Freya Aswynn

Elizabeth Hooijschuur (born 19 November 1949), known by her pen name Freya Aswynn, is a Dutch writer and musician, primarily known for her activities related to modern Paganism in the United Kingdom. She was an early exponent of a form of Germanic neopaganism centred on women, and has influenced the international modern Pagan community through her book Leaves of Yggdrasil. Aswynn was involved in the early neofolk music scene in London in the 1980s.

Early life

Freya Aswynn was born in Zaanstad in the Netherlands as Elizabeth Hooijschuur. She had a Catholic upbringing. She came into contact with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, the music of Richard Wagner and esoteric interpretations of the runes through her first husband, who died after two years of marriage. She continued to study Western esotericism, becoming acquainted with spiritualism, Rosicrucianism, astrology, Kabbalah and Thelema, before she moved to London at the age of 30.[1]

Pagan revivalism

Aswynn became involved in London's occult community and was initiated into Wicca in 1980 by Jim Bennett, supervised by Alex Sanders. Later the same year she became active in Gardnerian Wicca.[2] A few years later she experienced what she called "an intense, spontaneous invocation of the god Woden", urging her to move into Germanic neopaganism.[2] She was active in Edred Thorsson's organisation the Rune-Gild until 1995.[3] In 1993 she initiated a British branch of the American organisation the Ring of Troth, later renamed Ring of Troth Europe, and served as its leader for several years. The Ring of Troth later shortened its name to The Troth.[4]

Aswynn's experiences from Wicca left a lasting impact on her construction of rituals.[5] She was an early exponent of a female-centred version of Germanic neopaganism focused on seiðr, a practice which in the Old Norse sources is associated with the goddess Freyja.[6] Aswynn describes her version of seiðr as magical and shamanic.[7] During a wave of interest in rune mysticism in the 1980s she developed her own approach to runic divination.[8] In the 1980s she maintained that runic divination only could be practiced by someone of Germanic ancestry, but in 1990 she abandoned and publicly retracted this position.[9]

Her book Leaves of Yggdrasil (1990) has had significant influence on the practice of Germanic neopaganism on an international level.[10] It was revised and republished in 1998 as Northern Mysteries and Magick, accompanied by a CD with recordings of Aswynn's incantations, inspired by poems from the Poetic Edda.[11]

Having left London to live in Scotland and eventually Spain, she served as an elder in The Troth, where she continued to teach and guide members.[2] She was removed from the position in 2018 for having made social media posts which The Troth deemed to contain "increasing Islamophobic rhetoric".[12]

Music

In the mid 1980s Aswynn became involved in the emerging neofolk music scene in England. Her house in London was a meeting point for musicians such as Douglas Pearce of Death in June, Tony Wakeford of Sol Invictus, David Tibet of Current 93, Boyd Rice of NON and Ian Read of Fire and Ice. She appears on recordings by several of these artists, performing her own rune chants.[13] The Current 93 album Swastikas for Noddy (1988) can be understood as an expression of the jocular Final Church of the Noddy Apocalypse, created by Tibet and Aswynn in her house.[14]

See also

References

Citations
  1. Rabinovitch 2011, pp. 19–20.
  2. Rabinovitch 2011, p. 20.
  3. Granholm 2010, p. 108.
  4. Rabinovitch 2011, p. 20; Schnurbein 2016, p. 71.
  5. Schnurbein 2016, p. 111.
  6. Mountfort 2015, pp. 26–27.
  7. Cusack 2009, p. 354.
  8. Schnurbein 2016, p. 117.
  9. York 1995, p. 140.
  10. Schnurbein 2016, pp. 83–84.
  11. Mountfort 2015, p. 27.
  12. The Troth 2018.
  13. Schnurbein 2016, p. 342.
  14. Diesel & Gerten 2007, p. 63.

Sources
  • Cusack, Carole M. (2009). "The Return of the Goddess: Mythology, Witchcraft and Feminist Spirituality". In Lewis, James R.; Pizza, Murphy (eds.). Handbook on Contemporary Paganism. Leiden and Boston: Brill Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-16373-7.
  • Diesel, Andreas; Gerten, Dieter (2007). Looking for Europe: Neofolk und Hintergründe (in German). Zeltingen-Rachtig: Index Verlag. ISBN 978-393687802-8.
  • Granholm, Kennet (2010). "The Rune-Gild: Heathenism, Traditionalism, and the Left-Hand Path". International Journal for the Study of New Religions. 1 (1). doi:10.1558/ijsnr.v1i1.95.
  • Mountfort, Paul (2015). "Runecasting: Runic Guidebooks as Gothic Literature and the Other Gothic Revival". Aeternum: The Journal of Contemporary Gothic Studies. 2 (2). ISSN 2324-4895.
  • Rabinovitch, Shelley (2011) [2002]. "Aswynn, Freya (1949– )". In Rabinovitch, Shelley (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Modern Witchcraft and Neo-Paganism (2nd ed.). Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall Hunt Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7575-9078-8.
  • Schnurbein, Stefanie von (2016). Norse Revival: Transformations of Germanic Neopaganism. Leiden and Boston: Brill Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-30951-7.
  • The Troth (14 August 2018). "Freya Aswynn removal". Retrieved 9 November 2020.
  • York, Michael (1995). The Emerging Network: A Sociology of the New Age and Neo-pagan Movements. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 0-8476-8000-2.

Further reading
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