Heidrun

In follow-up to my previous post, a friend on a heathen forum I belong to shared this information:

The only feminine early beings of Heathenism are Audhumbla and Heidrun.

Stretching from Helheim to Valhalla ... bear with me as I lay out the facts.

Heidrun - Derived from Old Norse heiðr meaning "heath". In Norse mythology Heidrun was a she-goat who would eat the leaves from the tree of life and produce mead in her udder.

Heidrun makes all the mead for rejoicing warriors in Valhalla.

Heid means heath - an area of land that is covered with grass and small shrubs

Heid can also mean bright.

Run, of course, refers to the Mother Rune.

So, Heidrun combines all of these meanings.

As this all pertains to the Runic All-Mother, I think that (taking together all of the above meanings), my Dagaz rune poem (describing my preincarnate journey of consciousness and experience of an event that occurred 5 billion years ago through the field of the sun into the making of the earth) links me to this awesome creature of Germanic folklore. So, Heidrun, in my experience, tells of the journey of consciousness through a field of topographic brilliance (Heid) into the secret (run) making of the primeval earth (a heath - a land covered with grass and shrubs).

The video from the previous post describing the birth of the earth from the debris of a newborn sun:



My Dagaz Rune poem I wrote 15-20 years ago:

first rhythms ever plunge, eternal hosts driven into life
drawing through a field of topographic brilliance
where judgment lovingly flows, churning out whole stones
resting against asymmetries trying, like diamonds in chaos
proto-perception foams, over annihilating operations
and from it, dark bursts of lucidity finely entwine
coarse grains of almost something, almost yet sufficient
the silent rush of yet nothing slides, wildly as percolating pivots
diligently thread through it, casting clarity
upon myriads, hard pauses startle into vision
projecting arrays without mass, strings of confluency
impressing discovery, a shadowy tail-end lingers
between depths of opposite observation
iterating embraces of many meanings like quasi-quanta
gathering functions about the head and, and
spinning spectra, pushing forward, yearning toward home
not knowing, yet only knowing
as some featureless reach edging edges stretches out
the magnetic sweet dance
where divisions collapse like crystal caves
softly sprinkling the belly of the night divine
with bytes of thoughtbare kisses
extending the glorious field of apprehension

There is no doubt in my mind that great mysteries of consciousness are hidden in the myths of our folk. 

This insight is offered by another friend on the same forum:

Runic magic being that of consciousness, and intellectual knowledge -- the secrets hidden in the worlds that can only be discerned through conscious thought and processing. 

Indeed, it is so.

The Mystery of Archaic Denisovan DNA in Me

Why am I Denisovan?

I've been a bit puzzled by my Geno 2.0 archaic hominin genetic ancestry result which reported that I have 2.3% Denisovan genetic ancestry - greater than my Neanderthal genetic ancestry which weighs in at a mere 1.9%. This particularly perplexes me in light of the fact that my autosomal genetic ancestry results indicated that I am significantly and overwhelmingly of European stock (97% - 100% in most studies). Given the overwhelming European-ness of my genetic profiles, coupled with the fact that in the scientific literature archaic Denisovan genes have been found to exist (so far) only in modern populations of Aboriginal Australians and the Melanesians of Papua New Guinea, I didn't expect to have any Denisovan ancestry.

Then comes Teutonic me, with 2.3% Denisovan genetic ancestry. As a daughter of Europe (mostly Northern and Northwestern Europe even more specifically), I expected to have much more European Neanderthal in me and no Asian-Australian Denisovan. But surprise! - I have more Denisovan than Neanderthal! So, what gives with this?

Comparable with others of primarily Celtic-Germanic ancestry (matching the modern German and British reference populations), Geno 2.0 did report that I do have some genetic ancestry admixture from Southeast Asia. Papua New Guinea, home to the Pacific Islanders known as the Melanesians, is in East Asia - so this gets me closer to an answer as to why I have Denisovan DNA.

Like some of Nordic descent, I was born with white blonde hair, though it darkened to a dark blonde as I became an adult. Though I don't have blue eyes, my father does. So, it's clear that some of my ancestors had blonde hair and blue eyes stereotypical of Nordic types.

Interestingly, like me and like some others of Nordic ancestry, blonde hair is also found in high frequency among Melanesian children - those very same children with Denisovan genes. Like me.

So, while it may be that my Homo sapiens sapiens homeland may be Europe by way of Africa and the Near East, it may also be that my Denisovan ancestry homeland is in Australia - maybe that's why so many modern Brits live and love in Australia - our ancestral folksoul (Britain is one my ancestral homelands) is tied to that land as well.

