66 - The Poetic Edda

new Mythic Mind content for the time being. Now, I do have some ideas for the other show in the future, and so don't delete the Fellowship podcast from your library, but know that you should not expect anything to be shown up there for the foreseeable future. Everything will be coming in right here now. For now, I'm going to start posting our past patron chats over here while I work on some other things, such as the talking book that I'm currently writing and the talking course that's starting

up in January. Now, I know that many of you have not heard these Fellowship chats yet, and so they'll be new for you. And if you have listened to them, well here they are again. I enjoy the re listen. I'm going to start this transition by providing weekly postings of our chats on the Poetic Eda to catch up

to the new content. In the series when it arrives, probably at the end of this month, and then whenever there are gaps in weekly uploads, I'll post more content over here for the foreseeable future until everything gs moved over now, because I'm just dropping the entire Fellowship episodes over here, I want to go ahead right now and thank my patrons who make possible so many of the things that I'm currently doing, and so many thank you

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Apple hikes the price a little bit. And so make sure that you subscribe through the browser on your phone or on your computer. And now let's go ahead and get to our first edit chat. Hello, and welcome to the Mythic Mind Fellowship podcast, which is a platform for giving a voice to our patron. My name is Andrew Snyder, and I am the host of the show. As well as the Mythic Mind Legacy podcast, and I warmly welcome

you to join us around our heart. First of all, I'm going to start posting my interviews to YouTube, and so if you're watching the video of this, they know that this will cut to the actual video of the conversation once I finish this intro. This is the first conversation that our fellowship is having on the poetic Eeda, which is one of our chief sources of information on Norse mythology and legends. Now, to my knowledge, we're all

amateurs here regarding this particular collection of texts. I believe that all of us are reading it or have just

finished reading it for this purpose. But Mythic Mind patrons tend to generally be drawn to this kind of material, as the name suggests, and so although we don't have any particular expertise here, I believe that we are off to a good start in providing some important and fun conversations on this material that's so fascinating and that is really foundational to some of the rather important minds of our time, people like C. S. Lewis and J. R.

Tolkien and obviously beyond. Today we're going to be discussing the first two sections of the poetic Eda, the Vospa and the Havamal, and I really hope that you enjoy this even a fraction as much as I do. All Right, so welcome back to the latest patron chat as we begin our series and talking about the poetic Eda, which is one of the main sources of information we have about Norse myths and legends. Now, none of us here

are experts by any means on this material. We're reading it for the first time, or we've read it for the first time for this purpose, or maybe even you haven't read it at all. You're just here along for the ride. And so the purpose of this is really just to be fellow travelers in these uncharted waters and

see what glories we can uncover. But before we get into the conversation, I'd like to just for everyone to introduce yourself and so everybody knows exactly who it is that we're listening to, and we'll start with Thomas, who of course is a recurring guest. But you can remind us briefly of who you are and what you have going on.

He did a lot of pioneering work in geology, and I have adapted his story for middle graders, and so I'm really excited about that. I'm also a huge Tolkien fan, so I'm really happy to be discussing one of the sources of his great mythology.

basic structure here. But I think it's gonna be helpful for everyone, especially those of you who are not familiar with his text, to get a basic outline of this first section that we'll be taking a look at. And so I'm just going to read the summary that provided in the Larrington translation published by the Oxford Press, Oxford University Press, and so that way we have a sense of the general story we're looking at, and then we'll just jump around to whatever it has stood out to

us in our reading. Right, So this the account begins with the creation of the earth. Then time is created, the gods build temples and enjoy a golden age until

they are disrupted by three girls from giant Land. This somehow leads to the creation of the dwarfs, which, by the way, note it's a pretty good demonstration of the density in the kind of difficulty he worked with the text that even our translator here says somehow this legislation of the dwarfs, it's not super clear exactly how that happened, but anyways, so this somehow leads to the creation of the dwarfs, Humanity is created and the fates arrive. Now

history begins. A mysterious female manifests herself among the Asir, which is here the main group of Norse gods, a woman well versed in magic. As a consequence, the Asir find themselves at war with the van Year, which is another group of gods. Peace is concluded and the gods

