Continuing my series about novel gnosis, that is, religious insights I gained while writing fiction, today the topic is Odin. In heathen religion, Odin is a complex god with spheres of influence ranging from wisdom and magic to war. He and his brothers sculpted the world and humanity.
Trying to separate actual gnosis about Odin from parts of the Fireverse-Odin character that were distorted by the story’s function as a healing journey for me, it’s clear that Fireverse-Odin functions psychologically as a father figure, but lore Odin has definite fatherly overtones as well, even having two nicknames that include the word father, namely Allfather and the possibly older Yulefather, which is related to his name Yule-Being (Jolnir.) So I’m confident in saying that my gnosis is that Odin is a Skyfather, even though it’s clear historically that the original Skyfather of the Germanic peoples was Tyr. In a mythopoeic tale, every father is your father, and every mountain is the obstacle you yourself must overcome. The process of writing Some Say Fire healed me of issues I needed to resolve to become a godspouse, and becoming one helped me be able to finish the story. Odin and Loki were often in my head as I was writing. Sometimes they masked as each other. They usually no longer mask as each other when they communicate with me, now that a few years have passed since I finished writing the novel.
Nidhoggr is the worm that eats the dead. Many things in mythology are taken too literally and need to be examined as symbolic, but in this case the standard interpretation is ignoring the obvious literalism of a worm eating corpses. This is not describing punishment of sinners, it’s recycling. Worms literally eat corpses. Then they turn the matter into worm castings that grow plants.
This isn’t really novel gnosis in that I did not arrive at this insight while writing my novel, but I did discuss it in my head with Sigyn one night while I was at least partly asleep, and I only developed the ability to talk to gods and have them answer me while I was writing a novel with the gods as characters in it, so in a way all the conversations I’ve had with them since then follow directly from the writing of the novel.
The children of Loki and Sigyn are Narvi, also called Nari or Narfi, and Vali, who shares a name with a son of Odin. Vali Lokisson and Vali Odinsson will have a shared entry in the Novel Gnosis series later. The Nar- root word means corpse.
The sweet children of Loki and Sigyn were caught in the web of fate. The gods exist outside of linear time, so they knew what was coming from the beginning. They chose to give life and to love and be happy for the time they had, even though they knew it would not last forever.
Nanna is Baldur's wife. As I mentioned in my prior post on Hodur, in the Fireverse Nanna was the old moon goddess before the moon power passed to the moon god Mani. I believe this insight works in the actual mythology too. That's the reason I'm posting my novel gnosis: I think that some of what flowed out of my fingers when I was writing Some Say Fire was actual religious truth. I believe that much of my novel was directly inspired by Loki and Odin and other gods. So, here is the gnosis I've gleaned from the chapter focusing on Nanna.
In the Fireverse, when Baldur and Hodur were both wooing Nanna, Baldur invited Nanna to a ball he held in his mother’s underwater ballroom in Fensalir. Usually Fensalir only admits women and children, but there was an exception for the ballroom. The ballroom is round and one can look out of the curving walls at the underwater portions of a lake. The ballroom chapter being told from the perspective of Loki, like the rest of the novel, the story focused on Loki’s attempt to help out Hodur, which did not go well from Loki’s perspective. There were shenanigans involving a snow making machine. In the end, Nanna chose Baldur, just as she was always meant to, even though that’s not what Loki was trying to achieve.
In Asatru and other Norse or Icelandic based sects of heathenry, the name of the sun is Sunna and the name of the moon is Mani. Sunna is a goddess and Mani is a god.
In my novel gnosis, Sunna and Mani were not born gods, but they became full gods with full god powers when the sun and moon powers passed to them after the deaths of Baldur and Nanna. During eclipses of the sun, Sunna can leave the sun chariot and travel other places. When she appears in Midgard this is what she is doing, but because time doesn’t work the same way for gods and for human beings, she may appear in Midgard at a different time than when she left. She and Mani always return to their chariots in enough time to drive their horses on and outrun the wolves who are chasing them.
In the Fireverse, Honir and Lodhur were generated out of Odin to shape Midgard from Ymir’s body, reabsorbed, generated out of Odin again to shape humanity out of driftwood, reabsorbed, and finally Odin generated them a third time, and placed Lodhur in the jotun who was born vaette-Loki but who had the potential to become a god. Then Loki and Lodhur were the same being, “and then it had always been that way.” At that point, Honir was also permanently in existence outside of Odin, but he did not have a permanent physical form, so he only manifested when Odin and Loki were together. So Lodhur is both the same being as Loki and not the same. He is an aspect of Loki and is also older than Loki.
Just to set the record straight for those who may have read the Marvel version: Laufey is Loki's mother, not his father. That is Lore. What follows is my novel gnosis, that is, my insights gained via writing fiction.
Laufey lives on the Leafy Isle, which is an island in the middle of Jotunheim's major river. The island is located in a part of the river where the water is no longer really hot, but it doesn’t freeze over in the winter. Her island is full of birch trees and one of her main economic activities is to make birch oil for sale as a painkiller. Fireverse-Laufey gets into selling darker magics during Loki’s childhood to buy him forbidden books in defiance of Jotunheim’s king’s law because she intends Loki to take the throne of Jotunheim. Her older 2 sons are not sons of the king and that causes some family tension.
Anthony Gresham
It's taken me a while to finish writing this, but I accept your challenge to write a new myth of my own. Here goes:Narfi & NariI write of Narfi and N...
Thesseli
You should post on Substack too, where you won't have to worry about being deplatformed or kicked off the site for your views. (Also, I've archived th...