Norse lore & concepts

This thread will contain norse lore and concepts and will run in one single thread.magick and rune's will run in a separate thread in the same manner as this one.

The Tree of Life -- Yggdrasil
Every mythology features a Tree of Life. In the biblical account the ''jealous'' deities (elohim) -- usually translated ''the Lord God'' -- when the humans had eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, feared ''lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever.'' They therefore set ''a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.'' (1) In the Bantu myths a rather awesome Tree of Life pursues the goddess of fertility and with her begets all the kingdoms of nature; (2) in India, the Asvattha (3) tree is rooted in the highest heaven and descends through the spaces bearing all existing worlds on its branches. The concept of a tree branching into worlds is a universal one. Interestingly enough we still continue a tradition of adorning a tree with multicolored globes representing the many varieties of worlds pendent from the branches of the world tree although the meaning has long been lost.

In the Edda, the Tree of Life is named Yggdrasil, apparently for several reasons. This is another of the ingenious puns the bards of the Norsemen used to convey their message. Ygg has been variously translated in conjunction with other words as ''eternal,'' ''awesome'' or ''terrible,'' and also ''old'' or rather, ''ageless.'' Odin (4) is called Yggjung -- ''old-young,'' equivalent to the biblical ''Ancient of Days'' -- a concept the mind can grasp only in the wake of intuition. Yggdrasil is Odin's steed or, with equal logic, his gallows, the implication being of a divine sacrifice, a crucifixion of the silent guardian whose body is a world. In this thinking any Tree of Life, large or small, constitutes a cross whereon its ruling deity remains transfixed for the duration of its material presence. While Yggdrasil may refer to a whole universe with all its worlds, each human being is an Yggdrasil in its own measure, a miniature of the cosmic ash tree. Each is rooted in the divine ground of All-being and bears its Odin -- omnipresent spirit which is the root and reason of all living things.

Any Tree of Life -- human or cosmic -- draws its nourishment from three roots that reach into three regions: one rises in Asgard, home of the Aesir, where it is watered by the spring of Urd, commonly translated as the past. However, the real meaning of the name is Origin, primal cause, the connotation being that of antecedent causes from which flow all subsequent effects. Urd is one of the three ''maidens who know much'' the Norns, or Fates, whose farseeing gaze scans past, present, and future, as they spin the threads of destiny for worlds and men. ''One was named Origin, the second Becoming; these two fashioned the third, named Debt. Fortune's lots, life and death, the fates of heroes, all comes from them.'' (5) Urd, the past, personifies all that has gone before and is the cause of both present and future. Verdande is the present, but it is not a static condition; on the contrary it means Becoming -- the dynamic, everchanging, mathematical point between past and future; a point of vital importance for it is the eternal moment of choice for man, when conscious willing decision is made, directed by desire, either for progress or retrogression on the evolutionary path. It is noteworthy that these two Norns create the third, Skuld, meaning Debt: something owed, out of balance, to be brought into equilibrium in the future -- the inevitable result of all the past and of the present.

While the Norns are the Norse equivalent of the Greek Moirai or Fates who spin the thread of destiny we recognize in them also what in the Stanzas of Dzyan (6) are called Lipikas -- a Sanskrit term meaning ''scribes'' or ''recorders.'' Like the Norns these are impersonal, implacable processes that automatically retain every event and set the stage for the balancing action of karma, the natural ''law of consequences'' or of cause and effect, which operates infallibly in all fields of action and determines the conditions met by every entity as a result of its past choices. In the unself-conscious kingdoms this is a purely automatic adjustment; in the human kingdom, every motive, noble or base, brings appropriate opportunities and obstacles that modify the future. Moreover, as the human awareness is capable of self-determined choice, it is also increasingly conscious of its responsibility for events to come. Each being is the result of all that it has made itself to be, and each will become what is in preparation through its present thoughts and deeds. The record of the everchanging complex of forces remains in its inmost identity the higher self in man, the individual's own Norn which the Edda calls his hamingja. In the Christian tradition it is our guardian angel.

Yggdrasil's second root springs from Mimer's well. This, the well of absolute matter, belongs to the ''wise giant Mimer,'' source of all experience. It is said that Odin drinks each day from the waters of this well, but to do so he had to forfeit one of his eyes, which is hidden at the bottom of the well. In many popular tales where Odin is disguised as an old man in a blue fur coat, he wears a slouch hat to conceal the fact that he is lacking one eye. However, this is not the same as saying that he has only one eye. Can we be so sure that he had only two to begin with? The sacred writings of many peoples refer to a distant past when humanity possessed a ''third eye'' -- organ of the intuition, -- which, according to theosophy, retreated inside the skull millions of years ago where it remains in vestigial form as the pineal gland, awaiting a time when it will once again be more functional than it is today. Such an interpretation gives us information not only on the meaning of the tale but on the picture language used in these myths. As immersion in the world of matter provides the experience which brings wisdom, consciousness (Odin) sacrifices part of its vision to obtain daily a draught from Mimer's well, while Mimer (matter) obtains a partial share of divine insight. Mimer is the progenitor of all giants, the timeless root of Ymer-Orgalmer, the frost giant from which worlds are formed.

Long ago, it is said, Mimer was killed by Njord (time) and his body was thrown into a swamp (the ''waters'' of space). Odin retrieved his severed head and ''confers with it daily.'' This suggests that the god, consciousness, uses the ''head'' or superior portion of its matter-associate, the vehicle or body, to obtain the distillate of experience. At the same time the giant achieves a measure of consciousness by association with the energic, divine side of nature. Duality appears to be universal: no world is so low, no consciousness so elevated as to be beyond this perpetual interchange, as the divine impulsion daily organizes and dwells in worlds of action, ''raising runes of wisdom'' by experience. Consciousness and matter are thus relative to each other on all levels, so that what is consciousness on one stratum of cosmic life is matter to the stage above it. The two sides of existence are inseparable. Both comprise every level of life as giants grow into gods and gods are graduates of former giant worlds, evolving toward still greater godhood.

Mimer's tree is Mimameid, the Tree of Knowledge, which is not to be confused with the Tree of Life, though the two are in certain ways interchangeable, for knowledge and wisdom are the fruits of life and living; conversely the application of wisdom to living brings immortality in ever loftier ranges of the Tree of Life.

Yggdrasil's third root reaches into Niflheim (cloudhome), where the clouds -- nebulae -- are born. This, like the other two realms, refers not to a place but to a condition. The name is highly suggestive as nebulae are stages in the development of cosmic bodies. The root is watered by Hvergalmer, source of all the ''rivers of lives'' -- classes of beings. (7) These are what we call the kingdoms of nature which in their great variety of forms make up every globe. Niflheim, where lies the source of all these life types, contains the seething caldron of matter -- primordial, undifferentiated substance out of which the matters of all ranges of substantiality and materiality are derived. It is the mulaprakriti (root-nature) of Hindu cosmogony, whose divine complement is parabrahman (beyond-brahman).

The intricate life system of Yggdrasil contains both facts of natural history and cosmological information which may be gleaned from the texts. For instance, the first root, springing from Asgard, the realm of the Aesir, watered by the well of the past, maps the ''fates of heroes'' from cause to effect for all hierarchies of existence, and the gods are no more exempt from this inexorable law than any other form of life. Yet every moment changes the course of destiny as each being acts freely within the limits of its own self-created condition.

The second root, watered by Mimer's well, draws its nourishment from the experience in matter earned by the divine eye of spirit, as Odin daily confers with Mimer's head.

The third root is watered by the many rivers of lives: all the different expressions needed to fill the requirements of all kinds of consciousnesses.

During the first half of its life, Yggdrasil, the mighty Ash Tree, is named Mjottvidr (measure increasing); while in its process of growth the tree's energies are flowing from its spiritual roots into the worlds that are becoming. Its substances flourish on all levels, enriched by the nurturing wells that feed its three roots of spirit, matter, and form. After reaching full maturity, the tree becomes Mjotvidr (measure exhausting); its juices then flow back into the root system, the life forces leave the matter realms, as the autumn of its life brings the fruit and seeds for succeeding lives to come. At length dormancy prevails during the ensuing frost giant -- or rest cycle.

This metaphor of a tree, used in so many myths and scriptures to depict a cosmos, is remarkably exact. We know how on the earth with every spring the flow of forces infuses their growing power into each limb and leaf, giving beauty and perfection to blossoms, which in the course of time ripen into fruit which bears the seeds of future trees; and how, when the year draws to its close, the sap returns into the root system, nourishes it and provides firmer foundation for the next year's growth. We see an analogy to this in every human life as well: a baby's flesh is soft and delicate but increases in bulk and weight until middle life; thereafter the process reverses itself, culminating in the transparent fragility of the very old. So in the imbodiment of worlds do divine powers imbue latent, unformed matter with character, structure, and shape, increasing substance and solidity. The layered cosmos expands from within, branching through all grades of matter until the limit is reached for that phase of its evolution, whereupon the life forces retreat back into the spiritual realms as the divine root receives into itself the essence or aroma of the experience. So it is that consciousnesses imbody through multilevel worlds, earning the gods' mead of experience.

Yggdrasil nourishes all beings with a life-giving honeydew. The worlds pendent from its branches on all its shelves of existence receive from the divine roots what is needful for growth: predisposition from the well of Urd, material substance from the well of Mimer, and appropriate means of expression from Hvergalmer's rivers of lives. At death, when spirit withdraws as does the nutrient sap into the roots, the seeds of future imbodiments remain as an imperishable record while the empty shell of matter is recycled for future use, much as the leaves falling from a tree in winter become mulch to enrich the soil.

Yggdrasil is not immortal. Its lifetime is coeval with the hierarchy the tree is used to represent. Destructive forces are always at work and lead to its eventual decline and death: its leaves are eaten by four stags, its bark is nibbled by two goats, its roots are undermined by the serpent Nidhogg (gnawer from beneath). When it has lived its span, the mighty Ash is overthrown. Thus is taught the temporal nature of existence and the impermanence of matter.

Throughout the Ash Tree's life a squirrel makes its home in the tree and runs up and down the trunk maintaining communication between the eagle, or sacred cock, high in its crown, and the serpent at its base. The little rodent suggests life or consciousness, which spans the height and depth of existence. It is also pictured as a drill which can bore through the densest matter. In Havamal, which relates how Odin sought the bardic mead concealed in the depths of a mountain, he enlisted the aid of the squirrel (or drill) to penetrate the rock and, in the guise of a serpent, entered through the bore hole. Once inside, he persuaded the daughter of the giant Suttung, who had the mead hidden in his underground domain, to give him drink of it, and thus he gained wisdom. This is an oft-recurring theme: the divine seeking the mead in matter, gaining and learning from it before returning to supernal worlds.

By Elsa Brita Titchenel

Voluspa

TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

Among the lays and stories of the Edda the place of honor unquestionably belongs to Voluspa. It is the most comprehensive as well as the most enigmatic portion of the Norse scripture. In it are outlined the majestic pageant of worlds in formation, the attributes of the cosmic Tree of Life, its decay and death, and its subsequent renewal and rebirth. To follow the progression of events related by the sibyl we must often resort to other lays and sagor (1) which are more explicit, for in Voluspa we see the work of eternities compressed into the wink of an eye, the vastness of a universe in a grain of sand.

The vala or volva, the sibyl who speaks the poem, represents the indelible record of time, as from a beginningless past events move toward an endless future with universes succeeding one another in surging waves of life. The vala personifies the record of the past: her memory, reaching back through the ''foretime,'' recalls nine former world trees, long since dissolved and now reliving.

Voluspa is the sibyl's response to Odin's search for wisdom. The cosmic record is being consulted by Allfather -- conscious, divine intelligence which periodically manifests as a universe, impelled by the urge to gain experience. He is the root of all the lives that compose it, immanent in every portion of its worlds, yet supernal. When the vala addresses Odin as ''all ye holy kindred,'' this not only shows the intimate relationship which links all beings, but also identifies them with the questing god. Odin's cited wish to learn of ''the origin, life, and end of worlds'' is a device to elicit this information on behalf of all the ''greater and lesser sons of Heimdal'' (1) (2) -- all existing forms of life within this solar system, Heimdal's domain -- and, incidentally, of the audience.

To those who picture deity as a perfect, omniscient, omnipresent, and unchanging person, it may seem strange to find a god requesting information on anything, especially in worlds beneath his own divine sphere. But in the myths divinities are not static, congealed in divine perfection, but growing, learning intelligences of many degrees. The Voluspa uses a poetic ploy to suggest that consciousness enters worlds of matter in order to learn, grow, and evolve greater understanding, while inspiring by association the matter through which it operates.