have to repair damage to Asgard. A giant offers to rebuild the walls in a very short space of time in exchange for the Sun. The Moon and Frey of the gods agree, thinking the task impossible, but the Builder nearly succeeds, and Thor has to destroy him, breaking the god's promises of safe conduct. Then we reach the present, which Odin questioning the Cirrus about what is to come. The doom of the gods is signaled by the death of Balder and its consequences, the end of the world

by images of punishment and social collapse. Ragnarok approaches the world ash Yegrassil trembles in the giant's advance. Odin is killed by the wolf Fenrier, Freyer by Stewart. Thor and the Midguard Serpent kill each other, Odin is avenged by his son Vidar, and the world disappears in fire, and the verses which follow the earth rises anew with the sea, and some of the is here, including Balder, return to

live peacefully together. In the final verse, the sinister dragon Needhog is seen and the Sierus sinks out of her trance, and that's where the story ends. And so Odin is basically calling forth this cirrus who has died. And you know, there's a sense in the Northern mythos that they have more wisdom than the living, because well they've been removed from the tumults of mortal affairs and so they're keyed

into a greater wisdom. And so he calls forth this dead cirrus to get a sense of things that are to come. And through this conversation, this really this kind of interrogation, we get the full gambit of the Norse narrative, really going from creation that the earliest point that we have all the way up to Ragnarok and beyond. And so there's a whole lot that's covered within this material. And I'm interested in seeing what stood out to you, Tom Sair Josh, anything that you want to throw out there.

It can be from anywhere in this just kind of wherever you want to go with this.

that it has something to do. It's the life force of the tree itself that these fates are tuned into, and so they're able to see where this life force of the tree is going to move into the various branches, to the point where they know not only the fates of men, but they know the fates of gods as well. They know the fates of all things that live within and upon this tree. And so that's the best I can get a you know, not having great knowledge beyond

just looking at and thinking about it. That's kind of what I'm putting together.

of just appear in the text, but I was. I found them to be sort of more intriguing figgures than the main gods because of the sort of mystery surrounding them.

subject to fate. And I do know just from reading this as well as the Proseta, that very often the gods are trying to thwart fate. You know, they get some kind of revelation about what's going to happen and so they go out of their way to try to avoid their doom, but of course in so doing they

end up bringing it about. We see this and I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about Bulber and perhaps a little bit as that comes up a little bit later on in this section, when there's this revelation that Balder's going to die, and so they go out of their way to prevent it, and in so doing they leave room for the one weakness that's going to kill him.

And we see this in Beowolf a lot, which you know that's operating in the Anglo Saxons, but still we're still within the same region, same basic culture, and you know, when you read Beowulf, and it'll tell you that he's going to have victory before he has victory, and then it's going to tell you basically as soon as the dragon gets introduced, it's going to tell you that this dragon is going to kill him. And then the rest of the story is the playing out of how that happens.

And so, for Northern storytelling, and I assume even just northern life, there's a profound sense of fate and so the issue is not really what's going to happen, but the issue is how are we going to relate to the fate that we can't control, right, because you know, as mortals, we all have the fate of mortality. We all have the fate of death. That's what Tolkien says about Beowulf, that that Beowulf is not a heroic lay

per se. That there's a reason why Beowulf didn't have any inmeshed loyalties, he didn't get married, he didn't have kids, and that's because simply being a mortal was tragedy enough, and part of his hero's journey was simply relating himself to his mortality. And so it's not so much about what's going to happen, but it's about how do you

relate yourself to the fate that you can't control. And that's actually something I really appreciate about the Northern myths and legends that there's not a big focus on like human freedom to shape time. Things are going to happen the way that they're going to happen, and so that reorience freedom to deciding, as Gandalf says, right, we decide basically what we're going to do with the time that's given to us. Recognizing the time is given to us, we don't get to create it.

it's fine. It's interesting what you're saying, Andrew, because for all of the aspects of like Viking history and bloodshed, there are kind of silver linings to that which you can see in Bale Wolf and in this text as well, just because it's like that suffering kind of gives you that introspection that maybe you may not have otherwise.

we push it away. And when we do talk about something like death, we use euphemisms, right, we talk about like passing away, or we'll use any kind of language to soften the reality of what we're actually dealing with. Whereas you know, you read again, Baiolf is fresh on my mind because it's the northern text I'm most familiar with and I teach on it now on a regular basis.

