Recently, a fascinating debate was had in a private chat group run by a friend of mine, Dan — the host of an interesting Heathen podcast which can be found at www.fyrgen.com.
He ran a poll which began with the question, ‘How do you believe our ancestors first learnt the names, nature and myths of the gods?’
Other religions have a degree of explanation; Christians believe that Jesus walked the earth and imparted divine teachings to his followers; Islam has the historical Prophet Muhammad who received the words of Allah directly.
Yet the Odinist myth is shrouded by the mists of time, for the oral tradition of our ancestors was not written down until Christian scribes (who of course held no love for the old ways) were ordered to do so.
The aforementioned debate raised many good points, as is to be expected, for Dan’s Fyrgen project not only has attracted many knowledgeable and intelligent guests but the private chat includes yet more folk with a deep interest in northern European mythology.
Inspired by the question and subsequent conversation, I thought it would be good to propose my own theory on how our ancestors knew the gods.
Let us begin the journey at a little antique bookshop in England’s beautiful town of Bakewell. I rode there last summer on my motorbike and returned home with a rare Folio Society copy of Erwin Schrödinger’s What is Life? Chapter seven, entitled ‘Is Life Based on the Laws of Physics?’, begins with the following deeply interesting statement:
What I wish to make clear in this last chapter is, in short, that from all we have learnt about the structure of living matter, we must be prepared to find it working in a manner that cannot be reduced to the ordinary laws of physics.
Schrödinger was a scientist and not an Odinic mythologist, and was in this book concerned with the scientific reasoning of life from the cell to the body, yet those few words quoted above should open one’s mind to the notion of an unseen quantum reality and furthermore to the infinite variety of vibrational fields which comprise the living multiverse.
Once we grasp the fairly simple notion that there are different vibrational frequencies in existence, we can then go on to attempting to understand the Yugic cycles from the Golden Age down to the Wolf Age and back again.
It is said that in the Golden Age, man will finally understand the gods. In the Wolf Age, we do not have the capacity to properly know such things, although it is feasible that some individuals are able to make this leap.
For example, if one were to take a functioning smartphone back six hundred years, the technology would be incomprehensible to those of that time. Yet if it were presented to da Vinci, it is possible he would be able to grasp its workings.
As the Great Ages cycle ever onwards, some put the awakening (and dulling) process down to Sunna’s vibration. Ever revered by so many religions, the sun is a mystery in itself, emitting pure vibrating light and bringing life-giving energy to Midgard.
Now let me put the concept of the Yugas, vibrational frequencies, the multiverse and the gods into one theory.
At present, man is a low-vibrational material being residing in the middle part of the mythological World Tree Yggdrasil, this middle part being named Midgard (simply surmised as Mid = Middle, Gard = Earth or Home). There are planes above (such as Asgard, the home of the Aesir) and below. Now for ease of depiction, we can picture the image of the World Tree. As we look up we see Asgard, as we look down we see the lower realms. However, we should view these other planes of existence in vibrational terms rather than geographical ones.
As man moves through the Ages, his conscious awareness vibrates faster (as we are in the process of doing now, in this upward Yugic cycle), eventually moving him from the world of matter to the world of spirit and pure consciousness.
The world of matter (including the physical body through which spirit has an experience) may cycle through the Yugas at a slow pace, over thousands of years, but one’s inner light which leaves the body at the point of death has no such restriction, and can potentially move between realms of vibration; perhaps it moves upwards to reside in Valhalla or perhaps it moves down to the realm of Hel and is reincarnated back into matter for another life in the plane of Midgard.
However one wishes to depict life and the afterlife, certainly vibration is the key to unlocking where spirit goes, how it manifests and who it meets.
I utilise the word ‘spirit’ for ease of understanding for all readers, yet our ancestors had a fascinating and well-considered conception of the various parts of man’s being, which is worthy of research.
The gods, being divine, surely have the ability to move between levels of vibrational fields; in the Odinic myth, the gods travel from Asgard to Midgard via the Rainbow Bridge — a bridge of light, no less.
And so in answer to the question, ‘How do you believe our ancestors first learnt the names, nature and myths of the gods?’, I would offer the theory that we once existed alongside our gods, but not necessarily (at first) in the material manner of Jesus’s disciples following in his footsteps.
I offer you the concept of the multiverse, where we exist in different vibrational planes at different stages of the Yugic cycle, and are able, in the Golden Age, to exist alongside our gods. And it is of course widely understood that via shamanic techniques, certain gifted and trained folk can move between the realms, bringing back bits of understanding which may be pieced together to further understand and remember — via awakened blood memory — the myth.
There is also, however, the Odinic story of man and woman being created by Odin from the wood of ash and elm. Surely this creation of man from matter would have to be in an era other than the Golden Age; perhaps just as the Golden Age moved into the next (lower) level of the Yugic cycle did man ‘fall’ down through the vibrational frequency and become manifest materially in Midgard, by the hand of Odin Allfather.
The Odinic mythology is an ancient remembrance of the exceptionally long Yugic cycles where our folk have moved through the vibrational fields and taken forms from spirit to matter.
Paracelsus said that blood is condensed light, and so we can view the changing levels of awakening as a block of ice moving to the state of water and then to steam. And what of the states which precede ice? And the states which follow steam? The multiverse is vast and one must attempt to open one’s mind to concepts outside that with which one is familiar.
In regards to the source of the Odinic myth, it is not reliant on prophets but lives in the folk memory and the blood, accessed fleetingly by those on a journey towards awakening and more reliably by spiritual practitioners and genuine shamans.
As a final note, in line with my striving to get folk working together, I do feel it important to say that changes in the material nature of the structure of cells is a part of this material realm and the idea of evolving states of organic matter should not be shunned by the creationist. Likewise, the evolutionist should hold open a section of his mind to the possibility that although cells adapt to change, things such as the forces of light and gravity and electromagnetism are not fully understood by science, and until they are, the notion of creative forces, i.e. gods, should not be discarded.
If you do not fully know, accept this as a trait of the Wolf Age, but do not allow it to lessen enthusiasm for striving upwards.
Waes thu Hael — Be thou Whole
