Previous lectures by the Fellowship of Kvasir can be found on the website:

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thefellowshipofkvasir.org

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The Fellowship of Kvasir is a Norse think tank. We give lectures and have dialogues with a number of different interest groups for the Indo-European and Norse ways of thinking as they were expressed before Christianity. We believe that the wisdom before the “letter religions” needs to be thought through and taken into account, much for how the world looks today and based on the fact that we think that a more holistic perspective that has its origins in a perspective of many millennia may be necessary today. The world and we are facing great challenges. We should listen in and try to understand how humans have survived for a long time before “modern society”. What lessons can we learn from this and how can we, to the best of our ability, try to create a better balance between philosophy, nature and human progression?

 

Indo-European history began a very long time ago, we are talking about several thousand years of documented history. The interesting thing is that now that so much time has passed; it seems possible for the first time to actually see and understand parts of how it once entered into human development and the creation of society, in a way that was not possible before.

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It seems that with the help of research in several sciences we are discovering, and perhaps inventing, because we believe we are more capable now than before, an old perspective that was more holistic; the fact that this was naturally included in the Indo-European concept may be due to a foundation of thinking that was more diversified, due to a polytheistic concept.

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I will talk about the influences that remain and how we can discover and develop them, focusing a bit on a personal perspective. The interesting thing about living today, is that technology has developed in such a way that we have come a long way in terms of new understanding of old, accumulated knowledge, in a short time. Having said that, I would like to remind you that today there is evidence for events, happenings and conclusions that can be drawn from DNA material in a way that was undreamed of just 10 years ago.

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How then should we approach this big thing from a small perspective? I will, later on, list a number of questions from a personal perspective, that may be an entrance to curiosity and an understanding of the enormous expression of the Indo-European ideas that still permeate our society in the Western hemisphere today. As a basis for the progress in the process that is needed onwards, I have presented ideas that are inspired by scientific TV programs, radio programs, as well as supporting literature.

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If you are in the Germanic tradition of the Indo-European tradition, I need to say that it is of fundamental importance to start from the general form of Indo-European, polytheistic concept. This means that one can put the god Odin aside as the sky god. In the Indo-European tradition, that god is connected to Hermes. Instead, Tyr, Tiwas, is the sky god. Tyr is connected to Jupiter and Zeus. The Fellowship of Kvasir has articles about that context on its website.

I want to start with an example from Greek antiquity. Here is the temple of Apollo/the temple of Oracles.

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Temple of the Oracles

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Above the entrance to the Temple of the Oracles in Delphi was written a statement; it was allowed to remain for 1200 years before the Christians tore it down. According to writers from antiquity, inscribed on a column in the pronaos, the porch before the temple's cella, little room (cell) were three of the Delphic maxims of the Seven Sages. It reads:

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"Know thyself", "Nothing in excess"

“Being stubbornly convinced leads to decay”

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When you start looking for translations on this text, from old Greek to English, there is confusion, especially about the last line. The first suggestions to come up would be:

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“Surety brings ruin”, “Make a pledge and trouble will arise”. However, if you search more, other translations will emerge. From a radio programme in Swedish broadcasting, I chose to use what a professor of religion and theology used, namely: “Being stubbornly convinced leads to decay”.

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If we think a little about this statement from an anthropological, but above all, from a sociological perspective, it becomes extraordinary. We can find as many angles of approach as we want, from a contemporary investigation, to conclude that this illuminates a way of thinking that includes the local as well as the global society, the individual as well as society at large.

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The statement is focused on a personal perspective, but if you extend it to an approach in a wider perspective, you can understand that if you thought like that, it would have an incredible impact on the outside world, in the form of how a society is built, in the form of a basic ideological platform. It is easy to lead the meaning to a strong focus on how communication and social behaviour in that society during that time had an inherent striving that:

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The intention of actions should be considered.

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I strongly suspect that this was also meant generally and not individually. It was a different time and the “collective” had a more fundamental place in the world of thought, largely due to the fact that a polytheistic worldview gives rise to a more complex thinking in essence; something that one can believe that ordinary people also managed in everyday life.

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Antiquity was diversified. This means that society was built on the basis that different ideas constitute a compilation of truths; deeply thought-out consequences led to conclusions about how to operate, implement and ultimately arrive at lasting incentives, that form the basis for the construction of society.

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That is a big difference compared with today. An example: over the last 20 years we have seen how scientific research that leads to changes in society, is simply controlled by commissioned research, based on who can provide the most money for the research.

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"Know thyself", "Nothing in excess"

“Being stubbornly convinced leads to decay”

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If we could really get a number of powerful people in high positions to join us; those who are in charge of the wars that are now going on around the world; the meaning of this statement would be devastating, provided that they entered the meeting with serious intentions regarding these statements.

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Something that was understood in the way of thinking during Greek antiquity was how mythology and actual places were connected, even in everyday life. They saw everything as a whole. They saw their lives as being part of a much larger context. Imagination was more integrated as a part of everyday life, which meant that reality could, in many ways, be perceived as larger and in a wider perspective, compared to our point of view today; or at least, it could be seen from a point of view which would be more multifaceted.

