Norse Goddess Magic (23 page)

Hlin may be a goddess of comfort; however, she is a goddess for private and
real grief, not large groups engaging in wailing sessions or individuals
grappling with trivial discomforts. She is a very personal and private consoler
of great grief, of despair, of the difficult experiences that occur in every
life, no matter how successful. She not only comforts, she also inspires the
realization that these problems are not the end of the world, that you can and
should overcome them. Her own dignity offers both comfort and inspiration. She
is a goddess of total honesty, plumbing the depths of the personality, forging
the fears and weaknesses into a strong core of steel with her fires of the soul.

Ritual

Hlin can be invoked for the comfort and protection of oneself and
of others. Rituals to her lend themselves to intimacy and privacy because of the
strong emotions involved; a couple, a family, or a few very close friends might
join for a rite to Hlin, but very large groups are probably not advisable.
Comfort would generally be sought for a particular occurrence of grief or
unpleasantness, such as the loss of a loved one. Protection could be sought
either for a specific danger, such as protecting a loved one who is embarking on
a journey, or for the general safety or well-being of a person or a place.
Another way to honor Hlin would be to comfort and protect others who are going
through rough times; as the goddess herself once said to me, “It's not always
about you.”

Hlin's altar would be dark and muted, with dark grays or blues or black
predominating, and a few simple adornments. Pictures of loved ones being mourned
or for whom protection is desired might be included. If you are doing the ritual
to Hlin to purge yourself of a specific grief or comfort yourself in the face of
a particular sorrow, allow enough time to fully experience the emotions you call
up, to deal with them, and then to rise above them and return to a calm and
centered state. You should feel rested and comforted afterward, not worried and
frazzled; remember, the purpose of the ritual is to feel better, not to feel
emotionally drained and unhappy. It is not unusual to experience some sort of
realization and understanding of your inner state, of how you have arrived at
this point and what you can do in the future. After the ritual, treat yourself
to a glass of fine wine or hot cocoa, a warm bath, a night's rest on clean
sheets and a wooly blanket. Be kind to yourself.

Whether as an avenging spirit, a comforting mother, or a wise
advisor, Hlin is both mysterious and otherworldly, and yet very personal and
accessible. She is a source of inner strength to be called on throughout life, a
force that echoes and resonates with each individual's strongest and best self.

Call to Hlin

Hlin—goddess of refuge,
Goddess of the comforting cloak,
Defender of Frigg's beloved—

You comfort mourners,
You dry tears,
You soothe grieving hearts.

You who have your lady's ear,
    Give us aid.
Goddess of Protection,
    Ward us well.

Hlin, goddess of comfort, soothe us.
Hlin, goddess of mourners, dry our tears.
Hlin, goddess of refuge, keep us safe.
Hlin, Frigg's guardian, be with us now.

19

Syn

The Guardian

Lore

Syn (ON Syn), the eleventh goddess in Snorri's list
(Gylfaginning, ch. 35), is another protective deity, and her name means “denial”
or “refusal.” She is also one of Frigg's attendants, and it is Syn's job to
guard the door of the hall, warding it against those who should not enter.
Frigg, in her role as wife and mother, is the goddess of the home and the hall,
and Syn, her companion, functions as the guardian of the inner sanctum of the
family, of its most private and holy places.

Syn's second function is as public as her first is private. She is one of the
deities of the Thing, the lawgiving assembly of Old Norse culture.

