Odin
Page 7
The shaman is a spiritual practitioner who serves a tribe or rural community. He or she may be called to the work after having a near-death or visionary experience in which he or she is destroyed and reconstituted by the spirits. The new shaman is trained by the spirits or by an older shaman. Shamanic skills include trance journeys to gain knowledge or information, to heal the sick by retrieving their spirits, or to access otherworldly power with the help of spirit allies. Like many other spiritual traditions, the context and details of shamanic practices in different places are shaped by the culture and the influences of other religions in the area in which they occur. Properly speaking, in each culture, the local name for such spiritual specialists should be used, but it is also clear that a very similar pattern of experiences and skills is found in cultures from Siberia to Tierra del Fuego. If shamanic practice has indeed survived from a very early stage of human evolution, it seems reasonable to expect that traces of it would be found in Europe as well.
In 1980, Michael Harner, who had done ethnographic work among the Jivaro people of the Ecuadorian Amazon, published The Way of the Shaman, the seminal work in contemporary neo-shamanism, and established the Foundation for Shamanic Studies. His work does not claim to be “authentic” shamanic practice but is rather a synthesis and adaptation that can be effectively used by modern Americans and Europeans in a very different culture. People trained in his system are doing good work as “shamanic” therapists in many countries today.
At the time Harner's book came out, my own studies had already taken me through Women's Spirituality, eclectic Wicca, and Western Esoteric Kabbalah, and I felt a need to balance my ceremonial training with more intuitive skills. By then I had enough experience with trance journeying to take Harner's book and put into practice many of the skills covered there. It was not until 1987 that I had an opportunity to actually participate in the introductory workshop. This is the workshop where, as described in the introduction, I met Odin. This book is one of the results of that encounter.
While I understand the reactions of those scholars who stoutly maintain that Odin is not a shaman, the fact that he chose to tag me at a neo-shamanic workshop where I was most certainly not expecting to encounter him requires that I look at the reasons writers like Mircea Eliade, who devotes several pages to the evidence for shamanic practices in Scandinavian culture, think that he is.
In part 1 of Shamanism, Eliade identifies the following features of shamanism, which can be compared to the list in Ynglingasaga as follows:
1. Shamanism—The shaman is the most prestigious spiritual worker in his region, although he may coexist with other kinds of priests or even other religions, because his spirit leaves his body and travels between the worlds.
Norse myth—Odin and Freyja are the Norse gods most famed for their mastery of magic. Both wander the world or worlds.
2. Shamanism—The shaman has one or more spirit allies, taking the form of animals, ancestors, or other beings, that are called and controlled by magical songs.
Norse myth—Odin gets information from his ravens, Huginn and Muninn, and rides his magical horse, Sleipnir, between the worlds. His wolves may also be allies. He is famed for his mastery of magic songs.
3. Shamanism—The shaman can perceive souls and soul parts and retrieve them to heal or guide a soul to the afterlife.
Norse Myth—Odin can talk to the dead, on earth or in the Underworld. His valkyries escort those whom he chooses from the battlefield to his hall.
4. Shamanism—The shaman experiences an illness or near-death crisis in which he may experience death and reconstruction, learns from the spirits through dreams and visions, and is trained in his people's magical tradition.
Norse Myth—Odin “dies,” self-sacrificed, by being stabbed and hanging on the Worldtree. In the process, he acquires the runes and learns their mysteries.
5. Shamanism—The Otherworld has levels and a detailed cosmology that can be mapped.
Norse Myth—The Norse Otherworld has nine worlds, including our own. Odin wanders through them all.
Of these elements, the one that has perhaps attracted the most attention from the shamanic scholars is Odin's ordeal on the Worldtree. We will be discussing that in more detail in the next chapter, which looks at Odin as the giver of the runes.
One objection to identifying Odin's magic as shamanism is the absence of one of the most powerful shamanic tools for altering consciousness and raising power—the drum. Certainly the Saami, who have shared a great deal of magic with their Norse neighbors, use drums; however, the lack of references in the sagas (or, I must admit, of archaeological evidence) has led most scholars to doubt that drums were used by the Vikings. There is, however, one example that is, if not conclusive, at least suggestive.
One of the few humorous poems in the Elder Edda (given Old Norse definitions of humor) is the Lokasenna, a story in which Loki crashes a party at Aegir's place and proceeds to systematically insult all the gods and goddesses. Unfortunately, all the evidence we have from other sources suggests that everything he says, however scurrilous, is true. When Odin attempts to defend Gefon, Loki responds,
But you worked Seidh, they say, on Samsey Isle
Beat on the drum(?) like the völur;
Like unto a vitki, fared among men:
I think that those were ergi ways.
—Lokasenna 24
Völva (singular of vôlur) and Vitki are terms for a female and male worker of magic, respectively—witch and wizard, you might say. Draptu á vétt—“Beat on the drum”—is my attempt to translate a much-debated phrase, since the closest we can come to a translation of vétt is something like “box lid.” Chisholm gives the phrase as “plied magic”; Hollander, “wove magic”; and Orchard, “beat the drum.” I conclude that when Odin was working magic like a Völva, a term usually translated as “witch,” he was using some kind of rhythm as an aid to altering consciousness.
