Rasp
Senior Editor
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This booklet is written to show something of the simplicities and noble beauty of the Odinist religion as the writer sees it.
The subject is of supreme importance.
Criticism herein of any other religion is only incidental to our theme. But some criticism is inevitable.
The Odinist religion is based on an attitude to reality found in the outlook of some of our Nordic ancestors.
A. Rud Mills
Melbourne, 1957.
By the same author:
And Fear Shall Be In the Way
Guide Book for the Anglican Church of Odin
Hail Odin!
The Odinist religion is rooted in the simple outlook of the ancient Nordic peoples.
God the Nordics regarded as being too great for any man to wholly understand or wholly comprehend. But something of God they could in some measure understand, and that something they called Odin or Oddin – a diminutive of the word Od or God.
One aspect of this outlook said that all men, all kinds of men and all peoples, and, too, all visible things, were the different expressions of various powers in God.
The God of every man or race could be different, with varying degrees of difference. Views of God varied. Some types or races of men had an almost identical idea of God or Odin. That was because their spiritual origin and outlook were the same – because their race was the same. They were the expressions of a similar unseen power in God. They expressed in their lives similar modes of life.
Some types or races of men had different ideas or impulses, different views of God and the world, because they belonged to different races and were the expressions of different powers in God.
These different powers in God were recognized by our Nordic people and sometimes called the Father Spirit of the particular race or type or person.
These Nordic people believed that they themselves partook of the eternal. They believed that with death their spirits returned to the Father Spirit and lived as timeless entities with Him. Then they, with their experience of this life being made their own, and enriching them, lived after death, in a deeper and fuller life in God. Some believed that the events of earth life lived also and had their measure of immortality.
They believed that spirits of their dead existed and could or would in some measure manifest themselves, visibly or invisibly, in man’s strivings in the immediately material world.
They believed that Earth life was merely more subject to time than life after death.
They believed themselves to be sons and daughters of God and the powers in God, and that the attributes of God were theirs, however limited and qualified those attributes might be. Those attributes were capable ultimately of unrestricted extension.
Our forefathers loved poetry – the clouds were animised as wolves striving to overcome the Sun, the strife in nature was perceived by their poets and made the theme of many an effort. But they saw beyond the struggle and glimpsed the sweetness of the eternal and strove to the vital particulars of it.
Our forefathers loved nature – mountains, seas, forests, animals, cultivated fields. They reverenced the powers of the mind, which powers they believed reached their highest when they created poetry. The Ygdrasel poem – the Tree of Life – is noble poetic effort to present mankind generally with an eternal verity in spatial terms.
They believed that they existed beyond the range of their material habiliments and that they were not confined by the visible effects of change, and that after death they lived more fully.
A new world and a new heaven would be theirs and they bore their harvests of the spirit beyond death.
Some believed that ‘Is-ness’ was a feature of Reality.
The Nordic or Aryan peoples of many years ago have been often much misrepresented. Some Aryans went to Mediterranean lands, some to Egypt, and some journeyed eastward. Upon their simple and direct outlook on reality, they built up fine and noble civilizations. Greece, Rome, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia and even distant India saw them, and witnessed their wonderful contributions to the achievements of mankind.
From close contact with the ways of God in land and sea and air, was formed a true philosophic basis for all human development. They saw the sun and the stars. They wondered about them. They watched the majesty of the night and the day. They saw the sowing and the harvest and they expressed them to each other.
They thought upon the relations of God and man, the nature of God, the nature of man and of all things.
Archaeologists have revealed much of their wonderful works in Babylon and the other lands in which they settled. Aryan Sumerians were the ultimate authors of the Ten Commandments and much other guidance for man which has been incorporated in the Bible. In Rome a branch of these peoples, the Latins, drew up the Twelve Tables of the Law and there founded the great Roman civilization. And in ancient Greece they achieved standards of culture as high and noble as ever achieved by man. Their artists in Egypt sculptured the Sphinx. The architects of the great temple of Karnak dedicated their souls ‘to Odin and Thor’.
They believed there was no separation of man from the rest of the time over-riding Universe, and that man was an essential part of the universe.
Then came from later Greece the teachings of Socrates and Plato which were powerful enough and subtle enough to be used as a basis for a new concept of man’s relations with God.
These teachings were taken over by the architects of Christianity. Man and God were in effect, during the construction of that Christianity over more than sixteen centuries, set in opposition to each other. Man was abhorrently and hopelessly bad and God in Heaven perfectly good. This world was bad, Heaven was another place and was good. ‘Time’ was deemed separate from Eternity. Actions and thoughts became Good or Bad. Evil and Good became static separate things. Fixity for these people became a feature of Reality. Unity was sacrificed for Dualism to the point of complete disintegration and Naa-Strand (No-Place), as the Nordic fathers called its conclusion.
Death, not Vitality, was the measure of this code of Forgiveness, Meekness, non-Resistance and its other attitudes to Reality. Death defeated Life, and would continue to defeat Life. The Bottomless Pit yawned to engulf man and all his works.
Thus in Post-Homeric Greece, about 2,700 or 2,500 years ago, a school of thinkers headed by Socrates and Plato taught that man was separated from God. That man’s senses and man’s nature were lying, and distorting, and blinded him to the truth – consequently that man being without all merit or value was lost unless he obtained direct aid from Heaven. This was when the Nordic influence in Greece was dying due to foreign immigration and miscegenation.
One feature of this teaching developed into the Divisional theme of the Class War idea, which set men at enmity with each other, and further set subsidiary classes against each other and at last set individuals against each other.
This teaching was in conflict with the attitude of the ancient Odinists, who believed that all men and all nations with their differences comprised a unity, and that the differences acted and re-acted on each other, that all differences were valuable, that there was no separation of earthly Time from Eternity. They believed, something like Parmenides did, that what we call Time was a feature of Eternity. They believed that their senses were good gifts, and not bad as the Platonists taught.
The Plato-Socratian thinking produced unforeseen results. It brought disaster to Greece and Rome, and yet it became the basis of the Christian religion. This basic attitude judge by immediate temporalities seemed to some people harmless enough; but, like the untrue foundations of a building, it must eventually bring about a collapse of the entire structure.
Once upon a time, perhaps in the days of the original Homer in the mountain valleys of Greece, lived some remarkable persons. They apparently came there from afar.
Some of their descendents developed a theme which became the basis of a religion for millions of people.
This was the theme: –
An able man, born of poor parents, yet filled with affection and compassion for his less able and erring brethren, made it his life’s aim to ennoble their lives. To strive for worldly success and honour was too trivial for his noble nature. He saw beyond such things. He went about doing good. He gave gracious guidance pointing the way to a full life. The people for a little while applauded him. But soon the applause turned to jeers, jealousy, and hatred. Then, urged on by priests and the materially successful men, the mob cried “Crucify Him”.
The people whom he tried to save crucified him.
The crucifixion was his success. For he by his labours, his self sacrifice, his devotion to God and God’s creatures, had achieved more of life than had his murderers.
The dramatists brought out many ingenious and true observations in this drama – for instance, that there is always in every camp an unreliable person, a potential betrayer, there is always a shrewd not unkindly man, there is always a woman who gladly gives her love, there is always the “bludger”, and the cruel person, and the well-meaning person. The people he tried to save rejected the good man, and cried “Give us Barabbas”, and Barabbas was a murderer.
