Odin’s Inner Visions

Nigel Pennick

Since the earliest times, it seems, people have tried to gain visions of the future. The
belief that it is possible to foresee what is to come may have its origins in the world of
dreams. In dreams, people are able to visit places long since destroyed, or places that do
not exist in the material world. They can talk with the dead, meet beings who have no
material existence, or sometimes even see events that come to pass later in the real
world. Similarly, the delirious visions experienced by the drugged, sick, and dying often
involve visions of the world to come.

In the same way, carefully employed techniques of envisioning and meditation can
produce experiences beyond everyday consciousness, allowing us to journey into the
inner space of the mind and thus gain valuable knowledge. Such techniques have been
used by soothsayers and seers in order to enter this dangerous and uncharted inner
landscape. They may climb alone onto almost airless mountaintops. They may enter
deep trances that mimic death itself. They may eat and drink dangerous and sometimes
toxic substances. They may fast and perform ceremonial rites of self-injury, willing
undergoing ordeals at the edge of death. As a result of these dangerous practices, they
experience dreams, hallucinations, or visions. Those returning to some level of sanity
after such experiences (for some are destroyed by them) are believed to have brought
back with them information about other worlds, including that of the future.

In legend, the runes were discovered by the god Odin through a self-inflicted ordeal.
Some of the signs in the ancient rock carvings are identical to the characters of the
alphabet that gave rise to the runes, so it is probable that a gifted individual joined the
two systems together, bringing the runes into being. This act of creative insight is
symbolized in the Norse poem Havamal, written as the words of Odin. It tells us:

“I know that I hung on the windswept tree for nine days and nine nights. Stuck with a
spear, bloodied for Odin, myself an offering to myself, bound to that tree whose roots no
one knows where they go. No one gave me bread, no one gave me drink, down into the
depths I looked to take up the runes. Screaming, I fell back from that place.”

In the Norse pantheon, Odin is the god of magic, poetry, divination, and inspiration,
qualities that, in ancient societies, were possessed by shamans. The word “shaman”
comes from the Tungus of Siberia, and means “exalted” or “excited.” A shaman,
therefore, is a person who combines the functions of diviner, medicine-person, and
mediator between the worlds of humans and transcendental powers — spirits, demons,
or gods. Shamans were important people in ancient tribal societies before established
priesthoods came into being. The remnants of Northern European shamanry exist to
this day in the surviving guising and mumming traditions of midwinter.
Shamanry gives direct access to other-worldly states of being that cannot be reached in
normal consciousness. To gain access to this otherworld, shamans undergo
self-destructive processes. They experience the psychic trauma of being dismembered,
scattered through the worlds, and finally re-assembled. Anyone who survives this ordeal
overcomes the horror, becoming reintegrated as a person with special powers.
Sometimes this happens spontaneously, as the result of an injury or illness. But more
often it is done knowingly. Odin’s ordeal is a good description of just such a shamanic
initiation. His torment was concluded by a flash of insight that allowed him to release
the full potential of the runes for human use. Such moments, when the two sides of the
brain, analytical and intuitive, are linked by a unified response, are rare in human
experience.

Such visions as Odin’s have a basis in neurological fact. Neurophysiologists have

discovered what they call “phosphenes,” geometrical shapes and images in the brain’s
visual cortex and neural system. Phosphenes are present in everyone. We can see them
with shut eyes. They also appear to us when our consciousness is altered, such as in a
trance or during meditation, when geometric shapes resembling alphabetic letters often
appear in the early stages of the trance state.

The legend of Odin seems to recall a conscious realization and classification of the inner
phosphene patterns of the brain. If this is true, the runes relate to the “nerve circuitry”
of each human being.

From Nigel Pennick’s book “The Complete Illustrated Guide To Runes”