But what we see there is that, you know, the story of Beowulf is book ended on the beginning at the end by great funerals, first by Shield Chafing, and then you've got Beowulf at the end. And in both of those great funerals you see people who are willing to deal with death in that they do sorrow, they lament passionately, but not as people without hope. You see a sense of gratitude for life because they are aware of death, and so death doesn't come to them as

something strange. It is something that they can't help but to incorporate into their manner of life. And I think that there's something good about that. I think there's something that we can recover from that.

And Odin's big driving the thing that's motivating him throughout the game is I want to know what happens to me after I die.

us when we die? And I just think that it was interesting that the writers of that game have enough, you know, familiarity with the material that they are able to continue to explore that that theme of mortality and death which was which was so close to to Northern people and informed their whole you know, cosmology and mythic cycle.

And this is why mortality is seen as the gift of a luvatar to mortal men, because when you know, when we die, and even in Tolkien's world, which is supposed to be congruent with Christian theology, you know, he leaves that when we die, we leave the circles of this world and we essentially go to where God is. That that's the fate of mortals. But whereas the the elves, who are kind of more natural in the sense of being embedded within nature, there's this question mark groarding what

actually happens to them. And this is when we see that the death that mortals, that that humans experience, actually is a gift when seen in the right light. Whereas yeah, to bring it back into specifically the the seer to the Northern mythos, I mean this, this whole Volspa is odin basically trying to get a better sense of what's going to happen so he can avoid rock and rock right, so he can avoid death, but that's not how fate works.

to avoid the thought of death like just regularly. Like I just kind of think, like, you know, in a world that's plagued with nihilism, in a sense of course, you one want to think about death because there's no hope. But on the other hand, maybe people also don't even it's not even like much of a reality to them because they're so there's so much there's like so much comfort,

there's so much pleasure and distraction surrounding them. It's kind of like I thought I had that, Like I feel like I'm always blown away by how much these different cultures were seemingly just like so comfortable with death, you know, Like I don't think of like the Stoics with like Momento Mary right where it's like that was just like

a regular everyday practice. And I'm like, I couldn't imagine like every day just being like, yeah, I might just die in my sleep tonight and not wake up tomorrow, right, Like that's an interest disciplined to have in a sense. But yeah, I don't know if that was like a like a thing in like Enlightenment and early modernism, but it certainly seems like that's a massive, massive shift in the twentieth century, at least compared to any of these ancient medieval cultures.

a certain extent. So I think it's really important that we value aspects of what we might consider to be suffering, that we may need to sort of put ourselves through just just to be able to receive the gift of joy and remember, you know, those hardships so that you can you can be more thankful and feel the grace of everything that you've been given.

And so whether we're looking for the Kingdom of God, or whether we're looking to honor Odin the All Father or whatever, we're looking for something beyond ourselves. And so not only is there just simply the hope of afterlife, some kind of you know, eternal place to go beyond death, but also there's just this general sense that there is a context beyond ourself, and there is comfort in placing

ourselves within that context. Whereas you move into the later modern period, into the postmodern era, where we find ourselves now and the idea of authenticity is not so much about finding our place in broader context it's about contextualizing everything within ourselves. And once you do that, there's nowhere to go that there's no hope you could possibly have, because any hope you have is going to be entirely artificial. It's something that you just, you know, willed into existence.

And at that point you have nothing but your own illusions or delusions, nothing but your own dreams, is nothing to hope for. And so all you could possibly do is plug yourself into the matrix and not think about these broader questions of reality. Just try to ignore them as long as you possibly can, until you can't anymore. And then I guess you die in despair and darkness, or you know, like screwtape, what would have us?

