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“King Harald of England swearing fealty to William, Duke of Normandy, 1066”
by Myrabella. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
My longish silence here has been down to concentrating on preparing to take a commitment. As with any major spiritual task, this involves much thought and whatever your version of prayer is. Talking to my gods, in my case. Considering what I am taking on; what I have to live up to.
One of the things involved in that commitment was an oath. Now, oaths are dicey things for Heathens. They are regarded as extremely binding. If I explain that one’s word, once given, is regarded as binding by most Heathens, then an oath becomes more so. In many ways, an oath becomes unnecessary, as it is only necessary to give one’s word. Despite this, there is an elaborate ritual surrounding the giving of oaths. For example, using oath-rings. In the early medieval period, these were part of the swearing of loyalty to one’s lord. These days, some Asatru clans like to own modern oath rings. For my part, I tend to regard my word as binding, if it is given in formal circumstances. So I rarely give it that way. Even when not given in formal circumstances, I still try to abide by it. Once, when I wished to be free of a commitment, I went to the “lord” I had given my word to, to ask him to release me. He refused and asked me to carry through what I had agreed to do for him. Though he was Wiccan and not Heathen, he well understood what one’s word means to a Heathen.
I guess I’ve never really got the oath thing. In the sense of: why are they necessary? What is their purpose? Back in the medieval periods, they served the same purpose as a legal contract. But what purpose do they serve now? The only examples that come to mind are ritual circumstances, or to persuade someone of sincerity and commitment, when that person is doubtful. Those ritual circumstances may be a marriage or a religious ceremony; or a secular equivalent of a religious ceremony, such as Freemasonry; or a purely secular environment, such as a court of law. Which really places oaths neatly either within the legal system or within ceremonies of commitment.
Rituals are always a pain in the arse, because they involve someone’s else’s concepts and words. Heathens take as much notice of what the words mean, and treat the commitment of speaking them, as do Quakers. Maybe that’s why both the Society of Friends and, later, Heathenry, appealed to me.
Anyway, the person taking the main role to help me make this new commitment asked me whether there was anything in the oath he would ask me to swear that I found difficult. I studied the oath and told him, in all honesty, most of its words were meaningless to me, like asking a Christian to swear on a copy of the Quran. I referred him to the Havamal especially the bit about cattle dying and kin dying, but one’s renown lives on forever. And so, the oath I swore echoed what such things mean to a Heathen. Which makes the ceremony I took part in especially meaningful for me.
Leaves from a Book of Shadows 