A HARD-WON WISDOM

A Review of Walking with Wodan by Freya Aswynn

Freya Aswynn’s remarkable formation and career is richly revealed in this unsparing autobiography, Walking with Wodan, which must be seen as the pathway of a spiritual explorer. Many people assume that the topic for which an author is famous was fully-developed from birth onwards, but the truth is nearer to Freya’s own account. The main inspiration may arise, but it has to be hunted and pursued through a variety of turns in the labyrinth until the very centre is discovered. Such a heroic refinement of experience is Freya’s path.

Freya survived a deeply-flawed family, and confinement in a narrow orphanage, emerging into the great sprawling slew of esoteric experimentation which typified the 70s and 80s. This was a zone where the spiritual search was played out against a smorgasbord of traditions – some less firmly screwed into the earth than others. And all this against the backdrop of the lifting of formal social constraints and the great loosening of sexual mores.

Freya had her fair share of fellow companions in her quest ‘for the place just right’ who were, as yet, undeveloped human beings, while several others were just sexually predatory. Such people often affected a pagan seeker’s disguise as a stepping stone to further abuse – something that can be found littering every spiritual path today. However, Freya also discovered some good companions, and a few excellent teachers – some of whom we, incidentally, share: Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki, Diana Paxson, and Daan van Kampenhout, who have also helped me steer my own path.

I recognised many of the individuals and groups in the landscape that Freya that she walked through, as well as remembering the stumbling blocks of poor teaching, colonial attitudes, and unhappy experiences that were hard to avoid during this period. However, Freya remained strong and undaunted in her search, realising that the folk soul of Europe was incomplete without its Friesian and Northern traditions complement - which is also her own heritage.

All spiritual seekers in the 70s and 80s were more likely to encounter aspects of the Western Mysteries, as defined by the school of Dion Fortune, or the magical theories of the Golden Dawn than any indigenous traditions in those days. The teaching of these schools gradually reformulated and redefined considerably over the late 20^th century, shaking off the often racist overtones of Theosophy, but these mysteries held centre stage mainly for one reason. The exclusion of the Northern-West European Mysteries of the Low Countries and Scandinavia remained locked in a forbidden room, due to the catastrophe of the Second World War and its outcomes. No-one wanted to touch the Northern Mysteries with a bargepole, because of their commandeering and misuse by the Nazis.

As Daan van Kampenhout has clearly shown in his excellent book, The Tears of the Ancestors, the Nazi appropriation of the North Western European gods for their own vile purposes, very purposefully slewed the folk tradition of the gods of hearth and home, and left out the female divinities entirely, to pursue a solely war-like agenda, where might and white supremacy was the chief purpose. Anyone approaching the Northern Traditions in the post-war period was considered suspect - sometimes with good reason - as some right-wing groups had been confused or enthused by the Nazi representations of that tradition, and there were just a lone handful of teachers brave enough to reveal the ancient tradition for its true wisdom, without the filter of that awful overlay.

Freya fought her way through this ring-fence of forbidden research, being truly led by the wise gods for whose lore she has come to be so well-loved and respected. That she did so at great cost to herself and her life and comfort, has to be acknowledged by all who know her work. It greatly cleared the way for all who followed.

Every ancient tradition cannot just be visited like a day-tripper. The detritus of the European Christian conversion – like any interrupted tradition - always comes with fear, pain and distrust which litter the hinterland behind us - we each have to come to terms with what we have lost, as well as what can be recovered and lived. Anyone who thinks otherwise is fooling themselves. Yet the ancestral mothers and fathers still abide and uphold us: as they regard us and we begin to learn to follow the lore, so we are strengthened and brought home.

To this end, Freya has included meditations and pathworkings in her book that will lead the reader deeper into the spiritual terrain of the Northern Traditions in ways that will guide truly.

Walking with Odin is not an easy book, but I recommend it to all those for whom she has cleared the ground. It is the life-account of a true seeker. In a time of cosy New Age, Tik-Tok spirituality, Freya stands out as the honest practitioner who forged her way, by means of her dedication to Wodan, with the like same aim - to bring knowledge to the Earth. I am moved by her book. I’m also very grateful for the opportunity to bear witness to her life and work. The title of the book becomes very clearly and literally true, shining out as the reader rounds the end of this biography: the looking back is awesome, but the looking forward is prophecy.

Walking with Wodan by Freya Aswynn, Mandrake Press, Oxford, 206pp. £25

It is available here:

https://mandrake.uk.net/walking-with-wodan/#more-13923

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Walking-Wodan-Freya-Aswynn/dp/1914153367

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Here is a link to Freya’s website

https://aswynn.com/about-me/

and a link to her talking about her journey into the Runes on her YouTube channel: