Odin and The Runic Magical Tradition
Though examples of the magical use of the runic language pervade Northern Europe’s archeological and folk-literary record, primary sources detailing the beliefs and practices of the rune mages are sparse.
What little we do find is compelling.
Havalmal, or ‘Sayings of the High One’, an Eddic poem recorded in the Codex Regius, is written from the perspective of the High God, Odin. Verses 136-144 relate his quest for the Runes; how he won them through an act of self-immolation.
137. I trow I hung on that windy Tree
nine whole days and nights,
stabbed with a spear, offered to Odin,
myself to mine own self given,
high on that Tree of which none hath heard
from what roots it rises to heaven.
138. None refreshed me ever with food or drink,
I peered right down in the deep;
crying aloud I lifted the Runes
then back I fell from thence.
Odin won the runes by suspending himself on Yggdrasil, the Great Tree that supports the axis of reality. He hung there for nine days, wounded by his own spear and deprived of food and drink.
Odin was embarking on a vision-quest; Odin’s process was shamanic.
In the Norse Cosmology according to Voluspa, another Eddic poem, the Wyrd Sisters (Skuld, Verthanthi, and Urd, synonymous with the Fates) are tasked with nourishing the three roots of Yggdrasil with the waters from Urd’s Well.
When Odin hung upside down from Yggdrasil, he was staring down into Urd’s Well; he was learning from the Three Sisters. He was scrying the patterns of the past, present, future.
Like Moses bringing the tables of the Law down from Mt. Sinai, Odin brought holy letters down from Yggdrasil; he came away from his vision-quest in possession of the runic language.
In Havalmal, Odin demonstrates identity with Christ, Prometheus, and Apollo.
Like Christ, he is wounded with a spear and offered as a sacrifice to himself. Like Prometheus, he is a bringer of wisdom, punished by (and for) that wisdom. Like Apollo, he is a bringer of the instruments of divination.
Because the runes were drawn from the source of all time and space, the runes could be used to see around corners; these sacred markings could lay bare the secrets of the past, the present, and the future.
Tacitus, a Roman statesman of the 1st century AD, paints a vivid picture of what Norse runic divination might have looked like in his ‘Germania’:
Augury and divination by lot no people practise more diligently. The use of the lots is simple.
A little bough is lopped off a fruit-bearing tree, and cut into small pieces; these are distinguished by certain marks, and thrown carelessly and at random over a white garment.
In public questions the priest of the particular state, in private the father of the family, invokes the gods, and, with his eyes towards heaven, takes up each piece three times, and finds in them a meaning according to the mark previously impressed on them. If they prove unfavourable, there is no further consultation that day about the matter; if they sanction it, the confirmation of augury is still required.
After obtaining the runes, Odin learns ‘nine mighty songs’ and is granted a ‘measure of the wondrous Mead’ Óðrørir, the Soul-stirrer of inspiration.
139.
Nine mighty songs I learned from the great
son of Bale-thorn, Bestla’s sire;
I drank a measure of the wondrous Mead,
with the Soulstirrer’s drops I was showered.
In Snorri Sturleson’s Skáldskaparmál, instead of being a drink, Óðrørir is the mixing-cauldron where the dwarves Fjalar and Galar fermented the Mead of Wisdom by mixing honey with the blood of Kvasir.
Kvasir was a holy being the dwarves had murdered. In his life he was renowned for the wisdom he gained in his wide travels.
He was born from the pact the elder generation of gods, the Vanir, had made with the younger generation, the Aesir.
They formed this pact by mixing their spittle.
Whoever drank the Magic Mead would become a skald; a scholar and a poet.
So vaunted was this drink that even the High God Odin sought it. Indeed, winning the knowledge of Kvasir might represent the final plateau of Odin’s wisdom-journey.
The High God fasted nine days on Yggdrasil and won the runes; presumably, possession of the runes was a pre-condition that needed to be met before learning the magic songs.
Within the context of the Havalmal poem, all this was done to taste Kvasir’s wisdom.
In drinking Kvasir’s blood, Odin becomes the living pact between the Old and New gods. It may even be that this was the source from which Odin’s legitimacy as chieftain of the Aesir was derived.
This suggests the Vanir represented a mother tradition or mother culture; Odin’s knowledge was non-native and external. It was a bequestment, a reward extracted from one long-dead. Kvasir’s wisdom was an ancient secret preserved in the holy mead.
All of this reminds me of a passage from ‘The Saga of The Volsungs‘:
Sigurd said: "What is the name of the island where Surt and the Aesir will mix together their blood?"
Fafnir said: "It is called Oskapt, the uncreated."
In the 17th century, hermeticist and Rosicrucian Johannes Bureus developed a modern system of runic magic and divination. He combined Norse pagan tradition with Jewish Kabbalah in a system he called ‘Adulruna’.