The vala ''remembers giants born in the foretime'' -- worlds now dead, whose energizing consciousnesses have long since left them, whereupon their uninspired material reverted to entropy and chaos. She remembers ''nine trees of life before this world tree grew from the ground'' (2). Elsewhere there is mention of Heimdal's being ''born of nine maidens''; also that Odin's vigil when he is mounted on the Tree of Life lasted for ''nine whole nights'' (Havamal 137). This all combines to suggest that our earth system is the tenth in a series, following the frost giant Ymer when there was ''no soil, no sea, no waves'' (3).

Each world tree is an expression of the divine consciousnesses which organize appropriate forms to live in and gain the ''mead'' of experience. When in due course they withdraw, whatever cannot advance or profit by the association with the gods, that is to say, whatever is unmitigatedly material, becomes the frost giant.

The wise sibyl who tamed wolves, analogous to the cosmic vala, appears to represent the hidden wisdom or occult insight. (It is worth noting that the word ''occult'' means anything hidden or obscured, just as a star is occulted when it is hidden from our sight by the moon, or any other body. The merest a, b, c, is occult until it is understood.) The vala, Heid, is that hidden knowledge which exerts a fascination on the selfish, hence it is ''ever sought by evil peoples,'' although it may be harmlessly acquired by one who is wise and ''tames wolves,'' who is in control of the animal nature and who by self-discipline and service gains access to nature's arcana. The distinction between the two sibyls is clearly made in the poem: ''She sees much; I see more'' (45). One pertains to human concerns on earth, the other represents an overview of cosmic records.

The skalds distinguished three different kinds of magic: sejd or prophecy is the faculty of foreseeing events to come as they follow naturally on those of the past. In most countries there were until quite recently many ''wise women'' who continued to practice this art, most commonly in trivial matters. Such fortune-tellers are still to be found; many of them trade on public gullibility and prophesy more or less spurious ''fortunes'' for a fee. A second type of magic is the galder -- a formula of enchantment purporting to bend the future to one's desire. Such spells, when in any degree successful, are often sorcery, whether performed in good faith and ignorance or, more dangerously, with the impact of knowledge and with will and determination behind them. Inevitably their repercussions complete their circuit and adversely affect the originator as well as associates who may be innocently and ignorantly involved.

A third form of magic is ''reading the runes'' -- perusing nature's book of symbols and gaining progressive wisdom. This is the study of Odin himself, as he hangs in the Tree of Life (Havamal 137-8): ''I searched the depths, found runes of wisdom, raised them with song, and fell once more thence'' -- from the tree.

The vala tells of the end of the golden age of innocence and of the death of the sun-god Balder through the agency of his blind brother Hoder -- ignorance and darkness -- instigated by Loki, the mischievous elf of human intelligence. As in many other tales of the fall from innocence of the early humans, the agent which brought about our knowledge of good and evil and the power to choose between them, has borne the blame for all subsequent ills in the world. The biblical Lucifer, the light-bringer, from ''bright and morning star'' has been transformed into a devil; the Greek Prometheus who gave mankind the fire of mind was chained to a rock for the duration of the world and will be rescued only when Herakles, the human soul, shall have attained perfection at the end of its labors. Similarly, Loki was bound beneath the nether gates of the underworld to suffer torment until the cycle's completion. In each case the sacrifice brought us humans the inner light needed to illumine our path to godhood, which will be gained through conscious effort and self-conscious regeneration in ultimate reunion with our divine source.

The Voluspa gives a vivid description of Ragnarok. This has been translated as the ''age of fire and smoke,'' probably because rok in Swedish means smoke, and students of mythology have regarded this as characteristic of the Norsemen's supposedly doleful temperament, given to doom and gloom. But there is a better interpretation of the word: ragna, plural of the Icelandic regin (god, ruler) + rok (ground, cause, or origin) is the time when the ruling gods return to their root, their ground, at the end of the world. The horrors depicted as accompanying the departure of the gods are indeed chilling, punctuated by the howling of the hound of Hel; however, this is not the end. After the toppling of the world tree, the poem continues to describe the birth of a new world and ends on a note of serene contentment at the dawn of a new and golden age. Many are unaware of this and, having some acquaintance with Wagner's ''Ring of the Nibelungen'' tacitly ignore the implications of a cosmic rebirth. Yet, the pattern conforms far more closely to the tenor of other profound systems of thought than does the idea of an ultimate end. Such irreversible finality is not found in myths; instead we learn of nature's ceaseless flow into being and back to the unknown source, inevitably followed by a new manifestation -- a pattern that better mirrors all we know of nature, and evokes a far grander vision of the eternal pulse of life beating through boundless infinitude and endless duration.


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Voluspa
1. Hear me, all ye holy kindred, (3)
Greater and lesser sons of Heimdal!
You wish me to tell the ancient tales,
O Father of seers, the oldest I know.

2. I remember giants born in the foretime,
They who long ago nurtured me;
Nine worlds I remember, nine trees of life,
Before this world tree grew from the ground.

3. This was the first of aeons, when Ymer built.
There was no soil, no sea, no waves;
Earth was not, nor heaven;
Gaping abyss alone: no growth.

4. Until Bur's sons raised the tables;
They who had power to fashion Midgard.
Sun shone from the south on the stones of the court;
Then grew green grass in fertile soil.

5. The sun bore south together with moon.
On her right hand was the heaven's door.
Sun knew not what hall she had;
Stars knew not their places yet.
Moon knew not his power.

6. The mighty drew to their judgment seats,
All holy gods to hold council;
They named night and moon phases, separated morn from noon,
Dusk and evening, to tell the years.

7. The Aesir met on the Ida sward,
Timbered lofty courts and altars;
They founded forges, smithied gold,
Fashioned tongs and tempered tools.

8. Goldtable they joyfully played in the court;
Lacked not abundance of gold;
Until there came from the giants' home
Three very immoderate giant maids.

9. The mighty drew to their Judgment seats,
All holy gods to hold council:
Who should fashion a host of dwarfs
From Brimer's blood and the limbs of the dead?

10. There was Force-sucker, master of dwarfs
As Durin knows;
There were fashioned many humanoid dwarfs from the earth
As Durin said.

11. Wax and Wane, North and South,
East and West, All-thief, Coma,
Bifur, Bafur, (4)
Bombur, Nore.

12. An, Anar, Ai, Mead-witness,
Path, Magus, Windelf, Thrain,
Yearning, Longing, Wisdom, Color,
Corpse and New Advice.

13. Slice and Wedge, Discovery, Nale,
Hope and Will, Rooster, Sviur,
Speedy, Antlered,
Fame, and Lone.

14. It is time the dwarfs of Dvalin's kin
Be named, up to Lofar, the handed:
They who have struggled from the hall's
Stone foundation up to the ramparts.

15. Clarifier, Cycler, Shaver, Channel,
Sanctuary-of-youth and Oakshield-bearer,
Fugitive, Frost, and
Finder and Illusion.

16. While ages endure
The long, long reach
Of Lofar's forebears
Shall be remembered.

17. From one such train drew forth in the hall
Three Aesir, powerful, compassionate.
They found on the earth the ash and the alder,
Of little power, indeterminate.

18. Odin gave them spirit,
Honer discernment,
Lodur gave them blood
And divine light.

19. An ash stands, I know, by name Yggdrasil;
That tall tree is watered by white icicles daily;
Thence comes the dew that drops in the dells;
It stands ever green above Urd's well.

20. Thence come maidens who know much,
Three from that hall beneath the tree:
One was named Origin, the second Becoming.
These two fashioned the third, named Debt.

21. They established law,
They selected lives
For the children of ages,
And the fates of men.

22. She remembers the first slaying in the world,
When Gullveig (5) was hoist on a spear;
Thrice was she burned and thrice reborn,
Again and again -- yet still she lives.

23. Heid was her name.
To whatever house she came
She prophesied well and was versed in spells.
She was much sought by evil peoples.

24. The mighty drew to their judgment seats,
All holy gods to hold council;
Should the Aesir alone atone the wrong,
Or all the gods make reparation?

25. Odin hurled his spear among the throng.
This became the first war in the world.
The ramparts were rent in the Aesir's stronghold;
Victorious Vaner strode the field.

26. The mighty drew to their judgment seats,
All holy gods to hold council:
Who had mingled the air with evil
Or given Od's maid to the giant race?

27. Thor struck out in mighty wrath;
He stays not quiet when such he learns;
Oaths were broken, words and promises,
Mighty pacts were broken then.

28. She knows where Heimdal's horn is hid
Under the sacred sun-drench'd tree;
She sees ladled a stream mixed with icicle torrent
From Allfather's forfeit. Know you as yet, or what? (6)

29. She sat outside alone when the Old One came;
The fearsome Ase looked her in the eye:
''What ask you of me? Why do you tempt me?
I know all, Odin. I know where you hid your eye --

30. ''In the redoubtable Mimer's well.
Mimer quaffs mead each morning
From Allfather's forfeit.''
Know you as yet, or what?

31. The Father of Hosts gave her rings
And gems to gain
Wisdom and lore from her.
Far and wide she scanned the worlds.

32. She saw Valkyries ready to ride: Debt bore armor.
So also did War, Battle, and Spearwound.
Thus are the Hero's maidens named,
Valkyries mounted to ride over earth.

33. I saw the fate determined for Balder,
The gentle god, Odin's child.
High above the field there grew,
Slender and fair, the mistletoe bough.

34. The sprig that I saw was to become
A threatening sorrow-dart shot by Hoder.
Balder's brother, born before his time,
But one night of age, Odin's son rode to battle.

35. He laved not his hands nor combed he his hair
Ere he bore Balder's foe on the funeral pyre.
Frigga bewept in her watery palace Valhalla's woe.
Know you as yet, or what?

36. She saw the one bound beneath the court,
Where the caldron is kept.
The wretch resembles Loki.
Unhappy Sigyn remains by her spouse.
Know you as yet, or what?

37. A torrent of daggers and swords
Runs from the East
Through vales of venom.
Her name is Scabbard.

38. On low northern fields stood a golden hall
Belonging to Sindre's race.
Another one stood on the Unfreezing Ocean,
The giant Brimer's brewhall.

39. A hall she sees standing far from the sun
On the shores of death, with its door to the north.
Venomous drops fall in through the weave,
For that hall is woven of serpents.

40. Therein wading the streams she saw
Oathbreakers, murderers, adulterers.
There Nidhogg (7) sucks cadavers,
Wolves tear men.
Know you as yet, or what?

41. Eastward in the Ironwood the Old One sat
Fostering Fenrer's offspring.
Of them all shall come a certain something
That in troll's guise shall take the moon.

42. It feeds on the life of those who die,
And blood-red it colors the dwelling of powers.
The sun shall be dark the summers thereafter,
All winds be odious.
Know you as yet, or what?

43. There in the field, playing the harp,
Carefree Egter sits, watching the sword maids;
There crowed for him in the human world
Fjalar, the fair red rooster of spring.

44. For the Aesir crowed the goldcomb-adorned,
Who wakens the warriors in Hostfather's hall;
But another crows beneath the earth:
A soot-red cock in the halls of Hel.

45. Garm howls at the Gnipa-hollow of Hel.
What is fast loosens, and Freke runs free.
She grasps much; I see more:
To Ragnarok, the Victory-gods' hard death struggle.

46. Brothers shall battle and slay one another.
Blood ties of sisters' sons shall be sundered.
Harsh is the world. Fornication is rife,
Luring to faithlessness spouses of others.

47. Axe time, sword time, shields shall be cloven;
Wind time, wolf time, ere the world wanes.
Din on the fields, trolls in full flight;
No man shall then spare another.

48. Mimer's sons arise. The dying world tree flares
At the sound of the shrill trump of doom.
Loud blows Heimdal, the horn held high.
Odin confers with Mimer's head.

49. With a roaring in the ancient tree
The giant is loosened.
The ash, Yggdrasil,
Quakes where it stands.

50. Garm howls at the Gnipa-hollow of Hel.
What was fast loosens, and Freke runs free.

51. Rymer steers westward; the tree is o'erturned;
In titanic rage
Iormungandr (8) writhes,
Whipping the waves to froth.

52. The eagle shrieks loudly;
Bleknabb (9) tears corpses.
Nagelfar (10) casts off.

53. Comes a keel from the east. From over the waters
Come Muspell's folk with Loki at the helm.
Monsters fare with Freke.
Such is the train of Byleist's (11) brother.

54. How is it with Aesir? How is it with elves?
The giant world roars; the Aesir hold council.
Dwarfs groan before their stone portals,
Masters of mountains.
Know you as yet, or what?

55. Fire fares from south with flaring flames.
The embattled gods' sun is skewered on the sword.
Mountains burst open. Hags hurry hence.
Men tread Hel's road; the heavens are sundered.

56. Then comes Lin's (12) second life sorrow,
As Odin emerges to war with the wolf.
The bane of Bele (13) flashes forth against Fire:
There shall Frigga's hero fall.

57. Victory-father's son, Vidar the mighty,
Comes forth to battle the beast of death.
He plunges his sword from mouth to heart
Of the Son of Completion. The Sire is avenged.

