Sunday, August 8, 2010

Holy Woden

I thought I might try a spot of online dating.

Under 500 years need not apply!


If I asked you
to turn back the calendar,
 to the kick-off date,
for the modern world,
then,
at what time would you
stop the clock?



Is there, for you, a point where history just seems to fall off the edge?

It seems so to me.

And it's always nice to have (apparent) fact agree (though it's by no means necessary).

"Modern history, or the modern era, describes the historical timeline after the Middle Ages... The beginning of the modern era started approximately in the 1500s ...The term "modern" was coined shortly before 1585 to describe the beginning of a new era". wiki


This New Era infant was christened The Renaissance - "French for "rebirth"; Italian: Rinascimento, from ri- "again" and nascere "be born"."


Before that time there seemed to have existed a ridiculously-darked Age, full of stench & dirt & disease.

The premise for the rest of this article is that the world that we live in now was born in the vicinity of 500 years ago.

The End.


Well anything before that 'Is story.

For quite some time now I've been on an epic quest. I've had to re-view the past & be willing to turn my world upside down. And I have willingly done this.


When I did look forward I seemed to be careering all over the place, but now looking backwards, I rather fancy I see patterns emerging.


During my questing research I wandered into a book called Classical Mythology. Somewhere in it's pages I came upon a description of Gungnir, the famous spear of the chief Norse god, or All-father, Odin.




This book told me that Gungnir's shaft was carved from the sacred wood of Yggdrasil (the Cosmic Tree) & that after gaining knowledge from this World Tree, Odin had broken off a bough & fashioned a perfect staff from it's holy wood.

Those words set my mind a-galloping.

Checking up on Yggdrasil, I was told that it's name translates to something akin to 'dreadful mount'.

Ye gods thought I, could they be referring to ...


... this place?

The mount of Holy Wood

While I'm sure that we can link holly symbolism to this place, I'm long passed seeing that title as anything other than the rite-heavy Holy Wood.

I found out later that the mount referred to above either represents Odin's steed or the World Tree (Yggdrasil) as a gallows. But by then it didn't matter, for I had already set sail on a voyage of un-discovery.

And I rather think the journey was worth it.

"Yggdrasil, the World Tree lay at the heart of the universe"

"Yggdrasil ... is an immense [ash] tree that is central in Norse cosmology; the world tree, and around the tree exist nine worlds ... The gods go to Yggdrasil daily to hold their courts. The branches of Yggdrasil extend far into the heavens, and the tree is supported by three roots that extend far away into other locations."


"On Yggdrasil Odin sacrificed himself, hanging wounded from the great tree [for nine days] in his search for knowledge."

I reckon we can look quite candidly at Holy Wood as the heart of today's world.

The Yggdrasil of modern life, you could say...


... the World Tree around which our lives & worlds have been made to rotate.

Yggdrasil is the axis of nine worlds;
Alfheim
Asgard
Hel
Jotunheim
Midgard
Muspelheim
Niflheim
Svartalfheim
Vanaheim

Holy Wood is the axis of even more spheres;
Family
Fantasy
Horror
Musical
Mystery
Romance
Science Fiction
Sport
Suspense
Thriller
War
Western

Fret not, faithful reader, this is no mere mentaling-madness - we have interesting f-actuals to ford & a few familiar hills to climb.

"Odin is also associated with trickery, cunning, and deception."

"In Norse mythology, Gungnir (Old Norse "swaying one") is Odin's magical spear; it always hits its mark and always kills."

We recall that Gungnir was said to have been made from the Holy Wood of Yggdrasil.

Would it interest you to know that Holy Wood (Hollywood to unbelievers) revolves around a spear.


 "The meaning of the name Oscar is 'Divine spear'
."

"He [Odin] is also a god of war, appearing throughout Norse myth as the bringer of victory... In the Norse sagas, Odin sometimes acts as the instigator of wars, and is said to have been able to start wars by simply throwing down his spear Gungnir, and/or sending his valkyries, to influence the battle toward the end that he desires..."

" the most prevalent... story of the Oscar's origins concerns Academy secretary Margaret Herrick. Upon seeing the award for the first time, she supposedly proclaimed, "It looks just like my Uncle Oscar." If the story is true, she was likely referring to her cousin, Oscar Pierce"

... are you serious?

... the original Oscar award?
'A divine spear pierce'

... cODINcidentally - "he-rri-ck is of Old German origin, and the meaning of Herrick is "war ruler".

Every year the demi-gods & goddesses of Holy Wood, assemble on the red battlefield ...


... to stage a war that is launched by a godly spear (sphere).

