The New Website

Although it is not fully complete, the new website titled The Crow's Fjord is now up and running! The 'design' and 'mythology' sections are not yet complete but you can order a t-shirt or poster from me there! I also have a blog element to accompany the website The Crow's Fjord Blog which will have topics of interest to Norse/Anglo-Saxon design and mythology.

I would be glad to hear any feedback regarding the look or functionality of the website, the blog or anything else for the matter. The project is ongoing and I will update the website when I have new material!

Coming Soon...

I sell my designs on Red Bubble as well as directly through me. Some lovely staff member at Red Bubble saw my shirt rolling off the dryer in their Colorado office and snatched a photo for me.

Oh yes! and I have a new website called The Crow's Fjord coming March 01, 2014. Watch for it! I will post the link.

The Crow's Fjord

I am selling my designs via Facebook (for now). I know of a few out there who have managed to abstain from Facebook, (although I don't know why they bother at this point... its like having a telephone, so get over it, but anyway....) so I have made a public page which I hope can be viewed by anyone, even those without a Facebook account. It is here:

https://www.facebook.com/TheCrowsFjord

You can also buy them through sending me a direct email to:

mscorpsecafe@gmail.com

(spammers, please be aware that I have a spam filter and your junk will be deleted at the end of each day and not read by a single soul, so save yourself the bad wyrd and go somewhere else)

Here's a print ad I created for a magazine which breifly outlines what I've got:

Woden

Alright, it has been a long time coming....

The story of Odin's sacrifice on the world tree for nine days, Geri & Freki, Hugin & Munin + more. This image can be purchased asap at Red Bubble (see sidebar), or I will be custom printing t-shirts and posters and perhaps an apron or two for the master chefs, all of which should be ready for May 24th weekend.

Thunor T-shirts

I no longer use T-shirt monster as they've changed companies yada yada yada... so I'm going to be printing these myself. And, for now, I'm only going to be doing the black t-shirts. If you want a white t-shirt, you can order one from Red Bubble (see sidebar). If you'd like one of these, send me a message at corpsecafe@yahoo.ca and I'll take your order!

This is my first attempt at selling my work online. I really appreciate all your comments and support. Thank you very much and I hope you enjoy the designs!

Thunor

At long last I have something to show for the last two months of my life. It's taken me that long to complete this design. It is the first of a series with the theme of Norse Gods. This first one is Thunor, otherwise known as Thor. I plan to make T-shirts of them. If you are in the mood, please let me know which design you prefer. I'd like to whittle these down to 2 from 4... one white on black and one black on white.

Brigid's New Heathen Moon

Hailz to the Goddess Brigid and her gifts of fire and poetry.

I've been working all day on this tribute image and in the middle of it I read an eloquent, simple and complete description of Heathenism from the BBC article Heathenry that may very well change my life.

First of all, every aspect from the high regard placed on the worship of ancestors and taking personal responsibility or the other ethics of Wyrd to the values of honesty, forthrightness, ethical obligation, frith and the lack of emphasis placed on magic and the strong sense of polytheism came together for the first time and I got shivers down my spine. These are my personal values and virtues also. Nowhere have I seen a reprint of them in their entirety in an external place, let alone belonging to a visible, established and welcoming community.

To further the wow factor I got some help clarifying the “Folkism vs. Universalism” debate at The Godhi's Hall via The Penzler Scale created by the author of that blog. It is a scale detailing the degree to which an individul Heathen or a group feels those outside of a Northern European racial heritage are welcome within the faith :

A) Necessary: “Everyone in the world should be following this as the One True Faith.”
B) Encouraged: “We should be actively recruiting people of other ethnic backgrounds.”
C) Welcomed: “We needn’t recruit them as such, but they are as welcome as anyone else.”
D) Accepted: “Because of ancestral ties, they might not have as strong a connection to these ways, but that’s their business, and I can accept their participation.”
E) Tolerated: “They’d be better off following their own ancestors’ ways, but we’ll allow them in, reluctantly.”
F) Discouraged: “Those people should be actively discouraged from taking up our ways, and sent seeking their own people’s ways instead. If they really insist, I don’t care — but they aren’t going to be a part of any group I’m in.”
G) Disallowed: “They simply cannot be a part of this faith, ever.”
H) Fought: “They must not be allowed to take up these ways — they are harmful by their very presence and/or should be gotten rid of by whatever means.”

which I'd like to help spread. Now I understand completely the problem.

