I had dream of Yggdrasil recently that left me with the certain opinion that Midgard, this realm of embodied existence, is the best place for the operative sorcerer. Let me firstly say I disagree with the idea that all dreams are necessarily meaningful or illustrative – most aren’t. The inherent subjectivity of the dreamer makes extrapolating significance into the objective world potentially fraught with psychic narcissism. The ancient Greeks were aware of this, poetically observing that dreams coming through the gates of ivory were deceptive whilst those coming through the gates of horn were true. I tend to have a pretty active dream life but I’m pretty sure most of my dreams have their origins in the gates of ivory as the misfiring of synapses and snatches of memory that I impose a narrative around. That said, I very occasionally get the sense of something of an altogether different quality.
The dream ran like this: an impression of something male, cloaked, a predominance of atmospheric dark blue yet lacking distinct features. The shadowy entity presented me with an image of the dynamic relationship of Midgard to the other worlds on the cosmic world-tree. Specifically I was shown how embodied existence as understood here in Midgard is only possible because of the tension created by the orbiting planes of existence. I was just in the middle of looking at how the eternal renewal and fecundity of Vanaheim balances the chaotic potential in Jotunheim when my girlfriend woke me up but I’d seen enough to come to have my worldview influenced.
At this stage, I don’t feel the technicalities were quite as important as the subtle observation that I I’d somehow missed before, that Midgard is the realm of greatest freedom and potential for us. As Edred Thorsson opines; “We stand at the cross-roads of reality – a realm in which there is more potentiality and more challenges than anywhere.” For the magician who truly embraces Midgard it can be so much more than just a proving ground for whatever comes post-mortem. Feet in Hel, head in Asgard; it is the only place where we can most fully materialize the formula of man, beast, god as a living daemonic reality.
David Beth treads similar ground in his essay Krist – Sun of God, describing the practical and ontological applications of the “Germanic-hyperborean” weltanschauung. The Hyperborean initiate, like Wotan, straddles the worlds, his sacrifice being in truth, the shamanic formula by which “he descends into Hel and takes the souls of the damned up to heaven with him bringing them into wholeness and equality with God.” Numerous mysteries can be discerned from this principle. The misinterpretation in exoteric Christianity as a model for moral salvation should be obvious. From a magical perspective however, we can see that such a descent occurs on a personal and cosmic scale simultaneously for there is no difference. Descending into the icy-cold realms of the dead the multifarious aspects of self become transparent are can be yoked by the will of the sorcerer to achieve “unity of desire”.
Dave Lee calls this The Work of The Magical Self (see his quite Bright From The Well) whereby the various “mundane selves, knots of desire and will” can be rebuilt along willed lines. Lee utilizes Yggdrasil as a mythic model to describe “levels of consciousness involved in magical action.” In brief the formula involves invoking the primal sexual energies signified by the Dragon energy lurking at the base of the tree to meet with the observing faculty signified as the hawk. This Dionysian-Apollonian marriage flowers as the Dragon-Eagle of magical consciousness capable of performing all manner of sorceries and transpersonal communications. I’ll recommend interested readers to Lee’s book but I think it is important to note that this formula is must truly active here in temporal reality.
For me the importance of the Germanic mytho-magical model (yes, I understand it’s a broad generalization) rests on the value it places on worldly existence without eschewing transcendence. I am naturally suspicious of any occult doctrine or pattern of beliefs that insists on escapists fantasies and let’s be honest there’s a lot of them. Don’t care quite frankly what you were like in a past life or where you’re going next, don’t really care about your rainbow–unicorn spirit guide etc. If your magic isn’t operative in Midgard then what is it really for? On this I think Dave Lee says it best:
“ The overall aim of the magical path, if I define it in a way which opposes it to the mystical path, is always to return to Midgard, with the rewards of one’s magical action there for one and, if it be your Will, all the world to see. Magic has to be a celebration of the world, of spirit in it’s manifest form as the flesh, the body. The magician plays with the transcendent, but always returns to the flesh. The flesh is corruptible, mortal, subject to the worst the world has to offer, but surely it is still the most precious thin, to be born into this death-bounded ecstasy.”
