when men and Gods lived in a harmonious union. The Greek farmer-poet of the eighth century B.C., Hesiod, wrote of four succeeding ages that he referred to as the Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron. In the first of these ages, during the Golden Age, man lived under the rule of Kronos and his life was free of hard work, pain and old age. He had mastery over his environment and was on good terms with the Gods. The Roman writer, Ovid, gave a more descriptive account of these ages. He said that the Golden Age was actually a pastoral paradise in which it was spring all year around, and mankind was free from labor or heavy work. War, famine and disease were unknown and man lived alongside the Gods. Plato wrote that during the Golden Age, the first of the different ages, the Gods and mortals lived side-by-side, but that the Gods gradually departed, leaving man to deal with their existence, relying on their own devices, and thus succumbing to the laws of entropy. What he was explain was the gradual lost of the knowledge to use Vril Science. But like many of the other traditions of a lost Golden Age, Plato believed in the cycle of the ages. After the Iron Age, there would a return to a Golden Age, and since we are presently living within the Iron Age, the next age will be another Golden Age—the Golden Age of Gimli.

Both the people of the Mediterranean and Northern Europe referred to the lost age as Thule, or Ultima Thule. Ultima Thule was believed to be the ancient homeland of the original Indo-Europeans or Aryan Race. It was described as an entryway to a subterranean realm populated by superior giants, possessing magical powers, located in the northern most point on the planet. But the reality is quite different, though not much. This mythical land was also referred to as Hyperborea and thought to be a magical island that was located somewhere in the North Atlantic. Thule of Hyperborea, was believed to be an island, surrounded by a great wall of mountains and covered with huge glaciers. In the center of the island once lived a race of giant-men, or God-men. The Greeks and Romans believed Thule was the name of the capital city of Hyperborea. Herodotus wrote that he believed it was ". . . a glacial island located in the Great North, where lived transparent men."

The legendary land of Thule and Hyperborea was thought to exist somewhere between Labrador and Iceland, and many people think it could have been the island of Greenland. The interior of the island was believed to be warm and mild, and filled with lush vegetation. The women were unbelievably beautiful and the men heroic and dynamic. This race of God-men possessed great powers of clairvoyance and extrasensory perception. They were reputed to be the descendants of "otherworldly" visitation–the Gods themselves who visited them and interbreed with them, creating a Divine Race. These Gods lived among them, and shared with them their ambrosia, served in a gold cup, which gave them great powers, including eternal youth. This drink was actually the secret Science of the Vril. Its memory was transformed into the legend of a sacred cup and holy drink–the Holy Grail.

The Celtic and Germanic peoples thought Thule was a northern Garden of Eden, where a great and wondrous race of God-men lived. This great race of supermen held power over nature through their possession of a secret knowledge. These theories were actually racial memories of the long forgotten homeland of the ancient Aryans, the ancestors of the Indo-Europeans. The Great North, a land of mountains and ice was actually the shore of the ancient Black Sea. Around the southern, eastern and western coasts of the Black Sea, even today, they are mountains in the Balkans, in Asia Minor and in the Caucasus, while to the north, most of northern Europe, including the great Russian landscape, was covered by a huge sheet of ice, rising a mile high.

This ancient homeland of the original Indo-Europeans, or the ancient Aryans (not to be confused with the Nazi ideal of the Aryan race), was the wondrous civilization known as Atlantis. Around the now submerged coast of that ancient sea, which was much smaller than it is now, and made up of fresh water, lived a race of people, tall, beautiful and possessing a civilization in many ways superior to our present-day modern civilization. They were in possession of a power that enable them to construct a civilization that was in harmony with the natural forces of the universe. But they lost their civilization when a terrible flood erupted, from what is not the Bosporus Straits, flooding the Black Sea coastal settlements and filling the sea with salt water.

The people living there were thrown into a state of chaos, thousands dying and hundreds of cities and settlements were lost under the title-floods that raised the water levels of the Black Sea hundreds of feet. Those who survived were scattered, migrating north, south, east and west. This once mighty race of golden-haired, blue-eyed giants, who once ruled over themselves and considered themselves the masters of nature, now wandered across Eurasia, mingling with other peoples, forgetting how to use the power that they commanded, and thus suffered the weakening of their powers, which resulted in the weakening of their bond with their Gods.

