The Old Ways Is Order & Law

The following is a look back at the worldview of our European ancestors, and for some Europeans and folk of European ancestry today. While one may not accept their worldview in it’s entirety, there is still much to be appreciated and emulated.

There was a time when faith and law were not two things, but one. Our ancestors didn’t ask what they believed; they simply asked who their people were. They lived in a tribal world, and within those tribes was law that was holy, unyielding, and known. The Pattern was not a creed to memorize, but a structure to dwell in, a force that shaped the seasons, the kin, the land, the Gods, and the cosmos.

In the days of yore, every rite, oath, pledge, and agreement was a contract. To pour ale to the Gods, to plant and harvest, to bless the child and bury the dead; each was an act of keeping faith by keeping order, by keeping the law. When the Thing (community meeting) was called and the folk gathered beneath the sky, the laws were spoken aloud, not invented, but remembered and recited. These laws were before the rules of the earthy leaders; they were the order the Gods set at the world’s making.

The Gods founded laws and swore oaths not as afterthoughts, but as the words as if set in stone. Wóden established the laws of men and Heimdall brought us order. The Gods gave us our folcsida, our folkways.

Order dictated the Law and the law was the faith made visible, tangible. To the Gods and our ancestors, to keep frith, to have main, to bind oaths and make pledges, these were not just to be moral or trustworthy, but the sacred ability to participate in the very order that holds the cosmos together. To step outside that law, whether by deceit, oath-breaking, or betrayal, was to fall into chaos, to at best, lose your honor and at worst, become a níðing and lose your place not only among men, but in the memory of the folk and the favor of the Gods. The law is not only what is written, but what is lived. He who keeps the law keeps his soul. He who breaks it, breaks his soul.

Faith is not a feeling, nor a hope nor a trust, but a truth that we walk on the path laid out before us. It is honoring the Gods, guarding the hearth, keeping the words you speak and the promises you make. It is structure, alignment, righteousness. Not in the heart alone, but in the hands that build and feet that takes us on our way. It is in our lives, our house, our folk.

This is only order, only law, and only the faith that endures.

~ Folcweard