Lewis and Tolkien would say the same thing. That even pre Christian paganism is at least better than what we have now, because, as Lewis says, the pagan is in any ways something like a pre Christian, and he's eminently convertible because he at least believes in direction beyond yourself. And that's a pretty good starting place. You can have a conversation with that. But it's very difficult to offer objective hope to somebody who's entirely lost to their own subjectivity. Right.

This is why in the Great Divorce, Lewis's picture of Hell is radical isolation, where even the home in which you live is simply a projection of your mind. I think that he's doing something very important there and the way that he sets that up. So yes, so respond to your question, Yes, I do think that there are some very important philosophical differences between us and the pre moderns,

the Christians or the Pagans. And I think that our technology that's led to a higher standard of living just helps us to pull ourselves into these fake homes that we've projected out of our minds. But that's why you go to even the pagan past, and they're a lot more comfortable talking about death than we are today. Sorry, I tend to go to lecture monologue manage sometimes.

many times in many different places. But in the Discarded Image, Lewis brings up the fact that the medieval medieval man looks up at the night sky and what he sees is not space. What he sees is substance in which his mind can rest, which is different than the modern man who goes out on a starry night and he looks up and he sees not an answer, but he sees a question mark. He sees space, he sees emptiness.

He looks into the abyss, and the abyss looks back into him, and so he just feels a sense of despair, of radical smallness with nowhere to go. And so the modern looks at space and then sees ourselves as sees our existence as just you know, living on this rock, floating through the void that's inevitably going to dwindle into nothingness. And that's the only context that there is, which is again very different from the pre moderns. But they're talking

about the Medievals or the pre Christian Pagans. They look out at the heavens and they see substance. They see order, they see gods, they see angels, they see something beyond themselves in which they can find their place.

like that. So I think maybe, but I'm just conjecturing, maybe we will end up finding out that there is something there and it just we could not perceive it.

That just reminds me of the fact that we have no idea what we don't know, uh, And so you know, we need to have you know, whether you're doing science, whether you're doing philosophy, whatever, we need to have a great deal of humility, recognizing that we live in a cosmos that you know, we only have a fraction of an understanding of, and who knows what else we might discover or who knows what else is happening that will

never discover. And I think that humility, for one thing, I think it's just existentially helpful because it's a sense

of enchantment in wonder. But also I think it's even scientifically helpful in the sense of provoking the right kinds of questions and exploration, which again is something that you see in the Pagans They're constantly trying to go out and explore and develop a better understanding of the world in which they live, which I think that is a better position than simply saying science says this or that, because the truth is science didn't say anything scientists do, and so.

a dying and rising God. You know, he's one of those figures where the history channel, you know, documentary will will pop in and say that, you know, this is where we get the origins of the christ story. Right, you have all these examples of dying rising God, you got Balder, you got euro Cyrus, and the Christians are

just kind of recapitulating these same pagan ideas, right. But it is interesting, I think the connections we get in these mythological stories to you know, what we would call the true myth of the Gospel in that I mean, you do have here in Balder, you have a God who's associated with the beauty and light and glory and all these positive things, who dies, he descends to the place of the dead, and we're told that in the end he's going to come forth as part of the

renewal of the world. And so we do I think get some Christological imagery here, you know, before Christ, assuming the story goes back that far, which it likely does. But I really like the way that you know, Lewis and Tolkien and whatnot talk about Balder when Lewis addresses and myth became fact when he says that some people will bring up something like balder in order to discredit Christianity. But then Lewis turns back and says, if the Christian Gospel is true, then will we not expect to find

shadows of this reality? Will we not expect to find that, you know, the story of creation kind of rises up in even pre Christian human understanding that it is part of the fibers of reality, and so we would not expect that it would come up as visions and dreams and shadows. And then of course at that time we pull in some platonic language about shadow and fulfillment. But yeah, Amanda, Yeah, I.