These dramatists, were as great as Aeschylus or the creators of Faust.
Later the story of a man crucified and buried, who survived crucifixion, was attached to the story of the good man. He recovered from his horrible ordeal and got out of his tomb. Some of his simple acquaintances saw him and saw his wounds upon him, and believed he had risen from the dead. The New Testament accounts are not very strong evidence of Jesus’s resurrection, and different Gospels narrate the resurrection differently. But Christianity’s fundamental philosophy needed and demanded such resurrection. The Odinist theme did not and does not need it.
The story of the good crucified man, the story of the man who recovered from his apparent death, and the numerous parables, the wise (and not so wise) directions for spiritual health became the Christian religion. Judaic and Nordic writers wrote it or edited it.
Through many centuries up to and even after the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, Christian writers and artists evolved the Christian religion of today. The influence of Plato-Socrates pervades the whole outlook and its consequent anachronisms. The writers aimed generally to find some direction for man in a short-visioned humanity, and to find some place for man to stand upon.
‘Greek’ Christianity has made the people Jew-following nations. Christian preachers teach Jewish history, they call the Jews God’s chosen people, and by so doing depreciate the history and spiritual values of their own nations. Even Chinese and Negroes are taught that Israel is the ‘Holy Land’.
The Christian Bible and Jewish Talmud came from various sources – from Babylon, e.g. the ‘Ten Commandments’ and much other law of Sumerian origin, much from ancient Egypt, e.g. many Psalms, and much from Greece, e.g. drama features. These facts are undeniable. The evidence is as irrefutable and available as are the proceedings at the Council of Trent. Their code is synthetic and man was forced to create it by and because of his initial error.
The efforts of these religious writers have succeeded so far, that despite its remarkable conclusions, a large part of mankind found the edifice which was thus created so resilient to attack, that they have submitted to it. They may have grumbled at it and sneered at it, attempted to change it (e.g. the Protestant Reformation) they may have seen it destroy nations and empires, but knowing its power, and the frailty of their fellow men, they have turned away from fighting it, and submitted instead to the destruction of their culture and their people.
The truth is our thinkers and philosophers were not able to perceive the cure for the overwhelming malady. The erroneous philosophic beginning should have been attacked by them, not its ludicrous conclusions. Attacking the conclusions did not destroy or even hinder their hidden source.
The authors of the Christian “Lord’s Prayer” believed in the divisional or dualistic outlook on Reality. They were more or less in accord with Plato-Socrates. They believed that Heaven and Earth were separated. The authors of the Lord’s Prayer suggested in fact that Earth and Heaven were antagonistic to each other. That Time and Eternity had nothing to do with each other. That God was perfectly good, and His creation, Man, was perfectly bad and “had no health in him.” Consider this:– “Our Father who art in Heaven,” “Thy kingdom come,” “Thy will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven.” They suggested limitations on God’s power, or on His will. The authors – put simply – did not know.
The Odinists taught that man is born into certain circumstances with certain powers and opportunities, with certain capacities, with certain desires, and with a certain vision which shows him and brings him his Gard in God. There in his Gard is his place, his road, his fulfillment, his inspiration and the sphere for his holy exercise in this life.
Every man has his Gard in God. He has his place wherein to serve and to exercise his genius, to reap his harvest and to live and work with Odin and God. In a man’s Gard is his privilege and his reward, for his rights and his duties are equally beautiful. And there he can find happiness and peace.
That part of God which is beyond a man’s knowledge and power is not his concern nor is he responsible for it. He cannot alter the course of a star.
Man’s Gard in God or Odin brings him into fellowship with all things in the universe. He plays his part in the grand orchestra. And he can hear at least something of the anthem.
Odin was also called Edin or Eden. There are those who believe that the biblical Garden of Eden is a distant echo of an ancient Odinist time.
Every Gard in God is pervaded by Odin. His spirit and power are there. Man is not alone in his Gard. God with Timelessness and his other qualities is there also and within him. Man exercises the powers which are his, using such wisdom as he has. They are his powers with which to play his part.
The Gard of every man is full of dignity and honour, for its origin, its place and its function is of the Infinite God.
Every type of mankind, every race, every nation has its Gard in God.
The woodpecker bird may not know what good it does to the tree and to all reality. The tree does not know, the stones do not know, but, as Aristotle observes, even the stones have their nameless yearnings and they serve. All have a Gard or place in God’s scheme, however dim or obscure.
Every man may rejoice in his Gard in God, it is his road to all things and his beautiful harvest. And if a doctrine or any person tells him that his Gard in God is bad or evil, or that the gifts which God has given him are bad or evil, then he should beware of such doctrine or person.
The Gard in God is a thing holy. No one may spurn his Gard without hurt and even destruction to himself and his.
No one may spurn his own Father spirit, and the spirit which expresses itself in his instinct and body, and escape hurt and death. He should not turn from his own to another. Cicero prophesied the Downfall of Rome when he saw that the Romans neglected the spirit of their Gard and worshipped the spirit fathers or Gods of strangers – and when they selves forgot their spiritual origins and followed the direction given by Plato there came the Downfall. Edward Gibbon perceived it in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
The Odinist teaches a simple beautiful theme drawn from communion with God and Nature. He makes visible truth and the sweetness of truth the basis of his teachings.
“Every man,” he says “is a child of the powers of God”. “Every man is then of divine origin, with a divine mission according to his power and perception.”
The old Nordic religion was happy in the face of the All-Father. It feared no exposure. It laughed with God. It continually strove to be in accord with the manifestations of God, so far as man could see them. Its followers rejoiced in life. Their simple duties were within their power to perform, being performed, their heritage was assured.
A multitude of laws is a poor substitute for loss of the spirit.
When man knows himself, and what he is, then laws, as they apply beyond the immediate, will become of diminishing value.
The Wonderful Norse Gods – It is beyond the powers of man to conceive and wholly understand the great Being and Vitality, in whom and by whom man lives. Some men can understand more than others.
There is however, a capacity, more or less conscious in all of us, to feel and observe something of that tremendous Being and Vitality who is, we feel, beyond all description.
Many during these days of the 20th century are anxious and even fearful. They have felt that the foundations of their live sake trembling. They have sought to find out what our Aryan Nordic forefathers thought and believed of Life and God. And the enquirers have been profoundly impressed at what they have found.
It must be remembered that the early Christians destroyed as many traces as they could of the preceeding religion. Where they could not wholly destroy, they created confusion. The later Frankish Kings destroyed the library of Nordic mythology collected by Charlemagne. They worked with enthusiasm and with almost complete success. Only a little knowledge of our forefathers’ religion was left to us, but from that little – much of it was discovered only comparatively lately in the Edda and certain sagas – a wonderful world has been opened to us.
The All-Father was the great conception of the Nordic or Norse religion. The All-Father was real. The people could see and experience something of Him, and see the vivid evidences of His overwhelming Vitality.