Many modern ideas of democracy are derived not from classical models but
rather from the social practices of the Old Germanic peoples. In early times
most northern European societies were divided into a number of loosely
associated clans. A chief became king through nomination by the other chiefs,
“the first among equals,” and his authority and power were limited by the
assembly of the people.
¹
This assembly, or Thing, as it was called in
Scandinavia, was an annual gathering of all free men of an age and status to
bear weapons (and this included nearly everyone except the very lowest class of
thralls). It was usually held in the summer. The people met to proclaim the laws
and put them into effect, pass judgments, settle suits, worship their gods,
engage in contests of strength and skill, and buy and sell various goods. Each
district would have its own Thing and, later, as society became more complex and
centralized, there would be a larger Althing for the whole land. The laws of
Norse society were retained by custom and transmitted orally each year by the
elder members of the Thing, the law-speakers. The law was set down in an
alliterative form to help people remember it, combining law, poetry, and magic
into one.
²

The distinction between civil and criminal law that we have today did not
exist at that time. All complaints were brought by an individual or family
against another, and all required some sort of personal restitution. Murder and
acts of violence, as well as other injuries, were resolved according to a scale
of compensatory payments.
³
Though judgment was delivered by means of
the Thing, enforcement was usually left to the individuals and families
involved, and, if no reconciliation could be reached, the injured parties were
obligated to recapture their honor through acts of vengeance.

Any injury, from murder to insult, was viewed as damaging the honor, and
hence the luck and personal power, of the offended individual, and through him,
his family and his entire clan. Restitution for a wrong had to be made to heal
the injury. Because the injured luck of one individual could eventually enfeeble
the entire group of people to which he was attached, society took it upon itself
to redress wrongs and restore the balance. Thus, the spirit of Teutonic law was
characterized by sympathy for the offended party; the Thing declared itself at
one with the injured person and committed itself to procuring restitution for
him, renouncing his opponent.
⁴

Defender of the Accused

Into this setting the home-loving goddess Syn appears, entrusted
with the defense of the accused. She is said to protect people against
unjustified charges, defend against any legal actions she wishes to contest, and
preside whenever anyone denies something under oath. In Old Norse society, when
people rejected charges against themselves and pled not guilty, the usual
formula was to say, “Syn is set forward” (Gylfaginning, ch. 35).

The law at that time rested on the principle that an accusation made in
proper form was enough to tarnish a person's honor and luck and therefore
compelled him to defend himself before the Thing. If he was not ready to nullify
the charges by his own oath and those of character witnesses willing to swear on
his behalf, he was as good as guilty. The mere accusation itself allowed guilt
to enter into a person unless he hurled it back with his oath and freed himself.

Syn, then, like Tyr, Thor, Ullr, and Var, is a deity of oaths. Where other
gods of the Thing represent society and its values and concerns, Syn stands on
the side of the individual, protecting him against unjust charges and
accusations. The fact that Syn refutes only those cases in which she chooses to
involve herself implies that she does not support all defendants but only
unjustly charged people. Truly guilty parties have already lost their luck by
virtue of their deeds.

Trance

When I begin my journey to Fensalir, I find Sleipnir grazing
peacefully. After passing over Bifrost, I dismount and walk. I bypass Valhalla
and go straight to Frigg's hall. I find the door locked and the entire house
dark downstairs, but there are lights in the windows above. I walk around to the
back and knock. A woman's stern voice, with a sort of Texas country accent, asks
sharply who it is. I state my various names and begin to expound on the great
and esoteric reasons I am there. I hear the woman chuckle, and she opens the
door a crack. She is large, though not fat—a tall, big-boned woman with large,
muscular arms that are visible under her short, rolled-up sleeves. She wears
dark, plain peasant clothing and a shawl. Her reddish blond, or ash-blond, hair
is worn in a loose bun on top of her head like a Gibson girl, but with stray
strands coming down. Her gray or green eyes are set in a face with angular,
strong cheekbones and a squarish jaw. She takes me to her chair, which is by the
kitchen hearth, and gives me some tea. On her chair she has some knitting, some
papers, and some books. We sit and talk. She shows me her knitting; it's a
neck-scarf with a design on it. “It's for himself, to keep from catching
cold on all those wanderings.” I ask her about the design, and she holds it up
saying, “It's a DNA molecule”—and so it is.

