Følgende er manuskriptet til et foredrag holdt på Himmelbjerggården.
All stories must have their beginnings. Even those that in themselves have multiple possible entrances, as numerous as the sprawling roots of a tall Tree, must, for them to ever be told, take their beginning at a certain point, from where the narrative expansion can proceed. In some sense this starting point is arbitrary. Other choices always could have been made; and really, what is of interest is not where you begin, but where you are going – and what kind of circle you will be forming.
As you know, the entry point I have chosen for these ventures into the mythic realms of northern imagination is Odin. In the mythic tales of the North Odin is known and honored as the raging Lord of inspiration. He is the archetypal male image of a deepfelt yearning for cosmic understanding – a one-eyed God of Magick, poetry, seduction, madness, wisdom, death, deception and initiation, whose stormy desire drives him through transgression after transgression in the wild hunt for himself.
The intention of this mythopoetic talk is to approach & unlock his story as an imaginal message for us to recognize this divine desire for destiny as a motive to be understood & enacted in the unfolding of our own existence.
Let that be perfectly clear and unveiled all at once: This is all about us. We are, if we dare to be, the stars of this masquerade. I am Odin.
Or, to put it in yet another way: What follows will in no way – and we repeat, in no way – be an attempt to reconstruct a particular mode of ancient, Nordic thought, instead it will be an individual endeavor to unearth and actualize certain universal mythical patterns as they are to be found among the leftovers of the North – not because the Nordic polytheistic heritage is the only way to go, but because these tales and poems are indeed one of the convenient and efficient sources to delve into in the great quest of becoming who and what we are.
And so, it begins.
Our center of attention will be the tale of the Odinic conquest of the so-called mead of poetry,the drink of poetic initiation, as it is known from Snorri Sturluson’s Edda – and as it can be expanded and illumined by the means a poetic understanding. Here we go.
It all begins with war. The first war of the world – a mixing of primordial forces, destined to crash, before they could unite. Two tribes of beings, both of divine origin – but strangely differentiated in essence and behavior, The Aesir and the Vanir.
The instigator of this conflict was, some say, the arrival of an uninvited foreign sorceress in Asgaard, a most splendid witch of the Vanir, whose words and works of female force defied and broke the ordered peace of the Aesir – twisting the minds of men and calling forth hitherto buried potentialities of women.
This they could not have. This he could not have – and so Odin, the High One of the Aesir, ordered this shining witch of Vanaheim to be pierced with steel and burned with fire.
Few know if his intention was to kill her or rather to evoke and understand the golden force that dwelled deep down, inside her very body. Some say he did not know himself. Of essence is that neither purpose was achieved: She did not die, and he did not get her treasure:
Thrice burned,
Thrice reborn,
Often, many times,
And yet she lives.
As it is written and remembered in the prophecy of the Witch – Völuspá, a cornerstone of Nordic poetry.
Obviously, the proud and powerful Vanir did not tolerate such an aggression against this most distinguished Woman of their kind – and so they made their moves of escalation, approaching Asgaard with a claim of retribution: Now, give us quickly something valuable to amends for your defilement of the woman.
The answer was a spear thrown by the hand of Odin to the throat of a now nameless and forgotten enemy – some say it was the very first taking of a life in the created world.
And so, the battle raged – among these differentiated equals, who would, if they had kept on ‘till the very end, have wiped each other of the surface of the Earth. However suddenly, somehow, it stopped. It seems they understood and consciously embodied the timeless wisdom of the World – that primal unity must separate in hostile opposites and fight it out, until that darkest and most joyful hour, when suddenly a bright light shines, where not expected, and something new appears out of a golden coagulation of the contrasting elements, transformed and purified by tension and analysis.
In short, the story goes, they chose to opt for peace and sealed a mutual pact by exchanging valuable hostages – the two Aesir Hönir and Mimir went to Vanaheim, the Vana-man Njörðr came to Asgaard with his daughter Freya – later to be adored as the Lady of all sensuous arts and crafts. Some say that Njörðr’s son, Freyr, the Lord of Fertility, was with him too, others say that he was later bred in Asgaard – for now it matters not. We just stick to our part of the story.
