Ond, Ahma, Ghost and Breath: Basic Meanings

Winifred Hodge Rose

Ond gave Odin……..

(Voluspa vs.18, in the Poetic Edda)

In my article about the Ferah soul (Born of Trees and Thunder) I showed how the trees had their own Ferah souls before ever the Gods came to transform them into humans.  But they had no breath as humans and animals have breath, nor did they have the ghost / spirit who rides upon the breath.  These things, breath and spirit (both meanings are contained within the word ond) are the gifts of Odin, according to our lore. With these gifts, humans took their first steps into the state of human-ness and of kinship with the Gods.   Ever since then, the Holy Ones welcome each newborn child with the holy breath of life, and with the first breath the  ghost rides in and makes its home within the child: thus Ond takes root within us.

This soul-complex: breath-spirit-ghost, is quite a complicated one, which I shall cover in two separate articles.  In this one I focus on the basic nature of spirit / ghost and breath, its Indo-European roots and connections, and the radical differences between our real Ghost versus the stereotypes of the ghost that we come across in modern English.  In my next article, Ghost Rider, I discuss the interconnected activity between Ghost, breath and wode and the shamanic implications; the connections between Ghosts and Gods, and the source and afterlife of the Ghost.

As I am doing with my whole soul-lore series, I first explore the sources of words. I believe that just as the archaeology of sites and artifacts gives us the best information available about prehistoric peoples’ ways of life, so the ‘archaeology of words’ gives us the best available information, imperfect as it is, about the intangible concepts held by our forebears.  While I am far from believing that the ‘ancients knew all’ and we know nothing, I must say that the more I research ancient understandings of the souls, the more amazed I am at the breadth, depth and complexity that I glimpse within the confusion.  While no doubt far from completely accurate, these gleanings from the ancient meadows of thought can add fertile seeds to the furrow from which we are growing, together, a modern Heathen body of lore about the souls.

The Breath

The Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language, as reconstructed by modern scholars, has six word roots relating to ‘breath’ which are germane to our exploration here.  I show these roots in Table 1, along with relevant words that are derived from them.

Table 1: “Breath” Words

Anyone familiar with shamanism will note the last words in Table 1, *dhues,*dhuesmi, as being tied to pretty much all phases of shamanic practice: hyperventilating to bring on trance and soul-flight; the resulting dizziness, confusion, strange and hyper-excited behavior, ghosts and spirits, and wild animal powers.  (These are subjects I address in more detail in Ghost Rider.) One also gets a hint here of the belief that animals too have spirits, since the words for breath, spirit, and animal are so closely related.  In the same way, the Latin anima, meaning soul, gives rise to our words ‘animal’ and ‘animated,’ meaning ‘enlivened by having soul and breath’.   The Latin root “spirare” = to breathe, belongs with this list as well.  From this word we derive “spirit,” “inspire,” “aspire,” “expire” and “respiration,” all relating to spiritual matters, breath, and life.

 The special, sacred “breath” word of the Germanic languages (Aethm, Athom, Ahma, etc) no longer exists in modern English, though it does in all other modern Germanic languages.  In fact, Anglo-Saxon again shows its peculiarities here, because this language (a) adopted a different word for breath, unrelated to breath-words in every other Germanic language as well as in PIE, and (b) seems to have pulled a switch between the meanings of aethm and braeth. 

Braeth meant “odor, scent, stink, exhalation, vapor.”  Aethm, as we have seen, descends from a PIE breath-spirit root, with implications not only of physical breath but of spiritual  essence.  Somehow in Anglo-Saxon, aethm came to mean not only breath but also “vapor, blast,” and the verb aethmian, which should have meant “to breathe,” instead meant “to fume, exhale, emit a smell.”   (One cannot help but think of foul breath and farts!)  The original meanings of braeth = odor etc, and aethm = (pure!) breath, seem to have switched. 

Eventually aethm, with its remnants of ancient sacred meaning, dropped out of English altogether, and we are left with “breath,” which has no sacred connotations associated with the word itself – quite the contrary.  Because of this peculiar word-history, I prefer to use Old Saxon athom to mean the sacred breath, rather than A-S aethm!

