Winifred Hodge Rose
“Os / Ansuz is the wellspring of all speech,
the undergirding of wisdom and useful to the wise.”
Welcome to Heathen Soul Lore, Heathen Philosophy, and more! This website is designed as a library, which offers writings of mine on many topics relating to ancient and modern Heathen belief and practice. The drop-down menu bar, above, offers subject categories to help you select among more than 120 articles and other writings of mine you might like to read. The bar on the right gives an alphabetical list of all my writings, and you can use the search function for specific topics, as well. This website is an ongoing project as new articles of mine are uploaded, covering soul lore, deities, wights and spirits, Heathen life-ways, meditations, poems, songs, ceremonies, and more. Come back to visit often! And check out the list of my published books, workbooks, and booklets here: https://heathensoullore.net/my-books/
Before continuing, I want to take a firm stand here: nothing on this website, in my books or any of my works, has been generated by AI. It never has been, and never will be. I offer a conceptual space here for human people to explore, each of us using our blessed and honored human minds, hearts, and souls. All of this material is directly written by an intelligent human (me) and addressed to intelligent humans (you), and to Gods and Goddesses, of course! There is no place here for artificiality, for writings that do not come directly from the deep experiences and insights of human minds, hearts and souls. Nor is there a place here for the theft and unacknowledged use of other people’s writing, as AI may be inclined to do; brief quotations or summaries of the writings of others are always acknowledged here with appropriate citations, and are greatly appreciated.
For an overview of my work, read on…
The term ‘Heathens’, or ‘people of the heath,’ is used to describe the ancient paganisms of the tribes who spoke the old Germanic languages of Europe, including Anglo-Saxon, Old Saxon, Old Norse, Old High German, Gothic, Frisian, Frankish, and other related languages. They left clues to their philosophies and world-views, their understandings of religion, the world, and life in general, in their poetry and art, their languages and laws, their folklore and customs.
Aspects of these ancient paganisms are brought forward into present-day Heathen beliefs and practices. There are many styles of modern Heathen practice, and many modern Heathen scholars who research ancient practices and beliefs to enrich the modern foundations of our troth. This website expresses my own perspectives, with grateful acknowledgement toward the many sources, past and present, Heathen and non-Heathen, who have influenced my thoughts.
Heathen Philosophy
“Philosophy” means “love of wisdom” or “friend of wisdom”. I see ‘wisdom’ as the bridge between the realms of the intellect and knowledge, on the one hand, and the realms of the heart and souls on the other hand. Wisdom itself is crystallized not only from abstract knowledge but from lived experience: our own experience and that of others, past and present, who share their wisdom with us. Being a ‘philosopher’, a ‘friend and lover of wisdom’, thus means, for me, an eager and open-minded exploration of ideas and experiences for the purpose of growth, enrichment, and expansion of Being, rather than of creating fenced-in enclaves of ‘absolute truth’.
Even so, it’s helpful to have a place to start, a path in front of our feet, as we set out on our explorations. There are endless directions one can take, and various motivations for choosing one path or another. It’s good to listen to our heart when making this choice, to sense the path that calls to us. For many modern Heathens, we become Heathens because we feel a calling to do so from our deities and other spirits (such as ancestors and nature spirits), and a pull toward the world-views that they reflect and embody: we have a sense of home-coming here.
This Heathen home-coming places us within a broad and varied ‘landscape’ of the spirit, that has paths of knowledge, experience, wisdom, leading into and out of it in all directions. Many of these paths, especially those which feed in from the past, are overgrown with brush, barely discernable, yet they exude a sense of timeless meaning and deep mystery. We can choose some of these paths to explore, if we wish. A lot of brush-clearing is involved, the paths are faint and muddled, and we know we can’t tread them exactly as they were trodden in the past. We may not even want to do that. Part of the process is ‘making the way anew’, and a worthy goal is to bring back the insights we find to share with others as well as making use of them ourselves.
