The Arising of the Hugr; Back-Door Connections with Hel
Winifred Hodge Rose
Where do Hugrs come from?
In the previous parts of this series, I discussed my own ideas about the origins of Hel-world, and of the Saiwalo-souls and the Dwimor-phantoms that they produce. I also wrote of my idea that Hel-world is like a giant wetland, which receives spiritual waste from Midgard and other Worlds, and gradually transforms it through ecological-alchemical processes into nutrient-rich elemental Water that fertilizes the Worlds.
There is another phenomenon that I perceive happening during these processes: the arising of proto-Hugr souls, the first stirrings of what will eventually become full-blown human Hugrs. I wrote, in Hunting the Wild Hugr and Who is Hugr?, about the Hugr as an ancestral soul, one that survives physical death, continues its connection with Midgard through its living kin and others it was close to, and often reincarnates. But where did Hugr come from originally, and how do more Hugrs arise as new souls for increasing populations? Here are my current thoughts on this question.
Let’s picture the great wetland of Hel, here: a watery, marshy land busy fermenting and transforming the mass of spiritual material it contains. In terms of the alchemical processes I described in Part V, this is the fermentation stage. Marshes in Midgard sometimes produce the phenomenon called the ‘will-o’-the-wisp’, luminous wisps of mist that hover and waft over swamps and marshes at night. Scientifically, these are formed from chemoluminescent phosphorus and methane gases arising from decaying matter. In folklore around the world, they are considered to be spooks and spirits of the marshes, which are said to lead people dangerously astray if they follow these wisps across the nighttime landscape.
The next alchemical step, after fermentation, is distillation, where the fermented mass is raised to a higher energy level by heating until it steams or boils, and purified vapors arise from this mass. In our Hel-landscape imagery here, the fermentation process itself raises energy and results in distilled vapor-wisps dancing over the surface of the Hel-marsh. The marsh is itself fermenting and distilling image-energies collected from Midgard and other Worlds.
These 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. Thus, images crystallize into desires.
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 toward 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 Hugr can begin its long journey toward experience, wisdom and power.
Back-Door Connections
In my understanding of Hel, the Saiwalo-Dwimors and proto-Hugr souls, I catch a glimpse of some fascinating back-door connections between Hel, Hugrs, Midgard, some of the God-Homes, and their associated Deities. The reason I call these ‘back door connections’ is that Hel is traditionally considered to be a place from which dead souls can never escape, nor can the living or the Deities go there except under extraordinary circumstances. The ‘front door’ between Hel and the living worlds of humans, Deities and others is considered to be firmly closed. Yet if we look at folklore and beliefs stretching across many Germanic peoples and many centuries, there are clues that hint at all sorts of ‘back door’ connections, some of which I briefly outline here. (This is not a matter of alchemy, but is relevant to the subject of Hel, which is why I’m including it here.)
I’ve sensed for years a strong connection between afterlife Hugrs and Hel, yet I don’t believe that Hugrs actually populate Hel itself, as Saiwalo-Dwimors do. Rather, I think there are ‘back doors’ between Hugr’s afterlife hangouts and Hel, not to mention my belief that proto-Hugrs arise from Hel, as I wrote above. Hugrs can readily pick up the images that Saiwalos are generating, absorbing and processing. Afterlife Hugrs can use those images to ‘clothe’ themselves and their surroundings when interacting with living humans in dreams, visions, and oracular work. Thus, when working with afterlife Hugrs, we may see similar kinds of imagery of feasting halls, ancestral gatherings, and strange environments, that we might expect to see in Hel, as well as the more homely memories of known people and environments left over from Hugr’s life in Midgard. Hugr’s active involvement with before- and after-life as well as Midgard life creates a bridge of understanding and familiarity between itself and Saiwalo souls.
