Laurie Asra Sottilaro
Source: Dæmon that influences womb, wisps of imagery and longing in Hel
Type: Dæmon-soul/wander-soul
Keywords: Desire, Wish, Longing
Other Language Synonyms: Hugi, Hyge, Hugs, Hu
Spheres: heart
Afterlife: reincarnation, ancestral spirit
Patrons: Ancestors, Odin
Care and feeding: pursuing its interests, clarifying Hugr, awareness,
Foothold: breast, around the heart, organs of perception, chemicals of emotion, sexuality & reproduction
Interface: Laeti and Litr
Concerns: Very focused in Midgard life, the Hugr tends to be focused on our desires, and on protecting our inner self. It’s very active in the arcane, and connected especially to the ancestors. Some individuals with ADHD feel as though Hugr has a large role to play in ADHD with regards to attention regulation and impulsivity.
Runes / Bindrune: Mannaz, Ansuz, Eihwaz, Algiz, Dagaz, Ingwaz, Kenaz
Awareness: “communication from ancestors… hidden knowledge… motivations of others, strategic advantage, general powers of observation and thought, framework of thought, love and desire, friendship and trust, opinions, worldview, Midgard life and activities in general” (Rose 2022 340).
Notes:
What is Hugr?
As mentioned in the previous section, Hugr is often conflated with Mod. Just like Mod, it can act independently, as in Thrymskvida when Thor’s Hugr leaps on getting his hammer back. Hugr has three domains, and a matching threefold nature. Its three domains are:
- It’s intrinsic self: love, grief, anger, and emotions. In this domain, it influences character, temperament, behavior, and moods, and provides the mental framework for thought.
- The borders between self and not-self: as an advisor and counselor, Hugr wards the heart and mind, is the source of forebodings, and participates, if relevant, in oracular spaecraft; the level the participation in such matters depends on Hugr’s development and our ability to hear.
- Sometimes Hugr moves outside the self, either as a shapeless power or as a Hugham (‘astral form’) with supernatural powers; Hugr’s afterlife of course takes place in this domain.
Similarly, Hugr’s threefold nature is as follows:
- “It is an inner self, where our desires and longings are rooted, where our thoughts and feelings work away like yeast within ourselves and establish our framework of thought. Along with Mod and others of our souls, Hugr establishes our character, our persona and ego” (Rose 2022 269).
- “Hugr is an inner warder, a soul-being who stands on the boundary between our inner and outer worlds, offering warnings, cautions, rede and wisdom, foresight and insight into knowledge that is hidden from our conscious mind. Hugr also has many skills and abilities for human social interaction, both positive and negative” (Rose 2022 269).
- “In some circumstances Hugr can roam as an independent soul-entity, away from our body and sometimes even from our conscious awareness, to take its own actions in Midgard or in other worlds” (Rose 2022 269).
As mentioned above, “our Hugr constructs and maintains our framework of thought, and expresses itself through it as we live in this world of Midgard. We can see the framework as one of Hugr’s hamas, a soul skin that it creates during Midgard life. When we look at it in this way, we can see a linkage between Hugr’s thought framework hama, and Aldr’s Werold-hama” (Rose 2022 238). This may be the hidden reason why “Modern heathens often think of Hugr as a soul-part which provides the capacity for rational (left brain) thought or for ‘thought’ in general. Evidence from lore and folklore amply shows that Hugr also encompasses emotions, temperament, disposition, character, occult and magical abilities, and can leave the body as our double or in other forms and take action on its own. Our Hugr also serves us as an advisor and warder, and as a harbinger, bringing forebodings of things to come” (Rose 2021 228).
Hugr Thulur
The following are Hugr’s kennings from Skáldskaparmál:
Mind, tenderness, love, affection, desire, pleasure, disposition, attitude, energy, fortitude, liking, memory, wit, temper, character, troth, anger, enmity, hostility, ferocity, evil, grief, sorrow, bad temper, wrath, duplicity, insincerity, inconstancy, frivolity, brashness, impulsiveness, impetuousness.