Christian influence, you know what I'm saying. If if it is AD and not BC.

we can say for sure. At the same time, I tend to think that some of these myths, like the Osiris myth, like the Balder myth of the dying Rising God, that they do come about even before they had direct access to Christian revelation. But again it I mean it's

not always super easy to draw those lines. But again, if the story of creation, the story of redemption, the meta narrative is about the you know, the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and although that entails you work that out into the cosmic narrative of creation fall redemption, then I think that we should very much expect to see that story working its way up in the human imagination as that which we are all drawn toward, simply

as God's image bearers in God's creation that are in tune to the great story. And so yeah, I just I don't know, I find it interesting at the very least. And in the story of Balder, even setting aside the you know, bringing together with Christ, I we do get another example of here of the gods trying to deny fate, and so Balder and Freya get this dream that Balder is going to die, and so Freya gets an oath from every object on earth that it's not going to

harm Balder, except, of course, she misses one thing. She doesn't get an oath from mistletoe. And so the gods developed this game because they think that Balder can't be hurt by anything that touches him where they just take throw stuff at him. We see this in the proset, and so I'm getting a little bit outside of our art tacks here. But they've built this game where they just throw stuff at him because they know nothing can

hurt him. But then Loki the Trickster gives in either depending on the story, an arrow or a spear to to Hoder who's the blind god, and so he takes this weapon made of missiletoe and he's part of this throw things at Bolber game. And so he throws a spear or whatever of mistletoe at Barlber and that's what kills him. And then he descends into Hell h e l and the Place of the Dead, where he's going

to await. But there's also this prophecy that after Ragnarok, he as well as Hooter who killed him, are going to rise again, They're going to be reunited, and that they're going to be part of this kind of remaining force that's going to basically rebuild the world. Yeah, I don't know anything else that you have to say about Bilber.

this is basically a demon of sorts. Yet it seems to be there at the end, And even Larrington, at the end of her introduction here says, it's not really clear if Needthog appearing is like this is just the vision ending and now we're becoming reacquainted with the evil that's still around us, or is this like they're still enduring evil even after Ragnarok. It's not really clear what's happening in the narrative there. And so is there this

continuation of reburst in destructions or is it final. I don't know that that's super clear, at least based off what I've seen, So it's a good question.

mortal characters as well. And I find interesting that that text did not make it into the final published Silmarillion. Christopher Tolkien seemed to have made a conscious choice to leave it out.

end at that point in final renewal. But it is interesting how much someone like Tolkien lashed onto Ragnarok and this cosmic renewal for not just imagination, but he saw this as a vehicle for communicating Christian truth. It gave him his basic eschatology, right. It is the idea of the long Defeat followed by Yucatastrophe, that all things are in the long run, I mean, they're drawing to a close. And you find this when you read the Norse myths

and legends. You read even things that are generally in this climate, like you're Beowulf. There's this idea that, yes, heroes now need to fight for that which is with worth defending. They need to secure the meat halls, they need to keep the fires burning, drive back the forces

of darkness. For there's this expectation that in the end they're all going to die, that in the end we're headed for a the consumption of winter that eventually all things are going to fade away, but there's also this, at least vague hope that once all good things fade away, there is going to be this sudden, unexpected renewal. There

is going to be this hope. And and you know, Tolkien looked at that and thought that he saw essentially a Christian revelation there, even if you know, as Lewis says that in Perilandra, that you know, he looked at pagan mythologies, he finally recognized what they were, that they're glimmers of celestial strengthen glory that have fallen on a jungle of imbecility. And so, you know, there's a lot that's wrong with paganism, and so I'm not saying we

need to be pagans. But at the same time, which I think more remarkable, is that there's a lot right about paganism. It just needs to be brought back into the right context. You know, it needs to be baptized, it needs to be brought back into the right context. And so there's a lot in the Ragnarrock story that I think does actually suit really well with Christian theology about the fact that our ultimate hope is not for this earth, but it is for this earth renewed.

