The Norse idea of how the Universe is structured and how it came to be in the first place is something that is very helpful in understanding and restructuring our own psyche. In order to do that, we first have to wake up. This sounds very easy but it is one of the toughest things to achieve especially if we want to stay awake and not go right back to sleep. We have created a world that is perfectly suited to the needs of our species (Anthropocene), which unfortunately is a world filled with constant distractions. Keeping busy is the best way to stay asleep forever but luckily, we still have the tales of old that can help us to understand and induce this process anyways.
The Creation Myth
In the beginning, there was nothing except Ginnungagap, the great Void, and the subtle structure of Yggdrasil that was woven through its deepest core. The Void was a place of total chaos where everything potentially existed but nothing could ever materialize. But Yggdrasil was not limited to Ginnungagap and when two polar opposites formed outside the Void it seized them and kept them in place. So the first two worlds came into existence, Muspellheim, the world of fire, and Niflheim, the world of mist. These two worlds were so full of boundless energy that they simply couldn’t contain it and so the waters from Niflheim started to flow out towards the great Void where they were charged by the glowing sparks that were hurtled out of Muspellheim. Through the interaction of these two archaic worlds the first living organism came into being, Ymir, the screamer.
I know that none of this sounds extremely psychological at first but that’s the beauty of Myth, it encodes truth on many different levels. The process of how the Norse Universe comes into existence is a very apt description of what happens when a sleeping Self starts to stir. Most people never do but spend their entire life inside Ginnungagap. They have access to all these options but are incapable of ever truly holding on to one of them long enough so it can actually manifest. And so they float through life, chasing after one mirage after the next because they lack a fundamental skill: the ability to bear tension.
The Art of bearing tension
Feeling good and being happy has become the ultimate goal of modern-day humans and so we have largely lost that basic ability. No matter if you compose a song, paint a picture, build a new bookshelf or restore your Grandfathers old-timer, the joy of the work itself is always mixed with a lot of strain, anger and frustration. Overcoming these feelings and sticking with a project actually adds a lot to the joy that we feel if we really see it through.
Now in order to wake the Self from its eternal slumber we need a lot of strain. This is why the postmodern eclectic approach to spirituality is a dead end. If you walk away from something as soon as it becomes difficult and challenging and go looking for something else from another tradition that comes easier to you and feels better, you will never wake up. You may accumulate an impressive collection of very wise-sounding sayings for every imaginable life situation, you might start to look spiritual, speak in a very measured voice and only eat fruits and seeds that have fallen to the ground by themselves but you’ll still fly into a boundless fit of rage whenever some unenlightened asshole steals your parking spot right from under your nose or feel indignant when your very non-spiritual neighbor wolfs down two large steaks with heartfelt enthusiasm.
The strain that developed between these two completely opposed worlds that were kept in place by Yggdrasil must have been tremendous. Muspellheim and Nifelheim are the two worlds that power the whole creation process and later on are the most primal source of energy that flows throughout the nine worlds. If we ever become aware of these two opposing extremes that hover at the edges of our Self, we usually solve the resulting tension by turning away and staring at the ground, stuffing our fingers in our ears, humming a calming children’s tune that our mom used to sing to us and pretend that what we’ve seen was just a figment of our imagination. It leaves us with this somewhat uncomfortable feeling in the pit of our stomach that we always experience when we lie to ourselves but for most people it still feels much better than facing the truth and we can always blame that feeling on our stressful job or the horrible state of the world in general.
Struggling to wake up
If you want to wake up you have to bleed. Once these two extremes have entered your consciousness you have to acknowledge them and they will interact and thereby lay the foundation for your awakened Self. Fire and water are both very useful and pleasant in moderate amounts but encountering Muspellheim and Niflheim feels more like being thrown into a blazing furnace that is then extinguished by a monumental flood as these are the most archaic parts of your Self. These two worlds contain the whole history of evolution that you still carry with you in your genes. They are connected to your most basic drives that are imprinted deeply into your spinal cord and your brain stem and to your most violent urges and darkest needs that you have deeply buried within your subconscious. At this stage, you have no real chance of truly integrating these two worlds into your Self, as that would be suicidal at that point. It is important though to acknowledge them instead of curling up into a fetal position and cry, hoping they’ll be gone once you get back up again. If you acknowledge Muspellheim and Niflheim and start to expose yourself to the tension that they bring then something will be awakened inside the Void, the deepest core of your Self. Something new and powerful will come to live but just like Ymir it will be undefined, unconscious and quite unaware. In the Myth Ymir is a completely undifferentiated being. It is hermaphrodite and all it wants to do is to satisfy its most basic needs for food and reproduction. You can aid the interaction of these two worlds by willingly challenging yourself and putting yourself in situations that feel uncomfortable and create a lot of tension. The reason why this works is not that the Gods want you to prove your dedication through masochism which is something best left to the Martyrs of the different religions of this world. It works, because your Self needs to be exposed to prolonged periods of strain in order to implement a fundamental shift in perception that stands at the very beginning of every journey of Self-transformation.
