Odin: Ecstasy, Runes, & Norse Magic - Diana L. Paxson 2017

Rider of the Tree

It is time to speak at the seat of Thul

At the Well of Wyrd.

I saw and stayed silent, I saw and thought:

I heard men speak;

Of runes they spoke, nor were they silent at council,

At the hall of Hár, in the hall of Hár:

I heard them say these things.

—Havamál 111

As we have seen, Odin appears in many tales, but three of them in particular have a weight that transcends mere story—how he got the mead of poetry, how he gave one of his eyes for a drink from the Well of Mimir, and the deed for which he may be most famed: his self-sacrifice on the Worldtree to gain the runes.

Once my own wanderings had brought me to that unexpected encounter with Odin, I had to learn how to work with him. Trance journeys were useful, but I feared that when my life got busy (an outcome virtually guaranteed), I would let my spiritual practice slide as I had so many times before. I also realized that to understand Odin, I needed to know a lot more about the culture from which he came. It occurred to me that a good way to get that background would be to study the runes. And to make sure I didn't abandon that project, I resolved to start a class so that every month I would have to research another rune.

It is my good fortune to live in a community that includes a lot of extremely talented people. When I announced the class, I got an enthusiastic response, and in January 1988, a few months after my initial encounter with Odin, the class began. The fifteen people who turned up for the first meeting included several poets, a graduate student in Scandinavian studies, and another student whose study of Anglo Saxon was more recent than my own. In 1988, Heathenry as an organized spiritual path was just beginning to emerge. Everyone in the class was Pagan or Pagan-friendly, but only a few had worked with the Norse gods.

My plan for the class was to study the Elder Futhark two runes at a time, collecting and comparing information from the old rune poems and the lore and looking for ways to apply the concepts to our own lives. Ralph Blum had popularized his own unique interpretation of the runes, and Ed Fitch had written the Wicca-based Rites of Odin, but Edred Thorsson (1984) was the only writer with a scholarly background who approached the runes as a spiritual system.

My class worked together to find information and share ideas on how the runes, or the forces behind them, manifest in the world. To internalize what we were learning, we did rituals. And every month, as I wondered what I should do for the next class, I would open my mind to Odin; one word would lead on to another word, one insight to another, giving me a periodic download of information.

Like the letters in the Hebrew alphabet, the runestaves work simultaneously with vision, sound, and memory. We found that each rune served as a doorway to some aspect of Germanic culture. By the time we reached the last rune in the Elder Futhark, Othala, we had encountered all the major gods and goddesses, the most important myths, and a great deal of the history and values behind them. The material generated for this class, expanded and refined by additional rounds in the years that followed, eventually became my first nonfiction book, Taking up the Runes. What follows is based on the introduction to the runes that I give at festivals and conferences. For a more inclusive and detailed account, see the books on runes listed at the end of this chapter.

Mysteries and Alphabets

Most people today would call “” a “rune.” Properly speaking, it is a rune stave (a runic “letter”). Rune is actually a term that has been applied to many things considered magical, such as the Saami rune drum (which has no rune staves on it). It is usually translated as “secret” or “mystery.” A spell or formula can be called a “rune.” Furthermore, the staves most often seen in contemporary magical and religious contexts are only one version of the futhark, a word made from the sounds of the first six staves of the rune row, the equivalent of the Latin letter alphabet.

There are two ways to explain the origin of the runes. One is the story of how Odin hanged himself on the Worldtree to win them, about which we shall see more later. The other is based on archaeology. The earliest runic inscriptions date from the second century CE. Many of the rune staves resemble letters in northern Italian alphabets being used at the time. They could have been brought to Germany by Germans who had served with the Roman army, or they might have been introduced by traders. Most of the early runic texts come from what is now northern Germany and Denmark, suggesting that wherever the Elder Futhark was actually developed, it is in that area that it came into use.

Pollington concludes that “the runes are not a wholesale cultural import but a Germanic creation inspired by knowledge of at least one other, contemporary writing system (Spurklund 2010, 661). The invention of the futhark was born out of a desire to own a means of writing, and the need for such system to not be a transparent copy of the dominant (Roman) model” (Pollington 2016, 79).

