Creation – A tribute to Hervor OR

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abstract-creation

By Aeswyn OR

First published in OR Briefing 224  following the departure of Hervor OR from this realm.

Cattle die and kinsmen die,
Thyself soon wilt die;
But fair fame will fade never,
For whomever will win it.

I was deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Hervor and have said that she was an inspiration to me. I now feel that I need to take that statement further to quantify that remark.

When I joined the OR my first study project was the Circle of Ostara’s work on Odinic Mythology which had just been published. This work resonated deeply within my psyche and I wrote to Hervor to explain how I was absorbing the knowledge within it. I did this in a poem which I entitled Creation. Hervor included it in the Odinic Rite year book “The North Wind” published in September 1991 along with another poem I had written entitled “The Dance“.

These poems were written before I had refined my runic name which I had been given in a rune meditation. Ansuz and Wunjo which I then interpreted phonetically as Ao. The following is the poem inspired by Hervor and the Circle of Ostara’s work. This is my tribute to the memory of Hervor OR.
Hail Hervor
FFF

Creation

Vortex of power forever in motion,
evolving, forming and re-forming.
Spiralling mystic threads encompassing all,
weaving a pattern of all that has been,
of all that is, and all that will be.
Intelligence, matter, spirit in symmetry.
The Holy being, being whole, infinite,
without end, without beginning,
Wyrd, the whole, all.

Within the vortex lies the void,
the yawning gulf, Ginnunagap.
Dark and still, yet full of life,
life of forces opposite but equal,
forces of stillness, forces of motion,
positive, and negative, ice and fire,
meeting and mingling, creating a third,
neither one nor the other but both,
Ymir, the primal substance.

Substance of forms that were,
forms that are, and forms that will be.
Changing substance, evolving substance,
at once fluid and yet solid.
Forming and re-forming,
growing and receding,
splitting and coming together,
awaiting the catalyst of change,
Audumla, shaper of life.

A catalytic change in the substance
brings forth a form, progenitor,
a form containing the seed of life,
the source from which all life forms spring.
From microbe to mammoth,
from living rock to man,
from satellite to sun.
The Aesir from him are born,
Buri, the father of life.

The seed was sown, a multiverse arose,
when Buri caressed our mother the Earth.
Asgard, where the Gods keep watch.
Midgard, full of teeming life.
Hel, the shining realm of Holy Power,
the home of the sacred wells.
The wells of life, of wisdom and of fate,
in which the roots of life are nourished.
Ygdrassil, the world tree.

Holy powers, intelligent powers,
of wisdom, love, fertility and courage,
form the human beasts in their image
and imbue them with free will,
to care for Midgard and all it’s life.
Lodir gave us bloodline, our genetic code.
Selfhood and will-power Honir gave us.
Odin gave us spirit, our divine connection
with the Aesir,
The High Gods of the North.