The Reality of the Holy Powers
What makes
us think that the Holy Powers honored by our ancestors actually exist?
Here are a few reasons -
1. Our ancestors - hundreds of generations of them - considered the
Gods and Goddesses to be as real as their own family, as real as the
mountains looming over their homestead, or the clouds blowing through
the sky. Of course, it is easy today to say that our ancestors were
stupid, or at best ignorant and naive, but can that really be true?
The human brain has not significantly changed over the last few thousand
years.
In terms of innate intelligence, some of our brighter forebears could
have invented the theory of relativity or quantum mechanics a thousand
years ago. This didn't happen, of course - because the conceptual foundations
had not yet been laid by others, and because our ancestors were busy
doing other things, such as growing food and fighting off the tribe
from the next valley over. Discovering quantum physics is one thing,
but inventing the necessary mathematics and all of classical physics
at the same time, while planning raids and sowing the crops, is a little
much to ask! Lack of brainpower, per se, was not the problem
.
2. Tribal Europeans (and just about everyone else in the world) lived
in an environment that selected intensely for intelligence and hard-headed
practicality. Stupid people tended to make mistakes that got them killed.
Impractical dreamers likewise met untimely and tragic ends. By comparison,
we live much more protected lives, insulated from the effects of the
natural environment and from hostile people armed with axes and swords.
Fools, self-deceivers, the gullible, and dreamers did not fare well
in early society. The ancient Germans and Celts are not likely to have
believed in the Gods and Goddesses unless they had some reason to do
so. We on the other hand, living in an environment with much less evolutionary
stress, are much more likely to believe in superstitions like dialectical
materialism and the good intentions of politicians.
3. The enemies of the Gods - the Christian missionaries and later chroniclers
- believed the Gods and Goddesses were real. The Christian kings of
Norway, tyrants who made free folk into royal subjects and forced them
to give up the old ways or die, met Thor and Odin in mysterious encounters
that have come down to us in the sagas. One can argue, of course, that
the stories are made up, but the very existence of the stories clearly
reflect a belief that the old Gods were real. Nowhere in the surviving
sagas do the Christian writers think of Odin, Thor, Frey, or any of
the others as delusions. In fact, the oath required of the Saxons upon
converting to Christianity specifically renounced the old deities, thus
by implication acknowledging their existence.
4. The Gods and Goddesses manifest to living men and women today. The
old religion of the pre-Christian Nordic and Germanic lands has been
revived in an organized form for hardly thirty years, but the might
of the Gods and Goddesses has shown itself many times. These instances
are of varying types and qualities. When we make requests of the Holy
Powers, we often get dramatic results. In other words, our prayers are
answered. People get healed, children are born, difficulties are resolved,
the future is foretold, and so forth. In short, the Gods work!
Other times, the Gods and Goddesses (and other entities described in
the Nordic lore, for that matter) actually appear to people in visions.
You can call these delusions or hallucinations, but they are generally
associated with real results that happen, then or later, in the real
world.
Finally, there are cases, admittedly rare, when Gods and Goddesses manifest
to humans under conditions that do not appear to be visions at all -
when they are as real as your house or the rock on which you stub your
toe.
Real,
but Different
To say that the Gods and Goddesses are real is not to
tell us much. The next question is...what are they like?
Aside from the odd personal encounter and rare representations as statues
or on old tapestries, the only descriptions we have of the Holy Powers
are in the myths. When we look at the stories, we find Thor pictured
as a muscular fellow with a red beard and flashing blue eyes. Odin is
a tall, older man with a gray beard and one eye, and he sometimes travels
in the company of his two wolves and ravens. Freyr - well, he's a fertility
God, with the appropriate physical attributes.
Are we to take these vivid, dramatic images literally? That depends
on how you want to think of the Gods and the myths in which they appear.
Here are two possibilities:
We can think of myth as metaphor. In this scheme, the myths are symbolic
ways of transmitting spiritual truths. They have multiple layers of
meaning. On the most obvious and superficial level, they are entertaining
tales that often make a moral point or illustrate virtues like the love
of wisdom, sacrifice, and bravery.
Below this level, things get trickier. Some mythologists (not themselves
followers of our ancestral religion) will say they are allegories describing
natural phenomena such as lightning, or the warming of the land with
the departure of winter, or the cycle by which vegetation grows, dies
in the winter, and comes to life again in the spring.
Psychologists, particularly those who are students of
Dr. Carl Jung, interpret the myths as depictions of psychic realities
rather than external ones. In this model, the ancient stories tell us
important things about the personal and collective unconscious. The
heroic quest and the growth and maturation of the individual are typical
themes. The Gods and Goddesses are thought of as psychic forces in the
person and in society, but are not considered objectively real.
We can admit the value of these viewpoints in a technical or analytical
sense, while not conceding they represent the whole truth. Many Asatruar
consider the myths to be true - not in the literal sense but in the
sense of tales which tell spiritual truths, "those things which
never happened, but always are." The tales of Gods become allegories,
some of which can be deciphered by reason. Others cannot be interpreted
in terms of logic, because they speak a deeper, non-linear "meta-language,"
the secret code of the unconscious. In this case, the myths communicate
with us subtly, without words, influencing our mind and spirit.
For Asatruar who think of the myths as metaphor, the
Gods and Goddesses are real, but the anthropomorphic images of them
presented in the old lore are strictly symbolic. Thor is not really
a gigantic, muscular, man-like figure with a red beard, any more than
Jehovah is a human-shaped entity in a white gown sitting on a golden
throne, surrounded by clouds. The description of Thor we find in the
stories gives us a way to relate to the very real force in the cosmos
that we call Thor, but it is not him.
The Gods and Goddesses are not limited by the constraints of flesh and
blood. So while it is convenient for us to picture Freya as a beautiful
woman wearing a shining necklace, or Heimdal as having golden teeth,
these are allegorical. The Gods and Goddesses themselves are mighty
spiritual powers, existing within us and without us, capable of manifesting
to humans in any form they wish.
Next: The Gods and Us
