As the world marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a new survey suggests that nearly a quarter of young people in the Netherlands believe the Holocaust is a “myth” or has been “greatly exaggerated.”
What we see in the world of artifice—on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook—is the substitution of the person with a manufactured icon; a shallow image reflected back in the clear pool.
Norse mythology, unlike the Sacred Scriptures, does not present readers with loving and merciful divinities. The Norse gods are violent boozers, many of whom seem to spend most of their time playing practical jokes and fighting giants. And yet there is a great power to the tales.
Tradition tells us that giants are born from fallen angels joining themselves to willing humans, and that even after these are slain, their specters may yet demand sacrifice. We are still facing giants today, as well as the ghosts they leave behind, and may learn something from those ancient tales.
The Twelvetide is an open gate to benevolent magic, to mages and faeries, a time in which we may recognize what is exalted, as the wise men did, by exchanging gifts and thereby seeing exaltation in each other.
