The Northern Tradition from a Pan-European Perspective

[Goswin_van_Eyck]

The Vanir and the Gods/Goddesses of the Northern Tradition from a Pan-European Perspective

Robert L. Reid

Freya has sometimes been identified with Nerthus, who, according to Edred Thorsson ("Futhark"), was the original castrating and devouring Mother-consort of Ing (before Gerd). Nerthus had a wain drawn by cattle, which makes her comparable to Gefjon, a Danish hypostasis of Freya-Gefn, who ploughed out the Danish isle of Zealand (which contains Naerum = Niartharus = the sacred sanctuary of Nerthus) with a team of oxen (her sons), and there settled down at Lerje with Skjöld Odinsson (a hypostasis of Uller or Ing-Frea ?) - becoming the Clan Mother (Dis) of the Danish monarchy (from whom my own highland clan incidentally appears to be descended).


Gefjon was the patron of maidens who may not necessarily have been virgins, since Gefjon, like Freya, once sold her favours in return for a necklace. Premarital prostitution was once a sacred institution in the Mediterranean, which had trading links with Bronze Age Scandinavia. However, in the translation of Latin legends, her name was consistently used to translate that of the classical virgin huntress Diana. Though she is perhaps closer in nature to the great maternal 'Diana' (or 'Artemis') of the Ephesians.
At her great temple at Ephesus (one of the seven wonders of the ancient world) she received offerings from all over the world including amber necklaces (like Freya's Brisingamen) from the Baltic. Her cult was the historical prototype of the cult of the deified aspect of the Christian Virgin Mary, as the Venusian 'Star of the Sea' (Mardoll) and the Theotokos or 'Mother of God'. (NB some consider the 'Maiden' Mary to have been a temple prostitute before the birth of Jesus, avatar of Attis). This 'Diana' was a manifestation of the Anatolian Magna Mater Cybele, goddess of the earth and sky, whose cult (like that of Freya-Nerthus in the north) dates back to the stone age. It is interesting that the sacred image of Cybele was ritually bathed once a year, as was that of Nerthus on her sacred isle. Also Cybele rides in a chariot drawn by felines (totems of her invert priests ?) as does the Norse goddess Freya (whose seið-men may have had cat fetches). Like the cognate near eastern goddess Inanna/ Ishtar/Astarte/Astoreth, she was also depicted riding on the back of a lion, just as the Roman Diana-Lucifera has been represented riding a horned, winged panther, and Freya was depicted in the Schleswiger Dom riding on the back of a Siberian tiger.
Freya the Queen of Heaven's cat drawn wain, known as 'The Lady's Wagon', gave its name in the north to Ursa Minor, and as the Old Norse word fres meant both bear and cat, this celestial 'little bear' could also be seen as Freya herself in cat form drawing the starry wheel of the heavens (and hence also the seasons and fates) around with her; for Polaris, the celestial axis is set in the point of her tail (really too long for a bear's tail). Also her rune in this aspect would be Raido ('riding' or 'wagon'), which corresponds to the Vedic Rta, the principle of dynamic regulation common to all the gods including Varuna (Odin), Mitra (Tyr) and their joint executives Indra (Thor) and Agni (Loki). The wheel she turns is shown in diagram 1. Rta animates and controls all things as the Vedic psychological uniting symbol, cognate with the Taoist Ying-Yang and the western Holy Grail - not to mention the New Age flying saucer (cf. Ezekiel's Merkaba vision). Freya, the celestial expansion or emanation of the manifold might of the Earth Mother (Nerthus-Fjorgyn), herself unites opposites within herself: for she is both the chief valkyrie battle maid and the Vanic love-goddess (Thanatos and Eros), helping with birth and also claiming half the battle slain dead, and ruling both the waxing and waning halves of the solar round of the year, which is symbolised by her golden Brisingamen, which the opposite creative and destructive powers of Heimdall and Loki fight to possess. Like her supreme totem animal, the cat, Freya is both tender and fierce, prolific and murderous, sensual and supernatural, earthy and otherworldly. (NB according to the Chaldean Oracles the ultimate symbol of the universal fiery Ether is the form of a Lion).
Cybele also unites opposites with herself since she was originally a hermaphrodite - the multiple breasts on her statue at Ephesus have been identified as bull's testicles. This is echoed in the theory that the Norse Nerthus originally possessed a hermaphroditic unity with her 'brother' Njord, and the theory that Mary was a self fertilising Vir-gyne or Andro-gyne = 'Man-Woman'.


