Talking to Jormundgand
(Note: This is
based on raw, unfiltered UPG, something to
be tossed into some else’s soup to see if any of it makes its way
up to the level of PCPG. I have been dealing with
Jormundgand since mid-September; this may be considered another response
to the attempts at communication he has been putting out recently. I am
following the precedent of identifying
Jormundgand by my own gender, if only for convenience's sake.)
I was less than pleased when I was directed by Her Ladyship to go and work with Jormundgand. Somehow during one of my meditations I seemed to have caught whatever it is he has for attention. We were at a place that in my mind represents the boundary between being and the pure void, and appears as a very dark shoreline. I had the feeling of being checked out, however idly, with a vision of an eye that was copied from the Giants Tarot card “The World”. It was something I noted strictly in passing, but Hela and her father seemed to think it was terribly significant. I felt like I was being sent to look in on the family’s autistic kid brother in hopes that I might be able to establish a rapport with him.
But the next phase, despite my peevishness, went well. I started making Jormundgand the focal point of my meditations. I seemed to be able to get a lock on him that was mentally similar to my usual deity interactions, and I could feel his consciousness coming in to alignment with my own, in a way that sounds similar to what is called a third-degree possessory state in NT spirit work. For the most part, he is a calm and usually silent presence. He is like a strong perceptual center with a coiling energy surrounding it. An alert watchfulness seems to comprise the most of what I can perceive as being his mind. There are emotions, but they are subdued. An all-purpose will and drive is what is called on to focus and motivate him when he needs to act. Mentally aligning with him, at least so I have found, is under most circumstances rather calming, but you need to be in a stable mood to begin with because he tends to reflect and amplify whatever emotional energies that are passing through.
I have found a few times that his thoughts have come to me in the form of words, which is not supposed to be his thing at all. Shortly after I started focusing on him, something popped up in my head which sounded a bit like Hal from 2001 saying “I see me.” A week later came the word “Others” coupled with a moment of unease which was followed by a relaxing of tension. I took that to mean that Jormundgand does not have same subject-to-object relationship that our minds work with; he draws boundaries in a different way.
A bit further into our relationship, I tried asking him what it is he does, and what came back was “I watch the Nothing”. If that was something other than my imagination, it might reflect his situation as a barrier around Midgard, keeping the oceans separated from the waters of Ginnungagap. A bit more speculatively in this same vein, a perception of the void is the first act of drawing a boundary against it. This echoes that first act of separation in an observer-created universe. Nothingness undefined, but still dynamic, is forgetfulness and erasure; awareness keeps it at bay.
Perceiving seems to be Jormundgand’s main line of interest. He likes looking at moving shapes and colors, busy traffic especially. The rolling, coiling forms of energy which are his medium are probably what really engages his thought processes; everything else is just a vague “out there”. I found that those forms of energy can be engaged, and in a very small way aligned with, through some of my Taoist based training. I practice a movement form which is derived from the double palm change of baguazhang, a twisting serpentine type of exercise which just soaks up whatever it is Jormundgand is trying to tell me, and yes, it does feel like a kind of speech. Also I had modified (though corrupted might be a more accurate description) my ch’i-gong with an emphasis on coiling and spiraling internal motion years ago, and I feel that this is also helping. As far as I have been able to tell, the Rokkr attitude towards Taoism is that the exercises are worth appropriating, but the ideal calm that one hopes to acquire is a bit at odds with the spiritual growth through experiential extremes that the Rokkr seem to favour. Yet in Jormundgand’s case, that calm frame of mind can actually become a serious incentive for continuing to work with him.
Artwork "When The Midgard Serpent Weeps" used with permission from TwaRavenMotifs.