Laurie Asra Sottilaro
Source: Norns at birth; marrow, bodily fluids
Type: life-soul
Keywords: Nourishment, vitality, Werold, Ørlög, Ealdor yard
Other Language Synonyms: Ealdor (Anglo-Saxon)
Spheres: Time, life-force, orlog, wyrd, mortality, causality
Afterlife: “Does not long survive the end of physical Midgard life as an entity in itself” (Rose 2021 183). “Once the Gods’ Doom has been spoken, their acknowledgment of our Werold, Aldr says farewell to its soul-mothers, the Norns, and slips back into the well from whence it came. There it dissolves and gives back all it created during life, as Werold-hama gently spreads out to become another one of the endless layers of orlay within the well” (Rose 2021 186).
Patrons: Norns, Frau Holle, Heimdal-Rig, Freyr, Odin,
Care and feeding: proper nourishment, avoiding dehydration. Pay attention to its domains, ponder Werold, time, ørlög
Foothold: Bone marrow, fluids; feeds nourishment to body, la
Interface: La: energy flowing through blood. Time and its impact on the body. Nourishment of the body and souls.
Concerns: As our body in time, Aldr tends to be focused on the changes time makes, the impact of fate, and shaping our ørlög. Its main concern is the nourishment of the soul-body complex. It doesn’t experience time the same way we do, which makes communication difficult.
Runes / Bindrune: Perthro, Laguz, Jera, Uruz, Nauthiz, Ingwaz, Raido, Eihwaz, Ac / Oak (Anglo-Frisian Futhorc).
Awareness: subtle energies in food and drink that can nourish us. Time.
Notes:
Children of time
There is a Gnostic concept, explored by Carl Jung, called the Aeon, which can be defined as “1) an age of time, 2) a finite, created world (both inner and outer), and 3) The godly Spirit indwelling or embodying that time and world. As we shall see here, these meanings overlap very interesting with Germanic Aldr and Werold” (Rose 2021 166). Humans are children of time, Aldar-beornum or Eldi-barn. The Aldr then is our Body-in-time, or our continuity. It is bounded by Ealdoryard, which coincides with our physical exterior, and its energy is very close to the physical spectrum.
“Our Aldr souls are active agents of the Norns in Midgard. Input, feedback, and throughput between the Norns and Midgard flow through the Aldr-soul dwelling within each of us, weaving the Orlay of This-World.” (Rose 2021 184) Aldr has very few personal traits, it “does not play a significant role in our personality, nor does it provide general capabilities such as thought, emotion or will, though it does communicate through intuition” (Rose 2021 188). One of its primary purposes is to govern time related changes such as puberty and menopause, and our nutrition.
Ørlög is of particular interest to the study of our Aldr. It “gives our Aldr and our life-span substance and dimension within the domain of time, as our Lich gives us substance and dimension in space. Ørlög does this through the property of ‘continuity,’ which is the analog in Time of the property of ‘shape’ in Space…this linkage and continuity through time gives us our time-body, which is our Werold: the totality of our lifetimes experiences and deeds. The linkage or ‘glue’ that holds our time body together is ørlög” (Rose 2022 160). Ørlög and its resulting choices continually shape our Werold.
What a Wonderful Werold
Aldr weaves Werold as its hama; that is, “the space-time each person occupies and shapes during their lifetime” (Rose 2021 177) becomes like a tapestry, surrounding the Aldr, creating a supporting structure called the Werold. “Our Werold is our lifetime and everything it contains: all our thoughts and deeds, choices and experiences. We may think of everything that has happened with us up until now as ‘the past,’ but in fact, it is the Werold we have woven, the garment or soul skin of our Aldr soul … It is worthwhile to learn to see your Werold as a tapestry of threads. Some of these threads were spun by yourself, others were spun by the Norns, and by people who have influenced you or touched your life significantly, for good or ill. Others are spun by the society and culture we live in, by the history of our kin and culture, and by many other factors, such as genetics” (Rose 2022 165). When we die, the Aldr goes to the Urðarbrunnr, the Well of Fate, and the Werold remains in the well to become layers of ørlög itself.
Aldr and Health
“A primary function of the Aldr soul is to nourish and support our physical life and all the achievements and experiences of this life” (Rose 2021 163-4) “Our Aldr soul is, among other things, a channel for nourishing spiritual energies to flow into our Lich. This inflowing nourishment is contained within our Ealdorgeard or Ealdor-yard, an energetic construct that maps onto our physical body, where our Ealdoryard energetically overlaps with our Lich-Hama and Ferah” (Rose 2022 155).
Nourishment is not just physical, but emotional, mental, and spiritual as well; we are affected both by its presence and its lack, as well as inputs that are not nourishing. The Lich is much like Urd’s well: layers of ørlög accumulate over time, like rings of a tree. We can assume that “grief and related emotions actually cause a slow, creeping loss of the Aldr-soul, showing the great importance and need for methods of emotional as well as physical healing in order to keep our Aldr hale” (Rose 2021 171).
“For those who work within a shamanic mindset, the Ealdoryard is often the location where energy-intrusions or ‘worms’ and other illness-causing wights make their lairs, impacting the Lichama and Ferah through the Aldr soul. Grief and suffering deeply affect the Aldr, and over the long term, can cause erosion of this soul, limiting its ability to funnel spiritual nourishment into us, and leading into a vicious cycle of suffering, illness and inner loss” (Rose 2022 155-6).
Winifred proposes the term Aldr-wita (‘wita’ meaning ‘knowledge’) as an analog to the Vedic Ayurveda, for a heathen approach to holistic healing. A male practitioner would thus be called an aldr-witega or aldr-vitki for man, while a female practitioner would be an Aldr-witegestre, aldr-witegess or aldr-witka. She also proposes alveig meaning ‘nourishing drink’ for any holistic health potion, like a healing tisane or tincture (Rose 2021 p. 169). The work of Aldr-Wita would include rune work, herbalism & natural remedies, spiritual / magical healing, healthy lifestyle, & emotional support networks.
The Ordeal
Many Heathens perceive life as a series of ordeals to be overcome. Ordeal in this context meaning “the primal roots of a given ordeal-circumstance: the ørlög, the weaving of wyrd, which has been dealt out for me to face here and now, in this place, in this time…life itself is an ordeal in this sense: a complex, patterned knot or nexus of strands of ørlög, arising from the past, gathered together in the present, and shaping the future to come. The ordeal of life…shapes the whole pattern of our Being, and shapes the meaning that our life holds. Our purpose in life is not to avoid or escape true Heathen ordeals, but to rise to the challenge they offer: the challenge not only to meet the ordeal successfully, but to use it as a vehicle to emerge from the ordeal with greater soul-qualities than we had when we went into it” (Rose 2022 161). There are absolutely worse ways to look at hardship; this puts it into a healthy framework.
Possible Traits:
| Appropriate care toward age | Age obsessed |
| Comfortable with entropy | Fear of obsession with fate |
| Health food nut | Fights entropy |
| Mindfully shapes ørlög | Follows every diet trend |
| Timelessness | |
| Wyrd/Orlog in our lives |