Many believed Thule was in Iceland, while others thought it might even be Greenland, and still other felt it once existed in the arctic, at the North Pole. The Nazis believed that it existed as an entryway into a subterranean domain inhabited by a race of blond-haired and blue-eyed giants at the North Pole. Actually, it was none of these mythological lands, but it did exist. It was a prehistorical civilization--a pagan Eden--but not in a sweltering desert, or the marshlands of Mesopotamia, or in the Persian Gulf. We have to remember that Europe, twelve thousand years ago, was covered with a great sheet of ice and was a much colder place than it is today. Thus, the memory of Thule has been confused and mixed with other legends, and eventually many came to believe that had once existed at the North Pole because of the glacial environment that existed at the time. Thule was actually an advance culture in the cool landscape of virgin woods and rich, black earth that once existed along the shores of the freshwater Black Sea. It was a land of uncompromising beauty and natural purity. It is the source for the legend of Atlantis.

This civilization by the Black Sea was a prehistoric golden age. The society was ruled by a gnostic priesthood who guarded knowledge on how to tap into the Vril power source. Their civilization utilized this source of power that was free, clean and limitless. Their power source was a common creative energy that was generated from a biological collective, whose source was their union and bond with the Gods that created them. This is the Life Force that supports the metaphysical qualities that define our original Aryan ancestors that all Indo-Europeans are descended from and can trace our bloodline back through time. Thus, they were able to maintain a society that was pure and holy, but like all men, they let their guard down at some point. For some reason, they grew careless and thus the destructive power of chaos was able to cause an eruption that destroyed the earthen wall that had held back the waters of the Mediterranean. The natural earth barrier collapsed and the salt waters flooded into the Black Sea, causing title waves and flooding that engulfed the communities along the shore. The waters turned bracken and filled with salt. The sea-level rose hundreds of feet, destroying towns, farmlands and cities, killing thousands and causing thousands more to flee inland. The old priestly order disappeared and the people lost their knowledge in the use of the Vril. Their esoteric knowledge was lost and only bits and pieces of it have survived.

The priesthood that ruled over the ancient Aryans was an elite within their society, adepts dedicated to maintaining the bonds that united their people with the Gods that created them. Thus they were an advance evolutionary elite who was dedicated to act as a conduit between their race and their Gods, imparting their wisdom and knowledge of the Vril to the rest of their people. After the great fall due to the flooding of the Black Sea, most of what was left of this priestly order survived by fleeing east into what is today the Sinkiang province of western China. They built a new civilization there, imparting much of their knowledge to the Chinese and helped founding Chinese civilization. Their mummified remains have been discovered and we refer to them as the Tocharians. In the first century B.C., they were driven west and south by the descendants of the Huns. Most of them eventually invaded India and founded the Kushan Empire which lasted for about one hundred years. But a small group of them settled in Tibet and transformed that ancient land into a warrior society. They ruled for hundreds of years until they died our through intermarriage. Tibet was feared by its neighbors as a great military power, and after the Tocharians disappeared, the Tibetan people were forced to accept the pacifism of Buddhism, so that they would never again be a threat to their neighbors. What was left of their knowledge was passed down in a corrupt form among the Tibetan monks.

Our original Aryan ancestors worshiped Gods whose names have been lost through time. Our Indo-European descendants have given the original Gods different names as their original Aryan language splintered into different languages (Germanic, Latin, Celtic, Slavic, Baltic, Vedic, Iranian, etc . . . ). The original religion of the lost civilization that existed along the Black Sea, and their knowledge and ability to tap into and harness the life force of the Gods, known as the Vril, was passed down partially to the ancient Indo-Europeans in the form of gnostic religions emphasizing the union of man with their Gods through the initiation into natural mysteries. Among the Norse, this religion was known as Odinism, based on the principal the Gods of the Norse people. But the Vril religion also survived among the Celts, Greeks and the Romans, as well as the Vedic, Iranian and other Indo-Europeans. It has been passed down to us in a raw and natural form, though only partially, through many different sources that include the Riga-Veda, the Upanishads, the Gita, the Zend-Avesta, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Niebelungenlied, the Grail Legends, the Volusung, the Greek and Celtic myths and especially the Edda and the runes.

Joy to you all,

Bob Blumetti

Hail Odin! Hail Balder!

SERMON NINETEEN:

THE LIFE YOU WILL ECHO IN ETERNITY

Dead is inevitable. We all know that we are going to be claimed by the Grim Reaper someday, but still we cling to life whenever possible. It is instinctual for all living things to fight to stay alive, even under the most appalling conditions. It is only when someone or something realizes that they are too ill or injured to hope for continual survival that an animal or people give up. The urge to survival is genetic. It is written into our DNA for all living things to want to life so that we can pass down our particular set of genes to the next generation. But there comes a time for us to surrender to death’s embrace. Throughout the ages, people have wondered what lies beyond this life and awaits us in the afterlife.