So, after exchanging these most honorable guests who were to live among the former enemy as tokens of a peace to last, the Vanir and the Aesir gathered around a vessel of suitable size and mixed in it their oral juices to consecrate the oath that had been spoken.
From this admixture of the elements a creature was soon grown and assembled – a man of wisdom, fashioned in their dual image. They called him Kvasir and sent him wandering the worlds to be and spread the kind of unifying wisdom, that he was created as their embodiment of.
A task most beautiful – highly desirable and suited for all the happy children of opposites united! However, among the living there are those who simply are too small to recognize the grandeur of such a holy wanderer.
Dwarfs – two of them caught the smell of Kvasir and soon did what they saw necessary to claim his essence as their own. They slit his throat and mixed the the liquid of his soul with honey, thereby brewing what was to be known as the mead of poetry – a most miraculous drink, whose intoxication bestows upon the maddened drinker a strangely lucid and, for some, attractively risky ability to sense, grasp and manipulate those depths of Mind and World, which normally remain unconsciously dwelling below the surface.
But oh, having cunningly killed the wise one and craftly produced their wonderful elixir, the little ones had absolutely no idea on what to do with it, other than keeping it hidden and concealed as a most precious, but for ever unused, item in their mindless collection of rarities.
Off course they could not keep it. So skillful and so subtle were they in the vicious art of keeping everything for themselves, that they had never even touched upon the threshold of that mighty riddle of the world that nothing can be kept vibrating and renewed that is not freely poured out as precious and as costless, as it was received.
Thus, as the result of an intricate series of events of mutual assault and deception, the mead of poetry was seized by a Jotun-man bearing the name of Suttungr, which literally means something like ‘heavy with drink’ – and whose method of honoring this newly acquired jewel to his collection was very much like that of those he slayed to get it.
Like them he couldn’t come up with any other course of action than hiding and concealing – and so he stored the mead deep, deep inside a mountain and deposited his innocent daughter there in the dark to watch over the property of her greedy father.
And so, we stop and take a moment, breathing – deeply inhaling air and ambience, preparing our inner vision for the dramatic reappearance of our protagonist, heralding his arrival by being silent for, let’s say, nine seconds.
. . . . . . . . .
Odin is always wakeful, his witnesses are spread all over the worlds – the wolfs of his desire, the ravens of his mind & memory, Hugin and Munin, perpetually surveying lows and highs for all that could concern him.
Thus, in the darkness of the night, where ravens love to fly, and poets are awake, the Lord of inspiration, seated on the throne of Valhalla, a vantage point from which so many spheres are seen, receives most welcome and invigorating knowledge on where to find the liquified, transfigured essence of him, who was created as the conjoining of opposites.
And here, right here – we stop and turn ourselves around to venture into a little detour, contemplating another series of events, that are to be located somewhat earlier in the chain of events forming Odin’s path to himself.
The eye – everybody knows it. He only has one eye. The other one was purposely placed in the well of Mimir, whose name simply means something like ‘thinking’, that is, the ability to think.
By doing this Odin at the same time gained close contact with those depths of mind that are not easily accessed and bound half of his vision deep down there, thereby impairing his ability to orient himself up here. This is the precarious condition of his transgressive lust forrealization – his monstrous willingness to pay the price.
And Mimir – as mentioned earlier, he was the one to go with Hœnir to the Vanir as honorable hostages following the truce between the two peoples. Hœnir is Odin’s rather anonymous brother, his name means something like chicken man – ‘höna’ being a common word designating a female chicken, a hen; ‘ir’ being a standard masculine word ending.
That is, a composite verbal construct indicating an unpretentiously mysterious figure of a certain hermaphroditic nature – a mindless birdman, eager to follow and enjoy the calling of a certain rooster. A riddle for further incubation. Blessed be all those, who bear & heat this egg safely inside, and blessed be the early morning awakening when it finally hatches for the World to see what queerness grew inside!
For now, it is enough to know that this Chick-Man of the Aesir – accompanied by Mimir, the ability of thinking – was sent to Vanaheim under the pretext of being a truly wise one, someone well fitted to act as a leader. Initially the Vanir saw exactly this – a man of rare answers and sensations, a wisdom different from what they normally knew.