The Nordic All-Father was the Great One in and extending beyond man’s experience and understanding. He was all-wise, all comprehending, unconfined by Time and or Space. He was all Vitality, All-Being, He was the God-Head, and he had all the Qualities. He was extended beyond all man’s powers of conception. Man could perceive merely a part or a something of the All-Father’s Being. And man had enough wisdom to know that that part which he somewhat knew, was but a small part of the All-Father.
But that of the All-Father which men could see, filled them with wonder, awe, and praise.
Our forefathers saw with awe and affection what appeared to them to be outstanding features of the All-Father. These were features or “Sons and Daughters” of the All-Father, so distinct in themselves that they could be seen and thought of by man as entities in the All-Father.
The greatest of the “family” of the All-Father was Odin, Woden or Wotan. Odin was that of the All-Father which man in some measure may understand: Odin comprehended and was all that man could know of God. Odin’s family were distinguishable features or activities of him.
Odin was all wisdom, he was all justice, he was the ruler, he was everywhere. His power extended to all things. His spirit was unlimited by Time or Place. The day Wednesday was named after him.
Thor was Odin’s greatest son, was oft-times considered as synonymous with Odin himself. He was the fiatic or moving power in Odin. His spirit was vital, and ranged everywhere, moving all things. The day Thursday was in his honour.
Our forefathers perceived the Thor as a distinct feature of Odin ranging in and through all of God which they could know. They saw the Thor or Christos in all movement, – Heraklitos the Greek perceived it too – in change, in decay, in growth and in all vitality. This feature or activity of Odin could be perceived and thought of as of itself, almost as an entity. It was vividly manifest in the lightning and in the thunderbolt and the tempest. And further, Thor lived also in the sweetness and passing tenderness of the morning and the evening. He was the friend of man, of justice and of truth.
Of all the other gods and goddesses perhaps Frey or Freyga or Freida or Frigga or Frigg was the best loved. Like all the Gods she was often called by different names in different parts of Europe. Frey or Freyga or Frigga was motherliness and motherhood. Her presecene is ever with us. We find her spirit everywhere. She was mother of Gods and men. She loves the family man and the children and the wives.
All can see evidence of Freyga’s existence. The people, even if they could not see Freyga (or Frey or Frigga) could see her actions and see her loving care in the world and in all life. She was the beautiful Mother. She understood the love among mankind and in all sense-perceivable life. She knew in a special way the love between men and women. She understands the sorrows of mankind, the weaknesses and the pathetic foolishness of mortals, and she loved them. Nothing was too lowly for her loving care. Her nurturing love lived in all of Nature. The day Friday was named in her honour. Men and women knew Freyga (or Frigga or Freida) existed for they saw her footprints, they could see her in others and feel in themselves the tenderness and love of her presence. They prayed to her and were blessed as they prayed.
There was also Tyr or Tiw, the sword god, the god of righteous war, who teaches us to defend what is right, and is remembered in our day Tuesday.
It was inevitable that the Gods (the sons and daughters of Odin) should become personified. Most men and women needed a visual and tangible aid to understand the God. But the Northern people seemed singularly capable of thinking out the personality of the God and his various activities and functions without the aid of visual or sensible objects.
The old Norse poetic mythology told how the Odin-man, the truly great, and the Einheriar went boldly to Ragnarok, the last battle, knowing that they were going to certain death and defeat, and knowing that they were doing what their existence demanded that they should do (here it seems that Odin means “Good” and the enemy “Fenris” in this case means “Evil” – and our poet saw the sweet dawn and the coming beautiful day beyond the clash of the “Good” and “Evil.”)
Let the reader compare the men who created and composed the Edda with perhaps the greatest Christian writers – say John Milton and Dante. Let the reader say which of them thought the more deeply, the more truly, the more inspiringly. Let the reader say whose themes were the greater and the more vital. John Milton with his Satan rebelling against the Most High and “Him, the Almighty Power hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky with hideous ruin and combustion down to bottomless perdition,” and the like. With his Satan’s address to the Sun. Was his work close to Reality? Was it fruitful of life?
Milton, alas, like many a great man, draped his genius on an Untruth, and decorated it. He, though great in fact, never perceived the destroying nature of Dualism.
Milton, before beginning Paradise Lost, seriously considered writing an epic of the Nordic People. He did not, probably because the data was not readily available to him.
And Dante, with his exposition of the tortures of the damned, the heretics in his Inferno, his Dualism extended, his division of things not divided.
Dante too, believed that God was in a remote heaven manipulating the world. His terrors, his “All hope abandon” and the like. He abandons reality and the manifestations of God. What horrors he depicts! What a terrible God! He, in fact, by trying to bolster up the Christian Church, exposed it. Read his clever ill-founded work and fear his Christian Church, even if one is almost forced to laugh at its cold blooded narrowness – or is its Gorgon eye too powerful for man’s laughter.
Compare the general concepts of the writers, Milton and Dante, with the writers of the Edda, and certain sagas. No wonder Carlyle in his “Heroes and Hero Worship”, William Morris, Matthew Arnold, Longfellow and others of generous culture were profoundly impressed, even amazed with the beauty and majesty of these Nordic themes. Think for a moment of the simile of Thor and his hammer – perhaps the closest possible interpretation, in simple spatial terms, of power beyond time and space, beyond Good and Evil.
Again, compare these Odinist men with the noble Virgil. The Odinist men show greater even than Virgil was. Although we salute the man Virgil. For he somewhat saw the Dualistic death, and with his Aeneid, patriotically strove to steer the rulers of the Romans, into the paths of health, away from influence of rotting Greece.
Ceremonies can be beautiful things.
The Odinist ceremonies were more beautiful than any. These celebrate the births of the four seasons of the year, and the rising Sun. The celebrants generally, where practicable, go to a Tor or a high hill giving a wide view, or to some place of natural beauty, or to one of historic importance among their people. Many Odinist ceremonies were held in the open air. There the people gather and the Skald tells them of their places in the world, their privileges and their duties. They sing songs of praise, songs of peace, hope and struggle.
A man shall stand modestly yet bravely before his Creator, as Gylfe stood before Odin in the halls of Gladheim.
Odinists believed that guardian spirits came about them and guarded them against any ills consequent on their limitations. They believed that their welfare, outside their immediate responsibility, was in the care of such spirits, their Father Spirit and Odin. And their prayers for help were directed accordingly. They were never wholly cast down, whatever the seeming disaster. The Everlasting and its wonders and beauties, and the communion with all past, present and future was a reality and part of their existence.
Functions of Man – All the functions of man, his eating, his drinking, his sex life, his natural actions were matters for respect and honour. Disrespect and dishonour toward these things bring dire penalties. These functions are his from his father spirit and Odin.
It is good for man to seek knowledge and wisdom. The ancient poet pictured the wisest of all mankind, sacrificing his dearest possession – his eye – to drink at the fathomless well of Truth and Wisdom.
The sagamen usually presented the person they called “Odin” or “Son of Odin” as a man about fifty years old, grey-bearded, and bald of head, with perfect physique, with intelligent fine features, with one blind eye, this having been sacrificed as the price demanded by the Mimir, for drinking at the well of Truth and Wisdom.
Work is holy and life-giving, in that it brings the worker into contact with Truth, and in contact with the ways of God. Sometimes events compel him to work with desperation. Work and rest act and re-act on each other to the benefit of both. And our fathers knew that fact and said so with zeal. The Gods, sang the poet, erected a smithy in Asgard. And Thor blessed the work and the sweat of men, and the crops which were raised by this sweat.
