Jormungandr/Midgard Serpent Real Meaning: Translation, Attestations and Theories of Norse Gods
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- Опубліковано 29 лис 2020
- The actual translation and real meaning of the Midgard Serpent. Also all of the mentions of this serpent in the myths and poems.
#norsepagan
#paganism
#norse
Every God/deity/character in the Norse myths had a translation and real meaning. When we start to understand this, we can see that the Norse pagan myths were not just a bunch of unbelievable stories meant to entertain children. We should not assume that our ancestors were that dumb to actually believe in these things. All of the myths and gods symbolize real things in nature, the cosmos, universe and spirituality. Although we don't know exactly what these myths represent all of the time and theories are debated, we have to look at these things to determine the most logical ones and discover the real truth.
I've learned more about norse mythology by watching 10 of yours videos, than i've learned by living in Norway for 40 years...
Or doing religious studies at school☝️
looks like someone didn't care about our countries history. sad.
From what I've learned here I would say that Jörmungandr represents body (in the body-mind dychotomy), and, more generally, matter. If Thor (with Mjöllnir) is active, dynamic principle, then the Snake, lying still at the basis of the world tree is passive principle. It also fits perfectly, because life force gives life to everything and Jörmungandr-matter holds this "everything" together. The idea of the thread would also fit here, because a thread holds different parts together (and on the universal scale matter (billions of galaxies) looks like threads, stretched through space). It would also explain why Thor often fights with the Snake and why it might end in a catastrophe, because we are often in body-mind conflict, instead of elevating (lifting the Snake) us to a more enlightened state.
I see the story of Thor vs The Serpent as physical Science, and a philosophical visionary future prediction for society all in one. “As above, so below” is an Abrahamic terminology. But the Canaanites and Sumerians were in fact on to things as well. The Christian infringement upon their original ideas have polluted their ancient perspectives as well. But “As above, so below” has survived this far because it really does only make sense. Everything being interconnected, from start to finish.
I completely agree with your theory! Also being that professors theory on this story being physical science. Yet, I also think personally that it is a story of humanities social end, long before our realm’s physical cyclical end. Hear me out;
Humans are creatures of habit like any other animal on this turf. We can record the failures of our past over and over and over again while watching humans still continue to make the same choices that create our civil and societal ends, every time. Þórr to me represents the necessary chaos required for conquering the greater chaos, which is Jörmungandr. Jörmungandr being a more self-eating, self-destructive, anti-growth chaos. The kind of chaos that can only grown so large until it becomes cancerous. Where Thor represents structured chaotic destruction, so that these over-grown and cancerous elements may recycle and regrow back stronger instead continue down the self-destructive nihilistic path into eventual nothingness.
Thor represents the natural order of how everything works; breaking down your muscles so that they may grown back stronger, getting rid of bad people close to you in your life so that you may be in a better head space and environment, good cops keeping order, good war-fighters trying to rid foreign lands of evil oppressors, burning dry dense forests to prevent forest fires, hunters killing animals in the wild that over populate and destroy the environment, like boar. Or cause a mass extinction of wildlife like wolves can commonly do, or poachers for that matter are doing in Africa. People capable of great violence and chaos, like Thor, must step in who are willing to cause regulated chaos in order for growth to continue on. As time goes on though, the people who represent Jörmungandr complicate things. And so the serpent gets bigger, because that old ways of sustaining growth through organized Chaos becomes frowned upon in every new and eventually powerful, yet overly-civil society.
Don’t worry about what you put into your body or what you look like, “you’re beautiful just the way you are inside and out.”
Don’t burn the dead trees, “just tend them.”
Don’t shoot the poachers, “just apprehend them.”
Don’t push people away, “you don’t turn your back on family or someone that has helped you in the past.”
Defund all of the Police, “they are all inherently racist.”
Stop sending Americans to war, “They are doing more harm than good.”
Don’t kill the boar, “just relocate them.”