Enter the Ghost

Overall, one can see from Table 1 that breath and spirit are intimately related.  In some of the Germanic languages there is only one word that is used for both breath and spirit, and all such words are derived from Proto-Indo-European “breath” words.  But something strange happened in Old High German, Old Saxon, Frisian, and Anglo-Saxon.  Though they retained the breath / spirit-derived words that I listed above, they also had a word for spirit that comes from an entirely different root:

English ghost, Old High German keist and geist, Old Saxon gest (“gayst”), Anglo-Saxon gast, Modern German Geist, Modern Dutch Geest.

The old ghost-words were sometimes used to mean “breath,” but generally meant spirit, ghost, or otherworldly wight.   Modern German Geist is also used the same way as the modern English word spirits to indicate distilled liquor, or other distilled essences.   Calling the results of distillation by the same word as a soul-entity gives us one clue to the nature of spirit: it is a distillation, an essence, a quintessential part of oneself.  Spirit / ghost is something that must be refined and distilled from the more mundane portions of ourselves in order to reveal its true nature. 

The words for ghost in the various languages I listed above are derived from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) word root *gheis meaning “to be excited,” and a primitive Germanic root, *gaistaz, meaning “to be frightened, terrified.”  A related word is Old Norse geisa = to rage, to terrify.  Gothic does have a few ghost-related words even though they consistently used Ahma to mean both breath and ghost/spirit.  In these older Gothic words we can see how the meaning of ghost = spirit could have evolved.  The Gothic words are:

uz-geisjan, us-geisnan = to frighten, to make aghast, to be beside oneself.

uz-gheizan = to be amazed, astounded, or aghast (aghast is linguistically the same word). 

We can think of the word uz-gheizan as meaning “to out-ghost” (uz = out) which is what happens when we are “beside ourselves.”  In the wake of terror, shock or extreme astonishment, our ghost becomes highly excited and flies out of our body upon our astonished gasp of breath.  We can draw an analogy between the excited, energized molecules in a boiling pot of water, rising up out of the water in the form of steam, and the hyper-excited ghost-as-essence exiting like steam on the breath.  This is also how alcoholic “Geister / spirits” are produced.  In Ghost Rider I discuss the importance of these ghost-phenomena in shamanic and spiritual practice.

 In addition to the behavior of our own living ghost when in a state of fright or shock, there is the frightening, terrifying aspect of otherworldly ghosts, specters, apparitions and wights.   So, through PIE *gheis “to be excited” and Primitive Germanic *gaistaz “to be terrified” to Gothic uz-gheizan “to out-ghost due to amazement or fright,” and finally to the meaning of ghost as spirit-entity, we can approach an understanding of why the ghost-as-spirit word might have appeared in some of the Germanic languages.

Old Norse language did not ignore the connection between the ghost and states of fear, terror, and threat.  The Old Norse word Ond = spirit, breath, also provided the root for ondottr meaning ‘fearsome, terrible’.  In modern Norwegian and other Scandinavian languages, ond means “evil, wicked,” while spirit and breath are expressed by the word-root aand.  Onde and ande also appear in Old and Middle English, meaning “fear, horror.”  Thus, both the ghost word and the ond word have links to fear and terror, as well as to spirituality.

The Meanings of Spirit

Spirit-related words derived from PIE breath-words refer to five different but related domains of meaning in the old Germanic languages:

a) the breath, both ordinary and divine;

b) the indwelling spirit or soul;

c) the human afterlife persona;

d) a non-human spirit-being or wight, such as a demon, guardian spirit, nature spirit, angel, etc, including the Christian Holy Ghost;

e) intellectual and creative faculties.

Table 2 shows how these different meanings are distributed in the various Germanic languages.  I have included the letters (a) through (e) in the table, as cross-reference to the list of spirit meanings, above. This table represents my best understanding of how these words were/ are used, but note that I may have missed or misunderstood some usages of words, which could change the lists somewhat.

