ÓÐSMÁL (ODSMAL)
Book about profound wisdom of heathenry
the knowledge of our pagan ancestors

by Guðrún Kristín Magnúsdóttir

This section explains the delicate threads between man and nature and how easily these bonds can be abolished.

There is joy in vastness. (Veda.)
"Gladness" means "open space"
and the boundless space, ginnungagap, is within us
-- the universal consciousness

The concepts "nature belief" and "nature worship" can actually not be used, as "belief" and "worship" have got a rigid meaning. Belief is blindness that allows no unwanted questions, and worship is cowardly obedience and flattery, service out of fear to a whimsical god, or to get his rewards - an exiting bargain, soul gambling. Worship is in a way a self- humiliating act, practiced against sound reason of a discriminative mind. It seems to have nothing to do with divinity apart from declarations and preaching thereof.

The verb dýrka (dyrka, actually dýrð+ka; dýrð=glory(+fy)) in Icelandic means to worship, pay reverence to, but in the other norse languages the verb dyrke is to till or to cultivate. That is the meaning that is rækta (raekta) in Icelandic.

To see man as being part of Nature is nature belief. To see man as one with nature is nature belief. But we can not use the word "belief" any more. It used to be for the “_beloved_ gods and goddesses”. Worship has been abused too. It should be worth-shipped.
Our visual aspect, body, is al-materia, even emotions and thoughs are of that. But our real core and essence is ginnungagap. We are spiritual beings.

To see the all-pervading ginnungagap to be the innermost core of all things in the universe is the theosophical aspect of nature-and-man-relationship and a part of the wonder that it is. It signifies a mystical spirit within all things which can be contacted and emerged into as it is a part of us, and this nature-and-man-relationship implies that we are a part of it (ginnungagap, the spirit within all things in Nature). Nature is a veil that hides Reality out of sight -- the sight of our worldly eyes, that is.

Deepak Chopra MD warns us against picnic deficiency (!!!). I love how he expresses this medical advice.

The essence of nature-and-man-relationship is lost to some people in the world. It is a delicate contact, thus prone to disturbance. Speed, noise, and artificial living on the surface of life has blocked the channels through which the stream of connection flows. Connection between man and nature is lost and so are the bonds between man and his fundamental essence, the all-pervasive ginnungagap, the mystical spirit within. The channels seem to be clogged.

To find oneself one with nature is not primitive in a negative sense, as this is primal in man and natural to all men. Some "civilized" people do not understand the delicate ties that bind man and nature. To find these ties is not old-fashioned or out-dated or no longer relevant. On the contrary: We loose our very origin if we prefer dogmas of "made-up" religions to our very core found within every man: Providence.

Our innermost core is revealed when we are one with nature. We are "at home" here.
It is the opposite to an artificial belief, containing dogmas set by men. The artificial beliefs and belief-systems are opposed to man's natural instincts to find all power within himself.
Man himself, all beings, all things animate and inanimate, are a part of nature, a part of a universal whole. Inside all this is our greater Self.

To live in accordance with the gods is to find the flow of Nature, Her love towards us if we have feelings for Her. This is to be found all over mother Earth. It reflects love to the environment and all things. Give love and compassion and feeling, and what you get back automatically and spontaneously is love and compassion and feeling.

The core of nature cults is very deep and profound in man's psyche. Man is a part of nature - and - it involves that there is more to it than we see with our worldly eyes in this worldly world.

Some people say that man was afraid and crawled before the powerful forces of Nature. I suggest that pagans of nature cults found Nature's forces benevolent if they found Her mighty flow and surfed on it. We just know how fishermen in Iceland used the mighty oceanic waves to bring their small boats to see, and to shore again. We know how men used the wind to sail. Hávamál (Havamal) has very good advise on how to find this flow. Hávamál (Havamal) even suggests that we sit at the fire to have a friendly chat in the evening, and kiss our beloved in the darkness of night!!! In Hávamál (Havamal) we find the forces of Nature to be our allies, our power, our friends and nothing to be afraid of.
(They had not invented the devil at that time of Hávamál (Havamal) being chanted to kids from generation to generation in Europe.)

