Since it’s His Day Anyway
I kind of pulled this weekly topic out of my ass because I wasn’t happy with any of my alliteration choices, but reading even the surface info on Wikipedia’s description of Odin makes me feel pretty good about my choice. First, I love some of the art associated with him:
Second, here is a god who gave up his eye in the pursuit of wisdom . . . I like that, a god pursuing wisdom seems like a healthy symbol. Third, being as this is a liminal space, and as such, ambivalence/contradiction/in-betweenness are all totally in line with my general take on things (occasionally to J’s chagrin), I love the fact that:
His name is related to óðr, meaning “mind”, “excitation,” “fury” or “poetry,” and his role, like many of the Norse pantheon, is complex: he is a god of wisdom, war, battle and death. He is also attested as being a god of magic, poetry, prophecy, victory and the hunt. (Wikipedia “Odin”)
I don’t quite know how I’m going to structure my Wednesday entries exactly, but I’m playing with the idea of reading up on the guy, re-familiarizing myself with Norse Mythology and looking to those stories as a jumping off point for issues of leadership, sacrifice, contemporary politics, perhaps even my own life. Do we as a culture value the pursuit of wisdom? Considering that four of our days of the week are named for German gods, maybe we should know a bit more about that history, those stories. So I’ll be looking into Woden’s Day every Wednesday, trying to make connections, little leaps of narrative faith that stitch our time with a time long ago. Who knows, maybe a time yet to come as well.
Did that sound incredibly pretentious? Hmm, well we all have our weaknesses.
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