Some of you are beside yourselves looking at these books and yes, I own those books and those are my physical copies. I’ve read those books and I’m not apologizing for them because, if the photo turned you away, then this didn’t matter to you. You didn’t perform your MindCraft and you’re still far too reactive.

Go back, do that, come back when you aren’t.

Varg…oh man the things I could say about the guy.

As stated before, that photo with all those books, I have read them, cover to cover. Most would shy away from Varg’s work because “I don’t want to support a racist” and that’s valid…but you have no idea how to engage with his followers properly, nor do you know how to critically analyze anything that comes from his mouth.

I can prove that easily.

Let’s take his game Myfarog. It was about $10 at the time of purchase. It was one book and it was an acronym for Mythological Fantasy Roleplaying Game. Yep, Varg’s a D&D fan going way back. Now, I’m going to say something that will piss off some people and I’m prone to do that because I’m a solo church. No one is banging down my door to join. If you’re smart, you’ll take my structure and start your own but read this first so you have some fuckin’ discernment first. And do your MindCraft…do I have to keep hammering this point home?

Myfarog’s problems are a sort of multitude but for clarification, the photo shows the third and fourth edition of the game of which, according to others when I expressed a sort of frustration with the lack of world-building in it, I was told that the first and second editions DID have a mythical fantasy world built and even had lore but by the third and fourth editions it was largely gone so I can’t comment on that. Some will oversimplify stating that I shouldn’t have that material because “he’s racist.”

Yes, he is…but can you point out the specifics without sounding like a repetitive bumper sticker if you are able to even go that long?

I can. That’s where reading his work benefitted me the most. I can structurally take apart points he’s made even if I agree or disagree with him.

I haven’t burned them, nor have I tossed them in the trash, obviously. I know no one else will want those books but here’s the big question…where did you not find those books?

Spoilers ahead and you don’t get much time, I lied, you don’t get any.

The Magnusson Library and The Magnusson Curriculum.

It would probably piss The Rede off to the point of steam jetting from their ears if they knew I owned all of that before joining The Troth.

The point, I grabbed all of this when I was just getting back into the swing of things several years ago. Varg’s work led to two translations of The Poetic Edda, Sturlusson’s Prose Edda and the original sources for the things Varg mentioned.

For perspective, I have The Golden Dawn (Yeah, no shit, showed that tome off) and ended up going back to Corpus Hermeticum and The Kybalion, having read both this past week alone. When someone mentions a source and starts quoting it, I don’t take their word for it. I go back and look myself. When I did, that’s when I really started finding Varg and his wife’s world view to be really damn strange and questionable.

The assumption is that anyone who reads this work will end up adopting the same philosophy. I will tell you one thing…Varg almost had me. Almost.

During his YouTube days he was measured, intelligent, clear and what he said could be taken any number of ways, including ways that were constructive. Once the ideologues started trying to get him banned, that’s when my Trump impression kicked in.

“They Don’t. Know What. The Fuck. They’re Doing. Do you understand now?”

And they didn’t. Once they “got the racist” well then he moseyed on over to BitChute and …yep, he lost me too.

He didn’t lose his audience though, that’s the bad news for those who think they “got the racist” no, he merely curated them into a small but hardcore and hard-line following. Congratulations. What the hell do you do for an encore, I wonder?

You’ll still never find the works of his or his wife’s in my library for study. From having read them I know that there is nothing in there that would contribute to my studies, my applications or my practice. I can say that, on the points of permaculture and self-reliance, he’s not wrong on that issue but I’m almost certain that there are many who would agree with that without the self-isolation.

Remember what I said about building walls and building bridges? Yes, same applies here.

Reading these books back during that time was somewhat seductive, even enticing but at the end of it all, I found that it’s about building walls to protect yourself to a fault. It’s not about building bridges with anyone. It’s about building bridges only for those self-appointed “supermen” types that believe they’re rulers when they rule nothing at all, they have nothing at all and depend on your external validation in order for them to stay relevant.

When you build bridges, you do not need any of that. The bridges work on their own and, if built properly, they’ll stand patching chasms, schisms and rifts…even entire canyons for centuries if not millennia.

So which books are right for you? Well, they have to be an answer to certain questions you have. Who am I? What is my place in the grand scheme of things? What am I to my deity? What is my purpose? How can I achieve that purpose? Those are questions that your library should be able to answer as you explore it more deeply. If you find yourself with books or authors who are full of shit, then take them out of your structure and replace them with something that answers the question for you more clearly.

Let me show you something else.

These books are currently in the library. These are by Troth publications and written by Troth members. If at any time, I find the books are full of ideological compromises, they come out of the library and into quarantine…next to Varg.

I don’t believe in burning books but I know that putting them into the Little Free Libraries will result in someone doing it and none of the libraries around me accept donations anymore. Those books will be approached for certain information and the rest discarded without citation or thought.

This is how you approach the work. This is how you establish the bridge, the one that matters, between you and the Divine. You have to be the one to build it, not the other way around.

