SACRIFICE OF THE PRIMORDIAL BEING : NORSE PART 1

INTRODUCTION 

In the Mythologies around the world, we see certain episodes in common, like for example the flood myth, battle between the good and evil etc. Just like these examples, there is another episode, Sacrifice of the Primordial being. In many myths, including the vedas, there is a story of a Primordial being, being sacrificed for the creation to start. Let us dive into the Norse Mythology...Open your eyes to the dimensions of energy beings...

The story starts...

 " In the beginning of time, there was nothing: neither sand, nor sea, nor cool waves.  Instead, long before the earth was made, "

From this, we understand that, the Norse myths starts after the creation of earth and also we see that their Gods were all related to terrestrial energies.

Niflheim, “THE World of Fog”, homeland of primordial darkness, cold, mist, and ice , came into being, and in it a spring gave rise to twelve rivers. To the south was Muspell, a region of heat and brightness guarded by Surt, a giant who carried a flaming sword. To the north was frigid Ginnungagap, where the rivers froze and all was ice. Where the sparks and warm winds of Muspell reached the south side of frigid Ginnungagap, the ice thawed and dripped, and from the drips thickened and formed the shape of a man. His name was Ymir, the first of and ancestor of the frost-giants.

From, this we understand that, the myths are talking about the ice formation on the burning earth and Ymir is the energy that was causing the earth to cool. He is the personification of all the ice, mist and cold in those early ages of time. From him, many frost giants were born.

 As the ice dripped more, it formed a cow, and from her teats flowed four rivers of milk that fed Ymir. The cow fed on the salt of the rime ice, and as she licked, a man's head began to emerge. By the end of the third day of her licking, the whole man had emerged, and his name was Buri. 

The cow described in the story is Mother Earth herself. In other mythologies, we see that cow is somehow related to the earth and its energy. In Hindi, cow is known as gaay and in Sanskrit, it is Gow , similarly earth is also called Gow. If you see greek, Gaia is the ancestral mother of all life: the primal Mother Earth goddess. This visualisation of cow as earth is perhaps the reason why cows are sacred. Coming back to the story...The earth goddess was fed up of the icy cold blocks on her and so she produced a being called Buri.

 Buri had a son named Bor, who married Bestla, a daughter of one of the giants. Bor and Bestla had three sons, one of whom was Odin. Soon Odin and his brothers battled and killed Ymir. So much blood flowed from his wounds that all the frost-giants were drowned but one, who survived only by builiding an ark for himself and his wife. Bor's sons dragged Ymir's immense body to the center of Ginnungagap, and from him they re-moulded the earth. 

Ymir's blood became the sea, his bones became the rocks and crags, and his hair became the trees. Bor's sons took Ymir's skull and with it made the sky. In it they fixed sparks and molten slag from Muspell to make the stars, and other sparks they set to move in paths just below the sky. They threw Ymir's brains into the sky and made the clouds and they set up Ymir's eyelashes to keep the giants at the edges of the land.

The icy lands of the ice age and it's spirit Ymir was killed by the earthly spirits, Odin and his brothers. The myths talk about the end of ice age and also about the flood episode, that is present in all mythologies. After the death of Ymir, the new gods of earth re shaped it for humans and also build someways to keep  the frost and icy energies from entering the mortal world.