[Main Blog Post] [Book] The Seed of Yggdrasill 2 - Creation, Cosmos, and the Ruling Powers

[jprussell]

Okay, okay, I finally made it through the very long second chapter of The Seed of Yggdrasill and got my thoughts on it written down here. There's more lingering confusion than I'd prefer, even after getting my thoughts written and organized, but maybe you will be able to help me work through some of that with thoughts and commentary, which I welcome.

Comments

[k_a_nitz]

Heimdall + 9 mothers = 10 entities. Now what else has 10 entities, me thinks ...

[jprussell]

Huh, interesting!

I have barely scratched the surface of Cabala, and at some point down the line, I want to see how fruitfully it can be compared with/applied to Heathen cosmology, but I need to know a lot more about both fields before I feel ready to take that on!

More broadly, I hadn't considered the importance of "9+1" in all of the instances of 9 showing up as a significant number in the lore. Heathen numerology is another field I want to research down the way.

[k_a_nitz]

Re: "I try to focus more on what I do than on what I believe. "

I've been studying some NLP recently, and one of the principles is that we take in input from reality, filter it and react to it (and it thereby influences our values), but then our reaction to it changes reality, which we then take as input, filter and react to, etc. So there is a recursiveness to our experience which influences both our values and our internal programs for reacting to it. In this way of looking at things what you do is both shaped by your belief and shapes your belief. So if you believe two gods are different then this may change the way you approach them individually which may shape your belief in their difference, and vice versa. But you always have the choice of changing your beliefs and the way you filter and react to experience (though that choice does not imply it is easy).

An alternative way of looking at the gods, is that perhaps they are the same in essence but the different names represent different ways of knowing them or approaching them (as we can never fully understand gods, these can be seen as different frames for understanding parts of them). Certain names may have cut paths in reality through their repetitive use that make them easier to follow towards certain aspects of the god - greasing the groove as Pavel would say. Using them to get to another aspect of the god may then be more difficult than using a different name.

[jprussell]

Hah! Not a context I expected to encounter a reference to Mr. Tsatsouline! I haven't given much thought to the spiritual significance of kettlebells, but maybe I should.

More seriously, yes, I think there's a lot of truth there. In the post, I didn't stress a current part of my epistemology, which is that our brains just aren't that great at understanding reality "as it truly is" (if that's even a meaningful concept outside of a perceiving consciousness!), which of course I have also gotten from JMG. Practically speaking, this shakes out to "acting like this is true gets me these results, but I have very little idea if I 'made them true' by believing, if I had a belief that was true in some objective, external way, or if it was a lucky coincidence." For most experiences, it is very likely some combination of all of those, since as you say, your beliefs shape what you perceive and how you interact with it (at least, again, who knows what they may do beyond that!)

I very much agree with the second paragraph, and it builds on what I was saying above - does praying to Frigg and Freyja as "different Goddesses" reach Beings that are as distinct as anything can be? Does it follow different paths laid down by the worship of others to get to the same Being? Are any Beings involved the same one(s) that were called upon in Sweden 1000 years ago? In England 1600 years ago? The same as Aphrodite in Greece even longer ago? Hard to say, and the only answer that seems reasonable to me is to hold any theories about what's "really going on" loosely and focus on what we can do and experience.

[k_a_nitz]

Yes, GTG is what I think of as a personal physical egregore - though there may be other planes involved there too.

[jprussell]

It took me a second to parse GTG as "Grease the Groove," but hmm, that's an interesting way to think of it. I could also see that it might have at least etheric and astral components - etheric in that you might more efficiently channel life energy to tasks you've practiced sufficiently, and astral if that is involved in directing the body in accordance with an imagined/visualized course of action.

[thinking_turtle]

Thanks for the long post with many interesting ideas. The Voluspa dwarves make me think of Tolkien's dwarves, who were also awakened before men, and were called the Stunted (Naugrim.)

[jprussell]

Thanks! And that's not too surprising - Tolkien got the names for most of the Dwarves in the Hobbit from the Dvergatal ("Catalog of the Dwarves"), as well as the initial seed for Gandalf - he asked himself "why is there someone named 'Wand Elf' in the list of dwarves?" and away he went. Also, as you say, his version of the creation of dwarves given in Silmarillion (or was it Unfinished Tales?) was clearly channeling some of what's in Voluspa - coming very early in the creation, being confined underground, being "shaped" from the ground by a Being (Aulë) lesser than Iluvatar, and so forth.