When the
author of a book on Germanic religion turns out to be Vincent Ongkowidjojo, you
readily know that on facts, you cannot go wrong. He knows the material, partly
because he brings to it the philological and mythographical methods he acquired
as an Orientalist, being by training a specialist of the Ancient Near East. Meanwhile
he mastered Old Norse, as shown once more in the present book, Doors of Valhalla, through original
translations of two of the most important hymns from the Edda: Voluspa and Lokasenna. (A practical
suggestion for the reader: read those translations, printed at the end of the
book, first. At the end of your reading, you can go over them again and see how
your understanding of them has deepened.)
For this
book, he called in Maria Kvilhaug to write a preface on “the ‘worlds’ of Old
Norse mythology”, and David Parry to contribute an afterword. Kvilhaug
discusses the 7 heavenly worlds (heard of Breidablik,
“broad view”, called “the most beautiful place in heaven”?—p.12) and the 12
worlds, corresponding to forces within us. These are different from the
better-known 9 -heims or worlds on
the Yggdrasil.
Parry analyzes
why a return to Christianity would not be the right answer to the need for
re-enchanting the world. He considers it ethically in error, and not genuinely
resonating with us because not ancestral. He is a great fan of the Austrian
philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whom he calls a crypto-Pagan. Wittgenstein was
a conservative at heart, an anti-relativist who nonetheless was against the
absolutism of limited causes (notably against Bertrand Russell’s
self-righteousness about his liberal causes). Parry especially likes this
Wittgenstein witticism: “Not how the world is, is mystical; but that it
is.”
An aside: political shadows
On his
mother’s side, Ongkowidjojo is Flemish, and on his father’s side Chinese. This
explains his Indonesian name: the Chinese settlers there were forced by law to
take an indigenous name. Some politically conscious well-wishers of the Norse
religion, Asatrú or Vortrú (“Loyalty to the Aesir” c.q. “Ancestral loyalty”),
will heave a sigh of relief upon hearing of his visibly exotic ancestry.
After World
War II, Pagan Revivalism had acquired the odium of association with the Nazis.
Thus, in the Baltic states including Finland, Pagans were mostly nationalists
and fiercely opposed to the Soviet bid to annex their countries, so they sided
with the Germans. (Not necessarily with Nazism, but in wartime psychology,
those distinctions were not made, also because they sported the indigenous
swastika, wrongly identified as Nazi.) In the Netherlands, the few who took
scholarly interest in their ancient traditions, were roped in for the Nazi
occupiers’ nativist cultural policy, and branded afterwards as having been
“wrong” during the war.
In reality,
the stereotyping of neo-Pagans as tainted with Nazism is a gross optical
mistake. The Pagan revival started in the Romantic age, when nobody had heard of
National-Socialism yet, and more in Britain than in Germany. Adolf Hitler
ridiculed neo-Paganism, which he found flaky, past-oriented and thus
un-Germanic. By contrast, the top anti-Nazi Winston Churchill was an ordained
Druid. Today, there are actively Left-wing neo-Pagan groups, with the German
Pagan scene split down the middle between Left and Right. This politicized
stereotype, though definitely waning, is nonetheless a fact of life that one
still encounters sometimes. Enters Mr. Ongkowidjojo whose very existence, by a
sheer accident of birth, refutes that impression. As does his writing, which
reveals what profound worldview had been obscured by this political taboo.
The fact
that I am sensitive at all to this aspect of the matter bespeaks a trauma of my
generation, now greying. In our young days, Pagans were battered by endless
slandering from the mainstream media (whose then monopoly on the information
and opinion flow was fearsomely absolute), together with their numerous dupes
and parrots in the bourgeoisie. I am happy to see that this is far less the
case for the upcoming generation. If they think I just made a bizarre and
uncalled-for digression into politics, so much the better.
Pagan revival
After
Christianity fell out of favour among a majority of Europeans, numerous people
set out on a search in all directions for an alternative religion to fill the
“god-shaped hole” (as Salman Rushdie put it) that the parental religion left
behind.
The first
generations of neo-Pagans took the bare bones of whatever traditions they found,
adding their own fantasy to give meaning to these. Or in some cases they even
dogmatically refused to see a deeper meaning, arguing that all this airy-fairy
spirituality is “un-Germanic” and “not fit for European man”. They took all the
war scenes in the Edda stories literally, and their idea of Valhalla was as an
endless battlefield where fighting was only interrupted with drinking: the
life-style of a football hooligan. Their ideal of Paganism was what they had
imbibed: the Christian stereotype of the Pagan as a rugged barbarian. The
appeal of this sort of religion was consequently confined to hooligan types.
But then
the realization gained currency that our ancestors were not all beer-benumbed,
nor all that unique. The search for a deeper meaning in life, that animates the
post-Christian seekers, existed already among our Pagan ancestors and certainly
must have inspired their writings. The higher the spiritual reaches we go, the
more the traditions converge. When speculating on the spiritual meaning of the
myths, it is only right that similarities with other spiritualities are
assumed, though at the same time we should warn against the temptation of facilely
reading too many similarities in them.
