Germanic Values – Advice From the Havamal

Depiction of Wotan by Breitkpod and Hartel (19th century)

In the second half of the 13th century CE an unknown Icelander copied a number of Pagan era poems into the Codex Regis (literally meaning “Royal Manuscript”), which makes up a large part of what is known as the Elder Edda or the Poetic Edda. Among them is the Havamal, which means something like “Sayings of the High One”, the High One being Odin. Theoretically Odin is the speaker throughout most of the Havamal, if not the author. From a scholarly point of view the Havamal is thought to be a composite of poems, written by up to six different authors hundreds of years earlier, before Iceland adopted Christianity as the State religion in circa 1000 CE. Whoever the author, or authors, the Havamal is an invaluable record of traditional Norse values; it is full of good advice and insight, much of which is perfectly relevant to our own times. For this reason I attempt to summarise and extract those parts of the Havamal that I find particularly inspiring. In so doing I draw from two translations: Larrington (translator), The Poetic Edda, Oxford World’s Classics, 2008, and Orchard (translator), The Elder Edda: Myths, Gods and Heroes from the Viking World, Penguin Books, 2013.

Death is coming for you no matter what you do, so live fearlessly:

“16. A senseless man thinks to live for ever if he bewares a war; but old age won’t grant him a truce, whatever spears may grant [Orchard].” 

“16. The foolish man thinks he will live forever, if he keeps away from fighting; but old age won’t grant him a truce even if the spears do [Larrington].”

Hecate in the Roman Tradition – Trivia of the Crossroads

"Hekate" by Blake (1795)

Hecate (or Trivia, to use her Latin name – as this is now also an English word with a very different association I will retain her Hellenic title) is an enigmatic Goddess of the triple crossroads, the stygian night and magic; though she walks through the dark she is not a Goddess of darkness itself, for it is her torches which lit up the way for Ceres when she searched for her abducted daughter. Hecate is associated with both Diana,* who lights up the night, and Proserpina, who gives us hope that life can emerge from death. Hecate's rites were not recorded on the official Roman calendar (Beard at 384), but her veneration was well known in Rome. Cicero tells us that altars and shrines to her were commonplace in Greece, though not apparently in Rome at this time, however, she is referred to by a number of contemporaneous Roman poets, such as Horace and Catullus, which suggests that Hecate had already been successfully synchronised into Roman polytheism by the 1st century BCE. By the 4th century CE her worship was apparently prominent enough for Roman senators to be counted among her priests. This was during the last gasp of overt Paganism in Italy, when Christianity had become the religion of emperors; Paganism was increasingly mocked as a set of superstitions befitting peasants and barbarian Germans. Perhaps in an effort to assert greater spiritual legitimacy, some affluent and well educated Pagans were embracing an increasingly more sophisticated species of polytheism, by fusing it with mystery religions and philosophies from the east (a process which had been ongoing for centuries in any case). Roman veneration of Hecate appears to have gone hand-in-hand with this, for she almost certainly featured prominently within the well known Eleusinian Mysteries – a Pagan sect that was apparently so spiritually fulfilling that initiation into its secret rites brought about the apostasy of Constantine I’s nephew Julian, who would later be known as the last Pagan emperor of Rome.

Dis Pater and Proserpina

"The Rape of Proserpina" by Ulpiano Checa (1888)

In Roman polytheism Dis Pater, Pluto and Orcus are all names for the same God of the underworld and of death. His consort Proserpina is equally a Goddess of death, but also of spring, and thus the possibility of renewed life. Any discussion of one of these deities is incomplete without the other. Both deities should be understood as being essentially the same as the Hellenic Hades and Persephone. Although they are infernal Gods they are in no way like their Christian usurper, Satan. They are not inherently evil and their raison d'etre is not to torture the damned or tempt the weak. Nor is their domain a burning hell, but rather a “gloomy palace” (Ovid) surrounded by water. Dis Pater is euphemistically called the rich one – this title meaning, literally, rich father. As the foremost God of the underworld Dis Pater is naturally associated with all the wealth that comes from it, including gold, precious gems and, most importantly, the latent fertility of the earth. This latter aspect of the God links him with the Goddess of the harvest (Ceres), and of course her daughter who emerges from beneath the earth every spring, Proserpina. 

When Odin Recruits: On Becoming a Pagan Widow

Detail from The Death of Messalina by Rochegrosse (1916)

Note: this is a cathartic narration of my experience.

