Click here to listen to Loki, Norse God of Chaos and the Quantum Cosmos in the season 2 archives on buzzsprout
Myths of the Norse god Loki combine with an understanding of the quantum cosmos to offer insight into the necessity of chaos, and a perspective on the restructuring of our lives.
Transcript of Loki, Norse god of Chaos, and the Quantum Cosmos
00:00
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Myth Matters, storytelling and conversation about mythology and why myth matters to our lives today I’m your host, and personal mythologist Catherine Svehla. Wherever you may be in this wide, beautiful, crazy world of ours, you are part of this story circle.
00:29
In the last podcast, I shared a story with you about Eshu, the God who loves to create discord. I’ve been thinking about his place in the system, because Eshu has a place in the system. He’s a messenger of the Creator, and more significantly, perhaps, he is the great disruptor of her plans and of the harmony between human beings. In that podcast, I invited you to consider your worldview, and acknowledging the presence of Eshu, perhaps allow a bit of disruption into your system, into your thinking. This led me to consider science and the world view of science.
01:28
This is something that I’ve mostly avoided, having an obvious preference for something more poetic like mythology. But I realized that my antipathy to science is actually a deep dislike of the Newtonian view of the world as a soulless machine, of the “hierarchy of being” that puts human beings at the top as the sole possessors of consciousness, and the incredible loneliness and alienation that has engendered in Western people. I also dislike the insistence that objectivity is possible. This seems to me patently untrue, and has served to keep the white Western man in charge, among other problems. There’s also the claim that reason is the only pathway to knowledge, that there’s no such thing as intuition or emotional intelligence, and no intelligence in the non-human.
02:43
All of this together creates a worldview that discounts so much of my experience and the meaning that I find in it. As I thought about it, I realized that the invitation to you around which my work is organized, namely to “keep the mystery in your life alive,” is in part a reaction to this Newtonian view, and the belief that we inhabit an orderly mechanical universe governed by discoverable laws, that human beings will one day grasp and control it all. This is, however, 17th century science, and there is a new scientific worldview, the quantum world and discoveries of the 20th and 21st century. So I recently took it upon myself to update my awareness of science and learn a little bit about the quantum world.
03:51
It is, in the words of scientists, strange, paradoxical, and deeply disturbing, a world that has much in common with the psyche as described by depth psychology, and the world found in the old myths. You may well be aware of this. I’m certainly not the first person to make those comparisons and see the parallels. I share this bit of my process with you as an example from my life, of how one can make some space for discord and challenge cherished ideas about the world without engaging in a fist fight with your neighbor.
04:33
Now, the world described by quantum physics, which has parallels in chemistry and biology, is continually in process. It is a world comprised of relationships within networks, and individuals that are connected, without regard to time or space, by invisible systems of information. A world in which disorder brings about reorganization and new order. A cosmos in which chaos and order are mirror images. They are states that contain one another. This is a very old notion. Plato, for example, called it “necessity” and “errancy.” The one provides structure and the other life.
05:25
Well, this is a podcast about mythology, so I want to tell you a story from Norse mythology as a way of thinking about some of the implications of our mysterious cosmos, in a way that feeds the imagination and might bring these ideas closer to home, to our lives. The language of myth, that is, the images, analogies, metaphors and personages can put some flesh on the bones of these abstractions.
05:57
I’m increasingly interested in chaos and disruption, in the unexpected and the unpredictable, as this force is more and more prevalent in these times. This raises questions for me about the purpose and the meaning that can be found in it, and about perspective. How does one live in these times? Is there a call that must be answered? There are huge forces at work, and yet each of us has a role to play. Closer examination of daily life, of the news cycle, for example, well, this reveals the impact of individual values and action. The common view of power and the belief that it must be great, amassed in huge numbers and exerted with force, belongs to the Newtonian world. In the quantum view, power, that is the action of power, or rather “energy,” is much more subtle.
07:11
So let’s turn to old Norse mythology and a story about Loki, the Norse disruptor, the bringer of discord, and the God called Balder, the golden one. Now, Loki was the son of giants. This was an ancient race that existed before the gods and from whom the later gods actually emerged. The giants continued to live in the world with the gods. Loki repeatedly brings elements from the giants and other parts of the Norse cosmos into the world of the gods, that challenges the order that they try to maintain. Balder, who was also known as Balder the Beautiful, was the personage of wisdom and purity. He was the son of Odin and Frigg, and Balder was the most beloved of all of the Norse gods. He was associated with the sun.
