If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times; the fundamental point of Germanic belief is not the pursuit of glory; of any kind up to and including martial glory. It is the achievement and maintenance of holiness, of health, of wholeness; with the accent falling on the wholeness of the community … which is itself the bestower and carrier of glory (and simple individual wholeness) in all of it’s many varieties.

The principles of wholeness rarely stand in the way of glory the same way that the principles of glory (removed from the greater context of wholeness) stand in the way of, and often undermine, (community) wholeness, eg. social adversarialism. Certainly, sometimes people of great potential will be required to give up their dreams for the sake of wholeness … to not go off to university for example, because the family farm won’t survive without the benefit of their man-power, thus leaving that individual in a state of personal unwholeness … but ultimately, in the bigger picture, that communal wholeness is the soil that all of the varied potential of the community has, is, and shall evolve within and out of. And so it is given due priority.

When times are fair, the ethic of communal wholeness bleeds over into the individual realm and allows, even prompts people to embrace their personal wholeness and pursue their individual dreams with the full support of the community; as per the inclinations and aptitudes of the individual, eg. war, wealth, art, learning, etc.

There is of course nothing wrong, from a Heathen perspective, with a person working a minimum wage job. Most of our heathen ancestors lived a simple subsistence lifestyle as simple farmers, herders, and hunters; as did their forefathers for generations before, and as would their descendants.

The desire to “get ahead”, to do better than one’s parents, implying as it does the desire to be better, and the consequent opinion of “I am better than you”, was simply not part of the common heathen value system; which, naturally, was more (if not exclusively, ie. where the emphasis falls) concerned with securing one’s position within the tribe rather than advancing it.

Certainly, the “accomplishment” of “making minimum wage” shall never be glorified, nor should it, but as the Havamal relates, “some are blessed with sons, some by friends, some by wealth and others by good works”. And indeed, even if a man can boast nothing spectacular, save that he pitched in and did what he could for his community (like everyone else), no one (that matters) glorifies the man who forgets where he came from and turns his nose up at his own. As the Havamal also relates, “(memorial) stones seldom stand by the roads unless raised by kin for kin.”

Forsooth, looking back at the conversion age, all of those we heathens today deem to have been heroes in that epoch championed the cause of the wholeness of their tribe — quite explicitly in the case of an East Anglian Queen and later a Swedish Queen — while those we deem the sell outs were invariably were chasing glory, chasing their personal advancement in society or in the international community.

There is of course nothing wrong with having the right stuff and showing it. Elder heathen thought was not like the dualistic absolutist thought that is so common today; where things are perceived to be either one way, or their exact opposite, with only a fence to sit on between the two. But even Tiw, who’s name is synonymous with glory, was ready to give all of his rightful glory up for the sake of the wholeness of the divine community.

Glory will always sprout from the soil of wholeness; no matter the weather … which itself is an ever shifting affair. No. Glory shall always, inevitably, sprout. But woe to the flower that snubs the dirt it draws it’s vitality from.

And so, what does it mean to be whole?

For the answer to this, I look primarily to the Norse-Icelandic Eddas, which paint the clearest picture, but certainly compliment this with broader pan-Germanic evidence, and then verify within an even greater pan-ethno-cultural/tribalist context.

The Eddas paint an awe-inspiring picture of the cosmos as being held together by a great “World Tree”; the roots of which are deeply sunk into each of the “steads of being” that make up the cosmos (drinking deep of their varying natures), and who’s branches hang over the all (and rain “morning dew” down on all of the cosmos).

The World Tree is a great and deep symbol for cosmological wholeness in Germanic thought. This is also true of the number 9, as we see in the nine steads of being that the Norse-Icelandic World Tree is said to encompass (Asgard, Midgard, Hel, Vanaheim, Alfheim, Svartalfheim, Jotunheim, Niflheim, and Muspelheim). These realms can be viewed in an abstract, mystical spiritual sense — and certainly that is how they are presented in the Eddas — but indeed the unknown will always be explained within the context of the known, and these “worlds” also(more certainly) express the nature of the environment of our ancestors … and particularly the environment of Iceland, eg. Muspel and Niflheim, fire and ice … where Asgard becomes the sacred space of the gods (grove, altar, temple), Midgard the halls and homes of one’s tribe, Hel the tribal graveyard, Vanaheim perhaps the community’s farm, pasture and hunting grounds, Jotunheim the untamed wild lands, etc.

It is perhaps worth noting that in both the Prose Edda (13th century) and the Grimnismal (10th century), three of the Tree’s “nine” roots are singled out as being of special significance; though both sources differ on which roots. The Prose Edda holds them to be the roots that sit in Asgard, Jotunheim, and Niflheim, while the Grimnismal holds them to be the roots that reside in Hel, Jotunheim, and Midgard.

At any rate, even as the Tree was seen as a sign of cosmological wholeness, so to was it seen as a symbol of individual wholeness; as we see in the Eddic creation of the first men out of trees. And as we know from evidence beyond the Eddas, the tree (and it’s offspring the pillar, aka. axis) was also a symbol of the wholeness of kindred, community and tribe. The destruction of such things as the Donar Oak of the Thuringians or the Saxon Irminsul were highly symbolic acts in the Catholic conversion of our peoples;which resounded deeply (and balefully) in the “folk soul” of the tribe in question, ie. the destruction of their wholeness as a people.

And so, wholeness can be seen to entail an awareness and acknowledgement, of one’s organic relation/obligation to (and the inter-relationship between) the divine, the natural world, and the human community … both past and present, living and dead, great and humble, worthy and shameful. And it is much the same with tribal peoples the world over.

And as we have received, so to must we give.

Never forget where you come from. And always be whole!