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My overall understanding of how to talk about and interpret this great leap of thought must be broken down into a few points, also regarding my theories of how to understand the Indo-European way from a modern point of view:

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• The amazing human capacity to develop thinking leads to an infinity of intellectual understanding, in large and small contexts. Given the dangers to ourselves and the planet today; how can we think from an Indo-European perspective about continuity, life here and now and across generations?

• In Indo-European culture; how can mythology and the sense of a deeper, imaginatively incorporated world of ideas in everyday life, in front of local places, mean so much? What does our responsibility to nature, “the divine” have to do with this?

• How does the responsibility and understanding of “fate” and the “goddesses of fate” come into this?

• How does the concept of honour come into this?

• What does the scientific concept “Entropy” have to do with this?

 

 

Here an excerpt from: Mythologizing Landscape. Place and Space of Cult and Myth by Stefan Brink 2001.

I quote:

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“The modern world's perception of landscape is both secular and profane. In a way, the landscape has lost its innocence and mysticism.

The rationality of modern man and his constant demand for understanding and explanation constitute a major obstacle to our understanding of our earliest ancestors' world of ideas.

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For them, nature was allowed to be mystical, without any demands for rational explanations; a mountain could be the abode of one's forefathers, without raising any importunate reflections or doubts as to whether this was de facto possible or not. The landscape was allowed to be metaphysically charged.

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To the Greeks, all nature must be described as a sacred landscape, created by the gods and inhabited by gods and especially demons, spirits or "powers", in Greek daimon (δαίμων). This word corresponds to the Roman numen or genius.

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In the Roman religion, a certain place might have some kind of sacred value or power, a numen or a genius loci. These concepts must be considered to correspond with the concept of mana found in the Polynesian cultures of the South Pacific. A person might have mana, a royal person certainly had very much of the stuff, but a place could also possess it. In these cases, the persons or sacred sites became taboo in different degrees.

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Apart from mythical poems, also place names inform us of mythical and religious beliefs in the landscape. Several Greek river names contain an element: lou- 'wash', such as Lymax and Lousios. The explanations of these river names are placed in a typically mythological framework: Lymax is the water in which Rhea washed herself after giving birth to Zeus and Lousios is where Zeus was washed at birth.

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Especially the above-mentioned Pausanias' second-century description of Greece is truffled with many (folk-etymological) explanations of this kind In Arcadia, Mt Alesoin is named after Rhea's 'wandering' (ale), when, pregnant with Zeus, she came to a cave on the summit of Mt Thaumasion 'wonderful'.

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At Mt Sepia, the mythical King Aipytos was killed by a snake (seps). At Cape Zoster 'girdle', Leto undid her girdle to give birth to Apollo and Artemis.

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In this way, the Greek landscape reflected mythic history, and mythic history defined the landscape. Therefore, the past - both the historical and the mythical past (which are one and the same) - continues to live in the present landscape.”

End of quote

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Further down in the same article:

In a recent analysis of ritual and sacral landscape in the province of Tröndelag, Kalle Sognnes comes to the conclusion that potential cult sites, in the form of burial grounds (which he, probably correctly, assumes to be a kind of cult sites), may have been used for over 1,000 years, when the break came with the introduction of the new Christian religion. But this break was not always an absolute one, since it is possible to demonstrate that several churches were erected on pagan burial grounds.

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Sognnes concludes that the prehistoric religious landscape of Tröndelag was characterized by continuity to a remarkable extent, stretching over more than 1,000 years.

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If this observation - which I have made and which Sognnes intimates – can be substantiated, namely that we find an astonishingly long continuity of some sacred areas and cult sites in the Scandinavian landscape  –  in some cases one or even two millennia (sic) -, the underlying reason for this phenomenon must be the combination of a metaphysical investment in the landscape and the passage of numinous knowledge between generations.

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A sacred object, site or area was not likely to be damaged or utilized for profane purposes, on account of respect for the ancestors and their beliefs and perhaps also owing to some legal prohibition.

In such a perspective, it is likely that a site where people conducted ritual and cultic actions would become a continuously sacred site and be remembered as such for generation after generation. As long as society was fairly stable, with people living in the area, the numinous knowledge of that site would live on.

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It is therefore not so remarkable to find this very long continuity of cultic activities in a sacred place or landscape. The sacral investment in a landscape was obviously a fairly secure one, unlike the secular investments in our rapidly changing modern world.

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This brings us back to the initial citation of Sir James Frazer in this article. After my analyses, I am prepared to give the venerable scholar the right. It seems that cult sites and sacred landscapes may represent places in our world that show an unbelievable constancy and permanence. Consuetudinis magna vis est, which means The power of habit is great.

End of quote

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In modern society, the feeling of connection to geographical places as being personifications of divine nature has generally slipped quite a bit on the scale of what is of great importance in our human perception of reality. One could coldly express oneself as saying that the world is not particularly magical anymore.

