“Wodan, Id est Furor.” (Woden, that is Frenzy.)[1] With these words, eleventh-century chronicler Adam of Bremen described Odin, one of the best known and most compelling of all the Norse Gods. Odin is frenzy, furor, hunger, and drive. These things define this God's nature, and quite often they come to define those who serve Him too.  He is the All-Father, the Chieftain of the Aesir Gods, the Master of the Runes, God of warriors, kings, poets, and shamans. He is a complex God, as even the briefest description of His surviving praise names – or heiti – show. He is a God of hunger, power, knowledge, ecstasy, magic, kingship, and war. He was worshipped across Germany, Scandinavia, Anglo-Saxon lands, and Iceland. He is worshipped and venerated across the world today.

One of the first of the Aesir Gods, born of primal Jotun-kind, He arose in the early generations of creation along with His two brothers Vili and Ve. His Mother was the Giantess Bestla, His father’s name was Borr. Together with His brothers, He slaughtered the primordial hermaphroditic giant Ymir, and from his corpse and viscera crafted the Nine Worlds. Caught up in the frenzied synergy of creation, these three Gods also created the first proto-humans – Ask and Embla – from pieces of driftwood found on the briny shores of those early lands. Vili gave sense, Ve hot blood and warmth of complexion to these first humans, while Odin breathed into the dry, surf-tossed husks of timber, the animating breath of life.

Odin is a restless, wandering God. First, He was the ravening storm wind battering at the borders and boundaries of the human world. He was called Wodenaz and was a raw and terrifying God, a spirit of wind and storm and fury.[2] It was only much later, a time so long ago our eldest ancestors would be hard pressed to recall even its barest memory, that through His constant wanderings for power, knowledge, and above all else wisdom, He learned to wear the masks of civilization, and He became a God of kings, poets, magicians, shamans, and far-seeing wanderers as well.

He is a God of war and rides with a host of furious Valkyries.[3] They pick the bravest of warriors for His host, to join the ranks of His army, the Einherjar, in Valhalla and often His whim determines the outcome of earthly battles. He is a God of magic and power. His most well known tale (and one of His core mysteries) tells of how He went in search of that power. First, He sought out Yggdrasil, the Tree of Sacrifice, of Knowledge, the World Tree whose branches support all of creation. He ascended its boughs, cut Himself with His own spear allowing His blood to wet its hungry bark, and hung Himself there for nine days and nine nights. This was His ordeal, His agony, His triumph. This sacrifice tore open the fabric of creation and allowed the Rune Spirits to seize Him up, and His pain and sacrifice allowed Him to seize the runes in turn. He brought this power and knowledge forth and from then on became known as the Master of Runes. Not satisfied, He went to His maternal uncle Mimir, who holds sovereignty over the Well of Wisdom, an eldritch place nestled in hidden roots of the Tree, avoided by men and Gods alike.[4] He asked Mimir for a draught from the well, for one sip would give Him wisdom in equal measure to His knowledge. There is always a price for such things – a gift demands a gift our ancestral wisdom teaches – and so Mimir named the price: one of Odin's eyes. Without hesitation, Odin plucked it out and seized His prize. Thus He became not only a Master of ordeal, but a shaman to Whom no world is closed … well, no world but one. He cannot enter the realm of the dead.[5] I personally believe it is because He died on the Tree and by His will alone brought Himself back to life and were He to enter Hela's realm, His life would be forfeit for no one, not even a God, can escape the obligation of death twice, not in the very territory the Goddess of Death governs.