"The purpose of using pole weapons is either to extend reach or to increase angular momentum—and thus striking power—when the weapon is swung"

We cannot continue without a small nod & a wink to the mil-Lion Man. Once upon a previous time, I looked at the Six Million Dollar Man & saw Osiris looking back.

I have now also found that when ...


... viewed through different prism bars - he takes on a decidedly Odinish tinge.

Aha! With that VERY sentence I now see that which I did not see, before - just look who's tucked inside the one-eyed, better, stronger, faster man:-

Take one six millION Dollar man
give him a spin
& see what pops out -
ODIN


Yep, it's old 'One Eye' himself - the All-father, better than all the rest.

Some other mirrored images

Odin has his trusty spear, Gungnir &amp so too does Steve Austin ...

... Meet Oscar Goldman - Divine spear extraordinaire

Odin is the resurrected god - hung upon the holy wood of Yggdrasil for nine days in order to become better than all the rest.
Steve Austin is the resurrected man - brought back to life & automated to become better than all the rest.

Odin traded one of his eyes for a sip from a Well of wisdom guarded by the severed head of the god, Mimir. Steve Austin becomes like a god through the minstrations & operations of one Dr. Rudy ("red-head in polish language") Wells.

The man who played the resurrected Steve Austin, was given the suitably grand name Lee Majors. His birth name has an interesting death of a king resonance - Harvey Lee Yeary (& yes born just six months before Lee Harvey).

"The meaning of the name Harvey is 'Battle worthy or carnage worthy'


The man with six zeros went on to star in a movie called The Norseman, playing a character by the name of Thorvald.


You may or may not recall that Thor, the Norse god of very big hammers, was Odin's son. The movie, by all accounts, is very bad, but that matters not, in these matters does it knot? Further illumination comes from paying attention to the director - one Charles B. Pierce - I presume you're getting a larger picture.

Mythologically speaking, spears have been big business in the Godfamily:-

And the nominees are...


Holy Lance or Lance of Longinus, said to be the spear that pierced the side of Jesus (Alternatively, the Celtic Rebel has a whole different outlook on this)

Gungnir Spear of Odin, famous god in Norse


Amenonuhoko Spear of Izanagi and Izanami, creator gods in Japanese mythology.


Spear of Lugh or Spear of Lúin named after Lugh, a god in Irish mythology.


Gáe Bulg Spear of Cúchulainn, hero in Irish mythology


Trishula Spear of Shiva, a Hindu god.


Octane Serpent Spear of Zhang Fei (Yide) from the Three Kingdoms period in China.


Spear of Fuchai, the spear used by Goujian's arch-rival, King Fuchai of Wu, in China.


Poseidon's Trident Greek sea god's three pronged spear given to him by the undersea Cyclops

& who could forget ...


... Britney Spears


Spear is a "variant of spire".

If one drops in, in front of a spire ...


then one can "influence or animate with an idea or purpose"

Behind the name Odin aka All-father,
lies genius & madness;

"Odin ...probably from *wod-eno-/*wod-ono- "raging, mad, inspired," from base *wet- "to blow, inspire, spiritually arouse"

and yet another way to 'drop' in front of a spire

So ...

Is there any good reason, why we should take Norsely-mythical influence seriously, in our modern world, you ask?

... Death by mistletoe

You mean other than the fact that they colour four parts of the prism that keeps us weak?

"Many of the days of the week reflect the Nordic cosmology of the Ash Tree [Yggdrasil] - aka Holy Wood.


Tuesday Tiwes Nordic Goddess Tiwes
Wednesday (from "Wotans Germanic for Odin)
Thursday (Thor's day from Nordic god Thor)
Friday (German Freitag from Nordic goddess Freyja)
Saturday (day of Saturn, the original sun)
Sunday (Sun day, the modern sun after 9,500 BC)"

Let's get just a little side-tracked:


"The Romans ... would force prisoners to walk underneath a 'yoke of spears', which humiliated them. The yoke would consist ofthree spears, two upright with a third tied between them at a height which made the prisoners stoop ... The word subjugate has its origins in this practice (from Latin sub = under, jugum=a yoke)." wiki

Back on track ...


"The Christmas tree is a Nordic visual metaphor of their creation myth. It represents their cosmology ... it appears that only the Vikings embedded themselves in a creation myth that closely resembles that of the Christmas tree. However, they called their tree, the Ash World Tree" - (More from this excellent site)


At the foot of mighty Yggdrasil, hover the three Norns: -

"female beings who rule the destiny of gods and men, comparable to the Fates in classical mythology".


