Working with Mimir
by Gudrun of Mimirsbrunnr
One of
the wights that I work with—and have a lot of sympathy for—is Mimir. He is a
living prophetic head, a cult object that happens not to have died yet. When I
go into trance and prophesy, he is often the one who inspires me. Mimir came to me repeatedly in dreams, just a
face calling to me from the depths of a well. At first I was terrified, but
eventually I got used to him, I suppose you could say. He taught me a lot about
being a votive object, which helps when I allow the Gods and wights to enter me
and speak through me. I need to be able to move aside, to be a sacred place and
sacred thing – with emphasis on thing
– that does not get in their way. Mimir taught me how to do that.
He taught me to make a mask of his face—stark white, almost like a skull with the skin still on it—with long silver hair. The eyes are made of reflective glass disks; they are translucent enough to make out shapes, but not to see well. Odin’s blue eye, made of blue glass, is bound to the forehead like a third eye. I took the mask to a well and blessed it by dipping it in the water—but first, I drew blood from my eyelid with a clean needle and let it fall into the well, then poured in a whole bottle of booze, both offerings.
When I wear the mask of Mimir, instead of sitting on a high seat, I lay on the floor. I have a great mantle of shiny dark blue-green silk like the water in a well, and I wrap it about me so that it covers me from head to foot, and lays out onto the floor around my head and shoulders, as if I am a disembodied head in the Well of Mimirsbrunnr. I keep the light dim, with only a few candles at the edge of the Well. Then I go into trance, and he speaks through my mouth. The mask is the key—even just holding it, I shudder. No one else wants to touch it—it’s too unheimlich.
Mimir is able to touch emptiness, the kind of emptiness that is beyond loneliness, beyond desolation. In order to reach it, you must go through those places, and come out the other side. He situation is a kind of ultimate archetype of the intrinsic set-apart-ness of an oracle. Being an oracle makes you other, takes you away from the comforting mass of people. You are never quite one of them again. To exist only as eyes to see and mouth to speak, down the hollow, echoing Well of Wisdom, kept company only by the dead, your only light and solace a sacrifice extracted from an unwilling questioner … this is the essence of what it is to be an oracle, if only for the short time you are experiencing it. At first Mimir’s essential loneliness and helplessness was terrifying because it reminded me of times when I have touched that universal alienation - although not nearly to the bone-chilling extent that he has, of course – but eventually he taught me that there was a point beyond that ordeal. It is a point of wisdom, not pain; the universal wisdom is accessible to the quiet mind that has gone beyond the ordinary distractions of the world. He taught me about sensory deprivation, and how that works as a way to quiet the mind. He taught me how to be an empty vessel when I needed to, and while some people might raise their eyebrows at that, I found it a lesson that gave me serenity and made me a more useful seidkona for others.
Artwork by Sean Kelly.