Holy-Days – All days are holy. But we set aside those days specially honoured by our forefathers, for especial honour and solemnity, namely: Mid-Winter day, Mid-Summer day, and the Equinoxes. The Architects of Christianity borrowed these days from our forefathers’ Odinist religion. The days of the coming of Spring and Autumn, harvest and Sowing, May Day, Harvest Home and others are celebrated. There are, too, the Fridays or Freyga days or Frieda days by which women and the Queen of Heaven – the generative spirit, the Mother of God’s children – are remembered.
Our Nordic fathers said Odin married the Earth and the “spirit and the flesh were made one.”
Untruths – there is no need in our Odinist religion for a lie. A lie in religion, as in any other sphere of life, weakens. Cheating weakens too. They cause spiritual ill-health.
“Oath-breaking strikes fearful roots.” – The Edda.
Evil – The pains of evil and the terrors of loss can be the stepping stones to fuller life. The deeps are near the heights. Some day the Here and the There will become for us different from their present seeming.
All evils have their measure, and in their place will serve. Evil conquered is life won.
Force must be used, if necessary, to check and defeat the powers of Evil. The Son of Odin fought to the death. Tyr gave his right hand in the service of his fellows. “Evil shall be converted to good and be saved, and serve the good, and it shall not and must not prevail.” – The Edda.
Our forefathers’ poems or sagas were related to their morality as a guide to nobler observations of reality in all its forms, and generally offered a moral or guide to nobler life, although many of the excellent poems of our fathers were intended to give entertainment and diversion to the sagamen’s hearers.
Politics – the ruling of one person by another person – grows less under our Odinist directions, even as such ruling grows greater under religions which tend to make men robots and soulless automatons, ruled by ruthless non-spiritual men.
Punishment – Yes, we can be punished. Many among us may be inclined to feel:– “I could accuse myself of such things that it were better that my mother had not born me”. But to realise our wrong doing, to strive to correct it, guided by our instincts, is a stepping stone to life.
Forgiveness – Yes, we can see forgiveness in the greatness of God. It runs as the Thor or Christus power through all nature. And further, there lives a compensating, a healing and also corrective power. The healing may be quickened by prayer and effort.
Forgiveness is only wisdom, but must be consistent with righteousness and Vitality, (not consistent with Death, as in another religion).
“All shall return home, whatever the perils and the weariness.” “As we seek we find.” “Odin does not reject at the journey’s end.” – The Edda.
Time – Time in our physical life cannot be wholly comprehended. Yet by powers that are ours, we know it extends beyond the experience of the senses. And our duty is done, and our way secure, when we do the simple imminent duties which are presented to us and which we find.
Love of our Fellow Men – Men have duty to each other, for each and all of them are messengers of God, and we bear a duty and a privilege to love each other. Therein is sanity. Respect and affection and dignity is every man’s birth-right. Man is a brother of the stars.
“If thy kinsman offend thee revenge it not, it will be good for thee when thou art dead,” and again, “Forgive and love him who injures thee,” and “Keep on forgiving with love; consistent with vitality and righteousness.” – The Edda.
Loneliness – conscious contact with the powers of God, with the immediately ascertainable, of Odin or God, wars on loneliness. We are never alone whatever the deprivations.
Contact with human kind and natural things is needed – it is a necessity, for mental and other health. Solitary confinement can make men ill and even mad.
Thor – The Thor was the fiatic moving power ranging through all reality. The Thor was very like the Christos (Greek) or Christus (Roman) idea. Roman governors and judges claimed that in their spheres they expressed the Christus spirit. Later Christians claimed that Jesus was the Christus. Sometimes the sagamen personified the Thor. In one place it says, “And Thor strove to destroy all evil”, but he could not, and was informed by the wise ones that his success in this striving would have destroyed the world.
Division and Duality – When man believes Time and Eternity are separate or antagonistic to each other, he injures himself. Such belief is untrue and demonstrably so by immediate test. This and similar divisions, by logical necessity, demand still further divisions until the whole becomes divided and the entity and the soul are destroyed. A man or a nation accepting such an attitude to reality ultimately becomes materialistically soulless, becomes completely subject to immediate time and so dies, or in another aspect, at best, departs defeated from this life.
The world was not considered as evil by our great ancestors. It was forged, they held, with loving care by the All-Father himself, and was created, they held, from the giant mass called Ymer, deliberately, and with divine beauty – “spreading out in great plains, through which ran deep valleys and mountain ranges, with wide open seas and fast rivers.” And the All-Father breathed the breath of life into it all.
Death – The wiser, deeper nature of us joined with the flood of time and the fiatic power of the Thor or Christus, bears us onward to another bourne which it knows, undeterred by the noise and the limitations and the distractions we each of us experience. And we each, as we may, on our journey through life, gather our harvest from our own efforts and experiences; and above all from the bounteousness of God.
We rest in the Lord; we go forth to meet the Lover; we step forward and our burdens fall away; the drags upon our spirit fade to nothingness; the confusion of death passes into clarity, light and sweetness. Our work done, our purification ended and our debts paid, we pass to our great heritage.
The loving Frigga comes for us; our loved one come, the Valkyrie and the Angels come; the Christ-Thor past description comes, the tremendous Odin comes. The All-Father comes with His Gods, and they stretch out help to us. For we are of them and are their very children. And they belong to us, for we are made from them and live by them and have the qualities they have given us.
And with our fathers, we know that this wonderful world whereon we live, is not our abiding place, and with them, we know too, that we are of stuff beyond the habilaments of this immediate life.
“There is a happy land,” even though sometimes it may seem “far, far away.” Walhalla and the Garden of the great ones, the gentle and the good is not very far away. The gleam often peeps through the clouds.
The maidens who came for Arthur in the holy boat and bore him over the seas to the Islands of the Blessed, tell poetically what is in essence a truth. The Valkyrie came. The angels came. The loved ones came.
Justice tempered with mercy was, our Odinist fathers held, the way of God. And the mercy of Odin forever shielded and sweetened their lives.
Our early fathers who watched and strove asked each other in great moments:– “What Being is that which is great enough to express Time, great enough to express the stars, the vital space, the wonderful seasons, the Movement, the becoming and the going, and, the still greater Unfathomable and Time-ruling Permanence?” Then spake the sagaman, “There is another greater than Odin whom I do not dare to name.”
Said another sagaman, “I can find that Greater One than Odin, in part, by my numbers, by my sight, and by every power that I have, by my living and by my dying, and I find that that Greater One is of infinite kindness and mercy and is my Eternal Home and the Eternal Home of all mankind and of all that is of Him.” (The Edda, freely translated.)
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The Call of Our Ancient Nordic Religion
by
A. Rud Mills
The Call of Our Ancient Nordic Religion
by
A. Rud Mills
Reflections on the Theological Content of the Sagas
Northern World
Coventry, England
1957
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Coventry, England
1957
Distributed by The Odinic Rite
In reverence and commemoration of Else Christensen, The Folk Mother, who made this work available.
Though passed from Midgarth, her Light ever shines.
Hail Else Christensen
1913 – 2005 ce.
