Gnosis Diary: Life as a Heathen

My personal experiences, including religious and spiritual experiences, community interaction, general heathenry, and modern life on my heathen path, which is Asatru.

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No Ascension for Me

Science fiction influenced me to expect that the next step in the evolution of humankind is to ascend to become a being of pure energy. That philosophy is called transhumanism, and it saturates popular science fiction.

I was born a science fiction fan; my dad was a Star Trek fan, and if I had been born male my parents had intended to name me DeForrest, after DeForrest Kelly. The classic Star Trek had several species of energy beings, and humans were on the path to becoming like them. Many of the science fictions I encountered later in life had that idea in them, too. In some of them, a very advanced human could evolve during his lifetime. In Babylon 5, a character who was a telepath turned into an energy being (and blew up, dangerously for everyone around him, but well...) Characters in Buffy and Stargate ascended and became energy beings, and chose to come back to Earth. I even wrote ascension into my own fiction. In my Punch series, a character ascends upon death. A character ascends in Some Say Fire, too, but that's symbolic; it represents the unification of the conscious mind with the subconscious and the inner child.

So when writing my unpublished behemoth led me to be able to converse with a god, of course I asked Loki about ascension. I already had novel gnosis about the gods' true forms being 9 dimensional, from writing Some Say Fire. As always with gnosis, as they say, your mileage may vary. In the Fireverse, Loki tells the human character P to accept the symbols she’s seeing because if she truly saw the reality the gods see it would break her mind. 

In my mind's eye, I saw Loki and Odin as nine dimensional life forms. The mental experience was not one I'd care to make permanent. I realized ascension is not for me. I had to ask them to appear to me, in my mind, in stable three dimensional forms. 

I was born human, I will live human, I will die human, and I will remain human even afterwards, in the afterlife. Even when I leave this body and breath behind, I will still be human. Just dead. The transformation of death will not make me ascend. The visions I've received in which I grow butterfly wings and fly off to Asgard upon death are part of my natural human life cycle. 

Loki told me, “You’re a human, and that’s OK."  The gods love humanity as we are, and we are not meant to evolve to be like them. What science fiction taught me to want and expect turned out to be a mirage. We are as the gods sculpted us: mortal, made of flesh, limited in body and mind. Just how humans are supposed to be. 

 

Image: Butterflies and Flowers by Ken E via publicdomainpictures dot net 

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Erin Lale is the author of Asatru For Beginners, and the updated, longer version of her book, Asatru: A Beginner's Guide to the Heathen Path. Erin has been a gythia since 1989. She was the editor and publisher of Berserkrgangr Magazine, and is admin/ owner of the Asatru Facebook Forum. She also writes science fiction and poetry, ran for public office, is a dyer and fiber artist, was acquisitions editor at a small press, and founded the Heathen Visibility Project.

Comments

  • Agnes Toews-Andrews
    Agnes Toews-Andrews Monday, 15 August 2016

    I respect your opinion Erin, and that of Loki. All humans I have discovered though, were not created equal. Also I have come to know that many of us are ET's. I do know that through a "fall" I descended into matter from a higher consciousness/dimensional plane, as I have seen it. I am currently creating physical immortality. and that translates into ascension into a higher energetic body, a fifth dimensional/consciousness, body. Going 'home' is now on the agenda, as to the urging of my spiritual guides who are 11th dimensional.

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