58. Approaches the shining scion of Earth:
Odin's son meets with the wolf.
In raging wrath he slays Midgard's woe.
Then do all men turn homeward.

59. Nine steps only away from the monster
Staggers the son of Earth.
The sun grows dim; earth sinks in the waters;
The sparkling stars fall from the firmament.
Fire entwines the Life-supporter; (14)
Heat rises high to the heavens.

60. Garm howls at the Gnipa-hollow of Hel.
What was fast loosens, and Freke runs free.

. . . . . . . . .

61. She sees rising another earth from the sea,
Once more turning green.
Torrents tumble, eagle soars
From the mountains, seeking fish.

62. The Aesir met on the Ida sward
To judge of the mighty Soil-mulcher; (15)
There to recall their former feats
And the runes of Fimbultyr. (16)

63. There are found in the grass
The wondrous golden tablets;
Them in days of yore
The races had owned.

64. Harvests shall grow on unsown fields,
All ills be redressed, and Balder shall come.
With him Hoder shall build on Ropt's sacred soil
As gentle gods of the Chosen.
Know you as yet, or what?

65. Then Honer may freely seek his destiny,
Shake the divining rods, read the omens;
And the two brothers shall build their dwelling
In wide Windhome.
Know you as yet, or what?

66. She sees a hall more fair than the sun,
Gilded, glowing on Gimle. (17)
There shall the virtuous hosts abide
And Joy in serenity during long ages.

67. Then comes the dragon of darkness flying,
Might from beneath,
From the mountains of night.
He soars o'er the fields in a featherguise.

by Elsa-Brita Titchenell

Gods and Giants

As we study mythologies in the light of the theosophic ideas we recognize that their gods are personified natural forces which are not static or perfect but represent evolving intelligences of many grades. Some are so far ahead of our condition that they surpass our loftiest imaginings, having in the past undergone the phase of rudimentary self-consciousness wherein we find ourselves at present and gained a spiritual stature we have yet to reach. Others may even be less evolved than the human kingdom. These would be on the way ''down'' toward matter, having not yet attained our stage of material development.

The Eddas' gods and giants are the two sides of existence, the duality from which worlds are formed. Gods are conscious energies, intelligences of many grades. They imbody in stars, planets, humans -- in every form of life. This would include seemingly lifeless organizations of matter -- rocks, storm clouds, ocean waves -- that we do not generally think of as living but which, being organizations of atoms, possess the dynamism of the atoms that compose them, as well as their own unique characteristic structure and motion. The energies that supply this dynamism in the universe are the individually evolving consciousnesses the myths call gods.

The giants, their counterparts are inertia: cold, unmoving, unformed. They become matter only when vitalized and set in motion by the gods and they cease to exist when the gods depart. The time periods during which the organizations, organisms, are endowed with life are the giants named in the Eddas; this is to say they are the life terms of the gods as well as their bodies.

In many stories we find one or more gods traveling to the giant world, visiting some giant ''to see how his hall is furnished.'' There is often a confrontation between a god and a giant who compete in the classic guessing game wherein the protagonists take turns posing riddles which the other must solve. The loser forfeits his life. The meaning of this contest is transparently an exchange of information for the benefit of the hearer or reader and symbolizes in a masterly manner the way in which a divine energy informs the substantial side of its nature wherein it imbodies; in return it receives experience of existence and broadening understanding. The ensuing ''death'' of the giant (which always loses the encounter) represents a change of state, growth, as the rudimentary material nature dies from its earlier condition by entering a more advanced stage of evolution.

Existence is apparently unending; entities are advanced or immature only in relation to other entities, never in any absolute sense either in time or in kind. Like the aions (aeons) of the Gnostics, the Norse giants are both worlds and time periods, as said; ages during which gods are imbodied in and interact with appropriate forms. Often a giant is called the ''parent'' of an individual, showing the properties of his age, as one might say a person is ''a child of the renaissance'' or ''a product of his time.'' A shorter cycle within a greater may be referred to as a daughter of the giant, and several daughters would represent a series of cycles within a longer one.

When the gods form worlds and imbody in them they are said to be preparing the tables for their feast, for it is at the stellar, planetary, and other material ''tables'' that divine intelligences partake of the ''mead'' of experience whereby they are nourished.

In contrast to the giants, which act as vehicles or carriers of divine energies during the lifetimes of the gods, are the aions of non-life during which the gods are absent from existence, restored to their supernal spheres, leaving matter in a state of entropy. Such ages are the frost giants. They represent periods of inertia when no energies are present. During this total lack of motion there is no life or existence in the space so vacated; no atoms move, no forms are organized because no divine energy is present to give life to any beings. In Eastern philosophies such utter stillness is called pralaya (dissolution), when consciousnesses are in their appropriate nirvanas and matter is wholly dissolved. The only possible description of such a condition would be what science refers to as absolute zero (zero degrees Kelvin): total stillness, complete immobility, the absence of any kind of existence. To us it is of course a purely hypothetical state, unthinkable to living beings, but modern science approaches the idea of the frost giant very closely in recognizing that matter is the product of energies in motion -- that without motion there would be no matter.

The Edda's Orgalmer (primeval sound), (1) like Brahma, the ''expander'' of Hindu cosmogony, is the first breakthrough of vibrant motion which initiates the formation of a cosmos; the final giant Bargalmer (sound of fruition), which is ''ground on the mill'' and ''saved'' for reuse, parallels Siva, the destroyer/regenerator. It would be difficult to devise a more effective description of the big bang and black holes of astrophysical science than these mythic names. They suggest the systole and diastole of some great cosmic heart, the former pouring forth into manifestation the energies that organize a cosmos out of chaos, the latter reabsorbing the life essences into the unknown heart of Being, leaving bodily spheres to dissolve, ground on the mills of the gods into the frozen homogeneity of the frost giant.

In any kind of existence, whether it be the life of a galaxy, a human being, or an atom, there is constant interplay between energy and inertia, consciousness and substance, spirit and matter, gods and giants. The pairs of opposites are forever linked, mutually indispensable. There could be no giant without its corresponding god, for it takes energy to organize the structure of atoms; on the other hand, gods need vehicles in order to acquire the experience whereby consciousness is nourished. Without material worlds of some sort, consciousness has no way of growing or of expressing itself. Hence gods and giants are forever mutually dependent on and relative to each other. So the mead of the gods is brewed in the giant Ager's brewhall (space) and served at the tables of solar and planetary systems. This is the Norse version of the Hindu thought that the universe exists for the soul's experience and emancipation.

In the course of ages the gods of the myths came to be regarded as humanoid personages; the Greek deities seem to have suffered most from this indignity, though the Eddas' too have been degraded with cheap ridicule in popular stories and commentaries. Their overlapping dynamic force fields and the gravitational effects they cause were depicted in popular stories as marital, extramarital, and incestuous relationships which have been judged as the misconduct of highly improbable deities by generations of laymen and scholars alike. The Edda itself gives an amusingly exaggerated example of this attitude in ''Loki's Flyting.''

ODIN
Chief among the Aesir is of course Odin. As Allfather he is the divine root of every being in all the worlds, the essence of divinity present in all life forms, in the smallest particle as well as in the cosmos itself. When Odin visits the giant worlds, he rides an eight-legged steed named Sleipnir (glider), fathered by Loki, and he uses numerous names and epithets signifying in each case his specific mission. He possesses a magic ring which dispenses eight more like itself every ninth night. This evidently refers to proliferating cycles wherein each curl, comprising a number of smaller curls, represents recurrent motion in both time and space: the wheels within wheels of biblical symbology. This spiral design can be found among plants and animals throughout nature, from the atomic worlds to the great sweeping movements of stars and galaxies in space.

The primary and most comprehensive lay of the Elder Edda, Voluspa, is addressed to Odin, the divine pilgrim, who traverses the worlds, searching the depths of matter for experience, runes of truth. For Odin is individual as well as universal. On the planetary level he is the guiding spirit of the planet Mercury; he is at once the inner god of every being on earth and the divine messenger, Hermod, who is also his son and corresponds to the Greek Hermes.

Odin's consort is Frigga, the wise mother of the gods, a model of benevolence and custodian of the secret wisdom. In Norse myths she corresponds to the Egyptian Isis and also in other systems to the universal immaculate mother from whom all the energic causes of life (gods) emerge, or descend. Frigga is referred to as the one who ''knows every being's fate, though she herself says naught'' (Lokasenna, p. 217). Her power is equivalent to that of Odin and, though her influence is all-pervasive, it is never forcibly intrusive. We observe too that Frigga is not recorded as occupying a mansion (cf. Grimnismal) though, as Saga, she shares one of Odin's. We may therefore infer that while Frigga is the unmanifest, passive aspect of Odin, the wisdom of her eternal past in the form of Saga (cf. p. 87n), represents her on the stage of life.

As Odin occurs on many levels -- as a creative power in all the worlds, the Logos of classic Greek philosophy, and also as the informer of human spirit -- he is omnipresent and is to be found at all stages of existence, sometimes disguised, often under different names, but always recognizable. This reinforces the idea that the divine essence is present in all forms of life as well as being the only self-existent ideal in nonlife when the cosmos is dissolved into nothingness. It is therefore not surprising to find Odin referred to as Allfather and to discover him under one mask or another in every tale and poem. The most prominent example is in Voluspa where Odin is addressed as ''all ye holy kindred'' -- referring to all life forms in a universe. In Havamal he is ''The High One,'' in Vaftrudnismal he is Gagnrad (gainful counsel), in Grimnismal he is Grimner (hooded or disguised), in Vagtamskvadet he is Vagtam (way-wont: accustomed to roads). In Valhalla he greets his heroes as Ropt (maligned, misunderstood) and Nikar (ladler of misfortune) for reasons which will be explained (p. 79).

THOR
Another universally recognized deity is Thor, who corresponds to Jove or Jupiter of the Romans and in certain respects to the Greek Zeus. The source of all vitality and power, he too has many names suggestive of the different phenomena to which electromagnetic force applies. Thor is not only the Thunderer controlling the weather (paralleled by Jupiter the jovial and Jupiter Pluvius), he is also the regent of the planet Jupiter. When Thor goes by the name Vior he represents vitality, the life force that animates every being. As Lorride he is the electricity we know on earth and he visits us from the surrounding sky in lightning and thunder.

In the vastness of space Thor is Trudgalmer (sound of Thor), the sustaining energy (Fohat of Oriental philosophy) that organizes cosmos out of chaos and sets the galactic pinwheels churning. Trud or Thor is the impelling force which keeps atoms in motion and, like the Hindu Vishnu, maintains all things in action during their lifetimes. The hammer of Thor is Mjolnir (miller), the pulverizing force that destroys as well as creates. It is the electric circuit which always returns to the hand that sent it forth. Symbolized by the svastika, either three- or four-armed, it represents whirling motion, the ever moving power which never ceases while anything lives in time and space.

Trudgalmer has two sons: Mode (force) and Magne (strength), which suggest the two poles of electricity or magnetism on the cosmic level. Everything connected with Thor repeats the duality of bipolar power. His sons, centrifugal and centripetal action, manifest as radiation and gravitation in all forms of life. In the human arena we know these forces as hate and love, repulsion and attraction. Thor's iron belt forms the circuit for electrical current; his two steel gloves imply the duality of positive and negative polarity. His chariot wheels send sparks of lightning through the skies; for this reason, when traveling abroad he is unable to use the rainbow bridge of the gods, Bifrost, (2) as his lightnings would set the bridge on fire; he must therefore ford the waters (of space) that separate the worlds from one another. This apparently poses no problem to the god, so it is perplexing to find one lay devoted entirely to a rather monotonous exchange of braggadocio between Thor and the ferryman Harbard whom Thor is trying to persuade to convey him across a river. It is evidently a ploy to demonstrate the need of a conductor to convey electric power. (The lay is not included here.) On the planet earth Thor's action is served by his two adopted children, Tjalfe (speed) and Roskva (work), familiar servants of our power-hungry civilization.

Thor's beautiful wife is named Sif. She has long golden hair which is the pride of all the gods. It represents the vitality of growth as well as the harvest which results from it and, analogically, the evolutionary power and urge to progress that maintains the course of existence for all beings.

SOLAR AND OTHER DEITIES
The solar deity of our world is Balder. He dies and is reborn daily, yearly, and represents the lifetime of the sun. This is a way of describing the ever new aspects presented with each cycle, major or minor, as the sun-god ''dies'' and is ''reborn'' with every rotation and revolution of the planet earth. The soul of the sun is named Alfrodul, the ''radiant elf-wheel,'' while the visible orb is nicknamed ''Dvalin's toy.'' As the physical sun supports our life on earth, so its vital essence sustains our spiritual life.