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Why is it important to understand the connection to geographical places for humans? Why is it important from a communicative understanding perspective, and why is it important for emotions and a need for belonging, that humans have?

Do you yourself think that the world is less magical? I think so and would like to present some thoughts on why it seems to be experienced that way by many people.

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Here is an excerpt from an article in

Maal og Minne (Aim and Memory) from 1997 by Ottar Grönvik.

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It is about our kinship to nature based on an assessment of how Santa Claus can be considered modern and the big difference in the Nordic countries, in how the old farm gnome was viewed.

I quote:

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“The article emphasizes that one should make a sharp distinction between the old farm gnome and the new Santa Claus. Santa Claus is quite young in the North and goes back to beliefs and customs from the continent about the saint St. Nicholas, who gave good children a gift at Christmas. The farm gnome, on the other hand, stayed on the farm all year round, helped in the stable and in the barn, and helped ensure the prosperity of the farm. He received regular food offerings, preferably every Christmas Eve, but was usually invisible. The article argues that the name Nisse for such a farm gnome cannot be derived from the name St. Nicholas.

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Further down:

The word is widespread in the Nordic countries and is clearly old, it probably goes back to an Old Norse word: “NiDsi” – “the dear/little relative”, and refers to the same meaning as the words: farm owner, farm host, farm elf, i.e. to the deceased ancestor of the family, the one who first cleared the farm and, according to old folk beliefs, continued to live on the farm – until the beginning of the 20th century.”

End of quote

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Santa Claus or “Julenissen”

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Santa Claus or “Julenissen”, is today known throughout the Nordic countries as a figure who comes from the north, flying on reindeer. He comes to the home; he asks if there are any good children and hands out presents. He is widely used throughout the Christmas trade, online and in stores and supermarkets. Here, he is today mostly a foreground figure for companies to be able to sell as much as possible.

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In simple places throughout the Nordic region, however, there is still a genuine perception of another elf, someone to whom you give porridge on Christmas Eve, who guards the farm and takes care of all the animals. It is not that people believe in Santa or anything, but they hold on to other, far down in history inherited stories about the farm elf who has been important in our contact with nature, traditions and connections here, where we live, where we have our plot.

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We can clarify by calling the old Nordic elf: farm elf or farm gnome. In the Nordic region, the elf was thought of as a little man dressed in gray, sometimes with a red hood and a long beard. This farm elf is very strong. He helps with the work on the farm, generally and specifically with the work around the horses and in the stable. In exchange for this, he receives food and drink, especially on Christmas Eve, but also at other times. If you don't treat the farm elf well and have good communication with him, he can be mean and take revenge on both animals and people on the farm.

Here are some differences in perceptions of the old and new farm elf and Santa:

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• The farm elf from the past was on the farm and was on hand and worked all year round. Nowadays, Santa only comes at Christmas, although with the reservation that he is mostly important in all advertising for the Christmas trade, several months before Christmas.

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• The old farm elf helped in the stables and barn all the time with the animals and was friends with them; something that our modern Santa Claus probably has no idea about.

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• The new Santa Claus gives a lot of gifts to children and adults too. The old farm elf got gifts, especially porridge.

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• The new Santa comes into the cottage to people everywhere, he has big, bulky, red clothes and will talk to the children. The old farm elf was small, had a gray coat and a red top hat. He was incredibly strong.

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• In what has survived in folk memory, the farm elf in the old sense was respected by everyone, not just small children. He was definitely part of a living folk belief. People believed that they could get help from him. They didn't want to harm him because he was considered a friend. They definitely didn't want him as an enemy.

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I think it's particularly interesting, thinking about the theory that “the farm elf” is the first relative who lived here. Regardless if this is true or not, it is a thought-provoking concept.

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 This could mean that he holds a position between humans and elves, and thus to how nature works and is taken care of, how nature is looked after by the "Vanir".

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This means, in a progressive way of thinking, that we might be physically related to the trees that have branches that extend around our house. Figuratively and mythically, this means a lot, according to our nowadays scientific way of thinking, compared to the past. Let us go for this idea for a moment. What would that implicate?

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What does it mean that we are related to the land, the farm elf and what grows in our vicinity? It means that we have responsibility!

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Responsibility is the pervading force that gives substance to the Indo-European tradition. You have responsibility as an individual for your lineage. You have a responsibility for yourself. Without that responsibility, you cannot take responsibility for your lineage. To sum up: you have responsibility for your actions.

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Here we also understand that you have a great responsibility, for the nature you find yourself in, because you are related to it, in an early origin, meaning in the very creation of our existence.

What the story of the farm elf entails is a multi-developed responsibility for the context between man and the whole of nature we live in.

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Since responsibility in the Indo-European tradition is the center of the intention of how you should act, this fact differs remarkably from the Monotheistic view.

If politicians of today felt that way; would they even consider renouncing the Paris Agreement?