However, it soon dawned on them that Hœnir’s ability to answer was intimately connected with the company of Mimir. When Mimir was not present, Hœnir always just said: Someone else must lead.
Frustrated and angered by this disappointment the Vanir decapitated Mimir and sent Hœnirback to Asgaard carrying the chopped off head. Here the chronology is blurred – and really for our purposes it does not matter. When did this happen?
Was it before or after the creation of Kvasir? Well – another version of the story than the one I have told you, says that Kvasir was a man from Vanaheim sent to the Aesir as part of the hostage exchange – so searching for a one true linearity of events is really neither possible nor desirable.
Myths are not only allowed to be, but also supposed to be, both luminous and flickering. Their objective is at the same time to incite and to confuse the rational mind, thereby bringing it to a point of realization that is not irrational, but suprarational – not happening below, but above, the normal levels of mental computation. So yeah, chronological breakdowns are allowed – and maybe even something to be wished for?
But still, the show must go on. We gotta stick to the story. To get safely back on track, we’ll just hold on to this: Somehow a new war was avoided – and neither Njörðr nor Freya were returned to Vanaheim, presumably because they were content with where they were, enjoying their honorable position as forceful Vanir among the well-ordered ranks of the Aesir. Alright?
The point is this: After the inglorious return of his beloved brother, the Chick-Man, greeting him with the decapitated ability of thinking in his arms, Odin decided to keep top of Mimir around for future use. Thus – to reanimate it – he embalmed the head with most exquisite herbs and sang strange songs of necromancy over it.
And so, it lives. He has it where he wants it, and gets his answers, when he asks the thinking head for guidance. Sometimes in murky riddles, sometimes in clear commands: Go seize that golden mixture – It is for you to drink it up and pass it on.
Thus – both the birds are back, thus we are back at the unfolding center of our tale of theft, deceit and wonder. He sits there at his throne. The ravens whisper coarsely their advice into the ears of Odin; the living head confirms what is to happen.
For such a man, under such circumstances, deciding what to do is not a lengthy consideration – enflamed by heartfelt lust for sweet and bloody illumination, knowing the law of conquest, that action is the first key to initiation, he rises early, invokes the Will of fire in his chest and journeys to the realms of Jotunheim to claim his rightful price.
Disguised as an ordinary, but remarkably handsome, working man, calling himself by the name of Bölverk – a semantic construct with most sinister implication, simply meaning Worker of Evil – he now approaches the farm of Suttungr’s brother Baugi, knowing him to be the best approach to what lies hidden in the mount. On his way to the central farmhouse, he comes across nine slaves harvesting a field.
He talks to them and listens, as they complain about their sorry lives as sunburned workers on a field whose crops are not their own. If only the work could go a little faster, if only the sickles used for cutting could be a little sharper, so they could get to the end of this a little sooner and get a little more of what they most desire – a sleep forever undisturbed by work and toil.
He smiles in recognition of their poverty – and gives them his assistance by first miraculously sharpening one of the sickles with a certain grindstone of his own device, and then offering them to do the same for all of them. He only has, and only ever gives, one single condition: You will have to pay the full price.
Not understanding this most direful premise of attainment, the slaves instantaneously accept his offers. He breathes in peace of settled expectations, nods his head, already knowing what will happen, and throws the grindstone high up into the air. They jump – all hoping for an easy happy ending, all taken by a sudden urge to own this wonder stone.
The sickles drawn, hands reaching for the price – they cut each other open and die as miserably pointless, as they had lived. Odin moves on. He knows his path – and pities not the fallen. Arriving in the yard of Baugis’ farmhouse, the owner spontaneously cries out to the stranger about what has just happened on his lands:
Nine slaves have perished, in most mysteriously unexplainable manner – now everything is lost; no workers in the field, no crops to fill the barns, no money in the pocket! Oh, nasty women, evil sisters of a darkened destiny – why me, why now?
