Thulean Archives

Do you know Odin? Let's find out. Veit ek að ek hekk [I know that I hung] vindga meiði á [On the windswept tree] nætr allar níu, [Nine long nights] geiri undaðr [Wounded with a spear] ok gefinn Óðni, [And given to Óðinn] sjálfrsjálfum mér [Myself given to myself] á þeim meiði er manngi veit [On that tree of which no man knows] hvers hann af rótum renn. [From what roots it runs] Við hleifi mik seldu [They gave me no bread] né við hornigi [Nor drink from a horn] nýsta ek niðr, nam ek upp rúnar, [I peered down, I picked up the runes] æpandi nam, [Screaming I took them] fell ek aftr þaðan. [Then i fell again from there] This myth deals with reincarnation. The sum of our ancestors returning to life via the womb of the mother. He hangs on this tree of life, the placenta, for nine months, neither drinking nor eating, because he gets all his nourishment via the umbilical cord, the spare. And he doesn't fall from the tree, as such. He falls from this "tree" again.^[1] But our forebears didn't build the burial mounds for everyone. They didn't believe that everyone would return to life. They believed only that the honorable would return to life.^[2] And all the others, they don't reincarnate. But there's no punishment. There's no hell. It simply means that they die and go away. They die out like^[3] a flame that runs out of fuel. The purpose is to keep building on that ancestral divinity. Or if you're brand new, to turn your little spark into a big burning fire. The point is not to worship the gods. The point is to become the gods.^[4]

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1. He is born AGAIN.
2. "There is not death for the honorable, only a change of bodies."
3. We forget them.
4. Again.