Winifred Hodge Rose
Here is my response to a question about Frigg’s spindle and our souls.
Frigg and our souls….that’s a big and beautiful area to explore, as are the connections between each of our Deities and our souls! Here are some highlights of my thoughts about her role with our souls, and you’re right that a good part of this role relates to the image of the spindle.
So let’s start with the spindle as an analogy or symbol of our total being. The upper end accesses Ahma, the lower end is rooted in Saiwalo / Hel. I’ve seen Frigg in spae-visions quite a few times as she sits or stands beside Ginnungagap and draws out the primal material, Ond or Ahma, to wrap around her distaff in preparation for spinning things into being. At this level she is the Gatherer, the one who collects primal material in preparation for shaping, and then begins to shape it by the energy and direction of her spinning. I see what she spins as the threads that are woven into so many things: our souls, the fabric of Wyrd, the material worlds.
I see the process of creation along a two-way axis. On the ‘right’ and ‘left’, so to speak, the horizontal axis, are the primal polarities of Fire and Ice. In the center between the polarities stands Frigg’s spindle, its ‘top’ resting in Ahma, its ‘bottom’ resting in Saiwalo / Hel. (These directions are simply analogies so that we can envision the process.) As Frigg spins this spindle, threads of energy are drawn out from ‘left and right, up and down’, and wrap around the spindle. As the threads wrap the spindle, the whole mass, the spindle with its threads, becomes more material, more solid and able to hold its shape within the stresses and strains of Midgard life.
The threads represent our different souls and soul-parts, also the material of our physical body, and the wyrd-threads that shape our life. All of these threads are coming in from different directions, influenced / shaped / colored by various Deities and cosmic processes as they form. It’s the energy that Frigg sets into the spindle and its spinning, that holds the whole thing together during Midgard life. Then, it’s our job to make good use of all these threads, all these parts of our being, our life experiences, and inputs from Deities and Wyrd, to take this thread and weave the fabric of our lifetime in Midgard: our Werold, our tapestry of life-long experience.
All that I’ve written so far is very abstract and ‘cosmic’! Let’s take it down to the level of everyday life now. I’ve written an article, All in a Day’s Work, posted on my website, about Frigg’s power of creating order in everyday life, and how the Goddesses associated with her participate in that.
This power to help us order and shape our lives is an earthly reflection of what I wrote above, about how Frigg takes primal energy / material and shapes it into thread wound about a spindle. As she sets into motion the ‘process of who we are’ with her spinning, so we continue the ‘process of who we are becoming’ through our deeds of daily life. And of course, all of our souls are involved in these processes of shaping and ordering who we are and what deeds we generate, as our souls express themselves and act through our whole soul-body complex during our life in Midgard.
So, I think this is one of Frigg’s primary roles in the domain of our souls: this process of shaping raw soul-material into incipient soul-beings, and helping them order themselves and their actions into a whole that becomes an individual human and this human’s Werold. I think that all of this is closely tied to her function of gathering raw material and spinning it into thread, and tied to her oversight of our daily activities and daily lives that shape, day by day, the person we become and the life that we live.
In terms of Frigg’s connection with specific souls: she and each of our other Deities may have ties to any of our souls, and we can ask her for help and insight regarding our work with any of the souls and their roles in our life. Frigg does have a special connection to our Mod soul, in its aspect as a wise and knowing soul, a soul who strives for excellence of mind, of character, and of deeds and achievements. Queens, counselors, wise-folk and elders were praised in ancient poetry for their Mod, their excellent mind, wise rede and good character, and Frigg stands as a model and a support for us to follow their example.
Frigg and her fellow-Goddesses are clearly involved with our Sefa soul and its concern with relationships and social ties. I also see a close connection between Frigg and Ahma, through Frigg’s power of Awareness that she expresses through the Goddess Vor, whom I see as Frigg’s ‘daughter’ or as an extension of Frigg herself.
We can see a lot of overlap between Frigg and the Goddess Frau Holle, also a spinning Goddess and also deeply involved with all aspects of our daily life. But there are important differences as well. They are not the same Goddess, but I do think we can understand each of them to be involved in similar ways with the processes of coming-into-being that we symbolize using the spindle. Feel free to work with the one you feel closest to, the one who draws you to herself, if you are attracted to these images of world-spinning!