Now, let’s look at the Goddesses Frigg and Saga, and their homes. Mother-Goddess Frigg’s hall is called Fensalir, meaning ‘fen-halls’. A fen is a marsh or wetland. In my article The Soul and the Sea, I wrote about various Germanic beliefs that associate souls with water: babies’ souls being drawn out of water by a Goddess or Norn, and the souls of the dead sometimes appearing from and disappearing into lakes or other water bodies. In ancient Heathen times, bogs were frequently the recipients of rich offerings and sacrifices to the Deities. Here, we have combined images of birth, death, souls and treasures being placed into, and drawn out of, water bodies, with the strong association of Deities’ involvement in various ways. I draw the conclusion that Frigg’s hall Fensalir is a ‘back door’ or hidden life-death-life passage into and out of Hel’s treasure-troves of souls, offerings, spiritual wetlands, and the phenomena that arise from there.
The Goddess Saga’s hall is called Søkkvabekkr, meaning ‘sunken bench/es’. This seems to indicate an underwater hall, similar to Fen-Halls. Some modern Heathens think that Saga is another name for Frigg, or a hypostasis of her, because of the similarity of their hall-names and the fact that Odin, Frigg’s husband, joins Saga in her hall every day, where they drink together from golden cups (Grimnismal v. 7 in the Poetic Edda). This makes sense to me! Saga’s great skill is that of telling tales, songs, sagas, history. In order to weave these tales, she makes full use of dramatic images, which then link us with Saiwalo-souls and their ability to generate and transform images. So here is another back-door between a watery God-Home and the output of Hel: images shaped into tales, arising from the ‘hall of sunken benches’.
The Earth-Goddess Nerthus, who in the past lived on an island, was bathed annually, and whose sanctity was protected by drowning anyone who glimpsed her other than her priests, is another Deity who, I would say, has a back-door to watery Hel-world. I suggest that the purified elemental Water from Hel’s wetlands rises up to Nerthus’ lands, and under the power of her Earth-Goddess nature it fertilizes the earth of Midgard.
Odin’s hall Valhalla with its name and decorations reminiscent of slaughter, its Einherjar warriors who are slain in battle and revived every day, and Odin’s association with the dead, also sounds to me like it has some serious back door connections with Hel, even though it is considered an overworld abode.
Frau Holle, a German Goddess whose name stems from the same root as ‘Hel’, roams freely between underworld, overworld and Midgard; her doors are wide. People enter her realm by falling down a well or entering a mountain cave, descending into the underworld. She is also a sky-Goddess, shaking her feather-bed so that feathery snow falls down on Midgard, and laying out her clothes to dry, seen in the long, low lines of clouds lying on the horizon, and in the dense mists draped across the sides of mountains. She is heavily involved in everyday life in Midgard as well, including birth and death processes. Holle experiences no barriers between the Worlds; all doors, back or front, are open to her.
There are also the many versions of ‘lost souls, poor souls (arme Seelen in German folklore), wandering souls’, processions of gathered souls led by Goddess-figures, the Wild Hunt, Halloween flights and lurking of spirits from the afterlife and so forth, common especially among the Continental Germanic branches up until recent times. Much of the imagery associated with these phenomena indicates that these wandering souls either escape from and return to Hel at designated times, or have failed to reach Hel after death and need to be gathered up and guided there. There are many landscape features such as caves and water bodies that are considered to be the gateways through which such wandering souls exit and return, as I wrote about in The Soul and the Sea.
Putting together clues such as these, and the evidence of ‘Hel-like places’ populated with living beings that I discussed in Hel-Dweller, I draw the conclusion that Hel is a much more permeable and nuanced place than we are told to believe by some of the Norse lore and the lore of other religions such as Christianity. Though I believe that our Ghost-souls head for the God-Homes while our Saiwalos are rooted in Hel and our Hugrs remain connected to Midgard, the existence of these back doors indicates that there may be less distance and estrangement between these souls after death than one might assume.
Note: This article is included in my book Heathen Soul Lore Foundations.