In Bureus’ system, the Nine Magic Songs of Odin are instead nine staves. These staves, or branches, were said to have fallen from the Primal Ash-Tree Yggdrasil and settled into a pattern.
This pattern is known variously as ‘Web of the Wyrd’, ‘The Matrix of Fate’, or ‘Skuld’s Net’.
Adulruna’s ‘Matrix of Fate’ is a Northern Kabbalistic Tree of the Sephiroth.
Each of the runic shapes in the Futhorc alphabet can be derived from the intertwining of the nine staves of ‘Skuld’s Net’.
In Bureus’ system, ‘Skuld’s Net’ is the image of the weave and weft of reality itself.
Staring down into the depths beneath Yggdrasil where Skuld’s Net was spread out, Odin apprehended the entire pattern of time; what had been and what would be.
This was how mortals came to know the doom of the world and the doom of the gods; Odin had transmitted this knowledge to them, along with the runes.
The formal basis of Rune Magic is that the runes are each within themselves a fragment and holographic image of the Ultimate Reality.
Because they were drawn from the pattern which undergirds Yggdrasil, the runes were considered to be in direct correspondence with the very spine of reality.
As symbols of the architecture supporting the multiverse, the runes were thought to have potency in all realms. Their skillful deployment could command oceans, reverse sword-cuts, and even undo death itself.
Where have we heard 1something like this before?
In the beginning was the Wor(l)d…
Wyrd = Word ?
Odin and Apollo
Apollo was the god of music, the god of the lyre. The lyre is a stringed instrument.
In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, when the god is born, holy swans ‘sing around the babe nine times’ to cover the sound of his cries, and protect he and his mother from the jealousies of Hera-
This symbolism seems loaded. The swans are providing harmonic interference, moving in rings around mother and child a number which corresponds to the number of musical notes in an octave.
Remember the law of correspondence, and how it appears in nature: the seven planets, the seven colors, the seven musical notes.
In the Norse, we have nine days, nine songs, the nine worlds that the branches of Yggdrasil support…
If we think about the God of Music, Apollo, as being the same as the god of harmonic resonance,
Odin fetched Nine Songs. Bureus called these songs ‘staves’, which is a word also used to describe poles of wood. Meanwhile,’Runic Staves’ are what we call complex rune-spells:
And the word ‘staves’ in music describes the bars where musical notation is written.
Strumming these magic letters like strings, they vibrate the waters of Urd’s Well. With enough skill, one could play songs with the runes that could manipulate the flow of the past, present, and future.
I am rushing through this thought, I just wanted to get it down-
There is a strong suggestion in all this that the skalds understood harmonic resonance phenomena to be the true seat of heavenly Knowledge and Power. It was the Secret which the gods themselves saught to master-
In Richard Wagners opera based on Norse mythology, The Ring of The Nibelungs, Odin never masters the Ring. The Ring masters him.
Ringing is what sounds do.
Following Odin’s Rune-quest in Havalmal, he ends his ‘Sayings of the High One‘ by giving us a song of spells.
In stanza 136 of Havalmal, we learned that runes were useful for curing sword-cuts. In stanza 158, we learn that the runes had another purpose:
‘A twelfth (spell) I know, If high on a tree I see a hanged man swing, So do I write and color the runes That forth he fares,and to me he talks.’
Among his other powers, Odin was also a necromancer.
Brynhyld
By far the most extensive and complete collection of Icelandic rune-lore is transmitted to us through the figure of Brynhyld.
Brynhyld is an enigma.
Sometimes Odin’s daughter; sometimes an Amazon; sometimes a swan-maiden; she is always a Valkyrie and Shield-maiden, a chaste warrior and a scorned lover.
The runic education that Brynhild provides the dragon-slaying hero Sigurd in the 13 century ‘Saga of the Volsungs‘ is an abridged version of what we find in the Sigrdrífumál, part of the Eddic telling of Sigurd’s legend found in the Codex Regius manuscript.
Perhaps because he is a good Christian, Snorri Sturleson’s brief account of the Sigurd legend in the Prose Edda does not touch on the theme of Sigurd’s runic education at all.
The Icelandic Sagas represent one of the most impressive bodies of literature to come down to us from medieval Europe. These national, political, and familial histories of the Christian era were decorated with warlocks, curses, witches, werewolves, magical cloaks and broken oaths.
They are heavily indebted to the style and substance of their pagan ancestors.
In the case of ‘The Saga of The Volsungs’, the pagan influence is downright unapologetic .
Though it was recorded in the Christian era, there is every indication that ‘the Saga of The Volsungs‘ is faithful to a story-telling tradition which had been handed down for almost a millenia before being written in the form which we know it.
Rune Magic is the belief that the dictates of the incorrigible Sisters of Fate could be negotiated with or overturned by the artful use of God’s Runic Language.
The belief persisted into at least the 17th century, as attested by the existence of the Galdrabok, an Icelandic grimoire dated to 1600.