There are, in fact, three futharks. The Elder Futhark, which we know from inscriptions made in Migrations Period Germany, contains twenty-four rune staves and is the version used most often in Heathen religious and magical practice today. The Anglo-Saxons carried the Continental Germanic runes to England and added nine more to bring the total to thirty-three. On the other hand, in the Viking Age the futhark was reduced to sixteen staves. Some sounds were no longer needed because the language had changed, and some runes, like Bjarkan, did double duty for two related sounds (“B” and “P”). The most common forms and order for these three futharks are given in figure 9, but in inscriptions, variations of all of them may appear. Interpretation of runic inscriptions is also complicated by the fact that spelling was not regularized, and staves or inscriptions were sometimes written right to left as well as left to right, reversed, or even upside down.

The Principal Futharks

Fig. 9. The Elder, Younger, and Anglo-Saxon Futharks

The earliest runic inscriptions are on objects—to identify the owner or maker or to empower the objects, like the bind rune of inscribed on a spearshaft from the Anglian homeland, possibly meaning “I give good luck” (Pollington 2016, 174). During the Viking period, runes were widely used for communication and sometimes for graffiti. Archaeologists found a large number of runic messages inscribed on pieces of wood in the remains of a medieval trading center beneath the modern Norwegian city of Bergen (Liestol 1966). Later, runic memorials were inscribed on stones. Today they are used primarily for magical, religious, and decorative or culture-related purposes (such as the bind rune of Bjarkan and Hagall that forms the logo for the Swedish company Bluetooth).

From time to time, someone comes along who loves Northern mythology but cannot cope with Odin or what she believes Odin to be. Usually it's because, until recently, retellings of the myths based on the 19th century version of the Norse pantheon were pretty patriarchal, and Odin, as king of the gods, was portrayed as the worst of the lot. I have even seen claims that the runes were invented by Freyja or some other goddess or god who taught them to Odin. Freyja is indeed a mistress of magic, but her specialty is seidh, not the runes. If any Power other than Odin might claim them, I would suggest the three Norns, especially if Odin “took up” the runes from the Well of Wyrd.

In her book The Norse Goddess, the Swedish artist and feminist Monica Sjoo identified aspects of Norse mythology of which she approved as ancient and authentic, while branding anything she disliked a patriarchal interpolation. Ingrid Kincaid writes on the back cover of her book on the runes that “The Runes Revealed will challenge you to remove the tainted, distorted, lens of patriarchal interpretation and start seeing the runes with clearer vision. Long before Odin, the Vikings or Christianity, the runes were.” Given that each rune is the key to an aspect of reality, I would agree, but I continue to hold that it was Odin who obtained and gave them to the world. Kincaid's book is intended to share her personal interpretations and responses to the runes, and her conclusions about their meanings are in fact not too different from my own. My feeling is that Odin doesn't care who gets the credit for finding the runes so long as you use them well.

The Tree and the Well

So where does the story about how Odin gained the runes come from? In Hávamál 138 (the Speaking of the High One), we find the following: “I know that I hung on the wind-tossed tree, nine full nights . . .” The “wind-tossed tree” is the Worldtree, Yggdrasil, “the horse of Ygg” (the Terrible One), another name for Odin. The god is therefore the Rider of the Tree.

In Völuspá 19, the seeress states,

An ash I know, named Yggdrasil,

a high tree, moistened with white mud,

from thence dews drip down into the dales.

ever green it stands over Urdh's well.

Since the Well of Urdh (Wyrd) is located at the base of the Tree, if Odin took up the runes after looking down, it may be in that Well, in which all that has been is preserved and all that is becoming is continually being “laid down,” that he found them. Or he may have encountered them in another dimension of consciousness.

In Völuspá, Yggdrasil is called an ash tree. However, according to Simek, F. R. Schröder has speculated that the name might mean “yew pillar,” based on a link between the Proto-Indo-European words for yew tree and support (Simek 2007, 375). Furthermore, in Old Norse, barraskr, the needle-ash, is another name for the yew. The Worldtree is also referred to as “ever green,” which would support its identification as a yew rather than the deciduous ash. For these reasons, although the ash is noble and beautiful, I rather favor the identification of Yggdrasil as a yew, which is the longest lived of European trees, with the age of some specimens estimated at 2,000 years old or more.