Don’t kill wolves, “they are beautiful creatures.”
When you notice the natural order of things beginning to be prevented, and not kept or improved upon, that to me has always been Jörmungandr. And eventually, their will come a day of Ragnarok. Where the Devolving and devouring Chaos will finally have met its match with the original facilitators of organized chaos coming to the fight at the very end. Late, yet just in time to fight one more battle that ends it all. Only for the cycle to begin again.
Hard times create strong men
Strong men create good times
Good times create weak men
Weak men create bad times
Strong men return too late
as the monstrous “poisonous” chaos and the old order of necessary chaos kill each other to begin a new cycle all over again.
We are a product of the universe in physical form at its purest most keen state, with far too much intelligence in-order get out of the way of our own emotional and psychological ignorance. And so, human societies will always end with Thor killing the World Serpent that he allowed to live for so long. Only for that same monster to kill him in return because of how mighty it eventually becomes.
Basically, I say never let the Serpent get so big. Let it live, but tend to it wisely instead of allowing it to feed endlessly and grow into an untamable world destroyer.
Yes i like that. That strong men good times thing is one of my main philosophies in life. Like the evolution or de-evolution of humans that constantly happens like a cycle
This is very intersting, and I like much of it (especially the "regulated chaos" bit). Does Jörmungandr not just represent the destructive side of chaos, but the cyclical nature of destruction and rebirth? It may be an easy metaphor, but as it encircles our dimension clasping its own tail it forms an endless loop. We see parallels in Crom Cruach and Ouroboros, both of which (like Jörmungandr) seem to reside on the liminal boundary between growth and destruction, life and death, the end of a cycle and its new beginning.
I believe jormangandr can represent balance, and when balance is disturbed , there's chaos..
He can also represent cycles, Anything that begins, Ends.. and the birth of new through chaos.
A force like thor would be necessary to exist, in order to balance out the way of things.
One can't exist without the other . Because their fates are intertwined. Thats why they both die.
Its all neccessary..
Mate…the insight/knowledge you show in your material is so fucking refreshing and thought provoking. Some of your theories and interpretations I’ve also pondered deeply myself, others have really been truly eye opening.
Jörmungandr is one of them I’ve thought on for a long time. I do believe Jörmungandr could be metaphorical for a physical force (such as gravity, the atmosphere), but I truly believe Jörmungandr was more likely a personification of the “border” between our dimension and all others.
I have an extension on this that gets a little psychedelic so I won’t share all the details of my personal experiences with this force.
My theory is that Jörmungandr (and many other great mythic serpents throughout the pre-Christian world) was perceived visually by shamans, magicians, witches, spiritual leaders, monks in hallucinations/visions or out of body experiences…induced by either extreme meditation, trance building, ritual magic or psychedelic drug use. They may have perceived the “great serpent” in the enormous crystalline, geometric, serpent-scale “sea thread” landscape that engulfs you before shooting part of your soul through a portal (maybe part of the cosmic rivers?) into other dimensions/realms, to gain knowledge and wisdom to bring back.
Could have been strongly connected to such magic/mind altering practices and the initial border to the consciousness outside the body. As you so rightly stated, his name most likely translates to “Great Magic”
The image of the snake with its tail in its mouth, the circle that creates, strikes me as an expression of continuity. Continuity, being an abstract thought, can be applied wherever it can be perceived, for example, the persistence of life from one generation to the next; the cycle of the seasons; the ebb and rise of the tides; the repetition of the phases of the moon and of the positions of certain astronomical objects visible to the naked eye. From circle to cycle, the Midgard Serpent image is widely applicable.
