“The Rune-gilder does not “believe” in the Gods and Goddesses in the same way Trothers do (or might). The underlying “reason” for this is made clear by what is implied by the Germanic Epistemology presented in Section II. Gilders may begin with a faithful approach to the nature of the reality of the divinities – but they eventually learn that such a belief is a fetter which must be loosened if they are to progress further.”
“All the Gods and Goddesses are real in a practical sense. But ultimately they are creations of the threefold All-Father. The only (apparent) exception to this is Freyja – who is the only deity who teaches him anything he did not already know, that is, the mysteries of seid”.
Both quotes from Gildisbok by Edred Thorsson.
After Clint’s recent and very rousing posting on the subject of so called “hard polytheism” I somehow felt the urge to make a perpendicular response – by reflecting on the words of Edred Thorsson in the Gildisbok, the Rune Gild’s members-only handbook. Note that I haven’t been in the Gild for years so my copy might be dated.
Regular Elhaz Ablaze readers know that I’m not a huge Thorsson fan, considerable though his contributions have been. I particularly take exception to his goal of attaining a state of immortal, isolate intelligence – this notion seems to fly in the face of both Heathen and specifically Odinnic cosmology and philosophy.
Given this goal is directly inspired by Temple of Set philosophy – which seems little more than a hilariously confused manifestation of late modern nihilism – it is no surprise that I am not Thorsson’s only critic. But I digress.
The two quotes above are fascinating launch pads for reflection on the nature of the Northern divinities – not least because they appear on the same page in the Gildisbok. With the first quote I find myself (mostly) cheering. With the second quote I find myself shaking my head in disbelief.
In the first quote I think Edred is saying that we need to get beyond the trappings of form. I think he is saying that we need to recognise that there is a lot more to Heathenry than memorising lists of facts or aping what we would like to think is old-fashioned behaviour (but may reflect more our own insecurities). I could be wrong in my reading of course.
He also seems to be saying that when we are talking about divine beings we will be well served if we avoid being too literal about who and what they are, and how they might interact with us.
After all, how can we really know? Whether they are ideas, myths, archetypes, or fully existent and independent conscious beings, they’re way beyond our limited perspective.
However, I do note one little discordant note in this first quote. It suggests that Edred has a monopoly on this point of view, or less strongly that somehow it’s an insight very specific to his philosophy or knowledge.
This is obviously absurd – I’ve known plenty of Gilders and plenty of non-Gilders, and if anything it’s the latter that have tended to be much less literal and simplistic in their grasp of matters divine.
That isn’t intended to be an absolute claim of course, and I know there are many, many exceptions in every category. I’m just speaking from my own direct and personal experience of specific individuals.
So it seems either the Rune Gild is not proving too good at promulgating Edred’s point of view (which in this instance is a point of view I broadly agree with), or else something odd is going on – who knows what the answer to this is, I guess it ultimately doesn’t matter.
There’s also something odd about the appropriation of the more ‘sophisticated’ view on the gods that is evident in the first quote. Why shouldn’t mere “Trothers” have understandings of the gods every bit as complex, contradictory and weird as the supposedly elite Rune Gilders?
The notion that simple dogma is good enough for the (implied) less discerning masses is obnoxious to a Chaos Heathen such as myself.
I’m sure Edred has copped flack from dogmatic types over the years, but you’d think the Yrmin-Drighten would be a little more thick-skinned. But hey, what do I know?
Maybe indirectly bagging out his more literal-minded critics in a book like the Gildisbok, a book to which they can’t respond, is the best way of dealing with the problem. Far be it from me to throw the first stone from the doorstep of my glass house.
It is the second quote that really floors me. All the gods and goddesses (save Freyja) are really Manifestations of Odin? If nothing else, isn’t this very definite and concrete claim substituting one dogma about the nature of the gods for another? The two quotes seem contradictory to my addled mind.
Putting aside the way that Edred very forcefully presents a flamboyant piece of UPG as though it were written “just so in the Edda”, this second quote really makes me wonder: just what is going on in his mind?
(I’ll put aside the comment about Freyja in this post because it really opens up a huge can of worms that needs separate attention).
The local Hindu temple near where I live has occasionally put out the following slogan: “God Is One, Though The Wise Call Him By Various Names”. Now that’s a subtle and very interesting point of view to hold. Viva the pan-Indo-European connection!
This slogan recognises the ultimate interconnectedness of everything (which is the spiritual truth of monotheism at its best), but also the significance of individual beings’ unique spirit (which is the spiritual truth of polytheism and animism at their best).
But to say that Odin – who really doesn’t strike me as being at all like the One, or Brahma, or whatever – is the secret source of all the other divine beings? Well that surely wouldn’t make sense under a comparative mythological lens. And intuitively it just seems like putting the cart before the horse.