Any practice of religion or spirituality is founded upon philosophy, whether it is stated as such, or unstated. Philosophy as traditionally practiced in ancient cultures around the world included the following domains of inquiry: cosmology (an understanding of what the world / cosmos is and how it works); cosmogony (how this cosmos originated); mythology and theology (tales and teachings about the deities and other spiritual beings, their actions and natures); ethics (how humans should behave, interact with each other, and form societies); natural philosophy (how the world of Nature works, and how to work with it); psychology (the science of the soul or psyche, the ‘what, how, and why’ of spiritual, mental, emotional aspects of humans), and many other avenues of inquiry. For philosophers of any time and any place in the world, everything is grist for the mill of the mind! On this website, you will find my own Heathen-oriented take on many of these philosophical considerations.
We are used to thinking of ‘philosophy’ as something expressed through intellectual essays and lectures. But philosophy, as I described it above, can and is developed and expressed through many other media as well, including poetry, tales, songs, art in all its forms, folklore, laws, customs, and traditions. We as humans can’t live any sort of organized life at all, neither inner life nor outer life, without basing it on philosophy: on our understanding of how and why the world and people and unseen forces operate the way they do, and how we choose to deal with the results and live our own lives. Like all other peoples and cultures of the world, the ancient Heathen cultures had their own world-views and underlying philosophies, and many of these understandings seem very worthy of exploration for me and other modern Heathens.
The work I publish here comprises the ongoing results of more than thirty years of Heathen practice, and more than seventy years of pursuing a philosophical life—that is, a life where I’ve been fundamentally curious, intrigued, inspired, delighted, and driven by philosophical and spiritual questions. (Yes, even as a kid I loved this stuff, as I think many kids do when they have the time and space to explore, think quietly, and daydream.) I’ve found the greatest satisfaction, my philosophical and spiritual home, in pursuing these explorations based on my understanding of ancient and modern Heathenism. This is what I share here: examples of how mind and souls can flower when planted in the soil that nourishes them.
Heathen Soul Lore
Heathen soul lore, as I pursue it, begins with the study of ancient beliefs about the souls based on analysis of soul-related words read in context in their original Germanic language texts. I think that linguistic and etymological study, while far from perfect, provides very useful ‘artifacts’ or traces of ancient conceptual culture, paralleling the study of archaeological artifacts to understand ancient material culture. To this approach I add elements of folklore, comparative religion, linguistics, philosophy, anthropology, and similar perspectives.
This scholarly approach is not the endpoint of my efforts, though; it is only the beginning. I use this beginning as a way to find those faded, brush-filled paths I mentioned, to point toward promising directions that can be explored on all levels: intellectual, spiritual, intuitive, experiential, psychological, historical, and more, thus bringing these ancient concepts forward into a modern spiritual context. My focus is not only on researching ancient ideas about the souls; it is also on evolving those ideas into relevance for modern Heathen life.
I make no claims about ‘proof’ of anything here, and I certainly do not claim that the soul lore I offer represents a dogmatic belief structure held by all ancient (or modern) Heathens of all times and places. It is highly unlikely that such a thing ever existed, nor is it likely to in future! I collect what I consider to be meaningful and relevant linguistic, literary, and other evidence about ancient Heathen concepts of the souls, apply my own Heathen-philosophical reasoning to this complicated and contradictory mass of material, add in personal thoughts, insights and observations, and offer the results for you to consider and explore! I do strive to make clear which observations are based on academic study and which are drawn from my own thoughts, reasoning, and experience.
My purpose is not to present a watertight academic argument, but rather to offer some enriching perspectives for modern Heathen spiritual practice. Nevertheless, many years of dedicated research, study, and spiritual practice have informed this endeavor: it is an ongoing labor of love. Scholars of comparative religion, religious history, and practitioners of other branches of historically-based Paganism, may find some interest in the study approach I have taken, as well as the information I’ve collected.
