Re: The Walking Dead By: Personified / Knowledgeable
Post # 3 Oct 12, 2014
I agree with you on that one, Brom. I would like to explore the relationship between the dark alfar and their relationship to death more indepth, if given the chance.
When hear accounts of people pathwalking to all nine realms for their Ordeals, many will talk about not being comfortable in Alfheim and the upper parts of Svartalfheim. Most people choose to take their ordeals from the Dvergar rather than the Dokkalfar because Dokkalfar tend to be more violent compared to the Dvergar.
You see, most people can attest to two things when visiting Alfar, and those are their affinity for illusion and their societies based on nobility systems. This is seen in some Eddic poems and some Sagas. A lot of people tend to view them as distrustful of anyone outside their own societies unless they have been accepted by one of their own. Some view Alfar as kind of snotty because the combination of these two aspects (which I do not find true, personally).
Ljosalfar are not violently inclined, but it is also advised that you do not anger them, either. I have not had direct experiences with Ljosalfar, so I can only go off of the experiences of others to tell what they are like.
Let's also take into consideration how many Heathens actually directly work with Alfar and not the "generic Pagans" who needlessly clump them in together with Sidhe because "Fae is an umbrella term, yo". That would be.... maybe five or six people including myself that I've encountered on the World Wide Web. Every single person I have met that directly works them are Oath bound to secrecy. I only knew of two of them because I was considered 'one of their own'.
Basically saying, Humans who work with Alfar, that I know of, are few and far between because most humans and most Alfar distrust each other or don't want anything to do with each other. I sincerely wish more people would work with them, however.
While there are a larger number of people who do honor them, they do honor them as a main focus of their practice. And even then, a good portion of those people honor them coupled with Disir because they believe that because Alfar is a masculine word in Iceland, and that there are males who "ascend" to Alfhood in Sweden upon death, that Alfar are really just male ancestors. While this could be true, that does not encompass all of Alfar as this view completely ignores the vast majority of poems that cite them as females and as a race separate from humans (there are males, by the way, just not references by name as much).
Re: The Walking Dead By: WhiteRav3n / Knowledgeable
Post # 6 Oct 18, 2014
This reminds me of the resent "walking dead" of Liberia from the Ebola virus. Two women "came back to life" after suffering from the virus and being pronounced dead. People are calling the now perfectly healthy women "ghosts" and claiming they shouldn't exist. It shows that the lore isn't a bunch of crazy talk and that unexplained "resurrection" still happens! To me, that just proves that we still don't know everything about what the deciding factor between life and death really is. I am betting that the mind/will has a lot more to do with it than the heart and blood like most science states.
Re: The Walking Dead By: Personified / Knowledgeable
Post # 7 Oct 18, 2014
Thank you for the information about the Alfar, Brom. I've always expressed an interest in wanting to work with the Alfar. However, from my own UPG they come across as you described. I don't particularly feel that the Alfar have much care or trust for those outside their realm, and therefore I never felt that I could trust them the same either. They do have the capacity for violence (I work with the Jotnar, so I'm no stranger to that) but to me they are more... sneaky. Nothing wrong with them, just not my cup of tea!
That's an interesting point you made, White! Thank you for that!
I need to check my posts before I post them more often. I've actually made a point not to be oath bound to secrecy, and considering the Alfablot, I feel that Alfar are not honored nearly as much as they were in the past and I kind of wonder if it has anything to do with matters beyond folk not knowing much about them and the mutual distrust.
Also, I find that there have been plenty of cases where people have been clinically dead, yet able to have been "brought back" and in every single case, the folk pronounced dead were revived before their brains started realizing that the body was dead, thus starting the process of decay. What I'm trying to say that true death of the physical body is when decay sets in: true death is the death of form. Thoughts?
Great post personified. I like this story. It's clear and it is a good story. I should use it to scare my cousins. Just kidding. Anyways great post. :)