When the sun-god is killed by his blind brother Hoder (ignorance and darkness) -- a moving tale related in Vagtamskvadet -- Balder's devoted wife Nanna dies of a broken heart. She is succeeded by her half sister Idun who inherits her task of keeping the gods supplied with the apples of immortality. From the context it may be gathered that Idun represents our earth, while Nanna stands for the body of the moon which died a long time ago. In the theosophic pattern also the moon is the predecessor of our present living planet.

The planet Mars is represented in the Edda by the god Tyr -- a word which means ''animal,'' that is, an animate being, an energy, hence a god. Tyr is a heroic figure among his brother deities for having sacrificed his right hand to help bind Fenris, the wolf who, when set free, is destined to devour the sun.

The god of our planet earth, Frey, is the brother of Freya, the Norse Venus-Aphrodite. They are the children of Njord who is represented by the planet Saturn and who also (like the Greek Chronos) stands for Time. Freya is the patron and protectress of the human race which she wears on her breast in the form of a gem -- the Brisingamen: the spiritual intelligence in humankind (brising fire, specifically the fire of enlightened mind; men jewel). Frey's wife is Gerd, daughter of the giant Gymer.

LOKI
Among the gods a unique place is held by Loki. Having attained godhood, though of giant stock, he represents a most mysterious and sacred quality in human nature. On one hand he is the divine intelligence aroused in early humanity (the gem of Freya with which he is associated), and also the free will whereby mankind may choose its course for good or ill; on the other, he is the trickster, the renegade, who brings misfortune to the gods and is constantly being taken to task for his mischievous behavior, whereupon he is also the agent who remedies the situation he has caused. All in all, he typifies the human mind, clever, foolish, immature. When regarded in its most redeeming character, Loki is named Lopt (lofty) and applies to the elevating, aspiring traits in human intelligence.

There are many more gods in the pantheon, two of which require special mention: Forsete, justice, whose function in the Norse universe corresponds closely to that of karma in Oriental philosophies. Another is Brage, the personification of poetic inspiration, the wisdom of the skalds and divine illumination in the soul -- of the universe and of man.

It is evident from the tales that Vaner are gods superior to the Aesir in a universe of many layers of perception, apperception, insight, and comprehension, where the greater inspires the less which are contained within it, in unending successions of hierarchic lives. The two classes of gods, Vaner and Aesir, (3) apparently correspond to the Hindu asuras and suras (not-gods and gods, the former having a double meaning: either beyond gods or beneath gods). The Vaner are almost always referred to as ''the wise Vaner,'' and seem to play no direct part in the spheres of life. The Aesir, on the other hand, inspire living celestial bodies, the planets in space. Dwellers in Asgard (court of the Aesir), they visit the giant worlds, usually in disguise, or send emissaries to represent them. A clear example of this is the avatara Skirner -- a ''ray'' of the god Frey -- who is sent to woo the giant maiden Gerd on the god's behalf. Pure divinity can have no direct contact with matter but must be ''disguised'' or, to use a common electrical term, ''stepped down'' through a transformer or what the Norse myths term an alf (elf), meaning a ''channel,'' a soul. The ''disguises'' of the gods are souls in every case appropriate to and characteristic of the mission in which they are engaged at the time.

In any mythology some of the most mysterious and difficult passages to understand are those dealing with the war of the gods. In the biblical Revelation it is Michael and the angels who battle the celestial dragon with his cohorts; in the Rig Veda the battle is between suras and asuras, and in the Edda the same cosmic forces struggle in opposition as the Vaner and Aesir. Because Western thought has been long accustomed to viewing deity as a single divine personage, the only level of life above man in the cosmos, the Aesir are popularly believed to represent a more ancient and the Vaner a more recent class of deities respectively. There are, however, strong indications that these two types of powers belong to different levels of existence, one superior to the other; they may also parallel the Hindu kumaras (Sanskrit virgins) and agnisvattas (those who have tasted of fire), respectively gods who remain unmanifest and those who have imbodied in material worlds. This is supported by the verse (25) in Voluspa which tells of the Aesir being ousted from their celestial stronghold, leaving the Vaner ''victorious'' in the divine realms. The fray, which triggers the cosmic force of Thor and a new creation, appears to be the result of the burning of Gullveig (thirst for gold) which, like the enigmatic Phoenix, arises more beautiful after each cleansing by fire, ''hoisted on the spears'' of the gods. Like the alchemists' transmutation of base metal into gold, this mythic theme finds ready response in the human soul. We recognize its application to the hunger for enlightenment in man, which in the gods results in the creation of a universe; it is the urge that impels them to manifest. Paradoxically, the thirst for gold has also the opposite applicability in our human sphere where it may become greed for possessions.

At the council of the gods Odin put an end to the deliberations: should all the gods atone or solely the Aesir? The Aesir, ''defeated,'' leave the field to the Vana-gods who remain in their heavens while the Aesir, ousted, undertake to enliven and enlighten worlds. This seems to identify the Aesir with the agnisvattas because they energize worlds in the cosmos. It is their presence in living beings that arouses the nostalgia of the soul for its spiritual home. For the gods it is a sublime sacrifice instigated by Odin, Allfather, the divine presence in the heart urging to growth of wisdom.

Once again the gods take counsel: Who had mingled the air with evil and given Od's maid to the giant race? This may be paraphrased: ''Who had given to a race of humanity the power of free will to choose good or evil, and the intelligence (the Freya principle, Odin's daughter and manhood's bride -- the higher human soul) with which to learn and grow through these decisions?''

Who indeed? No answer is explicitly given but, bearing in mind the divine ''renegade,'' it is evident that an aspect of Gullveig is Loki -- the lower nature evolved to self-awareness and thence to divine stature from a former material condition. His impish tricks are characteristic of human nature, undisciplined and imperfect, yet potentially godlike. Loki nearly always accompanies the Aesir on their travels through giant worlds and functions as intermediary there. He represents the bridge between god and dwarf (the spiritual soul and the animal nature) in man and evinces a marked duality, torn between noble and base impulses. When Loki stole Freya's Brisinga-jewel, human intelligence was diverted from its proper goal and misused for base purposes.

A pact made between the Vaner and Aesir resulted in an exchange of hostages. (4) The titans Mimer and Honer were sent by the Aesir to the Vaner, who in return sent the gods Njord and his son Frey down to the Aesir. The Vaner soon found that Honer (intelligence on the cosmic scale) was useless unless Mimer (the protean basis of matter) was at hand to advise him (mind with no material field of action), so they cut off Mimer's head and sent it to Odin, who consults it daily and learns from it the secrets of existence.

To us the multilevel universe of mythic tales is an unaccustomed way of looking at things but it is implicit in most of the world's ancient cosmologies. Mimer alone has nine names on nine levels of life with nine skies and worlds. Other systems may use seven or twelve. Our western culture has limited the universe to three stories, with God upstairs, man in the middle, and the devil in the basement. This allows of no purpose for any form of life other than the human. All creation is beneath our own exalted state and evolving toward it and there everything apparently comes to a dead end. As for evolving consciousness and understanding, there is no provision for improvement or growth beyond the human stage, which gives us very little to look forward to and makes the concepts infinity and eternity irrelevant. In contrast, traditional lore postulates endless vistas of time and space, with life forms ranging through countless combinations of spirituality and materiality, where our world is a slim cross section on its own level. In such a universe one cannot automatically equate good with spirit and evil with matter; there is always a sliding scale of relativity where ''good'' is rightness, harmony in its own context, ''evil'' disharmony. The perplexing biblical reference to ''spiritual wickedness in high places'' can be explained as denoting imperfection in a spiritual condition or as evil relative to a superior state. Throughout the myths gods, and giants, energy and inertia, consciousness and substance, are inextricably linked, always relative, and not to be judged by our limited standards of good and ill. Yet they are constantly changing, growing from the less to the greater as the restricted expands its limitations, the self-centered becomes increasingly universal.

In Brahmanical literature gods and giants are also found under the guise of lokas and talas, among others. These represent the many worlds of manifestation, including the material world we inhabit. A loka is the upward-tending consciousness on any plane, the tala its corresponding downward-tending matter the terms ''up'' and ''down'' being of course symbolic. This interrelatedness of gods and giants in eternal opposition is well depicted in the Grimnismal which attempts to describe the ''shelves'' of substance that build the ''halls'' or ''mansions'' of their respective dwellers, the gods.

The explanation of the war in heaven must be left to each one's intuition. One discerns a progression of divine intelligences inspiriting material worlds, veritable hells to these benign influences, so that lesser beings may receive some measure of their enlightenment. This undercurrent of the participation of the gods in inferior realms for the sake of their denizens is strongly felt in all the god stories of the Norsemen (or their predecessors in time) and may well be the real reason these tales appeal to us and continue to be honored and retold.

by Elsa-Brita Titchenell

Cosmic Creation

Before the appearance of any system of worlds, naught exists but darkness and silence -- Ginnungagap (yawning void). The gods are withdrawn in their supernal spheres; space and time are mere abstractions, for matter is nonexistent in the absence of any organizing vitality. It is the chaos of Greek cosmogony before order, kosmos, comes into being. In the Stanzas of Dzyan (1) it is said: ''Time was not, for it lay asleep in the infinite bosom of duration.'' The Edda calls this the Fimbulvetr (mighty winter) -- the long cold night of Nonbeing.

As the hour approaches for the birth of a cosmos, the heat from Muspellsheim (home of fire) melts the ice massed in Niflheim (cloud-home), creating fertile vapor in the Void. This is Ymer, the frost giant, from which the gods will create worlds: unmanifest worlds and ''victory worlds'' wherein the rivers of lives will imbody. Ymer is sustained by the four streams of milk flowing in the four directions from the cow Audhumla, symbol of fertility, the still unmanifest seed of life. ''Slain'' by the gods, Ymer becomes Orgalmer (primal loud noise), the keynote whose overtones vibrate throughout the sleeping shelves of space. Like the Tibetan Fohat which sets the atoms spinning, this graphically describes a first vibration organizing motion in inert protosubstance, creating vortices whose amplitudes and velocities determine the wavelengths and frequencies that make the various ranges of matter. As the Edda has it: ''This was the first of aeons when Ymer built. There was no soil, no sea, no waves; earth was not, nor heaven. Gaping abyss alone: no growth. Until Bur's sons raised the tables; they who had power to create Midgard. The sun shone from the south on the stones of the court; then grew green grass in fertile soil.'' (2)

To paraphrase: Before time began, no elements existed for there were ''no waves'' -- no motion, hence no forms and no time. This graphic description could hardly be improved on. Matter and the whole phenomenal universe are, as we now know, effects of the methodical motion of electrical charges. Organized as atoms with their multitudes of particles they unite to form the many grades of matter that compose suns and planets. In the absence of the organizing forces, the gods, none of these things exist. Space is itself an abstraction, unimaginable, nonexistent, yet the sole existence. It is Ginnungagap, the ''chasm of Ginn,'' inexpressible, unspeakable Nonbeing, beyond contemplation and not to be imagined, wherein Ymer, the frost giant, permits of ''no growth'' until the creative forces ''slay'' him and from his body fashion the worlds: ''raise the tables'' whereat they will feast on the mead of life.

The cow Audhumla licks salt from the ice blocks massed in Ginnungagap and uncovers the head of Buri (Space as abstraction, not space having dimensions). Buri corresponds to the ''parentless'' -- the ''self-born'' of Hindu cosmogony. Audhumla, the primordial seed of life, may be compared with the Hindu vac, the first vibration or sound, also represented as a cow. We find the same idea in the biblical myth, John 1:1: ''In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.'' The Word (Greek logos) means reason and also contains the concept of sound, vibration. In each case the first thrill of activity has this expression as a first ideation in divine mind, or as a fundamental or keynote whereon is built up a series of overtones, each of which becomes the keynote of a new overtone series. If you have ever listened to a gong's reverberations slowly fading out of hearing, you will have heard the major chord built up on the one deep note. It is conceivably an accurate symbol to describe a big bang whose energic impulses multiply as harmonics to the limits of its progression. By such a proliferation of vibrations the consciousnesses called gods might organize forms to serve them as vehicles, and imbody and dwell in them, be they suns, humans, or subatomic lives.

From the abstract Buri emanates Bur (space as extension) and from this evolves a third, triune logos, composed of Odin, Vile (will), and Ve (sacredness -- awe in its original sense). These are the noumena or prototypes of the elements which in our sphere we call air, fire, and water: the essence of spirit (breath), vitality (heat), and fluid (mind) -- subtle originants of familiar states of matter. There is a suggestive connection between what myths call the ''waters of space'' -- basis of all existence and the common ground of universes -- and hydrogen (from the Greek hydor: water), when we remember that hydrogen is the simplest, lightest, and most abundant of the elements, and the one which enters into the composition of all known matter. The second arm of the trinity may be sought in the second element, helium, named for helios, the sun, where it was first discovered. A connection may also be found between fire and the element oxygen which chemically combines with other elements in combustion. One aspect of the divine fire is Mundilfore, the ''lever'' or ''axis'' which turns the ''wheels'' of galaxies, suns, planets, or atoms. It is the power which initiates rotatory and translatory motion, creating vortices, dynamic entities in the waters of space.

