Prayer Beads, Week 6: Norns, Æsir/Aesir

This week we again encounter the three primary Norns who weave the fates of men:

By the name of Urd, I seek the spinning thread of my true path.
By the name of Verdandi, I weave my life with the threads of those I love.
By the name of Skuld, I make peace with the blade of my final Wyrd.

After this we will be getting into the Æsir/Aesir. The Æsir are the most widely followed deities in the Northern Pantheon today. Like most beings in the Northern Tradition, they are highly varied and all of them fill multiple roles. Odin is a god of magic, journeying, knowledge, power, war, victory, terror, wisdom, and sacrifice: to name a few.

The singular form of the word Æsir is the word áss. It is believed to have the the proto-Germanic *ansuz, which implies a direct connection with the rune Ansuz (ᚨ). We normally think of this as being Odin's rune in connection with a Icelandic rune poem, but it could also be called the rune of the Æsir.

References to the Æsir are found throughout Anglo-Saxon as Os-, Scandinavian names as As-, and other germanic cultures as Ans-.

The Æsir are frequently viewed as gods of civilization and order, as opposed to the wild forces of nature that are the Jötnar. One theory on why we have seen a rise of Jötnar-worship in recent years is because we are needing the pendulum to swing the other direction, toward acknowledging and embracing the natural forces of our planet. This does not, however, reduce or diminish the value of the Æsir in our lives, particularly for those of us who live in the city

I am still debating the format for the next section of beads. I may do a god a week and go more in depth, or go more shallow and keep covering 3 at a time.