Heroic Growth

12/19/2025

Strider laid his hand on his shoulder. "There is still hope," he said. "You are not alone." ~ Tolkien

12/06/2025

We do not grow in one direction only - we grow in only one direction that we show to the world.

“If I accept the lowest in me, I lower a seed into the ground of Hell. The seed is invisibly small, but the tree of my life grows from it and conjoins the Below with the Above. At both ends there is fire and blazing embers. The Above is fiery and the Below is fiery. Between the unbearable fires grows your life. You hang between these two poles. In an immeasurably frightening movement the stretched hanging welters up and down.” ~ Jung, The Red Book

In Heroic Growth, we walk hand-in-hand with Shadow.

Without integration of our Shadow - of that about ourselves which we deny or conceal - we cannot become whole.

11/30/2025

GANDALF AND THE EAGLES RESCUE FRODO AND SAM
(With the One Ring finally destroyed and Sauron defeated, Gandalf sought the help of the Eagles to search for Frodo and Sam.)

"Then Gandalf, leaving all such matters of battle and command to Aragorn and the other lords, stood upon the hill-top and called; and down to him came the great eagle, Gwaihir the Windlord, and stood before him.

'Twice you have borne me, Gwaihir my friend,' said Gandalf. 'Thrice shall pay for all, if you are willing. You will not find me a burden much greater than when you bore me from Zirak-zigil, where my old life burned away.'

'I would bear you,' answered Gwaihir, 'whither you will, even were you made of stone.'

'Then come, and let your brother go with us, and some other of your folk who is most swift! For we have need of speed greater than any wind, outmatching the wings of the Nazgûl.'

'The North Wind blows, but we shall outfly it,' said Gwaihir. And he lifted up Gandalf and sped away south, and with him went Landroval, and Meneldor young and swift. And they passed over Udûn and Gorgoroth and saw all the land in ruin and tumult beneath them, and before them Mount Doom blazing, pouring out its fire.
[...]
And so it was that Gwaihir saw [Frodo and Sam] with his keen far-seeing eyes, as down the wild wind he came, and daring the great peril of the skies he circled in the air: two small dark figures, forlorn, hand in hand upon a little hill, while the world shook under them, and gasped, and rivers of fire drew near. And even as he espied them and came swooping down, he saw them fall, worn out, or choked with fumes and heat, or stricken down by despair at last, hiding their eyes from death.

Side by side they lay; and down swept Gwaihir, and down came Landroval and Meneldor the swift; and in a dream, not knowing what fate had befallen them, the wanderers were lifted up and borne far away out of the darkness and the fire."

~~ The Return of the King, The Field of Cormallen

Art: "Gwaihir and Landroval" by Yvan Villeneuve

11/27/2025

There are gods who weave,
gods who sing,
gods who see what will come.

And then there is Þórr (Thor)
the one who stands.

When the wild things crawl out of Jötunheim,
when the devouring forces rise from sea and storm,
when the world groans under the weight of what would break it
he steps forward.

Not for glory.
Not for praise.
But because someone must hold the line.

The sagas tell it plain:
Þórr goes where others will not.
Across the rivers of venom,
into halls of monsters,
to the edges of the world where death itself waits.

He laughs at fear.
He meets chaos with bare strength.
And every time he lifts Mjǫllnir,
the worlds breathe easier.

What he protects isn’t just gods and halls
it’s the very shape of things,
the fragile order that lets life survive.

So on this Þórsdagr,
honor the red-bearded defender
who stands between us and the endless dark.

Some battles are not won
they are held at bay.
And Þórr holds them still.

~The Roots of Yggdrasil~

11/26/2025

Comfort has never forged a warrior. Strength grows in the cold places, in the long nights, in the hunger that teaches you your limits and the storms that demand you surpass them. Ease dulls the edge. Hardship tempers it. A man wrapped in warmth learns nothing of himself. A man thrown into winter finds out what he’s made of. Do not fear the hard path. Do not curse the struggle. Every trial that strips away your comfort is forging something inside you; endurance, courage, resilience, the iron that cannot be bought or borrowed. Comfort feels good but growth comes from the places that hurt. Every time life gets harder, so do you if you choose to rise with it.

“Strength is born where comfort dies.”
~The Roots of Yggdrasil~

11/16/2025

Mjöllnir; The Hammer That Hallows and Strikes

In the hand of Þórr, son of Óðinn, there rests Mjöllnir, the “Crusher,” the hammer whose blow shatters mountains and breaks the skulls of jötnar. But Mjöllnir is not only a weapon of ruin. With the same hammer that smashes giants, Þórr hallows, blesses, and protects.
It is the tool that defends Miðgarðr, and also the symbol laid over marriage beds, births, and oaths. In that tension between destruction and sanctification lies its true power.

