The Price of Wisdom

Published: Sat, 04/25/20

There are three verses in the Havamal (54 to 56) which advise that you should be middle wise and not over wise. 54 suggests that it is best to know many things well, which presumably means not being over specialised. 55 says that a wise man’s heart is seldom glad if he has gained great wisdom. 56 says that not knowing your orlog with give you a better night’s sleep. Jackson Crawford and Carolyne Larrington both translate orlog as ‘fate’ but the original is orlog and fate is a limited translation. The word fate implies a prophecy of exactly what is going to happen to you, and where and when. If you knew exactly how, where, and when you were going to die would that make you sleep better? I think that once you had got used to the idea why not? On the other hand if you did know that you were going to die in a car accident next Thursday at 8.30 in the morning how difficult would it be to avoid that particular rendezvous with death?
Pretty easy I would have thought, personally I would just stay in bed that morning.

An early death from ill health? Perhaps slightly more difficult to avoid, but early treatment can delay the onset and consequences of a lot of conditions so if you know you need to be checked for say, bowel cancer, then just convince your doctor that you are high risk and need screening. Eating a better diet might help too, if that is an issue for you. Either way, we all know that our ultimate fate is to die physically one day, even the most foolish person must accept that no one gets out of this world alive.

So, the reality is that we cannot know our fate in advance. If we did know the exact details we would change it, which is something we do every day anyway if we have any sense. Example, it is my fate to get run over by a large truck, so I think I will wait ten seconds on the kerb and then cross the road. Now my fate is to die another day in another way.

Crawford and Larrington are both fine scholars but but translation is always going to lose something from the original intention of the writer. So, what does orlog really mean and why would knowing yours give you sleepless nights? Fate implies an event such as ‘The spy met his fate at dawn in front of a firing squad.’ Orlog is not an event but a thread woven into a web of lines which connect all things in time and space. Our orlog is spun for us uniquely but is also woven into a vast and complex web of connections and threads. Our physical manifestation can only begin once certain threads have been connected and we have been conceived. My maternal grandfather was exactly the right age to serve in the first world war. However, he had a health condition which made him unfit for military service and so the best contribution he could make was being sworn in as a special constable. (I still have the truncheon he was issued with.) There
is a WW1 story about my paternal grandparents too, I am hazier on the details, but as I recall it, they were living in Essex in 1917 when a bomb dropped from a Zeppelin destroyed the house next door to where they were living. Last year at Fightcamp I found myself having a conversation with a German gentleman in the bar one evening. We were discussing the two wars in which our fathers and grandfathers had fought each other. We looked around the crowd of drinkers and wondered who was not sharing this experience because their potential fathers, and mothers too, had not survived the conflicts? This is idle speculation on one level, but also a recognition that the web of orlog is vulnerable to human action. Is knowing too much ‘what might have been?’ a reason for sleepless nights?

In the present you can only be centered in your web in time and space, you cannot be anywhere else by definition. In a way that is reassuring, you can never be truly lost because you are always here and the time is always now. A baby reminds us that there is great comfort in being fed, clean, warm and having strong arms holding you and keeping you safe. When our baby, Iduna, sleeps she does so simply because she is warm, comfortable and safe. She does not worry about where she has come from or where she is going in life. Orlog means nothing to her and she sleeps like, well a baby should.

The psychology pioneer Carl Gustav Jung said:

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

This quote may illustrate the difference between fate and Orlog. We hear comments along the lines of: ‘I seem to be fated to only have very short lived relationships.’ Or, ‘It is my fate to be poor because my jobs never last.’ As we have seen, fate in the long term cannot be predicted, and where we can predict it accurately in the short term, our fate may be easily changed. The person whose life follows a predicable pattern is not subject to fate. Rather they are unconsciously living out their Orlog which is much more to do with our true nature as a person, the complex tapestry of threads which are woven into our makeup in body, mind and spirit. A great many aspects of who we are will actually work fine without any conscious awareness. We may well be lucky enough to enjoy relationships and an occupation in which there is mutual compatibility and no cause for questions or anguish. What if it is simply our fate to be happy,
secure, healthy and prosperous? What if all the threads in our web of Orlog have simply connected us with everything we need anyway? In such a fortunate situation we would have no reason not to be happy, contented and sleep like well cared for babies. What benefit could there be in looking more deeply into your orlog?

Is the writer of the Havamal advising us against seeking too much wisdom? Recommending that we do not ask too many questions? Discouraging us from thinking too much? Perhaps we are just being told that there are many people who enjoy pleasant lives because they are blessed with just the right level of wisdom. Just accept that fact and be happy for people who are in such a pleasant state of being.

Some of us however are tormented with a compulsion to examine our Orlog in more detail. It won’t lead to a happy life, a glad heart or undisturbed slumber but wisdom has its own purpose and there is always going to be a price to pay for genuine awareness of the truth.

regards

Graham

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