Odin: Ecstasy, Runes, & Norse Magic - Softcover

Paxson, Diana L. (Diana L. Paxson)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1578636108 ISBN 13: 9781578636105

Verlag: Red Wheel/Weiser, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

“A god for the ages, Odin's veneration remains vital and active. Paxson provides songs, rituals, magical exercises, and practical advice to help you develop your own personal relationship with the Lord of Runes. Highly recommended." —Judika Illes, author of Encyclopedia of Spirits, Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells, and other books

Odin is arguably one of the most enigmatic and complex characters in Norse mythology. Revered since the Viking Age, Odin has been called the greatest of the gods--the god of words and wisdom, runes and magic, a transformer of consciousness, and a trickster who teaches truth. He is both war god and poetry god, and he is the Lord of Ravens, the All- Father, and the rune master.

Odin: Ecstasy, Runes, and Norse Magic is the first book on Odin that is both historically sourced and accessible to a general audience. It explores Odin's origins, his appearances in sagas, old magic spells, and the Poetic Edda, and his influence on modern media, such as Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Each chapter features suggestions for rituals, exercises, and music, so readers can comprehend and become closer to this complicated god.

Author Diana Paxson, an expert on Viking-era mythology, provides a complete portrait of Odin and draws on both scholarship and experience to provide context, resources, and guidance for those who are drawn to work with the Master of Ecstasy today.
 

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Diana L. Paxson has been teaching classes and leading rituals on trance work for more than twenty years. She is the coauthor, along with Marion Zimmer Bradley, of Priestess of Avalon and has continued the immensely popular Mists of Avalon series on her own.

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Odin

Ecstacy, Runes & Norse Magic

By DIANA L. PAXSON

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

Copyright © 2017 Diana L. Paxson
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-57863-610-5

Contents

Acknowledgments, 
INTRODUCTION, 
Interlude: King Gylfi Visits the Hall of Hár, 
CHAPTER ONE Will the Real Odin Stand Up, Please?, 
Interlude: "Wanderer", 
CHAPTER TWO The Wanderer, 
Interlude: The Second Merseberg Charm, 
CHAPTER THREE Master of Magic, 
Interlude: "Rune Song", 
CHAPTER FOUR Rider of the Tree, 
Interlude: The Building of Bifrost, 
CHAPTER FIVE All-father, 
Interlude: "In Gunnlödh's Bed", 
CHAPTER SIX Desired One, 
Interlude: "Head-Ransom", 
CHAPTER SEVEN Battle God, 
Interlude: Bölverk and the Thralls, 
CHAPTER EIGHT Bale-Worker, 
Interlude: "Wodan's Hunt", 
CHAPTER NINE God of the Dead, 
Interlude: At Mimir's Well, 
CHAPTER TEN God of Ecstasy, 
APPENDIX I Rituals, 
APPENDIX II Music, 
BIBLIOGRAPHY, 

CHAPTER 1

Will the Real Odin Stand Up, Please?

High One, Just as High and Third These are his names as we have heard, Wide of Wisdom counsel gives, Odin, Oski, Omi lives, We call on Wodan, Vili, Vé, to All-father, Sigfather, Gandfather pray.

— "Namechant," by Diana L. Paxson

The man was in a blue cloak, and called himself Grimnir (the masked, or hidden one); he said nothing else about himself, though he was asked.

— Grimnismál, prologue

Those who have grown up with the straightforward definitions of gods that you find in Dungeons and Dragons manuals may find themselves frustrated when they try to explain Odin, who is "the god of ..." a lot of things. One place to start is by looking at the names and titles he has been given over the years. The "Namechant" quoted above gives a few of them (for the music, see appendix 2 at the end of this book).

In Neil Gaiman's American Gods, Shadow asks, "Who are you?" His companion offers "Mr. Wednesday," since it is his day. When Shadow insists on his "real" name, Mr. Wednesday answers, "Work for me long enough and well enough ... and I may even tell you that" (Gaiman 2001, 22). For many who work with, or for, Odin, that is indeed the goal.

In "The Lay of Hárbard," Thor, worn out from fighting giants, arrives on the shore of a fjord and calls to the ferryman to come over and take him to the other side. Apparently he is too far away to realize that the man at the ferry is his father. Odin seems to be in a quixotic mood. When the exchange of pleasantries works its way around to introductions, the god replies, "I am called Hárbard, I seldom hide my name ..." (Hárbardhsljódh 10).

