MIMIR'S WELL {{{{{{}}}} by LUX LUKAS
(The sculpture above is a representation of the god Thor)
From NONE OF THE ABOVE! newsletter
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A Review of Ralph Metzner's THE WELL OF REMEMBRANCE
One of the mythical accounts in the Nordic cycle of poetry tells the tale of Mimir's well.
the epic relates sky-god Odin's search for a concealed well guarded over by a primordial being known as Mimir:
"Under the root of Yggdrasil which faces the world of the frost giants there is the well of Mimir in which wit and wisdom are hidden: and he is called Mimir who owns that well. He is full of knowledge because he drinks its water out of the Gjallarhorn. Thither came Odin and asked for a draught from the well, but got it not before giving his one eye as a pledge."
MIMIR, WHOSE NAME IS COGNATE WITH "MEMORY," is a water-etin (a giant) of primal space and time. The horn he drinks from is the god Heimdall's (the warder of the bridge that leads to Asgard "the gods' garden") which he will sound when the gods' doom approaches. Mimir's well is the repository of the origin of all events and beings. The mirrored depths occult all wit and wisdom lest its sacred waters are drunk by fools incapable of understanding. "Let those who have eyes to see -- see." The All-Father Odin appears before Mimir and gives one eye to "see" in the well of remembrance.
THE WELL OF REMEMBRANCE reaches across vast distances of time to examine three distinct phases in the transformation of the religion and worldview of Europe. The book is authored by Ralph Metzner, a psychotherapist and a professor of psychology. He was an early pioneer in the study of psychedelics and nonordinary states of consciousness in the (anything but ordinary) nineteensixties and 'seventies, along with fellow spiritual revolutionaries such as Timothy Leary and Richard (aka: Ram Das) Alpert.
Metzner, who was born in Germany, underwent a great personal struggle in his study of Nordic Mythology, because the popular conception of Nordic-Germanic mythology still connects it with the ideology of the German National Socialists (NAZIs). Metzner chooses to personally accept "national guilt" for the Holocaust. The regime's borrowings and distortions of elements of the Teutonic religion have cast a long and deep psychological shadow over it, causing it to be unjustly vilified . It is only within the last two decades that a revival of Teutonic socio-religious heritage has occurred. Metzner's is a valiant effort to restore the forgotten earth-wisdom in pre-christian mythology and legends, and he manages to convey a sense of their transformative wisdom.
The Well of Remembrance is once again calling us to drink from its depths.
THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE GODDESS
Over six thousand years ago there lived a people devoted to the Goddess. The people of old Europe lived in agrarian communities in peaceful co-existence with one another. Rivers were perceived as well-springs of life that issue abundantly from the womb of the Earth Mother. The endless expanse of dark forests were believed to be the realm of a mysterious god who acted as a protective lord of the wild, as well as the consort of the Earth Mother. The Lord of The Wild inspired awe and even fear among the tribes of the Goddess, for he existed outside the relative comfort zone of the homes and sown fields of the Folk. Yet the people believed it was the lord's seed, coupled with the fertile soil of Mother Earth, that engendered the crops that fed the people. The folk of old Europe held reverance for the feminine power of procreation and were deeply connected with the natural world.
THE WELL OF REMEMBRANCE depicts the indigenous people of old Europe as a matricentric culture. Rulership of the community was often jointy shared by a female priestess and her consort. It is believed that this pair were sometimes married siblings. There is some debate as to whether this marriage was strictly symbolic, reflecting the Goddess and her consort joined, or whether endogamy (marriage within the clan) was widely practiced.
The evidence suggests that a woman would marry someone in the clan, and the husband would then live in the woman's extended family household. Offspring was reckoned as matrilineal: children were descended from the mother rather than the father. This practice symbolically reflects the relationship between Mother-Goddess and her consort. Thus the woman leader of the village represented the Earth Goddess in religious matters. Her husband or consort represented the protective god. These practices of Mother-Goddess societies were not limited to old Europe, but are found also in the Indus Valley civilization (India), the Minoan culture (Mediterranean), and many others. Several important elements are found in common among the Goddess cultures:
a) fertility rites
b) the concept of rebirth
c) spirituality as the goal of life
d) equality between the sexes and among the people
e) various forms of meditation
The communities of old Europe existed in harmony with each other and the natural cycle. They did not know war nor did they craft weapons of war. The condition they enjoyed is called The Golden Age in classical literature. It was known as Frith-stead in ancient times -- "a place of peace and prosperity."
THE CREED OF IRON
THE WELL OF REMEMBRANCE recalls two distinct races of gods described in Norse Mythology. The Vanir gods are connected with the promotion and celebration of fertility, prosperity, nourishment and vegetation. They are the eldest pantheon of deities of old Europe, worshipped by the Frith-Folk as far back as the stone age. The Vanir are the earth and sea gods of weather, nature, agriculture, sovereignty of land and sea, and givers of blessing. Their power is the power of gestation and creation of new life, life's becoming, and prophecy. They are the promise of renewal of life after death, with all that exists on land or in the sea. Freyja, Goddess of life, love and death, is the chief Goddess of the Vanir.
