Heathen Soul Lore #9 Winifred Hodge Rose With discussion of the Aldr Soul in my article “Aldr and Orlay: Weaving a World”, I finished the list of souls which were given by the Powers of Earth and Sky, by Odin and his brothers, and by the Norns; the latter two as described in the Voluspa of the Poetic Edda.  Now I will turn to two souls whose origins are less obviously divine, more earthly but also more mysterious in origin, and which are very active and powerful in our everyday, earthly lives: the Mod and Hugr/Hugi Souls.  (Note that Mod is pronounced “mode,” and Hugr is “who-gr”). There is a great deal of overlap in the nature of these two souls, and in fact a good argument can be made that they are really one soul with two different names given by different branches of the Germanic peoples.   I see both similarities and differences between Hugr and Mod, and in this and following articles I will compare and contrast these two souls as I discuss their respective natures. The Mod as an actual soul-being is not much developed in Gothic writings or in Old Norse lore; there, it appears primarily as an emotional state of anger, rage or fury, which can reach ecstatic levels similar to wode (see my article “Ghost Rider: Athom, Ghost and Wode in Action” for more about wode.)  In Old Norse lore and folklore, in contrast, the Hugr stands out so strongly as a full-blown Soul that some scholars have concluded it is the original, “pure” soul of Norse belief, before it was influenced by Christianity.   On the other hand, the Hugr does not clearly appear as a full-blown Soul in Anglo-Saxon belief at the time they became literate, while the Mod does so strongly.  In Old Saxon, both Mod and Hugi are strongly developed.  In Old High German writings the word Mod frequently appears; though its usage is often heavily influenced by Christian thought, there are still a number of instances useful for our explorations here. Thus, for discussion of the Mod as a human Full-Soul I rely primarily on Anglo-Saxon, Old Saxon and Old High German, but draw on Norse lore and folklore for some limited but important aspects of Mod’s nature and evolution, as I shall show.  A fascinating idea is put forth by Meyer, and further discussed by Eggers, Becker and other academic scholars.  According to some of these scholars (others debate the idea but are not convinced), and I agree, Mod seems to have begun as an undifferentiated natural power or energy and then gradually developed into a nature spirit, a “daemon” (Greek) or “genius” (Latin) that became associated with, and eventually incorporated into, the human “soular system.”  Daemons and geniuses refer to a guiding, protective, tutelary spirit that influences a human being.  One of the most famous daemons is the one that guided the philosopher Socrates.  Christians later turned “daemons” into “demons,” who lead people astray through temptation and deception: here we see a form of detrimental rather than helpful guidance. Christians substituted guardian angels for the helpful function of daemons.             As I will show here, Mod appears in several forms.  It is an individualized spirit / soul being, which I am calling the Mod with a capital M.  It is also an undifferentiated force which permeates Nature, animals and humans, and can be drawn upon by the Gods and otherworldly beings, that is closely related to megin or maegen.  Finally, it is a state of being similar to wode, involving any of the following: natural or supernatural strength, courage and determination; great intelligence and wisdom; battle rage; savagery, cruelty, vengefulness and capriciousness.  The latter two forms of mod (undifferentiated force; state of being) I refer to with lower-case m, and depend on context to differentiate them.  I am going to coin a word for modern Heathen use, namely “mody” (mode-ee) to translate the adjective / adverb made from Mod (modig / modags).  It is used very frequently in the ancient languages, is a useful word, and saying “having a lot of mod, done in a mod-filled way, etc” is very awkward, especially when trying to translate poetry.  Likewise, much meaning is lost if we try to use only one modern English word to translate modig, such as “courageous” or “angry”, rather than leaving the deep and complex word ‘mod’ to stand on its own, untranslated.  Hopefully after the explorations I present here, we will be able to take Mod and modig on their own terms, without translation. Basic Meanings In 1926, Elisabeth Meyer published a valuable doctoral dissertation entitled “The Evolution of Meaning of Germ. *moda-“ (Die Bedeutungsentwicklung von Germ. *moda-), meticulously researched and thought-through, which was drawn on by many later scholars.  