Hávamál (Havamal) reflects love to the environment and all things, finds greediness unwise, suggests modesty in all fields of life.

All thoughts are worldly. By reading Óðsmál (Odsmal) you get to realise that all thoughts, however pious, are worldly. In the transcendent there are no thoughts. Óðinn (Odinn) gets his wisdom  (*NEW*)  from that sphere of life: ginnungagap, Mímisbrunnur (Mimisbrunnur, the well of Mímir (Mimir), Urðarbrunnur (Urdar-brunnur, the well of Urður (Urdur) and all the profound places in norse mythology. This sphere is the mystic. This sphere is the foundation of the very truth that nature-and-man is one and the same.
These places are not on the level of thinking, say Óður (Odur) and little völva (voelva) in Óðsmál (Odsmal), even if all these contacts to the mighty flow in Nature know common sense (thoughts and feeling and understanding) to be the real key to this sought-after harmony.

Yule-tide (holiday season, noël, also called Christmas by some people) is a part of this "nature and man as one". Yule is at winter solstice. Light is defeating darkness, life is outsmarting death.
Óðsmál (Odsmal) Chatter (Chapter) 5 tells you all about heathen yule.
The ritual Skírnismál (Skirnismal) is the age-old yule story.

Christianity was forced upon heathen men but a lot of ásatrú (asatru) still prevails. Yule (yule-tide, Christmas) is jól (jol, jul, yule, noël). It means hjól (hjol, wheel ), the cycle or circle or that which is ever turning in fall and renewal, death and life, death and resurrection. (Skirnismal)

Easter is an age-old Germanic goddess of spring. She is, and has always been here. The Easter eggs, the Easter hare.
The pope in Rome is very smart in old heathenry when he calculates this feast for us in a very pagan way, which is based on equinox and the moon. It is all about Nature and Her beautiful cycles. Easter, our goddess, has nothing to do with imported and imposed, putrid horror- and suffering stories from a southern desert.

Feasts that could not be suffocated because of the joy they yielded for the nature worshipping natural man, were destroyed by new, deliberate, indoctrinated misinterpretations. This is also called brain-washing.

I have a suggestion: You should from now on always know where the moon is, if it is waning or waxing. It is sheer delight to look at the moon. When it is full it is on the opposite side of the sun (east-west; north-south). When we have new moon (and then we can not see it) it is in the same direction as the sun is. Try this moon-and-me game. It is all fun. Gradually you will find the flow and ebb in you, just as the sea does.

Here I include something else for you to reflect on and apply to your concern for coming generations:

A family in Iceland, one of many that owns a summer cottage in the countryside, came to dwell in the cottage over week-end in early spring. What met them on the roof of their hut were two ravens having made their nest there. The raven-family used the TV-antenna to carry and hold their new home. The man-family got the press photographer to get xxxxxxxxx into the press. What xxxxx? What did they show the press? They showed the press how they had to spoil and remove the ravensΠnest and throw it away!!! Oh they could not, poor man-family, watch TV with that nest in the antenna!!! What does this family mean by "enjoying nature"? What does this family do in nature? What are its kids watching and listening to before going to bed at night under the bright, midsummersun-lit sky in Iceland? What is this family going into the countryside for? Is TV-stuff more essential and agreeable than the sounds and beauty of nature before going to bed? Did neither the cottage owners nor the press people consider the option to enjoy the nest and the life-spectacle that was coming up there? Ravens are marvellous creatures once we get to know them. We should lift our hats for a raven-family instead of allowing to shoot ravens all year round, even in spring.
In case the TV gets jealous the nature-enjoying man-family sure can afford a second antenna for it on the hut-in-the-countryside's roof.