Table 2: Distribution of Germanic “Spirit” Meanings

Language	Spirit / Breath Words	Translation
Gothic	Ahma	(a) breath (b) indwelling spirit (c) afterlife persona (d) wights / spirits (e) intellectual faculties
Old Norse	Ond	(a) breath (b) indwelling spirit (c) afterlife persona (seldom)
Modern Norwegian	Aand	(a) breath (b) indwelling spirit (c) afterlife persona (d) wights / spirits (e) intellectual and creative faculties
Anglo-Saxon	Aethm   Gast     And-giet	(a) breath   (a) breath (seldom) (b) indwelling spirit (c) afterlife persona (d) wights / spirits   (e) intellectual and creative faculties
Old Saxon	Athom       Gest	(a) breath (b) indwelling spirit (d) Xian Holy Ghost (a) breath (seldom) (b) indwelling spirit (c) afterlife persona (d) wights / spirits
Old High German	Atum, Atem Geist, Gheist, Keist	(a) breath (b) indwelling spirit (d) Xian Holy Ghost   (b) indwelling spirit (c) afterlife persona (d) wights / spirits
Modern German	Atem Geist	(a) breath   (b) indwelling spirit (c) afterlife persona (d) wights / spirits (e) intellectual and creative faculties
Modern English	Ghost	(c ) afterlife persona (d) wights / spirits, also images of objects such as a train, car or house.

In addition to the words in Table 2, there is also the Old Frisian Ethma.  I am not sure about how it was used in the ancient texts, but it remains in the modern Dutch adem, breath.   Modern Dutch Geest is used much as modern German Geist. 

This overall picture of ghost-words has important implications for us as English speaking Heathens.  Note, at the end of Table 2, how impoverished the English meaning of “ghost” is, compared to meanings of the same word in other ancient and modern languages. There are only a few, old-fashioned usages of ghost in modern English that hark back to the older, richer meanings of the word, such as  the Christian God-spirit called the Holy Ghost, and expressions such as “to give up the ghost,” referring to our spirit’s departure when we die.

Ghost and Mind

Several Germanic scholars I have read suggest that the meanings of ancient Germanic spirit words which relate to the intellect are newer acquisitions, which only evolved under the influence of Christian usage.  They believe that pre-Christian Heathens did not make the connection between spirit and intellect.  This conclusion is based on early Christian translations from Latin into Old Saxon and Old High German, where indeed there are few indications that the ghost possesses intellect per se as one of its characteristics.  There are several instances where, in contrast to “intellectus,” the ghost is considered to possess “sapientia” or wisdom, which seems rather contradictory or confusing.  However, the spirit-intellect connection is very clear in the Gothic language, older by several centuries than the first writings in Old High German and Old Saxon. 

The Goths were the earliest Germanic peoples in contact with Christians.  The Visigothic bishop Wulfila (aka Ulfila and Ulphila) developed a Gothic alphabet based on Greek, Latin and Runic characters, and translated some of the Christian Bible from Greek into Gothic around 360 CE.    In Wulfila’s writings he used a number of words derived from Ahma (spirit) that relate directly to intellectual activities, and these are clearly not invented words or borrowed from Latin or Greek: they are long-established native words.  (See Table 3.)  If these intellect-related words already existed in native form in Gothic at the time of first Christian contact, this disproves the idea that spirit – intellect connections were unknown in Germanic Heathen thought, at least among some branches of the Germanic peoples. 

There are indications of a spirit-mind connection in Anglo-Saxon, as well.  Two words of particular interest to Heathens are gastgehygd and gastgemynd.  Both of these words refer to the faculty of thought.  Gast-gehygd is a compound word, with gehygd or ‘thought’ stemming from the word Hyge or Hugi, another Heathen soul as I understand it.  Gast-gemynd is the same: a compound with the word gemynd, which means memory, thought, consciousness, mind, intellect, and related meanings.  Our modern word ‘mind’ stems from this root.

These two compound words seem to me of great significance for modern Heathens: they say to me that the Ghost-soul we each possess has its own reflection of Odin’s ravens, Huginn and Muninn.  The Anglo-Saxon words gehygd and gemynd are the same words, in noun form, as Huginn and Muninn (“Thinking” and “Remembering”) are in verb form, though in fact they include other meanings as well.  As I mentioned above, gemynd is a word that covers a broad spectrum of intellectual faculties, and gehygd, in addition to meaning ‘thought,’ also means ‘mind, reflection, and forethought.’ 