This ties into another facet of Odin's nature as well: His reliance on and trust in powerful women. Time and again He seeks out powerful Jotun women for their counsel. He calls upon human prophetesses and seers, He surrounds Himself with wise and powerful females including His warrior Valkyries. Many of His most fervent contemporary devotees are also women. In the Poetic Edda, He first mentions one of His female mentors in the Havamal where He talks about the Goddess Gunnlod.[6] Gunnlod had charge over the mead of poetry and inspiration. Odin wanted this. So, to shorten a long and convoluted tale, Odin came to Gunnlod’s father with the face of Bölverk, the Baleworker. He became a snake. He slithered deep into the mountain where this mighty chieftainess bore stewardship over that sacred mead. This mead was a toxin. It seared the warp and weft of the wyrd of all it touched. No man could bear it. No man could taste it without eventually being corroded by it. It was a gift with a terrible blood price. It had a body count -- it was formed by the terrible death and dismemberment of the Vanir God Kvasir, and many people had died trying to steal it. It was a curse that Gunnlod was sent to guard. Odin bartered, negotiated, serpent power for poison, and She taught Him the way of wearing civilization on his face. He gave Her what She sought; She gave Him the mead. He took that poison inside Himself. He brought it full circle to Her in Their union. Ecstatic Poetry was born, when having devoured that searing brew, it was transformed. It took Them both to free the soul of Kvasir, else bound forever in the blood-hued drops of the mead created by an ancient greedy act of alchemy and slaughter. It took them both to manifest the fullness of its ecstatic power. Through Their union, Odin gained the mead of poetry and Gunnlod gained a son born of that poetic fire: the God Bragi.[7]

Odin is wed to the Goddess Frigga, and in every surviving instance in lore, when the two of Them go up against each other, it is Frigga Who inevitably emerges triumphant. She is every bit as skillful, wise, and cunning as He and, I suspect, every bit as ruthless. She is a power-broker extraordinaire. He has many sons in addition to Bragi: Thor, Baldr, Vali, Vidar, Hermod, Hod, Heimdall. (Snorri Sturluson claims Tyr, but I don’t believe it.) He begat a line of kings by the Goddess Skaði, and sired Baldr’s avenger in a brutal encounter with the Giantess Rind.[8] There may be more, as many of the surviving texts are somewhat contested in this respect, and He has at least as many human sons recognized in the surviving lore, having a penchant after all for fathering heroes. Once, when His son Thor challenged Him to a game of verbal insult (a rather Norse equivalent of “playing the dozens”, I’d warrant), to each instance of Thor's proclaimed prowess in battle, Odin fires back with another tale of seduction of one or another of His women.[9]

Odin is not blind to the power inherent in sex. It, like everything else, is a tool in His quest for power. In His search for knowledge of magic and sorcery, He loved for a year as a woman, and is said to have bedecked Himself in women's garb and to have engaged in women's magic. One of His names, Jalkr, even means “gelding”. Freya was a master sorceress, and this type of gender transgression and sexual submission was necessary for Him to learn to be opened to the flow of the type of power She wields. He may be Master of Asgard, but He was and is ruthless in His search for experience, knowledge, wisdom, and power, and allows nothing, especially not something like gender or sexuality, to stop Him.  Men who consciously choose to submit can do so as an offering to Him, in honor of this particular sacrifice made in His search and acquisition of both skill and power.

Odin has many allies. He is known to have in His company two ravens – Huginn and Muninn – whose names translate to Thought and Memory. It is said He fears the loss of the first, but not so much as the loss of the second. He has two wolves – Geri and Freki – both names of which mean “hunger”. He sits on a throne named Hildskjalf from which He can see anything in all the worlds, and He bears a mighty spear Gungnir; when He hurls it against an army wars begin. He is the spear God, the Raven God, the High God. He rides a mighty eight-legged grey steed Sleipnir, who is the child of His blood brother Loki. He is a Seeker of Power and a Wielder of Fury. He is the maker of heroes, goad of warriors, Master of the Wild Hunt, an army of wandering and fierce dead.  He is a master diviner, a magician, and also a healer. His name means “ecstatic fury” and He often bestowed this on poets and warriors alike. For the latter it manifested as the famed berserkergang. Wednesday is His day and nine is His number.

He is a God of extremes, of a focus so brutally vicious that it leaves no room for anything else. I call Him “God of my Longing” (and many other names) and those who love Him sing His praises and adorations. He is a complex and terrifying God and throughout the lands and peoples by which He was worshipped, He was given many epithets. I have no way to tally the names His devotees call Him in the hard and secret fastness of their hearts.

In the end, praise Him. Praise His hungers. Praise His ruthlessness. Praise the way He takes us up. Praise His sacrifices. Praise Odin, God of the bloody tree.