08:20
Odin was also called the “All Father,” and Odin was the main ruler God. He was a one- eyed warrior who devoted many of his energies to gaining wisdom in the desire to prevent, if at all possible, the Ragnarok, which was the doom of the gods and the end of the world as he knew it. Now the Ragnarok is prophesied at the outset of this mythology, something that I find very interesting. I often find myself wondering if this makes for a mythology of extraordinary pessimism or optimism.
The Norse world was populated than with gods and giants, also elves, dwarves and human beings. And it was divided into three separate realms: the realm of the gods, then the middle world, and then the underworld.There were some subdivisions in between, and the giants in particular, were kept in their own place. All of these realms were simultaneously supported and connected by a great ash tree, the axis mundi, which linked their fates. Odin, in his quest for wisdom and information, had two Ravens, one named Thought and one named Memory, that flew among the realms and collected information for him every day.
10:04
Frigg, who was the mother to Balder and the wife of Odin, was one of the most important goddesses in Norse mythology. She was the patron of marriage and motherhood, the goddess of love and fertility, and she had a reputation for knowing every person’s destiny. But apparently, unlike other prophets, she never unveiled her secret knowing. Frigg spent a great deal of her time weaving.
10:39
Balder had a twin brother named Hod, who is also going to be part of this story. Hod was as dark as Balder was light and golden; Hod was as serious as Balder was playful. He was taciturn and he was blind.
11:02
The Norse understood their deities as organizing powers, as the forces and concepts that gave structure to the world. And yet, just like in the Yoruban pantheon with Eshu, there was a place for disorder and chaos. This was in the person of Loki. Odin was informed through magical means that Loki and his children were going to play a decisive role in this Ragnarok that he was trying to prevent, the war that would bring about the doom of the gods. And yet Loki was allowed to live and hang around Asgard, the realm of the gods. Maybe Odin couldn’t get rid of him. I don’t know. Obviously these deities could die. That was part of the prophecy.
12:01
In any event, Loki was a constant presence in the mythology and there were early intimations of the trouble that he was going to bring. For example, Loki had a faithful wife, but he also had a giantess as mistress and he had three children with her: a great serpent, a daughter named Hel, and the wolf named Fenrir. When they were born, well, Odin banished the serpent to the outer ring of the middle world, where it encircled the Great ocean that contained Midgard, and Hel was sent down to the underworld to take charge of the dead down there. But Odin let Fenrir the wolf stay around because he had a special affection for wolves.
13:03
But one day the gods noticed that Fenrir was growing quite rapidly, and in fact, he was already very large and would soon exceed their ability to control or contain him. So they decided to shackle him. But he was already so strong that nothing they had could bind him. They wrapped him up with some chains and then said, “Hey, let’s see how strong you are, see if you could break them.” And he did. And then they tried something else, and they offered him the same test. You know, presumably just to ah, you know, admire his strength. And he broke those.
13:46
And so they decided to visit the dwarves. Now the dwarves were craftsmen of the gods, and they could make all kinds of special magical implements. The dwarves made a magic ribbon that was made out of many unusual things, like mountain roots and the noise made by the footfall of a cat, and this silken ribbon was stronger than any iron chain. They took this ribbon to Fenrir but when they attempted to bind him, he sensed some deception going on here. He refused to submit and play their old “Let’s test your strength” game unless one of the gods agreed to place their hand in his mouth. Tyr, who was known for his great courage, was the only one who was willing to agree to this compromise and knowing full well what the consequences would be, he put his hand in the mouth of the great wolf. As the bonds tightened, Fenrir struggled and realized that he had been tricked. He clamped his huge teeth down on Tyr’s hand and that was the end of his hand. Once the deed was done, all of the gods laughed. Except, of course, for Tyr.
15:27
Now, this attempt to bind Fenrir foreshadows perhaps, what came later. I want to tell you the story of Balder and Loki, and I invite you to listen and relax and let the story wash over you. Note the moment or detail that catches your attention as it may be useful when you reflect on this myth later.
Loki and the Death of Balder
15:58
The beautiful Balder grew up strong and golden and handsome, and when he was a man he was admitted to the Council of the Gods. He married a beautiful and loyal goddess, and he lived a happy life for a number of years. But one day the gods noticed that Balder had stopped smiling, and over time, his lack of smiles grew into a deep melancholy. And then a depression. The other gods worried about him, and they wondered what could be causing him grief. Now, finally, his parents, Odin and Frigg, couldn’t take it any longer. They tenderly implored their son to tell them what was troubling him.