It is striking how the more or less obscure hints found in myths are recognizable in modern science, even in such sophisticated fields as theories on star formation and cosmology. The latter show how physical processes take place, the former indicate the causes that bring them about. In chemistry we speak of three conditions of matter -- solid, liquid, and gaseous; the myths call these earth, water, and air, adding two more: fire and aether, which were included in ancient science as attributes of the gods.

In the far mythic morning of time, our earth with all its component denizens must still have been in a condition we can only describe as ethereal. The globe had yet to condense from its primordial nebula (nifl), born in Niflheim (the primordial cloudhome). We may picture how the divine will-to-be spiraled downward through transcendent, unimaginable realms of spirit, then through levels of ideation and intelligent plan, through ethereal and ever coarser though still intangible substances, forming atoms, organizing molecules, arranging organisms, until all principles and aspects of a world with its appropriate life forms had been breathed forth. From this impulsion the dust of long dead antecedent stars, spread dormant through the fields of sleeping space, received anew the kiss of life and, obeying that creative urge, formed vortices of energy which became the matter of which our worlds were fashioned.

Before our planet became physical, the less solid conditions of matter -- fire and aether -- were doubtless more in evidence; fire is still found as the vital heat of all living bodies. Even space itself, as much as we know of it, gives such a sign of life: a temperature of 2.7 [ [degrees] ] K, while hardly a heatwave, is still evidence of motion however slight, of vitality however faint. Aether is not recognized by that name today, nevertheless euphemisms such as the ''interstellar medium'' and ''intergalactic medium'' are used in astrophysics to suggest it. Since that distant past when our globe began to solidify, the ethereal element apparently receded from the range of our perception. In the future, when earth slowly etherealizes, as the theosophic records predict, we shall doubtless rediscover it along with the acceleration of radioactivity.

We have seen how Ymer, the frost giant, is transformed by the divine powers into the substances which make up a world, the primordial protosubstance becoming Orgalmer (the primal noise), keynote of a cosmos, an outpouring of energies so potent that it brings inevitably to mind the phenomenon which scientists call the big bang. The creation of earth in Grimnismal (40-41) is more poetic: ''Of Ymer's flesh was the earth formed, the billowing seas of his blood, from his bones the mountains, bushes from his hair, and from his brainpan heaven. With his eyebrows the beneficent powers enclosed Midgard for the sons of men; but of his brain were surely created all dark skies.'' The protective eyebrows enclosing the human domain are strikingly suggestive of the arc-shaped, or toroidal, Van Allen belts which trap excessive cosmic radiation.

The creative process of progressive manifestation (called in theosophy the ''descending arc'' -- the Edda's Mjotvidr), marks the fueling or feeding of the Tree of Life, while the subsequent evolution of spirit and decline of matter (theosophy's ''ascending arc'' and the Edda's Mjotudr), brings the exhaustion of the food that nourishes Yggdrasil. Odin is called Ofner (opener) at the beginning of a phase of life, when he is inseparable from Orgalmer, the keynote whose reverberations multiply into a cosmos. This systolic beat of the cosmic heart should be followed in due time by a diastole when, the expansion consummated, the gods withdraw once more into the heart of Being, and indeed this is confirmed: at the end of life Odin is Svafner (closer), linked with Bargalmer (the noise of fruition). This matter-giant is ''ground on the mill'' -- homogenized to formlessness, annihilated as matter with remarkable similarity to what science now calls a black hole. He is also said to be ''placed on a boatkeel and saved'' -- an allegory reminiscent of the Noachian flood, which also ensures the renewal of life forms after a dissolution. This may quite possibly be how the funeral custom originated of placing a dead chieftain on his pyre ship and letting the burning vessel drift out to sea.

The rivers of Hvergalmer or diverse classes or kingdoms of lives pursue their courses of imbodiment through the shelves and mansions of the world systems. They represent the great variety of organisms used by the many kinds of elf-souls, the human of course included. There are the dwarfs and the light elves, and also the dark elves who have not yet ''struggled from the hall's stone foundation up to the ramparts'' (Voluspa 14).

During the lifetime of a cosmic being Allfather Odin is closely parallel with Trudgalmer (noise of Thor), sustainer of all life. We have seen how Trud (on the cosmic scale), Thor (in the solar system), Lorride (on earth), represent energy in all ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum and how all their appurtenances have the connotation of power in various applications. Thor's hammer, Mjolnir, both creates matter and mills it to extinction; being the agent both of creation and destruction it consecrates marriages and also slays giants, thus officiating at the rites of procreation as well as bringing death by withdrawing consciousness from the spheres of life.

by Elsa-Brita Titchenell

Initiation

Each human being expresses to a degree the divine consciousness which animates all life forms -- Odin-Allfather, source of all the gods -- and we sense our spiritual link with a greater life, our individual hamingja. Mentally we are intrinsically part of the intelligence that informs and infills the solar system, personified as the Freya principle; emotionally too we draw on the impelling energies of Idun and the ambient world. Our outermost carapace, the physical body, is fashioned from the material which is available in the sphere where we imbody, though it is modeled on patterns we have ourselves shaped in our long past by numberless choices and decisions.

While all the kingdoms of nature comprise the same ingredients, the degree to which they manifest the various qualities depends on the stage to which they have developed them. We who make up the human river of lives, while we possess all the faculties we have brought into play in our passage through the dwarf kingdoms, also exhibit the peculiarly human characteristics of self-consciousness and intellectual fire and, in our inspired moments, we have an inkling of the spiritual awareness that will be ours in future aeons. So, being human, intelligent to a degree, we are able to pursue our evolution toward godhood with knowledge and intent and so accelerate our growth as to earn the greater destiny that awaits us on the next rung of the ladder of conscious life.

In the mythic scriptures, in fairy tales, legends, and folk traditions, surely no tales are more inspiring than those that tell of the heroes who precede us on the pilgrimage we are making through spheres of life, noble souls who have attained a grander perspective, a greater truth, a more enlightened vision than we possess. In all ages and races there have lived outstanding individuals -- Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Avataras, ''One-harriers'' (Odin's warriors) -- who have ''taken the kingdom of heaven by violence,'' who instead of drifting with the stream in slow meandering growth have gained the goal of human evolution, where ''the dewdrop slips into the shining sea,'' to use Sir Edwin Arnold's inspired phrase.

All mythologies contain some tales of the struggle of a hero, his trials, and either failure or success in overcoming obstacles -- the echoes of his own past -- to reunite with his divine self. In the West the best known story of initiation is that given in the Christian gospels, which contain many of the recognized symbols attaching to such an event. Another popular mystery tale is the Bhagavad-Gita, wherein the human soul receives the counsel of its divine Self in overcoming the familiar and often fond propensities of the human ego which must be vanquished. The Edda too contains similar tales, one of the most revealing being the beautiful allegory of Svipdag. (1)

Such legends are object lessons for those who desire earnestly to lighten the burden of suffering that afflicts the human race. Those who undertake the rigorous training of self-directed, accelerated evolution must of necessity by so much aid the progress of the whole and by example and encouragement incite a chain reaction of spiritual growth. Therefore those who desire most ardently to help their fellows escape the endless round of error and suffering to which mankind is subject, embark on a path of self-training of their whole nature so that they may aid and encourage the evolution of all.

Those who successfully complete this course, of all human enterprises the most demanding, when known, are universally revered as saviors and redeemers for they are the ''perfect'' who have nothing more to learn in the schoolroom of earth, yet return to help and teach those who lag behind them on the evolutionary ladder. The sagas which relate the trials of the initiant are the most popular and best known of all stories and legends, even in exoteric literature, though seldom recognized as such. In these adventure stories the hero must first become totally fearless for himself; he must wrest from the ''dragon'' of wisdom the secrets of ''birdsong'': this means he must know at first hand the structure and functions of the universe; he must be willing to sacrifice all personal ambition, even his own soul's success, to an all-encompassing concern for the welfare of the whole. One who succeeds in attaining such selfless universality becomes a coworker with the gods, a beneficent force powerfully impelling the evolvement of the world in which he is a component.

The fabled home of the Edda's elect, where the heroes go after being killed in battle, is Valhalla (val choice or death + hall hall). Popularized chiefly by the Wagner operas, Valhalla is one of the best known but least understood of the Norse allegories. It has become superciliously regarded as a humorous parody of heaven where rough-and-tumble Vikings go to carouse. Brought to this realm of the warrior god Odin by Valkyries, they are regaled with pork and mead each night, and each morning return to the fray only to be slain all over again. Valhalla is protected by many barriers: it is surrounded by a moat, Tund, wherein a werewolf, Tjodvitner, fishes for men. Its gate is secured by magic, and on the door of the hall a wolf hangs transfixed, surmounted by a blood-dripping eagle. In addition it is guarded by Odin's two wolfhounds. To understand the significance of all this we must define the terms used.

Each of the barriers to the Hall of the Elect is symbolic of some weakness that must be conquered. The warrior who would cross the river of time (Tund) and the river of doubt (Ifing) must maintain unwavering purpose and self-direction if he is not to be swept away by the turbulent currents of temporal existence. He must evade the bestial cravings of his animal nature (the lures of Tjodvitner) if he is to gain the other shore. Many scriptures use the allegory of a river. Buddhism, for example, speaks of four stages of progress, beginning with those who have entered the stream, and ending with those who have successfully reached the other shore. All nature is said to rejoice when an aspirant gains his goal.

Next, the candidate seeking Valhalla must overcome the hounds Gere (greed) and Freke (gluttony): he must avoid desire, even the desire for the wisdom he is seeking, if he is to obtain it. To find the secret of the magic gate, he must have strength of aspiration, purity of motive, and inflexible resolve. The wolf and the eagle must be vanquished and transfixed over the entrance to the hall to guard against their intrusion. This means conquering the bestial nature (the wolf), and pride (the eagle) -- self-seeking in any guise which, like Proteus of the Greeks, arises in ever new forms to challenge those who approach the realm of the gods. All weapons of offense and of defense must be relinquished and transformed into the constructive materials that form the sacred fane. The walls of Valhalla are built of the warriors' spears, the roof is of their shields. Within the hall even protective armor is discarded: ''the benches are strewn with byrnies'' (Grimnismal 9).

The surrender of weapons is a hallmark of the Mystery tradition. The candidate for universality cannot, by the very nature of his quest, regard himself as separate from the whole; he can therefore have no use for divisive means of any kind, in thought, word, or deed. First to go are weapons of offense, as harmlessness is cultivated. Thereafter all means of defense are dropped and finally all personal protection of whatever kind. The One-harrier has stepped beyond the notion of separateness. His work lies not in the immediate but in the eternal. He is no longer bounded by a self but extends unlimited; the hero soul has discarded all personal concern, placing complete reliance on the divine law he unconditionally serves.

If these myths had originated among the Vikings who, according to one of their codes, even slept on their shields with sword in hand, this would seem out of character. Rather does it corroborate the theory that the Norse myths far antedate these warriors and stem from the same archaic source as other early traditions. For there is clearly much more than meets the eye in the Edda's poetic enchantment even when it is concealed within its sometimes bawdy anecdotes.

The plain of battle where the warriors each day contend is called Vigridsslatten, which may be translated as ''the plain of consecration.'' It is reminiscent of the dharmaksetra -- the field of dharma (duty, righteousness) -- of the Bhagavad-Gita where the struggle between the forces of light and darkness in human nature takes place. In that classic many of his antagonists are the hero's friends and close relatives whom he must oppose, meaning character traits and habits of which he has become fond and which therefore are difficult to overcome. In both allegories the battlefield is man himself, where are ranged in opposing ranks all the human qualities, which themselves are the reflection of the properties of greater nature. The daily contest profoundly affects the evolutionary course of all beings. From time to time a One-harrier crosses over from the world of men to join the ranks of the gods; such rare forerunners who gain access to ''the shining abode'' unite their forces with nature's divine intent. The Valkyries, our own inspiring deepest selves, are ever searching the field of consecration for worthy recruits who choose to aid the gods in their unending labors toward the consummation of the cycle when mankind as a whole shall enter into its divine heritage and responsibility.

''The Hall of the Chosen glows golden in Gladhome,'' according to Grimnismal (8). Here Odin daily crowns the heroes after the battle. Here too, the One-harriers are regaled with ale or mead and are fed the three boars of air, water, and fire, that symbolize different aspects of the earth, for they are the essence of their experience during human life on this planet. The boars that nourish the One-harriers also represent creative powers, the energic aspect of three of nature's elements. Verse 18 in Grimnismal, if we substitute these for the corresponding three boars, would read: ''Spirit lets mind be steeped in will and desire.'' Thus the higher self or spirit of man permits the human ego to be tested in the fires of the soul to prove its integrity. If successful, the man brings to birth his inner god, the mortal earns its immortality, uniting with the indwelling divinity.

