I recently picked up a new
copy of Seed of Yggdrasil. I’ll
share some thoughts about that another time (if you know me or my work, you
know how much I enjoy the author’s work—and how much I loathe her publishing
house).
Reading through it, I began to mull some new things into the
Deep Thinky Thoughts I’d already been having about the nature of the Gods. I
still need to do some more thinking, but this ties in a little to some of my
Deep Thinky Thoughts about my own world view, i.e., that I realized rather
recently that I am a very hard polytheist and definitely *not* a Wiccan.
In a nutshell, Kvilhaug views the myths as parables, stories
with lessons to be learned—lessons have that have gotten because a) the
translators didn’t bother to translate the names of the Gods, other beings, or
places, and b) because we, as modern readers/listeners don’t understand the stories
the way the mythmakers and their audiences did. At the same time, Kvilhaug
seems to express belief in *some* of the Gods (while relegating others to realm
of “made-up for the sake of good story-telling”). I don’t agree with this (and
not just because my God didn’t “make the cut” to “proper Godhood”)—but I do
think Kvilhaug is onto something with the idea that these stories were told
with the intent of teaching something to the listener.
If you look at the myths and stories of other cultures, you’ll
see the same idea: the myths are entertaining stories, yes—but there is always
a lesson to be learned. Some of the lessons have been lost in translation (both
in actual translation and in our ability to understand the stories and figures
in them the way our ancestors did), but they are still there.
But what does that mean about the nature of the Gods? (And
for the record, I’m putting the God of the Abrahamic faiths in with this one,
too, because His stories are just as much about teaching lessons, albeit ones that
got corrupted in many cases by humans—but I’m pretty sure we can say that about
all powerful priesthoods. All
power-hungry humans in general: they corrupt the message to suit their own
desires.)
How can the Gods be at once literal, actual beings (that have
existed before the stories were written down and have continued to exist—to have adventures to live Their lives quite happily
on Their own), and yet so many of Their stories seem to be about teaching
lessons to mankind? And how did we even discover Their stories to being with?
Deep Thinky Thoughts, indeed.
I think the first thing we need to wrap our heads around is
that the Gods are Big. The kind of Big that we can’t begin to imagine except in terms that They set for us—faces They
allow us to see. Faces They give to us so we can see them.
To (perhaps) put that into perspective, imagine that we’re a
bunch of ants, scurrying around, doing our jobs, secure in our intelligence,
our superiority even, to the natural world around us. We build our tunnels—our little
cities with their skyscrapers—and we make more little ants to serve our
countries, to build more magnificent anthills than the ones we have made. Then
along comes something So Big, it can destroy our little world without even
thinking—perhaps even accidently. And that Something Big isn’t even capable of
feeling remorse because, well, we’re just ants.
But perhaps one of those Something Bigs is more empathetic
than the rest. It lifts a few of us up and moves us out of harm’s way.
When our fellow ants ask “what was that?!” how do we explain
what we’ve seen?
In that scenario, humans are the Somethings Big. We go on
about our day, secure in our place in the Universe, hardly ever realizing that
while we may be the kings of our little anthills, there are things out there
that are Bigger, Stronger, Vaster, Older, and Smarter than us.
What are those Things?
We call them “Gods” and I believe that some of Them have our
best interests at heart, if for no other reason than They are capable of
empathy, of compassion (sometimes more-so than we ourselves are). They have
seen something in us worthy of attention, so (occasionally), They move us out
of harm’s way. They guide us in the right direction.
They try to teach us lessons by giving us stories our human
minds are capable of understanding. But we have to listen. And we have to continue to be worthy of Their attention, because
if the Gods exist then there undoubtedly are other Big Things out there too,
Things without compassion (at least not for us) who could bulldoze over us without
a second thought—without even noticing we are here.
Because in the grand scheme of things, we human beings are as
significant to the Universe as the average ant colony is significant to you or
I.
