The Great Year and the Myth of the Eternal Return

The Great Year,Ragnarok and the Myth of the

Eternal Return

Copyright © 1996 The Circle of Ostara
From The Odinic Rite
We will look at the myth of Ragnarok, not as an old story of mere historic interest but as the symbol of basic truth. We do not intend to delve into the action of the tale, nor to consider the activities of the various protagonists. (That may be done, for example, by reading chapter 32 of The Norse Myths: Gods of the Vikings by Kevin Crossley-Holland.) Instead we will examine its meaning in a wider context.

The story of Ragnarok is an example of the archetypal theme which has been categorised as the myth of the eternal return. Roughly speaking, this mythic theme symbolises the various recurring cycles of nature, the return of the sun every morning, the resurgent life of spring after the seeming death of winter.

Orlog

Orlog: The Procession of the Ages of the World

By Robin Artisson

A Suggested Schema for Understanding the Becoming, Perishing, and Re-Becoming of the Nine World System

Based on Voluspa and Gylfaginning

A Heathen Perspective on the History of the World and the Cosmos by Robin Artisson

Copyright © 2008 All Rights Reserved

from Ule Alfarin's Asatru Portal

The Perennial Wisdom of the World-Cycle

One of the most crucial functions of mythology, cosmology, and mytho-poetic history is to give a people a grasp on their place within the cosmos. It can situate people within a framework that can be understood in terms of both time and space, but also in terms of deeper meaning, as the various impelling, preserving, and destroying forces that are given names in any mythology can be realized and approached on more than one level.

Roots of Ragnarok

Roots Of Ragnarok

By Ron McVan


Midgard is the cradle that rocks above the abyss---our existence
is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

The great Solar-myth underlies all the ancient mythologies. It commemorates the death and resurrection of the sun. It signifies the destruction of the light by the clouds, the darkness and the eventual return of the great luminary of the world. That which was most instrumental in conforming mankind to adopt the solar based religions took place in a time long before our written history. It was a thing so terrible, so incomprehensible, pitiless and destructive, that even today its dreadful aftermath still lingers deep in the genetic memory of all mankind.

In the Northern European pagan religion of Wotanism, this dreadful End of Days cataclysm is symbolized by three ominous spectres known as: Fenris Wolf, the giant world Midgard Serpent Jormungand and Garm the Dog. The Southern Europeans knew them as: Python and Typhaon and Cacus, which is the same as Vritra in the Indo-European sanskrit. The Christian bible referred to them as Satan, Behemoth and Leviathan. Yet, there is simply one name to describe the most terrible and unstoppable monster serpent of all, "The Great Comet."