She begins with a list of meanings of the word from both ancient and modern Germanic languages, according to various scholars in those languages, most of which I give here with the meanings translated into English and the terms for the languages (e.g. Old Icelandic instead of Old Norse) as given by Meyer.  (A few of the words I was unable to translate.) – Gothic moths = fury, rage. – Old Icelandic modr = wrath, moodiness, heart’s grief, courage, fury. – Old Danish mod = mind, senses, hu (hugr, frequently used as synonym for mod). – Old Swedish moth = mind, senses, mind/senses in an uproar / disturbed; envy, pride, overconfidence. – Meanings in the modern Scandinavian languages include fury, courage, bravery, boldness, daring. – Anglo-Saxon mod = 1) the inner man, the spiritual as opposed to the bodily part of a man; 2) courage, high spirit, pride, arrogance; 3) greatness, magnificence, pride – applied to inanimate things. – Middle English mod = mood, mind, courage. – Old Saxon mod = mind, disposition, inner person, soulfulness, feeling, the inner person, heart, character, bold courage, the ability to enact one’s intentions effectively. – Middle Low German mot = thinking, sensing, emotions, disposition. – Old High German muot = mind, soul, spirit, heart. – Middle High German muot and Middle Dutch moet = strength of thought, sensation, feeling, sentiment, will, senses, soul, spirit, mind, disposition, emotions, overconfidence, high spirits, longing, desiring, pondering a deed, decisiveness, courage, selfish, self-seeking, hopeful. (Note that if we look at kennings for the word “Hugr” in the “Skaldskarpamal” of the Prose Edda, we will find most of the same words or very similar ones listed.) – Old and New Frisian mod = courage, mind, disposition, inner person, will, independence.  (Meyer pp 9-10) Note also the modern German descendants of mod: Mut (moot) meaning courage, bravery; and Gemut meaning mind, disposition, inner person, soulfulness, feeling. Meyer stated that other scholars drew these all together into a consolidated meaning of “strongly moved emotions / soul; high excitement /stimulation; stirred-up Gemut / inner person; lively feelings.”  But her sense was that these meanings are too abstract to be completely true to the ancient Germanic culture and languages, and reflect more of modern psychological understanding than of older, more concrete perceptions.  She emphasized the importance of looking at the word in context with others that frequently accompany it, namely maegen (main), maegencraft (main-craft), and miht (might), all of them Anglo-Saxon words denoting power and strength, both natural and supernatural.  Especially in Anglo-Saxon, where the word-meanings are highly developed, Mod very frequently appears paired with one of these other words for power.  The context shows that not only physical strength and power are meant, but also mental and spiritual power.  As one among many examples, Meyer quotes a verse from the Anglo-Saxon poem Elene, where “the wise among you who have the most maegen and modcraeft” are called into council to develop a clever strategy for saving their people from a foe that is physically stronger than they are (p.13).  Queens and wise counselors are very often described with mod and maegen words in Anglo-Saxon, denoting both wisdom and virtue in the sense of a good character powerfully applied for the good of the folk. Gods (Heathen and Christian), Heathen heroes like Beowulf, Christian saints, Queens, wise folk: all were seen as being gifted with mod, maegen, miht, modcraeft, and related terms, which distinguish them from the ordinary and the every-day.  The Latin word virtus, the root of “virtue”, was translated into the ancient Germanic languages using the words “mod and maegen” together (Meyer p. 14-15).  We gain a sense of the same meaning when we speak of the “virtue” of an herb, a potion or a magical object, its special power that sets it apart from the ordinary.  A wonderful example of such virtue is found in Fjolvinnsmal, vs. 15, where Svipdag, seeing Menglad and her ladies sitting under the great Tree bearing mysterious healing and life-giving fruits, asks “What modi has this famous tree, that it can be felled neither by fire nor by iron?”  Powerful animals also have these characteristics: think of the aurochs under the Rune Ur, in the Old English Rune Poem, called a “modig wiht,” a mody wight.  