Many people
who participate in Asatrú rituals, otherwise also practise yoga or qigong, as
well as the related Oriental or Occidental martial arts. They will probably
like Ongkowidjojo’s foray into universal spirituality, unlike a dwindling hard
core that still reduces Asatrú to its ethnic dimension. In principle, he is
right to go there. It is very likely that the tradition expressed through the
Edda layer, is but the skeletal remains of a deeper spirituality. Partly this
is unrecoverable, because it is the subtlest and most precious layer of the
Pagan tradition that has been most thoroughly wiped out by Christianity. Partly
it can be reconstructed with the help of living Oriental models, and partly,
some motifs are just universal.
Edda
In the
chapters on the Edda’s contents, Ongkowidjojo goes into great detail and
reports a lot of background facts. He draws attention to numerous divine
figures and narrative themes that even many Asatrúar will never have heard of.
Norse mythology is far more complex than most of us had realized. This is
specially true for the Edda’s celebrated Voluspa
hymn (“prognosis by the seeress”), nearly impenetrable without competent
explanation. An unforewarned reader would never get the conceptual background out
of reading the bare Edda text itself. We refer to the book itself for that.
The Lokasenna (“Loki’s scolding tirade”, his
outburst against the gods) is more straightforward.
Ongkowidjojo reviews and
analyzes the many faces of Loki, the trickster-god. In some respects, the god is
merely uttering a rough version of the received barroom wisdom, e.g. on the
much-stereotyped topic of the weaker sex (p.285-287): “Loki regards the
goddesses as inferior. Through them, he hopes to hurt the gods”, as when he
“accuses all the goddesses of being unfaithful”. In more moderate tones, our
omniscient writer sums up: “Their means of defence consist of words instead of
weapons. (…) They care about reputation. They hope to gain standing through
their husbands. While this makes the women dependent, it also shows their
willingness to connect. One last major trait is shared. Almost everyone of the Asynjur [goddesses] possesses the
ability to tell the future.”
Some
critical readers of a Nietzschean bent might disapprove of the tinge of
moralism in Ongkowidjojo’s analysis: “Loki’s true motive is to disclose the
gods’ masquerade. (…) he senses their hypocrisy. Consequently, he make it his mission
to shake the very foundation of Asgard’s ethics. (…) he wants to wake up the
gods and point out their demise. While the Aesir become decadent and inactive,
Loki incites them to action.” (p.291) Then again, it is a good thing that he triest
o see the loftier motives behind this tirade by Loki, who is simply treated as
the bad guy in the text itself.
Like many
modern writers on the world’s mythologies, he sees the dramatis personae as symbols or personifications of a particular
virtue or tendency. Thus: “Fenrir symbolizes fear. Odin faces him but proves
unable to vanquish the wolf. His son Vidar takes his place (…) Vidar is
responsibility.(…) and stoically deals with the situation. Vidar is known as the
silent god. (…) Another of his traits in indifference. This explains his
detachment from the material world and from the lower Self. Because of his dispassion
he is able to defeat the wolf.” (p.100)
Comparisons
With his
wide knowledge of other mythologies, Ongkowidjojo makes some conscientious
comparisons. Thus: “The northern anthropogenesis is based on a heathen ritual
in which wooden idols were prepared to serve as a medium for the spirit of a
god. These so-called pole gods were endowed with the breath of life”, which
points to an old relic of an inauguration ritual” common to much of mankind.
(p.110) the author compares this with the “Opening of the Mouth ritual from
Ancient Egypt”. I would add the very similar Hindu procedure of Prana Pratishtha (“establishing
life-breath”), in which a sculpted piece of wood or stone is infused with the
god’s presence.
The context
here is the qualities of three gods that have to be infused in a cultic object.
These three are personified as Odin, for önd,
“life breath”; Hoenir, for ódr, “consciousness”;
and Lodur, for lá, “skill, appearance”.
Önd, “breath”, “is similar to Chinese
qi”, and “in Christianized times, the term also referred to spirit, even the
Holy Spirit”. (p.111) The Christian Trinity, which flies in the face of the
strict monotheism of its parent religion Judaism and of Islam, must have been
inserted into the monotheist tradition from the Hellenistic version of an
Indo-European model, where threefold thought-forms are rife. So, our author
analyses the Germanic trinity of three brothers (p.123 ff.): in the Voluspa,
they are called Odin, Hoenir and Lodur, the same three with a wide area of
application.
The myth of
a drink conferring immortality, captured by a solar eagle sent by the gods, is
quite widespread. The Norse mjödr, “mead”, corresponds both etymologically and
culturally to Vedic madhu, “honey,
sweet”, another name for soma, the
psychedelic brew. It also ties in with the Gilgamesh Epic and other sources. He
concurs with Svava Jakobsdottir that this Scandinavian myth “compares to other
IE myths about the theft of a sacred drink” (p.162).
Sacrifice
is a common theme in most mythologies, and Ongkowidjojo naturally ties it in
with an equally universal spiritual path: “A sense of sacrifice is evoked by
Odin’s death. Alfather sacrifices himself in the fight because he belongs to
the old world. When he dies, he makes room for the younger generation. Vidar is
one of those promising gods. (…) They are the seeds of new aspects of consciousness
to be unfolded after initiation.” (p.100)
Number symbolism
Number
symbolism, here as in other mythologies, is very important. Often the names
that are included in a sevenfold, ninefold or twelvefold are exchangeable for
others, as long as the number remains the same.