Are the monotheistic religions, right, they all have this sense of transcendence, that there is a deity that stands in a different realm of being and it's more fundamental than the world that we know through extense experience. Whereas you say, the Pagans and for the most part, they don't have that kind of transcendence. They just have humans and for humans of sorts. But we're all on one basic plane of reality, right. I mean that the gods of Greece,

they live on Mount Olympus. Eventually they kind of get conflated with the stars and so you know, they they get a better home, but we're still dealing with the same realm of being. So true with the Norse, the gods, men, the the dead, they all live within the same tree. Right. They're all with you dress seal and so yeah, I guess they're I mean, They're metaphysics is to some extent is tied into their physics. It's all just sort of one reality.

a problem with doing that. They obviously don't treat them as pagan deities, but they still treat them as something like intelligences. They kind of become angels essentially.

great wisdom. Essentially, he sacrifices himself to himself on e dress Seal specifically told he impales himself with a spear onto the tree. Again, I can't help but to think about the potential Christological connection there that we're told he sacrifices himself to himself on the tree in order to gain wisdom. Now obviously that's not the Christian story, but there's enough there that I think just raises the question,

it raises the topic of that connection. And I mean also it just makes you think of even the connection of the World Tree, which the idea of the world tree, and that's something that's not totally unique to the Norse.

You can find some elements of the World Tree, the tree of life, something about a cosmically significant tree and a number of different myths, and you know, I can't help but to connect us r Seal even to the Cross of Christ, the tree which reaches down into Hell but also ascends up into the heavens, and you know, metaphysically it is the cosmic unifying point that brings chaos back into its proper order. It's where real life is found.

And so as I look at the heart of even what the tree chr Seal is, you know, again, I can't help but to see connection to the Cross of Christ, in which Christ also was sacrificed, not necessarily to himself but to God. It's again, I mean, looking at a pagan parallel, so at least pretty close and then even impaled with a spear onto that tree. And so I just I think that there are a lot of strong

proto Christian symbols in these stories. Yeah, I don't know what to do with that, but I just think it's at least interesting to think about.

But again, as Lewis says, and it became fact that if the Christian story is true, then it would actually be a reason for more doubt if we didn't see some traces of this, you know, elsewhere, that if this is the story, then we should expect it to be anticipated in other stories now moving more directly to the sayings of the High One or the the the Hummofal, which is kind of like a book of proverbs. It's it's about the wisdom of Odin.

of effort or anything. I'm kind of thinking of Like I think like Pascal's Ponces are like a really profound and wonderful text, But sometimes I'm like, am I like misinterpreting what he's talking about because there's just so little like context of any sort that I'm like, I, you know what I'm saying, Like I don't want to like misinterpret it because it's completely you know, almost a thousand years removed from where I'm sitting today, and I have

no idea other than like the introduction. Basically, it's like a couple of sentences long exactly like exactly like what this is about, or if it's about something more specific than I realize, you know what I'm saying. That makes sense.

but that's not what I do. I just tend to read the book cover to cover and like blow through the whole thing, and I'm like, I don't think I extracted as much wisdom from that as I was meant to.

Like that's I was just thinking of like an example of a letter I read recently, but it's like addressed to a person, you kind of get, oh, here's the subject matter, here's what he's talking about, and yeah, sometimes it's hard to read this. With like the Biblical proverbs, it's like, I I think I've been interpreting them right all this time, somewhat at least hopefully, But you know, having like that biblical theological context helps with that. But sometimes I'm like, what am I?

you know, there's a lot of emphasis on hospitality. There's a lot of emphasis on like like you would even get in the proverbs about not being quick to speak, but you need to listen, you need to keep your mouth shut when you don't know what you're saying. You know that you should be loyal to your companions. Now, perhaps unlike the proverbs. You know, it's also gonna be a lot of emphasis on being a good pillager, essentially,

which shows that they have no problem with violence. You know, at one point it said, I don't know where it's exactly, but I think it's I was going to say.

is quite wise. For example, going back to what we've already been discussing about their relationship to mortality, we see this idea that fear of death shouldn't drive us because that's the path of the coward, and that's what's in your attempt to hold onto your life, you can end up losing any life worth holding onto.

this world for my sake will find it. So I think it's very interesting because there are some universal truths that are just that are kind of like a thread that carries through and then it finally finds its final resting place and for me as a as a Christian.

something now. And you know, Augustine talks about this in his Contra Fauston when he's talking about kind of laying out his just war doctrine, and he's saying that the real evil of war is not the loss of life. I mean, as much as that might be a temporary tragedy, like people are going to die anyways, we're dealing with mortals.

