An English Runo-Wôdenic Survival in the Middle Ages

Edred Thorsson
(From ​Rúna, ​Vol. 1, No. 1,, Ostara, 1983)

Source: ​Green Rȗna, The Runemaster's Notebook: Shorter Works of Edred Thorsson Volume I
(1978-1985), ​pp. 49-50.

The director on the Odinic Rite, Mr. John Yeowell, has recently produced a valuable little
volume ​Hidden Gods: The Period of Dual Faith in England, 681-1980, ​which concerns the
survival of Odinic ways in the age of mixed faith--a time in which we still to some extent live.
Other books have also dealt with this subject, for example, E. Jung’s ​Germanische Götter und
Helden in Christlicher Zeit ​(Munchen, 1939).

Wôden/Óðinn did indeed survive in many shapes and forms in supposed Christian lore and art,
and in the art of the Middle Ages--in those times which were perhaps most militantly directed
against Odinic wisdom (yet in much of it was practiced!). Here, we would like to present a short
study of a particular page of an obscure 13th century English manuscript found in Liège (MS
Liège University [396 C1]). this page has a miniature of what appears to be a king with fiery
streams flowing from his mouth into the mouths of five figures placed around the page.

We are literally told by the latin text that this figure is indeed Wôden or Voden--it is a text which
describes the engendering of the English kings of Kent, Wessex, mercia, Essex, and Sussex by
Voden. The myth of the Wôdenic ancestry of the English kings is well known, and was well
represented in medieval manuscripts--what is more interesting from the Odian point of view are
both the crown, with its rune-like signs and the fiery streams.

Versions of a similar crown are not unfamiliar in other medieval manuscripts of the 11th-13th
centuries--only they have ​fleur-de-lis--​in the representation of Voden they are clearly runes.
Here, it must be interjected that the Frankish ​fleur-de-lis ​symbol probably has a Germanic
origin--and one that may be in common with that of the z-rune. The English certainly preserved
knowledge of rune-lore and of the essential nature of the runes--even if it was syncretized with
the lore of Christianity. Runes and runic Futhorcs continued to appear in English manuscripts
into the 15th century, and in the “Sawles Warde” we read: “ha witen alle Godes reades, his
runes…” = “they (= the Elect) know all god’s purposes, (and) his secret councils…”

The staves mounted in the crown are three ​ᛉ​ PGmc. ​Elhaz: ​“elk”--or ​algiz: ​“protection.” These
are the swan-runes of the valkyries (OE ​wælcyrie​)--the protective and wisdom-bringing beings
of Wôdenic, and of the cosmic harts in the boughs of the World-Tree. All in all, the ​ᛉ​ rune is a
great symbol of the Wôdenic Way, as a sign of the connection between the divine and human
realms.

As to the flames which emit from Wôden’s mouth and enter into those of the kings of the five
English realms mentioned on the page, they are clearly a graphic representation (as S.R.T.O.
d’Ardenne. “A Neglected Manuscript of British History,” in ​English and Medieval Studies,
London, 1962, pp. 84-93 also interprets them) of the “divine breath,” of the spiritual quality and
power which Wôden imparts to his descendants. The myth of the shaping of Askr and Embla in
the ​Prose Edda ​(Ch. 9) and in the ​Poetic Edda, ​“Völuspá” 17-18, is also instructive. d’Ardenne
points out that this symbology is of Germanic and not of Christian origin (p. 92) and indicates a
parallel in which Havelock the Dane was recognized as heir to Birkabein because: “of his mouth
it stod a stem/als it were a sunnebem;/ also liht (= light) was it therinne (= there-in)/ so ther
brenden (= as though there were burning) cerges inne.” The more ancient bracteates (about
450-550 CE) also often show a breath or flame emitting from the Wodenic figure’s mouth.

This evidence, coupled with all else we know of the early period of the mixed faith in England,
leads us to the following conclusions:

1. Detailed knowledge of the runes and of their connection with Wôden was maintained in
England well into the “Christian Middle Ages”--this 500 to 800 years after the beginning
of the Christianization process!--and--
2. A fairly refined lore surrounding the All-Father, Wôden, was preserved--through oral
traditions--among the English as late as the 13th century in a pagano-christian cultural
context.