Similar usage in other languages breaks down as follows:
- Old Norse: mind, mood, desire, wish
- Anglo-Saxon: thought, mind, heart, disposition, intention, courage, pride
- Old Saxon: sense, perception, mind; thought; mind, soul, heart, disposition, temperament, spirit, feeling; heart
- Old High German: mind, heart; compound words: to remember, to think, sense;
- Gothic: intelligence, thought, understanding; compounds: to think, imagine, believe; to deem, consider; a thought, mind, conscience; to remove it is to make senseless, stupefy, bewitch.
Hugr Origins
Fermentation in Hel “raises energy and results in distilled vapor-wisps dancing over the surface of the Hel-marsh… these rising wisps are the proto-Hugrs, formed of image-energies that arise from the great transformational wetlands of Hel. As they dance over the surface of the wetland they gather more images, wrapped around themselves like yarn on a spindle. This is the alchemical stage of coagulation, and the result of images coagulating together is the arising of some form of desire, relating to the images. The desire may be a longing to reach toward these images, motivating the urge to achieve or realize them in some way. In some cases, negative images will instead spark a desire to get away from them or overcome them. These images of the Hugr’s formation lay the groundwork for the Hugr’s motivating forces: longing, yearning, desire, shaped by the originating images, which crystallize into this Hugr-ling’s core essence… At this stage, the Hugr-ling has no power or knowledge of how to attain its desires; it is simply a wisp of longing. But the energy of its longing is enough to draw it up towards the Midgard plane, the source of the imageries that the Hugr-ling is formed from, and the place where its longings and desires will be played out. When it reaches the spiritual-energy planes of Midgard, it encounters other, more developed Hugr-spirits, who have already lived human lives, once or many times. Through association with these disembodied but experienced Hugr-souls, the Hugr-ling is ‘apprenticed,’ so to speak, and begins to develop its powers. Ancestral, experienced Hugrs guide the new ones into association with parents-to-be, spurring their desire and, hopefully, love for each other and their desire for a child. Thus a new home is created for the Hugr-ling: a child with its full household of souls, and the young Hugr can begin its long journey toward experience, wisdom, and power ” (Rose 2021 489-491).
Hugrs appear to maintain a ‘back-door’ into Hel, and can clothe themselves in its imagery. Certain locations in mythology make the wetlands analogy of Hel more clear: Fensalir is associated with wetlands, and sacrifices, both human and otherwise. Sokkvabekkr also has associations with wetlands, and Saga is known to use dramatic images, “which then link us with Saiwalo-souls and their ability to generate and transform images” (Rose 2021 493). Nerthus had a similar wetlands arrangement, as Frau Holle still does. There are also wandering souls, and the Wild Hunt, which appear related to Hel, and imply a back door.
Hugr Life
“Hugr longs for trusted relationships, for networks of social interaction and mutual support, and all the emotional richness and complexity involved with this” (Rose 2022 242). “When we make friends, or have any other kind of relationship with another person, positive or negative, it is largely the other person’s Hugr (and Sefa) that we are forming that relationship with” (Rose 2022 244). “Hugr’s love and attraction are more focused on the most intimate forms: romantic love, sexual desire, and also the heart-to-heart intimacy of our closest friendships… it is of the greatest importance for Hugr to be able to share its deepest thoughts and feelings with a few true and trusted loved ones” (Rose 2022 251).
“Hugr is a shining, glowing, unearthly-white otherworldly being, and may be associated with other beings described in this way, such as the Alfar” (Rose 2021 230). “I believe that both reincarnation, and service for a time as an ancestral spirit, are two of the choices or fates of the Hugr soul after death of the body” (Rose 2021 233). “Our Hugrs are much engaged with all our endeavors throughout our lives, and when we die, that engagement, that interest, usually continues. Thus, the disembodied Hugr after death usually wishes to attach itself to the lineage of people that it was associated with during life, to continue the story, the engagement, and to use the skills and wisdom it has accumulated during its embodied life in Midgard” (Rose 2021 245). Hugr in the afterlife can become a Dis or Alf, reincarnate (usually in the family line), while Hugrs of ill will may become haunts. Other options include possibly becoming lesser Norns, or really any human-like spirit. “The Hugr’s desires, born of love, hostility, envy, engagement, wanting to stay involved, drive such afterlife choices” (Rose 2021 269).