At first the God is silent, mindful to let the idiot be done with his verbosity – and then, self-conscious as a master who has it all foreseen, he states his offer:
I shall work for you, easily doing what could have been done by nine of yours and – as you shall soon see – much more than that.
The Jotun immediately says yes – and then the price is stated: After completion of the harvest, you will give me one sip of your brother’s precious mead. To this the Jotun answers that his brother clearly intends to keep the drink all to himself, so nothing can be promised, but sure, if all the fields are clear by autumn, as Bölverk says they will be, Baugi shall happily accompany the working man to go and see, if they can – somehow – get to a tiny sip of this most precious beverage.
And so, it happens. Bölverk persistently keeps his silence for the summer and completes the task by fall, exactly as foretold. Now time has come for Baugi to honor his half of the deal – and so they go to see Suttungr. Unsurprisingly his answer is a straightforward no – what does he care about an agreement made by his foolish brother?
Having left Suttungr with promise and desire unfulfilled, Odin suggests that Baugi helps him get to the mead by other methods – that is, by sneaky methods. This he accepts – maybe because the promise somehow binds him, maybe because he has finally started to understand how this working man is capable of so much more than first assumed. Probably both.
And so, they both go to the mountain, wherein the mead lies hidden – guarded by the virgin. Bölverk pulls out a certain instrument for difficult tasks of drilling and tells the Jotun to make a hole into the middle of the mountain.
He does what he is told – or so he pretends: We’re through now, the hole is ready, just go ahead, Baugi says. But Odin, himself an adept in deception, is not deceived by such an amateur, and from his mouth he blows a stream of air into the hole to test if passage is secured.
Stone dust blows back into his face – the Jotun tried to cheat him. He gets him back to work – and finally the path is open, a tiny hole for him to slither through.
And so, our hero reveals one of his true beings transforming himself into a serpent – a snake, perfectly fitted for the task at hand – and quickly moves into the passage. Behind him Baugi tries his best, poking the drill after the treacherous magician – but obviously, he simply is too slow.
Now Odin enters the innermost chamber of the mountain – and quickly reassumes the appearance of an attractive male, suited to please the flesh and soul of any healthy maiden long in the waiting. Need I say more? Three days and nights her spends with her in there – both satisfying and arousing more than she ever thought to be and to become.
Thus, she succumbs to his one-pointed Will – and gives him what he really yearns for; the treasure she had long been guarding, promising her father to keep it secret, keep it safe, for him to own forever. Now the intruder lifts the veil and drinks it all, leaving her in the dark – perplexed, awakened and blissfully dissolved by his embrace.
And so, Odin exits the mountain, his belly full of the golden, reddish potion, this time he travels upwards – in the form of an eagle. Both these creatures, the serpent and the eagle, are of the utmost importance in his science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with Will – each representing different keys and operations in his performance of the Greatest Work of the World.
As serpent he is flexible and stealthy – courageously capable of finding low and narrow entrances where others never would or could. As eagle he, finally, reveals himself, that is the aspiration of his higher Self, for everyone to see what kind of soaring freedom always was his sweetest longing. Remember well: The one would not be possible without the other.
Thus, Wisdom says: If you wanna fly high, you first gotta go low – and she’s damn right about it. This he knows – and thus acts in accordance with an age-old recipe of initiation: Boundaries must be ignored; transgressions must be purposely performed, intention must be firm and feisty – dangerous, unconscious and self-serving forces must be called upon to bring about destruction of all worn-out patterns and radical transformation of that primal matter in the chest – from which the living gold is to be made; the crowned and conquering child to be begotten.
To will, to know, to dare, to keep silence and – as a fifth virtue and power arising out of the four – to go. Now, that is and ever was, a splendid formula to follow for those of us who have no other choice.
And so, he does, he goes – travelling swiftly by the wings of Spirit, hastily moving with the wind, homebound for Castle Valhalla in the Yard of the Aesir.
Behind him follows the furiously angered Jotun father, who sees an eagle exiting his mountain and immediately knows, that someone has somehow convinced his daughter to let go of his most precious property – thus, Suttungr in an eagle-suit of his own is right behind our man, biting his tail, foaming with hatred for the violator of his paternal rule.