Galdrabok compiles 48 magic spells and runic staves.
If there was ever a genuine lapse in the practice of rune magic, it was shortly resurrected by the Rosicrucian alchemists.
The Rosicrucians paved the way for people like Guido Von List, who paved the way for Rudolf Von Sebottendorf, who helped to found the Thule Society.
The Thule Society was instrumental in galvanizing the social elite of 1920’s Germany with an occult ideology. Sebottendorf self-identified as a rune mage…
And a Sufi mystic.
If you don’t know, Sufism is a mystical branch of Islam.
The symmetries between Islam and Norse shit is something I really want to get into, but that will have to wait for another article.
There have been many efforts to reinterpret the runic magical tradition for the convenience of post-industrial trends like nazism and neo-paganism, but if we cut out the middle-man, the teachings of Brynhyld are perhaps the purest expression available to us of rune magic as its ancient practitioners would haveunderstood it.
Byrnhild's Rune Lore
“Let us drink together and may the gods grant us a fair day, that you may gain profit and renown from my wisdom, and that you will later remember what we speak of.”
Brynhild filled a goblet, gave it to Sigurd, and spoke:
Beer I give you,
Battlefields ruler,
With strength blended
And with much glory.
It is full of charmed verse
And runes of healing,
Of seemly spells,
and of pleasing speech.
Victory runes you shall you know
If you want to secure wisdom,
And cut them on the sword hilt,
On the center ridge of the blade,
And the parts of the brand,
And name Tyr twice.
Wave runes shall you make
If you desire to ward
Your sail-steeds on the sound.
On the stem shall they be cut
And on the steering blade
And burn them on the oar.
No broad breaker will fall
Nor waves of blue,
And you will come safe from the sea.
Speech runes shall you know
If you want no repayment
In hate words for harm done.
Wind them,
Weave them,
Tie them all together,
At that Thing
When all shall attend
The complete court.
Ale runes shall you know
If you desire no other’s wife
To decieve you in troth, if you trust.
They shall be cut on the horn
And on the hand’s back
And mark the need rune on your nail.
For the cup shall you make a sign
And be wary of misfortune
And throw leek into the liquor.
Then, I know that
You will never get
A potion blended with poison.
Aid runes shall you learn
If you would grant assistance
To bring the child from the mother.
Cut them in her palm
And hold her hand in yours.
And bid the Disir not to fail.
Branch runes shall you know
If you wish to be a healer
And to know how to see to wounds.
On bark shall they be cut
And on needles of the tree
Whose limbs lean to the east.
Mind runes shall you learn
If you would be
Wiser than all men.
They were solved,
They were carved out,
The were heeded by Hropt.
They were cut on the shield
That stands before the shining god,
On Arvak’s ear
And on Alsvid’s head
And on the wheel that stands
Under Hrungnir’s chariot,
On Sleipnir’s reins,
And on the sleigh’s fetters.
On bear’s paw
And on Bragi’s tongue,
On wolf’s claw
And on eagle’s beak
On bloody wings
And on bridge’s ends,
On soothing palm
And on the healing step.
On glass and on gold
And on good silver,
In ale and in wine
And on the witch’s seat,
In human flesh
And the point of Gaupnir
And the hag’s breast,
On the Norn’s nail
And the neb of the owl.
All that were carved on these
Were scraped off
And mixed with the holy mead
And sent on widespread way.
They are with elves,
Some with the Aesir
And with the venerable Vanir,
Some belong to mortal men.
These are cure runes
And aid runes
And all ale runes
And peerless power runes
For all to use unspolied
And unprofaned,
To bring about good fortune.
Enjoy them if you have learned them,
Until the gods perish.
Now shall you choose,
As you are offered a choice,
Of maple shaft or weapons.
Speech or silence,
You must muse for
yourself.
All words are already decided.
Sigurd answered:
I will not flee, though Death-fated you know I am,
I was not conceived as a coward.
I will have all
Of your loving advice
As long as I live.
– 21. Concerning Sigurd, From Jesse L Byock’s translation of ‘The Saga of the Volsungs’, Regents of the University of Caifornia, 1990
Is Final Fantasy III's Celes Chere a reference to the Volsung Saga's Brynhild?
Celes the Runic Knight is a teutonic baddie that comes pre-loaded with the Ice spell. Her special ability is called ‘Runic Blade’, which functions to protect the party from magic attacks.
Brynhild the Valkyrie in the Volsung Saga from 13th century Nordic Iceland tells us the runes carved into the center ridge of a warrior’s blade are for victory and wisdom.
Through her rune-lore, Brynhyld offers the hero of the poem magical protection.
One of the core principles behind market research is that you can minimize risk and maximize impact by finding out what has worked in the past. What I mean is; why wouldn’t the developers use Brynhild as a character template?
After all, Final Fantasy III is the most Wagnerian game I have ever played. It reeks of Gotterdamerung.