The Aesir are the war and sky gods of Aryan culture. The Asa-gods are connected to battle, law, caste, patriarchal dominance, and runes. Many of the Aesir gods are known, and twelve are reckoned to be divine among all others. Highest of all is Odin. Next is Mighty Thor. Others include Balder the Bright, Bragi the Eloquent, Heimdall the Warder, and Tyr, god of Truth and Law. The Aesir live in a heavenly sanctuary called Asgard, "the gods' garden."
The Frith-stead of the Mother-Goddess culture was shattered in the third millennium by Aryan invaders. The Aryans migrated from the steppes of what is now southern Russia, imposing their patriarchy upon the people of old Europe. They brought war with spear and battle-axe. Because old Europe was not versed in the art of war, they became subject to Aryan dominance. The myths related in the Eddas speak of the first war between the Aesir and Vanir gods. This is likely a reflection of the Aryan intrusive element into old Europe. The pattern was repeated in the Mediteranean Minoan culture, and the Harrapan civilization of northern India. Matricentric societies fell before the war patriarchs. Yet the Mother Goddess was not destroyed, and many elements of old Europe were assimilated into the Aryan worldview.
The Eddic literature gives us many accounts of the Aesir race of gods, but only a few are told of the Vanir. THE WELL OF REMEMBRANCE gives depth to those accounts while exploring the shift within the European worldview. The shift in the worldview of old Europe to that of Aryan culture occurred over a period of three thousand years, and was generally established by the first millennium before the common era. As the nomadic Aryans advanced into Europe they gradually suppressed and supplanted Earth-Goddess worship with that of their own. An amalgam was formed as a result of cohabitation between the Aryans and the Frith-Folk. This synthesis formed Teutonic, Celtic, Balto-Slavic and GrecoRoman civilization. The process of three millennia of interaction, assimilation and accomodation formed Norse culture and religion.
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WORLD-TREE
"I WILL DESTROY THE WISDOM OF THE WISE, AND THE INTELLIGENCE OF INTELLIGENT PEOPLE I WILL SET ASIDE." So spoke the God of Christiandom. And as the state religion of Christianity spread across Europe, the earth-wisdom of the old religion fell under the shadow of the cross. Some of the elder socio-religious groups converted more or less willingly, combining an amalgam of the old craft with that of the New Way. Other groups resisted fiercely, and their banners to the Earth Mother and the Sky-Father fell as battles raged. Loyalty to those who practiced the craft of the wise faded with time's passage. What had once been was barely remembered as legends and myths, held true by scattered circles of witches, pagan midwives and individual shamans. These remnants of the ancient truth were ruthlessly hunted down to be tortured and burned at the hands of Christian inquisitioners. It is a holocaust that is still not officially acknowledged by the Church.
The old way of religious expression, with its reverence toward the natural cycle, became lost to the new religion. The sense that the earth was sacred was obscured by the transcendence of Christianity. The magnificence of the heavenly realm was promised instead, and humanity broke its charge as keepers to the earthen garden, replacing it with dominating and exploitive attitudes. Earth's paradise was relegated to mundane status. The idea of paradise on earth was truely lost.
We are now faced with ecological disaster as the military-industrial complex lords over the earth. Fortunately human-kind is beginning to wake up to the facts. This awareness is accompanied by a growing hunger to understand our spiritual condition. James Redfield, author of THE CELESTINE VISION, attests to a "shifting in human consciousness." The fact that his book is a worldwide run-away bestseller indicates that SOMETHING is indeed shifting!
This shift in the collective consciousness is opening eyes to patterns of synchronicity that are an inherent part of each individual's life. These synchronous patterns are real events that propel each of us forward into a greater understanding of ourselves, each other and the earth. They are patterns that are born in Mimir's Well. We are taking a crucial step in the human maturation process when we are able to realize that these "coincidental" encounters are prompted by a yearning for a greater integration with Mother Earth and all of life itself.
Our quest to understand our relationship to a divine source can not be accompanied by the exploitive destruction of ecosystems; it is from these very systems that the divine source can be found! Take a view from a mountain peak and hear what the wind there is saying. Stand upon the shore of any sea and you will know the language of the waves. Deep in the forest you will hear the leaves whisper. To destroy a river is to put a clamp-hold over the mouth of God.
The time has come to cast off the shroud of accumulated guilt and religious dogma that demonized the grandeur of Northern European Mythology. It is time to integrate our personalities, minds and bodies with the natural cycle and the cosmic world: to give pledge to the Well of Remembrance so that we may once again drink from the living water of wisdom.
LUX LUKAS --August 2000
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