This is going to be a long one and I am typing on my phone so bare with me. There is a symbol in Taoism called the yinyang, it represents many things but mainly duality. Two of the major dualistic principles are as follows chaos/order good/evil. Walking the path in Taoism essentially living your life in a way that you are right on the boarder of chaos and order, so as to not to become stagnant with too much order and not to destroy yourself with too much chaos. Jormungander represents this line, or “the way.” When Thor (life force) uses Mjolnir (drive) to fight Jormungander, it is a representation of living your life in a balanced way with purpose. When Thor slays Jormangundar, that is representing the ascension into enlightenment where duality become unity. The Hindu have a similar story that was mentioned in the video called sumandra munthran where a sneak is wrapped around a mountain and a tug of war happens, during the tug of war the “milk of the ocean.” The milk represents immortality.
excellent
Really intresting chanel, been looking for just these kinds of videos.
I will keep binge watch them 👊🏼
Thanks for making these!
Very much my own interpretation/associations (and I've just started really learning about this, so read it like that, but I find it very interesting to think about). It makes me think about a concept in anthropology. How some cultures are focused on balance and staying 'the same', as opposed to more growth-focused cultures. Perhaps we could see jormungander as the border of what we can know. As the border between growth and destruction. As we see today: how far can we take our industrial growth before we completely drain our earth and the big forces of nature push back? It makes sense in the stories with Thor, our life force pushing that boundary and the fear when it might work and the waves that it causes, literal as well as more symbolic. It makes sense that it's loki's child, it's a form of change, a between, neither us nor the great forces but the balance between.
great timing on this video. I've been looking more into this amazing being. serpent energy can be generalized as grounded, feminine, reincarnation, alchemy, wisdom, healing. is there ever any talk of Jormungandr shedding skin? or traces of shed skin being something found?
I think about kundalini serpent energy rising and being dangerous if not channeled skilfully.
eating one's own tail, like the more common image of the ouroboro, regenerating one's self overunity energy would make sense to generate a gravitational or protective field.
Very cool. No not any records of jormungandr shedding in norse myths. But I am sure there is in other indo-european myths. Im not as knowledgable in those but I am sure there is. The old vedic myths may be a good place to look for those. Its related to the norse anyway
@@norsemagicandbeliefs8134 Arith Härger has some very interesting theories about Christianity's influence on the subject in his video "Nidhogg & Jormungandr - The Old Gods". I think you'll dig it
@@humanatur2786 Yea hes pretty good. Ill check that video out
Isn’t the Ouroboros a representation of the cycle of life, a cycle to which even the ‘gods’ are bound, resulting in their (and our) inevitable reincarnation‽
In regards to Lögseims, perhaps (as in other cultures) water was viewed as a nourisher of life, a natural counterpart to the air, or the breath of life (ǫnd), both of which are set into turmoil, becoming poisoned during the time of Ragnarök.
It would make sense imo, that if Thor (the life-force) were able to lift/separate Jørmungandr (the cycle of life) from the earth, it would ‘upset’ the balance of all life in the realm, perhaps Ragnarök symbolising the end to the natural cycle of reincarnation‽
Hati and Sköll are also said to catch, and devour their prey (the moon and sun) during this time, both of which are known as sources of life (the moon perhaps more symbolic of the calendar, which governs the growth & harvest seasons, and the blóts).
Therefore it seems logical that the awakening of Jörmungandr at Ragnarök is symbolic of the multi-faceted forces of life being tipped into disarray, with Thor (the life-force) being the only one able to initiate such an event, being hinted at when attempting to lift ‘the cat,’ seemingly on the verge of tipping the scales of balance, at which all were afeared~
Really enjoying your videos and insights on the Norse myths.
Keep up the great work
I made a connection with the sea serpent and the umbilical cord. "Sea" in "sea thread" is probably the amniotic fluid. With our ancient ancestral cult of reincarnation it makes perfect sense to me, especially while Þórr has represented the heartbeat and the embryo (in Þrýmskviða, union of male and female gametes, the true Hermaphrodite). The placenta was seen as the twin that had to be killed for the fetus to live, and the cutting of the umbilical cord was the murder of it (also known as the castration of Ouranós and the murder of Remus).
