1. Name (optional): Stormerne Hunt-Anschutz
2. Age: 52 (now 54)
3. Nationality: British
4. Gender: male
5. How would you explain your path to someone else with no knowledge of it?
20-9-2004: My path is Heathenry.
In complicated words, I would say that "Modern Heathenry is a reconstruction of an ancient polytheistic and henotheistic Germanic pagan religion."
In simple words, I would say that my religion centres on a bunch of gods and goddesses, some of whom are still remembered in the names for our days of the week.
21-10-2006: I think that I've changed over the past year. I have been Heathen for... who knows... maybe 15 years or so. Now I was class myself simply as "Polytheist". In other words, I would not ascribe a path as such to myself.
I would explain that to someone else as revering many gods and goddesses but not from just one specific family of deities.
I see myself as different from "Eclectic" because I see eclecticism as a conscious and deliberate pick-and-mix approach often based less on contact with the deities and based more on preferential likes and dislikes. Instead I make contact with deities and we form relationships, some of which are pleasant and productive. Just like forming relationships with people really.
The biggest divine influence over the last 12 months in my life has been Kuan Yin.
6. How is your path expressed in practice?
20-9-2004: By communicating with the gods and goddesses of Heathenry. By negotiating with them to find out how they can help me and what they want in return.
21-10-2006: This is true except that the gods and goddesses that I communicate and
negotiate with are no longer limited to those of Heathenry.
I have a large statue of Kuan Yin in my house. I carry a picture of her with me.
20-9-2004: By living and upholding certain values which are historically exemplified by ancient heathens or extolled by deities in ancient heathen writings.
21-10-2006: That is less important to me now.
7. How do you know if your practice is successful?
20-9-2004: I can tell whether negotiation with deities is successful because (1) they agree to do stuff for me and (2) it actually happens (in return for what they have asked of me).
21-10-2006: This is still true although it's precisely due to a frustration with non-desirous consequences over time that I've given up on my allegiance to Odin, a Heathen god, and found Kuan Yin, an Asian goddess. She has been very good indeed to me and there's no reason I shouldn't stick with her.
20-9-2004: My values are successful because (1) they lead me to live a successful and happy life, and (2) they cause me to attract the company of people whom I admire.
21-10-2006: This is less important to me now.
8. Why have you chosen the particular path you are following?
20-9-2004: I was originally very much interested in divination of all kinds. I studied runes because they are used in modern times for divinatory purposes.
Runes were a writing system used by ancient heathen peoples. While further studies showed me there was no evidence runes were used for divination in those times, they did teach me more about Heathenry.
From then I would say that particular Heathen deities have chosen me. I seem at home with them.
21-10-2006: But after all this time with them, and being more or less formally tied to one of them (Odin) since 1992, I have tired of insufficient rewards and far too many hard times. As from August 2005 I put my relationship with Odin on hold. While I was on business in Malaysia, I dallied briefly with Krishna (who is more easily accessible there than here) and even with Allah (whose strength there is very powerful). However the beautiful Krishna gave me ephemeral things and Allah strikes me as a paranoid insidious control freak!
I game across Kuan Yin at the start of December 2005. Her image was on a prayer card belonging to a Chinese Malaysian friend that had been given to her by a Buddhist monk. Holding the card was like a bridge to the goddess's presence. I begged the card off my friend and over the next few months formed a simple and strong clairvoyant relationship with Kuan Yin. On my next visit to Malaysia in August 2006 I made a point of going to the Thean Hou temple and drinking the water spouting from her statue there. The closer I become to Kuan Yin the better my life seems to get.
9. What is your experience of otherworld beings? Could you give some examples.
20-9-2004: First of all, you are making the assumption that these being are "otherworld".
Why can they not be viewed as the same world?
Putting that aside, I find I can fairly easily and freely communicate with gods and wights more or less at will (though useful communication is never guaranteed!). As far as deities are concerned there are between 30 and 40 deities that I have seen and/or had two-way communication with. From my recollection only about half are Heathen deities. Such communication is always at least clairvoyant and is sometimes also clairaudiant or claircognizant.
21-10-2006: This is pretty much the same.
10. How do you see your relationship with them?
Gods are like respected elders. I don't grovel before them. I deal with them as adult to adult. I see them more or less on an equal footing to each other, including the Judeo-Christian god.