Another story -- that counts not only for modern Iceland but perhaps for you too: In every place that the roadrunners (nature through the car window families) stop at or stay in overnight there must be a TV, pizzas, hamburgers, and - so that the kids do not get bored: an organised play ground with kindergarten equipments, and some asphalted soccer and basket ball space. I, really, am worried because all activity for children and teenagers is organised by grown-ups. The "society-providence's" (such as sportsΠrules, organised day-schedules, man-made equipment, programmed and systematic schemes) is overwhelming and is killing our natural talent for playing creatively. When kids do not have access to the pre-organized playground and perfect schedule or attention-absorbing pass-time games, they do not know what to do. Do we really want the next generation to depend on the townsΠarchitects and game-coaches and not to be able to feel at home in our precious, untouched wilderness? Do some people even say: -We do not need to go to the mountains as we have seen them on TV (they have come to us(!)) - along with sound effects such as birdsΠsinging and the burble of a clear brook?

When I have stayed in the wilderness of Iceland for several weeks in a row, then the rhythm of natureŒs sounds is gradually penetrating every fibre of my body and each tiny twinkle of my feelings. When I return to town, I refrain from the city´s sound pollution for the first few days. Sometimes city-people can not, for the first few nights, sleep at night in our wild, untouched nature because of the quietness and lack of city-noise!!!

It is unforgivable that missionaries are destroying the pagan cultures of the world. Greedy governments are, at the same time, exploiting people and land under that false flag as "philanthropy" and "charity".
First they spoil the contact and love between man and nature. Then they can spoil nature without interference from the inhabitants of that area. It looks better (now-a-days) than killing them (as was earlier practised).
The big business companies often use missionaries to gather people under the church, then they come and exploit the land. Did you know this?

If you want to give starving kids food, and if you want to give sick men aid, it does not imply that their culture has to be destroyed.
Some needing people seem only to get this "charity" IF they submit to a certain god, alien to them, and everything else (their inherited culture) has to be destroyed and abandoned. We do know that those who need clothes and medication get it from the church's charity institutions ONLY if they get baptized and abolish and deny all of their own culture.
The Red Cross people, on the other hand, give and help without being missionaries. Without intending to destroy man's love of nature. That is giving, not on conditions or with hidden intentions. It is real giving.

The "forni siður" (forni siðr (sidr) olden custom, traditions of the North, heathenry, paganism) of our ancestors is much deeper than the church's religion that we see and hear most of now-a-days here in the North. - That newly-invented religion was thrust upon us - imposed upon us by threat of death. (In Iceland not until 999 AD, in southern Europe earlier.) It has always been alien to us, so it is changed according to needs when killing those who don't obey is no longer taken for granted.

To sneak in, Christianity adopted nature belief, but at the same time calling it primitive and irrelevant! Actually that newly invented religion, Christianity, was a tool used by kings and warriors to gain power and land. Christianity is very shallow in comparison to nature worshipping, and a dreadful step backwards for humanity, as it contains these monotheistic double ethics (say you are good and that god loves when you kill your fellow men for the god), and its dogmas spoil the innocent and profound essence of nature love, where man is in contact with the spirit within all things, animate and inanimate, without a tool, without a church, without institutions, without another man as a redeemer, as he is one with it and loves it.

Worship is now not seen as due reverence, but as submission and obedience. So those who love (worship) nature are thought to be humiliating themselves before nature as some do before some gods. (This is why nature-worship and nature-belief are words to be avoided as they mislead instead of explaining.)

Some religions are used as tools of dominance-urge. They contain a strategic tool called devil or satan. These do not exist but are invented for the purpose of frightening the credulous mobs. It is a "common enemy", a "scare-crow" used to get a hold on credulous people, summoning them against something frightening. And of course, to follow up, the promise to safe them and shield them on some acceptable conditions: that they give up their search for their divinity within, paganism, use a redeemer, and have an outside-upthere-god.

In paganism there are accepted negative powers. These are jötnar (joetnar, eotens; singular: jötunn, joetunn, eoten) in norse mythology. They are just corrosive powers, negative acts, natural destruction, deliberate destruction, rot and decay and corrosiveness (e.g. free radicals). All this is a part of all the cycles in the relative world. Part of our ever changing Nature.
Heathen men do not help these negative powers. They help the constructive powers, the gods, the creative powers, the laws of nature, the inner values. They take part in these cycles in life. They are not passive. This is "nature and man" so natural to man.