“When your Hugr gives you rede and knowledge, it is likely coming from ancestral sources as well as Midgard and other sources that Hugr taps into” (Rose 2021 296-7). It is possible to ‘lean in’ to this connection; “an aspect of ancestral magic that I strongly advise, is to move your consciousness into your Hugr soul with its powers of discernment and subtle thought, when contacting the world of the ancestors… That way you will have real-time awareness of dangers, opportunities, insights, precautions, that might not be available, or might be delayed or misinterpreted, if you rely entirely on your conscious mind” (Rose 2021 298). “When living people contact departed ancestors and others they knew during life, or want to get to know after life, my sense is that it is usually the Hugr souls who are the ones contacted, especially if the spirits one encounters seem very human-like, with personalities, emotions, thoughts, similar to those of living humans” (Rose 2021 476).
The Protective Hugr
Hugr is centered near the heart, where it protects the heart and Sefa; to take advantage of another takes a contest of Hugrs. The Hugr can also acquire a kind of sickness, as with Frey pining for Gerd. “Because Hugr enjoys the play of minds and words, enjoys being clever and interacting with witty people, it can be distracted from both of those greater impulses of self-protection and of trust and love” (Rose 2021 262). When properly engaged in its duty, “the Hugr is our warder, our lookout, our forerunner, our scout, our rede-giver or advisor, our Hugbode, in the otherworldly domains of magic as well as in our everyday-world” (Rose 2021 314-5). “Hugr also loves, and desires friendship and trust…Hugr, however, is not by nature tender and vulnerable, as Sefa is. Hugr is strong and wily, courageous and deep-thinking. One of its important soul functions is that of the Warder, who can to an extent foresee or intuit what is coming toward us, and who has very good insight into the inner motives and intentions of others” (Rose 2021 326). Hugr is not always kind and protective however; for some, Hugr is a grim, manipulative, and cynical being, preying on other people’s Sefas. Discernment regarding such things is aided by having a clarified Hugr.
The Clarified Hugr
When working with our Hugr, “Our aim can be to make our Hugr, and the thought-framework it constructs, less of a clouded, roiled, confused, obstructed mash-up of thoughts and feelings, and more of a mental-emotional patterning of transparency, brilliance and power, channeling the best of what we can be, rather than the worst. Clarifying the Hugr may involve reevaluating not only our present life experiences and the assumptions and thought patterns they have generated, but possibly past life experiences as well … The relative clarity or cloudedness of our Hugr will thus affect how well we can perceive and experience our other souls,” (Rose 2021 271) because sometimes spirits must contact us through the thought framework that Hugr creates. “…This illustrates the importance of hlutro hugiu, a ‘clear or clarified Hugi’, which can observe a situation without distortions, assumptions, hang ups and other baggage, and thus produce wise, clear-minded rede for us to follow” (Rose 2021 263). “Clarifying the Hugr involves – not necessarily the separation of thought from emotion – but the awareness of how our emotions are involved in our thoughts” (Rose 2022 232). “This whole instinctive / conditioned / reasoned / subliminal amalgam of complex mental and emotional action and reaction is the core of our Hugr soul, though other souls such as Mod are involved, as well” (Rose 2022 228).
The Wishful Hugr
One of Odin’s bynames is Óski, meaning ‘Wish,’ which demonstrates how important the concept was to the elder heathen. A “wish or longing is a ‘pull’ towards something outside oneself” (Rose 2022 252). “It’s notable that the old meaning of Wish focuses on a state of achievement, of ‘perfection’ in the sense of ‘completion:’ first something was longed-for, then it was achieved or obtained: the wish was completed and perfected. Wish was a Being, and also a state-of-being that came about through contact with, or action by, the Wish-being or Wish-power. Wish itself is power, in this view” (Rose 2022 250). Nowadays, a ‘wish’ implies that it’s something that you can’t get, “an expression of powerlessness and possibly even of hopelessness” (Rose 2022 251). When working with unachievable wishes, one can express one’s wish symbolically, or through someone else, transform the wish into something achievable (which may require a bargain with Hugr), or “develop a deep, serene acceptance of the situation” (Rose 2022 260). Remember that Hugr reincarnates; perhaps there are ways to train for the next life, with things unachievable in this one.