16:57
He told them that he no longer slept easy at night and was plagued with dark and oppressive dreams. “I don’t remember them clearly when I awake,” he said. “But they fill me with the fear and foreboding that I cannot shake.” When Odin and Frigg heard this, they were very uneasy. It seemed impossible that any harm could come to Balder. He was so well loved, and yet they were compelled to take measures to avert any form of danger.
17:30
Frigg sent her servants in every direction with strict instructions to prevail upon all living creatures, all plants, metals and stones, in fact, every animate and inanimate thing in the world, to register a solemn vow not to harm Balder. All of creation readily took the oath, for there was nothing on Earth that did not love the radiant God. The servants returned to Frigg and told her that everything had been duly sworn, except for this young little plant called the mistletoe that was growing upon the oak tree at the gate of Valhalla. This, they added, was such a puny and inoffensive thing that they felt no harm could be feared from it. Frigg agreed. Thinking that she had covered all of the bases, she now resumed her weaving and spinning in great content for the mother, Frigg, felt assured that no harm could come to Balder, the child that she loved above all.
18:47
Odin, in the meantime, had resolved to consult one of the dead prophetess. He mounted his eight footed steed Sleipnir and rode into the depths of hell, where he roused a prophetess using magic spells and the power of the runes. Now Odin didn’t tell her who he was because he wanted her to speak truthfully. When he arrived, she was spreading a feast for a new arrival. “Who do you expect?” he asked, and she replied, “Balder, who is destined to be slain by his brother, Hod.” Odin was horrified by this news and he struggled to keep his composure in order to press the prophetess for more details. And she told him that someone would be born to avenge Balder’s death, but that the golden god would not be brought back from the dead. And then she started to get a little bit suspicious about who she might be talking with, and feeling that maybe she had said too much, she refused to offer any more information.
20:06
Odin road home to Frigg with a heavy heart. But when he arrived, he found his wife in a happy state. She assured him that their son was absolutely safe. “All things under the sun have pledged not to harm him,” she said.
20:25
Well, in the meantime, Balder and the rest of the gods were feeling a great relief at the news of these many pledges that Frigg had collected, and they decided to celebrate. The gods held a picnic out on the green plains with lots of fine food and drink and games. They were warriors and their favorite games all involved various tests of strength. One of them involved throwing some golden discs, which they could do with great skill. But since they were feeling especially light and festive, they put a little twist on this game. Having learned that Balder was invincible, they amused themselves by casting all types of weapons at him. They threw arrows and darts and spears and stones. But no matter how cleverly they tried or how hard they threw them, every object glanced aside or fell short. Balder was unharmed.
21:40
This new game was so fascinating that soon all of the gods gathered around Balder, and every time someone threw something and it failed to hurt him, they laughed and laughed and laughed. These bursts of merriment attracted the attention of Loki, and he wondered what was going on. Now, Loki had been left out of the loop on this as he was often left out of the loop by the other gods, and he decided to visit Frigg, who was at home spinning, to see if she knew what was going on. He took the shape of an old woman and went to her house.
22:33
Frigg saw this old woman walking by and she invited her to stop and come in and have a cup of tea. So the old woman, that is Loki, came in and sat down. And he was annoyed, you know, by the laughter and very curious to find out what was causing all of this joy. So he asked Frigg what was going on. She told him, “Well, the gods are amusing themselves by throwing stones and other missiles, blunt and sharp, at my beloved son, Balder, and he simply stands there smiling and unharmed because they can’t hurt him.” The old woman expressed some wonder and astonishment at this, and Frigg smiled and said, Well, it’s really quite natural that nothing could harm Balder. All things love him and have solemnly sworn not to injure him.”
23:44
When Loki heard this, he was very vexed and annoyed, but he hid it from the goddess. Instead, he said. “Are you certain that all things in heaven and earth have taken this pledge?” And the old woman, you know, she was so innocent sitting there that Frigg said, “Yes, I received the solemn oath of all things, absolutely everything, well, except this harmless little plant, the mistletoe which grows in the oak at the gate of Valhalla. But this is too small and weak to be the source of any danger.”
24:32
Loki smiled. He bid the goddess Frigg adieu and hobbled off with this information. As soon as he was safely out of sight, he resumed his usual form and rushed to Valhalla, where he found the oak and the mistletoe. Loki cut a piece of the plant. He sharpened one end of the wooden stem to make a sharp dart, slipped it into his pocket, and then he went to join the picnic and the games.