Gain what you actually need:
The goal is not to gain more thatn other men, but to give love to nature and get her love back: providence.

We should stay away from artificial beliefs. Actually,  believing can be a dangerous thing, because it is of this world. It often leads to narrow-mindedness or even fanatic blindness. It could even retard personal development. It is not at all a secure path to the all-pervading divinity that is to be found within every being and even within inanimate things, every atom, in the relative world. Actually, belief can block the channels to the real divinity within. Believing can retard and disable the sincere seeker of Truth, and can, unquestionably, distract completely from the real divinity within.

But:
people can not be classified and divided into groups by their confession to a religion. In every clan there are spiritually minded people. Some claim to love free-human-spirit-ideology. But we do not know that our spirit is not all too free at all. This tends to be a superficial statement only by most people.

In heathenry there is no place for a redeemer. Absolutely impossible to add that trick to heathenry. We would call it idol-worship! We find it most silly. In heathenry every man is his gods. Óðinn (Odin) is the free human spirit. We find Óðinn (Odin) within, - not hanging on a wall on a cross to pray to. For the nature-man the gods are the creative powers, the Natural Laws of Nature. They abide in Ásgarður (Asgardur). All is to be found within us.
We can use a material object (a stone for example, or a place, or a tree) or a worldly mantra (a meaningless thought) to cue us in to our transcendence or probing-within. But that thing is only a cue.

Heathen men love to trust nature, trust her providence.
Heathen men realise their responsibility. This means: we are not passive and dull. Our new age is revealing this.

Man is part of nature. That which pervades all (ginnungagap) is within all things, living and inanimate. It is our essence. It is ginnungagap in norse mythology, in norse profound theosophy.
New Theories in Óðsmál (Odsmal)

Heathenry has been treated unjustly.
Even scholars treat heathenry as museum junk, fit for amusing research only.

Now we are told by some that heathenry is inferior to the imposed religions. It is not true. The imposed religions, widely propagandized, are designed to make a mass of obedient sheep. Those who do not obey are doomed stray sheep. This is only the dangerous theocracy.
Heathens (pagans) are, still to this day, killed by missionaries. Cultures are killed and exploited to serve the new mastersΠpurpose. People are and were threatened with something called hell after death. To get them in, and to keep them obedient, they are promised as a reward for the obedience and submission to the belief system, a heaven for the dead.
Of course material goods play a big part in the rewards-part, and hardship in the threat-part. Some call it blackmail, as in some cases there is no way of rejecting.

Nature-and-man-relationship is not usable as a device of dominance as it contains no belief system and every individual is responsible for his contact with the innermost spirit of himself and his surroundings: nature.
In other words: heathenry is not fit as a "power tool", as every individual is free to choose his god or gods or goddess or goddesses he feels are most appropriate to his psyche, most appropriate to his individual development and evolution.

Only by that freedom and by that way of living is the evolution for each individual at its best. Every single man is living his dharma for the best for himself and all others.

Still some do not know this, and submit themselves in their blindness to the powerful institutions that are, some of them, the extension of the Roman Empire and its pursuit to rule the world and ply every man to bow at its feet under false labels: "love", "charity", "goodness", "forgiveness" - even "democracy", even "poverty" .

Do not let others choose a god for you.
The well-advertised and terribly expensive god (gods) from the monotheistic religions is (are) a worldly god. That is why all other gods had to be banned. All men that did not obey the only true prophet were killed because of the anger of that only true god. No heathens were allowed to live. So some got baptized to safe their life. We often surrender to the more powerful, and put our righteousness to sleep.

The golden calf is pagan.
The golden calf might not have been of the metal gold, even if the slaves from Egypt borrowed some jewelry that they never returned to its owners. Gold in this context can just as well mean the fertility of Mother Earth, hope and prayer for food. Gold in this context can mean food for people and cattle. This is alchemy as the metal gold is not what is relevant but the good goods of nature.

The golden hair of Sif, Þór's (Thor's) wife, is the golden ripe field. "Gold and green forests" is a heathen proverb for gifts from the earth. The golden calf can be heathen men's wish to Mother Earth to yield harvest. Horns are a fertility symbol. Fertility of the all-yielding. It is trust in providence.