Oskapt - Fire and Ice

On a forum I frequent, it was asked:

In The Saga of the Volsungs translated by Jesse L. Byock there is an interaction where Sigurd said: "What is the name of that island where Surt and the Aesir will mix together their blood?" Fafner answered: "It is called Oskapt, the uncreated." Does anyone have any insight into Oskapt?

This is an interesting idea - I like to speculate about interesting ideas.

Google translates oskapt as "terrible." I've also seen the word translated as "unshapen" and seeming derivatives of the word are associated with the idea of something which may not be of the normatively experienced natural worlds (that is, "unnatural") - so, oskapt may refer to a deeper or alternative level of nature which precedes mental, psychological or material constructions. In other mystical systems (from my learning as a kabbalist primarily), "terrible" often is a term applied to a level of Being "above" (in terms of extension into manifest reality) the created worlds, a correspondence which is in agreement with the Germanic ideas of some place which is both "uncreated" and "terrible." In kabbalah, the "terrible" universe is called atzilut, or universe of divine emanation from which creation is forthspoken via utterance, then shaped and then made manifest. Taking the correspondence further, it may be that the "place" of oskapt corresponds to some high unmanifest place from which that which is to become manifest first comes forth, if that makes sense. It's interesting to me the the word oskapt could be divided into "os" ("mouth") and "kapt" (or West Germanic Dutch "kopt", a form of koppen - like German "kopf") which can pertain to both the head in general (and to the crown of the head more specifically), making "oskapt" pertain to the "mouth of the head" - this is congruent with the idea of forthspeaking.

So, it seems to me that this island "Oskapt" may refer to a "place" within the Folksoul within which we all mix with one another as a unified community before extending out as individuals (or tribal families of individuals like soul families) into created reality.

Another interesting correspondence is that in kabbalah, the "terrible" place is also called the place of "terrible ice" (despite that it exists in the fiery Universe of Atzilut), so Oskapt may also be an "island" of "Niflheim within Muspelheim" in Germanic cosmology.

Paternal Ancestral Ethnicities & Folk Soul Impulses

As some who read my Facebook may recall, I recently learned from my father that my paternal line hails from the Cumberland Gap in Appalachia, making it very likely that some of my paternal grandmothers were Appalachian root workers known as granny witches, and practitioners of ethnic Appalachian folk magic.

(In honor of my Appalachian roots, over time, I will be adding a focused line Appalachian folkish conjure formulas to my Etsy shoppe!)

The oral tradition of my paternal family - that as being primarily of English, Irish (Scots-Irish as well, given my confirmed autosomal genetic link to Scotland) and German descent, as well as having American roots in the Cumberland Gap deep in Appalachia, and into Appalachian Kentucky, as well as having some Native American American (Cherokee and Potowatomi) family members - fits exactly with the historical ethnic makeup reported by Kentucky Emigration and Immigration Department -
 

Pre-statehood settlers of Kentucky were mostly of English, German and Ulster Scots descent who migrated from the Atlantic seaboard states. Immigrants from North Carolina and southwestern Virginia came by way of the Cumberland Gap and over the Wilderness Road. Immigrants from Maryland and Pennsylvania came on flatboats and rafts down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh. Other early immigrants included small groups of French, Swiss, and Welsh. During the mid-19th century the Ohio River brought many German immigrants and settlers from New England and the Middle Atlantic states. Many Irish settled in Louisville during this time.

In 1790, historians estimate Kentucky's population was English (52%), Scots-Irish or Scots (25%), Irish (9%), Welsh, (7%), German (5%), French (2%), Dutch (1%), and Swedish (0.2%) in ethnicity.

1820 statistics vary slightly: English (57%), Scots-Irish or Scots (18%), Welsh (9%), Irish (8%), German (6%), French (2%), Dutch (1%), and Swedish (0.2%).

Native Americans were the indigenous population also living in the area with the immigrants, giving support to the oral family tradition of having some Native American family members. As a small child, I grew up around one aunt known to be a full blooded Cherokee. She was known by the name Palace. The clannish rural area I grew up in (often humorously called Taylorville - my birth surname is Taylor) was one in which many families in my father's extended family lived in homes and properties clustered together in proximal concentration. Even today, several families of the Taylor Clan still live here in proximally clustered homes. This clannish way of living, also fits well with ethnic Appalachian ways of living.

No one in my family has, in oral family tradition, ever been Catholic Christian - I was raised as a Protestant Christian (where Protestantism in my mind is the first major successful impulse of the Teutonic folksoul to return to its native Pagan roots, and to throw off the yoke of the non-native religiosity imposed on the people via the Romanization of Pagan Europe). The religious affiliation of Appalachia with folkish Protestantism also fits with the ethnic and religious history of Appalachia and the oral traditions coming from my paternal family.