"The importance of the Norns in the Odinic world view is seldom appreciated by historians and mythologers ... If we look at the etymology of the names of the three Norns (Urd, Skuld, and Verdandi), we can go a long way toward grasping the concepts they embody.


"Urd" is cognate with "Wyrd", the Anglo-Saxon word for the unseen influences behind events ... Urd is depicted as being the guardian of a bottomless well ... represents the unmanifest potential, everything arises from the unmanifest, and returns to it ... Wyrd is a web of interconnections within a larger web" (Rest of excellent article here)

Now we need to cast our net a little wider.


"Urd, Urth - goddess of fate: a giantess who personified the past"

"The original, single, eldest Norn was Mother Earth, Ertha, Urth, Urdr"


"Urd, etc., who represented Fate and the Word of creation. She was Wurd"

"other variants of her name include Wurd (Old High German), Wryd (Anglo-Saxon, commonly translated as "Fate"), Weird (English), Urth, Urtha, Urdr, Urda, Ertha -- our word "earth" is derived from her. She was the Norn of destiny."

"The three Norns were known collectively as Die Schreiberinnen, "the Writing Women," who wrote the on-going book of Destiny in which they revealed the deep secrets of the universe ... They were writers, not spinners"

In the beginning was the Urd/ Wyrd/Word?

Although I could find no accepted etymological facts to back up the above statements, the word wyrd, is too damn close to the word to be under-looked.

And indeed I suddenly feel like I'm looking at the design plan of a grand architect & it all feels so familiar:

Earth - Word - Past - Destiny/Fate

ONE word spelled out in four different ways...?

Norse mythology has it's own 2012 countdown sequence called Ragnarok

Here are some sentences of sense tense I've split four ways for you

On Ragnarok, the Earth will be torn apart during a battle between the gods and the giants

On Ragnarok, the Word will be torn apart during a battle between the gods and the giants

On Ragnarok, the Past will be torn apart during a battle between the gods and the giants

On Ragnarok, Destiny/Fate will be torn apart during a battle between the gods and the giants

If history be a glut of lies, would this scenario be such a bad thing?

Let's direct our attention back to the Holy Mount ...

... the place where today's Holy Words hang out.
"The gods themselves gathered daily around Urd's sacred Well"

Let's suggest that the Holy Word of Holy Wood

=
today's scripture.

Let's suggest that

Actors = priests & priestesses.


& that when Congregations flock to church, the Word/Earth/Past/Destiny is made reel

Holy Wood
in-spires & animates ...

it takes words/script(ure) & breathes virtual flesh & blood into them...


so that they may be swallowed ...


... by a spectating flock

"Old English wyrd is a verbal noun formed from the verb weorþan, meaning "to come to pass, to become" ... Adjectival use develops in the 15th centrury, in the sense "having the power to control fate", ...


... originally in the name of the Weird Sisters, i.e. the classical Fates, in the Elizabethan period detached from their classical background as fays, and most notably appearing as the Three Witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth."

The really, really, weird, wyrd sisters who fatally dictated Macbeth's future

"fate - late 14c., from L. fata, neut. pl. of fatum "thing spoken (by the gods), one's destiny".

Ah yes, we come at last to Shakespeare - the name applied to the riter of centuries-worshipped wyrds.


The One who took the English Word round the Globe.

In our fantasy dating of this article, we find that Meister Shakespeare was in situ near the beginning.

I'd been wondering, you see, if we could see Shakespeare as the All-(grand)father of the Church of Holy Wood.


See him as the One who planted the seed that would become the Yggdrasil around which this modern world/word revolves.

Each day the Norns "draw water from the well ... which they pour over Yggdrasill so that its branches will not rot."

Each day the fruits of Holy Wood are fed into the minds of millions, & their words are re-newed again.


Was Shakespeare the One who set in motion what would become the wor(l)d of the (e)motion picture?

We recall that Odin "is associated with wisdom, war, battle, and death, and also magic, poetry, prophecy, victory, and the hunt".

 He had many, many, many names.

Among them:-

Geirölnir ... Spear charger

Geirlöðnir ... Spear inviter

Darraðr ... Spearman

Geirvaldr ... Gore/Spear Master

Geirtýr ... Gore/Spear God

Biflindi ... Spear Shaker

Excuse me?

Sorry what was that last one again?


Why I said, Spear Shaker

Oh haha, that's funny, now I get it!

Spear Shaker = Shakespeare

Hey wouldn't it be hysterical if history really did begin five hundredish years ago?


Imagine if that story was simply the scenery & stage props designed to make our modern world appear real.

Ever noticed how similar the words Destiny & Disney are?