2010-6 Pentagram English

Page 15

Countless myths have been passed down to us from the most diverse cultural periods. They contain images of early humanity depicting the origin of the world, the activity of the forces of nature, gods and also about the human fate after death.

the vision of the seer The myths collected in the Edda speak about the mysteries relating to the development of the world. The Edda transmits the one universal truth by various images, in accordance with the power of imagination of the listeners at that time. Part two of our series about the Edda deals with a lengthy prediction of the seer Volva or Voluspa. They are mythical images, and this is why we are not always able to understand them immediately. The Edda is an early-Germanic drama about the gods, the subject of which is the end of the whole world.

T

he epic The Vision of the Seer consists of sixty-six verses, and is considered a milestone of proto-Germanic poetry, in which the sum total of traditional knowledge is concentrated in a few verses. The aristocratic audience that assembled in the Althing (the free tribal meeting), was thoroughly acquainted with this and other odes. The poem abounded with ‘kennigar’, plays on words, which contained whole series of images. In our time, they may seem affected, but at the time, they were a milestone of West-Germanic literary skill. 14 pentagram 6/2010


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