In the years since I started working with Odin, I have created and collected a variety of magical tools, including a seidh staff, a rune wand, and a drum.
Fig. 7. Seidh staff, wand, and drum
The drum is made of elk hide and shows creatures from the Norse tradition placed in the Upper, Middle, and Lower worlds. Although this drum is too sensitive to moisture to be of much use outdoors, in a controlled environment, striking the images showing different levels or animals is a useful way to guide myself through a trance journey.
Practice
The path that drew me to Odin was magic. The skills to which it led me required years of exploration—presented in my books, Trance-Portation, The Way of the Oracle, and Possession, Depossession, and Divine Relationships—and what I know now is only a beginning. The first step on this path is self-knowledge.
1. Self-evaluation before studying magic
What magical practices have you tried?
What knowledge/abilities do you already have?
___ concentration and focus
___ memory
___ poetry/song
___ visualization
___ sigils and charms
___ energy sensing
___ trance work
___ connection with spirits
2. Use the Galdralag verse form to write a spell.
For an example of a verse in Galdralag, see the prayer on page 59.
3. Second of the Nine Nights Meditations:
Set up your altar and prepare the space as before. Light a blue candle and invoke Odin as Vitki. Then say:
Odin, by these names I call you:
Göndlir (Staff Wielder)
Jolnir (Yule Being)
Sváfnir (Sleep Bringer)
Thrótt (Magical Power),
Fjölsvidh (Much Wise)
Sanngetal (Truth Guesser)
Jalk (Gelding)
Grímnir (Masked One)
Magic's Master, Wand Wielder, hear me,
Mighty Singer of spells,
Word power I want, wisdom I wish for
> To work my will in the world,
To work my will.
Seidh madhr show me, spirit inspiring
How to soar between the worlds.
Drum with the witches, whisper open my heart,
Till it pulses with power,
To receive the power.
Meditate on the meaning of power. What power do you have and how do you use it? Do you want “Power over” or “Power to”? Sit quietly and count your breathing, letting the words bubble up into your awareness and then float away until your spirit is still. Continue to breathe and open your awareness to the currents of energy around you. Open your heart to the god. If words come to you, write them down. When the time feels right, breathe more quickly and move your limbs to return to ordinary consciousness.
Rune Song
Odin old one-eye
hanging nine nights on a tree
waiting for wisdom.
You hung till the tree
grew into you
branching red tree of life
bare white bone tree of death.
The first night fear fastened your lids;
the second fog formed in vague clusters,
at eye corner blooming and buzzing;
the third night world came into focus
trees, mountains, meander of rivers,
sharp as new-made;
the fourth night was motion:
boar, cave bear and flea;
the fifth night came Huginn to sit on your head
you brought into being the four thinkers,
your one eye struggling for their shapes.
The sixth night you stretched down,
drank Mimir's water,
recalled and called them by name;
the seventh Muninn, black clot of feathers,
settled on your shoulder.
Nothing, you could forget nothing now.
The eighth night your black mind
saw, inner eye saw
all was nothing:
nothing within, nothing without
nothing now, nothing then, nothing to come.
On the ninth night hanging
on the tree of yourself
you saw
how you held it all within you,
everything and nothing within you,
and you lifted your voice, singing.
Holding yourself together,
inner and outer together,
blood tree and bone tree and world tree together,
beginning and ending together,
holding all things together,
you sang.
—Elizabeth Harrod (1999, 10)
Fig. 8. Odin on the Tree
CHAPTER FOUR
Rider of the Tree
It is time to speak at the seat of Thul
At the Well of Wyrd.
I saw and stayed silent, I saw and thought:
I heard men speak;
Of runes they spoke, nor were they silent at council,
At the hall of Hár, in the hall of Hár:
I heard them say these things.
—Havamál 111
As we have seen, Odin appears in many tales, but three of them in particular have a weight that transcends mere story—how he got the mead of poetry, how he gave one of his eyes for a drink from the Well of Mimir, and the deed for which he may be most famed: his self-sacrifice on the Worldtree to gain the runes.
Once my own wanderings had brought me to that unexpected encounter with Odin, I had to learn how to work with him. Trance journeys were useful, but I feared that when my life got busy (an outcome virtually guaranteed), I would let my spiritual practice slide as I had so many times before. I also realized that to understand Odin, I needed to know a lot more about the culture from which he came. It occurred to me that a good way to get that background would be to study the runes. And to make sure I didn't abandon that project, I resolved to start a class so that every month I would have to research another rune.
