Kaman / Pápes Viking Magic

1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-9990366-2-1
Verlag: Lokay
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, Band 2, 294 Seiten

Reihe: Forbidden Knowledge

'Viking Magic,' the second installment in the Forbidden Knowledge series, embarks on a captivating journey into the mystical realms of Old Norse magic. This non-fiction book meticulously examines and interprets stories and poems of Icelandic sagas to bring forward the secrets of the magic wielded by the Norse people.
The exploration begins with an immersive look into the magical worldview of the Vikings, unraveling concepts like Hugr - the unity of mind, or the protective force of Hamingja. As the narrative unfolds, readers are guided through captivating stories, displaying the depth of Viking magical traditions.
Venturing into the supernatural, the book brings to life the mysteries of revenants and the enigmatic realm of Hel - the land of the dead. Trolls, both legendary and contemporary are studied, exploring their role in Norse mythology and their presence in today's digital landscape.
The heart of the book delves into the intricacies of Viking magic, dissecting practices like divination and clairvoyance, the power of words, and the fascinating art of illusion.
The encyclopedic content of the Appendices includes topics ranging from deviant burials to the Oseberg Ship, from ancient curses to the Shamanic Drum, presenting a supplement to the various facets of the subject.
With over 50 illustrations, this book provides a unique and insightful analysis of Viking magic. The meticulous translation of every detail from original manuscripts, along with hyperlinks to relevant sources, ensures that readers gain an authentic understanding of the magical legacy left behind by the Norse people.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kaman, E.

Pápes, Éva

Weitere Mitwirkende

Lokay, Eva

Maltese, Rachel

Leseproben

Hugr – Unity of Mind

The word hugr means mind, consciousness, thought. When used in the context of a story, it signifies a state in which a person’s thoughts and feelings resonate in unison with those of one or more others—in which his or her awareness flows into the sphere of another person or community:

The farmer noticed that Oddr and the beautiful Þórdís were attuned to each other. He asked Oddr, whether he wanted her.

And Oddr answered:

‘It is no secret that she is on my mind more than any other woman. If it should happen that you wished me to wed her, I would not be opposed.’10

In the translation of the original text,11 attuned to each other signifies that Oddr’s and Þórdís’s hugr move in synchrony. The word hugr then resurfaces in the phrase on my mind, where the original text speaks of Oddr placing more hugr on—or directing more hugr onto—Þórdís than on/onto any other woman.12 Here, the sense of the word concerns the synchronous motion of two souls—the parallel, complementary workings of their thoughts. It also includes the idea of thinking about something—of one’s thoughts revolving around something, returning to it again and again over the course of time.

In the following story, moreover, the word hugr appears as a feeling, mood, or energy field accessed collectively by a group of people:

King Olaf and the Assembly

One summer, King Olaf, having assembled an enormous army, headed for the northlands. Upon arrival there, he sent heralds out along the fjord, calling the people of the land to council. The lords of the region, however, construed this as a declaration of war and mustered all who could bear arms, freeman and servant alike. As the king approached the council site, he saw that all had come there, weapons in hand.

At the start of the assembly, the king first spoke to the people, asking that they convert to Christianity. At this, the participants shouted at him to be silent or be removed and banned from the assembly.

Said they: ‘We did the same when Hákon, foster son of Aðalstein, asked this thing of us, though we esteemed him more highly than you.’

When King Olaf saw that the landholders, who were beyond angry, had military strength sufficient to defeat his own army, he changed his tune and, as if yielding to their wishes, spake:

‘I would like to reach such compact with you as we maintained before. I will therefore attend your greatest sacrificial ceremony and see how it is performed. Afterward, I will explain ours to you, so that you can decide for yourselves which religion to follow.’

As the king now spoke with greater moderation, the hugr of the erstwhile angry landholders was softened, and the council continued in a spirit of agreement. They discussed where the midsummer’s sacrifices would be held and that each leader and landholder should be obliged to attend, as was the custom in those times.13

In this story, the hugr of an entire group of people moves as one, collectively characterizing the attitudes of the story’s figures—their feelings, thoughts, and judgments—as they react together to the king’s proposal. In the course of the dispute, their shared hugr is at first ruffled, then subsides as agreement draws near and their anger recedes. What this narrative adds to our understanding is that hugr is a complex phenomenon, a term that refers not to thought alone, but to a certain unity of mind and emotion, in which community and individual consciousness move in complete synchrony with but little difference between them. The key is sympathetic vibration—a link that exists at both the emotional, and mental levels.