In reverence and commemoration of Else Christensen, The Folk Mother, who made this work available.
Though passed from Midgarth, her Light ever shines.
Hail Else Christensen
1913 – 2005 ce.
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FOREWORD
This booklet is written to show something of the simplicities and noble beauty of the Odinist religion as the writer sees it.
The subject is of supreme importance.
Criticism herein of any other religion is only incidental to our theme. But some criticism is inevitable.
The Odinist religion is based on an attitude to reality found in the outlook of some of our Nordic ancestors.
A. Rud Mills
Melbourne, 1957.
By the same author:
And Fear Shall Be In the Way
Guide Book for the Anglican Church of Odin
Hail Odin!
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The Call of Our Ancient Nordic Religion
Chapter One
The Call of Our Ancient Nordic Religion
Chapter One
The Odinist religion is rooted in the simple outlook of the ancient Nordic peoples.
God the Nordics regarded as being too great for any man to wholly understand or wholly comprehend. But something of God they could in some measure understand, and that something they called Odin or Oddin – a diminutive of the word Od or God.
One aspect of this outlook said that all men, all kinds of men and all peoples, and, too, all visible things, were the different expressions of various powers in God.
The God of every man or race could be different, with varying degrees of difference. Views of God varied. Some types or races of men had an almost identical idea of God or Odin. That was because their spiritual origin and outlook were the same – because their race was the same. They were the expressions of a similar unseen power in God. They expressed in their lives similar modes of life.
Some types or races of men had different ideas or impulses, different views of God and the world, because they belonged to different races and were the expressions of different powers in God.
These different powers in God were recognized by our Nordic people and sometimes called the Father Spirit of the particular race or type or person.
These Nordic people believed that they themselves partook of the eternal. They believed that with death their spirits returned to the Father Spirit and lived as timeless entities with Him. Then they, with their experience of this life being made their own, and enriching them, lived after death, in a deeper and fuller life in God. Some believed that the events of earth life lived also and had their measure of immortality.
They believed that spirits of their dead existed and could or would in some measure manifest themselves, visibly or invisibly, in man’s strivings in the immediately material world.
They believed that Earth life was merely more subject to time than life after death.
They believed themselves to be sons and daughters of God and the powers in God, and that the attributes of God were theirs, however limited and qualified those attributes might be. Those attributes were capable ultimately of unrestricted extension.
Our forefathers loved poetry – the clouds were animised as wolves striving to overcome the Sun, the strife in nature was perceived by their poets and made the theme of many an effort. But they saw beyond the struggle and glimpsed the sweetness of the eternal and strove to the vital particulars of it.
Our forefathers loved nature – mountains, seas, forests, animals, cultivated fields. They reverenced the powers of the mind, which powers they believed reached their highest when they created poetry. The Ygdrasel poem – the Tree of Life – is noble poetic effort to present mankind generally with an eternal verity in spatial terms.
They believed that they existed beyond the range of their material habiliments and that they were not confined by the visible effects of change, and that after death they lived more fully.
A new world and a new heaven would be theirs and they bore their harvests of the spirit beyond death.
Some believed that ‘Is-ness’ was a feature of Reality.
Chapter Two
The Nordic or Aryan peoples of many years ago have been often much misrepresented. Some Aryans went to Mediterranean lands, some to Egypt, and some journeyed eastward. Upon their simple and direct outlook on reality, they built up fine and noble civilizations. Greece, Rome, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia and even distant India saw them, and witnessed their wonderful contributions to the achievements of mankind.
From close contact with the ways of God in land and sea and air, was formed a true philosophic basis for all human development. They saw the sun and the stars. They wondered about them. They watched the majesty of the night and the day. They saw the sowing and the harvest and they expressed them to each other.
They thought upon the relations of God and man, the nature of God, the nature of man and of all things.
Archaeologists have revealed much of their wonderful works in Babylon and the other lands in which they settled. Aryan Sumerians were the ultimate authors of the Ten Commandments and much other guidance for man which has been incorporated in the Bible. In Rome a branch of these peoples, the Latins, drew up the Twelve Tables of the Law and there founded the great Roman civilization. And in ancient Greece they achieved standards of culture as high and noble as ever achieved by man. Their artists in Egypt sculptured the Sphinx. The architects of the great temple of Karnak dedicated their souls ‘to Odin and Thor’.
They believed there was no separation of man from the rest of the time over-riding Universe, and that man was an essential part of the universe.
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Then came from later Greece the teachings of Socrates and Plato which were powerful enough and subtle enough to be used as a basis for a new concept of man’s relations with God.
These teachings were taken over by the architects of Christianity. Man and God were in effect, during the construction of that Christianity over more than sixteen centuries, set in opposition to each other. Man was abhorrently and hopelessly bad and God in Heaven perfectly good. This world was bad, Heaven was another place and was good. ‘Time’ was deemed separate from Eternity. Actions and thoughts became Good or Bad. Evil and Good became static separate things. Fixity for these people became a feature of Reality. Unity was sacrificed for Dualism to the point of complete disintegration and Naa-Strand (No-Place), as the Nordic fathers called its conclusion.
Death, not Vitality, was the measure of this code of Forgiveness, Meekness, non-Resistance and its other attitudes to Reality. Death defeated Life, and would continue to defeat Life. The Bottomless Pit yawned to engulf man and all his works.
Thus in Post-Homeric Greece, about 2,700 or 2,500 years ago, a school of thinkers headed by Socrates and Plato taught that man was separated from God. That man’s senses and man’s nature were lying, and distorting, and blinded him to the truth – consequently that man being without all merit or value was lost unless he obtained direct aid from Heaven. This was when the Nordic influence in Greece was dying due to foreign immigration and miscegenation.
One feature of this teaching developed into the Divisional theme of the Class War idea, which set men at enmity with each other, and further set subsidiary classes against each other and at last set individuals against each other.
This teaching was in conflict with the attitude of the ancient Odinists, who believed that all men and all nations with their differences comprised a unity, and that the differences acted and re-acted on each other, that all differences were valuable, that there was no separation of earthly Time from Eternity. They believed, something like Parmenides did, that what we call Time was a feature of Eternity. They believed that their senses were good gifts, and not bad as the Platonists taught.
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The Plato-Socratian thinking produced unforeseen results. It brought disaster to Greece and Rome, and yet it became the basis of the Christian religion. This basic attitude judge by immediate temporalities seemed to some people harmless enough; but, like the untrue foundations of a building, it must eventually bring about a collapse of the entire structure.
Chapter Three
Once upon a time, perhaps in the days of the original Homer in the mountain valleys of Greece, lived some remarkable persons. They apparently came there from afar.
Some of their descendents developed a theme which became the basis of a religion for millions of people.
This was the theme: –
An able man, born of poor parents, yet filled with affection and compassion for his less able and erring brethren, made it his life’s aim to ennoble their lives. To strive for worldly success and honour was too trivial for his noble nature. He saw beyond such things. He went about doing good. He gave gracious guidance pointing the way to a full life. The people for a little while applauded him. But soon the applause turned to jeers, jealousy, and hatred. Then, urged on by priests and the materially successful men, the mob cried “Crucify Him”.
The people whom he tried to save crucified him.