It is my good fortune to live in a community that includes a lot of extremely talented people. When I announced the class, I got an enthusiastic response, and in January 1988, a few months after my initial encounter with Odin, the class began. The fifteen people who turned up for the first meeting included several poets, a graduate student in Scandinavian studies, and another student whose study of Anglo Saxon was more recent than my own. In 1988, Heathenry as an organized spiritual path was just beginning to emerge. Everyone in the class was Pagan or Pagan-friendly, but only a few had worked with the Norse gods.
My plan for the class was to study the Elder Futhark two runes at a time, collecting and comparing information from the old rune poems and the lore and looking for ways to apply the concepts to our own lives. Ralph Blum had popularized his own unique interpretation of the runes, and Ed Fitch had written the Wicca-based Rites of Odin, but Edred Thorsson (1984) was the only writer with a scholarly background who approached the runes as a spiritual system.
My class worked together to find information and share ideas on how the runes, or the forces behind them, manifest in the world. To internalize what we were learning, we did rituals. And every month, as I wondered what I should do for the next class, I would open my mind to Odin; one word would lead on to another word, one insight to another, giving me a periodic download of information.
Like the letters in the Hebrew alphabet, the runestaves work simultaneously with vision, sound, and memory. We found that each rune served as a doorway to some aspect of Germanic culture. By the time we reached the last rune in the Elder Futhark, Othala, we had encountered all the major gods and goddesses, the most important myths, and a great deal of the history and values behind them. The material generated for this class, expanded and refined by additional rounds in the years that followed, eventually became my first nonfiction book, Taking up the Runes. What follows is based on the introduction to the runes that I give at festivals and conferences. For a more inclusive and detailed account, see the books on runes listed at the end of this chapter.
Mysteries and Alphabets
Most people today would call “” a “rune.” Properly speaking, it is a rune stave (a runic “letter”). Rune is actually a term that has been applied to many things considered magical, such as the Saami rune drum (which has no rune staves on it). It is usually translated as “secret” or “mystery.” A spell or formula can be called a “rune.” Furthermore, the staves most often seen in contemporary magical and religious contexts are only one version of the futhark, a word made from the sounds of the first six staves of the rune row, the equivalent of the Latin letter alphabet.
There are two ways to explain the origin of the runes. One is the story of how Odin hanged himself on the Worldtree to win them, about which we shall see more later. The other is based on archaeology. The earliest runic inscriptions date from the second century CE. Many of the rune staves resemble letters in northern Italian alphabets being used at the time. They could have been brought to Germany by Germans who had served with the Roman army, or they might have been introduced by traders. Most of the early runic texts come from what is now northern Germany and Denmark, suggesting that wherever the Elder Futhark was actually developed, it is in that area that it came into use.
Pollington concludes that “the runes are not a wholesale cultural import but a Germanic creation inspired by knowledge of at least one other, contemporary writing system (Spurklund 2010, 661). The invention of the futhark was born out of a desire to own a means of writing, and the need for such system to not be a transparent copy of the dominant (Roman) model” (Pollington 2016, 79).
There are, in fact, three futharks. The Elder Futhark, which we know from inscriptions made in Migrations Period Germany, contains twenty-four rune staves and is the version used most often in Heathen religious and magical practice today. The Anglo-Saxons carried the Continental Germanic runes to England and added nine more to bring the total to thirty-three. On the other hand, in the Viking Age the futhark was reduced to
sixteen staves. Some sounds were no longer needed because the language had changed, and some runes, like Bjarkan, did double duty for two related sounds (“B” and “P”). The most common forms and order for these three futharks are given in figure 9, but in inscriptions, variations of all of them may appear. Interpretation of runic inscriptions is also complicated by the fact that spelling was not regularized, and staves or inscriptions were sometimes written right to left as well as left to right, reversed, or even upside down.
The Principal Futharks
Fig. 9. The Elder, Younger, and Anglo-Saxon Futharks
The earliest runic inscriptions are on objects—to identify the owner or maker or to empower the objects, like the bind rune of inscribed on a spearshaft from the Anglian homeland, possibly meaning “I give good luck” (Pollington 2016, 174). During the Viking period, runes were widely used for communication and sometimes for graffiti. Archaeologists found a large number of runic messages inscribed on pieces of wood in the remains of a medieval trading center beneath the modern Norwegian city of Bergen (Liestol 1966). Later, runic memorials were inscribed on stones. Today they are used primarily for magical, religious, and decorative or culture-related purposes (such as the bind rune of Bjarkan and Hagall that forms the logo for the Swedish company Bluetooth).
From time to time, someone comes along who loves Northern mythology but cannot cope with Odin or what she believes Odin to be. Usually it's because, until recently, retellings of the myths based on the 19th century version of the Norse pantheon were pretty patriarchal, and Odin, as king of the gods, was portrayed as the worst of the lot. I have even seen claims that the runes were invented by Freyja or some other goddess or god who taught them to Odin. Freyja is indeed a mistress of magic, but her specialty is seidh, not the runes. If any Power other than Odin might claim them, I would suggest the three Norns, especially if Odin “took up” the runes from the Well of Wyrd.