Most religions like to claim that death is some great spiritual awakening. They speak us this life as a preparation for the next life. This is true of almost every religion, except for Judaism, which has a healthy respect for living well in this life. Jewish people are taught that they should seek success in this life. They are taught to fight and work for the maximum fulfillment of their potential in this life. The Calvinist Protestant religion and the Mormons almost believe this to a degree. The former believe in predestination, and thus believe that God, who is all-knowing, knows who will be successful in this life even before they are born, and thus conclude that our lives are pre-destined for us, and so, success in this life is God’s way of letting us know who is chosen and not chosen in the next life. Jews on the other hand, simply don’t believe in the afterlife. They believe on goes into a state of sleep until the day of resurrection. If you led a righteous life (translated into the belief of following a tyrannical God’s laws) then you will be resurrected when the Messiah comes and sets up the new order of eternal bliss and paradise.

Of course, it is natural for all of us to fear death, especially if we lead a healthy, happy life. Who wants to give up happiness for the unknown? After all, who really knows what exist after death, if there is even an existence? No one has actually returned from the dead to tell us what lies beyond, though some claim of near-death experiences. Many claim of a glorious sensation while others remember absolutely nothing. Some people dread dying because they dread the unknown, while others look forward to death as a great release from the daily struggle of this life. These people often lead a life of suffering and toil. The Eastern faith more often then not hold this belief. The East disciplines itself against a conscious desire for betterment in this life, believing that all desire and want is the cause of suffering. They teach that by suspending your natural instincts for advancement, success and even survival, you will be free of want and suffering. If you can accomplish this in this life, you will become one with some "Great Universalist Awareness," and thus no longer be reincarnated into another life, and thus be at peace with yourself and the universe. This belief in reincarnation is a way to prove hope for the vast majority of people who suffer in poverty and under oppression that if they lead a righteous life in this life, they will advance to a higher state of existence in the next. But if a higher state of existence in the next life is one of material possession, then will they not be moving aware from full rejection of want and desire and thus move further away from complete fulfillment and next achieve the blissful state of becoming one with the "Great Universal Awareness?" Also, doesn’t anyone ever wonder that if they ancestors, who could be themselves in previous incarnations, had lived good lives in the past, then why is it they were born into poverty and suffering? And if you need to abandon and reject all material possessions for the fulfillment of a state of denial to achieve this blissful state of existence after death, they upward reincarnation should one of progressive poverty, and not one of increased wealth and possessions. Thus, the untouchables, who hold the lowliness place in the social structure of Eastern societies, should hold the loftiest.

This rejection of our natural instincts and desires seem to be predominate among those societies where material advancement is difficult to achieve. Thus, the religions of these regions try to convince people to willingly accept their miserable existence. This is a way in which those who are powerful and successful can continue to rule the great majority of those who are poor and oppressed. They can actually convince the great majority of the poor that those who rule them will suffer because of their wealth and power and thus encourage the majority of people under their dominance that it is terrible to strive for success. Thus, they teach that it is wrong to take pride in yourself, your accomplishments and success in this life.

Unlike most religions which advocate modesty and humbleness, our faith encourages the individual to be proud of his or her accomplishments. One must seek success in life, and no one should be ashamed of their success. The best way to celebrate the Gods is to shine in their examples. By accomplishing great things in their name do we increase and strengthen the bonds we forge with them as individuals and collectively as a community. We want our people to strive with all their ability and determination in everything they do, and we should encourage it even in our children. It is important for us to build on our self-esteem. If our sense of identity is great then no one can keep us down. By doing great things in life and being proud of them, we strength our self worth and thus the power that dwells within us. That power is the same life-force that we share with the Gods, and thus we strengthen the bond we share with the Gods.

Other religions seek to destroy or weaken the sense of self-worth of the individual so that they can inflate the sense of power and sene of wonder and astonishment of their God, making those who are members of the religion feel inferior and insignificant compare to the God they worship. Not the Folk Faith. Our religion seeks nothing less than the creature of a new race of God-Men on this world. To accomplish this we need to increase the sense of self-world and develop a strong sense of self-respect among our people, which is vital for success in life.

Part of this success is in the passing on of our genes to the next generation. This enhances our Life Force, and the more children we have the greater in that Life Force. We are connected to the Life Force by the biological bond with share with other living being. Since the Gods reside within us, occupying the DNA that is the essence of who we are, and who the Gods are, the greater the increase and expansion of our biological community, the greater is our spiritual force. We are all connected and thus share a collective soul or racial soul, as well as an individual soul. This collective soul is also shared with our Gods. Thus, by reproducing in great numbers, by forging those bonds with our Gods through ritual and ceremony, by working to build a strong and healthy community in the communion with our Gods, we are strengthening our spiritual power of our souls and ensuring that we will live on in the next life in an exalted state.

