Скачать или смотреть The trickster Gods of Heathenry: Odin and Loki

The beauty of theological research is that the more we learn, the more complex things seem to be unfold. This is just as true about our views on the Gods: the more we connect to them, the more fully their personalities unfold before us. Ódin can be mischievous and Loki can also teach us valuable lessons.

Their tension in the mythology can be best described through Friedrich Nietzsche’s criticism of ‘nihilism’, which he describes as the following: “Nihilism: any aim is lacking, any answer to the question "why" is lacking. What does nihilism mean?--that the supreme values devaluate themselves.” Nihilism is both useful and dangerous: without ever asking the “why”, without ever deconstructing our preconceptions, we can never break apart from the masses and become conscious. It is an unskippable step in one’s philosophical development.

Yet, it cannot be the final step. Endless destruction, aimless wandering eventually consumes the heart completely. Once you got rid of the mass-structures in your thinking, you have to find your own way and build up yourself from scratch. On the ruins of ademolished shed, you have to build a new castle of your heart. That is the ‘übermensch’, that man the surprasses himself, that becomes more and better. The übermensch needs nihilism to awaken, but will throw it away to fulfill himself. That is the Odinic way.