The yew was often planted in churchyards and held to be a link to the land of the dead. The flesh of the red berries of the yew can be eaten, but every other part of the tree, including the seed, is poisonous. I have been told that some people have developed headaches and hallucinations from sitting under a yew tree on a warm day. The wood of the yew is prized for making bows and also for magical staffs and wands. However, you should only work with it where there is good ventilation, especially when you are sanding it.

That said, in the trance journey that led to my first meeting with Odin, the tree up which Raven led me was the redwood, which to my Californian eyes seems more beautiful and impressive (as well as taller and older) than either the ash or the yew. Yggdrasil is the axis mundi that grows at the center of the spiritual dimension that lies within Midgard. In Siberia, the Worldtree is represented by the birch, by a saguaro among the Tohono O'odham of the American Southwest, and in Central America by the kapok. I think that in the world of the spirit, we see the Worldtree as the most impressive tree that grows in the forests of our home.

In the Norse cosmology, Midgard, our world, is in the center; the world of the gods above and the ancestors in Hel below. The configuration of the other worlds around them has been variously described. References in the lore put Niflheim in the north, slightly lower than Midgard. Jotunheim is in the east and Muspelheim in the south, which leaves the west for Vanaheim. Presumably the light elves live closer to Asgard and the svartalfar below.

From Völuspá, we know that three roots reach into the depths. Beneath one of them lies the Well of Urdh where the three Norns (figures analogous to the three fates of classical myth, though not exactly the same) dip up water to nourish the Tree. This is also the site where the gods sit in council. In his fascinating study of world and time in Germanic culture, Paul Bauschatz proposes that all the Otherworld wells described in the lore are connected. From the Well rises the Tree, containing all the worlds, whose events fall into the well in “seething, active strata” (Bauschatz 1982, 122). This creates a source of power that is drawn up through the tree to be released to the worlds.

To quote Völuspá (20) once more,

From there come maidens, knowing much lore.

Three, from the lake that's under the tree.

One is called Urd, the other Verdandi,

the third is Skuld. On wood they carved signs,

laws they laid down, lives they chose.

They worked ørlög for the sons of men.

Far from being a simple representation of past, present, and future, the Norns—Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld—represent a complex concept of time. My understanding of the discussion presented by Bauschatz (1982, 153—187) in The Well and the Tree is that the names of the first two Norns derive from tenses of the verb wairthan, “to be.” A simple preterite form of the verb gives us Urd, governing those actions from the primordial to a minute ago that have already been “laid down” in the Well. The word Verdandi is not only a present tense, but a participle that emerges from the past. The future, however, can only be expressed with the aid of a helping verb. Skuld, from a different verb, skulan, is added to another verb to indicate what shall or should happen as a result of what has gone before.

“They stress the proximity or real presence of the following action without specifically predicating it” (Bauschatz 1982, 183). I interpret this to mean that the past is fixed, and the present, the perpetual “becoming” in which we experience the world, is shaped not only by the past but also by the choices we make right now. Therefore, until those decisions become part of the past, the future can only be a probability.

The lore does not tell us on which branch of the Worldtree Odin was hanged, but it makes sense to me to place the event near the Well, where the inalterable past, the protean present, and the ever-mutating future coexist in the swirl of the cosmic cauldron that is the Well.

The Sacrifice

Here we enter the dimension of myth, where logic is transcended by meaning. In Hávamál 138, the High One speaks in both the first person and the third, observing his ordeal even as he experiences it.

By spear wounded, given to Odin,

myself to myself,

On that tree of which no man knows

the roots from which it rises.

The speaker is “given to Odin,” sjalfur sjalfum mér. To understand what a sacrifice to Odin entailed, let us consider the death of King Vikar in the complicated history of the hero Starkad, which provides much of the plot for Gautrek's saga. As the story goes, King Vikar's ship is becalmed, and divination tells them that Odin requires a human sacrifice to provide a favorable wind. Each time they cast lots, the choice falls on the king. Of course, no one wants to kill him, especially Starkad, who has been his friend and right-hand man since they were boys.

That night Starkad goes (or perhaps dreams he goes) with his foster father to a meeting in which all the participants are called by the names of (or are possessed by) the gods. “Odin” tells Starkad that he must “send the king to me.” In the morning, the men decide to perform a mock sacrifice of the king. “At that, Starkad let loose the branch. The reed-stalk turned into a spear which pierced the king, the tree stump slipped from under his feet, the calf guts turned into a strong withy, the branch shot up with the king into the foliage, and there he died.” (Pálsson and Edwards 1985, 157).