We live in a time when the total information that bombards us daily, constitutes a soap bubble of impressions that confuses us, makes us methodically and incessantly fixated by a flow of images and text. In this aggregate of information, in this flow, there is nothing that leads us to an inner place of reflection. It alienates us from who we are as total beings and makes us blindly seek affirmation in this mass of information.

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If we consider that the Indo-European tradition has included a subconscious and conscious relationship over thousands of years, in its traditions, we can assume that today, we are in a stealthy way losing this subconscious and conscious connection to that tradition. I think it is about this.

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Let me discuss the importance and significance of the subconscious a little bit from an individualistic perspective. Taken from a scientific program from Swedish television:

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To do something really well, we need to let go of control. We can practice with control in a context for a long time, but to become really good and be able to do it; play a guitar solo, a performance in a sports context, for example throwing a basketball on demand when you know you will get a million euros if you strike it right; then you need to let go of control.

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Most of what happens in the brain happens unconsciously. In other words, how you have learned and relate to your surroundings and your skills, plays a very big role when you let go of control.

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Then what you have focused on becomes important. A silly example: if you think that the most important thing is just to make money and you have practiced it, then these ambitions and behaviours will be the ones that you do best when you let go of control. If you have decided to play tennis, this is what you have practiced with control; then you will become really good at it when you let go of control.

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If you have practiced destructive things, like being a thief, then these ambitions and abilities will act when you let go of control and then you will be really good at it.

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I conclude that accumulated knowledge that lies in the unconscious not only controls how we act, but is actually decisive for how we are and become and act as people. It is about how we make decisions and in what order we sort impressions that turn into feelings and that end in a behaviour for how we act.

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It seems important that we should listen to the earliest human influences that have governed our social consciousness. For me this becomes fundamental. How this happens becomes essential in a very complex game of social existence. Here I lean towards trying to learn from history and Indo-European thoughts. This, despite the fact that today's influences largely include a system that we have ended up with, which really imposes a feeling that it is the present and what we have achieved in the form of knowledge, technology and social engagement for now, says something else.

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Something that distinguishes Norse mythology from other Indo-European myths is the great war between the Aesir, the divine, governing principles, and the Vanir, the creative principles.

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There is something very attractive in Norse mythology with the resolution after this war and the subsequent lasting peace between these different principles.

Philosophically, it is quite profound. The Vanir and the Aesir making peace could be expressed as our intellectual/spiritual self understanding and making a compromise with our body, all our emotions and our overwhelming consciousness.

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Human consciousness is of course unique and different from animals and plants, but scientific research still gives us new findings almost every month about how incredibly much of the underpinning material for human consciousness, which we share with animals and plants, is actually common.

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These are the foundations that become interesting to us if we think that geographical places are special, or even magical or sacred.

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So now that we have taken examples of how geographical places have had a fundamental significance and being a main point in people's construction of social structure over time; why is it so important?

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The Indo-European idea has actually been central, in terms of the historical record of humanity. It is only to state that it is probably the case that its content has proven to be supportive for survival.

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Honour

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In a culture that includes the subconscious and conscious for a long time, one can learn that a certain behaviour is more advantageous than another, also developed in social structures.

Here I want to make a wild connection to how socially developed behaviour can have to do with basic survival, incorporating important social functions in a collective context.

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It can be of crucial importance for how we survive on the planet, how we manage a total intellectual heritage together. It concerns first and foremost how we as individuals can thrive and feel socially engaged in a social context with more developed social organisms; what is better and what is worse from a long-term survival perspective?

In the biological context, we see how cooperation in an optimal way in nature leads to lasting survival and a constant development in this; nature adapts all the time, we see it, not least, in species that are most exposed to today's environmental changes, how they find a continued existence in cooperation with their surroundings.

I believe that structures that do not want to be aware of the unconscious will perish over time.

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The Indo-European structure is based on the fact that one as an individual and as a participant in society takes responsibility for this, both on an individual level and from a societal perspective.

How do our actions and our understanding affect development forward from the perspective of honour?

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The concept of honour

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Let me start with some excerpts from Östen Kjellmans: “Den forna seden”, “The Ancient Custom”:

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When historians explain the ancient concept of honour with "desire for fame" or "need for prestige", they have not understood the old way of thinking.

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Our modern Swedish word "ära" is a later loanword from the Middle Low German êre. It originally also had such meanings as "glory", "status", "brilliance". But the word used to have a broader usage. During the Middle Ages, "honour" also meant a sense of honour, a sense of justice, honesty, a good conscience, and duty.

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Further from Östen Kjellman:

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The commandment of honour

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Instead of following moral precepts, written on stone tablets, or in some other way of "divine" origin, the pagan Norse was bound by the concepts of honour, reputation, duty, conscience. The Old Norse words for this are - according to the fairy tale literature, in order of frequency - Sömð (sæmd), võrding (also meaning esteem, respect), sómi (to put one's honor in something) metnaðr (also meaning competition, ambition), vegr, frame (also meaning reputation, fame), metorð, vegsemð, heiðr, höðuðr (the head’s posture), drengrskapr.