 We can think of our Gast-gehygd, our Ghost-Huginn, as the one who ‘thinks forward’ in time and intentionality, while our Gast-gemynd, our Ghost-Muninn, ‘thinks backward’ in time and reflective memory.  Both of these functions tie in with the ecstatic visionary and prophetic states of mind that the Ghost is capable of when inspired by wode, as I discuss in Ghost Rider.  I believe that our strong Heathen Ghost-souls not only possess extensive mind-powers, but, like Odin, we have the potential to project hypostases or embodiments of those powers into soul-constructs like the Ravens.

This connection between ghost and intellect does not exhaust the interesting clues we can find in Anglo-Saxon, however.  As I have mentioned before, and will again, Anglo-Saxon is odd in its tendency to split concepts that are expressed by one word in other Germanic languages into several separate words.  In addition to gast and aethm, as I have discussed above, there are also words in Anglo-Saxon based on the ‘and’ root that is related to ond and ahma.  ‘And’ does not appear as a stand-alone word with a spiritual meaning in Anglo-Saxon, but it is part of compound words relating to intellect, perception, and skill. 

And-wlita or “splendor of And” referred to one’s countenance, one’s face, which reflects the beauty and strength of one’s inner spirit.  Wlita is the same word as Old Norse ‘Litr’, one of the gifts given by Hoenir / Odin’s brother to Ask and Embla (Voluspa vs. 18, Poetic Edda). Wlite’s A-S meanings of ‘splendor, beauty, brightness’ as well as its meanings of ‘appearance, shape, countenance’ that it shares with ON litr, enrich our appreciation for the beautiful gift of the human shape and appearance given by the Gods, which allows our spirit to shine through our form, for those with eyes to see. The modern German Antlitz = countenance is a cognate of these words.  (For more about the Litr, please refer to my article The Shape of Being Human: The Hama Soul.)

Anglo-Saxon And-ribb was the breast, the place where breath and spirit live.  Interestingly, And-weorc meant “matter, substance, material, cause,” implying that matter is something which is a “work” of spirit-mind, or is worked by it.  Someone who is skillful or expert is “and-wis,” wise in the ways of “And,” of spirit-mind.        

In Anglo-Saxon, and-giet meant: understanding, intellect, knowledge, perception, senses, meaning, purpose.  The word ‘giet’ means ‘get’, so this word-combination implies that understanding, perception and knowledge are what our and, our spirit-mind, ‘gets’ for us: get it?  (My thanks to Ben Waggoner for the meaning of ‘giet’.)  There is a Sanskrit word which I think can cast some light on the deeper meaning of andgiet. The Sanskrit term is atma-jyoti.  I have already noted the linguistic connections between Atma and Önd / ånd in Table 1.  Jyoti means ‘light’ in Sanskrit.  A modern Hindu scholar (Ramakrishna Rao, p. 36) explains that the atma-jyoti is a glowing mental screen upon which the outer world is projected, and is then perceived from within by the inner self, the atman, which corresponds to Ahma, Önd, And. The atma-jyoti is thus, as I understand it, an intermediary between the outer, sensate world of objects, and the “inner self who knows,” the atman.   The jyoti is still part of our inner, subjective self, but is not as deep within us as the Atman-soul, the eternal, transcendent, cosmic Self.  The atma-jyoti thus seems very much related to the and-giet as a faculty of perception and understanding. 

I also see a connection here with the Anglo-Saxon and-wlita, our countenance and appearance, which is also a screen: it projects our inner self out into the objective world.  Looking at our appearance and the expressions of our face and body, people can understand much about our inner self, our thoughts and feelings. Thus, the andgiet is a (mental) screen which projects outer knowledge inwards in the form of perceptions, to be perceived by our inner self, while the andwlita is a (physical) screen, our face and appearance, which projects our inner self outward to be perceived by others.  These understandings of And-wlita and And-giet can form the basis for a Heathen practice of spiritual perception and communication.

 Touching on the split between “andgiet” meaning spirit-mind versus gast as spirit-wight, we can look at what happens to a person who loses one or the other in the Anglo-Saxon language. The person who is andgit-leas, without andgiet, is foolish and senseless.  The person who is gast-leas, or ghost-less, is dead.  It is clear from this distinction that the Ghost is a life-soul, while the andgiet is not, even though the Norse ond / aand is. By the time Christians were writing texts in Anglo-Saxon, the three-way split between spirit (a full-soul), intellect (a soul-part), and breath (a physical phenomenon with spiritual connections) was already settling into place.