To hang a man and then to stab him would seem to be overkill, but the use of multiple methods for a single execution goes back a long way. Some bodies found preserved in northern peat bogs appear to have been bound, clubbed, and stabbed before being sunk in the marsh. A young man killed sometime in the first century CE and found in Lindow Moss near Cheshire had been strangled and hit on the head before his throat was cut (Joy 2009, 45). This triple form of execution has resonances with “triple deaths” found in the stories of the Irish Suibhne, the Scots Lailoken, and Merlin, whose deaths included piercing, stoning, and drowning or burning.

In The Quest for Merlin, Nikolai Tolstoy proposes that the death of Llew Llaw Gyffes, the Welsh version of Lug whom Tolstoy believes to be cognate to Odin, is an example of the triple sacrifice. In the Mabinogion, Llew says he can only be killed if several impossible conditions are met and makes the mistake of telling his wife what they are. She tells her lover, who stabs Llew with a ritually fashioned spear while he is standing with one foot on the back of a goat and the other on the edge of a bathing tub. Llew turns into an eagle (an ability shared with Odin) and flies to a tree, where he sits, rotting, until he is found and healed by his uncle, the wizard Gwydion.

The men and animals sacrificed at Uppsala were hanged on trees. We do not know if they were also stunned and stabbed. The Odinic sacrifices feature only two methods of killing, which may have been the Germanic version of the custom. Some have proposed that the description of Odin's death on the tree was inspired by the death of Jesus. But the story of King Vikar suggests that it was a pre-Christian tradition in the north.

Certainly when the Germanic peoples encountered the story of the execution of Jesus, they saw in it a parallel to the ordeal of Odin. Although Jesus was crucified, not hanged, both were suspended on a gallows and speared. For a sense of how Germanic peoples viewed the Christian story, see The Heliand, a fascinating version of the gospels in Germanic terms written in Old Saxon in the 9th century. In this version, Jesus is portrayed as a warrior chieftain with his war band around him. The section on the crucifixion includes the driving of the nails, but thereafter Jesus is described as hanging from ropes on the gallows. “The Protector of the Land died on the rope” (Murphy 1992, 173).

Although some have portrayed Odin suspended by one foot like the hanged man in the Tarot cards, the evidence in the lore supports hanging by the neck. Certainly strangulation, which stops the breath, would be appropriate for a god of communication who, as we see in chapter 5, gave the gift of breath to humankind. However he was hanged, it is also important that Odin is suspended, a liminal state that allows him to move between the worlds.

As the rope uplifts the body, the spear opens it to receive the power. When a king cast a spear over an enemy army, he dedicated them to Odin and took no prisoners. The god's special weapon is the spear Gungnir, with which he dedicates his offerings. I believe that Odin is pierced by his own spear, though no one seems to know who dealt the blow.

They gave me no bread nor drinking horn,

I looked down below.

I took up the runes, screaming, I took them,

fell back after.

—Hávamál 139

Why does Odin go to the Tree? What exactly happens to him, and what does he learn? For nine days and nights the god endures, half starved, half choked, weakened by blood loss, and hanging between the worlds in a state of detached and altered consciousness. Conversations with friends whose allergies have nearly killed them have made me vividly aware of what happens when the throat is closed by anaphylactic shock. Interestingly enough, the adrenaline released by pain can slow the process, leading to interesting speculations on the balance that might be achieved by the simultaneous action of the noose and the spear.

Odin is effectively dead, but in that moment of ultimate awareness, he is able to perceive and “grasp” the runes, comprehending their essence and internalizing it. Writers like Mircea Eliade see in this story an analogue to an initiation in which the new shaman has a visionary experience of death and disintegration after which he is given a new, magical body by the ancestors or spirits. If Odin rides the Worldtree to his death, it is in quest of transformation.

These stanzas from a poem by Jennifer Tifft express the experience.