Ymir and Audhumla
The Ymir stage resembles the state you are in when you start to wake up in the morning but haven’t opened your eyes as of yet. This stage is quite alluring, as even though you’re not truly awake at this point you’ll have an advantage over your fellow humans who are still lost in their world of slumber and eternal dreams. It feels really good to stomp around the void, shouting on the top of your lungs, drinking Audhumla’s yummy milk and create more half-awakened things out of yourself that you can send out into the world. But the shift in consciousness that is needed in order to truly wake up has still not taken place but luckily the story of the Creation has not been told in full as of yet.
In the Myth a second component was needed in order to create that shift which is represented by Audhumla, the nourishing principle. As we’ve seen before, the Void was the spot in between the two polar opposites of Muspellheim and Niflheim. This sweet spot where the tension created by these two worlds was balanced out was the place where creation truly began. This Mystery is encoded in the Rune Dagaz and was nicely put into writing by Dr. Sharp. If you try to wake up solely through generating and bearing tension, you might be successful but your awakening will be rather painful and strained. The Creation Myth offers us a far more pleasant approach in that it advises us not only to challenge ourselves in order to grow stronger and more flexible but also to nourish the parts of our Self that are already good, healthy and productive. Improving our strengths as well as overcoming our weaknesses makes this process of waking up far more balanced than if we only focus on one of these two aspects. Audhumla’s actions resulted in the creation of Buri, a being we know basically nothing about except that it was a male and that he was fair, great and mighty (Gylfaginning 6). His son Borr married the Giantess Bestla and their offspring, the result of crossing the lines of Ymir and Audhumla, were Odin and his brothers Vili and Vé.
Odin, Vili, Vé
Through Odin and his brothers, a completely new concept was introduced into the creation process. They had a characteristic that was unheard of so far, they were self-aware. They were not just a part of everything like Ymir but were beings that experience themselves as being separate from their surroundings, they were individuals! This is the decisive moment in the story, as now this shift of consciousness that I mentioned earlier has taken place. The individuality of the three brothers allows them to take a look around and they suddenly realize that they do not like what they see at all. There is nothing but ice and some sparks that drift over from Musepellheim from time to time, the whole world is populated by Frost-Giants, there is nothing to eat but Audhumla’s milk and the noise made by Ymir shouting at the top of its lungs while violently stomping around is annoying to no end.
When you finally truly wake up, the first thing you feel will probably be shock. It will be inexplicable to you how you could live in a world that was so hostile to your needs, hopes and dreams without ever realizing it. This realization is oftentimes so overwhelming that most people that experience it go right back to sleep. It is far easier to suppress this awakening and keep on dreaming even though you will have to live with that nagging feeling in the back of your head that tells you that something is wrong, than to own the way that you have lived up to this point and start acting in a way that will lead to fundamental changes in your existence, which will allow you to stay awake most of the time.
In the Creation Myth that’s exactly what Odin, Vili and Vé do. They grab Ymir, kill him, and create a new world from his body. The sea from his blood, the earth from his flesh, the rocks from his teeth and the trees from his hair. There is actually so much blood in Ymir’s body that it drowns almost all his offspring. The world that the three brothers create is Midgard, the world of men…
Staying Awake
If we finally wake up and chose to stay awake, then that’s exactly what we’ll have to do as well. We have to destroy our old world, our way of living and rearrange it in order to create an environment in which we can actually thrive and grow. It is important to understand that Ymir wasn’t bad and if Snorri says so in his Prose Edda then that has nothing to do with the belief system of our Ancestors but simply with the fact that Snorri was a Christian and therefore couldn’t help himself. If Ymir was truly evil, then it would have been necessary to destroy him but instead he is simply given a new form that allows for more growth and diversity. Instead of an icy wasteland that was only populated by Frost-Giants now there was a world that allowed for an almost innumerable amount of different animals and plants to grow and prosper. A multitude of different landscapes came into being as well as many different climate zones. Order was implemented by creating the sun, the moon and the stars, which marked the beginning of time. Humans, other races and other worlds soon came into existence and so a singular, hostile Universe became a place where life as well as consciousness could grow and prosper. A few Frost-Giants survived as well, which was actually a good thing as the goal was to create a Universe that was balanced and stable. Unfortunately, I can’t give you a manual on how to rearrange your world once you have woken up. If I did and if you followed it, it would put you right back to sleep. You can use a simple concept though in order to check from time to time if you’re still on the right path. Like in the Creation Myth rearranging your world has to lead to growth and an overall improvement of your life and living conditions. By that I don’t mean that your life will get easier, quite the contrary actually, but the quality of your life will improve drastically.
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D. L., Switzerland