Dreaming the Future Closer

The general approach of the book echoes the style of historiography that Dumezil engaged in.  It amplifies Odin’s mythic presence by situating him within a broader Indo-European context.  The approach appeals to me deeply.  The incredible overlap between different Indo-European cultures myths make it possible to establish some rich comparative framework.  It also provides me with an occasion to think again about the issue of women’s mysteries and men’s mysteries in the historical record.

From a spiritual perspective, it is easy to think of this in theological terms.  Any given culture has a conceptual palette with which they approach the spiritual world and that palette limits how they portray a spirit.  The limit isn’t one of error, per se, but of finitude, each conception providing an entrypoint into the depths of the spirit.  That entrypoint, though, needs to simplified in a way that the culture can pass down.  Hence the reduction of the figure of the spirit.  Amplifying that picture with related pictures provides those with the time to integrate them intellectually with a more robust concept.

Of course, you don’t *need* a more robust concept to work with a spirit.  It helps, sometimes a lot, but even a well-developed concept can’t prepare you entirely for just working with the spirit.  It just gives you a better sense of what to expect and how to connect intuitions.  For those who are not directly engaged with the spirit, it can also give them the tools to help advise someone who does (if and only if the counselor’s concept of the spirit is guided with a lived sense of spirit work).

Enough with the caveats, though, let me get to the book!  Like all my reviews, this isn’t a proper review so much a reader response entry, so…

Kershaw puts a lot of weight on Odin as a man’s god, as a god of the Mannerbund, the age group societies through which boys are educated in the lore of their people and taught the art of war.  While she observes that those within the band have a good deal of sexual license during certain periods (like wartime) and so foster camp followers (here seemingly code for prostitution alone), she dismisses that women had a proper place within the band.  Since she views Odin as the spiritual force of the band, she sees him as quintessentially masculine.

And yet there are elements that are problematic.  She does note that (1) Odin’s Wild Hunt (the mannerbund of the dead warriors) chases after and captures women or feminine spirits and (2) sometimes a female spirit leads the wild hunt in place of Odin, just as in some cases one of Odin’s chosen warriors might lead the hunt.

She rests some of her assertions about the inherent masculinity of the mannerbund by showing how, ritually, even female figures associated with the band are embodied by male maskers.  While it’s important to emphasize the fundamentally masculine characters of the band, though, it elides the importance of feminine figures to simply exclude women’s involvement from the discussion.

Those camp followers, at least in Germanic accounts, are not inactive during warfare, but engage in rituals to strengthen the men of their band while weaking the men of rival bands.  While Kershaw emphasizes the sexual license given to men within the band, she doesn’t make explicit the corollary: that the women in the camp followers must also have a certain degree of sexual license. The description of the Gundharva that Dumezil gives in Mitra-Varuna, where we see the Gundharva accompanied by the nymph-like Apsaras in their reveries.  The connections between camp follower and soldier represents a real one, but not one that exists ‘in the village.’

Around this complex of women, we can begin to see the lineaments of what later comes to be the witch.  She makes her home in the wild rather than the village.  She is sexually active yet her sexuality is not contained within the bonds of marriage.  She has power over men which she can use to aid them or hurt them.

Now, to this, we can begin to speculate about the relationship between these women, since they were not part of the band itself.  The secrets of midwifery could easily develop among them, including the elements that would later be demonized in Christian sources like the ability to prevent pregancy.  Since children born to them as camp followers would not be officially part of the father’s patrilineage, many would have good reason to be infertile, at least for a time.  Still, one imagines that children might form part of this band as well and that women might meet a prospective husband as camp follower.

It’s also likely that this camp of women would probably include mothers, women with the greatest interest in the success of a raiding party which might bring their sons wives.  Therein lies an opportunity of mentorship of younger women who might also be part of the group.  Think, too, of the mythic notion that the Gundharva lay with a woman before her husband—could this reflect a reality in some Indo-European cultures of the distant past?  In some cases, we might well imagine that a man might meet his wife first as a member of the band and later sacralize that marriage within the village.  The ‘gundharva’ and the ‘husband’ might sometimes be the same person!

Those women who did not return from this liminal camp state would be much like the men who gave themselves over to the band and took neither wife nor land.  The unease felt around the berserker may be the same sort of unease felt around the wise woman who took no husband.  Think of the Morrigan in Celtic myths, for one figure who seems to fill out this figure nicely.  The Morrigan who kills Cuchallin takes on the role of an old washer woman (the mother) as well as of the sexually appealing woman who can guarantee his victory.

Moreover, they have a certain kind of military prowess, if only as one of influence over the battlefield.  One could imagine that, from time to time, a woman might find her way to leadership of a warband on a raid if they thought her spiritual influence so great as to give them advanatage.  Figures like Joan of Arc might be holdovers of this complex, right down to the ambiguity of her power being divine or demonic.  Joan was not known as a mighty soldier, but as a spiritual force that strengthened her men.