An Autobiography by Freya Aswynn

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“This is not a story about belief, but about fate, will, and what it costs to walk with a god.”

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Format & Availability

• Hardback: available for pre-order
• eBook:
• Paperback: to be published at a later date

Walking with Wodan is currently available as an eBook, with the hardback edition open for pre-order. A paperback edition is planned for release at a later stage.

Walking with Wodan is the unflinching autobiographical testament of Freya Aswynn, one of the most influential and controversial figures in modern Northern Tradition and runic spirituality. Part life-history, part initiatory record, this book traces a journey forged through extreme adversity, institutional neglect, occult awakening, and lifelong devotion to Wodan/Odin as living spiritual force.

From a brutal childhood in post-war Europe and years spent in state care, through early encounters with magic, witchcraft, and esoteric orders, to her central role in the revival of Germanic paganism in Britain, Aswynn recounts her life with uncompromising honesty. The narrative weaves together personal trauma, political realities, occult practice, and spiritual insight, offering a rare inside view of the people, movements, and conflicts that shaped contemporary heathen and magical traditions.

This is not a sentimental memoir, nor a sanitized spiritual autobiography. Walking with Wodan is a record of wyrd in motion: of names claimed and discarded, of gods who demand everything, and of a life lived in conscious alignment with fate, will, and oath. Essential reading for serious students of Northern Tradition, occult history, and the lived reality behind modern paganism.

Foreword by Edred Thorsson:

Freya Aswynn began corresponding with me even before she was known to the world by that name. Throughout the 1970s there were embryonic developments in the rebirth of the runes in the English-speaking realms. These organisms were of two kinds: the traditional and the wildly speculative. It can be said that the traditional approach can over-do the rules and regulations of things, while the speculative can sink into meaningless idiosyncratism. But on the other hand the traditions do provide objective anchors in a world of rudderless journeys, while speculations can liberate the essential component of intuition. Intuition based on tradition shows the surest path. Indeed, Freya represents an intuitive approach to the runes in some regards, but it must also be said that she possesses the inborn wisdom to make use of the actual traditions — the lore — which was ages ago laid down by our ancestors and predecessors in the tradition.

In the realm of the esoteric and magic(k), individuals who have been gifted (or cursed) with intense vision often find themselves in what appears to the competition with others, which inevitably leads to some sort of conflict. In the course of this book the reader will find references to this sort of thing between myself and Freya. It should be noted, as she points out that I did my best to help others to make their way in the world of writing and publishing. I am a firm believer in that old saying that “a rising tide floats all boats.” When seekers’ hearts are resolutely dedicated to higher principles they always — should they be gifted with long enough lives — find happy resolutions to these apparent conflicts. In the case of Freya Aswynn, we are both firmly dedicated to the higher principles both sought and taught by the one we affectionately and respectfully refer to as the Old Man— our All-Father.

In this book the reader will discover the path of one such seeker who has left her imprint on the world.

 Edred Thorsson