The crucifixion was his success. For he by his labours, his self sacrifice, his devotion to God and God’s creatures, had achieved more of life than had his murderers.
The dramatists brought out many ingenious and true observations in this drama – for instance, that there is always in every camp an unreliable person, a potential betrayer, there is always a shrewd not unkindly man, there is always a woman who gladly gives her love, there is always the “bludger”, and the cruel person, and the well-meaning person. The people he tried to save rejected the good man, and cried “Give us Barabbas”, and Barabbas was a murderer.
These dramatists, were as great as Aeschylus or the creators of Faust.
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Later the story of a man crucified and buried, who survived crucifixion, was attached to the story of the good man. He recovered from his horrible ordeal and got out of his tomb. Some of his simple acquaintances saw him and saw his wounds upon him, and believed he had risen from the dead. The New Testament accounts are not very strong evidence of Jesus’s resurrection, and different Gospels narrate the resurrection differently. But Christianity’s fundamental philosophy needed and demanded such resurrection. The Odinist theme did not and does not need it.
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The story of the good crucified man, the story of the man who recovered from his apparent death, and the numerous parables, the wise (and not so wise) directions for spiritual health became the Christian religion. Judaic and Nordic writers wrote it or edited it.
Through many centuries up to and even after the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, Christian writers and artists evolved the Christian religion of today. The influence of Plato-Socrates pervades the whole outlook and its consequent anachronisms. The writers aimed generally to find some direction for man in a short-visioned humanity, and to find some place for man to stand upon.
‘Greek’ Christianity has made the people Jew-following nations. Christian preachers teach Jewish history, they call the Jews God’s chosen people, and by so doing depreciate the history and spiritual values of their own nations. Even Chinese and Negroes are taught that Israel is the ‘Holy Land’.
The Christian Bible and Jewish Talmud came from various sources – from Babylon, e.g. the ‘Ten Commandments’ and much other law of Sumerian origin, much from ancient Egypt, e.g. many Psalms, and much from Greece, e.g. drama features. These facts are undeniable. The evidence is as irrefutable and available as are the proceedings at the Council of Trent. Their code is synthetic and man was forced to create it by and because of his initial error.
The efforts of these religious writers have succeeded so far, that despite its remarkable conclusions, a large part of mankind found the edifice which was thus created so resilient to attack, that they have submitted to it. They may have grumbled at it and sneered at it, attempted to change it (e.g. the Protestant Reformation) they may have seen it destroy nations and empires, but knowing its power, and the frailty of their fellow men, they have turned away from fighting it, and submitted instead to the destruction of their culture and their people.
The truth is our thinkers and philosophers were not able to perceive the cure for the overwhelming malady. The erroneous philosophic beginning should have been attacked by them, not its ludicrous conclusions. Attacking the conclusions did not destroy or even hinder their hidden source.
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The authors of the Christian “Lord’s Prayer” believed in the divisional or dualistic outlook on Reality. They were more or less in accord with Plato-Socrates. They believed that Heaven and Earth were separated. The authors of the Lord’s Prayer suggested in fact that Earth and Heaven were antagonistic to each other. That Time and Eternity had nothing to do with each other. That God was perfectly good, and His creation, Man, was perfectly bad and “had no health in him.” Consider this:– “Our Father who art in Heaven,” “Thy kingdom come,” “Thy will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven.” They suggested limitations on God’s power, or on His will. The authors – put simply – did not know.
Chapter Four
The Odinists taught that man is born into certain circumstances with certain powers and opportunities, with certain capacities, with certain desires, and with a certain vision which shows him and brings him his Gard in God. There in his Gard is his place, his road, his fulfillment, his inspiration and the sphere for his holy exercise in this life.
Every man has his Gard in God. He has his place wherein to serve and to exercise his genius, to reap his harvest and to live and work with Odin and God. In a man’s Gard is his privilege and his reward, for his rights and his duties are equally beautiful. And there he can find happiness and peace.
That part of God which is beyond a man’s knowledge and power is not his concern nor is he responsible for it. He cannot alter the course of a star.
Man’s Gard in God or Odin brings him into fellowship with all things in the universe. He plays his part in the grand orchestra. And he can hear at least something of the anthem.
Odin was also called Edin or Eden. There are those who believe that the biblical Garden of Eden is a distant echo of an ancient Odinist time.
Every Gard in God is pervaded by Odin. His spirit and power are there. Man is not alone in his Gard. God with Timelessness and his other qualities is there also and within him. Man exercises the powers which are his, using such wisdom as he has. They are his powers with which to play his part.
The Gard of every man is full of dignity and honour, for its origin, its place and its function is of the Infinite God.
Every type of mankind, every race, every nation has its Gard in God.
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The woodpecker bird may not know what good it does to the tree and to all reality. The tree does not know, the stones do not know, but, as Aristotle observes, even the stones have their nameless yearnings and they serve. All have a Gard or place in God’s scheme, however dim or obscure.
Every man may rejoice in his Gard in God, it is his road to all things and his beautiful harvest. And if a doctrine or any person tells him that his Gard in God is bad or evil, or that the gifts which God has given him are bad or evil, then he should beware of such doctrine or person.
The Gard in God is a thing holy. No one may spurn his Gard without hurt and even destruction to himself and his.
No one may spurn his own Father spirit, and the spirit which expresses itself in his instinct and body, and escape hurt and death. He should not turn from his own to another. Cicero prophesied the Downfall of Rome when he saw that the Romans neglected the spirit of their Gard and worshipped the spirit fathers or Gods of strangers – and when they selves forgot their spiritual origins and followed the direction given by Plato there came the Downfall. Edward Gibbon perceived it in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
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The Odinist teaches a simple beautiful theme drawn from communion with God and Nature. He makes visible truth and the sweetness of truth the basis of his teachings.
“Every man,” he says “is a child of the powers of God”. “Every man is then of divine origin, with a divine mission according to his power and perception.”
The old Nordic religion was happy in the face of the All-Father. It feared no exposure. It laughed with God. It continually strove to be in accord with the manifestations of God, so far as man could see them. Its followers rejoiced in life. Their simple duties were within their power to perform, being performed, their heritage was assured.
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A multitude of laws is a poor substitute for loss of the spirit.
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When man knows himself, and what he is, then laws, as they apply beyond the immediate, will become of diminishing value.
Chapter Five
The Wonderful Norse Gods – It is beyond the powers of man to conceive and wholly understand the great Being and Vitality, in whom and by whom man lives. Some men can understand more than others.
There is however, a capacity, more or less conscious in all of us, to feel and observe something of that tremendous Being and Vitality who is, we feel, beyond all description.
Many during these days of the 20th century are anxious and even fearful. They have felt that the foundations of their live sake trembling. They have sought to find out what our Aryan Nordic forefathers thought and believed of Life and God. And the enquirers have been profoundly impressed at what they have found.
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It must be remembered that the early Christians destroyed as many traces as they could of the preceeding religion. Where they could not wholly destroy, they created confusion. The later Frankish Kings destroyed the library of Nordic mythology collected by Charlemagne. They worked with enthusiasm and with almost complete success. Only a little knowledge of our forefathers’ religion was left to us, but from that little – much of it was discovered only comparatively lately in the Edda and certain sagas – a wonderful world has been opened to us.