I’d like to add a personal note here, responding to people’s comments on the internet that they enjoy my writings on Heathen soul lore, but that these writings consists of ‘bits and pieces of research here and there,’ with most of it being my own ideas. I think these commenters have not read the foundational material of my soul lore, the articles listed under “Soul Lore” in the menu headers, which involved about 20 years of research including teaching myself to read the old Germanic languages so that I could understand soul-related words in their original language contexts, as well as studying Latin and Greek texts and Proto-Indo-European studies. (This article about the Hugr soul is just one of many examples of my methods: https://heathensoullore.net/who-is-hugr/ ) All of my original work was done before the internet and electronic files made reading and searching texts so easy; I studied and sifted through several thousand printed pages in multiple languages for this work and spent a lot purchasing expensive academic reference works. Including reading through every page of dictionaries of all the old Germanic languages in my search for soul-related words, even languages I didn’t end up using in my studies because there wasn’t enough relevant material available. I’ve used less than half of the notes I extracted from all this study in my writings because I try not to overwhelm readers with too much detail. A lot of my effort in my writing has been to simplify and communicate very complex and contradictory information which–agreed–often does show up in bits and pieces; that’s simply what is there, and it’s for us as modern Heathens to try to put the pieces together. I do develop my own ideas, but they didn’t just appear out of the blue; they are based on years of research in linguistics, history, literature, anthropology, folklore, religious studies, philosophy, and more. I don’t claim that this makes my ideas infallible, of course, but these ideas do reflect more than ‘bits and pieces’ of research.
An Overview of my own Landscape of Belief
All philosophical efforts should aim to make their underlying assumptions explicit, which helps others to clarify and evaluate the results. Here are my own basic, underlying assumptions: things which can’t be proven or disproven, but which shape my philosophical approaches and conclusions. I believe that all the deities and other spirits—those of the Heathen pantheons and all others as well—are real, independent and individual beings who interact with us and with the world at large. I believe that they and everything else that exists arise from a primal, cosmic source, which I conceive of in terms of Heathen cosmogony as the primal polarities of Fire and Ice, with Ginnungagap, the space of magical potential that is spun out between these polarities, releasing a constant flow of coming-into-beingness. I believe that souls are real, that we have not one but several souls, that some of them exist before and after our physical life, and that these souls collectively create ‘who we are’ here in Midgard.
I believe there are many other beings, as described in Heathen folklore and other folklores around the world, which do not have a full physical presence in this world, which exist and pursue their lives in other planes, dimensions, ‘worlds’ or ‘lands’ but also interact with ours. I do not see them as physical aliens from other planets, but as occupants of metaphysical spaces congruent with our own physical space.
The interactions among everything I’ve listed here, along with all the beings of physical and metaphysical Nature, constitute an ‘ecology of worlds’ that is vital to the ongoing health and well-being of all that exists. For me, the practice of religion / spirituality means facilitating these interactions in healthy ways, building relationships within and across the physical and metaphysical worlds, and taking up whatever constructive tasks and personal development we can, to support and balance this great spiritual ecosystem. The contribution I strive for is to express my Heathen wisdom-seeking in writing, with the aim of offering inspiration and support for a deep and broad Heathen spiritual life, and perhaps something of interest for people on other paths as well.
Here is a note about my writing from Lonnie Scott: “Your writing is always thought provoking. I think your writing fills part of an enormous gap in modern Heathenry. You’re not just doing how to books or the latest translations of lore. You give us deep thinking, philosophy, and more! We need more like that for Heathens. Lots more.”
So….Welcome!
Pull up a chair and get comfy; I hope you feel at home here, as I do! I can’t offer you food and drink, as befits an honored visitor, but I can, I trust, offer some spiritual nourishment instead.
All visitors are welcome here, of whatever path or faith or philosophy. You’re invited to explore, and perhaps to find some inspiration on your own unique path into the endless realms of spiritual beauty and mystery, where human minds and souls thrive and are challenged to grow to their full potential.
Well-come, one and all!
-Winifred-
This trademarked image is the logo for my publishing imprint, Wordfruma Press, conceptualized by myself and beautifully created by Heathen artist Forest Hawkins. It shows the rune Ansuz arising from a wellspring:
“Os / Ansuz is the wellspring of all speech,
The undergirding of wisdom and useful to the wise,
And to everyone it is blessing and hope.
The image also symbolizes the World-Tree, with drops of dew falling into the sacred Well below. The word “Os” in the rune-poem quotation above points to a God of the Aesir, the Esa in Anglo-Saxon: Woden / Odin with his gifts of eloquence, poetry, prophecy and wisdom.
In the reverse-color image shown at the beginning of this page, the black-turned-white color of Ansuz arising from the Well shows flecks of many subtle colors, suggesting individual words, thoughts and ideas all flowing together into expression in Midgard. May Woden and his godly associates guide us into the profoundest depths of wisdom and meaning that lie hidden in the sacred Wells, and help us to express what we find there!
Wordfruma Press webpage: https://www.wordfrumapress.net/