I would have thought that the work of people like Paul Bauschatz and Bil Linzie resoundingly demonstrates that the closest cognate to the Totality of Existence (that is, God) in the Heathen myths would have to be some combination of Yggrdrassil, the various wells of memory and time, Wyrd, and possibly the surface of the Ginnung.
Conversely, Odin is surely best seen as somewhere between Mercury and Zeus, a definite divine entity of some kind but not a representation of the Totality.
Personally I lean towards seeing him as being more Mercurial, since Mercury is very similar to Odin; and Tacitus certainly glossed Wodan as Mercury. And also since the whole “king of the gods” thing only came on in late Dark Ages times and almost certainly isn’t representative of the whole spectrum of Heathenism.
Odin’s biography is maddeningly complex and with so few sources available there is a lot we just cannot know (and you can’t even ask him because he’s a bloody liar, so UPG isn’t much help either).
I get that Odin has a starring mythic role in shaping the cosmos, but even as Odin-Vili-Ve there was a whole lot of life and creation going on prior to his arrival.
This “Odin is behind all the gods” point of view just seems bizarre. It doesn’t square with the mythological evidence and as a speculative opinion it seems extremely left-field. It also seems rather disrespectful to a whole bunch of beings that I personally at least think have plenty of their own stuff going on.
Surely it would be prudent to refrain from making very strong, unusual and textually unjustifiable claims about Odin’s nature with no more authority than that old faithful “because I say so”. I mean speculate away (I know I do), but a bit of honesty about it please! What is lost from admitting the limits of one’s perspective?
Furthermore, it seems like a weird crypto-monotheism to reduce all the other gods to guises of Odin. If we are going to do that then why not just adopt monotheism for real? Or for those feeling the need to be contrary and ‘tough’, the Satanic road is there in its various absurd forms. Although Edred also walks that path, so who knows?
Hence the title of this post – “Soft Monotheism”. Just as Catholicism sneaks in all kinds of gods and goddesses through the back door of the Saints, one could be forgiven for thinking that Thorsson wants to sneak monotheism in through the back door of the endless hordes of divine beings that crowd out the old Germanic myths.
He is entitled to whatever opinion he wants of course. It just seems odd for someone who built their career on being so well grounded in actual historical evidence and research to then leap off into such a wild opinion and present it as though it were a matter of objective fact.
Maybe the New Age influence on Heathenry affects Edred more than he realises. Again – that isn’t a criticism, though given his marketing angle I imagine he might take it as one.
I for one have no idea what the gods and goddesses are; nor what the ultimate nature of reality is. I do have lots of personal experience with these things, but personal experience and rational discussion don’t necessarily like to hold hands.
I do know this though – every time I think I have it figured out, I find out there’s more mystery still. Silent, awe-struck, in the face of the infinite reaches of Runa – that’s where the truth lies. And I suspect the horizon of mystery is always going to foil any attempt at expressing it (though of course it might be possible to invoke…)
BRAVO!
Thanks – I just hope I’m not being unfair… but somehow I feel it just needed to be said…
Hey, I just wanted to say BRAVA!
I’ve been following this site for awhile and I have to say I find the perspectives here to be absolutely refreshing. You’re not Thorsson’s only critic (while I am Vanic-focused, I find “Witchdom of the True” to be… problematic… putting it nicely), and I absolutely love “you can’t even ask him because he’s a bloody liar, so UPG isn’t much help either”… that is very much The Old Man.
Anyway, cheers! Keep writing, it’s very needed.
-Sigrún Freyskona
Heya, Yeah I loved the line about “he’s a bloody liar” too. This post had me LOL. One of the most lucid discussions of the mythology I’ve read so far.
Freya is an interesting subject, isn’t she?
Your point about a belief in reality or an acceptance of mythology was particularly helpful.
Thankyou!
Before I begin, I don’t know what your experience has been in interacting with Edred. (I am assuming you left when Sweyn left?) I know my experience has been very different than Sweyn’s in that I’ve found him to be encouraging of arguments to some extent, and that my own view on a lot of things is very, very different than his. I see Edred as a valued mentor to me personally even though on some points, I respectfully disagree.
So with that in mind, I guess I’m going to respond to a couple of points here that you might find productive to consider. In particular, I don’t personally use his concept of Germanic epistemology (my epistemology is structured very differently), nor do I find the second quote you mention to be uniquely true. I see where he is coming from and I think it’s a great idea to think about, but it’s not my approach.
