Thau

Part 1: Man’s Place Within the All

By: Steve Anthonijsz

 

 

            In the beginning—before there were men or gods—was Urlac, or Urlag. Urlac (= “primal law” or “primordial layer”)[1] is often depicted as a divine triad called the three Wurtâ (< OHG Uuurtâ)[2]. As mankind understands Urlac, he establishes cosmic order. This order is known in Armanic terminology as rita[3]. Rita includes elevated concepts ranging from the rotation of the planets to the establishment of wurt[4], or the consequence of action. Guido von List defines this concept thus:

 

“‘Making one’s self transform within one’s self, by means of one’s self,’ i.e. one’s own commissions and omissions, as causes, generate from themselves and by means of themselves…”[5]

 

All this talk of “cosmic order” and such, though, can seem quite vague when we try to apply it to our daily lives. But just as there is the macrocosmic conception of rita, so there is the microcosmic equivalent in Natural Order. Our ancestors referred to this Natural Order as êwa[6]. Understanding êwa, and understanding that we are a part of nature offers us a much more reasonable and pragmatic approach to morality than the legal precepts offered by other religions. Rather than to have codified laws explained to us and enforced by promises of reward and/or punishment, we can simply look around us and see the effects of a particular action or process. Êwa is eternal and immutable.

          We may go one step further in understanding the terminology and conceptions of our altmâgâ (OHG “ancestors”), however. We are the descendants of Mannus, the son of Tuisto[7] (Ziu?). This informs us that even though we are a part of nature, a piece of Mittigart, that we also bear a certain portion of the Divine in our souls.

 

What this means to mankind is that, while we are certainly a part of nature (the microcosm, under the law of êwa), we also carry in us a spark of the divine because we are the scion of the gods, and are thus part of the cosmos (the macrocosm, under the law of rita). This may sound like an awfully big burden, but it really is nowhere near as complex as it may seem for two reasons: [1] because êwa and rita are not mutually exclusive (i.e., these are bifidic manifestations of the same concept); and [2] because our altmâgâ, over the centuries, have evolved laws and customs that, by their very nature, keep us in tune with the world(s) around us. These laws and customs are known as thau or dau.

          Thau[8] literally means “custom, usage, habit[9];” but to our altmâgâ, “custom” and “law” were more-or-less synonymous. Furthermore, “law” and “society” were considered to be coterminous and, therefore, custom defined society. Irminen hold the same to be true today.

 

          The differences between the terms rita, êwa and thau are technical ones, and the dividing lines between them can often be blurry at best. To illustrate the way the concepts overlap consider that:

 

Animal and human existence is characterized by certain essential conditions over which we have no control. They are facts of life which inevitably dominate our behaviour. These conditions may seem so obvious that often we don’t stop to consider the consequences of ignoring their validity in every aspect of our economic, political, and religious activity; yet it is vital that we fully understand what they imply, otherwise we cannot hope to find an adequate response to life.    We have to eat and drink to stay alive, we have to maintain our bodies between certain temperature limits, which means in the case of human beings, that we are usually obliged to wear clothes, and to seek shelter in some form of dwelling. Furthermore we need living space, a territory where we make our homes, raise our families, and which, ideally, also provides the basis of our means of sustenance and our recreation…    Living space is absolutely vital, and that is why both animals and human beings will, if necessary, fight to establish their claim to the area of land they need for their survival.

 

          Another way to conceptualise the significance of these three ‘levels’ of law as it relates to the individual is to see êwa associated with the lichamo (“physical body”), rita relating to the sela (“soul,” including the atum, or “animating breath of life”) and thau addressing the geist (“spirit” including the hamo, or  “astral body” of occult terminology)[10]. These terms did not always have the vague connotations that they do today. This is reflected by euphemistic phrases such as “she shows a lot of spirit”.

          The energy of substance is common to all living matter. This is because matter is nothing more than solidified spirit.[11] The lament for the dead—those whose sela has been separated from their lichamo—is not for this fractional diminution of the individual’s Self; it is for that aspect of the Self that is individual to each person. We mourn not Man, but a man, because his geist was not like that of any other; and we do not lament for his lot, but for our own because the unique package of thoughts and feelings in this individual has been stolen from us. Similarly, during the celebration of events such as a birth or marriage we are rejoicing in the wholeness and completeness of the Self as he relates to us as part of the family or community.

          The geist, which may be imagined as the shadow of a man, is not a force of a moral or “higher” nature. It is, instead, a package of thoughts and passions, of intelligence and motivations, and this is the part of an individual that most of us will see and either respect or detest. The geist, in most cases, is the decision-making part of the Self, which is what makes life sometimes complex--because passions do not always match right action. It is what a man does, and not whether he feels satisfaction or remorse, which is important to other men.

          The commitment towards right action and goodness is the function of the sela. One might say that the sela is one of the constants of the All.

Despite the fact that all men have a conscience (a function of the sela) some may perform right actions and others incorrect actions. This is because we depend on the geist to make decisions, not the sela. The geist, as the repository of Man’s history, his form and his force, the final resultant of his ability, intelligence and experience, is a precious accumulation. However, in a collective community, where people are interdependent, the collective welfare cannot be entrusted either to the vagaries of subjective conscience, or to the “free” or “natural” development of the geist. The entire morality of our triuwa, therefore, is structured for the controlled development of an individual’s geist and the enforcement of a collective morality put into action.

The significant morality is the product of the lichamo and therefore shares its nature. The individual consists not of a dualism, as some religions would teach us, existing in a conflict of the irreconcilable down-pull of flesh and the up-pull of spirit; it is, rather, a raw dynamic, a process by which all that which characterizes divinity—power, intelligence, energy, authority and wisdom—exists within the flesh itself. Instead of being eternally separated, the substance and the spirit of a person are eternally and mutually committed: the flesh to the divinity within it and the divinity to the flesh. Therefore it ought to be clear why êwa, thau and rita overlap as they do, as none of these concepts is truly exclusive.

 

Since the beginning of the Reawakening various national and international organizations have promoted an assortment of lists of virtues in an attempt to describe their particular conceptions of living according to thau: the Nine Nobel Virtues, the Three Wynns, the Code of Nine… All these have their merits, and, they are not mutually contradictory. They offer a good guideline for new Heathens that may need ethical steering. But none of these really offer a complete understanding of thau; they only act as pylons in the road of life for those that don’t yet fully comprehend the way to go on their own. This is not intended as an insult—again, these lists do have their merits. But every list also bears its limitations. These lists are simply too vague and too incomplete to really prepare an individual or a group for all of life’s challenges. For this reason it is best to learn the significance of thau, because simply by understanding its reasons everything else just falls into place. There are two distinct grounds for this:

1.       People, for a variety of reasons, fare best when living in communities, which are most efficient for our increased survivability and prosperity. By “prosperity” I am including all the items listed in Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In order to maintain this community there must be certain standards of behaviour in order to prevent conflicts and divisions within the community. This is the aspect of thau that borders with êwa.

2.      Individuals need to have a sense of “place” within the community in order to facilitate one’s understanding the reality of oneself and one’s relationship to the All. Because our baser needs are taken care of by the community one is now freed to give back to the community, thus building one’s own worth and reputation. In addition, one is freed to take time for spiritual pursuits, meditation, political endeavours, and in other ways find fulfilment. This is the aspect of thau that overlaps with rita.

         

         

 

Continue to Part 2

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