Winifred Hodge Rose
“The process of occurrence of events and the continual accumulation of more and more of them into the pattern of the past present a system of growth that is never finished. As the Norns daily bring their nurture to the tree (Yggdrasil, the World-Tree), they express the power of this sequence or pattern of the past up and out into and upon the world of men; as these ‘past’ events sustain and feed the tree, they bring into being the events of the here and now; as ‘present-day’ events occur, they fall from the tree (as ‘dew’) back into the well (Urð’s Well) and join themselves into the ever increasing complexities of the past, restructuring it, reinterpreting it, continually expressing more and more about the interrelations of all actions.” (Bauschatz p. 20-21, parentheses mine.)
Here is something of a conceptual challenge that I think is important to understand as we strive to grasp ancient concepts of orlog but evolve them into something relevant for Heathens today. I wrote in my article Norns, Causality, and Determinism that there’s a difference between the details of any specific cause-and-effect event, versus the process of causality as a phenomenon. In the same way, there’s adifference between the substance of orlog and the process of orlog. I think it would be easier if there were two different words for these things, but there are not, as currently recognized, though ‘orlog’ versus ‘wyrd’ might eventually be worked into such definitions. I won’t do so here, though, because when I’ve tried to work out such definitions for myself it seems to create more confusion, not less! Process and substance of orlog are not separate things, they are part of an integrated whole, but for the purposes of the following discussion it’s useful to look at them individually.
The process of laying orlog continues the same over time, and in both modern and ancient Heathen understanding, we use metaphors of layers laid in the Well or plastered onto the Tree to describe this process. In Bauschatz’ beautiful imagery, the Tree sucks water from the Well, and after the water-sap runs through all the life and beings upon the Tree, drops the water down as dew, representing deeds and events. Significant deeds fall within the Well and are recycled back to nourish the Tree and all life upon it; insignificant deeds fall outside the Well as ordinary dew and have no influence. (See Bauschatz chapter IV: “Action, Space, and Time.”)
In my article The Shapings of the Norns I discuss how this process of laying orlog is envisioned as ‘shaping,’ ‘scoring (runes),’ ‘laying layers,’ and ‘speaking.’ This process is captured by verbs, the words of action that describe what the Norns do as they lay the layers. The process of orlog, however it is envisioned metaphorically, is presumed to be unchanging. The Norns / Wyrd lay layers, they shape what is coming into being, they speak orlog: this is how it happens, it always has happened this way, and always must happen.
The substance of orlog is a different matter: this consists of the layers which have already been laid. The substance is not captured by verbs, words of action, but by nouns: ‘what is.’ These layers have been laid already and lie outside the direct influence of the Norns or others in present and continuous-present time.
These already-laid layers are not the same today as they were when the Eddas and other ancient poems were composed. The layers lying at the ‘surface’ of orlog, so to speak, those that are most influential in our daily lives today, are not the same now as they were then. Many years have passed since then, many layers of dew-drops have been added to the Well, centuries of rings have grown upon the Tree.
Orlog itself has accreted many more layers since that time: that is what it does. It grows and develops based on the layers continually being laid down, and those layers subtly influence the ones that accumulate above them and below them. The World Tree, nourished daily by the Norns, has grown, and the Norns have spoken daily, over the past thousand years, whether people are aware of this or not!
Once these layers of orlog have been laid, they take on a character and process of their own. Here’s an analogy involving rocks and soil that illustrates how this works. Rocks are laid down on the Earth’s surface by either volcanic or sedimentary action, but they don’t stay the same over time. Both types of rock can be changed by the pressure and heat of tectonic forces into metamorphic rock, having different features.
All types of rocks on the surface are subject to erosion and deposition as sand, silt, and clay, and further geologic changes after that, including changes into sedimentary rock. Tectonic movement and other geological processes can result in layers being reoriented—horizontal layers becoming more vertical, and even inversion of lower layers on top of higher ones.
Soils that develop over different kinds of rocks have different properties even when the surface soil constituents are similar, coming from decomposing plant and animal materials. Soils are categorized by types and subtypes, as plants and animals are by species, and soils can and do evolve into different types with different characteristics over time, influenced by what lies below them, what is deposited on top of them, and by the water that flows through it all, just like the water of the Well of Wyrd.
Soils evolve under the influence of their climate, surroundings, and inputs, almost like living things; they don’t just sit there. Plants, animals, people, microorganisms, waste products, weather, depositions and erosions by wind and water—all of the activities and materials on and below the surface—influence the metamorphosis and evolution of soils.
And not only that: churning and mixing of soil layers occurs constantly. Earthworms, burrowing animals, grubs, and other organisms mix soil around from layer to layer. Freezing and thawing cause upheavals in the soil and move rocks up to the surface. Water dissolves chemicals from the surface and carries them down to lower layers, which then are changed by this input, while rising groundwater brings up dissolved minerals from below. Soils, whose very nature is defined by layers, are not static, and neither is orlog itself, an equally dynamic, layered phenomenon involving many complex processes.