Odin, Allfather, is the essence of universal creative consciousness on all levels of existence. The name is a form of Odr, universal intelligence (equivalent to the Greek nous and the Sanskrit mahat), whereof the spiritual soul of man is a child. Odraerir, mystic dispenser of Odr, is one of the holy vessels which contain the ''blood of Kvasir'' -- divine wisdom (Greek theos-sophia). Kvasir was a ''hostage'' or avatara sent by the ''wise Varier'' to the Aesir. This is an enlightening hint indicating the descent of divine inspiration from sublime cosmic powers to the god world beneath, which is still far superior to our own. We may infer from this the continuous evolutionary pattern wherein Odin, Allfather to our world and divine root of every living being in our sphere, has risen from a formerly lesser condition and is now progressing toward superior stages, aided by the inspiration of still loftier divinities.

While in a general sense Allfather is implicit in all manifestation, Odin also has his own domain as a planetary spirit: his is the shelf named Gladhome, where is located Valhalla, the Hall of the Elect. Though Val means choice it also means death when it applies to Odin's warriors, the ''One-harriers.'' Related to the Greek koiranos, ''commander,'' the One-harrier is one who harries, commands, or controls, one -- himself. Each has moreover elected to die as a personal ego and gained transcendency of consciousness into the nonpersonal, universal, realm of the gods. To put it another way, he has overcome the lesser human self and united with the cosmic purpose of life. This is a continuous process -- of growth, hence of change, each change being a ''death,'' a transformation from one state into another, usually from a less to a more perfect condition. The ''crowners of the elect'' (Valkyries) who bring the heroes to Odin's sacred hall are closely related to the hamingja or guardian angel, the spiritual soul, every human being's protector and tutor.

When Allfather welcomes his heroes to Valhalla, he is named Ropt, ''the maligned,'' and in the Lay of Odin's Corpse, he is Nikar, the ''ladler'' of misfortune. These mysterious hints become clearer when we recognize that Odin is the initiator who, as well as instructing and inspiring, must subject the human ego to the contending fires of its own complex soul and cannot, may not sway the outcome of the trial. Hence it is only the successful initiate who knows the true nature of Odin, the hierophant, and recognizes the bringer of trials as Ropt.

Valhalla presents yet another aspect which links it with Eastern scriptures of remote antiquity: Odin in Grimnismal tells his pupil that there are ''five hundred doors and forty more'' to Valhalla; and that eight hundred warriors issue from each when Odin emerges to war with the wolf. Further we are told that there are five hundred and forty halls in bulging Bilskirner (the shining abode), the largest being ''my son's'' -- the solar deity's. Multiplying 540 x 800 we get 432,000 warriors and the same number of halls. In both Babylonian and Indian chronologies this figure occurs in numerous ways. Multiples of it define specific astronomical cycles while, divided by various numbers, it applies to terrestrial events of greater frequency, even down to the pulsebeat of the human heart, generally reckoned as 72 beats per minute. It is itself the length in human years assigned to the Iron Age, in Sanskrit the kali yuga, when the forces of darkness are most challenging. Curious that this should be the number assigned to Odin's champions. It certainly hints vigorously at some common source from which these widely separated traditions have descended and at some hidden meaning which makes this figure recur in them.

It is significant that of all the Norse tales, the battles of the Elect should have gained the greatest popularity: even though we may be unaware of the hidden meaning, this theme has an appeal that will not be denied. On the plain of battle, or of consecration, we all daily meet formidable enemies: weaknesses of character and habits we have adopted, familiar foibles to which we have become attached -- what the Gita calls our friends, relatives, and teachers.

For the human race evolution can be defined as developing awareness, an increasing comprehension of life. This is not mere knowledge of facts and relationships, nor is it just a growing understanding of ourselves and others; it entails a very direct realization and personal discovery of the spiritual unity of beings. With it comes a self-identification with all, well expressed in the words, ''I am not my brother's keeper, I am my brother.'' The self is nonself. In the transition from a restricted inwardness of ego to all-inclusive self-transcendence, the human soul comes naturally to identify with all that is. The battle undertaken by Ygg's heroes, which gains them access to Valhalla, is the constant exercise of will, firm control of every thought and impulse, complete selflessness at all times, in all situations. The injunction, ''to live to benefit mankind is the first step,'' (2) is tacitly confirmed in the epics of the Norsemen as is evident in the Song of Svipdag, where the hero, united with his hamingja -- the Freya of his dreams -- returns to perform ''the tasks of the years and the ages.'' The ally of the gods seeks not merely to do good when opportunity occurs but to exist throughout with the paramount purpose of beneficence, constantly cited as characteristic of the deities, ''the beneficent powers.'' The One-harriers have in fact died to their personal desires and been ''virgin born,'' to borrow a metaphor from other myths, into universal concern, enabling them to take their natural places in what the theosophic writings call the Hierarchy of Compassion. Odin's heroes do not rest on their laurels but continue to play a vital part in the eternal struggle of life as allies of the gods.

Traditional scriptures hint that, ever since divinities descended among men and taught the early races, there have lived an unbroken succession of spiritual teachers, intermediary between the gods and humans, whose mission is to inspire and aid the human race in its evolution toward perfection. Such adepts in the art of living are the One-harriers. A divine ray may imbody among mankind from time to time as one of these superior men and women who have chosen the lonely road toward merging their human self with the divine essence at the core of being. Even among the highest gods messengers, ''hostages,'' descend among their younger brother deities as avataric rays. Skirner (3) represents such a ''hostage'' to the human sphere.

Many are the tales linked with this motif, tales that relate how the evolving soul seeks its spiritual self, the Sleeping Beauty, or the Beauty on the Glass Mountain, accessible only to the valiant, pure, and totally selfless hero. He alone can draw from its scabbard, or from the anvil, or the rock, or the tree, the mystic sword of spiritual will placed there by a god. With this magic weapon he conquers the dragon, or serpent (of egoism), and gains inner knowledge, whereupon he understands the language of birds and all nature's voices. He must overcome all weaknesses, all temptations, surmount all fears, to be able, mounted on the steed of his obedient animal nature, to leap the flaming river that separates the world of men from that of the gods. There he gains reunion with his divine hamingja. The godmaker is become a god.

Incidentally, tales wherein the knight slays a firebreathing dragon, rescuing a fair damsel and saving the kingdom, may not all be mere allegory with no basis in physical reality. They are too universally prevalent to be lightly dismissed. While it is certain that they symbolize the hero's overcoming his baser nature and gaining his inmost heart's desire, it is also possible these symbolic tales may be superposed on a historical framework, which seems to be a common practice of myths. We may speculate on the possibility that the earliest human races of our round of life shared the earth with some at least of the giant saurians, whether winged, aquatic, or earthbound, before the latter became extinct. Who knows what lonely relics of once abundant species survived long enough to interact with early humanities? Any encounters with them which may have taken place would certainly have given rise to legends which would persist long after the events themselves were forgotten. If sea serpents qualify as mythic ''dragons,'' we need not look very far back to find their traces; to this day we hear rumors of such ''monsters'' being spotted in Loch Ness and elsewhere. The mythic Scandinavian dragons are said to have emitted an overpoweringly nauseating odor which defeated many a would-be dragon slayer. Indeed it is daunting to think of facing some gargantuan crocodile with halitosis. But this is by the way.

The universal appeal of myths may stem from a slumbering yearning we all have, to perform valiant deeds of derring-do. Leading what may seem commonplace lives, we have a deep-rooted desire to achieve the conquest implied in the sagas, the inner victory of All-self over myself. The goal of human evolution must be attained eventually with or without our purposeful effort. We can drift along in a slow, unmotivated round of endlessly recurring mistakes and continue to suffer from the inevitable results of our unwisdom. We may also actively oppose nature's beneficent direction and with intense self-centeredness shrink our sphere of interest to a mathematical point and ultimate extinction. A third alternative is that chosen by the heroes who elect to pursue the purposes of the gods. Whichever course is embarked upon will inevitably lead to the moment when a choice must be made: either conscious existence as gods or dissolution in the waters of space as inert frost giant material, becoming ground on the mill of extinction. Skirner, in wooing the giant maiden Gerd on behalf of the god Frey, implies this as he threatens her with Rimgrimner, the icecold (frost giant aspect of) Mimer, ultimate matter-base of all universes. This would mean utter severance from the energic, divine power of the gods. Gerd is apparently a race of humankind who is given the opportunity to decide between immortality and annihilation.

To everyone there come moments when the whispered urgings of divinity are sensed within the silence of the soul. Those who answer the call to serve the gods and help alleviate humanity's future suffering are on the path to becoming One-harriers, heroes who muster the scattered forces of the soul under the single command of universal purpose, and who maintain this tenor through lifetimes of effort. It is simply an acceleration of the godmaker's natural evolution that these heroic souls undertake and by the destruction of personal egoism ally their powers with the long-range work of the gods in our world. It is this message we may find in myths: the initiation of a new kind of living. For initiation means ''beginning.'' It is entering on a new sphere of duty, a more exalted and, to us, godlike arena of life. The ''One-harrier'' is crowned a warrior of the gods and undertakes to share with them ''the tasks of the years and the ages.''

Elsa-Brita Titchenell

Terrestrial Creation

The creation of our planet is depicted in several ways. The terrestrial deity is Frey, the valiant. He is the son of Njord and brother of Freya, and he owns a magic sword which is said to be shorter than the customary weapon but invincible when its wielder is courageous. It must be earned by each of Odin's warriors who would gain Valhalla.

The soul of the earth is Idun, guardian of the apples of immortality which she serves the gods at certain specific times, nor will she yield to any entreaties between meals. Idun is the daughter of the giant Ivalde -- ''oldest of his younger brood'' of children. Nanna, the soul of the moon, one of his ''older brood,'' died of a broken heart on the death of her husband Balder, the sun-god. (Cf. Vagtamskvadet, p. 258.) This may be a way of suggesting that our living planet sees a different sun, another aspect of the solar being, than did its predecessor. The sons of Ivalde are the elements which compose our planet; they are life forces which once formed the dwelling of Nanna but after her death began to form that of Idun. According to the theosophic teachings, each planet, including our own, as well as the sun, comprises several unseen globes along with the one we know; they also regard our earth as the fifth in a series of seven imbodiments of the planetary deity the moon having been the fourth; our planetary system is therefore one step more advanced than the moon's former composite world.

Many traditions regard the moon as parent of the earth and say that its substances and vital essences are still being transferred to its successor. Some support is lent to the myths by the fact that the visible moon is slowly diminishing, particularly the side facing the earth. One figure of speech pictures the moon as a mother circling the cradle of her child, the earth. The popular nursery rhyme, Jack and Jill, originated in the Edda where their names are Hjuke and Bil, and they go to the moon to fetch of its substance and bring it back to earth. When they are there, we can see their shapes silhouetted against the lunar disk, much as we see the man in the moon. American Indian traditions refer to the earth as ''mother earth'' and to the moon as ''grandmother moon,'' which carries out the same theme of succession.

In one tale, the Edda relates the building of the earth as a contest between two factions: one consisted of two of Ivalde's sons, the dwarfs Sindre and Brock (the vegetable and mineral kingdoms); the other of Dvalin (the unawakened human-animal soul) assisted by Loki (mind). The contest was to determine who could produce the most appropriate gifts for the gods.

Brock and Sindre create for Odin the self-renewing ring, Draupnir, from which eight like itself drop off every ninth night, ensuring the cyclic renewal and perpetuation of life forms. They made for the earth god Frey a golden boar. This symbol for the earth is found also in the Hindu Puranas, where Brahma in the shape of a boar lifted the earth from the waters of space and supports it on his tusks. For Thor the dwarfs fashioned the hammer Mjolnir, the pulverizer. This is the ''thunderbolt'' in popular versions which, as we have seen, represents electricity and magnetism, hate and love, destruction and creation and, in the form of the svastika, eternal motion. It has the property of always returning to the hand that sent it forth, completing a circuit; in addition to its physical meanings this is one way of expressing the law of justice ruling universal nature on all its ''shelves.'' We readily recognize in it the Oriental doctrine of karma which rules on every level of life, restoring harmony whenever it has been disturbed and, on the grand cosmic scale, causing the cyclic reappearance of worlds. Thor's hammer is somewhat short of shaft, however, for during its forging, Loki disguised himself as a bee and inflicted a vicious sting on the dwarf who was wielding the bellows. The dwarf faltered only an instant but it was sufficient to flaw the gift and accord the victory to Loki and Dvalin. Still, the gifts of the dwarfs are the best that can be produced by the vegetable and mineral kingdoms for the divine (Odin), vital (Thor), planetary spirit (Frey). It is to be noted, however, that these gifts, produced as they are by the minerals and vegetables, are limited to physical properties that concern their creators: Odin's ring clearly denotes the cyclic progression of events with perpetually recurring parallels, whereof the changing seasons are characteristic; Frey's boar with shining golden bristles draws his chariot through the heavens; while the creative and destructive hammer of Thor represents the life force and the powers we associate with the elements -- thunder and lightning, seismic stresses and motions, and the interplay of gravitation and magnetic fields.