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Of equal importance to the lives of the Norse were the concepts that expressed the opposite of the above, namely the words for dishonour, disgrace, shame, nesa, disgrace: svívirðing, skömm, (lifa við skömm = live with dishonour; vita upp á sig, skömmina = have a bad conscience), sneypa, klöki (also meaning lowliness), hneisa, hróp (also meaning mockery), smán (þessi smán ok svívirðing, er þu görir mig = this dishonor that you do to me), skemð, blygð.

End of quote.

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It seems that honour and glory encompass and constantly encompass an individual questioning of how you act. It is not about intentions but the results of your actions.

Of course, then, it is about upbringing and how we shape children and young people in their way of thinking and acting.

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The excerpt above comes from Östen Kjellman's analysis of an incredible number of writings that deal with the old Nordic way of thinking in terms of honour and glory.

 

In my opinion, honor is a way of relating to causality. When you want to act honorably, it is because you want it to be an action that is visible over time. It is about how you are seen, but also about how much you have understood about human communication from a larger perspective. Therefore, honor in action shows how you have decided where and who you really are.

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The concept of “the goddesses of fate” becomes interesting in relation to causality and also honor. We can imagine that honor as a concept and in a natural practice over time, has to do with the understanding of causality in relation to actions that are simultaneously helpful to “my life and the lives of others” in continuity.

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The concept of fate

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Throughout Indo-European civilization in different cultures, fate is represented. In the North there were the goddesses of fate, or the Norns.

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From Wikipedia:

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Three named Norns occur: Urd, Verdandi and Skuld (Urðr, Verðandi and Skuld).

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• Urd (Urðr) comes from the Icelandic word for good or bad luck (related to the English "wyrd" and the Old High German "Wurd, Wyrd" with the same meaning).

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• Verdandi means Becoming and comes from varða/varda

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• Skuld means guilt or future.

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The Norns were said to live in a house at the roots of Yggdrasil next to the Urdar well. There they took water from the well and sand from the ground around the giant ash tree and poured it over the tree so that its branches would not dry out or rot. According to Snorri, there are several Norns, who are of both gods, elves and dwarves. According to him, those of the gods are the ones who decide on people's lives.

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In modern art and literature, they are often depicted as spinning the threads of fate (like the Moirs), but this description of them is almost completely absent from the medieval sources with the exception of the First Poem about Helgi Hundingsbane. In Valan's Divination, it is instead stated that the Norns carve runes, not much more.

From the description of the Norns it is clear that the Norns were fatalists and, like the Greeks, the whims of fate also included the gods. They appeared when a person was about to die and people spoke of "the cruel Norn". Connecting the Norns with a flow of time is probably a later Christian invention that actually originates from their Roman counterparts, the Parcae.

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Snorri Sturluson explains in his Edda that in addition to the three named, there are also countless smaller Norns who follow each person from birth to death and shape their fate (related to concepts such as fylgja, hamingja and vård). According to some interpreters, Urd is said to have been the sole goddess of fate in the (common Germanic) beginning; she appears in several bardic edicts.

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The Norns are equivalent in Greek mythology to the Moirai and in Roman mythology to the Parcae.

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"An ash tree I know stands, Yggdrasil is called

its tall trunk is sprinkled with white gravel;

from there comes dew that falls in the valleys,

the ash tree by Urd's well always stands green.

The dead come tender as much as they know,

three from the house that stands by the tree;

Urd is one, Verdandi is the other -

they cut wood - Skuld is the third;

They make terms, change the lot of life,

measure the fate of the children of men".

End of quote.

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Modern theories of fate

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There is a book by Robert Sapolsky. From a modern scientific perspective, he describes how our lives are predetermined. The book is called:

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Determined; The Science of Life Without Free Will

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Neurobiologically, he describes in detail how no action/reaction in our behavior can exist without a previous neurobiological incentive.

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The book is really well written and I have to say that I understand and agree with a lot. Among other things, he addresses how children are born into a relationship where drugs have been present and how this fundamentally affects the rest of their lives neurobiologically. But he also addresses old family structures, as well as analyses of the absolute present. He manages to prove that we are actually only a product, in our thinking, of how neurons have operated up to this moment.

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That is not to say that I agree with Sapolsky. He is just a very good example of modern science that has understood how to relate to causality.

It is perfectly possible to have free will if, for example, you relate to the Indo-European path.

What is needed is an understanding from a much larger perspective, which could be called divine principles, however, it is also possible to scientifically call them just principles that exist in the universe. Polytheism helps us to diversify a picture of the universe in this way.

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My theory is that the subconscious is more important than we have understood, both from an individualistic perspective, as well as from a social and sociological perspective The goddesses of faith represent an enormous concept of how to interpret the individualistic as well as the sociological perspective. If we imagine that the Indo-European tradition has carried this fundamental way of incorporating a geographical, as well as a causality concept bearing on how we relate to the outside world, it becomes interesting to study yet another modern interpretation of our perception of the universe, namely the concept of entropy.