Wrist, waist, neck hemp-wound, taut on the tree

stricken through and intersecting worlds

Pierced and piercing, my throat rune-raw with screams

Words hammer in my heart, lie on my tongue,

Shape my breath

Double and single-sighted eyes look out, see in

Oldest and youngest

Perish never the desire: will to live

Dying to know

Fleeting wing-beats, demanding hardness:

The words are real

Untame warmth, unbridled strength:

The seeing is true

Phantom rope-wounds, remembered pain:

The knowing is all

Odin has no Gwydion to rescue him. It is not the spirits who resurrect the god but that other Self to whom he has been offered. One glimpses a higher self or an expanded consciousness that can only manifest when the less evolved portion has been cast away. In mythic time, all events take place simultaneously; therefore, Odin is always hanging on the Worldtree and always taking up the runes.

When we finish a round of my rune class, those who have fully absorbed their meaning may choose to experience an initiatory ritual that includes being tied to a tree for most of a night, during which, every ten minutes, those conducting the rite bless you with a new rune. The script and directions are included at the end of Taking up the Runes.

When it was my turn, I found that being fully supported by the ropes allowed me to relax into a trance state, while the delivery of a new rune at regular intervals kept trance from turning into sleep. The result was an altered state of consciousness that lasted for six hours, in which it was possible to contemplate all the runes simultaneously and thus to perceive the relationships and connections between them.

Odin, of course, went further. He offered himself to himself—but what does that mean? In Edred Thorsson's magical text, The Nine Doors of Midgard, the student is asked to emulate Odin, becoming not the god but “himSelf or herSelf. This is the true nature of the cult of Odhinn. The Odian does not seek union with Odhinn, but rather with his or her own unique self, a mirror of Odhinn's own godly task” (Thorsson 1991, xx).

This is essentially self-realization, a worthy goal, but I cannot help wondering how the student can understand which aspects of himself to reject until he has gained enough wisdom to glimpse what that true self, not to mention Odin's actual goals, might be. One has visions of young men blithely trying to transform themselves into the gung-ho warriors of the mannerbund (about whom we learn more in chapter 7), forfeiting the opportunity to encounter the other dimensions that Odin's sacrifice revealed.

My experience has been that most people who work with Odin did not set out to find him. When Odin calls, the question they ask is “Why me?” not “How can I gain your power?”

Working the Runes

Once you have the runes, what do you do with them? In Hávamál 142 and 144, respectively, the description of Odin's ordeal is followed by several stanzas discussing how to fashion the physical rune staves and use them.

Runes must you find, and meaningful staves,

Very mighty staves,

Very strong staves,

Which Fimbulthul [“Mighty Sage” or “Speaker,” a name of Odin] stained,

And the Ginnregin [“Great Powers”] fashioned,

And Hropt [“Tumult” or “Speaker,” a name of Odin]

carved from among the powers:

Do you know how to rist [cut/carve]? Do you know how to read?

Do you know how to stain [color]? Do you know how to test [or wield, or pray]

Do you know how to invoke? Do you know how to blót [sacrifice]?

Do you know how to dispatch [offer, send]? Do you

know how to slaughter [literally, “stop the breath”]?

These questions are followed by eighteen spells for healing, battle, protection from powers human and supernatural, and talking to the dead. Their purpose and effects are described, but the spells themselves do not appear. Are these rune spells? If so, apparently the rune master is expected to know which runes to use. What we are given is a description of carving and painting runes on wood or stone. We find the same pattern elsewhere in the lore. When Skirnir tries to scare the giant-maiden Gerd into agreeing to marry Freyr, he describes what the runes will do to her but not, perhaps fortunately, which ones he will use.

When Sigurd awakens the Valkyrie from her charmed sleep in the Icelandic version of the story (Sigrdrífumál), she rewards him with several pages describing how to inscribe the runes for various kinds of magic—Tiwaz for victory, Naudhiz to protect one's drink. The runes for the other purposes listed are not named. One stanza describes inscribing runes on wood, then scraping them off and mixing the shavings with mead. They may also be inscribed on weapons or gear, or worn on jewelry or on an amulet.

These are the book-runes

These are the protection-runes,

Also all the ale-runes,

And the splendid power-runes,

For those who can, unblemished and unspoiled,

Have them on their amulets.

Use them, if you've learnt them,

Until the Powers are destroyed.

