Video version of this article
0:05:09
Following up the video I made yesterday, with a video about the European circular world view, and how it differs from the Abrahamic linear world view. You will understand, but you might never really fathom...
About the European World View
In the European tradition we don't have a linear view with a beginning and an end,[1]we have a circular view where there is no beginning and no end.
The stanzas about Ymir (proto- Nordic *WumîaR, meaning "sound") are by the scholars thought of as being a Scandinavian "Creation Myth". In reality, it is a myth about the burial mound. What you see here is the "skull" of Ymir being held up by the four "dwarves" Northern, Southern, Western and Eastern. This is "Middle-earth"; the realm in the middle, between the world of the living (Ásgarðr) and the world of the dead (Helheimr). The person in the mound is just waiting to be reborn. He is not really dead. Here you can see the Sky, created from the skull of Ymir and the 'Dwarves' holding it up. The "first" gods crept out from Ymir's "armpits". The soil surrounding the "skull" was made from the flesh of Ymir. So yes: That is just a myth explaining with the "road signs" of that time how they created the burial mound, and how the progenitors all came from those mounds. The stanzas about Ask and Embla are also by the scholars believed to be a Scandinavian "Creation Myth". You can find an explanation to what that myth really is all about in this book.
I quote:
In the European tradition we don't have a linear view with a beginning and an end,[1]we have a circular view where there is no beginning and no end.
The stanzas about Ymir (proto- Nordic *WumîaR, meaning "sound") are by the scholars thought of as being a Scandinavian "Creation Myth". In reality, it is a myth about the burial mound. What you see here is the "skull" of Ymir being held up by the four "dwarves" Northern, Southern, Western and Eastern. This is "Middle-earth"; the realm in the middle, between the world of the living (Ásgarðr) and the world of the dead (Helheimr). The person in the mound is just waiting to be reborn. He is not really dead. Here you can see the Sky, created from the skull of Ymir and the 'Dwarves' holding it up. The "first" gods crept out from Ymir's "armpits". The soil surrounding the "skull" was made from the flesh of Ymir. So yes: That is just a myth explaining with the "road signs" of that time how they created the burial mound, and how the progenitors all came from those mounds. The stanzas about Ask and Embla are also by the scholars believed to be a Scandinavian "Creation Myth". You can find an explanation to what that myth really is all about in this book.
I quote:
Völuspâ stanza 17 & 18 describe how the actors who had played the role of the Winter spirits in Ragnarök, by impersonating predatory animals, in particular the wolf, were brought back to the sacrificial trees, the ash and the elm, by the gods (i. e. human beings impersonating the deities). To become Winter Spirits they had hung their own cloths (a symbol of their life force) in the sacrificial tree; naked they went to put on (mainly) wolf or bear skins and thus assume the role of Winter spirits in a great play, a mock battle between the Summer and the Winter.There is no night and day, or day and night. There is a night, a morning, a midday, a day, an afternoon, an evening and then a night again. So it all goes in circles. Likewise you have a winter, you have a spring, a summer and a fall. And you have the moon phases, you have the earth spinning. We are dead, we are born, we live, we die, we are dead again and we are born again. We live, we die, we are dead and so forth. Everything revolves in a circle. You sleep, you wake up, you are awake, you fall asleep and you are asleep again. You wake up, you are awake, you fall asleep again and so forth. No beginning, no end, just a movement in circles. As explained in my video about 'Yule', Ragnarök is not the end, but just another beginning. The Universe has always been here. It has no beginning and no end. And it has no centre or outer edge. It is eternal and endless. It all revolves round and round and round. No beginning, no end. You want me to list a source for everything I say here? Óðinn told me. You think you know better than him?
During this battle the (actors playing the) Summer spirits tore their animal skins off them and stepped on them (i. e. played the role of Viðarr in Ragnarök ripping the Fenrir wolf in two), to symbolically kill them. The actors played dead and were ceremonially carried back to the sacrificial trees, where the deities put back on their clothes and brougth them back from the dead; gave them good colours, spirit, a language and life again. There is no creation in this myth either.
- Creation and Armageddon.