As I watch we have a really violent thunderstorm going on here. Appropriate for a discussion of the Serpent and Thor.
The ouroboros is the milky way above us. At certain times in history you can see it bite it's own tail. You can find pictures of this on google.
Congrats on all the new subs, man! You’re channel is awesome
It’s nice to finally find someone making videos about all of this with the same point of view I come at it with.
I always assumed the serpent chewing it’s own tail and encircling the earth was the tide.
Jörmungand (the magic of the whole world) represents the cyclical, overlapping, eternal world, without beginning or end. Odin threw it into the world ocean (in Swedish you can call the whole sky a sea - lufthav) therefore this snake is also a representative of time, which is Thor's (the life force) enemy. Although Tor and the snake are told to kill each other at Ragnarök, Tor is said to walk 9 steps before he falls, and the number 9 represents that something is created, in other words reborn, so neither Tor nor Jörmundgandr ceased to exist but now simply start cycling, in eternity.
The Thread of the Sea alwyas made sense to me to be the currents. If you look at the ocean it does wrap all the way around the world. The World serpent to me always made sense as the force that binds or world together and keeps the sea and land separated. Like a belt around the world inside the sea. If the currents break rotation the world would freeze and die. So to me as lond as the snake keeps biting its tail and the sea keeps flowing in its course the status quo can continue. When it stops the weather will be thrown off too.
I have heard something similar and it makes sense. i like it! How would you say thor fits into all that? His various scuffles and eventual fight to the death with jormundandr?
@@norsemagicandbeliefs8134 The sea is the engine for weather, if currents stopped bringing war waters to the north then the weather would become incredibly cold I guess. You can't Have a god of Thunder who watches over the land if the land is frozen and the weather is wrecked maybe. Maybe Thor fishing The world serpent up out of the water is metaphor for a storm so bad it upset the flow of the sea? Im not sure.
Or the sea-thread is a rising sea level due to melting ice :). We humans are trying to fight it but eventually the natural power always wins.
10:51 Like Atlantis and the Floods caused by Babel-like Tower events.
Another obvious interpretation is Kundalini and Time - and there is even a unifying metaphysicsl field that unites them in how perception manifests as experience over time through the curved lens of linear reality experience.
Jormungandr can also be seen as the psychic Internet's AI, to continue along the dimensional track. Like, a primitive realm/planet rips into the fabric of space-time for destructive purposes, causing a ripple in the aether that summons a program that sets humanity on a self-contained/quarantined ascend-or-Atlantis path through reptilian manipulations of ego-desire/impure Kundalini functions.
I know little of Jörmungandr but as I listened, for some reason I recalled Borges quoting Hugo: “L'hydre-Univers tordant son corps écaillé d'astres"
As many commented before me, the serpent is a symbol of the circulation of everything. In Hebrew mythology there is an interpretation of the serpent as a rogue angel who unlawfully grants humans with the basis of knowledge that can potentially give access to the abilities of taking life and creating life, when the "end of days" prophecies tell us of a world cured of killing and of death, a world that is almost certain to exist if we can only survive the next few generations. In Celtic mythology the snake is portrayed as something essential for existence, that can be very harmful but can also be harnessed to empower a being. In Babylonian mythology there are two serpents (or dragons) that had to be defeated for the world to be created but also must keep existing. This tells us something about the nature of life, not only of ourselves or of our fellow living organisms, but of the universe itself, life feeds death and death feeds life. As sir Roger Penrose's theory of cyclic cosmology states it is possible that our universe (or multiverse) will end to give birth to an identical one in an eternal cycle as it has always been, It is possible that wise and enlightened people of the past had the same idea and symbolized it by the serpent, causing such a variety of meanings, including ones that seem to be quite contradictory, maybe also causing the variety of words for snake in Indo-European languages.