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The All-Father was the great conception of the Nordic or Norse religion. The All-Father was real. The people could see and experience something of Him, and see the vivid evidences of His overwhelming Vitality.
The Nordic All-Father was the Great One in and extending beyond man’s experience and understanding. He was all-wise, all comprehending, unconfined by Time and or Space. He was all Vitality, All-Being, He was the God-Head, and he had all the Qualities. He was extended beyond all man’s powers of conception. Man could perceive merely a part or a something of the All-Father’s Being. And man had enough wisdom to know that that part which he somewhat knew, was but a small part of the All-Father.
But that of the All-Father which men could see, filled them with wonder, awe, and praise.
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Our forefathers saw with awe and affection what appeared to them to be outstanding features of the All-Father. These were features or “Sons and Daughters” of the All-Father, so distinct in themselves that they could be seen and thought of by man as entities in the All-Father.
The greatest of the “family” of the All-Father was Odin, Woden or Wotan. Odin was that of the All-Father which man in some measure may understand: Odin comprehended and was all that man could know of God. Odin’s family were distinguishable features or activities of him.
Odin was all wisdom, he was all justice, he was the ruler, he was everywhere. His power extended to all things. His spirit was unlimited by Time or Place. The day Wednesday was named after him.
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Thor was Odin’s greatest son, was oft-times considered as synonymous with Odin himself. He was the fiatic or moving power in Odin. His spirit was vital, and ranged everywhere, moving all things. The day Thursday was in his honour.
Our forefathers perceived the Thor as a distinct feature of Odin ranging in and through all of God which they could know. They saw the Thor or Christos in all movement, – Heraklitos the Greek perceived it too – in change, in decay, in growth and in all vitality. This feature or activity of Odin could be perceived and thought of as of itself, almost as an entity. It was vividly manifest in the lightning and in the thunderbolt and the tempest. And further, Thor lived also in the sweetness and passing tenderness of the morning and the evening. He was the friend of man, of justice and of truth.
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Of all the other gods and goddesses perhaps Frey or Freyga or Freida or Frigga or Frigg was the best loved. Like all the Gods she was often called by different names in different parts of Europe. Frey or Freyga or Frigga was motherliness and motherhood. Her presecene is ever with us. We find her spirit everywhere. She was mother of Gods and men. She loves the family man and the children and the wives.
All can see evidence of Freyga’s existence. The people, even if they could not see Freyga (or Frey or Frigga) could see her actions and see her loving care in the world and in all life. She was the beautiful Mother. She understood the love among mankind and in all sense-perceivable life. She knew in a special way the love between men and women. She understands the sorrows of mankind, the weaknesses and the pathetic foolishness of mortals, and she loved them. Nothing was too lowly for her loving care. Her nurturing love lived in all of Nature. The day Friday was named in her honour. Men and women knew Freyga (or Frigga or Freida) existed for they saw her footprints, they could see her in others and feel in themselves the tenderness and love of her presence. They prayed to her and were blessed as they prayed.
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There was also Tyr or Tiw, the sword god, the god of righteous war, who teaches us to defend what is right, and is remembered in our day Tuesday.
It was inevitable that the Gods (the sons and daughters of Odin) should become personified. Most men and women needed a visual and tangible aid to understand the God. But the Northern people seemed singularly capable of thinking out the personality of the God and his various activities and functions without the aid of visual or sensible objects.
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The old Norse poetic mythology told how the Odin-man, the truly great, and the Einheriar went boldly to Ragnarok, the last battle, knowing that they were going to certain death and defeat, and knowing that they were doing what their existence demanded that they should do (here it seems that Odin means “Good” and the enemy “Fenris” in this case means “Evil” – and our poet saw the sweet dawn and the coming beautiful day beyond the clash of the “Good” and “Evil.”)
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Let the reader compare the men who created and composed the Edda with perhaps the greatest Christian writers – say John Milton and Dante. Let the reader say which of them thought the more deeply, the more truly, the more inspiringly. Let the reader say whose themes were the greater and the more vital. John Milton with his Satan rebelling against the Most High and “Him, the Almighty Power hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky with hideous ruin and combustion down to bottomless perdition,” and the like. With his Satan’s address to the Sun. Was his work close to Reality? Was it fruitful of life?
Milton, alas, like many a great man, draped his genius on an Untruth, and decorated it. He, though great in fact, never perceived the destroying nature of Dualism.
Milton, before beginning Paradise Lost, seriously considered writing an epic of the Nordic People. He did not, probably because the data was not readily available to him.
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And Dante, with his exposition of the tortures of the damned, the heretics in his Inferno, his Dualism extended, his division of things not divided.
Dante too, believed that God was in a remote heaven manipulating the world. His terrors, his “All hope abandon” and the like. He abandons reality and the manifestations of God. What horrors he depicts! What a terrible God! He, in fact, by trying to bolster up the Christian Church, exposed it. Read his clever ill-founded work and fear his Christian Church, even if one is almost forced to laugh at its cold blooded narrowness – or is its Gorgon eye too powerful for man’s laughter.
Compare the general concepts of the writers, Milton and Dante, with the writers of the Edda, and certain sagas. No wonder Carlyle in his “Heroes and Hero Worship”, William Morris, Matthew Arnold, Longfellow and others of generous culture were profoundly impressed, even amazed with the beauty and majesty of these Nordic themes. Think for a moment of the simile of Thor and his hammer – perhaps the closest possible interpretation, in simple spatial terms, of power beyond time and space, beyond Good and Evil.
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Again, compare these Odinist men with the noble Virgil. The Odinist men show greater even than Virgil was. Although we salute the man Virgil. For he somewhat saw the Dualistic death, and with his Aeneid, patriotically strove to steer the rulers of the Romans, into the paths of health, away from influence of rotting Greece.
Chapter Six
Ceremonies can be beautiful things.
The Odinist ceremonies were more beautiful than any. These celebrate the births of the four seasons of the year, and the rising Sun. The celebrants generally, where practicable, go to a Tor or a high hill giving a wide view, or to some place of natural beauty, or to one of historic importance among their people. Many Odinist ceremonies were held in the open air. There the people gather and the Skald tells them of their places in the world, their privileges and their duties. They sing songs of praise, songs of peace, hope and struggle.
A man shall stand modestly yet bravely before his Creator, as Gylfe stood before Odin in the halls of Gladheim.
Odinists believed that guardian spirits came about them and guarded them against any ills consequent on their limitations. They believed that their welfare, outside their immediate responsibility, was in the care of such spirits, their Father Spirit and Odin. And their prayers for help were directed accordingly. They were never wholly cast down, whatever the seeming disaster. The Everlasting and its wonders and beauties, and the communion with all past, present and future was a reality and part of their existence.
Functions of Man – All the functions of man, his eating, his drinking, his sex life, his natural actions were matters for respect and honour. Disrespect and dishonour toward these things bring dire penalties. These functions are his from his father spirit and Odin.
It is good for man to seek knowledge and wisdom. The ancient poet pictured the wisest of all mankind, sacrificing his dearest possession – his eye – to drink at the fathomless well of Truth and Wisdom.
