In the wood above the Well of Wyrd the crystal leaves shiver in the wind. Light glitters on the water. Sound and light together make a song. Words can be carried by many means — it is no longer the breath only that bears them into the world.
First, I set images within men’s minds and they carved them into wood and stone. They learned to paint them on the skins of beasts and the bark of trees, ever refining, evolving the transmission. And now they are carried by flickers of energy that pass along the magical windings of crystal in your machines. The Web of Wyrd has become the Web of Silicon, and it encompasses the world.
In all those ways I have spoken, from the vellum codices the Icelanders still prize to the millions of bits and bytes on your machines. My words speed across the net as swiftly as I ride the wind. As I am Mind, it is only natural that I should find my own way to communicate in this medium, which is, after all, a mental construct as much as it is a physical network.
There are symbols and more symbols, layers upon layers of meaning, before you come to the primal impulses that carry them. I rejoice in the power of the net as once I rejoiced in Sleipnir’s swiftness. Both carry me where I need to go.
And so I have come to this new dwelling you have made for me, a place where my words can be seen. When you read them — you who will come upon this site, wondering what it might be– be warned. These words on the web are an image of me which is as true, and as false, as any other representation — they are my truth, my essence, but filtered through a human mind.
My words are true, but your ears and eyes have not always learned how to understand them. My language is the language of creation, but it sometimes suffers in translation.
You wanderers on the web who read these words, I welcome as I would welcome you to my hall. Sit, rest, read and consider, knowing that like Gylfi, you see what your hopes and fears, what your expectations, prepare you to see. This is a gateway, as your minds are gateways, through which my spirit can pass. Your minds may not understand my meaning, but your spirits, will, perhaps, be wiser.
Believe in these words, or do not believe. They are human words for human minds. It is not my wish that you respond like dogs trained to obey but like thinking beings who consider and evaluate and seek to understand. Receive the contents of this virtual home therefore not as commandments, but as a challenge to think and to decide.
No man now living knows all of the names that they gave me in the elder days. I have almost as many today. Run a Search on this crystal web and you will find my name listed hundreds of thousands of times. Each site sees me in a different way — each one who calls my name has a different image, is calling, in a sense, a different god. And yet some portion of my true spirit comes to each in reply, each one knows some part of my truth.
But as you read, be warned.
Geri and Freki are the greedy ones indeed. But what are they greedy for? If Huginn and Muninn are the thoughts I send out into the world, what are my wolves? I am greedy for minds, for experience and the knowledge it brings, I am greedy to share.
Let me in willingly, and I will not come as a conqueror. Accept my embrace and I will give you ecstasy — a fair exchange, surely, for experience. I want everything, not to hoard, but to share. As once I shared the runes of power with gods and elves and men, so I would share what I learn through each one of you with all the rest — many minds linked in my Mind, as through this web of yours, your thoughts and knowledge are intertwined.
(laughter) You are doing the work that I need, helping to bring me into the world. What you do, knowing, makes it easier for me to reach out to others.
But what you really want to know is why? Why am I the one who is pushing all these others? Is there something I am trying to say that you need to know? (more laughter) Of course there is. I am always wandering, and I am always talking-at least at present, though there have been eons when I was silent. But I never ceased to listen.
Why? Because the new age is coming, a change in consciousness. The forces of reaction that rule you now cannot stop it, though at times they may drive it underground. But this stream is too powerful to be dammed now. It flows on currents of energy. Even the reactionaries are part of the web now. They cannot cut the threads without crippling themselves, and this they will not willingly do.
But the web is more than business. The web is a constant stream of communication. Wherever it flows, there I am.
So much for my explicit presence. My hidden presence is more important. I push, open, penetrate consciousness for those who are willing and able to hear. You are strong enough to bear my embrace. Others find it difficult, but they will not even know I am knocking unless I put forth my power. They should be grateful that I do not give them all of myself. Rough though they find my touch, I am pulling back, being “gentle” with all these psychic virgins. But it is because I myself am ergi (receptive) that I understand how to break down these barriers.
To what am I myself ergi? What power can invade me as I invade you? You might call it the Force — the raw, undifferentiated energy of the universe. You might call it wyrd, the power that comes from all those connections. You might call it Life.
Life and death are only two states of the same energy. I can be a death god and a god of powerful life at the same time. Indeed, I must be. Even Hella has two sides. It is all a matter of balance.
I now have many homes and habitations. One of them is your head. One of them is Cybergard, a glittering, beautiful, silicon palace, constantly changing, being expanded, rebuilt. Will it last as long as Asgard? Its nature is change. I am not the only inhabitant. There are alfar here, a new race, partaking of the natures of both the Light and Dark elves, energy beings who inhabit the Web and also sometimes computers. You believe in wights elsewhere, why not in Cybergard, which is a realm of energy? Of course, they are there. Add them to your list of wights to honor, and your systems will work better!
So with this new tool for communication, this new mode of being, I can be in more places, with more people, and more people are learning a mode of consciousness that I find very sympathetic, so of course it is easier for me to talk to them.
But this is not all. The impact and result of this global consciousness will produce new ways of thinking, new awareness. That is what interests me — linkages, systems, relationships, consciousness raising, not in the fluffy New Age sense, but at a deeper level.
Your culture is on the edge of a shift as profound as that created by the printing press. You know that, but do you understand what it means? The group mind develops, and once the globe thinks together, perhaps the peoples of the world can manage their lives and the environment together. Isolationism is no longer an option. Globalization benefits the big businesses now, but in time everyone will be connected, and learn to see the world in a new way.
Do not fear-I do not see disaster imminent, although the human capacity for stupidity means that there is always a danger. What I see now is the potential for an explosion of consciousness, and that is my kind of ecstasy.
Source Six
[T]he beauty of the Internet is not the places it connects, but the place between those places, the ‘Inter’ of ‘Internet.’
But the Internet, and the place between places. It’s only in the space between places that new things can happen: only in the slender fibres spun between computers that the network comes to life, only in the space between ice and fire that the worlds can be made, and only in the space between neurons that the spark of consciousness can happen.
Do you see now why I delight in being the god of empty spaces, of the place which is no place, of neither here nor there but everywhere at once? Because it’s only there that there is room for new things!
So cherish silence — yes, not my usual advice, but it’s only in the pause between One Word and the Next Word that you can comprehend what was made when either Word was said.