Now the Time of Changes — or one of them, is gathering momentum. It is not by chance that those who can hear me are coming together. For so long it has been so hard to get the folk to listen. But ears are opening now. Here and now you must fight your own episode of Ragnarok. Not only is it different for every age, but it happens in every age, when life ends for a culture, a way of life. There will be many such endings before the ending of the age. The purpose is not to win — not to stop the changes, but to create a place of safety where something may survive to seed the new world. You cannot preserve that which is good unless you are prepared to risk it for the sake of the greater good.
Self to Self I am offered. Always and forever. And the Tree, also, is always growing and always being consumed. Nidhogg gnaws it ever, the elks eat it. And sometimes it burns. The World tree is the world. How much can you do to it before it will be so damaged it cannot recover? A great deal. You cannot imagine how much it has already endured, what storms, what convulsions of history. There is a great vitality here, at the core of all worlds. But it can be damaged.
It is so in your world, in Midgard, as well. You can do great damage and still the world will survive. But it may not be quite the same world, much of the beauty you cherish will disappear. You make a desert, and call it Progress.
It is my desert too — I am part of its making, part of that knowledge. I do not repent anything I have done, any thought, any discovery. But not all things should be continued once their lesson has been learned.
The burning of Yggdrasil is the burning of the forests of the Amazon. It is a great devastation. Your folk who swear by the Tree should at least have some care for that cause. But what are you willing to do to stand by your beliefs? Will you refuse to eat beef grown there? Will you even ask where it comes from?
In the opera, Wagner says that the Tree died, that I caused its logs to be stacked around Valhal to burn heaven. It is not I who have cut those trees and burned them, but your heaven is burning nonetheless.
All of you participate in the crime, either by intention or by inattention. Pay attention.
Europe is in danger, and because it is small, whatever happens is in their faces, they find it harder to ignore. Only when they work together will they be able to treat their problems as a whole, as an interaction.
It will not matter what ethnic group lives in Bosnia, or Germany, or California, if there is no fertility in the soil and health in the water. You humans grow afraid and try to hold off awareness of your danger by focusing on distractions, smaller problems that you think can be solved by some easy decision. The problems you face now are complex, they twist like Jormundgandr’s coils.
Ask Jordh for help. She is the serpent’s mother. [Is he speaking metaphorically here, or in that instance is Angrboda Jordh under another name?] Ask Thor for help, he is its brother, its fellow, as Tyr is to the Wolf. [This must be a metaphysical relationship] He strikes the serpent of earth, and he becomes the serpent of heaven, sending snakelets of lightning flashing down. Thor is more complex than you given him credit for. He prefers to pretend he is only the drinker, the brawler, but he has the bear’s wisdom, and the bear is the wisest of beasts.
It is true, he is a great shaman, but he works alone. He walks with the bear, and he hammers iron, makes smith magic. He knows a great deal about the turnings of the seasons and the movements of the stars. He is impatient with civilization, but that does not mean he does not understand it. But if you ask him to teach your leaders, watch out, for he will not be gentle.
This life of yours is not a children’s game, And it will become rougher for the next few years. There will be great tension. And then, when the century turns, a great release, when nothing will be done, except that some will despair. The next five winters will pass very swiftly. There is great energy in this time. It is for you to use it wisely to shape the future.
Try this for a focus — trees. Not as a political stance, but as a life choice. Tell people to simply pay attention this year to trees and wood and how they use them. Just that will be enough for many.
Source Two
Of course the old ones knew the earth and the spirits therein. They walked the ways of their ancestors and walked with their ancestors. They (the spirits) lived in the mounds and in the horses and in all things around them. The land was alive to them, not a dead thing that lay beneath their feet. Not a problem to be conquered. Not a whore to be pillaged and left behind. Life is sacred; this is what makes death sacred as well. The interweaving of the cycle, the movement of one form to the other, the release of energy and recapturing it.
You have said that if you ignore the earth, you ignore the body. This is so and ignoring the body is not the way– it will not go away. It is the vessel that carries all the parts of you. It is not who you are but it is how you are recognized. It is tied intimately to the earth and to that which lies within the land. To avoid this truth is to avoid living. And perhaps this is the cause for the avoidance. If we live, we must open our eyes from the death of sleep and see what we are doing. Ragnarok comes when the forces that do not care, that do not see, have overcome the forces of those that do. The spear hallowing was done not just to claim the warriors but to claim the land on which they fell. Vast tracts of land are holy to me in this way and to those who walk with me.
Do you hear the ravens calling? Do you hear the wolves who howl? Do you hear the child that cries in the night or the lovers that cry as they part? Do you hear the life of the planet, the pulse beat beneath your feet? The steady breathing of the winds? All these things are sacred to me as well and I will use my wiles and wisdom to defend them from the (untranslatable word) that seek to destroy that to which I have laid my hand. Much has been made of me as a god of battle, chooser of the slain and rister of runes and these things are important in their own ways. Death is with us whether we like it or not. But the lore does not recount the many times I have interposed my spear and protected that to which I had laid my hand.