Worth dying for?
Published: Sat, 11/26/16
The second two runes in the Ethical Bind rune are Mann, which effectively means sexual attraction and Bjork which symbolises motherhood, family life and home and hearth. I said in my last post that our primary value is going to be defence of self and that is true except when there are people and a place that we actually value more than our own safety.
Only having yourself to please is nice now and then but is it the way we want to be all our lives? Having no family members or friends to care about and who care about us would be a rather sad state of affairs. Falling in love is a complex business involving instinct, social imperatives, hormones and some fantasy and projection. However, there is no doubt that really falling in love causes a radical shift in our sense of values, both the value of self and the value of another person. Conversely, rejection or betrayal by a loved one will have a negative effect on one’s sense of value. I don’t need to elaborate, a million pop songs and a similar number of novels, stories and poems are right there for further research if your own experience isn’t enough.
Falling in love is Freya’s territory with all the glamour, confusion and excitement suggested by Njord’s daughter. Freya’s romance is likely to be short lived but it may lead to a more solid relationship as symbolised by Frigga involving family and a shared home. This may well include extended family, a wider community, work, business and property. These are all aspects of life governed by the Karl principle. The Karl being the freeman, traditionally a farmer, but meaning anyone who was taken control of their own destiny personally, socially and economically.
If you have only yourself to defend and no other concerns then running away is usually the best option. In self-only-defence fighting is only necessary in order to facilitate one’s escape. It is of course more dangerous to stand one’s ground and defend that which one loves.
How can you know that some one or something is worth risking life and limb for? Simple really, if don’t want to live with knowing that you put yourself first then you know what you have to do. The real question in combat is not. “How am I going to survive this situation?” Rather. “Is what I am fighting and risking dying for worth it?” You can’t really say you value something unless you are ready to die for it. That sounds terribly melodramatic in our modern Western society where some medals for running fast is source of national pride and being knocked out of a football tournament is a national disgrace. We need to recover a sense of reality about what really matters.
Does something like Stav training actually change anything? Probably not in itself, no. However, being trained physically, being able to think clearly and having a genuine sense of values will prepare you to cope with harsh reality when it does bite back. And bite back it does eventually.
Very few people will every actually get themselves trained to engage reality head on. I have had people tell me to my face that there is no point wasting time and effort learning self-defence because Somerset is such a safe place that they will never need such skills. In one way it is nice that they feel so secure but they are also missing the point, there are always going to be challenges in life and we need to be ready to meet them.
My next training event will look as much at the philosophy of Stav as the physical training. 10th December in Crewkerne, Somerset details http://www.iceandfire.org.uk/foundation.html
Regards
Graham
PS For more on the Ethical Bind Rune and the runes which make it up see my article at http://www.iceandfire.org/archive.html#sept16