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Chapter 6. The Sky 149
the two tribes of Gods, the Æsir and the Vanir, had led to the creation of the
inhabitants of Midgard to that end, but since man nor spirit have direct access to
knowledge of the entire Tree (from the Well of Mimir), they need guidance so that
the proper “shaping” of the Waters (through the layering of ¸orlög) can take place
ultimately preserving the Tree and, consequently, the lands of the giants, the Gods,
and men. In the Teutonic mind-set, the relationship between the folk and the Gods
was that each individual had some role to play towards a common goal rather than
the type of relationship between a Christian and his omnipotent God who had His
own separate and secret agenda in spite of His Followers.
Gift-giving (blót) to the Gods was fairly common, but the concept behind it was
slightly different than what the more Christian word “sacrifice” implies. Gift-giving
from man to man and from man to spirit has already been described in earlier
chapters and the basic format still holds true even with the Gods. For centuries, it
has been understood that for whatever reason the various Gods of the northern pantheon
“needed” gifts; this is a terribly poor and jaded interpretation of the concept.
From the eddaic descriptions of the Gods, they already had everything necessary to
their survival and those things could never have possibly been provided by man: the
apples of Idunna, huge vats of mead, etc. Whatever a community or an individual
was able to provide would have been but a part of a meal and a single quaff of
mead for Þór. If “divine needs” were taken care of by tri-annual sacrifices, Ragnarök
would have come after the very first sacrifice millennia ago because the Gods would
have starved to death. The early Germanic people were pragmatists, and surely
recognized early on that they were not “supporting the existence” of their Gods.
The ecclesiastical question then posed above is merely an early piece of rhetoric.
Gift-giving between man and God was purely a matter of honor and good-faith.
Man gifted man to align himself with power/ luck in terms of lineages (see Chap.
2), and man gifted a God for the same reason. A sacrifice to a God was in a sense
telling the God that a community or an individual would allow themselves to be
guided through this life, would work with rather than work for the God, etc. The
basic format of this “gifting the Gods” really was no different than a man gifting a
king as a show of faith and loyalty. And just as a warrior would give his war-leader
credit for a successful raid through the composing of poetry and offering of praise, so
also gave the farmer credit to Gods for a successful season. Additionally, sacrificial
animals were eaten by the participants. Apparently, a sacrifice was little more than
a feast planned and executed to the honor of a God or Gods, at least in the Heathen
way of thinking, rather than a method for taking care of a deity’s needs.
Gift-giving 10 from the Gods to man was also slightly different than the Christian
10 Chapter 3, Midgard, deals with the topic of gift-giving. In this modern day, folks generally
think of gift-giving as a type of "reward," but in the older philosophy based on the Germanic