25:08
When he arrived out on the green field, all of the gods were still playing, still laughing, still hurling things at Balder. Only poor blind Hod stood alone. Hod was leaning mournfully against a tree and taking no part in the game. With great nonchalance, Loki approached Hod and asked, “Why Hod, you look so forlorn. What’s the matter? Are you sad because such great honor is being awarded to your brother?” “Oh, no, no, no,” Hod replied. “I would love to join in the new game, but I have no weapon. And of course, Loki, I’m blind. You know that.”
25:57
“Well, let me help you then,” said Loki, “so that you too can pay tribute to your brother. Here, take my hand.” And Loki led Hod into the circle of gods, where he put the mistletoe dart in Hod’s hand. Loki held up his arm and gave him aim and Hod threw the dart. He waited for the cheers and applause that had followed every other dart and arrow. But there was only silence, followed by a shuddering cry of horror. You see, the dart struck Balder, and the beautiful and the shining god fell down dead, pierced by the fatal mistletoe.
26:58
Now the myth continues, and it describes the attempts that the gods make to bring Balder back from the underworld. But they are unsuccessful. All of nature mourns the passing of the golden God. All except one, a giantess who it’s suspected by some, may have been Loki. And because there is one being who will not mourn Balder, Hel and the others down in the underworld refused to let Balder come back. So at last they have to build his funeral fire. They pile it high with gifts, and they burn the body of their beloved Balder. And when they are done, they capture and punish Loki.
27:54
Loki is bound to three huge rocks. He’s tied to them with the guts of one of his own children and then a serpent is set up above him. A serpent with poisonous fangs that drip a painful venom down onto Loki’s face. Loki’s wife is allowed to hold a dish over his head to catch the venom, but every so often she has to leave to empty the dish, and when she does this venom falls on Loki’s face and he writhes in pain.
The myths don’t say that what happens next, happens because Loki is bound, but the implication seems fairly clear. Once Loki is put in this position and is no longer allowed to roam free, the events that are prophesied to mark the beginning of the Ragnarok began to unfold. There’s a long series of winters without a summer. Brothers start killing each other out of greed, and finally the stars begin to disappear. As the outer structure of the world begins to collapse, other bonds are loosened and ultimately broken, including Loki’s, and he is free, free to fight on the side of the giants, the beings who were even older than the gods.
After a great battle, everyone on both sides is dead. Only two human beings remain. And yet the myth ends with the emergence of a new world. We are told that the earth rises again from the deep, deep green, full of growing things. A new order will return.
30:04
Now, I said that this myth could be either extremely pessimistic or optimistic. This mythology begins with the notion of the end, and it’s very pessimistic if you are attached to the survival of the old order of Odin and his family of gods. It’s very optimistic if we look at the end and see that despite many, many, many attempts to prevent the destruction, in fact, the cosmos itself cannot be destroyed and a new order emerges. So taking up this question of what kind of perspective might we adopt, let’s take a look at this story.
30:55
We see that Frigg attempts to protect her son from absolutely all contingencies. She tries to create a world in which there can be no accidents, and she does this with a compulsive thoroughness. In his very excellent book called “Trickster Makes the World,” Lewis Hyde notes that Frigg sets this whole chain in motion with this oath- taking, this attempt to create a world in which Loki, who is the disrupter, who is the unpredictable, who is the bringer of accidents, has no room to operate. She attempts to create a world in which there is no opening for Loki to move. So in a sense, he was already bound. He was already banished from their world before they tied him to those rocks and then it’s no wonder that he immediately searched out the one exception, the mistletoe.
32:03
In the old view of Newtonian science, and apparently of Odin and Frigg and the Norse gods, control is the means to preserve order. But in life, as recent science and experience show us, we want and need dynamic connectedness. There has to be flexibility and openness to change. If Frigg had succeeded, the world as we know it would no longer exist. The gods, the organizing powers, they create structure but they can’t bring the world to life by themselves. They need that spark. And that spark is the touch of disorder and the vulnerability that Loki brings. We see this in reverse in the story. When he’s suppressed, when he is tied to the rocks, the living world collapses. You know the stars, the summer, everything, you know, everything falls apart. And then when he returned, the world is reborn.
33:19
Yes, there is a great battle, and there’s a lot of destruction. And yet, that green, the green of life, is present at the very end. We get this message in the mistletoe also. Mistletoe is an evergreen plant, and it is a pagan symbol of rebirth that was very important at the midpoint, at the winter and summer solstices, which are in themselves a kind of a crossroads between the light and the dark. Loki’s fatal weapon then, this mistletoe, itself carries the promise of rebirth.
