! Assembly of The Elder Troth

What is The AET?

Contacts Database

The Assembly of The Elder Troth would like to welcome you to our website. Please click on the links to the left to enter the relevant area of our site.

Just as with many organisations and faiths, the Assembly of The Elder Troth too has special days and events which are celebrated by many Asatruar. The links below provide a list of months and the events that you will find occur during those months. We hope you find the information both informative and useful.

From Living Asatru: A handbook of Simple Celebrations by Stephen A. McNallen, 1993.
Edited and adapted by Rurik Grimnisson, Shope and Steersman of the A.E.T. Inc.1996.

Walburg

October 31st
(northern hemisphere, April 30)

Walburg or Walburga is a Teutonic Goddess about whom little is known. There was a Saint Walburga who left her native England to live among the tribes of Germany, and no doubt this legend is a reflection of dull memories of her mightier, less tangible namesake.

The mood surrounding this obscure Goddess can be detected even today. The witches in the Middle Ages supposedly frolicked with the devil on Walpurgisnacht, engaging in hidden and sinister rites on remote mountain tops. Walburg may mean something like "mountain [or fortress] of the slain", which would identify her with both the burial mound and Valhalla mysteries of death predominate, to be followed the next day - Nov 1 by the celebration of life and rebirth.

The heroic dead in their mounds are like great deeds laid in the Well of Wyrd. They are the layers of the past, their powerful lives continuing to shape the present through the reputation, and physical offspring they engendered while they were alive. Just as past events manifest among us, being constantly "reborn", so the mound-buried dead will be eventually reborn into their clan to be with us once more. At Walburg we experience these two processes as aspects of the same thing. We notice the layers we are putting down in the Well of Wyrd by our own deeds, and we act to bring ourselves more in line with the result we desire.

Walburg symbolises a sort of holding area, not just for the bodies of the past ( warriors, for example) but also for the actions of the past (heroic deeds, and their fruits). It is a state where the things that have been done can rest, germinating before bursting into awareness again. Seeds under the ground, actions that haven't yet borne fruit, and souls waiting between incarnations all deal with the essential idea of Walburg.

This is a powerful time. We can gain much from it by acts like these:

Think: What layers - deeds - have you laid down in your life? What acts or thoughts or other lasting things will you leave behind when you die? What would you change about yourself or what you are doing? Now, do something about it!
Write your obituary. How satisfied are you with the verdict on your life?
Visit a graveyard to get at least a fleeting sense of your mortality, and to contemplate the essence of life and death.
Our ancestors were usually buried with grave goods. These treasures, like deeds, were buried in the mound/past. Sometimes a great sword or similar artefact would be retrieved by a hero for use many years later. In the same way, buried events affect the present world. Make a list of things you would like buried with you when you die, and reflect on symbolic nature (if any).

Page maintained by Schmitt Services

Last Update: Monday, June 30, 2003