The sagamen usually presented the person they called “Odin” or “Son of Odin” as a man about fifty years old, grey-bearded, and bald of head, with perfect physique, with intelligent fine features, with one blind eye, this having been sacrificed as the price demanded by the Mimir, for drinking at the well of Truth and Wisdom.
Work is holy and life-giving, in that it brings the worker into contact with Truth, and in contact with the ways of God. Sometimes events compel him to work with desperation. Work and rest act and re-act on each other to the benefit of both. And our fathers knew that fact and said so with zeal. The Gods, sang the poet, erected a smithy in Asgard. And Thor blessed the work and the sweat of men, and the crops which were raised by this sweat.
Holy-Days – All days are holy. But we set aside those days specially honoured by our forefathers, for especial honour and solemnity, namely: Mid-Winter day, Mid-Summer day, and the Equinoxes. The Architects of Christianity borrowed these days from our forefathers’ Odinist religion. The days of the coming of Spring and Autumn, harvest and Sowing, May Day, Harvest Home and others are celebrated. There are, too, the Fridays or Freyga days or Frieda days by which women and the Queen of Heaven – the generative spirit, the Mother of God’s children – are remembered.
Our Nordic fathers said Odin married the Earth and the “spirit and the flesh were made one.”
Untruths – there is no need in our Odinist religion for a lie. A lie in religion, as in any other sphere of life, weakens. Cheating weakens too. They cause spiritual ill-health.
“Oath-breaking strikes fearful roots.” – The Edda.
Evil – The pains of evil and the terrors of loss can be the stepping stones to fuller life. The deeps are near the heights. Some day the Here and the There will become for us different from their present seeming.
All evils have their measure, and in their place will serve. Evil conquered is life won.
Force must be used, if necessary, to check and defeat the powers of Evil. The Son of Odin fought to the death. Tyr gave his right hand in the service of his fellows. “Evil shall be converted to good and be saved, and serve the good, and it shall not and must not prevail.” – The Edda.
Our forefathers’ poems or sagas were related to their morality as a guide to nobler observations of reality in all its forms, and generally offered a moral or guide to nobler life, although many of the excellent poems of our fathers were intended to give entertainment and diversion to the sagamen’s hearers.
Politics – the ruling of one person by another person – grows less under our Odinist directions, even as such ruling grows greater under religions which tend to make men robots and soulless automatons, ruled by ruthless non-spiritual men.
Punishment – Yes, we can be punished. Many among us may be inclined to feel:– “I could accuse myself of such things that it were better that my mother had not born me”. But to realise our wrong doing, to strive to correct it, guided by our instincts, is a stepping stone to life.
Forgiveness – Yes, we can see forgiveness in the greatness of God. It runs as the Thor or Christus power through all nature. And further, there lives a compensating, a healing and also corrective power. The healing may be quickened by prayer and effort.
Forgiveness is only wisdom, but must be consistent with righteousness and Vitality, (not consistent with Death, as in another religion).
“All shall return home, whatever the perils and the weariness.” “As we seek we find.” “Odin does not reject at the journey’s end.” – The Edda.
Time – Time in our physical life cannot be wholly comprehended. Yet by powers that are ours, we know it extends beyond the experience of the senses. And our duty is done, and our way secure, when we do the simple imminent duties which are presented to us and which we find.
Love of our Fellow Men – Men have duty to each other, for each and all of them are messengers of God, and we bear a duty and a privilege to love each other. Therein is sanity. Respect and affection and dignity is every man’s birth-right. Man is a brother of the stars.
“If thy kinsman offend thee revenge it not, it will be good for thee when thou art dead,” and again, “Forgive and love him who injures thee,” and “Keep on forgiving with love; consistent with vitality and righteousness.” – The Edda.
Loneliness – conscious contact with the powers of God, with the immediately ascertainable, of Odin or God, wars on loneliness. We are never alone whatever the deprivations.
Contact with human kind and natural things is needed – it is a necessity, for mental and other health. Solitary confinement can make men ill and even mad.
Thor – The Thor was the fiatic moving power ranging through all reality. The Thor was very like the Christos (Greek) or Christus (Roman) idea. Roman governors and judges claimed that in their spheres they expressed the Christus spirit. Later Christians claimed that Jesus was the Christus. Sometimes the sagamen personified the Thor. In one place it says, “And Thor strove to destroy all evil”, but he could not, and was informed by the wise ones that his success in this striving would have destroyed the world.
Division and Duality – When man believes Time and Eternity are separate or antagonistic to each other, he injures himself. Such belief is untrue and demonstrably so by immediate test. This and similar divisions, by logical necessity, demand still further divisions until the whole becomes divided and the entity and the soul are destroyed. A man or a nation accepting such an attitude to reality ultimately becomes materialistically soulless, becomes completely subject to immediate time and so dies, or in another aspect, at best, departs defeated from this life.
The world was not considered as evil by our great ancestors. It was forged, they held, with loving care by the All-Father himself, and was created, they held, from the giant mass called Ymer, deliberately, and with divine beauty – “spreading out in great plains, through which ran deep valleys and mountain ranges, with wide open seas and fast rivers.” And the All-Father breathed the breath of life into it all.
Death – The wiser, deeper nature of us joined with the flood of time and the fiatic power of the Thor or Christus, bears us onward to another bourne which it knows, undeterred by the noise and the limitations and the distractions we each of us experience. And we each, as we may, on our journey through life, gather our harvest from our own efforts and experiences; and above all from the bounteousness of God.
We rest in the Lord; we go forth to meet the Lover; we step forward and our burdens fall away; the drags upon our spirit fade to nothingness; the confusion of death passes into clarity, light and sweetness. Our work done, our purification ended and our debts paid, we pass to our great heritage.
The loving Frigga comes for us; our loved one come, the Valkyrie and the Angels come; the Christ-Thor past description comes, the tremendous Odin comes. The All-Father comes with His Gods, and they stretch out help to us. For we are of them and are their very children. And they belong to us, for we are made from them and live by them and have the qualities they have given us.
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And with our fathers, we know that this wonderful world whereon we live, is not our abiding place, and with them, we know too, that we are of stuff beyond the habilaments of this immediate life.
“There is a happy land,” even though sometimes it may seem “far, far away.” Walhalla and the Garden of the great ones, the gentle and the good is not very far away. The gleam often peeps through the clouds.
The maidens who came for Arthur in the holy boat and bore him over the seas to the Islands of the Blessed, tell poetically what is in essence a truth. The Valkyrie came. The angels came. The loved ones came.
Justice tempered with mercy was, our Odinist fathers held, the way of God. And the mercy of Odin forever shielded and sweetened their lives.
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Our early fathers who watched and strove asked each other in great moments:– “What Being is that which is great enough to express Time, great enough to express the stars, the vital space, the wonderful seasons, the Movement, the becoming and the going, and, the still greater Unfathomable and Time-ruling Permanence?” Then spake the sagaman, “There is another greater than Odin whom I do not dare to name.”
Said another sagaman, “I can find that Greater One than Odin, in part, by my numbers, by my sight, and by every power that I have, by my living and by my dying, and I find that that Greater One is of infinite kindness and mercy and is my Eternal Home and the Eternal Home of all mankind and of all that is of Him.” (The Edda, freely translated.)