34:04
On the outer level, so to speak, this is a story of the gods, of the struggle between order and chaos on a cosmic plane. But there’s also an inner level to this because each of us is our own mini cosmos, so to speak. And we each have our own gods, that is our own ordering principles, the ideas and the rules that we use to construct and maintain our lives. Some of these things may well be called into question in these days. For example, we have ideas and expectations of comfort and convenience, of productivity and progress. There’s, you know, the Almighty God here in the United States anyway, that we call the “economy” and our personal relationships to money.
35:07
Your ordering principles, your gods, may be expressed in the language of need. You might identify them by noticing what it is you tell yourself that you need. Or maybe you can identify them by looking for solutions or approaches to problems that you habitually rely on, and ask yourself whether or not they work as well as they have in the past. I wonder if each of us might find in our own little cosmos something that needs to go. And maybe we already have an intimation on an individual, on a personal level, of what that is, a sense that something will end. You recall that Balder had a dream, and in that way the story tells us that his death was a process that was already in motion. Is there a clue being provided to you about some principle in your life that’s got to be changed? Is there a place where you’re exerting great effort to protect yourself or prevent things from changing?
36:33
This may seem like a rather small example, but I find myself thinking about my own work process and the ways that I try and control the information that comes into me, as evidenced by all of the post-it notes on my walls and the piles on my floor. If things start to feel a little bit out of my control, I get very nervous. I might even have to admit to being anxious. And yet, increasingly, I see that I simply cannot work in the old way and respond to the world, to what’s coming to me, and to what I’m observing, with my old structures. I’m considering whether or not I have to allow more chaos, and so more flexibility, in service perhaps, to something that I haven’t been able to imagine.
37:36
Renewal. That message of the mistletoe, which is echoed in our current stories of the quantum universe, will come and the death is necessary. I want to return to Lewis Hyde. He writes that Balder “is the irremediable mediocrity of the present age.” The irremediable mediocrity of the present age, and he observes that although Balder is called the most wise of the gods, he is throughout the stories in Norse mythology, completely ineffectual. Balder is a source of salvation or the promise of a better future that is never realized. It is, in fact, paralyzed from the start.
38:35
I want to end with a quote from Rabbi Lawrence Kushner that I found in a book by Margaret J. Wheatley titled “Leadership and the New Science, Discovering Order in a Chaotic World.” This is one of the books that I’ve turned to, to start ramping up my understanding of the scientific world view, and I chose it because Wheatley provides an overview of some of the principles of the quantum world and applies this to her work as a consultant to organizations. This is a handy model for me because I used to work in public interest nonprofit organizations some years ago. I recommend this book to you if those parallels would be useful and I’ll post a link to her website with the transcript to this episode.
39:32
Kushner writes, “This is the setting out. The leaving of everything behind. Leaving the social milieu. The preconceptions. The definitions. The language. The narrowed field of vision. The expectations. No longer expecting relationships, memories, words or letters to mean what they used to mean. To be, in a word: Open.”
40:08
Openness. In my last podcast, I suggested to you that one of our greatest tools right now is the question. Our ability to question. And I guess for that tool to work, we have to take Kushner’s advice to heart as well and cultivate a new state of openness.
40:31
And that’s it for me, Catherine Svehla and Myth Matters. If you’re new to Myth Matters, I invite you to head over to the Mythic Mojo website, where you will find information about the podcast. There are lots of links to different platforms that you can use to listen to it, and this is also where I will post a transcript and the links that I mentioned.
40:56
If you visit the website, you’re also going to find information about various ways that you come work with me, one on one, to use story to do some of the things we talk about here in this podcast. If you use story to shift your consciousness, it could be a good opening to make life changes, as well as understand the mythic dimension of your life. If you go to the website, you’ll see there’s a consult tab in the navigation bar that will lead you to more details.
41:30
I want to thank you so much for tuning in to Myth Matters and for your support of this podcast in whatever form that takes. If you are finding value here and you have the means, and you can help me with the financial part of this whole enterprise, then you can do that by joining Myth Matters on Patreon. You will find links on the Mythic Mojo website to Myth Matters on Patreon.
41:58
And that’s it, my friends. Thanks again for joining me. Please tune in next time, and until then, happy myth-making and keep the mystery in your life alive.
Links to materials I mentioned in this podcast:
Margaret J. Wheatley, author of “Leadership and the New Science,” website
