Heathen Soul Lore #4 Winifred Hodge Rose As Bor’s sons were going along the sea strand they found two trees, and took up the trees and shaped men therefrom.  …  They gave them clothing and names, calling the karl-man Askr and the woman Embla. (from Gylfaginning in the Prose Edda) Odin said: My clothes I gave, along the way, To two tree-people. They thought themselves heroes when they had clothing; The naked person is ashamed. (Havamal verse 49, in the Poetic Edda) Until three came, crossing over from elsewhere, Potent and loving Aesir from their homes. And found on the land Ask (Ash) and Embla (?Elm), With little megin, lacking orlay. (without human power and destiny) (Voluspa verse 17, in the Poetic Edda) In these beautiful passages from the Old Norse lore, we see that in the misty depths of time, the Gods shaped human beings out of trees.   This belief is common to other Indo-European peoples, and other peoples of the world as well.  But why trees?  The Abrahamic religions and some other religious traditions maintain that humans were shaped from earth, and other traditions tell of yet different origins, but our own faith links us with the trees.  What is it about trees that makes them suitable for this transformation?  Let us first explore what scholars can show us about the Indo-European linguistic connections between trees and vital essence or life-soul, as shown in Table 1. (Note that in the process of language evolution, the sounds ‘p’ and ‘k’ often transmute to the sounds ‘f’ and ‘h’, respectively.) Table 1. Language Trees Life-Soul Proto-Indo-European *perkwu = oak *perku Prim. Germanic / Gothic furh-jon = fir *fairhw Old High German / Old Saxon/ Old Frisian fereh-eih = oak foraha = pine ferah, ferh, ferch, verch   Old Norse fjörr = tree fura = pine fyri = fir fjör = life-soul fjörr = living being Anglo-Saxon furh = pine feorh, ferhth Modern English Modern German fir tree Föhre = pine           — (* The asterisk is used before Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and Proto-Germanic words to indicate that these words are reconstructed using linguistic science.  There are no written records of language going back to the time before the Indo-European peoples split off from one another.) Votive offerings to a group of Germanic Matron-Goddesses, dating to the time of the Roman Empire, link these two groups of meanings very neatly.  The Goddesses are called Alaferhwiae, ‘The All-Ferhw-Ones’, and their votive stones show images of trees.  The name has been variously interpreted as ‘the great life-giving ones’ and ‘the goddesses belonging to all trees’ (Simek p. 5).   In my view the connection between trees and life-soul removes any contradiction between these interpretations. There are many more words derived from those listed above, that flesh out our understanding of the Germanic life-soul concept. Table 2 shows just a few of them. Table 2. Language Term Translation Proto-Indo-European *perku chest, rib (the place where the soul lives) Gothic fairhwus the world, “house of the fairhw” Anglo-Saxon feorhus   feorhbana feorhbera feorhcynn   ferhth – body, chest, “house of the feorh” – feorh-bane, murderer – feorh-bearer, living being – feorh-kin, kindred of the living – mind, intellect, spirit Old Saxon firibarn firihi feraht – child of humankind – the folk – devoutly wise All of these terms link together: (a) trees, (b) the vital principle or life-soul, (c) the human body as the dwelling place for this soul, (d) wisdom as the expression of this soul, (e) the idea of humans as ‘children of this soul’, and (f) the kinship among all humans, which is conferred by their common possession of this soul.  Terms like Feorhcynn and Fjörr also apply to all living beings, not only humans. Ferah and the Gods Though in biological, evolutionary terms, humans are more closely connected with animals than with trees, there is a unique characteristic that trees and humans share: we are both upright, vertical, and by our upright nature we serve as conduits between earth-power and sky-power.  