Hel by an unknown artist. She is both life and death because both are two aspects of something inseparable. Though she is not depicted with a baby in the Eddas, I feel that her carrying a baby is an appropriate metaphor. The baby will replace the parents when the parents die. In order for newborn children to live, the older must die to make space and allow the child to consume limited resources. Thus an infant is symbolic of both life and death, as is Hel.
In order to fully understand our ancestral faith, we must take on the philosophy that our ancestors followed. While we do have to adapt our Germanic religion into the modern world, we also have to adapt their philosophy in order to appreciate our religion and our Gods in their entirety.
This is no easy task. Unlike the ancient Greeks and ancient Romans, we do not have philosophical works by our ancestors until well into the Christian eras. Moreover, our philosophers were oral philosophers - they passed down their wisdom from adept to adept, father to son, teacher to pupil through oral traditions, often in the form of poetry. The Druids are a famous example: they studied the arcane arts for 20 years before having the title of Druid bestowed upon them. And everything they learned (philosophy, theology, medicine, warcraft, politics, et cetera) was orally passed down. Our European brothers - the Greeks and Romans, and our Indo-European cousins, the Persians, Indians and others (Hittites) had a natural literacy develop where their oral traditions were gradually turned into written works (Homeric poetry). Barbarian Europe, on the other hand, had literacy forced upon it when Christianity was forced upon it, thus our earliest Germanic literature is largely the Bible or heavily Christianized, with some exceptions (the Poetic Edda). As a result of this cultural upheaval, the majority of the wisdom of our bards, scalds, and Druids have been lost.
The philosophy of life for our ancestors has not been lost, though.
Keep in mind when I say philosophy, I do not necessarily mean Greco-Roman philosophy, where educated men think and discuss all aspects imaginable. When I speak of the philosophical life of our ancestors, I speak of their outlook and view on the world around them. This is discernible from the way they viewed their Gods.
Our Gods and Goddesses are every aspect of the world around us.
When we worship life, we worship "Rosy-fingered Dawn" or the Divine Crone/All-Mother (Hera, Frigga...). We worship fertility in the form of both male (Freyr) and female (Freyja), and their mother manifested as Spring itself (Eostre). We worship the Sun (Sunna or Sol Invictis). We worship the All-Father (Odin) and Sky-Father (Tyr). We celebrate life through festivals, marriage, games, feasts, and through sacrifice (where we give a part of us - our time) to the Gods in thanks.
We also, as a result, must celebrate death.
To celebrate life is to embrace all aspects of life. When the ancient Greeks made libations to Ares, the "blood-stained God", they did not because they thought war was a good thing. They did not worship Ares, but they recognized him and made sacrifice to him, because he represented a natural part of life - war. Our ancestors accepted war as a part of life, and recognized it for what life is, and thus embraced Ares and war. They did not "pray for world peace", they did not pray against Ares or wish for Ares to go away. The ancient Greeks understood that hopeless dreaming in life is pointless. They accepted that war is part of life, and thus war must be embraced. So they sacrificed to Ares, even though they did not worship him.
The ancient Greeks also made libations to Hades. Though the Romans did worship the War God (proudly declaring themselves Mars's descendants through Romulus), no Greco-Roman actually worshiped Hades. Yet Hades received a libation - with the conductor's head turned away to the side for the libation. Because in order to celebrate life, death must also be celebrated.
Today, we still celebrate death. The modern European and European-diaspora funeral, shelled in a Victorian casing, superficially Christian and fringed with modernity, is a testament to the European celebration of life. Yes, there is mourning - crying, wailing, screaming, perhaps even guilt or fighting among the guests - it still is a celebration of the life of the person who died. And in order to have that celebration, that person must die, thus death is celebrated.
Think about the modern Catholic wake and funeral. Family, friends and even acquaintances gather together in the room of the body. Kin that have not spoken in years are brought together, friendships are rekindled and bonds are strengthened. When I was a teenager, mired in atheism and degeneracy, I scoffed at this - I said once "People are mingling, but there's a corpse in the room!". But it's not a corpse. The person in the casket is a reminder of life. We are celebrating that person by "mingling", by laughing, joking, and later and traditionally, by feasting and drinking. I remember at one funeral, at the procession afterwards, we tossing around the children between the tables, vaulting them up into the air and catching them. It was a joyous outburst, so delightful that we probably would have started dancing had there been music! Yet someone had died, and we were celebrating their life, and their death.
Our ancient ancestors knew that, too, which is why there were not only feasting and drinking at Pagan European funerals, but also evidence that they held athletic competitions in the name of the deceased. If one were to excavate an Etruscan or Roman tomb, they would find strighe - iron blades used to scrap off oil and sweat from the skin of the athletes. For Germanic and Slavic funerals, often there would be mock fights between youths with swords and shields as the body burned upon the pyres, the warriors clashing in the smoke as women sang and men shouted in glory.
We as Germanic and European Heathens must recognize that though Christianized, we still have pulses of our Pagan past, especially during traditional processions such as funerals. A classmate of mine, a sociology major, once remarked to me, "When I die, I do not want a white [European diaspora] funeral where people talk and gab. I would rather have a non-white funeral where it's more solemn and respectful." She of course could not realize that it is in European spirit to talk and mingle at the body of the deceased (since we can no longer hold athletic games or sword and shield competitions!). Despite her ignorance and her willingness to forsake her heritage, this is our unique European heritage, and I stress, something so unique that others cannot comprehend why we would do such a thing such as talk in front of a corpse.
Thus when we celebrate at a funeral, whether by quiet talking or feasting afterwards, we are in fact worshiping death. Death is hailed and championed, whether you personify Death as Hades, Hel or the Grim Reaper, Death is being worshiped. But we do not like death just like we do not like war. But like war, death is a part of life. We must celebrate death.
Thus we have our Goddess Hel. There are no known monuments to her. There is no eponymy. Her cognates such as Hades too had no temples or busts in his image.Thus we do not worship Hel (or Hades) the same way we worship Thor, with our boasts and our bearing of his hammer. We do not worship her the same we worship Freyja, with an appreciation of all that is beauty, and our lust of beautiful, fertile women. We do not worship Hel in the same vein as we worship Odin, by pondering the cosmos and standing in awe of his power.
When we sacrifice to Hel, we take a glass of wine and we pour it into the Earth. We turn our heads away as we pour it, because death is something undesirable. We must hail Hel out of necessity and respect. We say, "And to Hel, who is Death, we recognize you as a necessity of our life. Someday we will meet in the underworld. Hail Hel, Goddess of Death." Do this in the fall after the death of summer, but sacrifice to Hel any time you feel is appropriate, since death is omnipotent.
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