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Heimdall,
Odin and the Nine Waves of Creation
Myths
constantly need to be decoded and reinterpreted so that we shall be able to
retrieve new knowledge from them – new knowledge which is continuously being
created by the great cosmic dance and thrown into the molds of the old myths.
Everything is in constant state of movement and change - and so is the
essence of the myths. Rereading Carl
Johan Calleman’s seminal book The Nine Waves of Creation led me into
the following contemplation: Do these insights exist in a fragmentary form in
the pre-Christian myths, insights created from an alchemical coalescence of
the cosmologies of the Mayan calendar and quantum physics? It does! – and this leads into an expanded interpretation of some
truly archaic themes that concern Urvölvan, Heimdall and Odin. In
his book, which I have previously reviewed in Swedish on this blog Calleman points out that the very number nine recurs in
many original myths from across the world. There seems to have existed a
rudimentary, or maybe better said intuitive, understanding that the world has
been formed by nine different impulses, which qualitatively speaking are very
different. In the Nordic tradition we have the myth of the world tree
Yggdrasil and the nine worlds that are connected to, or maybe rather
interwoven with the world tree. In the first song of the poetic Edda Urvölvan (the original female seer) has the following to
say: I,
born of giants, remember very early Calleman sees what he calls the Tree of Life –
somewhere close to the center of the universe – as the sphere that all the
creative impulses, both on a macro and a micro level, have emanated from. The
Tree of Life is thus a sort of a cosmic matrix for everything that ever was
and is: as above, so below; as inside, so outside. The question is now if the
nine worlds in the Nordic tradition correspond to the nine creation waves that has brought the world forth. There does not
seem to be a total conformity between the two, but common elements do exist
and in this case there also exists a chronological order of the Nordic
“worlds”, even if it is not a question of a hierarchical order. Eight
of the worlds, which I would rather call spheres, can be combined into pairs
and thus exist in a complementary and at the same time contradictory
relationship to each other. They are polarities that mutually condition each
other. The two oldest spheres are the cold and the heat, which from the
Emptiness (Ginnungagap) bring forth the very first
being, the androgynous giant Ymer (= the roaring,
the rambunctious). The Cold = Nifelhem, the Heat= Muspellhem. The third sphere, which then takes the shape
of Ymer is Jotunhem, which is balanced by Vanahem,
the domain of fertility. The next pair in this chronological tale about
cosmic creation is Helhem, the sphere of death, and
Asgård, the dimension of the heavenly gods. Then
follows Svartalvhem and Ljusalvhem,
the life-generating forces of the earth and the air, and finally we have Mannhem, the sphere of the humans. What we are looking at
here is a cosmic as well as a planetary and inner process of evolution. If
we analyze the correspondence of the nine Nordic worlds with the nine waves
of creation described by Calleman by means of the
runic system of the uthark and in particular
consider the numerological magic we arrive at the following highly
interesting result: Nifelhem = Iss,
which is rune no 10, Muspellhem = Ken with the
numerical value 5, Jotunhem = Thurs (2), Vanahem = Lagu (20), Helhem = Eh (18), Asgård = Ass
(3), Svartalvhem = Bjarka
(17), Ljusalvhem = Sol (15) and Mannhem
= Madr (19). The sum of these becomes 109. If we
reduce this to a single digit number we get 1+0+9= 10, which in turn becomes
1+0=1. Rune no 1 is Ur, which represents the origin, the beginning and the
creative, constructive primordial power. This seems to indicate that the myth
about Yggdrasil and the nine worlds implies a creation story, which is
consistent with the nine waves of creation of Calleman. A
character, which is strongly connected with this creative cosmic process, is Heimdall – the divine being which drank from the well of
wisdom in exchange for one of his ears and thus had been endowed with a
supernatural hearing and as a result had taken the place of guardian at the
gate of the Dreamtime. Heimdall has been
interpreted as a personification of the World Tree or the World Pillar and
has a counterpart in Sapmi cosmology in the
character called Veralden olmai,
the man of the world or the worlds. That Heimdall
indeed is the man of the worlds becomes clear from the Edda song about Hyndla. One
was born in bygone days, Gialp bore him, Greip
bore him, One
was born greater than all, In
the Edda of Snorres it is said about Heimdall: ”He is called the
white god. He is big and holy. Nine virgins, all of them sisters, gave birth
to him as a son.” A fragment from Heimdallsgaldern
is also given there: I
am the child of nine mothers, This
song also exists in a more complete version: You
are Heimdall, white among Asar,
The
mothers of Heimdall may simply be the nine waves of
creation. That they are described as sisters is in order to point to the
organic connections between the waves of creation. They have a common origin
and are intimately connected, even if they carry different qualities, or
better said potentialities. The nine waves bring forth Heimdall
as a representative of the world in its totality. In this myth there is also
an evolutionary chronology inscribed. Acording to Calleman the
three last waves of creation were activated in the years 1755, 1999 and 2011.
How did people more than a thousand years ago know that there were actually
nine waves when only six had been activated? This is undoubtedly a question
which complicates the analysis, but maybe people leaning towards esoterics felt a kind of pre-waves (as Calleman talks about) or they simply had a prophetic
intuition about the cosmic dynamics – maybe attained by using runes as a
means of divination. In contrast, it seems fully clear that it is only after
2011 that we are able to gain a more complete understanding of the nine waves
of creation as well as the nature of the world and thus also possible ways
towards bringing peace, harmony and balance. For this, there was an intuitive
understanding already when the old myths were told, which emerges for
instance from the initiatory rite of Odin at the World Tree. In
Odins own words in Havamal:
I
know that I hung on a windy tree, No
bread did they give me nor a drink from a horn, Then
I began to quicken and be wise, Consequently
it is only after the ninth night (read the ninth wave), that complete
knowledge is possible. This is potentially present in all of creation for
whoever makes oneself receptive. It did not exist in a complete form when
these myths were narrated or written down and it only existed as a
premonition or pre-wave when CG Jung developed his thoughts about the
collective unconscious and synchronicities, or when Carlos Castaneda and
Michael Harner wrote their texts about the path of
the shaman in the 70-ties and 80-ties. This may explain why these
groundbreaking authors chose individualist positions. Their stances are today
completely insufficient, but they should be recognized that they have opened
doors for us to acquire new knowledge. They were however not themselves
capable of entering these doors, but yet made it possible for us to do so at
this later point and then transcend their limitations. Today all necessary
knowledge exists for us to be able to create peace and harmony and as a
result it falls upon ourselves and those living today to do so. And this can
only be the result of shared views and not in the form of spiritual ego
trips. Carl Johan Calleman has realized this and
through this he has made a very significant contribution to the world. As he
himself writes as the final words of The Nine Waves of Creation: ”Everything is now available for us to go in this direction
toward Oneness with the Divine and unity among ourselves”. Jörgen I Eriksson, July 2017 (Translation
from Swedish by Carl Johan Calleman. The quotes
from The Poetic Edda are from the translation by Carolyne
Larrington (2014).) |