We can liken the processes of rock and soil formation to orlog as a process. We can liken the substances, the specific composition of individual rocks and soils themselves, to the substance of orlog. These substances are always changing, always subject to processes of alteration and transformation, albeit very slowly and imperceptibly from a human perspective.
I suggest that orlog is the same: what is laid down in the past is there, it supports and shapes what is layered above it, but it, too, is subject to slow changes and transformation into something subtly different. That changed substance, in turn, affects what grows above it, the new layers laid down by the ongoing processes of orlog, and everything that grows out of those layers.
Orlog Evolves as Process Creates Substance
I’ve argued here that orlog is subject to evolution in the sense that, through its natural processes and the work of the Norns, it undergoes changes in its substance through time. The layers of orlog that are most influential in today’s world—the ‘top’ layers, so to speak—are not the same as the most influential or ‘top’ layers that existed centuries ago when information about Heathenry was being recorded in the writings we have today. A lot of orlog has been laid between then and now!
And not only that: the ‘soil’ of orlog has been stirred as old information becomes available and important to us today, as we are positioned at the ‘surface’ of the substance of orlog. The old writings, archaeological evidence, folklore, linguistics, and other evidence of ancient Heathen beliefs and practices, burrowed into and dug up from ancient layers of orlog and brought into awareness in today’s world, are now creating new layers of orlog in modern Heathen consciousness and action. These older layers influence us today as Heathens, but so do all the layers of orlog that have been laid between then and now: layers laid by centuries of history and cultural change, changes in religion and philosophy, discoveries of science, technology, and many other influences.
I suggest that it is a valid exercise to approach an understanding of the substance of orlog through modern ideas and thought processes. In elder times, orlog meant primarily ‘time and circumstances of death’, and this was, in general, not heavily influenced by the individual but set by the Norns or Wyrd. Nowadays, influenced by modern scholarship and Heathen thought, and modern ways of thinking generally, we tend to think of orlog as something we mostly create ourselves (whether knowingly or not) through our choices and deeds during our lives.
If we understand that orlog-substance slowly and subtly reshapes itself through time, then it’s valid to believe that both understandings of orlog are genuine: both the ancient, more deterministic or fatalistic understanding of orlog, and the modern one that incorporates a greater role for personal choices and our responsibility for them.
Over centuries of time, orlog-substance has shaped human thought and deeds, and been shaped by them in turn. As soils physically, chemically, and microbiologically reshape themselves over time, so does the substance of orlog. The greater degree of fatalism, as seen in old Heathen and other old Pagan attitudes, has been modified by layers of science, philosophy, history, culture, changes in outlook. As a result, we may conclude that orlog is something which we can and do influence by our choices and actions today, more than was the case in the more fatalistic past.
Orlog and the Norns / Wyrd still determine the conditions that influence our choices and actions; they are conditioning forces as I discussed in my article The Fateful Roots of Orlog, and The Shapings of the Norns. But many modern Heathens believe that our own Will plays a strong role as well. My understanding is that the Norns themselves shaped this change in the substance of orlog. I think they shaped this change while Heathenry was mostly ‘underground,’ below the level of everyday consciousness, during the centuries after conversion took hold and before the re-emergence of modern Heathenry. They, and we—generations of humans—brought about this evolution in the substance of orlog. Through this development they are helping us to mature spiritually—mature through the passage of generations and all the learning and experience that we accumulate and build on, year by year, including the rediscovery of Heathenry and the wisdom it brings as we grow it forward.
Bauschatz gives a powerful description of the living, growing nature of the Well—the symbol of Time—and the Tree: the symbol of Space. The Tree is the shape of three-dimensional Space, of the concrete, ‘real’ world as we know it—our World of Midgard, and all the other Worlds as well, material within their own contexts of space. As do natural trees, this great Tree of Space expands and grows as the abstract becomes concrete and what exists in potential form becomes actualized through the deeds and actions of living beings. The Well, as he discusses, is not a static container of still water, but a powerfully active, upwelling wellspring. “Within the well, the power of all events past still surges, writhes, twists, whelms, and weaves the whole of this greater reality ‘out’”…out into the domain of the Tree, nourishing its growth and change. (Bauschatz p. 125. I love this description!).
The Norns and orlog and the Well are not static, have never been static and never will be. Their work is to nourish the World-Tree—the ever-evolving shape of all the Worlds—and help it grow. Growth means change, and our souls need to expand to encompass such changes, while still and always remaining rooted in skǫp Norna, the shapings of the Norns.
Note: This article in included in my book Orlog Yesterday and Today: The Shapings of the Norns.
Book-Hoard
Bauschatz, Paul C. The Well and the Tree: World and Time in Early Germanic Culture. The University of Massachusetts Press, 1982.