[Main Blog Post] The Seed of Yggdrasill 1 - Introduction and the Books of Old

[jprussell]

This week, I take my first step in tackling Maria Kvilhaug's massive tome The Seed of Yggdrasill. As with some of her other work, it is a frustrating blend of genuinely wonderful insights and sloppy organization, but hopefully sharing my thoughts on them will help both of us get more out of it!

Comments

[k_a_nitz]

Re: "Kvilhaug's interpretation is that these are initiatory tales, and that the sequence of tales shows a soul getting part of the way there, dying, reincarnating, and then getting further along each time, turning what can feel like a loosely-linked anthology into a coherent spiritually relevant cycle."
This would be a cool exercise for anyone wanting to write their own myth cycle - figuring out which lessons should be learnt in each 'life', and what order to put them in.

[jprussell]

Indeed! It's also a valuable theme for meditation to look at other existing mythic cycles and ask "what if this were a tale of different levels of initiation?" I've gotten a lot of out the Mabinogion following that advice, for one.