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What is entropy?

From Wikipedia:

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"The concept of entropy can be illustrated with a messy room: In a completely tidy/ordered room, each thing can only be in one place, that is, there is only one way to place all the things in the room so that it has the property of being completely tidy. In a messy room, it does not matter whether a particular book is on the right or left of the bookshelf; the room is still just as messy. The entropy of the room is the number of ways in which things can be arranged to achieve a certain level of clutter. The messier the room, the more places they can be found and the higher the entropy of the room. Difficulties in understanding the concept of entropy often stem from ambiguities regarding the concept of "order".

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Exergy

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However, the introduction of the concept of exergy can bring clarity. It is when you use energy that you consume its exergy = increases entropy/increases disorder/decreases order.

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Exergy indicates some form of contrast or difference and the absence of (= completely obliterated) contrast, that is, the absence of exergy is the same as maximum entropy (the so-called heat death in the case of the entire universe). Entropy increases in the universe as a whole, but can within this framework decrease locally, as for example on Earth where entropy has decreased but at the expense of an even greater increase on the sun, i.e. a net increase in the universe as a whole, or expressed in exergy terms: Exergy decreases overall in the universe, but can increase locally, as on Earth where exergy has increased but at the cost of an even greater exergy loss on the sun (solar exergy has been transferred to Earth and here created exergy patterns that together constitute the biosphere).

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In thermodynamics, exergy is the maximum available mechanical work during a thermodynamic process, which leads to the system coming into thermodynamic equilibrium with a heat reservoir. When the system's surroundings are the reservoir, the exergy is zero when the system and surroundings have reached equilibrium".

End of quote.

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A simple way to talk about entropy would be to talk about what happens when you have your lunch. Then you increase the entropy locally in your body. Food is a concentrated and controlled form of energy. Entropy makes itself known with a subtle, however, violent force when you consummate food. The feeling for you personally would be that things calm down and you relax and feel comfortable. From the bio-chemical point of view, it is rather the opposite. You know the feeling when you have eaten something bad; similar things happen even when you eat things that are good for your stomach. It is just the fact that then, it works as it should do, so you don’t notice.

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When you eat, the decay begins immediately. In this process, you first get warmed by the energy, then it decays into more and more disorganized form; it does so in a flow. So, if we utilize this flow in a thoughtful, accumulated, conscious way, then we get the most out of life right now.

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The process involves physical, chemical, and biological processes. It is interesting the more we understand this and can utilize the processes in the best way. If we think longer and understand these processes consciously and subconsciously, we also understand how to establish and create complex social systems that span generations, which inherently carry, hopefully, the essence of this knowledge.

So, it is a question of a state that we constantly find ourselves in. We have done so throughout human existence. So how can we relate to it in terms of this knowledge?

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If we imagine that people have lived from an Indo-European perspective for thousands of years, we can decide that if they only did so because it was the easiest thing from the point of view of entropy, it may feel banal and simple. I don't think so. The simplest things seem to be the most difficult things in life. They must have had a subconscious way of understanding this, through a belief in a greater system.

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Entropy is a decay that depends on how our universe was created about 13.8 billion years ago. About 380 thousand years after the Big Bang, what would become our universe, was shaped in the form of how heat, density and primordial particles develop.

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From this “soup” our universe developed as it came to be.

Entropy is a sort of decay, moving from hot to cold, as Hoffmann noted. But it is also a description of how our universe works over time. Entropy exists as a constant. It arises locally all the time. When our sun projects light and energy to our earth, a local entropy arises.

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In the decay from hot to cold, there is a window for life conditions.

On Earth, this means for us humans that we have to relate to this. In the decay of entropy that occurs all the time, we eat food. Then we increase entropy, i.e. we follow the flow during the decay and can do something during this short period of time.

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In the Indo-European tradition, one can see that rites in relation to death become interesting. For example, around the winter solstice, there are special rituals. These rituals have a function that is about welcoming the return of the sun, as well as honoring the dead who have gone before us.

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For me, it becomes clear that when in the Indo-European tradition,  consciously or unconsciously they would have acted according to causality in this way, it becomes in a relationship with entropy. We take it into account and understand that the causality in entropy is a fact.

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The Norns have an important meaning here because they decide over life and death. So, the context of understanding in transitions in thermodynamics linked to human culture becomes obvious. Without having thought about it, the Indo-European tradition has related to entropy. Of course, without being able to express it in modern terms.

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If the Indo-European tradition managed with the connection of gods and other beings in a conglomerate of complexity that resembles life; if this provides a viable path, then it seems useful.

It seems obvious that it is of the utmost interest to explore how we have survived for so long, individually and from a fundamentally holistic, social perspective.

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It seems as if we need to examine more closely what lies in the collective social subconscious.

Without going into psychology, I mean that it can be stated that how we humans have built a social consciousness and which lies as a relatively unconscious sphere, now needs to be brought to the surface. What are we missing? What has worked? Why has it worked for thousands of years and how can we rediscover it, first individually and then in a social context?