Earlier this year my husband (W) died suddenly from pulmonary embolism. He was in his early 40s. We first met at school, when he was 16 and I was 14. We hooked up two years later. For almost the entirety of my adult life we were together and for most of that time we were totally into each other (although we did have problems, and break ups, here and there). I adored him, he was my universe. Although I’m not sure I knew quite how much I adored him until he died. He treated me (mostly) very well. He had a traditional approach to our marriage; he was protective and loyal. He would not have left me for a younger woman when I got into my 40s (like my sister’s husband did). He was not emotionally abusive or violent (like my father). He was honourable and true. He didn’t care for religion but, even so, he had personal values that he upheld and believed in – he had integrity.

It happened as follows.

Buddhist Beliefs Regarding the Afterlife

"Courtesan looking into the mirror" by Yoshitoshi (19th century)

It is axiomatic that nirvana (ie, the extinguishment of suffering) is the ultimate end goal in Buddhism, however it is equally axiomatic that most people dwell in an ocean of suffering, hence most people do not achieve nirvana, but they do die. What happens after death is something that not all Buddhists agree on. Many Western Buddhists hold afterlife views that differ little from atheism, which is to say that essentially they do not believe in an afterlife except in some very abstract way (such as that what we do in our life echoes on through the ages, or that our material remains will eventually become the basis of some new form of life). However, the orthodox teachings make it clear that traditional Buddhism embraces the concept of repeated rebirths into multiple realms of being. Thus when most of us die we do not die with finality, rather death is part of the ongoing life-death-rebirth cycle that characterises ordinary existence.

The Theravada afterlife

The orthodox position of Theravada Buddhism on rebirth is laid out in The Debate of King Milinda, as written down in the 1st century BCE – it records a dialogue between the Greek king of Bactria and the sage Nagasena. Nagasena says that ordinary people are reborn but that from existence to existence these people are:

“Neither the same nor another … [just as] a pot of milk that turns first to curds, then to butter, then to ghee; it would not be right to say that the ghee, butter and curds were the same as the milk but they have come from that so neither would it be right to say that they are something else [Pesala at 11].”

Western Mourning Traditions – After the Funeral

"Love's Melancholy" by Meyer (1866)

In secular times such as ours the rites of mourning have become somewhat vague. Generally speaking, there is a notion that one wears black for a period of time – though no one really expects black to be worn at any time other than at the funeral – and sometimes a group of people may wear black armbands for a certain period, such as a football team at a sports event. There is also a half-remembered tradition that widows should wait for a year before becoming romantically involved with someone new. In the last few decades a new quasi-tradition has arisen whereby the bereaved are encouraged to book some sessions with a grief counsellor or psychologist. Beyond these things it is hard to pin down Western mourning traditions, even Debrett’s fails to say much on the matter, advising of little more than the intricacies of funeral arrangements while acknowledging:

“It is only in our increasingly secular times, when death has become something to be ignored, avoided and indeed feared, that these most final and utterly inevitable rites of passage are often, quite wrongly, skimped on [Morgan, Debrett’s New Guide to Etiquette and Modern Manners at 96].”

The truth of the matter is that we are mostly left to invent our own way of mourning. Society at large, as fragmented as it is, will expect little from us once the funeral is over. The insensitive will hope that we will simply move on and adapt to the new normal as quickly as possible – the grief of others and the reality of death is simply too awkward to deal with. Those who care will probably encourage us to do “whatever feels right” and treat us gently (unless they are overwhelmed by their own grief). Those who mourn are often left grasping onto thin air, with few known traditions to fall back on – at such times looking at historic traditions may give the bereaved something to work with.

Germanic Beliefs Regarding the Afterlife

"Ingeborg" by Zorn (1907)

One thing of which we can be certain is that the pre-Christian Germanic peoples generally believed that the spirit continued on in some way after death. The popular presentation of the afterlife presented by Snorri Sturluson invites us to think of a sort of Viking heaven, called Valhalla, where slain warriors battle perennially by day, followed by lavish feasting and drinking in Odin’s hall. Alternately, some warriors go to a seemingly similar place overseen by Freyja, the Folkvangar – “wherever she rides in battle, half of the slain belong to her. Odin takes the other half” (Prose Edda at 35). For those who do not die violently Helheim is at least one of the major destinations of the dead. This apparent underworld is perhaps a place of latent dormancy, for from here Baldr (the slain son of Odin) and Hod (another slain God) will emerge when the next cycle of life begins after the world destroying events of Ragnarök. Aside from Sturluson, other sources on Germanic religion indicate a profound and beautiful approach to understanding the afterlife – a topic which we can be sure our Germanic ancestors would have considered deeply, given how comparatively frequent their confrontations with death were.