—Sigrdrífumál 19

In the saga about the noted poet and warrior Egil Skallagrimsson, we see him inscribing runes on a drinking horn to reveal the poison within (chapter 44). In another episode (chapter 72), he notes that the daughter of a farmer with whom he is staying is ill. He is told that a neighbor's son inscribed some runes on a sheep's shoulder bone to help her, yet she is no better. Egil, observing that people who don't understand the runes shouldn't mess with them, scrapes off the runes and burns the bone to destroy the first spell and replaces it with a spell of his own.

Sound and Sense

The sounds and meanings that go with each rune stave are derived from three rune poems: the Anglo-Saxon, the Icelandic, and the Old Norse. You can find the texts and translations online at a number of sources, including https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Rune_poems.

For example, let us look at the rune most often associated with Odin. This is the fourth rune, whose reconstructed old Germanic name is Ansuz. The Old English Rune Poem gives it as:

This rune poem was composed in the 8th or 9th century, when the English had already been converted to Christianity but were still using runes or sometimes a combination of rune staves and Latin letters. In a somewhat glorified manner, the stanza for Os celebrates communication.

The Norwegian rune poem covers the runes of the Younger Futhark, which were in use by the 9th century. The earliest manuscript that records it was written in the 13th century, also after the conversion. It translates the rune name as “mouth” and explains it as the mouth of a fjord.

The Icelandic poem may not be any older than the Norwegian, but Iceland was the last Scandinavian country to convert to Christianity (in the 11th century). Even in the 13th century, when Snorri Sturlusson was writing, the old mythology was the foundation of poetry and culture. It specifically identifies óss, with “ás,” a god, Odin.

We do not know whether the rune originally meant “mouth” or the god Odin, but given that he was the patron of poets as well as being the giver of the runes, if you take the Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic poems together, you get Odin as a god of speech and communication. My own rune poem describes the rune as, “ANSUZ, ÓSS, is Odin's wisdom, communicating ecstasy.”

When we salute Odin as Master of the Runes, we also hail him as Rider of the Tree, recognizing the price he paid for that power. But he did not seek the runes for himself alone. Some he shared with the other gods, some he gave to leaders among the elves and the dwarves, and some he wrought for “earth-born men” (Hávamál 143). We do not know if all beings received the same runes, but if we take up the ones that Odin gave to humankind, it is our responsibility to use them wisely.

Odin's identity as a god of communication might also explain why a number of people who work with him find that he speaks through and to them through trance dictation, in which you open your mind to the god and simply take down the words he puts there. This technique is discussed more fully in my book Possession. Examples of these transmissions from several different mediums are available on the Odinspeaks website (www.odinspeaks.com).

Given that anything passing through the filter of a human mind may be subject to bias and error, the fact that material transmitted through different individuals may still show a remarkable consistency in style and tone suggests a single source. But whether the comments come from the minds of the writers or from the god, they offer insight into the experience of working with Odin today.

Practice

If you have not yet studied the runes, now is a good time to begin. My own book Taking up the Runes is only one of the useful resources now available. Here are some others:

Edred Thorsson, Futhark (Weiser, 1984)

———, Runelore (Weiser, 1987)

———, At the Well of Wyrd (Weiser, 1989)

These books, written at the beginning of the “Runic Awakening,” were the first to develop working with the runes as a contemporary magical and spiritual system.

Freya Aswynn, Leaves of Yggdrasil (Llewellyn, 1993). Interpretations by a longterm priestess of Odin with a background in British magical traditions.

Kveldulf Gundarsson, Teutonic Magic, (Llewellyn, 1993). More magical technology with particularly good pathworkings.

R. I. Page, Reading the Past: Runes (British Museum, 1987). Historical background on the runes from a mundane and scholarly perspective.

Stephen Pollington, Rudiments of Runelore (Anglo-Saxon Books, 1995). A useful introduction to Elder, Anglo-Saxon, and Norse runes.

———, Runes, Literacy in the Germanic Iron Age (Anglo-Saxon Books, 2017). An in-depth examination of everything archaeology and scholarship have been finding out about the origins and use of the Elder Futhark and its later development in England.

Ann Gróa Sheffield, Long-Branches (Lulu.com, 2015). An excellent study of the Younger Futhark.

Many have found it useful to make their own rune sets from wood, river stones, or even Sculpi. Meditate on the meaning of each rune as you make it, and keep your runes on your Odin altar. When/if you have a complete set, try drawing one or three runes when you have a question. This is one way to talk to the god.