CERN's Hadron collider is shaped like a serpent eating its tail and its goal has to do with the boundaries of reality of I'm not mistaken
Whilst I agree that he represents the border of the universe I also think he represents the consequences of hubris that people face for attempting to attain godhood of sorts, like if we were to be arrogant and attempt to leave our place in the universe for a higher power for seeing ourselves as above nature, then the results would be catastrophic; even the god Thor cannot escape the consequences of excessive pride
Do you know the artist or name of the artwork @ 1:24 into the video? Awesome videos, Thank you for them.
Hi, maybe Jormungandr just meant the boundaries of the sea (like a waterfall) that the vikings and other germanic tribes imagined it existed at the end of the sea. Maybe the Norse did not think the Earth was a sphere, and they thought it was just flat and therefore it had a limit. In order to create a sort of protection for sea travelers, they invented the story that there was a giant monster/serpent that could devour them so they would not go too far. Before Christopher Columbus arrived at the american continent, many people in western nations thought about sea monsters (giant octupus) that could reach out to the travelers and sink/eat the ship. So maybe it was a common idea among people of that time.
In other cultures the Snake is sacred. Its very interesting the differets points of view.
It's the mid ocean ridges hmmm
Listening to you being skeptical about the attempts of. scientists to push our boundaries outward into other realms, this reminded me of my mother, born in 1909 with no other education than schooling of the village school. She was alarmed at the early steps in space exploration in that very realm and said that he masses of material shot into space would reduce the mass of the Earth in the long run and changing its orbit bringing about nasty effects. Is it rational to think the wounds in our safety field have come back to us in the form of accelerated global warming, earhquakes, tsunamis, terrible high winds of sorts, etc ?
Doesn´t the electromagnetic field (Thor) represent the protective border between our world and Utgard/outer space?
in Smundara manthan gods stable the sea by using a big snake as a rope
This is The Eternal Evil Serpent of Bible, The Deceiver, The Drako , The Black . My Theory this is The Drako reptile King of pre-human civilisation atested in sunken Atlantis miths and even in some some pottery discored in vicinity of Ural mountains where reptile people were depicted when they went in a cave there down.(rhus or slavic ancestors)
I find it funny that the snakes name can mean staff/magic. Like in the Bible, before the exodus, Moses staff is turned to a snake. An pharaoh magicians also turn there staffs into snakes an Moses staff eats the others. Thought that was interesting.
Ouroboros is a snake that eats its own tail. They say it Represents a symbol of cosmic harmony, eternity, and the cycle of birth and death. Maybe he is the magic that holds Midgard cosmos in harmony, allowing birth and death to continue for eternity not letting souls or spirits pass to the afterlife
Also could be like the Higgs field in quantum mechanics. The Higgs field is what stops the universe from succumbing to the tendency to lose energy. Our universe is being kept in a fictitious vacuum by the dips an hills of the energy potential of the Higgs field long enough for planets, stars and galaxies to develop. Since everything wants to be at its lowest potential energy people in a gravitational field or electron going around a nucleus. Possibly allowing harmony for life to be born and die ?? What do you think lol
Extreme high voltage might be useful for passing through the van allen radiation belts...
Going with your theory of ragnarok representing an ice age, could Jörmungandr represent global warming, and when the sea snake is realeased ragnorok aka an ice age comes with it.
🖤
Jormangandr is always portrayed as the enemy of the gods, who is killed by the son of the earth and the god of wisdom. I've always thought of Jormangandr as what the Rasta refer to as Babylon. After Ragnarok, the survivors marvel at the bones of the dead serpent. Couldn't that be the ruins of old cities and industry in general?
Please go on some podcast or something. I've had such Similar thoughts and its frustrating hearing larpers ramble about paganism like its fucking true stories.
Could it represent gravity?
The mermaid and the cat equal happiness 🤔🌹🤰
Roger at mudfossil university channel has many mind blowing in depth videos about the dragon and fish. He zooms in on google earth to show you and has dna reports.🐉
Thank you. Im gonna check that one out
Maybe the it represents the black hole at the center of the milky way ??