Table 3 shows the close linguistic connections between the life-soul words I listed above and Gods, Earth and Sky powers. Table 3. Language Life-Soul Earth / Deity Thunder / Deity Proto-Indo-Europ. *perku             —  *Perkwunos Thunder God Old Norse fjör – Fjörgyn (Earth Goddess) – Fjörgynn (father of Frigg) – fjarg (“Gods,” plural form) – fjarghus (Gods’ house, temple) Thor Thunder-God, son of Fjörgyn Earth-Goddess Old Prussian   Lithuanian, Latvian   Old Russian             —           — – percunis = thunder – Perkunas Thunder-God – Perunu Thunder- God Anglo-Saxon   Middle High German feorh   verch fyrgen = forested mountain virgunt = ditto            – Gothic fair, fairhw fairgunni = forested mountain region            –   There seems to be what semanticists call a ‘bundle’ of meanings rooted in Proto-Indo-European that includes closely-related words for: oak, Thunder-God, strike (*per), and stone.  There are various views as to which words are more closely derived from each other, but there is also a general sense that all of these words are interrelated.  The Thunder-God strikes trees with a thunderbolt in the form of a stone hammer, causing lightning and fire to spring out.   The ‘stone’ connection extends into the word-domain of rocks, mountains and other earth features.  Thus, *Perkwus, the Oak, is the bridge that links *perku / fairhw / ferah, the life-soul, with *Perkwunos Thunder-God, his stone hammer and his strike, his *per.  Oak is the bridge between soul and God-power.  There is a widely-held belief that when the thunderbolt strikes the oak, it does not ‘cause’ fire in the tree, but rather ‘releases’ the fire that is already within it.  This makes me think of the Old English rune poem for Yew (Eihwaz), which calls Yew the “keeper of the fire.” This is also the reason why the Need-Fire, made with a fire-drill, is the most sacred form of ‘domesticated’ fire: fire is not brought to the wood, rather fire is released from it by the drill. The idea of a God releasing fire from a tree is very close to the idea of Gods shaping, or even ‘releasing’ humans from trees, fire being a frequent analogy for ‘life.’  I speculate that Thor, as well as (obviously) his Mother Fjorgyn / Earth, is deeply involved in bringing into being and nurturing the Ferah souls of trees and other living beings. Though science doesn’t yet completely understand how life began on Earth, among the ideas considered for this is the role of meteorites, and possibly lightning: Thor and his Hammer stand behind these images too!  We see Thor as a life-giver when he swings his Hammer over the bones of his slaughtered goats, bringing them back to life.  His Hammer brings fertility to the lap of the bride and ripeness to the fields of gleaming grain.   With all of this, I wonder whether Thor was the one, in much earlier times than we have records for, who was credited with bringing human life from trees. Based on linguistic clues this would make sense; he would not necessarily have been the one giving specific gifts such as Ond or Wode, but he and his Hammer might have been the actual ‘releaser’ of the human life-soul from the wood, just as he releases fire from within it.  As I shall show farther on, the word ‘release’ is also used to describe what happens to the Ferah at the moment of death, the other end of the process. So, here is a story of beginnings, expanded from the Old Norse tales:  Trees, rooted in Mother Earth, attract lightning bolts, Sky-God power.  And so, one mythic day, Thor rode the clouds above a forest in his beloved Midgard, while from Asgard three mighty brothers set forth in that direction, all coming at last to a strand between the forest and the sea.  Together the Gods came across two trees there, trees with great Ferah-spirits of their own that drew the Gods’ awareness like magnets.  Raising his Hammer, the Hallower of Midgard gave the life-releasing blow, striking one tree on the fore-swing and the other on the back-swing.   The trees-becoming-humans stood there between Mother Earth and Father Sky, between negative and positive poles of power, and felt the God-mains flowing through them in brilliant surges of actinic light. And so the Ferah-souls within these trees burst forth as flames and were transformed into Ferahs of new beings, human beings, different but akin to the ancient spirits of the woods.  The Sons of Bor gave their great gifts: breath and spirit, wode and speech. They clothed these transformed Ferah-spirits with the human shape, the Hama, so they would not be naked spirits in a world of tree-clothed wights.  Human Hamas are so skillful and powerful that Ask and Embla, as Odin remarked, felt like heroes when they had been so clothed!  At Ragnarok, human souls will take shelter within the beleaguered Tree.  