He says that the real evils of war or is the fact that it tends to provoke a love of violence and you know, hatred and carnage and these sorts of things that the real evils of war, or that it tends to provoke sin, It tends to provoke that which leads to death of the soul, which is a far more serious tragedy than simply the death of our mortal lives, because we're all going to die. What matters is how we live, and that it's going to be

very different depending on who you are. So yeah, I think that's a great line, and I just a great verse here, and I just want to read it again. The cowardly man thinks he'll live forever if he keeps away from fighting, but old age won't grant him a truth even if spears spare him. Makes me think the iconic line from William Wallace and Brave Heart that you know, all men die, but not all men truly live. And I guess that's true. And I think it's good northern

wisdom here, or actually the diverse here. Right before that, it's also another good one, silent and thoughtful. If Prince's son should be and bold in fighting, cheerful and marry, every man should be until he comes to death. And so at the same time we're talking about the inevitability of death. You know, it says here be cheerful and mary when you're being bold and fighting, that you know

when you are. It's like Chesterton said of angels, right that they can fly because they don't take them they because they take themselves lightly. So too. I think we're getting something simwhear here that when you take your life lightly in relation to your mortality, can actually enjoy it more even when you're doing hard things.

is a plundering culture. At the same time, we see that the path of wisdom is not just about the accumulation of stuff. It's about finding contentment wherever you are, whatever your station is. And I think that's something good and something that we can take away.

is already laid out for us? And I almost quoted Glad there, which she says, you know, don't be overly concerned about, you know, the way that you go. Maybe maybe your path is already before you, and basically your your job is simply to discover it and to walk on it, not to forge it, not to create it. Will you find the path that's already laid out for you?

worldly treasures for that very reason. So I would say to you, or to those listening that whoever of you has a wife who is a stay at home wife is very wide in this regard, and you should probably ask and listen.

in kind of like the societal structure. And I just say that as someone purely from being within the structure and then being kind of outside of the structure in a certain sense, because it's like you're you feel as though you can you are compelled to speak those truths in a way that maybe you felt hindered previously.

is no true friend who only says pleasant things. You know, it's the the wounds of a friend, or better than the kisses of an enemy, as the biblical proverbs tell us. And so the sense that we need companions, we need people around us who are going to tell us the truth, who aren't going to let us get swept up in you know, the system, or simply our own desires or our own myopic vision, but are going to bring us into the broader context of goodness. Of it's a virtue

of faith. And then just I mean a little bit past that. It says here Odin talking, He says, I advise you Loadfafnir to take this advice. It'll be useful if you learn it. Do you good if you have it where you recognize evil, call it evil, and give

no truth to your enemies. That right there is I think a bit of wisdom that very much counteracts what you're going to hear today, when today, I mean everyone's saying he piece piece where there is no peace, that we're trying to disrupt any kind of claim of goodness of evil. This is something that I deal with constantly, teaching my public university philosophy students that nobody wants to

call anything wrong. We just want to tolerate everything. At the same time, I'll ask them how many of you intended to vote in November, and they're pretty much all raise their hands, and so I ask them, Okay, if we're just going to tolerate everything, say that nobody's right or wrong, what business do you have voting on who's going to implement a certain ideology on your neighbors? And so this postmodern radical relativism where nothing is good or evil,

there is no up or down. It's not how anybody actually lives, you know. The same time, sometimes I'll ask my students things like how many of you are big fans of justice? And everyone raises their hand, and then I help them understand that this doesn't make sense in light of the fact that they're telling me there's no norms for how to live and that there's no such thing,

as you know, right or wrong, left or right. But you go back to the Pegans, and yeah, maybe we say that sometimes they didn't get things right in what they called good or evil, but they don't have a problem recognizing there is such a thing as good and evil, and in mishandling of justice is a much better reality than denying justice altogether, because at least a mishandling of

justice has the potential of being made right. But when you eliminate the very foundations of justice, well, now we're in a place that none of us actually want to live in. And so I think that a lot of the pushback that we can and that we should give to postmodernism really comes down to just helping people recognize that they don't actually believe the things that they say that they believe, and helping them to at least recover the tools for calling things right or wrong, calling things

evil or good. And maybe initially we don't arrive at the same definitions, but I think at least dealing with something like a standard gives us something to work with. And you know, sometimes when you're talking to the postmodern they're more likely to listen to pagan wisdom than explicitly Christian wisdom. But at the same time, the best of pagan wisdom is Christian wisdom.

