#guodan

[doubtspirit]

Odin (Wodan/ᚢᚦᛁᚾ) the Wanderer

[deahariasa]

Óðinn. Wōdan. Wuotan. Wôðanaz. Guodan. Alfaðir.

He is one of the most (if not THE most) complex character in Norse mythology. A god whose historical worship spanned much of a continent and several centuries.

If you look close enough you can see our planet in my left eye because Odin was also known as the breath of life.

[coldalbion]

Hey! Can you tell me at all how wotan, woden and odin differ? are they different aspects of the same god? Are they separate entities? If so, how do they differ? UPG and/or Historical context please! Sorry if you can't answer this, i just know you and the old man share a whiskey from time to time! If you can't could anyone help? i'm just confused a little. Thanks.

This crops up in Heathen circles again and again, so let me state something right out of the gate as it were: I reckon it’s far better to develop a personal relationship, and form cultus around this particular god-complex, than achieve some sort of theological dogma.That said, one needs to know which angle to a approach things, so here’s my take. All the godnames you mention seem to descend from a theorised Proto-Indo-European root, *Wodanaz. This appears to emerge from the PIE root *wet- (1) "to blow; inspire, spiritually arouse.” See also:wood (adj.) "violently insane" (now obsolete), from Old English wod "mad, frenzied," from Proto-Germanic *woda- (source also of Gothic woþs "possessed, mad," Old High German wuot "mad, madness," German wut "rage, fury"), from PIE *wet- (1) "to blow; inspire, spiritually arouse;" source of Latin vates "seer, poet," Old Irish faith "poet;" "with a common element of mental excitement". Compare Old English woþ "sound, melody, song," Old Norse oðr "poetry," and the god-name Odin.vates (n.) 1620s, "poet or bard," specifically "Celtic divinely inspired poet" (1728), from Latin vates "sooth-sayer, prophet, seer," from a Celtic source akin to Old Irish faith "poet," Welsh gwawd "poem," from PIE root *wet- (1) "to blow; inspire, spiritually arouse"      Or as 11th century Adam of Bremen puts it: “Wodan id est furor.” (Wodan, that is ”frenzy/fury”.

Notice that the common element is inspiration as well, and that inspiration has its own links with breath:inspiration (n.)c. 1300, "immediate influence of God or a god," especially that under which the holy books were written, from Old French inspiracion "inhaling, breathing in; inspiration" (13c.), from Late Latin inspirationem (nominative inspiratio), noun of action from past participle stem of Latin inspirare "blow into, breathe upon," figuratively "inspire, excite, inflame," from in- "in" (from PIE root *en "in") + spirare "to breathe" (see spirit (n.)). And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. [Genesis ii.7]The sense evolution seems to be from "breathe into" to "infuse animation or influence," thus "affect, rouse, guide or control," especially by divine influence. Inspire (v.) in Middle English also was used to mean "breath or put life or spirit into the human body; impart reason to a human soul.Tie this in with the Eddic tale of Odin and co breathing into driftwood to make humanity, and it’s obvious that on some level, that particular myth has ancient roots.But what about say, Wotan, Woden, Wodan, Guodan etc?Well, each of these are regional names for one who has mastered the phenomenon I will call, for ease, the wodh. The furious onrush, the terrible ecstasy which renders one beside oneself, makes one possessed and obsessed, beyond the ordinary state of mind.This fury, this onrush, may be experienced in battle, in dance, in creative states, within religious rites. It may drive one to acts and experiences which place one within the realm of madness and death, and if one is not able to master it, may drive one irrevocably insane, may lead to what Herakleitos (potentially via Plutarch) mentioned regarding the Sibyl:“And the Sibyl, with raving lips uttering things mirthless, unbedizened, and unperfumed, reaches over a thousand years with her voice, thanks to the god in her.”    (Another translation has mirthless as “things not to be laughed at.”)As to which Sibyl this refers, we don’t know, but the ancient Greeks used the word to refer to oracular priestesses or seers. Meanwhile, the Eddas mention vǫlur - wandering female oracles (and probably akin witches in modern parlance, in some senses) and Odin not only calls up a dead one to give us Voluspa, but is accused by Loki as living-as and dancing with witches on the isle of Samsey. Add in the note about Odin learning seidr from Freya, and it’s very suggestive regarding the Norse form of the Master of Wodh.We have little historical data regarding the other names - Woden appears in the Anglo Saxon Nine Herbs Charm  suggesting his role as a magician, or healer, while the Continental Germanic names have only sparse references.How a hierophany - or manifestation of the sacred - occurs, is very much about “set and setting”. That’s to say, what ideas we bring with us, and the environment in which it occurs. Norse settlers in England named areas in reference to their gods - but the Britons would have had different names, possibly related to their gods.Thus, as we find all over Britain, just as the Romans raised temples to local gods now known by Roman names, the experience, the phenomenon comes first. The name comes during or after.Just as my Old Man may differ slightly from say, @transistorxiii‘s experiences,  (sorry for picking you out, friend!) there’s enough commonalities that we can say it’s very probable we’re experiencing the same being. Those commonalities arise as phenomena, as experience - and out of that constellation of experience comes the sense of the god. See my post here for more.The commonality in all the names above is the fury and its mastery. But how that manifested environmentally, linguistically and culturally? That’s probably full of commonalities and differences. Are they the same being though? Yes, no, and maybe. It all depends what you regard as the thing that makes an individual being a separate entity. For me, they are different-but-the-same. All are accompanied by the onrush. All are masks the Old Man likes to wear, but even his Old-Man-ness is a mask which each might wear. 

Perhaps this isn’t much of an answer, and if so, I apologise. Nevertheless, it’s the only one I have. That, and telling you to breathe. and seek the onrush, the wordless storm of experience which inspires all language, all coming-together-and-breaking-apart, all fury and magic and song.