Einar Selvik" said:
"...A lot of people tend to confuse Ragnarök with the Christian term 'Armageddon', which means 'The End of the World.' But, that is not the case here because in the Old Norse way of thinking, everything moved in cycles. So it's basically telling the story about a ring that ends, but also a ring that begins. So something needs to die, for something else to live. And these days, when the sun is turning, that is what it's about. To let die what needs to die. It's the end of the death cycle, of the year. Today, or in these days, this is when summer is born. This is when light of the year is born. In these days. So it's a very good opportunity ... to let die stuff that you don't need to carry around anymore. To make room for new stuff that you can reap during later this year." ~Einar Selvik
My view:
I feel there is no reason to believe Ragnarok is the end of the year cycle. I do not like it when people start to explain Paganism as all symbolic and archetypes. Rather than trying to understand their ancestors, they seem to be ashamed of traditional ideas and want to turn them into more fashionable abstract ideas they make up themselves. I can understand a scientist taking in such a detached view, but surely for people in a religion it means much more. We should not readily explain away what seems odd to us, or makes no sense to us. Give the ancient ones some credit.
Ragnarok is surely be taken as the end of the World as we know it, even the Human Race as it exists now. In many ancient religions we find the idea of the end times and that it begins with a great battle. The ancients understood well that we live in cycles within cycles within cycles within cycles etc..
The year is part of a bigger cycles. A cycle itself is broken up in (two, tree or four) periods. Just look how the life cycle can be divided in two, three, or four stages as well. In Hinduism for instance life is traditionally divided in 4 stages of 25 years, like we divide the year to in 4 seasons. But the Celts used less seasons.
Humanity as well was believed to have a life cycle of four era's. In many old civilizations we find the idea of the Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. The Greek and the Egyptians spoke of them. In Hinduism it is called Yuga's in the cycle they call a day of Brahmaa (the Creator God). This is relevant as European Pagan language and traditions are connected with Vedic ones, and we often find very similar ideas.
The Human race has been reborn several times already. Presently we live in the last era, the Iron Age or Kali Yuga. At the end of this era humanity (or large part of it) will die and be reborn with the new cycle and begin another Golden Age. At the end of the cycle people get more and more corrupted, just like the human body gets corrupted near the end of life. In new era's new Gods reign supreme. Gods are immortal but their reign is not eternal.
The Iron Age we live in is the age in which people become more and more unfeeling (hard as iron) and less social and spiritual. It is the Age in which feeling is more and more replaced by self-centered reasoning. That is why people seek purely rational explanation for things. Nowadays people try to impose constructed rational ideas on everything. Even their feelings they want to give rational explanations. Otherwise they find it hard to accept them. Modern Man wants control, power over things. He no longer respects Nature as it is, he wants to control it, rule it. He worships a supreme God of power or wants to be a supreme God himself. No longer he understands that the Gods too play their parts to serve the rest.
The Germanic people had a strong belief that the grand cycle was coming to an end. Every year the days would get shorter, but luckily with the help of Wodan the Sun would be rescued every year. But the forces of the dark were growing and one day the force of the dark would finally swallow the Sun.
Now our ancestors observed and understood Nature very well. They just did not understand the underlying mechanisms as well as we do. Our science is much better. They did not understand the mechanism that caused all the cycles, but they did observe the cycles. And to throw that overboard and recplace it with a cheap analogy of the year cycle is really a loss.
And Enar is wrong here, we do find the same ideas in translation also in Abrahamic religions, as Abrahamism is based on rehashed Pagan myths. In Hinduism the last era will end with the coming of Kalki, the last incarnation of Vishnu, the Lord of Time. In Christianity many believe in the return of Jesus, In Islam for some the Madhi. Many Christians today believe in the end time, even the Muslims of IS are motivated by the thought of this end time.
And scientists? More and more scientist believe in the idea of the Singularity, an event that could well mean the end of the Human Race as we know it. Maybe the new human race will be a machine race, or maybe future human races will live in abstract digital worlds. Or maybe the great battle will be against the machines.
So these ideas are all but dead. They live in all kinds of ways in different cultures. The uncontrolled way humanity is moving to an unknown destiny may well end in a major crisis. And from the ashes a new humanity may arise as before. We know we are not the first human race to walk the earth. Disruption is typical for the end of every cycle, it always ends with a rupture, in the same way that our life ends with a rupture (death) as well. You can not be reborn without dying.
Our ancestors were not stupid. They studied Nature. Their brains were as good as ours, probably better and they had much more time to observe and think about these things. In fact the last ten thousand years we lost a considerable part of our brains, muscles, health, even size. What grows fast is our collective knowledge and arrogance, but not our individual intelligence or memory. Those are going down.
If the ideas of our ancestors feel alien, and you want to rationalize them, you are rather a philosopher then a Pagan. Philosophers is what really destroyed Paganism replacing age old wisdom and connection to Nature and the Spirits with a highy idealized abstract thinking, that distanced itself from Nature. The Greek philosophers ridiculed the Gods. And with that they also undermined the Greek city states whose unity and strength very much came from worshiping the City patron Gods.
Many words or descriptions in myths are not to be taken literal. One has to understand the meaning of the symbols and poetic descriptions. But neither are they to be taken as intellectual abstract ideas. We also need to understand that ancient people used all kind of analogies to describe the deeper nature. They also created endless honor titles for Gods or people. They used language in a different way than we do today.
If you think Gods are symbols and Ragnarok is the year cycle you are simply projecting moddern ideas on ancients texts. It is driven by a desire to get away from the idea of end of the world. That sounds too unbelievable, so lets create another explanation. O yes, I got it, our ancestors found a symbolic way to describe the year cycle. No, they did not! They did not mix up cycles. If the theory seems to fit it is only because different cycles go through similar phases.
No religion can survive on such abstract ideas. When you say Jesus did not really live he was just a archetype and God is just metaphor for perfection, you effectively kill religion. Then you are an atheist living in a combination of materialism and abstract philosophy. That is a way to mentally distance yourself from existence.
Pagan religion is a way to connect yourself to existence, to feel deeply connected with Spirits around us, with Ancestors before us and our offspring after us, and we do not just live a life, we live a story. We play a role in huge play. And in that play are all kinds of actors, the Living, the Dead, the Gods, the Demons, etc.
That is why tradition is hugely important for a people, it gives each member a part in an ongoing story. He does not come to this world as an accident of Nature to survive for a while. No, a Pagan comes to this world to play a role in cosmic story, once again. A story he plays with all the connected spirits. And every story is part of a bigger story. When you are not part of a tradition, you are a rolling stone lost in space and time.
No the end of the world/human race is not a stupid idea. Everything that begins also comes to an end. That goes for an individual human being and the Human race as a whole. There was a day, no humans walked the Earth and that day will come again. Come what may come, for our ancestors the most important thing was to walk this world with dignity. For our ancestors the world was a big stage, and they were the actors in a play seeking honor.
Were they wrong? I do not think so.
Ragnarok is coming!