From the blood of the severed testicles of Cybele's androgynous avatar (Agdistis) there sprang a pomegranate tree which fertilised the mother of her sacred 'son-consort' Papa (Pope) Attis, who corresponds to Syrian Adonis and Mesopotamian Tammuz. The Norse equivalent of Attis is the symbolically emasculated goddess-lover Yngvi-Frey (Ing) who gave away his phallic sword and horse to win his beloved: though Frey's originally maternal 'castrating' beloved was replaced with an Etin maid (Gerd), and his mother-lover (Nerthus) became his sister Freya, who was then respectably married off to Odur/Odin. Like Cybele, Attis castrated himself (or she did it to him) as the model and spiritual father of Cybele's prophetic and sorcerous eunuch priests, and sacred passive-homosexual prostitutes, the Galli - who have been equated with the Corybantes and the Curetes of Rhea. (NB in the first few centuries of the Christian era the Galli's ritual castration was sometimes replaced with symbolic bull sacrifice, which may have been reflected in Freyic horse sacrifice in the north). sometimes replaced with symbolic bull sacrifice, which may have been reflected in Freyic horse sacrifice in the north). As Rhea (mother of the Olympian gods) the divine mother of Attis also turned her grandson Dionysus (Aegean equivalent of Odin as god of ecstasy) effeminate when she initiated him into the supposedly primal Phrygian mysteries. She even gave him her dress to wear, making him a priestly transvestite like the Galli of Cybele. It is implied that when Odin learned the primal shamanic mysteries of Seið-craft from the goddess Freya (a manifestation of his great grandmother, Audumla, dam of Buri) he also suffered the 'shame' of temporary sexual effeminization, indulging in periodic ergi - hence his by-name Jalk or 'gelding', and the report that he behaved as a female witch, or Seiðkona, at Sams Isle.
One theory holds that the original shamans were female shamankas, and that to assimilate their powers, upstart male would-be shamans had to impersonate their femininity. However, it may be that certain womanly types of homosexual men have always had a 'natural' affinity with female sorcerers ? There is also some evidence that the primal creative deities at the centre of all things were originally womanly or androgyne, like the Orphic hermaphroditic Eros-Phanes, an all powerful love-deity like Freya, and also the Gnostic Sophia-Barbelo-Cybele, sole parent of the Devilish Trickster Demiurge.


Freya's affinity with Gefjon and Nerthus links her to the bovine symbol of the primal All-Mother, who Egyptian name was Hathor. This Freya like cow-headed goddess of young women, love, music, dance and intoxication was herself identified with all the other goddesses. In one aspect Hathor was seen as the intoxicated and thus pacified form of the all devouring, terrible lioness-goddess Sekmet. Likewise Cybele first appeared as a terrible hermaphrodite monster (Agdistis) who had to be pacified with alcohol. In identity with the primal creatrix Neith, Hathor was said to be two-thirds male and one-third female, and hence an Androgyne like Cybele-Agdistis and Nerthus-Njord, whose primal form would be Audumla, the great cow mother of Etins and Gods (Æsir and Vanir) alike. She is herself also threefold as Freya, the (Vanic) maiden-whore and battle-maid; Frigg, the (quasi Aesic) mother-wife; and Heid/Angurboda, the (quasi Etinish) crone-witch - a reflection of the 'male' magical trinity of lover and battle-god Odin; father Heimdall; and shaman-trickster Loki.


