Anglo-Saxon "Fate"
by Edith
So much has been destroyed. Wherever the monotheists have prevailed, they have deliberately torched the evidence of nobler forms of spirituality. It’s a nasty habit they have. Usually they try to destroy every trace, but sometimes - through sheer good luck or perhaps through fate - a few clues remain from which we can open a window to a higher level of morality.
Sometimes it can be like deciphering an ancient text in a forgotten language: a slow, painstaking task, with no guarantee of success. But when the lost secrets of our ancestors might suggest ways out of the modern world’s spiritual impasse, the trail is worth following. At such times, we can be grateful even for the crumbs that sometimes fall our way when academics get their hands on our taxes.
One such mystery concerns the enigmatic reference to a sacred festival known as the "Night of the Mothers", by the Christian scholar Bede (c. 673 - 735).
"The ancient peoples of the English," wrote Bede, "Computed their months according to the course of the moon ... However the year began on the eighth day before the Calends of January [December 25] where we now celebrate the birth of our Lord. And the same night now sacred to us, they then called by the pagan name Modranect, ‘Night of the Mothers’, on account, we suppose, of the ceremonies which they performed overnight."
These mother goddesses are referred to nowhere else in Old English literary sources, and Bede’s timid silence on the details of their worship is understandable. But the cult of the Mothers is known to have been widespread among the continental Germans and Gauls, and monuments to them were raised in all parts of Britain that had been occupied by Rome.
The Mothers are usually depicted standing or seated, in groups of three, and holding either fruit or bread. On one stone in England they are identified with the Parcae - in modern English, the Three Fates. By a strange bit of luck, a manuscript survives (called the Corpus gloss) in which the Old English plural term wyrde is used to translate the Latin parcae. Wyrde is, of course, the early form of the word that Shakespeare used to describe his "Weird Sisters" - the strange women who can give Macbeth success in battle, a kingdom even, and also delude him into disaster.
So, although most of the evidence has been carefully syppressed, just two miraculously surviving clues make it certain that The Fates, known then as "The Mothers", were worshipped on the eve of December 25th in Anglo-Saxon Britain - and therefore by the ancestors of three quarters of the Australian population. To understand their function in our native religion, though, we have to resort to Scandinavian sources.
In pagan Scandinavia, "The Mothers" were known as "The Norns". According to Snorri Sturluson they are three maidens who sit at the foot of the World Tree, ruling the destinies of men and gods alike; measuring time; and controlling past, present and future. The World Tree itself is constantly threatened by the gnawing of a hideous serpent. When the Tree falters the end of the current era will be at hand; to be followed by the final battle, the defeat of the forces of chaos, and the return of Balder. To delay events until the appropriate time, the Norns are constantly applying holy water and healing clay to the World Tree.
The Fates, The Norns, The Mothers, Wyrde - call them what you will - are obviously close to the heart of our religion. What is fated to be, will be, and even the High Gods cannot avoid their destiny. But our ancestors' concept of destiny bears no resemblance to the cruel despotism of the Yahwehs and Allahs of the Death Cult. It refers to things that cannot be changed: what some of us might regard today as natural limitations. How we conduct ourselves within these bounds is the measure of our personal fulfilment and basic human value.
This concept has perhaps never been more brilliantly explained than by Regis Boyer, a Paris academic, in an article in Sagaskemmtun: Studies in Honour of Herman Palsson (1986). Boyer's writing bristles with untranslated Norse words and academic asides. Leaving out these obstacles to easy comprehension, this is his summary of how the heroic heathen responds to our northern concept of fate:
"A man receives at his birth a [destiny] which is the way in which the Powers that be show their interest in him. He has been endowed with a share of sacredness which is the basis of and justifies his [humanity]. The feeling he will get of his honour is first of all the certitude that he is not alone and forsaken; his life has a meaning since it has been shaped in this way by the Powers.
"Then he has to personify, so to speak, this particular aspect of Fate which has been bestowed upon him. He has to know the specific shape Fate has taken for him; then he has to accept it; then to assume it. His whole behaviour, the face he will give to his personal destiny and the way he will accept his death are clearly the consequences of these three words.
"Through the predictions or prophecies of wise people, through the traditions of his family, duly recalled by an old person, generally a woman and, eventually, through his dreams, he is warned of what he is destined for. He has to accept this without despair, revolt or disgust. In some cases he will have to wait in order to manifest his personal abilities, but fate is fate, due is due, and he will finally consent.
"Whichever the face of his fate, he will accept it. Still more, he will voluntarily fulfil it, since he is sure that such is the intention of the Powers. [It is] as if there were implicitly a kind of collaboration, a co-operation between man and the gods."
Only someone from a monotheistic background would find that last sentence surprising. The North Sea peoples and our gods and goddesses are involved in a common struggle against the forces of entropy and destruction. We have a pact. We cannot exist without our gods: if we turn to other peoples' divinities we wither and die. In their own turn, the gods and goddesses require that we should live up to the sacred spark within us. Together, even with heavy losses, we can prevail against chaos in the coming battle known as Ragnarok. Only then can Balder return.
Whether Aesir, Vanir, or merely human, we all must assent gladly to our destinies. If we fail to live up to our potential there is no future for any of us. In eschatological terms, The Fates reside at the core of this long-standing and sacred pact.