personal grudge I have against him. Yeah, and Lewis says something very similar and said is theology poetry or one of his essays when he says that, you know, it really enraged him as well, that they so misused the Northern Mythos. But he says, and then the Nazis really gave it all back by fundamentally misunderstanding what they were

dealing with. And so you know, Lewis says that I get much more fun with odin that who I don't believe in, than these Nazis do through their misapprehension of this ideal.

sort of thing. We get something similar but a little bit different in the Voles or in the Havamal, where it says in a witch's arm you should never sleep, so she encloses you with her limbs, and so it's the same kind of idea, but instead of dealing with the prostitute, now we're dealing with the witch, which I mean, I guess we're dealing with more or less the same thing that in both context where we're working with the

siren imagery here. But I think it's interesting that you know, the the seductress of the Havamal is the witch who is going to consume your soul essentially, you know, by resting with her.

I just think that that's that that's an amazing, you know, tribute to these stories. And also like you know, in a way, he moves beyond them, you know, like even though these are like you know, you know, amazing you know, mythological, you know, texts that have endured for for potentially thousands of years, in some way told, Yeah, Tolkien moves beyond them into a new space.

in these original texts. And and I think that that's what makes for good stories, especially good fantasy, but really any good story. I think it's going to be in tune with the lagos. That makes great stories great, that makes great literature great. And where I think a lot of people go wrong is they'll read Tolkien and then say, well, I want to go write stories like Tolkien, and so

then they start writing basically knockoffs. Whereas if you want to write like a Tolkien, you want to write like a Lewis, you have to read the kinds of things that they read. You have to do the kinds of things that they did. And so I think that you have to be in tune with these kinds of world shaping stories if you want to create a world shaping story.

Eda's I've been all this year. I've been dipping in and out of the the the Arthurian legendary and the Arthurian mythos, and there's there's just a lot there that I can recognize where I'm like, oh, I see what he's done, you know.

are well and good and I think are useful. But the best way to get into their minds is by doing the kinds of things that they did, reading the kinds of things that they read, which will help you to tap into that same spirit, but also go in your own direction with it, which I think is very useful to actually creating something that's really worth engaging in.

I mean, don't get me wrong, it can be fun to do things that are just derivative, but it won't necessarily be good like good literature, right, it's not the probably the kind of legacy that you want to create. And now, at the same time, you know, especially if you are a writer or you want to be a writer, it can also be tempting as you move into this mentality to think I can't write anything until I read everything that's ever been written. That's definitely the temptation that

I tend to move towards. Yep, need to.

the mentality you're never actually gonna do anything. And so it's that balance of you need to fill your mind with the right substance, but you also need to be willing to let that substance move into the places that you are meant to go with it, you know, find the path that's laid out for you. All right, cool, anything else that anyone wants to mention before we close

it off? All right? Well, I think that this is a good chat, especially for you know, people who are not well versed in the material but are just exploring along the way or just joining for the conversation. I feel like this went well and I look forward to where we go next. In the ed up, I'll look ahead and let you know what will be including but thanks to one or two sections or so, and I look forward to discussing with you next month or even in the discord in the meantime, if you are in

the discord. But that's where we'll leave it off for now until next time. God speed. Thank you again for listening to the Mythic Mind Fellowship podcast. Be sure to subscribe so you can follow along with the next conversation, which should drop in about a month or so. If you'd like more regular content, you can also subscribe to the Mythic Mind Legacy podcast and for the most content as well as the ability to join the conversations, you can become a patron at patreon dot com slash mythic Mind.

But that's it for now until next time, God speed,