The realm in which this narrative occurs is one in which objectivity has no place, where everything is both personal, and communal simultaneously. The people it describes would not understand the way things work in the modern age, when a given act can be shrugged off as ‘nothing personal—just business.’14 That the two were one and the same was, for them, the most natural of conclusions.

In the poem below, we see how this same sense of connection existed between a people and their leaders, as well.

Upon the death of King Magnus, the Good, there was great sadness among the people. According to Oddr kikinaskáld15:

Noble men shed

many tears [when the king] into the tomb they bore,

heavy burden was that, king,

to whom you gave riches.

With hugr asunder hardly could

the household hold out,

and the king's men but since

often sat drooping, weeping.16

In this verse, the depth of the people’s mourning reflects the strongly communal nature of contemporary existence. The hugr of the king and his people occupy a single field of cause and effect, their mental and emotional worlds, for the sake of the community, inextricably intertwined. The hugr of the individuals involved merges with that of the group, held together by the idea—and, not less importantly, by the quality or beneficence—of the king. The poem also conveys the depth of the void left behind once the king’s hugr has departed and becomes cut off from that of the community.

These were times when personality lacked contour, when humans still conceived of themselves as components of the whole, held together by hugr in the form of shared thought, awareness, and emotion. It is for this reason that casting the individual out from the family, tribe, or clan was deemed one of the harshest of punishments. Such individuals were as abandoned dogs or lone wolves, beings unprotected and belonging to no one, bereft of the hugr of the many. Expulsion from the group implied not merely loneliness and isolation, but actual ‘loss’ of the soul, as it was only the community that could fill one’s being with life and energy.

Today, we can no longer imagine what it must have meant to be expelled from the ambit of community law. The Vikings, for their part, recognized two different forms of punishment. The first was monetary: in response to a legal violation (up to and including murder), a certain sum was paid to offset the damages and the remitter was free to move on. The second was exile. In its lighter form, this latter penalty lasted only three years, after which the exiled was permitted to re-enter the community. In its most extreme form, the sentence was life, and the hugr of the condemned was permanently cut off from that of the group.

Even today, the concept of hugr has not lost all significance, as it is on a similar basis that all communities are formed. We still recognize when, in a given situation, the energy of a group resonates synchronously—still sense the hugr that is present at a political rally, sporting event, or rock concert. When a member of the opposing party or team accidentally turns up in such a place, that same hugr can turn ugly and grow difficult to control.

According to the tenets of mob psychology, the act of melting into a crowd robs us of our sense of self—our individual consciousness—rendering us helpless and less prudent. In a sense, it is akin to having one’s personality ‘ground into the mix,’ as the individual is returned to a state of hugr in which separation from the community becomes unthinkable. In such a condition, all sorts of negative and antisocial behaviors become possible, including ones that we, as individuals, would never engage in on our own.

When a group’s shared hugr is expressed in such deviant fashion, an angry mob may turn to lynching, a group of protesters to attacking passersby, or a collection of concerned citizens to some radical political undertaking. A similar manifestation of hugr arises in the context of battle—whether a Viking raid or modern-day global conflict—when individual combatants coalesce to form a single, bloodthirsty wave. In fact, these and other varieties of unarticulated effluence or aggression are timeless phenomena, as is another common manifestation of shared hugr: national pride. In a country where a people and their leader are connected by not only mutual interest, but also a certain sense of harmony, the nation’s hugr will be positive.

Where royal dynasties still exist today, subjects partake of the same hugr as members of the royal family, being linked to them not only politically, but also emotionally. For an illustration of this, one need look no further than Diana, Princess of Wales, whose wedding and subsequent death evoked a phenomenon akin to mass hysteria due to the public’s strong emotional reaction.

It was for this same reason that the weddings of actress Grace Kelly to the Prince of Monaco and, more recently, Meghan Markle to Prince Harry elicited such widespread interest. In both cases, the hugr associated with fandom and that arising from love of the royal family united and—each reinforcing the other—gathered the power to move the hearts of masses.

What the Vikings called hugr, therefore, is a presence that lurks in the background of all our decisions, whether we are aware of it or not. Its roots are various: identical upbringing, similar environment, the shared comprehension of a certain terminology, or any other invisible tie that binds people together where no overt connections exist.

In London, for example, people often...