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It is something in the whole that has been lost. Most people are aware of it.

The interesting thing is that contemporary science proves from another angle how we are social beings, who do have a geographical affiliation. Both the research I mentioned, as well as DNA analyses that have shown connections in recent years, have consistent and relentless information that cannot be disputed.

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In our most hopeful intention, one can dare to believe that based on all the collected science today, we can penetrate historical contexts in a new way and can draw better conclusions about how we can change society's accelerating development, to a greater reflective and initiate a deeper human perspective that includes the entire planet and its inhabitants.

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If these have always been the fundamental conditions for life, we can talk about how people together in social systems can be smart.

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The Indo-European tradition seems, on an individual and social level, to have included, in many ways, an approach that enhances the chances of survival for humans. In many ways, this approach to attacking existence on the planet we live on, can be in congruence with all mammals, but also fish and other living beings.

According to my definition, it is causality that has a supporting function in relation to entropy. The all-encompassing understanding and how this understanding is included in an action that follows and simultaneously exists in relation to entropy becomes interesting.

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What is it that surrounds human behavior in a formative way of actually relating to causality over time?

What is needed is an understanding from a much larger perspective could be called divine principles, but it is also possible to scientifically call just principles that exist in the universe. Polytheism helps us diversify a picture of the universe.

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The insight into what the goddesses of fate stand for develops the understanding of responsibility over time, one's own life and generations.

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My idea is that humans have consciously created rituals and ceremonies over a long time that include an understanding of how the world works. Most of it is about causality. With our modern consciousness, we have really understood another big piece of the puzzle of how “causality” really permeates our body and our consciousness every second since ancient times, yes, I really mean since the “Big Bang”, where also the concept of Entropy started.

In the Indian “Veda” writings from several thousand years ago, according to Anders Kaliff, a Swedish archaeologist from Uppsala, there is clear evidence of a similarity between funeral rituals in India thousands of years ago, with Nordic funeral rituals in the Viking Age.

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Is the Indo-European tradition "banal" because it is "only" about survival, from a modern perspective?

My conclusion is that it is not banal but seems to be an extraordinarily clever way of approaching existence that has preserved human structures in societies around the world for many thousands of years.

During my life, I have come to be more and more amazed at how incredibly important it is to look at the scenes behind existence. What is it that moves and makes small adjustments in the background that have gigantic effects over time?

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Context is everything. The momentary has significance, but only if there is a thought and relationship to history. I feel that wisdom has to do with an understanding of how this is connected in a background perspective, something that includes the understanding of how we project the future, in a first respect, but further in an accumulated subconscious respect, together with our conscious choices in the present.

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In the Indo-European tradition there is a constantly preserved consciousness, both individual and social, of fate or the power of the fate goddesses over existence.

How can we think about this from a modern perspective?

Urd is the source, Verdandi is the being, that is, the present, and Skuld is the result. In other words, it is not much different from the concept of karma. Skuld in this context is the result of your actions. What happens if you have these intentions? How do you act on them? How do you work with the process before it is shaped into action? How do you act?

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Within monotheism, a shift has been made in the perception of our relationship to the divine. Today, many people probably think that it is a lot about your intentions when you relate to the divine.

The Indo-European thought has a fundamental way of showing that it is your actions that determine how your life is judged. You stand for something because you need to show your clan or lineage that you are good enough. I don't need to mention that it is the same with all mammals.

However, compare this with the monotheistic approach that advocates that there is only one God who is all-powerful and you are just “a little person”.

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How you relate to this does matters.

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If you know in your life that there is an accumulated understanding somewhere, in yourself and in a social structure, that actually assesses how you act per minute; does life become more awake? This is where responsibility comes in. Feeling a responsibility for your lineage or the society you live in can enrich life. In today's society this has often been lost. As an example, you can see how institutions, due to bureaucracy, sometimes make quite inhuman decisions when it comes to the individual. You do not have a holistic focus.

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I would like to take an example in the break between the polytheistic view and the monotheistic, when King Alfred in the newly formed England is given advice before taking power and taking over people and land:

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In the series “The Last Kingdom”, the Christian potentate gives pieces of advice to King Alfred:

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Our Sin is great

But remember that God judges us

Every sin can be set against an act of faith

If faith is allowed to grow, sin decreases

What if the shadow of sin obscures faith?  Alfred remarks

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The potentate replies:

 

Now is the time to cleanse the Pagans

Will it cleanse me and us? The king asks

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Go beyond that Alfred, the potentate replies:

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"The larger the country, the greater the faith

When you are to be judged, your faith is greater than your sin

When you conquer the country, you can accept the sin and the conquest".

End of quote

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In other words; the more you believe, the less it matters if you perform foolish or lethal acts.