Then, at the beginning of the new cycle of time, Lif and Lifthrasir will come forth as flames of life from the sheltering wood, just as their forebears Ask and Embla did, so many generations before. The Evolutionary Perspective In our myths about the creation of humans from trees, we can view our primal human substance literally as trees, or we can view it as the Ferah soul-substance itself: Ferah which gives life to all physical beings and which shares its name with trees, storm powers and earth powers.  I follow both beliefs in different layers of my consciousness.  At the mythic level of consciousness I find the idea of descent from trees to be deeply meaningful; all that I wrote, above, is true to me in a way that has no need for scientific logic.  At the more modern, scientific level my understanding is that our Ferah life-soul goes way back to pre-human stages of evolution.  At some point during the physical process of evolution, the Gods gave pre-human beings a human spirit, human qualities and powers, and the Norns gave us the collective orlay, the fate, of human-ness.  Thus we made the shift from pre-human to human beings, bringing our Ferah with us, and along with it our kinship with the Feorhcynn, the kindred of all living beings.  Ferah can be understood as the soul which places us in an evolutionary context and connection with the other forms of life in Midgard.  As humans emerged from pre-human beings, Thor and the other Fjarg, the Gods and Goddesses, played a great role in this process. From Thor’s lightning, humans first obtained their fire, and his stone hammer was the prototype for tools that brought food and other needs to our forbears: throwing axes, hoes, and other tools and weapons.  Midgard’s Defender, a patron and inspirer of everyday, life-sustaining work, was with us back then, too!  As I mentioned above, the PIE words *perku (life-soul), *perkus (chest, breast), and *per (to strike) are all closely related to words for the Thunder-God and his actions.  The Latin root of our word “percussion” comes from the same source.   These words are all part of a logic-circle that looks like this: life-soul / chest / heartbeat / drumbeat / thunder / Thunder-God / God-power / life-soul.   In addition to the thunder / heartbeat aspect, there is the element of lightning / electricity and its functions in our body.  Our brain and nervous system functions, inter-cellular reactions, and the regulation of our heartbeat, are just a few examples of the essential bio-electric life-functions set into motion within us by the God of Lightning.             There are three ancient words that well capture the interconnection of humans, the world, and the Gods: each is the same word in a different language; each expresses one aspect of the whole.  Anglo-Saxon feorhus means “house of the Feorh,” and it refers to the body, sometimes just the chest, as the home of the Ferah-soul. Gothic fairhwus means “house of the Fairhw,” and refers to the world as a whole, the place where all Ferah-souls live their lives.  And Old Norse fjarghus, “house of the Fjarg,” is the temple or Gods-house, the place where the Gods who give life and soul are honored in Midgard. The Nature of the Ferah Without Ferah, there is no life.  Grimm mentions that one of the many German folk-names for the personified figure of Death is the ferch-grimme, a monstrous figure who “has designs upon the life or soul (ferch)” (p. 849). Ferah is so much associated with life that often modern scholars simply translate the Germanic Ferah-words as “life”, which works alright in most contexts as long as we understand what is meant by “life.”  We are not speaking of life-span, lifetime, the duration of life: this is the domain of our Aldr soul.  We are also not speaking of anything like life-style, way of life, making a living.  Nor is Ferah some kind of philosophical abstraction or amorphous biological principle.  Although modern linguists translate the PIE *perku as “life force, vital principle,” I doubt that our Indo-European forebears thousands of years ago thought in terms of “principles” and “forces;” they probably thought in much more concrete, substantive terms.  