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LadyEllen -> RE: Faith, Religion, or Spirituality (8/4/2006 4:45:08 AM)
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Hi Mnotter
Yes - the heathen Germanic/Norse system does just make a whole lot more sense I think, and it also appeals directly to me as a descendant of those peoples in some mystical way. The way this system describes the world and our purpose in it is comprehensive and coherent but is a bit too much to detail here - the basics though are;
In Odin we have our own dying and rising God who sacrificed himself to win the runes - the gnosis of all, whereby he could shape this cosmos as a great mill to restore all to the All from which Ymir (a primeval and evil Giant) had rent it. Odin killed Ymir and then built the cosmos from the body as a turning mill which by its cyclic motion gradually purges the evil of Ymir from it all through Ragnarok as a recurrent happening rather than a single end to the cosmos. The cosmos is brought to a great conflict of godly vs ungodly in each Ragnarok, and though the godly appear to be vanquished, the skill of Odin is such that it is the godly who survive into the next cycle. Mankind are here in the centre of Odin's cosmos in Midgard, to assist in the whole process.
This explains why the world is so imperfect and yet is the work of God (as Odin) - Odin shaped the world and us from imperfect stuff because the world and we are infected with the evil of Ymir from whom the entire cosmos is made. Evil is in the very nature of all that is in the cosmos, so we can expect to suffer, but in maintaining godliness we will survive the purging to come. Of course the question still stands as to why God (Odin) allows and sometimes even makes suffering? There is no single answer to this - some suffering is the result of deeds from former lives, other suffering is the effect of the evil in us and others as it struggles to reassert itself, other suffering is in the nature of Odin's plan for the cosmos.
In the end though, as long as we maintain and uphold godliness through virtues such as honour and truth (not necessarily moral good as in christianity), all suffering will cease and we will be restored to the All that is One. It may not be in this life, but since our nature is eternal and we are reborn, we need do nothing more than maintain godliness in all we do to achieve it. We must trust in Odin and the Gods and Goddesses who assist him that as long as we assist them, we shall be "saved".
To go further than this would require a lot more detailed foundation than these brief basics allow. Suffice to say that we can achieve restoration to the All that is One in this life without waiting for the effect of the cosmic mill in a future life, because of the nature of time and the existence of Odin's work in no-time.
I know people will say this is gobbledy-gook, but in response all I will say is that these are the very simplest basics rather than the whole system, and that it works for me and others, is coherent and comprehensive and similar to many other systems from other cultures - it thus passes the test for spiritual and religious validity.
E
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