The Occult Hugr
Mounds are connected in European esotericism with beings known as wights, such as the kobold and the haugbui, the ‘dweller in the mound’. Burial mounds represent ancestral connections, but also can represent rebirth in some form for the Hugr. “The Hugr spirit or daemon appears as a ghost or an otherworldly being such as a kobold or hobgoblin. It is associated with mounds and burial sites, and with the mounded belly of the pregnant mother” (Rose 2021 234). There are still “more associations of elements already discussed: eerie sounds associated with burial mounds and with the otherworlds, crying out of the newborn or the newly-empowered, and expressions of deep emotion that can come from an upwelling of the Hugr” (Rose 2021 241).
“The ‘magical force’ aspect of Hugr comes from its powerful rooting in manifestations of life, growth, death, decay, and rebirth – the deep soul-powers of nature and Earth-life. The watchfulness, the careful attention to these deep powers and their manifestations in both embodied and disembodied life-states, is the hallmark of Hugr’s potential wisdom and power” (Rose 2021 243). Hugr is “a being who expertly perceives, observes and thinks, who has access to hidden knowledge and serves as an advisor, warder, and harbinger within our own complex of soul beings” (Rose 2021 244).
There is an interesting kenning for the Hugr, the ‘wind of the troll-wife.’ It is probably due to the fact that the “Hugr leaves the body more readily than any other soul – its departure may not even be noticed by our conscious mind – and it is the most active and versatile of the souls as an independent entity” (Rose 2021 253-4). This unconscious action of the Hugr is prevalent in the lore, for example “envious thoughts and feelings are a major driver of Hugr’s magical activities as seen in Scandinavian folklore” (Rose 2021 268-9). Negative thoughts can inadvertently cause harm through the power of the Hugr. Envy especially can cause harm. Scandinavian folklore is rife with examples of intentional and inadvertent use of the Hugr to accomplish uncanny things. A strong Hugr, motivated by ill-will, can burst forth from the body in a wave of power. “As deVries points out, the Hugr can move out of the body as breath or wind” (Rose 2021 238).
Hugr resides in the chest, and is often associated with “a wallowing, whelming, churning, upwelling sensation…caused by the process of power swelling within the Hugr and seeking a way out” (Rose 2021 238). “Hugr has the capacity to swell with power, and seeks a way to express it” (Rose 2021 239). In the lore there is one particular dwarf named Thjoðrœrir, or ‘Folk-stirrer,’ who “stirs our Hugrs to swell and dwell within the mighty flows of power that run between us and the holy tribes of the Aesir, the Alfar, and the deep and broad Hugr of Odin himself” (Rose 2021 242). Thus, Hugr “may act upon others outside oneself through magical means, a flowing or bursting outward of occult power” (Rose 2021 203).
Sometimes when a person is sleeping, their Hugr may exit the body and act independently. “The extrusion of a personal double or a person’s soul in animal form seems to ‘just happen’ when circumstances warrant it, among people who were shape-strong or hamrammr” (Rose 2021 290). There are other unusual phenomena that can take place as well. For example, “people’s Hugrs can be in close and instant communication with each other, even when in our conscious minds and the physical world, this instantaneous communication would not be possible” (Rose 2021 304). In order to bring such things under control, practice and discipline are necessary. “The key to occult work that is both effective and ethical is to bring our Hugr into full consciousness and work consciously with it and our other souls together, as a team” (Rose 2021 295).
Possible Traits:
| Bold | Cynical |
| Clear sight | Disinterested |
| Connected to family & ancestors | Fear of the occult |
| Courage | grasping |
| Decisive | Grim |
| Deep thought | Hard |
| Determination | Lack of connection to family |
| Fierce | Lack of focus |
| Firm of purpose | Manipulative |
| Generous | Rationalize |
| Goes after desires | Self-centered |
| Good analysis | Self-deception |
| Good judgement | |
| Laser focused | |
| Mind-hungry | |
| Protective | |
| Strategic intelligence | |
| Strength | |
| Value close relationships | |
| Value kinship | |
| Will | |
| Wily | |
| World-Wise |