The Germanic Ferah-as-life was conceived of as an actual substance which conferred life by its presence, and caused death by its absence. It was pictured as a fluid substance which fills the body: the term ferahes gifullid, filled with Ferah, is used a number of times in the Old Saxon Heliand, particularly with reference to Jesus as one who was filled with an especially sacred and powerful Ferah soul. (The Heliand is an Old Saxon  poem that retells the Christian gospel story in very Germanic imagery and language, a useful resource for understanding how native Saxon words relating to the souls were used.)  In the description of Jesus’ resurrection, the Heliand author says that after his death the Ferah was no longer within the flesh, but then the flesh was again “filled” with Ferah at the time of resurrection. This quasi-material nature of Ferah also comes across in a phrase from Beowulf.  When Beowulf is facing the dragon, he knows that his Feorh will not be “wrapped in flesh” for very much longer; he knows that death and Wyrd are very near (ll. 2419 ff.). We get an impression here of something like an etheric substance which is congruent with the physical body during life.   It is both similar and dissimilar to the etheric body as it is understood today.  The etheric-substance nature of the Ferah is quite clear from the ancient descriptions, and as I shall discuss below, many of our body-related sensations and instincts seem to be rooted as much in our Ferah as they are in our Lich, our physical body. In this much, the Ferah is similar to the modern etheric body concept.  But it is different in that the Ferah is not a template which shapes our physical body; in Germanic thought, this role is played by the Hama.  Nor can the Ferah leave the body and roam outside it during life, as the etheric body is understood to be capable of: that is a power of other souls. There’s an intriguing mention of the Ferah / Fjör in Hervör’s Saga, ch. 4 (a part of Heidrek’s Saga).  The viking-leader Hervör has gone to the burial mounds of her father and his eleven brothers, all berserks who died in battle, to take her father’s sword Tyrfing from his howe.  Much argument ensues between Hervör and the shade or Dwimor of her father Angantyr Arngrimsson, who doesn’t want to give her the sword because it will bring ill luck to her and her line.  Finally Hervör gets the sword, and as Angantyr bids her farewell, he makes a statement that sounds like a father’s blessing, but hampered because he is dead and she is living.  He tells her: “Freely I’d bestow on you the Fjör of twelve men, if you trust in the might, power and courage, and all the good that Arngrim’s sons left behind themselves.”  (My translation; the original: “Flótt gæfak ðér tólf manna fjör, ef ðú trúa mættir, afl ok eljun, allt it góða ðat er synir Arngríms at sik leifðu.”)  This seems to be simply his good wishes toward her, since presumably the Fjörvi of the dead are no longer available.  But the description “might, power and courage, and all the good” gives us some idea of what the gift of Fjör would involve, if it were possible to give it.  It’s also intriguing to meditate on the idea of ‘giving Fjör / Ferah’, and what that might mean in a metaphysical sense. The Ferah registers all the sensations, perceptions and emotions that occur within the Lich.  For example, the Anglo-Saxon “Sith Gealdor” or journey-charm contains the line “may my feorh never be frightened” by the perils of travel (Storms p. 216-223).  The Feorh can suffer ‘feorhcwala,’ torment and torture of the Feorh, when the body is wounded, tortured, or mortally ill.  The mortally-wounded Grendel in Beowulf is called ‘feorhseoc’ (feorh-sick).  In the Heliand, the author says that when one is captured, one’s enemies have power over the Ferah, but not over the Seola (Saiwalo soul) (ll. 3807 – 10).  The Old High German poet Otfrid used the phrase ‘ferahe stechan’, to ‘stab the Ferah’ (Becker p. 34): when the body is stabbed, the Ferah is, too.  These are examples of the close connection between the Lich and the Ferah: the Ferah is the one that actually perceives and feels cues in the environment (frightening situations, threat of injury), which set in motion instinctive and physiological responses within the Ferah-Lich complex, such as fear, pain, fever, etc.  The Ferah is intimately involved with all the vital functions of our body: our physiology and metabolism, our neurotransmitter and endocrine functions, our responses to environmental cues, and our growth and deterioration in youth and age, health and disease.  I believe that the channels and reservoirs of the life-energy, sometimes called Qi or Prana, are … Continue reading Born of Trees and Thunder: The Ferah Soul