We understand that by our actions in this life, we are creating the existence that we will enter in the afterlife. "The life you lead with echo in eternity." Thus, if an individual spends his or her life living it to the fullest, filled with joy in trying to accomplish great feats, their spirit will refuse to die once the body has expired. The vitality in this life will live on after we die. Our souls will be great souls and will be housed in a great place in the next life. The belief that most people who die will enter the Netherworld known by the Norse as Hel, or by the Greeks as Hades, does not mean that the afterlife is dark and cool and devoid of light, joy and bliss. There is no Heaven and Hell , which are places inhabited by the good and wicked after they are judge by God. The place in the afterlife, and its nature, is determined by the life you lead in this earthly existence. Through ritual and ceremony we can enhance the vitality of our spirit in this life. This can also be accomplished through doing great feats and deeds. Be bold in everything you do. Walk with pride in the accomplishments that you have done, and never be humble. False modesty is just as great a fault as false pride. Know your worth and try and increase it. By living life to the fullest, by accomplishing great deeds, by refusing to surrender and by performing ritual and ceremony designed to strengthen the bonds we share with the Gods, we are increasing the power of the Life Force that fills us, and thus increasing the spiritual power that possess. This power will live on beyond our earthly life and will ensure an honored place in the next life, either in an exalted in the Netherworld, or by one being permitted to reside either in Odin’s hall of Valhalla or Freyja’s hall of Sessrumnir.

Joy to you all,

Bob Blumetti

Hail Odin! Hail Balder!

SERMON TWENTY: ON POLITICS

All politics is futile.  We are living in the great turning of the ages.  The turning of the ages is Ragnarok.  Ragnarok is not the end of times, or the end of the physical.  It is simply the end of one cycle and the beginning of another.  It is the period of time between two ages. 

the world order created by Western Civilization is dying.  Since the beginning of the twentieth century, this order has undergone a transformation  The twentieth century is seen terrible world wars, genocide, revolutions, mass murder of a grand scale, nuclear escalation, civil wars, crime, inhumanity beyond anything that even Dante could imagine in his Inferno.  We are truly living in a "Clash of Civilizations."  The Twenty-first century will witness the culmination of Ragnarok.  We have seen the axe age (the First World War), a sword age (the Second World War), a wind age (Communism), and now we are entering a wolf age (the clash of civilizations on a world-wide scale).

In the twenty-first century the world will be shaken by the death of Christianity and Judaism by Islam, and then the collapse of Islam.  Our technological civilization will also collapse.  there might be pockets of technology surviving, but for the most part, the entire world will be plunged back to the Dark Ages.   The Giants have been rallied under Loki's leadership and are just waiting for the right moment to make their final assault across the rainbow bridge and invade Asgard.

Odin understood that both Gods and Giants would destroy either other in the terrible clash.  He also knew that this was not the end, but the start of a new beginning.  Before one can evolve, one must devolve!  Odin also understood that all who could not divorce themselves from the struggle for power would be destroyed.  many of these individuals have been some of the most heroic men and women who have ever lived.  Odin sought to ensure that they joined the ranks of the Einherjar.  The Einherjar would ride out of Asgard under his leadership to meet their end in the final conflict with the Giants.  these are those individuals who cannot evolve.  They cannot change.  They are motivated by negative forces of hate and anger, and this can only lead to their destruction.  They cannot understand that the struggle for power is futile---that all politics is futile.

Not all the heroic go to Valhalla and join the ranks of the Einherjar.  half of those chosen by the Valkyries are take by Freyja to stay with her in her hall, Sessrumnir.  Freyja represents those powers of fertility that give new life.  Those who join her in Sessrumnir will ensure the rise of Balder out of the Netherworld of Odainsaker and establish the new, Golden Age of Gimli.  With him in Odainsaker are those souls destined to be reborn in Gimli. Thus there are three types of people.  the Einherjar who are dested to meet their destruction in the futile struggle of politics.  the second group are those individuals who follow Freyja in initiating those forces necessary to ensure that Balder will rise from Hel and herald in the new age that is Gimli.  These individuals are the men and women who are joining the Church of Vrilology and have begun, and will continue to, teach others how to harness the power of Vril to cause Balder's rising within themselves.  The third group are the descendants of those who will belong to the second group.

Those who join with Freyja are motivated by the light of Wunjo.  They will be given the necessary means to build, not destroy, to love, not hate, to create and not kill.  They will ensure that Balder will return.

This is the choice before you.  Will you continue to be blinded to the futility of politics and go down fighting in a struggle destined to fail, or surrender yourself to love, joy and harmony that is the power of Wunjo, and ensure that we will survive Ragnarok?

Joy to you all,

Bob Blumetti

Hail Odin! Hail Balder!

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