Waking The Dragons: Norse Myth, Runes and Magic

The heart of ceremony is transformation and when done correctly it can offer us a set of new eyes with which to view our relationships, obstacles or community.

Logos was the peer-reviewed essay, the analysis, the laboratory, the bookkeeping. Since that time, and as a heritage from ancient Greece and the influence of the enlightenment period, our Western society presents logos as the main, and only, viable description of reality and truth; a reality and truth that can be calculated and quantified.

Our world the gods called Midgard - the Middle Earth. Over Middle Earth Ymir’s skull was placed as the sky, held up by four dwarves: north, east, south and west - to forever hold it together upon their shoulders. Ymir’s brain is today the floating clouds. Always moving and always thinking - changing like the weather. His decapitation and the creati

The three sisters of time are called Urd, Verdandi and Skuld. Past, present and future. The word Skuld, depicting the future, means "hidden" - also this is the same root word as "debt" in many Scandinavian languages.

In Norse myth, Memory (personified as Mimir) had a daughter called Urd. Urd is the Goddess of the Cycles of Time, all of time flowed toward her like currents of sea and she received all; she is all of the past. The memory of yesterday transforms into her Urd-water (named Aurr); she collects each wavelet and fills the great Well of Memory. This wate

The anathema of logos is "mythos". It is subjective, the personal; the oral story, the poetry - mythos speaks of eagles carrying golden keys, and of the Earth being created in seven days; it speaks of gods riding through the rainbow bridge.

We have Ur-logs in our own lives - the big ripples, such as love won and lost, illness, relations, betrayal and all the tangles of our human existence. In the ceremony we are invited to add new Ur-logs (laws) through a pledge or to change our ways or to do things differently.

The word rune also means: "mystery, secret or whisper."

But Odin knew that his largest and most dangerous battle would have to be against the firstborn babe, Ymir - the biggest of all the giants and the most wild. Upon an ice mountain in Nifelheim they battled, none was a victor at first and for many years they fought. Until one day, Odin (spirit) cut open the throat of Ymir and blood cascaded out of hi