In fact, I’ll tell you a little something that might surprise you. If the gods cared about politics, they’d run for earthly office.

They don’t.

They created all of this, you really think they’re going around issuing tests on a personal level? If you were thinking this is how it all works, then might I suggest…MindCraft? Stop projecting your failings onto Divine entities that, at best, care little to nothing for how we actually do things enough to interfere and more of how we conduct ourselves by our own volition to create a collection of deeds and legacy that will ultimately establish who we were here and how we go up the tree later after our corpus has essentially said “Okay, this is as far as I go.”

Do the Troth get any say in that? No.

Does Varg? Hell no.

Does The AFA? LMAO, get real.

Odinic Rite? Refer to previous answers.

No group does. I’m not asking them. They’ve failed in their guidance and their role. Hence, the reason I don’t belong to any.

It’s the old hereafter story. If you’re not here after what I’m here after, you’ll still be here after my ass left a flaming vapor trail.

Here’s the thing, buying the wrong books doesn’t get you ousted here. Reading them and even studying them doesn’t get you ousted here. A lack of discernment can get you corrected in a big way but it won’t get you ousted unless you’re intent on building walls. That is something we reject and do not accept.

In my studies, Guido Von List’s name keeps popping up.

I’m studying the runes, he’s bound to come up somewhere.

Von List has been rejected out of hand because of two things; He claimed secret knowledge and claimed, during a state of temporary blindness from eye surgery, that Odin had revealed certain new runes to him. Some have found those runes work and that’s fine.

I, however, have looked at similar stories like Dr. Wescott, a founding Golden Dawn member who spoke of a document that he had to use a secret cypher manuscript to decode. He claimed that the document came from Fraulein Anna Sprengle who, as it turned out, didn’t exist. The cypher manuscript was in the Britis Library so it wasn’t all that secret and it was found that he possibly manufactured the document to claim secret knowledge in the interest of leading a group. Granted, the practices of The Golden Dawn work and survive to this day and it’s a syncretic practice that takes in a mix of practices which have worked for the last century or better. The methods are solid even if the pretense was false.

Von List’s runes…they’re a fabrication until proven otherwise. Not to mention all the other problems that come with Von List’s philosophy, his politics and, yes, that translates to his work.

If you want to take his work and leave the rest, that’s all up to you. His work won’t see space in my library.

The thing is, this library wasn’t built in a day. It was built using trial and error over years. The accelerant was that I decided to look up that which I wanted to become even more proficient, looked at where I needed refreshers from Ritual Rust and gathered recommendations that I’m still getting to this day. Pretty soon, the works of Dion Fortune will join the library because of her safety protocols for the operator in the field. I bought books and read them, some I wish I didn’t, others I wish I’d read or studied sooner. In either case, if you feel that the ownership of these books even with the explanation of why is sufficient enough for you to bail, that’s cool. This wasn’t for you. If you get it and you understand how the approach was developed, even better, this is in fact for you.

The key thing to remember is that, when choosing books, it can be tempting to go with something others highly recommend but you need to be able to apply the question to the synopsis or ask the person making the recommendation why they’d recommend it. Also keep in mind that if I were to recommend something like Buckland’s Big Blue or Buckland’s Big Red, I should be able to clearly articulate to you why I’m recommending those books. If I offer you a translation of The Havamal, I should be able to explain why I recommend that translation to you. I should also be able to explain why certain books might not be right for you.

For example, I wouldn’t ever recommend Aleister Crowley’s work to a practicing Christian who wants to practice magick from a Christian bent which is entirely possible (The Golden Dawn’s Rosicrucians often invoke angelic beings and use the multitude of Hebrew names for God spoken in a degree of resonance or “vibration”) but Crowley, as we’ve seen, lived for the intensity of his experiences leaving him burned out physically. Likewise, Fortune succumbed to Leukemia after spending years pushing herself beyond her limits. She wrote the safety protocols but died relatively young from not having self-applied them. Both prove that this kind of thing does have a very real toll and that has to be considered also.

Let me close this out with food for thought and yes, this has been included in my notes because it is relevant.

1 Corinthians 13:11:

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But, when I became a man, I put away the things of a child.

In youth, the mind is a reed that bends to every wind; speech is loud and thought is shallow. But when the man stands tall, he puts aside the toys of the child and seeks the counsel of the wolf and the hawk. For the gods do not listen to the babble of babes; they answer only the clear voice of the one who has learned to walk alone.

Need more? Okay.

“The foolish man thinks he will live forever if he avoids fighting; but old age will give him no peace, even if weapons spare him.” (Hávamál, Stanza 2)

“Foolish is he who knows nothing but his own name; he goes about with empty hands and knows nothing of what he should do.” (Paraphrase of Stanzas 14-15 regarding ignorance)

“A wise man is ever cautious; a guest comes in, and he looks at him and weighs his words... He who speaks too little is often wise, but he who speaks too much is often foolish.” (Hávamál, Stanza 3-4)

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