"Oh with gentle hands he did sway me

Over the flames to strengthen and purify

Oh, with loving words did he dab me

With springs last snow for cleansing me his child"

These are lyrics from the Bathory album, Hammerheart". Which later goes on to proclaim.

"Oh, having it with me

From the first day of my life

always carrying them within me

The powers of Fire and Ice

Now I pass unto thee

My son what was given to me"

Fire and Ice. These are described in our lore of the Eddas to be great powers, extreme poles that come together to create life. This is a theme in the creation myths. That life came from fire and ice. Is this a metaphor or a superstition?

It might be neither. Actually, our ancestors may have had a ton of insight about the energies that created life.

Science can tell us about the rocky surface of the earth. It can tell us that a great heat splintered these miles of rock, which allowed mist to form in the many cracks and crevices that the heat created. When great heat turned to great cold, this mist became ice, breaking apart the rock more and more. This happened over and over again, and on a smaller scale. What did this process create? Soil. Life. Two opposing titanic forces created one of the top life-giving substances in the world.

Was this knowledge literally known by our ancestors? Probably not. What IS known is that the concept of fire and ice was part of their cosmology. I do beleive it was a gods-given insight, or perhaps something understood through divine reflection.

At the core, our people are fire and ice. In constant opposition, yet peaceful when neither force need be used. Frith is the concept of peace in a kindred or communal sense. A sacred place where harmony is between people, gods, and spirits of the earth. A state. This state is crucial to life. It is the state of a pure people, be it pure in love or pure in virtue. Brotherhood, marriage, parenthood, community, and faith. These are all the products of great, life-protecting forces, and therefore products of fire and ice.

This is sacred knowledge, an understanding that in great conflict, great effort and exertion and will, things are created.

This can also coincide with the heathen philosopher Colin Clearys concepts of Will and Openness", which he believes are two states of being that are innate and required to communicate with the gods and the spiritual world. Through openness and suppression of our instincts of will, which naturally tries to posit itself on the world around us, we achieve a state of openness, and this allows sacred reflection.

Through this reflection we are susceptible to the effusion of great spiritual energies around us, some of these being the gods themselves. We take this knowledge, which we have gathered in a great open state, and feed it to our other pole: Will.

The Will within us is then greatly empowered by this knowledge and contact with the divine, and we use it to enrich our lives, the lives of those within our communities, and in many cases the world around us.

Thus we see, through two opposing states. Peace and conflict, will and openness, fire and ice.life is created in many forms.

This is why we are all baptized in fire and ice. Our folk and our gods, empowered to the end by a kind of strength unique and needed in the world