I see all gods, without exception, as being both products and shapers of tradition, and while I’d consider myself a soft monotheist, my soft monotheism is closer to what’s described in the Upanishads. Namely if all the gods are aspects of something, that something is Yggdrassil, and, to me, Yggdrassil is ME. I also see a fundamental paradox and tension between looking at Hindu concepts of immortality as self-annihilation and self-deification. In reality it is both and in that paradox lies everything.
Having said this, I think there are some areas where I’d have to defend Edred a little here. I think he’s saying something different. Namely that many religious folk believe in the gods as real, distinct, physical entities. I’ve met plenty that did. I also see him saying that people can make a certain level of progress in understanding when they believe this, but that it’s something that one must eventually outgrow.
Also I think he is trying to say that, in essence, Odin is the All-father for a reason and that as creator of the world through the sacrifice of Ymir, and through being the progenitor of the gods, he can be seen as the incarnation of the pantheon as a whole. I don’t particularly agree with this viewpoint (nor do I find it particularly useful), but I don’t think it’s baseless either, particularly due to some more recent cross-Indo-European studies I have done which suggest that the sovereign was often seen as the embodiment of the tribe.
I also think he sees himself in this way as being far more influenced by studies of Zoroastrianism than by New Age thought (and has in some speeches compared Odin to Ahura Mazda in this specific way). I suppose I find myself more influenced by Hindu thought than by Persian.
You know I resonate so damn strongly with the spiritual views you express here: in particular the suggestion that Yggdrasil is the One. Apart from my Heathenry I am also a Sufi and the Sufi emphasis on the need to remember the Oneness of all Being to me is very close to the deepest form of Heathen spirituality too.
I’m not really sure how to respond to your comments on Edred or his views – it is possible that he comes across very different if one has regularly personal experience oof him than the way he comes across in his writing. I can only assume that if someone writes certain opinions without qualifying them that they mean them…but I respectfully accept the possibility of my being mistaken ;)
I didn’t leave the Gild when Rune Net split from the Gild, incidentally. I stayed in both for a while but I wandered off from the Gild after I had the realisation that all the exercises of the Nine Doors had done nothing for me; it was when I embraced a more shamanic – for want of a better word – approach that sparks really began to fly both runically and in the deepening of my Odinnic connection. Basically it was a waste of money to remain a member. However he is in person, some of Edred’s writing seems to me so laden with “bubble pride” that I could not see how the author of such sentiments could have “the goods” spiritually speaking. This is sort of a digression – I should note though that I didn’t mean to suggest that Edred sees himself as influenced by New Age thought…merely that he seems to have more in common with this sort of thing than he might like to think, given how scathing he is of Blum, etc!
My point about people’s way of believing in the gods was not to suggest that no one literally belives in them…but more to point out the seeming arbitrary and ill-informed arrogance and ignorance of suggesting that the Gild alone is a custodian of more subtle understandings of the divine. I agree, we have to go beyond the obvious – but from the way Edred comes across to me, you’d think he thinks he invented this venerable notion.
Thanks for challenging me and calling my bluff. I have much to think about. During and since the time I wrote “Soft Monotheism” I have decided that my righteous fury sometims lowers me to the level that I perceive my target to be at. It is valuable to explore this way of doing things and I thank you for the opportunity to do just that.
Hmm…Just reading about how Edred equates Odin and Set philosophically, and rather aggressively dismisses any disagreement without appearing to actually address the content or substance of that disagreement.
To me for a Heathen leader of that level of profile to build a reputation on being opposed to syncretism…and then to promulgate such a deeply syncretic view of the CHIEF DEITY of Heathenry, without any academic or objective basis…I’m sorry but while I respect his acheivements, I’m really not down with this extreme “passing off opinion as fact” stuff, especially when the opinion being passed off as fact (though openly without academic basis at least) is so bloody out there…
Yep, my suspicion that Edred is a monotheist seems to be confirmed by his own words (and these cross-cultural mythological conjurations seem pretty tenuous to say the least – where exactly do any sources say that Mercury or Lugh or Odin or Varuna or the others have anything to do with “isolate intelligence,” concept it seems entirely of Temple of Set making in the 20th Century, or any of this other stuff? “Nowhere” seems to be the resounding answer.
http://edred.net/community/members/385/Blog_Isolate_Intelligence.php
“Edred here. Einhverfr asked “how and why” I would have equated Odin and Set. How this was done was a matter of looking at the intellectual constructs of the living master of Setian philosophy, Michael Aquino and comparing them to the insights of the father of philosophy as we know it, Zarathustra, who defined the part of the Indo-European pantheon we know as Odin-Lugh-Hermes-Mercury-Varuna-Ahura Mazda as the principle of divine intelligence separate and unique in the universe, the one and only true god, from whom all other gods are derived.”