I believe that in prehistoric Germanic thought, the concepts of spirit, breath,  intellect, afterlife-persona, and wights were all united as in Gothic Ahma.  At some point in time, in some of the Germanic languages, a split gradually occurred between the Ahma-concept and the Ghost-concept, giving rise to many complexities.  In modern English this historical development became further confused because Latin roots displaced native words: spirit versus ghost, intellect versus mind, and many other examples.

Table 3 shows examples of spiritual and intellectual word usage in two ancient and two modern Germanic languages, representing the Ahma /Aand branch and the Ghost branch.  I have also included some of the Anglo-Saxon “and” words.

Table 3: Spirit and Mind Meanings

Gothic	Modern Norwegian	Modern German	Anglo-Saxon
Ahma spirit, ghost, spirit-being   Anan to breathe out	Aand spirit, ghost, mind, intellect,genius Aande   breath	Geist spirit, ghost, essence   Atem breath	Gast spirit, ghost, spirit-being, breath And-ribb breast (where the breath/ spirit lives)
Ahmeins spiritual	Aandelig spiritual, intellectual, mental, ghostly	Geistlich spiritual Im Geiste in spirit, in imagination	Gastlic spiritual, ghostly, ghastly
Aha understanding In-ahs wise, prudent Ahjan to think	Aandelig spiritual, intellectual, mental, ghostly	Geistes-wissenschaften (ghost-sciences) humanities, arts	Gast-gehygd / Gast-gemynd (ghost-thought) And-giet understanding, intellect, knowledge, perception, senses
Ahmateins inspiration	vaere í ande be inspired	Geistes-blitz (ghost-lightning-strike) inspiration Geistes-flug (ghost-flight) flight of the imagination	Gastan to meditate Gast-brucende (ghost-usage / enjoyment) spiritual practicing
Uz-anan (out-breathe) to expire, die	Oppgi andan to give up the ghost, expire	Geist abgeben give up the ghost, die	Gastgedal (what is dealt out to the ghost) death

The connection between the Ghost and the Mind / Intellect also comes across clearly in words relating to mental illness and mental health in modern Germanic languages other than English.  Table 4 shows some examples of such words in German and Norwegian, with a couple of Anglo-Saxon interpolations.

Table 4: Illness or Health of the Ghost

Modern German	Modern Norwegian	English translation
Geistes-gestört (ghost-damaged) Geistes-verwirrung (ghost-confusion)	XX	mentally disturbed   mental derangement
geistige Gesundheit (ghostly health)	aands-friskhet (spirit-health)	sanity, soundness of mind
Geistes-schwach (ghost-weak)	aand-svak (spirit-weak)	feeble-minded, mentally retarded
Geistes-abwesend (ghost-absent)	aands-fravaerelse (spirit-absent)	absent-minded
Geistes-los (ghost-less)	Aand-las (spirit-less) note also Anglo-Saxon: and-leas (spirit-mind-less)	spiritless, shallow, stupid     foolish, senseless
Geist-reich (ghost-rich)	Aand-ric (spirit-rich) also Anglo-Saxon: and-wis (spirit-mind-wise) and-gitol	witty, ingenious, brilliant, highly intellectual expert, skillful   intelligent, sensible

The Impoverishment of the Ghost

As the preceding discussion and Tables 3 and 4 show, the connection between our Ghost-soul and our highest mental, creative, and spiritual capacities is clear in various ancient and modern Germanic languages, with modern English being a rather glaring exception! Our English term “ghost” implies only the category of “spooks,” things that are generally not taken seriously and which are severely limited in scope and stature compared to true Heathen meanings.  Ghosts, as they are commonly envisioned today, are generally stupid or pathologically single-minded, emotionally uncontrolled, lost, distraught, pathetic even in their (sometimes) dangerousness.  This is a far cry from the real, fully-developed stature of our Ghost-soul, our Spirit. However, the connection between our living Ghost-soul and afterlife ghosts, spooks and wights is important, as I discuss in Ghost Rider.