Someone pounds on the door. Syn talks through the door
with whoever it is for a minute, then lets in a young woman carrying some things
in bundles; the young woman hastens upstairs. Later we hear another pounding at
the door. The voice sounds similar to that of the young woman who previously
entered, but Syn decides that whoever it is this time may not come in. The voice
wheedles, then pleads, then threatens. As the voice gets angrier and angrier, it
becomes apparent that it belongs to a giant. Syn rebukes him sharply and lifts a
huge bar into its place across the door, her arms rippling with muscle. There is
furious pounding and pushing on the door, so hard that the wood strains inward
slightly—but the door holds. Unconcerned, Syn returns to her chair by the fire.
“When you're in here with your door shut, you just forget about anything out
there,” she says. She also tells me that I need to finish the things I start, to
resolve unfinished business and relationships or else I'll have to carry all
this leftover “stuff” around all my life.

After a while Syn puts on her “good shawl,” as she calls
it, and goes to a large assembly of law—a trial, or lawmaking body of some sort.
The politicians and legislators and lawyers greet her with outward courtesy, but
one can see that they really wish she wasn't there. They view her as
troublesome, a nuisance. She stops some of their bills, or decisions, and
refutes them. The politicians are conciliatory at first, then openly angry, but
Syn remains calm and firm—“What's right is right, and what ain't right, ain't,”
she tells them. I leave her there with the sullen and angry lawmakers, like a
nursemaid with sulky children.

My vision of Syn was surprisingly homely and down-to-earth, a
countrywoman, a yeoman-like figure. At first glance there appears to be some
discrepancy between Syn's function as a hearthside doorkeeper and her position
as an oath taker at the law assembly. One answer to this paradox comes from
another look at Old Norse thought. One of the most dreaded punishments in Norse
society was outlawry, or banishment; it isolated people from family and clan and
left them without legal rights. Worse, it cut them off from their family power
and luck and from their family's protecting spirits, cut them off from the
fabric of life itself, in this world and the next.

But a pronouncement of outlawry by the legal assembly carried no real weight
as long as a person was still supported and acknowledged by his kin. If they
rejected the court's decision and agreed to retain the condemned individual in
their clan, he could remain safe and protected at the family homestead. True,
this might lead to a feud between the accused's family and that of the offended
party, but the defendant was safe from the ultimate isolation, the living death,
of being a true outlaw. Since the deeds of all family members contributed to its
ørlög—to the luck and fate of everyone in the family—it is not likely that a
clan would risk its future and its ultimate prosperity to protect a truly guilty
individual. But an innocent or unjustly punished individual would be able to
count on his family's support.

This is the tie between Syn's function at the law assembly and in the
home—she represents the family hall, the inner reaches of the homestead, where
the family sits united behind strongly barred doors, protecting its own from the
vagaries of the outside world. In Norse society one's home and kin were the
ultimate defense against all attacks.

Moreover, the center of the home was considered to be the seat of the
greatest frith, where a family's luck and holiness were strongest. Women, since
they dwelt in and worked closest to this inner refuge, were filled with the
greatest frith. Therefore, no man of sense would disregard what the women of his
house advised on any serious matter but rather regarded their speech as
reflecting their close ties to the family's luck and therefore of great
significance. In this context, Syn is the voice of the higher self, speaking
from the inner place of holiness within us all to guard and guide us.

Today, with our modern systems of impersonal law enforcement, where
wrongdoers are usually accused by the state and pay restitution, if any, to
society at large instead of to the people they have actually wronged, perhaps
Syn's function is not as clear as it used to be. However, surely a goddess can
adapt to changing legal systems if people can, and there are still unjustly
accused individuals today, as in the past. Today we must rely on the goddess to
work through lawyers and legislators as well as through family honor and clan
interrelationships.

Ritual

Syn could be invoked by any people accused of wrongdoing, both
those involved in formal legal proceedings and those blamed for mistakes on a
more informal level—a person being unjustly blamed for an error at work, for
example. Syn could also be of help on a broader level, defending against laws or
decisions in the various executive, legislative, and judicial branches of
government. For example, you could ask her to help reject the licensing of a
potentially harmful industrial site or veto an unjust law in Congress.