21-10-2006: The relationship with Kuan Yin has developed into one of love. It is
difficult not to love a Goddess of Mercy, especially when she changes your life for the better!
11. How does your path relate to other areas of your life?
20-9-2004: It is completely interwoven with all parts of my life.
21-10-2006: Still true, even with a different path.
12. How do you see the relationship of life and death? 23-10-2006
Yvonne: Do you believe in reincarnation, afterlife, Valhalla, etc?
Stormene: Reincarnation: I did once when I was first a pagan in the 1970s when reading Edgar Cayce and Joan Grant encouraged it and everyone has a guru. Now I neither believe nor disbelieve.
Afterlife: I don't make any assumptions. Just because I've seen my dead son clairvoyantly doesn't mean that an afterlife exists for all people or that it is a more or less permanent state.
Valhalla: this may never affect me as I'm unlikely to be battle-slain!
The real question for me is this: how would a belief in these things help my life now? Answer: it doesn't.
Yvonne: Is it important to die a good death, or live a good life so as to have a good death/afterlife?
Stormene: No to both. As a heathen I might have said yes to both. Now I say, "Live a good life anyway, never mind the consequences!" But what is a good life? What makes it good? See my answer to question 14.
Yvonne: Is death necessary to sustain life?
Stormene: No. Instead say, "Change is necessary to sustain life."
Yvonne: What would life be like if there was no death?
Stormene: Maybe there is no death but there is always change. When there is no
longer any change in the universe there will only be death.
13. How do you see time?
20-9-2004: Past and non-past. Things are dependent on what's been laid down previously. I live in the now - part of the non-past. The non-past is simply an opportunity to lay more layers down.
21-10-2006: That was the Heathen view of time. I live in the present, in the now.
Always have done. But that's just me and not particularly a religious thing.
14. How do you handle ideas of good and evil?
Good and evil are to me entirely relative concepts. Good is that which is conducive to the survival of a group or an individual at a particular time or in a particular place. Evil is what is against that. I see them both as the results of sentience.
21-10-2006: Once more, I agree with my old words.
15. How do you view different spaces and objects in your practice or experience?
23-10-2006: First of all you have to define sacred. What does sacred mean? Is sacredness something abstract or a human quality, or is it a tangible even measurable quantity? If the former then we simply choose what is sacred or we allow our deities or other entities or scriptures to do so for us. If the latter then is sacredness innate or can it be transferred or imbued?
I used to keep sacred objects for rituals. Not so much now. These were, however, not sacred. They were simply tools. Sometimes the tool would be an aid to magic (e.g. a Thor's Hammer). Sometimes it was designated by a deity themselves, with or without any explanation of why they wanted it so (e.g. the use of a lucet in our Hredha blot).
I respect the sacred places of others for their sake. Visiting the Kuan Yin shrine at the Thean Hou temple in Kuala Lumpur or a Buddhist home in Glasgow, I will take my shoes off. I do so because I'm asked by humans. Kuan Yin does not require it of me.
A craftsman keeps his tools safe and well maintained. So it is with so-called sacred objects used as tools.
Robin Herne and Terry Smith got me a huge Kuan Yin statue for my birthday this year. I'd be upset if it broke but it would not be the destruction of a sacred thing. There is a Guan Yin garden in the Second Life virtual world. It's a wonderful place to visit and I'd recommend it. But is that any less sacred than the Thean Hou temple?
Rather more questions than answers. :)
16. How do you feel about other religions?
20-9-2004: I am henotheistic and support henotheistic views held by people of other religions. After all, I have often communicated with the god or gods of those religions anyway! Proselytizing by anyone seems to be a very silly occupation.
21-10-2006: I was probably less henotheistic when I first wrote this than I am now!
I am a polytheist. It's very odd to communicate with Allah ("there is no other god except he") as well as other gods and to know therefore that what people say about him is wrong!
17. How do you feel about science?
20-9-2004: I like it.
21-10-2006: Sure.
18. How do you feel modern Paganisms relate to ancient paganisms?
Some of them do. Some of them don't. I think a better question would be to ask the deities of the paganisms concerned how THEY feel about it. Seems to me that's a question rarely asked, even by the followers of those paganisms.
21-10-2006: Still true
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