We can describe the difference from the above by thinking a little about how the Indo-European thought process has shaped us. One thought that struck me is that most exciting films are about a hero. It makes me reflect on how the Indo-European tradition carries a self-evident value when it comes to daring to perform actions that are bigger than the ego. We take hold of ourselves and dedicate our lives in some form to helping the tribe/family/clan, even society on the whole.

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That is in a way the meaning of life. This is in stark contrast to Monotheistic thinking, which means that you are actually just “a little person” and a single god rules over everything. You don’t have to take responsibility in the end. It’s not that you are fully responsible for your actions, but there is a greater god who bears that responsibility.

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The fundamental difference between Monotheism and the Indo-European way of thinking is that in the monotheistic religions, the perception, is that intention and thought play the biggest role. In the Indo-European way of thinking, however, causality is crucial. It doesn’t matter what thoughts and intentions you have. What matters is what actions you perform and what they entail.

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In the Indo-European perspective, you are, of course responsible for everything you do. On closer inspection, I think that way of looking at existence actually corresponds to how other mammals act.

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My point is that the Indo-European idea is best consistent with a continued development of human consciousness in comparison with how nature works.

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Second Hand Lions

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Another example of how the Indo-European idea is still present in our collective communication layer, is in a film with Michael Caine and Robert Duvall, namely “Second Hand Lions” from 2003.

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Here we see a boy who has been dumped by his mother with two uncles, where one of the brothers has been fighting against lions. He tells young people in a speech that:

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“Money is not worth fighting for

Honour, glory and virtue are worth fighting for even if you don’t believe in it.

Even if you don’t understand it, live by it anyway because it gives life meaning.

True love never dies”.

End of quote

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As he says, it does not matter if you believe in it; do it anyway! This is something so deep and inherited that it works, although presented in a superficial film.

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Conclusion about the Indo-European way of thinking from a modern point of view.

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It seems that our way of acting in the moment and in the perspective of long and very long time has to do with the understanding of this enormous perspective. This also involves the subconscious. Thinking in terms of honor, simply a behavior that seems adequate even in the animal world, has been one of the lasting links that has allowed us to survive to this day. The perspective of the Norns, the Goddesses of Fate, stands for an extended perspective over generations. I mean that this whole concept is included in an Indo-European way of thinking.

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I also think it has to do with the concept of entropy in the sense that I see that a cultural thought in Indo-European that includes a gigantic complexity has the ability to bring down large concepts to everyday contexts. How do we live our lives with our subconscious intact?

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Good luck!

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We all live in a process. Living in a process means that you follow the path with a steering speed. If you are attentive, you will always find the way forward with the right sign. Along the way, you want something to lean on. With the right perspective, you will fix it. There are also larger processes that you may not have thought about. For me, it is always inspiring to keep the following in mind:

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Here is some interesting information that you can reflect on when you are going to buy a new pair of trousers, or you need two cucumbers for the dinner you have planned for. This is because you are, whether you like it or not, really attending a great process.

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Sagittarius A star is the black hole that is located in the center of the Milky Way. After having had very large eruptions several billion years ago, it has now entered a dormant period. It can really be compared to a sleeping giant in Indo-European and Nordic mythology.

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The black hole in the center of the galaxy is a primordial force that the Galaxy cannot live without. The giants are the primordial force and we, as humans on our small planet, need to relate to it. We can see traces of the Milky Way's black hole's eruption several billion years ago, through 25,000 light-year-long dust remnants that remain and extend out from the Milky Way after the black hole's projection eruption.

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Based on the concepts of entropy and the warping of space-time, we can imagine that we are falling through the universe. We fall with the Earth around the Sun and we fall with the Solar System around the axis of the Milky Way. The Milky Way, in turn, falls around other, larger compilations in the Universe.

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All of this has to do with mass, warping space-time so that time arises in different formations in different places in the Universe.

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Our planet Earth falls around the Sun at 465 meters per second. Our Sun falls around the Milky Way for 250 million years. During the entire existence of man, 0.1% of our time will be the time consumed in an orbit around the Milky Way.

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The Earth's orbit around the sun is about 94 million miles and we travel at 108,000 km/h while we spin on our own axis at 1,600 km/h. This is about the speed at the equator, but in the North the speed is only half as great and at the poles the speed is zero.

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I wish you good luck and all the best, falling through your life in as much balance as possible, to a greater understanding of yourself and the universe.

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Living through the Indo-European process can be like Morpheus says to Neo in the 2001 film "The Matrix":

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“Following the path is not the same as knowing the path; following the path feels a little bit like being in love.”

 

List of literature

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Ebbe Schön: Asa-Tors hammare

Ebbe Schön: Vår svenska tomte

Ottar Grönvik: Maal og Minne (Aim and Memory) 1997

Stefan Brink: Mythologizing Landscape. Place and Space of Cult and Myth by Stefan Brink 2001.

Jim al Khalili: Scientific TV programmes

Brian Cox: Scientific TV programmes

Robert Sapolsky: Determined, The Science of Life Without Free Will

Anders Kaliff: Källan på botten av tidens brunn. (The source at the bottom of the well of time.)