(Perhaps these heathen horns are on the invention Christian Devil now.)

Moses was, they tell us, 40 years in the desert dressing his people to obey the new "one and only true god" of theirs, that new god's own people. All disobedient were mercilessly killed, as the god became angry. Pagans were slaughtered and since that very moment they have been killed if they do not obey. Moses's god would give them land and food if they obeyed his (god's or Moses's) commandments. How did this ever become fashionable in Rome -- and the rest of Europe as a bride-of-Christ empire?

Some descriptions that priests of the church wrote down (to add to their fame) was of what they had destroyed of heathen temples, sacred groves, trees, stones, vé (ve, vje), etc. These descriptions (from priests to bishops) are now (for research) used to cast light on how pagans contacted nature. Some priests also boasted about the number of heathens they had killed. (They became saints if they had massacred a lot of heathen men and women and their children.)
The priests' description of the "demonic" act of the nature-people is not all too reliable as a source. All things that were sacred to heathens were said to be of the devil that the church uses. Some priests are known to have written descriptions of places and happenings that they never saw. So you see that this is not an all too reliable material for research in ethnology -- and even of less value in the understanding of man-and-nature!!!
The bonds between man and nature can not be seen with the worldly eyes.

What "nature-and-man" is all about is peace to find the power that abides within. I do not know if people still practice the art of finding this peace within. We should, you know, and it is here waiting for us. (Goddess Eir (tranquility).)

In nature-and-man cults there supposedly are no bans, no musts, no commandments to be found. There might have been some rituals, but everything is lost as it was abolished.
Bans and musts are not to be found in heathenry, but advice on sound ethics is there for those who want to listen.

Every individual should try to find the flow within himself. This is best done in quiet to begin with. That flow we eventually find within is also the flow of nature. It throbs within us. The gods are the laws of nature and the creative powers in the world. They are our psyche too. There are many layers of gods.

The TM-technique (transcendental meditation) is an easy, strainless method to able any man (busy in the world) to transcend on Sleipnir. It is originally (since 1960) taught by Maharishi Mahes Yogi - all over the world. You sure will find a TM teaching center in your town or neighborhood. This easy technique is delicate and has to be learned correctly to lead to the transcendent field (ginnungagap). It is meant for the modern men, women and kids. It involves no strain (use Gungnir), but joy only.
For Sleipnir and Gungnir: *NEW*

Each man should be all-responsible for himself and his surroundings. He himself should find the flow within himself. No other man can do it for him. Only good advice can be given by the wise. Then it is up to each individual to find his path inwards to his real core and essence, the supreme divinity that sustains all - also his actions in life.
For right actions performed spontaneously, transcend twice a day (have a sip from Mímisbrunnur (Mimis-brunnur, the well of Mímir (Mimir); nýstu niður* (nystu nidur)).
*) (explained in Óðsmál (Odsmal))

For man to communicate with nature we need man and nature. Not should we rush through scenery in noisy cars or trains and call that to enjoy nature. Rather, we should sit in peace and quiet perpetually, leave the radio and disc player at home, and find goddess Eir (tranquillity, peace within, the goddess of healing, true soundness) within. We should listen and feel all things in us. We should seek for the pulsation of mother Earth. She throbs within us too. We should not try to think, just listen without expectations.

If you happen to be in a hospital or in prison or if you use your work or home as a prison, try to bring some of nature in to you. It need only be a stone or something like that*. Hold it for example, close your eyes for example, listen to your breath. What you will find is prana, the first trace of the world. You must know that this is not a thought. What we enjoy is inside and between thoughts. Thoughts that come and go in your head are irrelevant to it. Just dismiss them  -   without trying not to think. Trying, expecting and "trying not to", spoils. The unintended, easy, natural way to find the void, the effortless way to live the gap (ginnungagap), is most beneficial. From there all nourishment comes.

*Do not get attached to that particular item you pick. If you loose it get another one, or do without one.
To understand the void see Chapter 12, i.e. listen to (!) Chatters 12 and 2 in Óðsmál (Odsmal)