This may be the only joke Odin makes in the entire body of the lore. The point, of course, is that Odin has more names than anyone else in Asgard, and never gives his own name when a byname will do. He is the ferryman Hárbard ("Hoar-Beard") when he teases his son at the shore. As the wanderer Vegtam, he conjures the seeress from her grave-mound to give him answers, and as Grímnir, the Hidden One, he withstands being "roasted" by King Geirrod. Still other epithets, bynames, and hypostases may be found elsewhere. In The Viking Way, Neil Price lists 204 names used for Odin in the lore.

Why does he have so many names? In the section of the Younger Edda called Skáldskaparmál, Snorri Sturlusson, writing for young poets, explains that in poetry you can call a thing by its name, substitute another word, or use a descriptive kenning. Given that kings needed praise poems to spread their fame, poets had to find a lot of terms for the patron of kings. The other reason, of course, is that Odin is interested in a great many things. Those who work with him today may refer to him as "the Old Man," or sometimes, "You bastard." How many names Odin really has ranks with his last words to Baldur as one of the great unanswerable questions in the lore.

Some years ago, my friend Lorrie Wood got a post from someone who was trying to understand the relationship between Odin's many aspects. This is how she replied:

The aspects of Odin that are in one or another "name clump" may resonate more with me, and others with another, but none of them aren't Odin. The aspects of Lorrie that might be collected under the aspect of "lwood" — the parts of me that directly pertain to having been a systems administrator for fifteen years — have friends to whom that's the way they know me. The folk who know me as "Clewara," a community organizer for a certain poly-MMORPG gaming guild primary based in EVE Online, see a different side of me. Our enemies within that game see me and my alternate characters, which only means to them I'm a target, or I'm gathering reconnaissance on them because THEY are — well, we are to one another, ultimately. That's another group of folks who know me after that fashion. Both of those me's aren't the same me as the Lorrie who's been chugging along in service to the Troth for a decade and a half. That's another batch. The Lorrie that stands at Diana's side running Hrafnar isn't the same and hasn't the same friends as the foregoing either.

They all intersect and overlap: the Linux administrator learned how to handle groups of people and both know how to do a good turn in desktop publishing and so on. They all gather data and see patterns and weave threads and tease sense from them and all that happy fun stuff. Those are all me!

So how much less could Odin be Odin, whether I'm calling him Vegtam or Valfodr? Those address the god in different places, but they're the same god. Who is the Far-Crier? Who is the WayTamer? Who is the Hooded One? Who is the Old Man? Who is Frost-Beard and Horsehair-Mustache and Fire-Eyed and Dead-Eyed? Who is WoeWorker and Desired One?

Yes.

In this chapter, you will encounter a summary of Odin's names and history that will give you a context for the more detailed discussion of his major aspects in the chapters that follow.

Aliases and Aspects

The name by which we know Thor's father best is Óðinn, anglicized as "Odin." In Old English, he is Woden, in German, Wotan, or the archaic Wodanaz. The root word can be translated as "frenzy," "voice," "poetry," "vision," "excitation," or "mind." As you shall see in chapter 10, these terms derive from a state of mental exaltation that can indeed manifest as either inspiration or berserk fury. To me, the fervor of excitement one feels in the throes of creative achievement of any kind captures the essence of Odin's primary name.

In the earliest myths, Odin is accompanied by two other gods. We don't know much about his companions, and for this reason, scholars sometimes identify them as "hypostases" of Odin, or other "persons" sharing the same nature. In Völuspá 4, we learn that Midgard was made by the "sons of Bor," identified by Snorri Sturlusson in Gylfaginning 5 as Odin, Vili, and Vé. If one loosely translates these as "Mind," "Will," and "Holiness," they make up a useful creative trinity.

In verse 18, Odin, Hœnir, and Lódhur create the first humans from logs of wood found on the shore. Hœnir does appear elsewhere in the mythology. Lódhur is unknown, though some have speculated that this is another aspect of Loki. In the Prose Edda, Snorri Sturlusson offers us a more explicit trinity. When King Gylfi enters Valhall, he sees threethrones, one above...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Red Wheel/Weiser
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1578636108
• ISBN 13: 9781578636105
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV, GPSR Europäische Union; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Niederlande