In competition with these, Dvalin with the aid of Loki creates for Odin the magic spear which never falls its mark when wielded by the pure in heart. This is the evolutionary will, often symbolized by a spear, sometimes by a sword. It is the inborn urge in every living being to grow and progress toward a more advanced condition. There is in this a mystic implication of sacrifice as Odin, transfixed on the Tree of Life, is also pierced by a spear. The spear thrust has been inflicted on other crucified saviors as well.

For Thor, Dvalin and Loki restore the golden hair of Sif, his wife (the harvest), which had been stolen by Loki -- human misuse of earth's bounty? -- possibly having reference to more than the physical grains of earth. The gift of reseeding and the infinite potential of evolutionary growth on every level of matter and consciousness brings great promise for the world about to be formed. Frey receives as his gift the ship Skidbladnir, which contains all seeds of every kind of life, yet can be ''folded together like a kerchief'' when its own life is ended.

While the physical, astral, vital, and all other requisites for the new planet are being assembled and re-formed in this manner, the spiritual principles, Lif and Lifthrasir (life and survivor, the latter meaning ''hard to kill'' or indestructible), are ''concealed in the memory hoard of the sun.'' These are the quasi-immortal part of the planet, the deathless spirit-soul of the human kingdom, the solar essence of humanity which endures throughout the lifetime of the sun. Allegorically we learn in this tale that though the elemental kingdoms produce good and useful gifts for the imbodying deities, human ingenuity is of a superior order and wins the contest.

The name given to our physical planet, Midgard, means ''middle court.'' This placement of our globe in a central position corresponds strikingly with the theosophic description of our terrestrial home as composed of a series of globes, the central one of them being the sphere we inhabit. The number of its ethereal companions varies in different mythologies; because the highest of them are so spiritual, so far beyond human comprehension as to be unimaginable, they are omitted altogether in some mythic cosmogonies, or else only vaguely suggested. The Edda's twelve enumerated in Grimnismal suggest a pattern where six increasingly material globes culminate in our own, followed by six increasingly spiritual spheres culminating in the divine apex of the terrestrial system. Our globe is the Edda's giant Trym and rests on the most material of the shelves that accommodate and provide the substances for the twelve mansions of the deities.

Like other mythological histories, the Edda has its floods, both universal and terrestrial. We have seen how Bargalmer, the end-result of a cosmic cycle of activity is ''saved on a boat keel'' to become a new system of worlds at the beginning of the next period of manifestation. Similar patterns emerge on a smaller scale within the life span of the earth. Here giants succeed one another and, within each gigantic period, a series of briefer but still immense giantesses, their daughters, follow one another, reflecting analogically the greater planetary ages of life.

There are always similarities between the first of one series and the first of a subordinate series, between the second of one and the second of another; sometimes they are given the same name or one that is very similar, which may lead to confusion but which also serves to reveal a design. As an example, there are clear analogies to be drawn between the giants Ymer, Gymer, Hymer, and Rymer, which represent different phases of a series of cosmic events.

As concerns our planet, we know it is subject to gradual changes all the time, in addition to which there occur occasional cataclysms. One reason for this is the depredations of the inhabitants who over a long period violate the laws that govern the ecology; when human destructiveness becomes intolerable, nature rebels, bringing violent change and restoring the balance of forces. This is part of the normal processes of the living earth's restorative system and of its healthy recovery and recuperation.

The greatest upheavals, however, which cause radical alterations in the disposition of continents and seas, are governed by the rhythmic pulse of the planet's own life currents, and they take place at intervals whose length far surpasses any secular histories. During the four and a half billion years of earth's present lifetime to date, only four such major catastrophes are recorded in the theosophic traditions. Lesser events are of course more frequent.

Mythologies unanimously relate stories of floods and the repopulating of the globe after its being all but denuded of human life. Some Amerindian traditions tell of a series of ''suns'' succeeding one another. Each sun endures while the governing elements, air, fire, and water, are in equilibrium; gradually however, one or another gains ascendancy causing an increase of stress until a critical point is reached, when violent relaxation restores the balance, radically altering the configuration of land massifs and oceans. The inhabitants of the ''new world'' see the sun taking a different path in the sky. According to the Nahuatl traditions as well as those of the Hopi, we are now in the fifth sun. The Zuni state with greater detail that we are in the fourth world but with one foot in the fifth. Compare this with the theosophic teachings: that we are in the fourth of seven courses round our earth's series of globes and also in the fourth of the seven globes of the series (called a chain), but in the fifth humanity on this globe.

by Elsa-Brita Titchenell

Nature's Kingdoms

While gods and giants represented complementary poles of divinity and matter on a graded scale extending both spiritward and matterward beyond our perceptions, nature was to the Norse mythographers replete with living beings at all stages of evolution. Every such being represented its god (consciousness energy), expressed itself in its own appropriate way or soul, and imbodied in a fitting shape, its giant. Our visible, tangible world was one of many -- a slender cross section of a vast range of god-giant juxtapositions through which the ripple of life flowed unendingly with scope for infinite kinds of evolutionary change and growth.

The link which both separates and unites the god and its corresponding giant is its alf (elf), which, as we know, means river or channel. The elf expresses its godlike qualities through the substantial form to the degree it can. This makes each being a triad: first, the divine consciousness or eternal Odin, the Allfather, immortal root of every being; this animates the giant or body which dies and is ground on the mill, dissolved when the divine life has departed; linking the two is an elf -- the actively evolving soul which channels the divine influence to the material world and is itself evolving toward its hamingja, its guardian angel or individual god-self. The elf-soul partakes of both kinds of influence: inspired by its divine nature it becomes progressively more harmonious as it unites little by little with this ennobling source of its being, while its material tendencies, weighted down with the heavy drag of matter, its giant, remain mortal. This is most clearly shown in the lay of Volund, where the elf-soul, humanity, is held captive by an evil age, yet overcomes by virtue of spiritual will and determination as well as ingenuity.

Through the long, slow course of evolution the elves gain increasingly conscious union with their divine mentors and little by little become immortal; but until they achieve this state, these proteges of the gods spend each blissful rest between earth lives among the deities in the titan Ager's banquet hall (space), but oblivious of their surroundings. There are numerous classes of elves at various stages of awareness: light-elves are those who between lives sleep among the gods at their heavenly banquet, while dark-elves are drawn toward inferior worlds.

Souls that have not yet reached the human, self-conscious stage in their evolution are named ''dwarfs.'' These elemental souls imbody in animals and plants, in the minerals of the globe's interior, and in the forces of wind and weather. Popular stories describe them as little people. This is apparently the result of translating the Icelandic midr, the Swedish mindre, as ''smaller.'' This is quite legitimate and has given rise to the notion that dwarfs are beings smaller in size than humans. However, an equally valid interpretation and one which makes more sense is that they are less than human -- less evolved, less complete in their development. Judging by their names, they evidently refer to various animals, plants, and other creatures of the less-than-human kingdoms, so that more than likely the diminutive refers to their stage of evolution rather than to physical size.

Among the elemental dwarfs (those belonging to kingdoms of life less evolved even than the minerals) are trolls which are said to be inimical to humans, and tomtar which serve and help man in many ways. In popular stories the troll is depicted as a hideous monster, the tomte as an appealing little sprite wearing a grey suit and a red Phrygian cap. Every farm of old had its tomte which protected the livestock and the crops, kept the horses from slipping on the ice in winter, and performed numerous other services throughout the year. All it demanded in return was a plate of hot rice porridge by the barn door on Christmas Eve. The trolls on the other hand were the allies of sorcerers and not averse to playing pranks of their own on the unsuspecting. It is noteworthy that in all such folklore there was no real exchange between humans and dwarfs on an emotional or mental level. Whether useful or harmful, dwarfs are not intentionally either benevolent or malevolent but simply unthinking nature forces, acting automatically and without amity or malice, so that man's regard for them was a curiously impersonal one. You would not become fond of a tomte though you might well be grateful for his actions.

The classic fairy with gossamer wings, as well as gnomes and pixies and other ''little people'' in appropriate attire, although their appearance is the creation of human fancy, cannot be denied existence altogether. Various ancient legends which tell of these and other ''unensouled'' denizens of Cloud Cuckoo Land, are echoing a very real knowledge which has become warped and misunderstood in the course of ages: that beneath the minerals on the evolutionary scale are entities and forces which express themselves in the properties of material elements or states of matter. They are beings we would be hard put to define, for we have no conception of the type of ''soul'' that imbodies in minerals, much less in creatures beneath them on the ladder of evolutionary progression. Classical and medieval stories depict there denizens of the elements as salamanders (of fire), undines (water), sylphs (air), and gnomes (of the earth); the Edda classes them among the dwarfs and ascribes their parentage to the titans or giants of the appropriate elements. As the Greek Oceanus (the ''waters'' of space) fathered the undines, so in the Norse myths did Ager with his wife Ran, goddess of the sea, bring to birth the nine waves. What we today call laws of nature whose attributes we constantly rely on -- all the chemical and physical, automatic and semiautomatic functions of the natural world -- are expressions of elemental forces. Without them we could neither contact the matter we live in, nor could we depend on its behavior. They are the shapers of clouds, the surface tension that defines a dewdrop, they cause flame to rise and water to fall. However, lacking defined sizes and shapes, these beings are generally not recognized as life forms, though they may assume whatever forms are presented by popular imagination. Men fairy folk or leprechauns have occasionally been seen by perfectly rational people, their appearance and the attire they wear are due to mental images created by folktales and custom which may be so strong, especially in certain localities, that a sensitive nature, combining hearsay with its own impressions, may perceive them in that way. The image-making faculty is a very real force.

The dwarfs are said to follow in Dvalin's train because the lower kingdoms receive the impulse to growth from Dvalin (the entranced -- the human soul which has not yet become awake to its potential). Pictured as Ask and Embla (ash and alder), miniatures of the world tree, Yggdrasil, the human race was still in a vegetating condition, sans thought, sans mind, and growing only as the plants do without consciousness of self, until ''the gods looked back and saw their plight.'' The planet was then still in process of being fashioned by the children of Ivalde, the giant period whose lifetime was our moon.

The dwarfs in Dvalin's train which are named in Voluspa include such descriptive appellations as Discovery, Doubt, Will, Passion, Failure, Speed, Antlered, and many more. Some names are obscure, others are clearly characteristics of certain plants and animals, ''up to Lofar, the handed.''

Humanity, whose plight roused the compassion of the gods, became endowed by them with the deities' own qualities, making the human being an asmegir (godmaker), a potential god, in a threefold combination: a dwarf, kin of Dvalin, is his animal nature; in his human self he is an elf, a channel or soul, which links his dwarf nature with the gods; and the spiritual soul is his hamingja, kin of the Norns, his guardian and mentor which never leaves him, unless man himself by persistent unremitting evil severs his link with divinity, forcing the hamingja to abandon her charge.

A more comprehensive classification comes to light as we note that man comprises the gifts of the three creative Aesir, being compounded of their nature: ''From one such train [of evolving kingdoms of lives] drew forth in the hall three Aesir, powerful, compassionate. They found on the earth the ash and the alder, of little power, indeterminate. Odin gave them spirit, Honer discernment, Lodur gave them blood and divine light'' (Voluspa 17, 18). This makes the human a composite being. In Viktor Rydberg's penetrating analysis, the lowest elements were already combined in the ash and the alder before the advent of the creative gods, whose ''gifts'' completed man as an asmegir, a godmaker -- an ase in the making -- who shares in the divine attributes that endow the universe with form, powers, and organization. On every level a human being is an intrinsic part of the agencies that vitalize the universe. The same idea is found in Genesis: divine essences of universal life breathe into man their own breath and create a human image of themselves, which possesses in latency all that the universal life contains.

The mortal frame may be described as threefold: first, the body, composed of the elements of the earth; second is the formative model which causes any organism to retain its shape throughout life; third is the vegetative growth force in all creatures, the physical vitality or magnetic field. These three ingredients were already present in the ash and alder. To these physical portions the gods add their own properties: Lodur contributes la and laeti, literally blood and distinctiveness: blood in the sense of bloodline, hereditary genetic traits, while distinctiveness is evidently what in Sanskrit literature is termed svabhava, self-becoming: the peculiar combination and proportion of qualities that give each entity its uniqueness. These two related gifts constitute the divine light or image furnished by Lodur which, together with the gift of Honer, odr, mind or latent intelligence, compose the human elf nature. This, when kindled by a divine power, becomes an asmegir, a god-to-be. (Cf. The Lay of Rig, chapter 18) The highest gift is that of Odin, who endows the humans with his own spiritual essence.

