Varg Vikernes
"Reflections on European Mythology and Polytheism" 2015

The Ancient Scandinavian description of man is as I see it rather interesting; it describes the physical body as the lîk («corpse»), the life-force that gives life to the corpse is called vörðr («guardian»), the ability to move and learn through repetition is called hamr («shape»), the mind and the ability to reason is called hugr («mind») and the spirit - giving divine powers - is called önd («spirit»).

Everything physical has a lîk.
Every plant also has a vörðr.
Every animal also has a hamr.
Every human being also has a hugr.
Every super-human also has an önd.

The lîk needs hard work or physical exercise; the vörðr needs warmth, sleep and light, the hamr needs joy and appreciation; the hugr needs safety, creative expressions, music, art and dreams as well mental challenges, challenges for the memory, concentration and reasoning; the önd needs harmony, a super-individualistic perspective and a higher meaning. However, the bodies need the opposite of this as well, to thrive and survive; the lîk needs rest; the vörðr needs cold and darkness; the hamr needs sorrow, grieving, silence and emptiness; the hugr needs danger, peace of mind and calm; the önd needs disharmony and sadness as well as ruthlessness. Too much of one thing can only be destructive though, no matter what that one thing is. Each needs both the positive and the negative. Day and Night. Summer and Winter. Sun and Moon.

If the divine man loses his spirit, he becomes a normal human being. If a normal human being loses his mind he becomes an animal. If an animal loses his shape it becomes a plant. If a plant loses its life-force it becomes a corpse.

In a more classical esoteric language these bodies would be called the Physical Being (lîk), the Etherial Being (vörðr), the Astral Being (hamr), the Mental Being (hugr) and the Spirit (önd).

The physical being is of course our flesh and bones, so to speak; the vessel carrying all the other beings. The life-force could probably be said to reside in the blood or some other «life liquid», but most likely in the heart itself. The shape would be our ghost form, an invisible shape filling out the entire physical body (and even if you lose a physical limb, the ghost limb would still be there). The mind would naturally be located in the brain.

So what about the spirit? Where does it reside?

The thymus is a very rarely mentioned human organ, mainly because we really don’t know what it’s for, save that we do understand it seems to be a part of the immune system. Plato mentions thymos, as one of the three parts of the psyke, and - like so often is the case - the ancients were closer to the truth than we are today. We can thus assume that the spirit resides in the thymus, although certain animals too has a thymus. What to make of that? Well, to have a spirit you need a thymus, but the presence of a thymus does not mean you have a spirit. It just happens to be the organ that will house the spirit if it is present.

The Greeks today use the term to mean «anger». As we know the name Ôðinn translates as «fury» as well as «mind», and the rune symbol linked to Ôðinn is called AnsuR, from PIE *ans-/and- (Norse âss, known better from its plural form æsir), which translates as «spirit», and which is a symbol of a fisherman's spear point, of the type used in the Stone Age to catch fish. This is the spirit that descends from the sky and attaches itself to the earthly body and turns it divine! Ôðinn in man, the deities in man, the divine man. Naturally the other mentioned term for spirit, önd, also derives from the same PIE root (*ans-/and-).

Ôðinn becomes more and more interesting as a deity, and we understand how many think of him as «the king of the gods», even though Tyr (older form TîwaR) is obviously mightier and indeed the true king of the gods. Tyr is the Sky God. Ôðinn is just an aspect of Tyr. They are one and the same, of course, and yet different; Ôðinn is the heavenly beam that enters man and inspires him!

The name of TîwaR is interesting too; it translates as «beam», but became known as meaning «gods». He is the divine light not from the Sun or Moon, not from any one of the planets or any one star in particular, but from every celestial object emanating light! He is the Sky God after all! Ôðinn is the divine light that inspires man; the light man sees and takes in.

This light in turn can come from any one celestial object, or from several of course.

If you remove the thymus organ from a man he will not die, but the organ assumed to house his spirit is no longer there, so we can assume that he will no longer have a spirit. He will be just an ordinary man from then on - unless of course if he already was, in which case nobody will see any change whatsoever. If you remove the heart you no longer have a life-force, so you will in any case die, and the spirit will leave you. If you remove the brain you will no longer have a mind, and I guess life without a brain is not too common either - although we can easily think otherwise when we see the actions of our politicians.

Only the mainly Neanderthal man has the ability and capacity to «house» a spirit, to be inspired by the deities, to live as part of a deity, to be a deity himself! To do this you need to have Neanderthal blood. Further, you need to have a sufficiently advanced and noble mind, and of course a thymus not damaged. Finally, you need to trigger the enlightenment, so to speak, by way of religion and religious rituals.

This, ladies and gentlemen, explain why I - an actually rather hopelessly a-religious person - find the Ancient European (Neanderthal) religion so important. Every other religion on this planet is just a misinterpretation and misconception of the Ancient European religion, and sometimes even a twisted, sinister, perverted and soiled version of it as well - as is the case for the Abrahamistic religions.

There are three human species and many races of men today, but there are really just three types of men; those who are divine, those who have the potential to become divine and those who are not divine.

Varg Vikernes