The very
first page shows a magic-type square made up of 9 runes. Already on p.10 we
learn that in the “hall of friends”, the number 12 is quite important. The
All-Father has one seat, with twelve for the other gods; that is, the centre
surrounded by a Round Table of the 12 signs of the Zodiac, just like the Greek
12 gods (Dodekatheon) and the Vedic
twelve suns (Aditya), reproduced in
Japanese Buddhist temples as the 12 heavens (Ten): “There are
twelve Aesir. In ancient times, the
number had more significance than the composition of the group.” (p. 245) The
signs of the Zodiac are also linked to Hercules’ twelve labours as well as to the
stages of Thor’s and Odin’s careers.
Similarly,
the author devotes a chapter to “The seven and the nine” (p.21 ff.) Rather than
just summarizing this very important subject, we would like to draw attention
to what we consider to be a weak point in this otherwise excellent book.
Theosophy
The author endeavours
to link Norse mythology with other systems of spirituality, where the symbol
value of the mythic characters corresponds with themes on or phases of the
spiritual path. That much is in itself very commendable, as we know little of
the spiritual practice in the society that engendered this mythology. Greek and
Vedic religions provide the historically most relevant points of comparison,
but the author has opted instead for Theosophy, not older than the late 19th
century, and related modern authors.
On p.23, he
lists all the great names of Theo- and Anthroposophy, each with his own system
of 6 to 9 “planes” of existence, from the physical to the spiritual. These 9 he
doesn’t mention again, but equates them to the nine worlds: 1. Helheim =
physical; 2-3. Niflheim and Svartalfheim = ethereal; 4. Jotunheim = emotional;
5. Midgard = mental; 6. Asgard = causal; 7. Vanaheim = intuitional; 8. Alfheim
= spiritual; 9. Muspelheim = monadic. Further, Ginnungagap = the logoic plane,
whatever that may be according to the Theosophists. This correspondence is
questionable and will certainly be challenged by some lovers of Nordic
mythology, but has no further importance for the narrative. The idea behind it,
however, is essential for this book: that the nine worlds are not only a
descriptive worldview but also a guide for action, a map on a path that we are
expected to walk.
Another
heritage from Theosophy is more pervasive: the Seven Rays. Take for instance,
in the middle of a discourse on Eddaic psychology: “Hroering [= “stirring”, cfr. the Dutch word be-roering], whether emotional or mental, is connected with Ray
Four and secondarily with Ray Six.” (p.112) What to make of this?
The
doctrine of the Seven Rays finds its origins in the Vedas, where there is a
sparing mention of the Sapta Rashmi,
the “seven rays”. This notion is not further developed there. When Theosophist
Alice Bailey takes it up in the early twentieth century, it has become a
cornerstone of her worldview. They are
detailed as 1. Power/Will; 2. Love/Wisdom; 3. Active Intelligence; 4. Harmony;
5. Concrete knowledge; 6. Devotion; and 7. Ceremonial Order. Ongkowidjojo links
them to 1. Thor; 2. Odin; 3. Mimir; 4. Freyja; 5. Heimdal; 6. Vidar; 7. Balder.
(p.37)
With any
such “world models”, you can make approximations between one member of the list
(one of the 22 great arcana of the Tarot, the 8 trigrams or 64 hexagrams of the
Yijing, the 12 signs of the Zodiac etc.) and any given person, including each
of the Nordic gods. Hence not much fault can be found with the author’s attempt
to find a correspondence between hroering
and Ray 4 or Ray 6. But the question is whether it adds anything that was not
already present in the lore about the Nordic theo- and anthropology. Instead of
saying that something “connects with Ray 6”, you might simply say that it is “devoted”
or “devotional”.
I can’t see
much surplus value in this esoteric angle. In principle, yes, but at least in
this instance, no. The main reason is that his choice of esoteric tradition
leaves much to be desired. Theosophy and allied esotericists like Dion Fortune
and Rudolf Steiner were very second-hand. They didn’t fully grasp the
Hindu-Buddhist traditions they were grappling with, and moreover tried to link
it to or combine it with budding Western sciences like psychology. Note that
after their heyday in the late 19th and early 20th century, their worldview has
not evolved or put to creative use ever since, only widely parroted. A sure
sign of their immaturity is their bombastic use of complicated jargon drawn
from different existing traditions not forming a logical whole.
So, I would
suggest the reader to skip the (usually brief) passages about the supposed
Theosophical angle and concentrate on Vincent Ongkowidjojo’s explanation of the
Edda, spiced up with comparisons with other mythologies and genuinely
traditional worldviews. On that condition, you have a very good book before
you, one that genuinely contributes to our more sophisticated understanding of
the Edda.
Vincent
Ongkowidjojo: Doors of Valhalla, An
Esoteric Interpretation of Norse Mythology, Mandrake, Oxford 2016