This too is nothing but straight by the book and in accordance with the general experience – a necessary element of every true initiation. The thing is this: By seeking and seizing an Understanding of it all, the one, who wants and takes it his share, awakes a lust for vengeance in the power-hungry father who thought he owned it all.
This motive has a myriad of mythic parallels – one is the story of the Garden, the Biblical account of how a most pathetic father is freaked out by the advent of an adversary, who by his words and gifts enables a receptive woman to start thinking and feeling for herself – who then, because it is her loving Will, generously tries to teach a less courageous man to follow her example.
However, the man just doesn’t get it, and as the father calls, he submissively answers and tells him how the woman in her evil ways seduced him into breaking his obedience. Oh, man, oh, boy, when will you ever learn? Truth be told, most of them won’t; few males ever transcend their ingrained tendency for servile adherence to one or the other Doctrine of the Father. At least not yet.
In the Biblical story of the so-called fall of Man the consequence of eating the forbidden fruit from that magnificent Tree of knowledge that no one is to touch – if Big Daddy had it his way – is the expulsion from the Garden. Exiled and estranged from their sheltered beginning woman and man are forced to live and work in sweat and tears, as sworn and frightful enemies of the serpentine messenger who defied the king of old to bring them – light.
Our story has a different dynamic – Suttungr does not catch up with Odin. Oh, yes – he bites the tail, but never makes it to the heart and throat of the awakened poet.
This is a most fitting description of how initiation actually plays out here and now in the World of events: The drink of inspiration must be seized by single-mindedly clever and creative means of action.
Whenever someone actually succeeds in this most splendid adventure, the immediate consequence of attainment is always the repercussions of the father and of all the lowborn servants of his law – who hate to see a child of Earth suddenly soaring upwards like an eagle.
To spell it out: When someone first attains his introduction into a real mystical Understanding trouble starts brewing. Storms gather tight around the one who has defied the order of the old, by affirming himself in the opening of secret kind of Eye. This should be understood and anticipated in a most concrete manner: Shit simply starts to happen. Both on the inside and the outside – both in explainable and unexplainable ways.
In India the wise not only know, but also clearly say that no one should ever start with Yoga – that is, with the conscious act of uniting the individual with the Universe, the microcosmos with the macrocosmos – unless that particular individual is ready for danger, death and darkness. Those simply are the rules, we play and dance by as children of the Gods. Magick begins with blood.
The key is to go on – to fly, face forward, through the convergence of catastrophes, steadily renewing the ambition and intention to bring back home the luminous and living liquid that was ingested in the dark, for it to someday be a fertilizing force joyously poured out, when and wherever the moment takes the Master. In short: It all depends on what we do. Please, wakeful listener, oh please, inhale and understand that as the wonderworking essence of it all.
He brings it home. After a long, exhausting flight with Suttungr right behind him, trying to bring him down with beak and claw to reclaim what was stolen, our hero finally reaches the mighty walls of Asgaard and victoriously enters this fortified realm of nobility, that Suttungr can never penetrate. We hear no more of him. Maybe the Aesir slaughter him, maybe he simply withers away, having no longer any part to play – bereft, emasculated and dethroned.
One thing is certain: Now Odin has the mead of poetry. The story goes that the Aesir inside the walls, as they saw him approaching, cleverly placed a number of suitable vessels in the yard for him to drop the exquisite content of his stomach in, whereby the drink of wisdom was secured for future use among the noble.
And this is where we are: The mead of poetry is his to give – and this he happily does to anyone, who dares to take it. You see: His pattern of attainment must be laboriously studied and vigorously reiterated – enacted with personal and radical devotion as a strictly individual drama of initiation, not just in a sphere of dreamy visions and sensations, but here and now in flesh and deed. That is the one and only uncompromising ethos of Odinic initiation.
Go be that God!
Or – as a certain, raging anarch-poet of my early childhood has so memorably put it: Action must be taken. We don’t need the key, we’ll break it.
Those were the words. This is the end of my neopagan sermon. More could be said, and more will be said of Odin’s mind and path. For now, the cups are full.
In the hope of having given you a thought-provoking beginning, I sincerely thank you for your time.
*