Meditation for the Third Night: The Rider of the Tree

Set up your altar and prepare the space as before. Light a green candle. Or you may choose to do this meditation sitting with your back against a tree. Then say:

Odin, by these names I call you:

Váfuth (“Dangler”)

Hangi (“Hanging One”)

Svidrir (“Spear God”)

Ómi (“Crier”)

Fimbulthul (“Mighty Speaker”)

Rider of the Tree

If you have already memorized and studied the runes, galdor (intone) them one by one, feeling the vibrations roll through your body and taking a few moments to meditate on the meaning of each. If not, read the rune poem that follows or another of your choice, taking time to contemplate each meaning.

The Building of Bifrost

Long ago, in the dreaming time that begins all stories of origin, the gods of the north came forth from the mists where the primal ice met Muspel's flames. Odin was first among them, first to know himself, to see and understand that he saw, to speak the words of power that named all things. So it was in those days, when the jotnar—the primal powers of wind and weather, the giants of the frost and the cliffs and the mountains, of the sky and sea—walked the world.

Odin took thought for the future, for a vision had come to him of Middle Earth and how it would be tilled and settled by humankind. But for that to happen, the newly made humans must have protection; for in those days, those who would become humankind still sheltered in caves and hollows, gathering roots and berries and chipping tools from stone.

Odin, who is a great wanderer, sought the spirit of Earth, Jordh, Mother Earth in woman shape, a giantess of the most ancient kin. He reminded her that humankind was also her offspring, and they needed a protector. And they lay together, and from that union came Thor, who strides the skies, striking the clouds to bring the lightning and laughing in the thunder. To Thor was given the task of battling the wild powers, to defeat just enough of them so that there would be room for humankind to flourish on the land. And so it is that even now he does not kill all the giants—just a few, when it is needful. But these days, humans themselves destroy many of the elder kin.

But even Thor's strength was not enough. A center was needed, a refuge from which the gods might fare forth to shape the worlds. Odin contracted with one of the mightiest of the jotnar to build him a place of power. If he should finish it in the time set, he would have Freyja, lady of love and beauty, for his bride. Odin dared to make this promise because Loki had assured him that he would find a way out of the bargain. But the giant harnessed up his giant horse, and together they worked too well, and Loki could find nothing the giant would take in exchange for the goddess. One day was left on the contract, and the walls were almost completed. What to do?

Loki, in desperation, changed himself into a mare, sleek and rounded—and in season. He, or rather she, trotted past the giant's horse, waving her tail seductively, and the stallion, unable to resist, broke his harness and went after her. The giant raged, but without his horse to pull the stones he could not finish the wall. Eventually, the horse came back, but the deadline was passed, and Freyja was saved.

There was one other consequence—when the time was accomplished, Loki, still in the shape of the mare, gave birth to an eight-legged steed who could outrun the wind. He was called Sleipnir, and Odin raised him up and taught him to run between the worlds.

And so the fortress the gods had envisioned was finished, fair and mighty, a castle in the clouds. And there were the gods on Middle Earth, gazing up at it. Odin could enter, for it was his mind that had shaped it, and he had Sleipnir to bear him. But he did not wish to dwell there alone.

That castle was not entirely in the world. Sometimes the walls seemed as transparent as mist; sometimes they were solid stone. At all times they were curiously hard to gaze at, for the eye somehow kept slipping away. No one of mortal race could come there, and it was not easy even for the holy gods. A bridge was needed, and not just a link between one world and the other, but a bridge that would itself be a transformation, so that those who walked it would be able to move between the worlds.

Odin called on Thor to summon the mists and swing his hammer, and clouds curdled in the sky. Odin called a gentle wind to hold them and summoned Sunna from the east to bless the sky with her rays. And as she rose, all the assembled gods saw a shimmer in the air.

“What is it?” they asked. “What are you doing to the sky?”

But Odin only smiled. “Behold,” he said then, “Sunna's disc rising in the dawning, the brightness of Idunna's apples, the blood that gives you life. Set your feet firmly upon Middle Earth and see as men see. . . .” and he uttered a rune of power—URUZ. . . .