Uncastrated stallions and bulls were called “mod” to distinguish them from geldings and oxen (Meyer p. 20).  Weather, too, could be referred to by this word, as in Grimnismal 42 in the Poetic Edda which describes the hard-mody sky / cloud-cover that was created from Ymir’s skull or brains (heila).   The power of the sea was seen as an expression of mod.  Anglo-Saxon poetry, for example, contains several references to “merestraemes mod”, the mod of the streaming sea; Old Norse and Old Saxon have similar expressions.  Even a good beer was considered to have mod: Meyer quotes an old German Brewer’s Guild document from Hamburg that refers to a beer’s “modes, smacks (flavor), und krafft (sic; strength)” (p. 27).  Our modern English “mood”, descended from mod, also refers to a powerful state of being; that is, moods can be powerful, though sometimes they can also weaken us.  Moods can overwhelm us, fighting our best, most reasonable efforts to overcome them and put them aside.  Moods are primitive, powerful, springing from hidden roots, and are much affected by our environment: the weather, our surroundings, the moods of people around us, and by conditions such as mob mentality and group-think.  We can be swept up not only by our own moods, but by group moods, into anything ranging from fads and fashions, to political or religious movements, to mass hysteria, panic, and mob violence.  The Mod soul underlies our moods and is integrally connected to, and reflective of, mod and maegen in our environment and in others around us. Meyer’s conclusion is that the root meaning of moda is based in the concept of “Macht,” of might, strength, virtue in the sense of special power, that sets one above the ordinary and can even reach to supernatural and divine levels.   The scholar Becker agrees with Meyer on the connection of Mod with supernatural spiritual might or Macht (Becker p. 158). Turning to another source, de Vries’ Old Norse Dictionary postulates that Mod stems from the Proto-Indo-European root *ma, meaning to be emotionally stirred, excited (gemutserregung), as well as meaning “striving.”  He suggests related words in Greek that mean to strive, to yearn or wish for, to rage; also a Tocharian word meaning strength.   In previous articles I noted also the connection between our Ghost soul and the root of the word Ghost meaning “to be excited, stirred up.” There is certainly some overlap between the state of wode, a characteristic of the Ghost soul as I understand, and the state of mod, a characteristic of the Mod soul (see Meyer’s discussion of these similarities, p.44-5).  Here, in seeing similarities between Ghost-states and Mod-states, we begin to move into the idea of Mod as a Daemon, a spirit-being who has a certain independence from us and influences us through urges, longings, and various strong emotional states that seem like they come upon us “out of the blue.” Mod as Daemon Numerous scholars of southern and western Germanic literature have noted that the Mod-soul or Mod-faculty within a person has the ability to drive, urge, incite that person to action.  The Old Saxon Heliand, which retells the Christian gospels in heavily Germanicized imagery and vocabulary, states at the very beginning of the poem that: “many were those whose Mod incited / urged them (iro mod gespon) so that they began to spread God’s word”. Here we see clearly that Mod was envisioned as something belonging to oneself but also having its own volition and identity. Another remarkable example of Mod acting separately from the person is in the Beowulf poem.  Lines 720 through 735 describe Grendel entering into Heorot hall, filled with sleeping warriors, and exulting at the opportunity for violence and bloodshed before him.   This sense of exultation is expressed as “his Mod laughed (his mod ahlog).”  It is clearly Grendel’s Mod, not Grendel ‘himself’ who laughs here.  In others of these lines we see phrases that indicate he has entered into a supernatural state of strength and rage, showing the exaltation of his Mod-daemon-soul: he burst the iron-bound door open with a touch, in his eyes was an ugly light like fire, he was yrre-mod, his Mod in a state of rage, of ire.  Likewise, Thor’s Hugr soul laughs and exults within his breast when his stolen Hammer is brought out of hiding, at the end of the Thrymskvida poem (Poetic Edda).  