Ragnarok

by Asrad CG (based on a talk presented at the Great Moot 2256)

Today I would like to talk to you about what is perhaps the most well know of all our Odinic Myths, the Ragnarok. People that know nothing of Odinism or our rich and wonderful Odinic mythology will have heard of the Ragnarok. They may know of it as the “Doom of the Gods” or Richard Wagner’s Classical masterpiece “Twilight of the Gods”.  Of all our myths this one section of our mythology is without doubt the most written about, most discussed, and in my opinion the most relevant to us as individuals as a group and as a folk unit.

Let us first remind ourselves of the basics of the myth of Ragnarok and the most significant link in the chain of events leading to the Ragnarok.  Baldur the bright shining God, son of Odin has been slain by his blind brother Hother under the guidance of Loki. Here we see the blindness of Hother as the symbolic small ego guided by Loki which is illusion. Balder here is representative of humanity and the individual and the destiny of each individual. Baldur must now reside in Hel, despite the Gods attempts to have him returned until the Ragnarok.

We are told that the Ragnarok will be preceded by Fimbulvetr, the winter of winters. Three such winters will follow each other with no summer in between.  There will be great conflict, brother shall fight brother. The world is Harsh. Fornication is rife, luring to faithlessness spouses of others.

Axe time, Sword time, shields shall be cloven. Wind time, wolf time, ere the world wanes.

The Wolf shall swallow the Sun, and another Wolf shall take the Moon at one bite, a treble loss. Next the Earth and the mountains shake, woods are torn up by roots, crags crack from top to bottom and all fetters and bonds are smashed and split. The Wolf Fenrir breaks loose, and a great bore of waters covers the land as the World serpent thrashes and boils up out of the sea! The Fenris Wolf gallops with his jaws agape, his lower fangs raking the earth, his upper scraping the sky. The World serpent blows its clouds of poison that all the earth and sky are covered.

At the height of this clangour the skies split asunder and through the rift ride Muspell’s Sons. Surtr rides first, flinging fire before him and after him. In his hand the supreme sword more dazzling than the sun. As they ride up over the Bifrost Bridge, it crumbles behind them. All the hosts of Muspell plough steadily on to Vigrids plain to meet with the Fenris Wolf and the World serpent. Loki comes with Hrymr who leads all the Frost Giants, while Loki’s Sons, followers and the children of Muspell form an army on their own – a blazing host!

When all this takes place Heimdal stands forth and sounds the Gjallarhorn to muster all the Gods, Odin confers with Mimer’s head. The Sons of Odin prepare for battle and the Einherjar don their battle harness and march to the field of battle. Odin Allfather rides at the head carrying Gungnir. Odin charges into battle and engages the Fenris Wolf with Thor at his side, unable to help as he has his own battle to fight against the Midgard Serpent Jormungand. Thor and the mighty Mjoilnir are victorious, but Thor only takes nine steps before falling down dead, enveloped by the poisonous mist blown upon him by Jormungand in their battle. Surt battles the swordless Freyr and kills him. Mighty Tyr fights the monstrous hound Garm and they  kill each other. Heimdal and Loki fight their eternal battle and neither will survive. The battle between Odin and Fenrir continues for a long-time, but finally Fenrir defeats Odin only to be immediately avenged by his son Vidar who kills the Wolf

Surt now sends fire in all directions and the Nine worlds shall burn, and friends and foe alike shall perish.
After all this terrible carnage and destruction, a new and idyllic world arises from the ashes. There will be new growth, an abundance of supplies. The sons of Thor, Mothi and Magni bringing with them Thor’s mighty Hammer. After them shall come Balder and Hothr from Hel. They shall live in love and talk long together and revive all their old wisdom and shall put behind them all the ancient evils of the Midgard Serpent and the Fenris Wolf.

The world is peopled again by the survivors of Surt’s fire, Lif and Lifthrasir. The Sun gave birth to a bright and wonderful daughter before she was swallowed by the Wolf, and this new fair maid will pace the sky just as her mother.

Now today I do not intend to analyse each point of this wonderful mythological epic, for to do so would take more time than we have here today and would no doubt result in a considerable amount of snoring from the audience in a very short space of time! So breath a sigh of relief.

As we know, myth is the symbolic expression of primal truth. We also know that our Myths are multi layered and so make themselves accessible to all our folk, regardless of our level of understanding. Let us look at just a few of these levels.