Several unsuccessful attempts had previously been made to people the earth with viable human forms. The Edda describes the mud giant Mockerkalfe who had to be destroyed and superseded. The story is told in the Younger Edda and relates Thor's battle with the giant Rungner:

Rungner was regaled in Asgard with ale served in the goblets Thor was wont to drink from, and he drained them all, but he became very drunk and began to boast how he meant to carry off Valhalla to Gianthome, flood Asgard and slay all the deities save Freya and Sif, whom he would take with him. As he ranted on, Freya continued to ply him with drink. At length, the gods, weary of his boasting, spoke Thor's name, which instantly brought the Thunderer into the hall with his hammer held high. Thor demanded to know by whose leave Rungner was being entertained in Asgard and served by Freya as befits only the gods. The giant claimed to be there at Odin's invitation, which Thor swore he should soon regret having accepted. One word led to another. At last, Thor and Rungner arranged to meet in combat on the border between Asgard and Gianthome, and Rungner hastened home to arm himself for the fray.

The whole giant world was alarmed at the forthcoming battle, for they feared evil consequences no matter who should be victorious. So they created a giant of mud nine cubits tall which they named Mockerkalfe. However, they could find no heart large enough to animate the effigy so they gave it the heart of a mare. ''But,'' says the tale in Snorri's Edda, ''Rungner's heart is, of course, of stone and it has three corners.'' His head is likewise of stone and he bears a stone shield and a stone axe.

Accompanied by Mockerkalfe (also named Leirbrimer -- muddy water), Rungner awaited the coming of Thor but, seeing the Ase approaching, the mud giant was in such a panic that ''he lost his water.'' Thor's companion, Tjalfe, ran swiftly to Rungner and told him: ''You are foolish, holding your shield before you. Thor has seen you and will attack from beneath.'' So Rungner stood on his shield, wielding his axe with both hands. With flashes of flame and loud thunders, Thor came toward him. At the very same instant Thor hurled his hammer and Rungner his axe, so the weapons clashed in midair and the axe broke in pieces; one half scattered over the earth, becoming lodestones; the other half hit Thor in the head so that he fell forward on the ground. But Thor's hammer smashed Rungner's skull and, as the giant went down, his foot fell across Thor's throat.

Tjalfe meanwhile had easily bested the mud giant and now he tried to lift Rungner's foot from Thor's throat but he could not move it. All the Aesir came to help, but they too failed to raise the foot. At this point Thor's three-year-old son, Magne, arrived. His mother was the giantess Jarnsaxa (iron shears). Magne lightly tossed the giant's foot aside, apologizing for being late to the rescue, but Thor, proud of his son, ''did not hold the delay against him.'' However, a piece of the stone axe still remained imbedded in Thor's head. The vala Groa (growth) attempted to remove it with magic chants; but as soon as Thor felt it becoming dislodged he set about rewarding her by telling her about his rescue of the former giant Orvandel (Orion) whom he had carried across the icicle waves in a basket. One toe, which stuck out of the basket, became frozen, so Thor broke it off and tossed it to the sky, where it can be seen shining to this day. We call it Sirius. Groa was so enchanted with the tale, however, that she forgot all her charms and the stone axe remains to this day imbedded in Thor's skull.

Like many tales from the Younger Edda, this one contains inklings of thought we may interpret in part, although the tale has probably undergone changes fitting it to Viking humor and character. The three-year-old hero and the iron age which bore him certainly have meaning, as well as the allusion to Sirius. In rough outline the mud giant has parallels in many traditions, such as the Adam of dust in Genesis 2:7. Mankind undoubtedly took millions of years to evolve a form which could survive as a thinking, responsible type of being. Nor did the awakening of mental capacity happen overnight, for this too must have been a very gradual development. The theosophic tradition allots to the awakening of mind several million years. According to the Stanzas of Dzyan the Sons of Mind (manasaputras), which aroused the thinking faculty in the human race, were unable to imbody in the earliest forms of humans, or even as late as in the early third humanity. These were, they said, ''no fit vehicles for us.'' The curious little ''mudheads'' found in the Mexican countryside may also represent that phase of our development. Only gradually, as the vehicles became ready, were the third ''root race'' humans capable of receiving the stimulus of mind from those who had graduated from the human phase of evolution in a previous world cycle. The presently human race will, if successful in completing its evolution as sapient souls, in turn be due to enlighten and inspire those who are now ''the dwarfs in Dvalin's train'' -- in some far-off future aeon on a new and reborn earth, successor to the globe we help comprise today.


by Elsa-Brita Titchenell

Rig, Loki, and the Mind

One of the most inspiring events related in every mythology and scripture, though in various ways, is what the Edda calls the coming of Rig. Rig is a ray or personification of Heimdal, the solar essence, which descended to unite with the still unfinished humanity, rousing into activity the mind of the unthinking, semiconscious humans-to-be who were in due time to become as we now are.

In the Lay of Rig (chapter 18) the first attempt to produce a humanity gave rise to a race of ''thralls,'' a brutish, primitive type of human. These were born to the ''great-grandparents'' in a miserable hovel whose door was closed against the entrance of the god. A second effort was more promising: here the door of the cottage was ajar, and the god left with the ''grandparents,'' who dwelt there, his scions who were to become worthy, self-respecting folk and who gave rise to a similar race. At the third attempt, the ''parents,'' who dwelt in a mansion, welcomed the god with the door wide open. This time the divine seeding brought to birth a noble race whose descendants became regal in their own right.

It is a remarkable tale and the symbology is singularly transparent. Each race of semidivine humans refers, if the theosophic keys apply, to immense periods of time. These ''races'' have of course quite another scope than what we call races today: ethnic groups which inhabit the earth together. These, as we know, vary but little, mainly in coloration. All are one humanity. By contrast, the ''dwarf '' kingdoms display striking differences among themselves: for instance, gold and granite, both minerals, bear only slight resemblance to each other; deodars and dandelions both belong to the vegetable world, while moths and mammoths share the animal realm. Human beings alone are uniformly equipped with nearly identical forms and senses. Our differences are more pronounced in areas of ideas and feelings, talents and opinions.

The time which elapsed since the first attempt was made by the gods to awaken our intelligence until the whole human river had achieved it is not given but we may surmise that it was to be reckoned in millions of years. Myths inevitably telescope their information into the smallest possible compass. The biblical Genesis, for instance, relates the saga of man's awakening mind by saying that ''the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. . . . There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.'' (Gen. 6:24). Another version of the event is also given, when the serpent of Eden urges Eve to partake of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. He too is the awakener: Lucifer, the bright and most beautiful angel, the light-bringer who defies the elohim (gods). In the Greek myths it is Prometheus and in the Norse it is Loki. Both are titans, giants, grown to godhood through evolution. Having themselves surpassed the human stage they bring humanity divine fire from the realm of the gods. The name Loki is related to liechan or liuhan (enlighten), to the Latin luc-, lux, to the Old English leoht (light), and the Greek leukos (white). The bright star Sirius is named Lokabrenna (the burning of Loki).

The awakening of the capacity to reason, the power of self-knowledge and judgment, was the most crucial event in humanity's evolution. It brought our human river of life to the point where deliberate choices could be made, where reasoning supplants instinct, and where the knowledge of good and evil will be a deciding factor in the further development of the species. The unthinking kingdoms are guided by the built-in monitoring of instinct, which permits only limited freedom, but once the mind becomes active, aware of itself as a separate being, there comes into play a corresponding responsibility and the doer is accountable for everything he does, thinks, feels, and for his responses to the stimuli of the surrounding universe. Thereafter the godmaker cannot turn back. Each moment brings a choice, and every choice produces an endless stream of consequences, each stemming from its predecessor. Through many wrong choices Loki has become the mischief-maker, the instigator of wrongs in many tales, for he represents too often the lower, ratiocinative brain without inspiritment -- inspiration. He is, however, the constant companion of the gods and serves as go-between in their dealings with the giants. Perhaps his mischievous nature has been somewhat overemphasized for its naughty appeal to the Viking temperament. It is well to bear in mind too that, while he is often the cause of trouble in Asgard, he is also the agent for solving the problems that arise from his own doings.

So acts the mind of man: it causes us no end of difficulties when acting on its own but, when we accept the guidance of Brage, the wise bard who represents poetic inspiration, it resolves them in the end.

by Elsa-Brita Titchenell

Human Death and Rebirth

Survival after death of the body was clearly taken for granted by the Norse seers, and the adventures of consciousness continue after death without interruption. When a human body dies, the occupant embarks on a journey through the realm of Hel, queen of the dead: she is depicted as half blue, i.e., half dead yet half alive, and she is the daughter of Loki -- mind. This interesting point is made in many mythologies, which imply that death came into being following the awakening of intelligence, so that the use of this faculty and of the free will which accompanies it is universally connected with the introduction of death and the opportunity it affords the soul to evaluate and profit by the experiences undergone in life, as well as providing rest and recuperation.

When a human being dies, before embarking on the 'journey through Hel's domain, the soul is equipped with footgear strictly in accord with its character: a good and kindly person is provided with sturdy shoes whereas the gross and earthbound one is scantily shod or barefoot amid the rocks and brambles it must traverse to reach the well of Urd where its future will be decided. Urd, as we have seen, is Origin -- causes created in the past. She waters the soul's individual tree of life as well as the cosmic Yggdrasil: the past determines all one's future condition, in death as well as future lives.

At the spring of Urd the soul is judged by Odin, its inmost Self, ''father of the gods'' as well as its own ''father in heaven.'' But, although Odin pronounces he does so according to the prompting of Urd -- the soul's past determines the judgment of its inner god and its placement in the many-layered realm of Hel. Following the judgment, the soul seeks its proper habitat and finds the place that is its own by reason of affinity among the endlessly varied regions of the dead. One may enjoy sunlit meadows decked with flowers if this is in accord with its natural inclinations; another, being of evil disposition, may be confined in a venom-soaked cage beneath the nether gates that lead to inferior worlds. The Edda does not specify the duration of these after-life states, but if we may reason from logic as well as from Greek, Tibetan, and other mythical sources, it is safe to assume that each individual remains in this dream world of his own making until its attraction is exhausted. Another description of the after-death condition is given in Loki's Flyting, where the elves are present at the banquet of the gods, but sleepily unaware of their surroundings.

In due course, the Ase-maker is ready to resume its journey through life on earth. Again it visits the well of Urd, who now has the task of selecting a mother for its new birth. Once more we see the past determining the future in an inescapable sequence of cause and effect. We have seen how Bargalmer, the end result of a cosmos or any world, was ground up and saved for reuse in a subsequent manifestation as Orgalmer. The same law may be applied analogically to human life, which is a universe on a smaller scale. Just as seeds planted in the spring will, after many days and nights, bring forth their fruitage where they were sown, so seeds of thought and action must bear their harvest of good or ill in the field where they originated, even after many deaths and births.

The only true hell in the Edda is Niflhel, the sphere of absolute matter where the material for new worlds is formed out of the dregs of the old, after being ground on the mill, homogenized, reduced to formlessness. It is the caldron of Sinmara which, like the caldron of the Welsh Ceridwen, contains mother-matter. It would seem that only a soul so utterly depraved that it has no mead to contribute to its inner god can know the dread fate of total extinction; having allied its entire being with the giant-side of nature it has lost all trace of spirituality and its hamingja can no longer nurture and inspire its return to the divine spheres that are its home. Such a soul, having passed irretrievably through and beneath the house of Hel with its many halls, both sumptuous and dismal, having no increment whatever of enduring spirit, descends to the Niflhel of absolute extinction. All others visit the well of Urd for her selection of the coming lot in life: the most appropriate and useful conditions for the soul's further growth. The circumstances thus chosen may not always be to our liking, for we have not the wisdom of our divine hamingja to see the precise needs of the soul. It may well be that to one a happy life will bring expanded sympathies and greater awareness, but it is very often suffering which more effectively arouses the knowledge of others' need and the wisdom to supply it aright, mellowing the soul and enabling it to blend with the universal in divine compassion. The right and fitting selection from the well of the past will nevertheless be made.

The Edda, like other traditional classics, takes for granted the reimbodiment of consciousnesses at all levels and the absolute justice of natural law. There is a Christian gloss added at the conclusion of the second lay of Helge Hundingsbane:

It was the belief in former days that people were reborn after death; but this is now called an old wives' tale. Helge and Sigrun are said to have been born again; he was then named Helge Haddingskate and she Kara Halfdansdotter, as told in the Lays of the Crow; and she was a Valkyrie.
It is worth observing that it is in the oldest relics of any mythology that we find the largest portion of universal theosophy and the grandest concepts. It seems the intervening millennia have done little but distort the pure versions of prehistory; to reach the pristine ideas we often have to fumble through curtains of ignorant and inhibiting prejudice that have been interposed throughout centuries and that effectively conceal the jewels of thought they contain.

by Elsa-Brita Titchenell