And the gods blinked, for the vibration in the air had a color. They saw red, they saw crimson, an arc of color arching across the sky. And the bow arched downward until that ruddy light bathed all of them, and they saw one another as red, children of earth one and all.

“That is wonderful, but what is it good for?” they asked.

“Wait,” said Odin. And they could tell that the air beside the red arch was moving, but that was all. “Cannot you see,” he asked, “the blaze of sunset on the sea? The warm skin of lovers in close embrace? Look at Freyja with the sunlight on her hair. Feel desire pulse within you and see. . . .” and he uttered a second rune—FEHU. . . .

And suddenly they realized that the red was shading into an arc of blazing orange, glowing in the heavens. And the band arched down and they felt desire, and Freyja moved among them, blessing them with her love.

But now it was clear that the air next to the orange band was vibrating, too.

“What is this?” they asked. “Show us how to see—”

“It is you who must will this,” said the god. “Draw the fire of the sun and the radiance of the growing grain into your centers, and see!” Once more he chanted a rune—SOWILO. And the gods stared at the shimmer and willed it to enfold them, and as it did so, fire flared through them, and they were bathed in golden light.

A fiery arch now spanned the sky; it was like a road, but not yet broad enough to bear them, and the air still shook with colors they could not see.

“The next band will be harder,” said Odin, “for you must open your hearts to all the world. See the waving grass, see the glossy leaves of the Worldtree, and become those things.” And he uttered the rune JERA, and they touched the green grass that grows everywhere and the green leaves of the tree Yggdrasil, which bears the worlds, and they loved them all.

As each band of color was added, they could feel themselves changing; now they shook with excitement as well.

“Can you tell me what you are seeing?” Odin asked then. And they shook their heads in silence, for they knew only a wonder for which they had no words. “Until you can speak of what you see, you have no power over it,” he said. “Look up into the sky, and breathe deeply, and let the wind fill you with words.”

And he spoke the rune that is one of his own names: ANSUZ. . . .

And a great blue wind rushed about them, and suddenly they were babbling. “Turquoise, cerulean, ultramarine, sky, sea . . .” they cried, and a shimmering band of blue flared out from the green and arched across the sky.

“The bridge is broad now,” they said. “Let us go across.”

“No,” answered Odin. “You think you see, but you do not, for you are only seeing with the eyes of the body. Move into the vibration that comes now, and let it shake you until you truly see. . . .”

And the rune he uttered then was PERTHRO, which signifies the Well in which the eye he gave for Wisdom is hid.

And what they saw then was the deepening color of the sky as it passes from sunset to midnight lit by the moon; they saw all other colors in this new light more luminous and radiant than before. They saw with the eye that is hidden behind the brow. They saw indigo. . . .

The gods looked upon one another and saw each transformed, and Odin whispered the last rune, which is the rune of his spirit, and is named JOY . . . WUNJO. . . .

And the gods saw color beyond color, a radiant violet, and they saw the rainbow complete, arching like a bridge before them, linking the heights of Odin's sanctuary to the lands below.

“Behold Bifrost, the shaking bridge, that vibrates with all the colors there are. Now the substance of which you have formed your essence is all light, and you, shimmering with all vibrations, can see all things. Follow me now, my children, and we will enter our new home.”

And Odin stepped onto the bridge, and his body shook with all of its colors, and shimmered like a rainbow. First to follow was Heimdall, Odin's son by the nine waves, the god who can see farther and hear better than any other being in the worlds; for that, Odin made him Bifrost's guardian. And after him, one by one, all the holy gods and goddesses stepped onto the bridge and ascended into the realm that is called Asgard, the sanctuary of the gods.

And we know that this is so, for after the storm the sun returns, and Bifrost shimmers in her holy light. And those who learn to shimmer with the colors of the rainbow, seeing and understanding all things, may journey to dwell with the gods.

I wrote this tale in 1996 for a conference at Asilomar near Monterey that had been focusing on a new chakra each year. Think of it as a fantasy on the origin of the Rainbow Bridge, inspired by, though not based on, the lore. When I was at the conference, they had reached Ajna, the chakra of Vision located in the Third Eye. The conference hall was draped in indigo and had some of the biggest quartz crystals I have ever seen. While I didn't agree with everything they were saying, for me it was a very Odinic weekend.

Fig. 10. All-father