Healing: The Merseburg Charms
Have you heard of a band called Heilung?
They are an experimental folk outfit comprising members from Denmark, Norway and Germany who compose music based on ancient runic literature from the Bronze, Iron and the Viking ages.
Don’t be fooled by their folk genre, expecting some mellow music when you do tune in on YouTube. (If you do check them out, just type- Heilung Lifa- and watch the entire live concert; thank us later).
In ancient Germania, Folk was more Metal than Metal.
The band’s name literally means — ‘healing.’
They don’t just compose music; they give their audience an experiential history lesson by transporting listeners back to an age when survival was the name of the game by any means necessary- brute strength, violence, superstition, shamanism etc.
Some of the instruments wielded by Heilung’s members-
- Drums made of horse-skin, goat-skin and deer-skin- all painted in human blood
- Bones - human forearms and deer
- Rattles
- A Hindu Temple Bell
- Ravanahatha- another instrument, a precursor to the violin from the Indian Subcontinent (Yes, it is named after Ravana who used it in his compositions in praise of Lord Shiva; Hanuman brought the instrument to the mainland after his arson in Lanka).
If you cannot check out Heilung’s entire seminal live album, we would urge you to listen to their best (in our humble opinion) song called- Hamrer Hippyer.
The rendition combines cross-cultural elements of Inuit throat-singing, Icelandic animal sacrifice and magical charms from an ancient Runic Old High German Language.
The main chorus in this 14 minute hypnotic therapy (you understand that the seed of German Trance was laid over a thousand years ago) centers around the second verse of what are now called The Merseburg Charms - the only known surviving relics of pre-Christian, pagan poetry in Old High German literature discovered in an obscure European abbey during the 10th century.
It basically details out a healing spell believed to mend the broken foot of a Germanic King’s horse in the middle of a dark and dangerous forest.
So the English translation goes:
The broken foot of the horse can be a powerful allegory for what lies broken in us today in tough times like these. The song is powerful with its therapy. Give it a listen.
Next up… we unearth a chilling connection between The Merseburg Charms and the Indian Subcontinent’s own High Sanskrit Literature.
Keep reading this space.