I've gained such a great understanding today. And fittingly, it is Imbolc AND the new moon, making starting anything new extra special and potent, as today I feel I begin my Heathen journey. That being said, I've been informed that Thorrablót is the Heathen holiday/celebration of spring-coming complimentary to the pagan ritual of Imbolc.

Signature D

This is a logo for a signature I was commissioned to do for an ambient doom metal band.

Happy New Year!!

This I can agree to. I have a good feeling about this year. Fingers crossed that it is better than the last two have been.

Warm dark hugs and best wishes to you all for a warm and prosperous year!

The Darkling Child Series

This book is the first in a series I hope to continue. It was inspired by both my grandfather and grandson. I wanted to teach my grandson to read and also to teach him about my grandfather, who passed away before he was born. It's called a mouse a cat a bat.

I did finally get it done in time for X-mas. I self-published it and only did 6 copies as it is my first time doing this so I wanted to see how it would turn out before I invested too much money into it. I also ran out of time before my deadline (which was the 22nd) so I didn't get as much variety into the illustrations as I would have liked. But I'm good with it.

Here are a few sample pages:

As this book was specifically dedicated to my grandson, it is not for sale. It was just too expensive to produce. Although, if you are interested I could print you a copy for about $50. But the next one will be more affordable as I'll make a bigger quantity!

Dark Spirituality

It's one of those days I have too much to do I'm so overwhelmed and I'm getting nothing done at all, although I am feeling better.

My thoughts have been on dark spirituality and how much I think about this. I decided to hash through it yesterday and this is what I came up with:

Everything else. That's what I concern myself with. I refer to everything other than what is commonly considered good. I'm not going to say good vs evil because that is primitive juvenile thinking perpetuated by dogma and fiction. I say 'why do people 'want' to be good and try to be good? To do good things to try to be a better person? To be enlightened even?' I've never understood it and I've never understood the concept of wanting to become enlightened so one does not have to return to the realm of human existence. This is pretty much the highest aspiration for all Buddhists. Why wouldn't I want to return to life here on earth? I like it here. In fact I embrace the here and now here and now. I don't know what else there is so I'm not going to bank on it. I like to flirt with the unknown, which should explain my fascination with death, but I actually really like living and being human. I love human things, like emotions. Even the nasty ones... they make me feel alive. No emotion = not alive... this is not cool. Death is cool and I love to peer into its inky blackness and create from it, or just revel, but not for one minute is death on my wish list of 'states' I'd like to be in here and now.
Is this desire to do good to be good yadda yadda yadda a need for some kind of acceptance? Is it buying into the Christian doctrine that we are sinners and must strive to escape a hellish fate? And as for enlightenment, is that the pursuit of escape as well?
Recently I've been wondering why I don't have too many friends. I'm sure it has to do with my lack of presence on the path to goodness. That and/or my unrealizable goal of trying to sink everyone else into the mire of things 'not necessarily good' and to do it for the pure pleasure of it. Meh,.. I'm (semi)alone in my thinking and I'm unfazed by the view others have of me. Evil is a fiction in a polarized mind. I'll just leave that to them and concern myself with everything else.

After reading Nocturnal Witchcraft Magick After Dark by Konstantinos which was suggested to me by the talented bard Christopher Courtley, poet of dark fantasy fiction rendered in the Gothic persuasion (to appease my troubled mind he offered a simple idealogy suggested in Konstantino's book for framing an understanding of dark spirituality which he himself finds useful. I did too. Thank you Christopher.), what struck me most importantly in that book was the idea, and importance placed on connecting to a spiritual dimension outside oneself. I know that in the past I have flirted with the idea of this, but found nothing personally satisfying to connect to. I realized there might be some sort of trend out there having to do with dark spirituality so I typed 'dark paganism' into Google and lo and behold there is an actual book about that written by John J. Coughlin called Out of the Shadows: An Exploration of Dark Paganism and Magick. Well I'm not so interested in magick per se, but the dark paganism part as it pertains to talking care of my spiritual health does interest me. And while we are on the subject of dark spirituality, if you are also interested in this sort of thing have a look at Adventures Of A Spooky Old City Fox, a blog of interest with an open-minded agnostic skeptic (his words) of an author who also writes about these kinds of dark explorations of the spirit, albeit much more articulately and in depth than I do. I'm just a hack in a forest of dark souls intent on destroying themselves with an overdose of denial... oops, I mean goodness.

Lots is happening for me and I've wasted another several hours writing this and finding all the proper links et al so now I'm heading back to my work on the children's book I'm trying to finish before year's end. Working title is Darkling Child. I'm writing and illustrating it. I'll post about it when it's nearer to being finished.