The connections I have described here are ones that healing and exorcizing shamans, priests,  and other Heathen spiritual practitioners must deeply understand, yet the path our English language has taken makes it difficult to grasp the connections unless we burrow more deeply into these matters.

Summary of Meanings, and Modern Heathen Usage

As I have shown, the concept of the spirit / spirits in ancient and modern Germanic languages is complex.  We need words for modern Heathen English usage that can refer to all the complex aspects I have discussed.  Modern speakers of the Scandinavian languages, German, and Dutch, all have native words that can serve the purpose reasonably well or very well, but we are not in as good a position.  In general conversation, of course there is no need to use a lot of technical jargon from this or any other field of knowledge. At times, however, Heathens who are interested in soul lore, and especially those who are dedicated spiritual practitioners either alone or serving their kindreds or other groups, might want to use more specific, technical vocabulary. I don’t mean to impose anything here; many Heathens may have a different perspective on soul lore and will not find my suggested terminology helpful. But for those who do find my approach to soul lore useful, here is a list of suggested terminology.

Modern English-speaking Heathens (and perhaps Scandinavian Heathens as well; I don’t know) often use ond to mean an ambient spiritual energy that can be accessed through magical and spiritual practices.  I think this is similar but not identical to ancient usage, as I’ve discussed in this article.  In any case, it seems best not to propose the word ond for general English-speaking use regarding the whole complex spirit-entity I have discussed here, so as not to cause confusion with its other common use as a term in magic. 

1) The divine breath of life: Athom.  (The “th” sound is voiced as in “them;” the ‘a’ is long, as in “father.”) 

2) Indwelling spirit, the spirit during life: Ghost or Athom-Ghost.  The latter term is more specific, indicating the Ghost’s living status because of its linkage with Athom, breath.

3) Afterlife persona: Ghost.  The indwelling spirit and the afterlife persona are obviously the same entity; the distinction lies in their “in-life” or “not-in-life” status.  This in turn depends on the presence or absence of Athom.  “Ghost” is useful for referring to both of them together.

4) Non-human spirit-beings: Wights, and of course more specific terms such as wood-wife, skogs-ra, heinzelmann, nixie, dwarf, etc.

5) Intellectual and creative faculties which are part of the Ahma soul, as opposed to similar intellectual faculties seated within Hugi, Mod, and other full-souls, can be referred to as  Andgiet (pronounced AHND-yit).  Note that although several other full-souls possess strong intellectual powers,  the Ghost / Ahma is the most creative because it is the one through which Wode flows, as I discuss in depth in Ghost Rider.  Our Ghost-Huginn and Ghost-Muninn are integral here, as well.

In Closing

When our Ahma is fully functional and stable, and connected with our other Souls and the Holy Ones, it provides us with many of our greatest human traits: brilliance of intellect, spiritual power and presence, inspiration and creative talents, ecstatic abilities and insights, the ability to perceive and to shape our world.  Our Ghost directly receives divine communications, inspiration, and wode: the inspired frenzy or ecstasy sent by divine powers, as I discuss further in Ghost Rider.  When we nurture our creative, intellectual and spiritual powers, we are nourishing our Ahma.  This is why it feels so good, so personally rewarding, when we do that!   We are expressing, developing and fulfilling our Ghost-self. 

 When we feel no urge to learn and create, or fear that we cannot, our Athom-Ghost is either not fully present in us, or is being suppressed in some way, often due to unfortunate life circumstances.  A psychologically unhealthy upbringing can cause severe damage to our Athom-Ghost and stunt its confidence in its abilities and gifts, until this condition is overcome.

Having here discussed the basic nature of Ahma, I continue the subject in Ghost Rider, where I look at the interconnected activity between Athom, Ghost and wode, and the kinds of practices and ecstatic states that arise from this. I discuss the relationship between Ahma and Ghost, whether they are one soul or two, touch on the relations between our human Ghosts and non-human wights, explore the connections between Ghosts and Gods, and the source and afterlife of Ahma and Ghost. 

Bookhoard

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This article was originally published in Idunna: A Journal of Northern Tradition, #69 Autumn 2006. Revised May 2021.