It is also noteworthy that if this primal Mother and her initiated priestly functionary, or 'son', were originally both androgynes or transsexuals and womanly lovers of men (Gefjon was equated with the Cypriot, 'man eating', sacred prostitute goddess Aphrodite in "Stjórn"; and the Ing derived English word ingle meant young, passive homosexual) then the loving/erotic union between the two must have been in essential reality the mystical possession of the latter by the former following on from the latter's sex changing sacrifice of his outward masculinity ? In this process, the great goddess Freya-Nerthus -Gefjon is the archetype of the all potential Higher Self and transcendent cosmic consciousness which the devotee aims to become mystically merged with and to magically express or incarnate; and the effeminized gods: Frey (as expressed by his ergi-priests), Odin (as best expressed by his 'shadow' Loki) and perhaps even Thor (in his impersonation of Freya) are the models of the aspirant magician-priest in this Great Work.
Finally I would like to point out that my own sex changing and sorcerous patron god Loki (who vanically flies in Freya's hawk robe and who underwent a mock castration in place of Njord) may himself be seen as the fiery son of the Terra Mater/Nerthus, for his mother's name Laufey, 'the leafy (wooded) isle', is a kenning for Mother Earth, and may also refer to the cult site of Nerthus on an island grove. Laufey's alias Nal, 'needle', may suggest that her manifestations included the pine tree sacred to Cybele, and Loki is himself runically linked to Freya-Frigg's sacred birch tree in the Old Norwegian Rune Rhyme.
Loki's matronymic surname Laufeyarson may be of Aryan antiquity, for it is paralleled by that of the Vedic fire god Agni, who is likewise called garbhas vanam, 'fruit of the womb of the woods'. Jung etymologically linked Old Indian van, vana = 'wood' to Germanic words related to the rune Wunjo and possibly also to the name of the Vanir themselves. Note in Tacitus that the Vanic Earth god/dess was the parent of Tuisto = Teiwaz/Tyr, the original heavenly All Father before Odin the Sigtyr. Furthermore Fjorgyn/Jord, mother of Thor (alias Fjorgynn 'father' of Frigg), is also 'Mother Earth' (like Nerthus); and Indra, the Indian Thor, was sometimes said to be the twin of Agni (Loki). According to Snorri's Edda, the name of Thor's wife Sif (mother of Uller, wintry shadow of summery Frey, the other Alci/Hadding) is also an alias of Jord. So Loki's stealing (reaping) of Sif's corn gold hair is parallel to Plutarch's account of Horus snatching the magical head-dress of his mother Isis, as an act of divine, heroic rebellion. He had to atone to the Mother's frosty, Etinish 'shadow' (= Skadi) however by tying his testicles to the beard of a nanny-goat (Heidrun ? = Freya ?) and then playing a painful game of tug of war in order to warm the goddess into laughing fertility. The change in Skadi's character from wintry harshness to summery happiness is not permanent however. For when Loki is bound under the earth for his alleged part in the slaying of Balder, it is she who ties the venom dripping serpent above his face. This in turn enrages Loki and transforms him from a Puckish figure of fun into a destructive, chthonic force of volcano and earthquake. Also, when he breaks free at the Ragnarok, Loki will have his final revenge by setting ablaze the maternal cosmic tree of life, which contains all the worlds and their wights. But from another point of view this universal destruction can be seen as a loving work of renewal, for from the regenerated Yggdrasil will be born a new humanity, and to it's crown the fallen gods will at last return from Hel.


Bibliography
Edred Thorsson : 'Futhark'
Kveldulf Gundarsson :'Teutonic Magic'
The Ring of Troth : 'Our Troth'
Nigel Pennick : 'Runic Astrology'
H.R. Ellis Davidson :'Gods & Myths of Northern Europe'
John Ferguson : 'The Religions of the Roman Empire'
Lucie Lamy : 'Egyptian Mysteries'
Veronica Lons : 'Egyptian Mythology'
Hans George Wunderlich :'The Secret of Crete'
Benjamin Walker : 'Gnosticism'
Anne Baring & Jules Cashford :'The Myth of the Goddess'
Randy P. Conner : 'Blossom of Bone' .
G. Jung : 'Symbols of Transformation'
C.G. Jung :'Psychology & Religion West & East'


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