And it’s interesting to compare this with another moment of triumph / exultation in Greek mythology, when Zeus’s Htor soul laughs within his breast during (what he thinks is) his seduction of his previously-angry wife, Hera, though actually she is seducing him using Aphrodite’s magical belt (Brisingamen, anyone?). (Claus p. 24)       In each case, we see a soul acting as a separate entity within a person, energizing them toward what they consider a great deed and triumph.  Energizing, inciting and motivating are major functions of the Mod soul at all levels of being. In the Old High German poems of Ottfrid we see more examples of the Mod acting as a separate person inside oneself.  “My Mod (muat) informs me that you are a fore-seer,” he writes (min muat duat mih uuis, thaz thu forasago sis).   He also describes in several places how the envious muat hates and rejects the good (that is, the Christian God and his teachings).  (Eggers p. 7-8) Eggers notes that the verbs used to describe the muat’s actions are used only in context of persons or people, showing a personal construction of the word muat.  In King Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon translation of the Psalms, like Ottfried he uses the expression “my mod tells me….” (Ps. 51:21).  This is just the same as the phrase that comes up in the Norse sagas: “my hugr tells me….”  The scholar Eggers, looking at the above passage in Beowulf, sees Grendel as being possessed and driven by his Mod-daemon (p. 6).  He and other scholars studying the continental Germanic literature note that Mod is the only soul-entity or soul faculty that is used with transitive verbs, where Mod itself takes action as a person would, as well as being the receiver of actions such as being the site of emotions or thoughts (Eggers p. 4-5). In Norse lore, it is the Hugr that has this same characteristic, but not the Mod. Meyer, Eggers, Becker, and other scholars see this characteristic of Mod, the way it is used with transitive verbs of action, as well as the archaic syntax of Mod word-usage, as a possible indication of a very ancient understanding pointing back to Mod as an independent nature-spirit which would at times possess and overwhelm a person and drive that person to act in accordance with the Mod-spirit’s desires.  The Norse Hugr does something very similar, though with some subtle but significant differences.  In particular, the Mod generally acts upon the person from within, affecting their own behavior, while the Hugr may often act upon others outside oneself through magical means, a flowing or bursting outward of occult power. (See my articles about the Hugr on this website.)  However, the ON word modhr can occasionally be used to mean “sorcery” (trolldom), and in these cases it is much the same as Hugr in this context.  (Meyer p.26) Eggers (p. 14f), drawing on Meyer, sees our ancestors conceiving of Mod as originally being an external Daemon spirit, not very personal, but more in the nature of barely-personified energy, force, power.  This power can be expressed through humans, Gods and Goddesses, Jotnar, animals, weather, and other natural phenomena like ocean waves (much like the magical concept of Elementals).  In the second stage, Mod wandered or was drawn into the soul-realm of human beings, but is not yet fully incorporated therein.  It expresses itself as urges toward certain actions, as well as strength and will, generally, but is still quite distinct from the “person.” This is the level of development that appears in the few Gothic uses of the word, as well as in Old Norse, mostly used to mean enormous rage, fury, overwhelming desire to win, to conquer, to have one’s own way against all obstacles.  The Norse expression ‘Jotunmodhi’ describes such a state, comparing it to the Jotnar, the Giants, in a state of rage. Thor can enter a state of Asmodhi, the rage-power of the Aesir, in the same way. Thirdly, Mod internalized itself into the inner person of human beings, expressing itself as more sophisticated emotions, desires, motivations, as well as the more primitive eruptive impulses (think ‘moods’ here).  And finally, as we see especially in Anglo-Saxon writings, Mod becomes the entire Inner Person, the persona, ego, living soul, of human beings, without overt implication of an external force acting on the human.  The Anglo-Saxon dictionary defines mod as: heart, mind, spirit, mood, temper, courage, arrogance, pride, power, violence. Notice in particular that the primary meanings in Angelseax are heart, mind, and spirit. If we look at the list of mod-words … Continue reading Dances with Daemons: The Mod Soul