Skáldskaparmál in the (Prose Edda, ch. 35–36): Loki, after cutting Sif’s hair, must make amends. He goes to the dwarves, and from their forges come the treasures of the gods: Gungnir (Óðinn’s spear), Skíðblaðnir (Freyr’s ship), Gullinbursti (Freyr’s boar), Draupnir (Óðinn’s ring) And last, Mjöllnir, forged by Brokkr and Eitri (Sindri)
Loki tries to sabotage the work (as if that is a surprise), so the hammer’s handle is made shorter than intended, but even so: It would never fail in a blow, never miss its mark and would return to Þórr’s hand after being thrown. So from the dwarves’ craft comes the most fearsome of the gods’ weapons.

It has been Stolen and Reclaimed: Þrymskviða in the (Poetic Edda):
When the giant Þrymr steals Mjöllnir and demands Freyja as his bride, the gods answer with trickery, not raw strength. Þórr disguises himself as the bride and is brought to Jötunheimr. At the feast: “Then they brought in Mjöllnir to bless the bride’s lap… Þórr took hold of it, laughed in his heart, and slew Þrymr and all the giants there.” Here, Mjöllnir is explicitly used to hallow (bless) the “bride” before becoming the instrument of slaughter. Same hammer. Two functions: sanctify and destroy.

Hammer of Protection and Holiness: In Gylfaginning, Mjöllnir is repeatedly named as the chief defense of gods and men against the jötnar. In late heathen practice and archaeology, hammer amulets (torshammrar) appear as: Protective symbols. Countermarks to the cross in the conversion period. Emblems of identity and faith. While the Eddas give the mythic backbone, the small hammer pendants in graves and hoards show how deeply this symbol sank into daily life.

Mjöllnir is not just “Thor’s magic hammer.” It is: The boundary weapon that keeps chaos (jötnar) from devouring the world.
The hallowing tool raised over marriages, oaths, and rituals to bless and protect. The emblem of the laity. The god of farmers, workers, and common folk, not just kings. Where Óðinn seeks hidden wisdom, Þórr stands for stability and the defense of kin, land, and frith. Mjöllnir is the will to protect what matters, even violently if needed, and then to bless and rebuild afterward. In modern Ásatrú, the hammer worn at the throat is not cosplay; it’s a quiet vow:
I will stand between what I love and what would destroy it.

Pronunciation ~ Mjöllnir: MYOHL-neer Old Norse: /ˈmjœlːnir/
(Keep the “mj” together like “my” with an added y-sound, not “mee-joal.”)

The same hand that protects must also be willing to strike. And the same tool that breaks can be the one that blesses. May your “hammer” whatever form it takes defend, not dominate.
Hallow, not only harm.
~The Roots of Yggdrasil~

11/16/2025

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” — Gandalf

11/15/2025

"...In rode the Lord of the Nazgûl. A great black shape against the fires beyond he loomed up, grown to a vast menace of despair. In rode the Lord of the Nazgûl, under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed, and all fled before his face.

All save one. There waiting, silent and still in the space before the Gate, sat Gandalf upon Shadowfax: Shadowfax who alone among the free horses of the earth endured the terror, unmoving, steadfast as a graven image in Rath Dínen.

"You cannot enter here," said Gandalf, and the huge shadow halted. "Go back to the abyss prepared for you! Go back! Fall into the nothingness that awaits you and your Master. Go!"

11/13/2025

In Heroic Growth, we work to understand, tell, and restory our narratives, as we all live a story.

The patterns are out there: floods, tricksters, battles with monsters, creation and apocalypse. Could it mean that, beneath the confusion of gods, ghosts, and rituals, there is a primordial mythology, a long-lost ancestor dimly visible in its descendants? There’s “something intoxicating about the quest for a key: the notion that, by sifting through myth, we might retrieve the imaginative worlds of the earliest storytellers,” Manvir Singh writes. “Nor is the quest just a scholarly game; it’s an attempt to prove, against all odds, that our wild, warring species shares something irreducible at its core.”

Nowadays, we can unearth bones, extract DNA, even map ancient migrations, but only in myths can we glimpse the inner lives of our forebears—their fears and longings, their sense of wonder and dread. Linguists have reconstructed dead languages. Why not try to do the same for lost stories? And, if we can, how far back can we go? Singh writes about the hunt for the world’s oldest tales: https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/yEwlsV

11/10/2025

"Sometimes it takes another person to hold up a more accurate mirror in which the possibility of our wholeness can be glimpsed." ~ Kalsched, Trauma & the Soul

11/08/2025

May the odds be ever in your favor.

11/06/2025

I trow I hung on that windy Tree
nine whole days and nights,
stabbed with a spear, offered to Odin,
myself to mine own self given
~ Havamal

Image Credit The Roots Of Yggdrasil
Joseph Campbell