Let us first look at how the Ragnarok myth can be viewed at a personal level. We can liken this great cataclysmic battle between the Gods and the overwhelming forces of destruction to those of our own personal battles, our own internal struggle against negativity. Few of us have led lives where there have not been times of turmoil. We may have faced our own inner giants, forces which have brought us near to personal destruction, yet we have battled and defeated our giants, our own inner Jotuns. It is this inner battle, these personal Ragnaroks which must be faced in the same courageous way our Gods do. The great internal battle over illusion, the Loki energy, which Heimgest so excellently explained in his article “May Loki be Bound” is something we must be constantly aware of and fight against, just as in the Ragnarok myth when Heimdal battles Loki. Only when we fully understand that until we have overcome the internal battle, the inner revolution, and remember the internal battle over our giants, our weaknesses and the forces of illusion are a continuous struggle, can we obtain advancement and so reach the higher consciousness, the Odin consciousness.

It is on a folk level which we can see just how difficult and vast the forces of destruction are at the present time. Look around us at the world we live in and we can see that our folk are under continuous attack. This is not necessarily physical attack, more often it is psychological, spiritual or moral, though in the recent past we have seen an ever increasing physical threat to our folk, to our culture and to our right to exist. An alien creed and alien people now threatens our very being with its warped and twisted beliefs. We can see the forces of destruction coming from the east and amassing on Vidgrid’s Plain.

It would be easy for our folk to roll over and give way to this evil force, faced with what may seem overwhelming odds, a wretched and corrupt system of government and a sickness within many of our own folk which has blinded them to the very real dangers facing the Children of Odin amassed on the other side of Vidgrid’s Plain. The weak and spineless will turn and run at the first sight of the Loki’s children.

So many are the battles our folk face here and now that it is hard for me to mention them all, and if I were to open this to the audience I am certain that we could list an enormous number. Each battle, each struggle would be significant. The forces of negativity and illusion have already inflicted many causalities within the ranks of our folk.

Mother Jorth, the Earth, our home, is also facing and fighting a mighty battle. The children of Loki, are ravishing Mother Jorth. The deluded and power-crazed are pillaging the world’s resources. We see the world being polluted and poisoned, raped by big business, abused by those that have no love for Mother Jorth, no respect or understanding for our home, our great Mother. No understanding that we are part of nature, not its owners. It is sickening to hear the hollow talk and blatant lies spewed out by politicians who on one hand claim to want to protect our great Mother and yet on the other they encourage her destruction.

We can see just what Mother Jorth and our sacred sites mean to those that seek only power and money by the way in which that seek to destroy the environment and our heritage. Look at how sites like the White Horse Stone, Thornborough Henge and the famous Hill of Tara in Ireland are being attacked in the name of progress! One is being attacked to provide 15 seconds of air time for mobile phone users, one by the construction firm Tarmac and the Hill of Tara by its own government because they want a motorway.

I have painted a very dark and depressing image of what we are facing on a personal, folk and world level. Snorri Sturluson attempted to portray the story of Ragnarok as the death of our Gods; their total destruction; and in so doing he was attempting to pave the way for his own alien creed with its sickness, a sickness which has poisoned our folk for generations. But we know that the Ragnarok is not the death of our Gods, it was not a final act, it is the symbol of primal truth, a symbol of the great cycle of life. Birth, Life, Death, Rebirth. We see our Gods fall in battle struggling against negativity, the powers of chaos, but as in nature, nothing really dies for all is reborn and so our Gods rise again.  Baldur the bright is returned to us and from the destruction new life springs forth. Gods and Man return to a bright new realm, a realm that is cleansed of decay, negativity and illusion.

So we see that the Ragnarok is not a story of doom or the loss of our Gods forever, far from it, it is a story of victory, positivity over negativity, order over chaos. The Gods rise again from the ashes, just as the phoenix rises again. We as a folk have also risen again, once more our folk are awakening from their slumber, and they are stirring from a deep sleep induced by the noxious poison feed to them by the alien religion and its missionaries for over a thousand years. The shackles which have enslaved our folk have been broken. Our folk are free to rise again. If they chose to be free they can be free. If they chose to remain enslaved by a new master, that of materialism, then they shall never be free. The choice for our folk is there. We can choose to live a noble and honourable life, fight against negativity in all its forms and stand as one folk in defence of Faith, Folk and Family just as our Gods do, knowing that rebirth awaits.

Let us hail the Ragnarok and its victory, our Gods have risen again, we shall rise again.