Cattle die, Kinsmen die
Cattle die, kindred die,
Every man is mortal:
But the good name never dies
Of one who has done well
Havamal
76
Cattle die, kindred die,
Every man is mortal:
But I know one thing that never dies,
The glory of the great dead
Havamal
77
These two verses from the poem Havamal tell us a great deal
about the importance of living an honourable and productive life. It is quite different to the Judeao-Christian
concept of one’s reward being in heaven. A person is remembered for his deeds.
“Cattle die, kindred die, every man is
mortal”. Nothing in this world lasts –
nothing is forever. But things don’t
just end – they evolve and the purpose of religion is to help people evolve
spiritually. This is the on-going cycle
of birth, death and rebirth – but an upwards spiral of evolution – not an
endless circle going round and round and getting no where.
A good name never dies. A
person’s good name is remembered through history. Paradoxically so is a person’s bad name! People who have achieved great things are
remembered for these. People who have
lived exemplary lives are also remembered for these things. Their glory never dies. People with a bad name may be remembered –
but they are not remembered with glory!
So these verses are more about how a person should live his life
in this world and the sort of legacy an honourable person should leave
behind. It does not suggest that these
attributes are all that a person can
look to after death in this world. As
with so much else of our pre-Christian religion, the emphasis is very much on
this world and life in it. Whilst life
after death was believed in, people didn’t focus on it too much or try to
second guess what would be in store for them.
Living a good life in this world was what counted – both in
terms of leaving the right legacy behind and in terms of being sufficiently
advanced spiritually to progress to higher states of existence in the
next.
But what about the millions of unsung people who live good,
decent and honourable lives but who were not famous enough to be remembered for
posterity. What about those people who
achieve good things in their lives but not to the point where they are
remembered for it by society as a whole.
Well, firstly, these lives will have helped them to advance spiritually
to help them in the next world. These
verses are telling us how we should live our lives, whether or not we are
remembered for it. But there are
millions of people who are remembered for their lives, even if it is just by
their families or smaller groups of people with common interests.
Not only this, but the “glory of the great
dead” is remembered even if all the individuals are not. This is why we should remember and honour our
ancestors.
And there is another reason why we should honour our
ancestors. The “glory of the great dead”
can be seen as the sum total of what our ancestors leave behind. Advances in technology, medicine, art,
spiritual insights and so on take place over a long period of time. They are the product of many people, over
many generations making contributions – even if one or two people make
particularly big contributions. Our
collective contribution to our society and our folk is our legacy to it.
In this sense, these two verses are saying something quite
profound to us. Something
which has particular relevance to our lives in this world at this point in
time. Because
so much of our culture is dominated by a blind materialism; the pursuit of
pleasure for the sake of pleasure.
A seeming moral decadence. Too many people have little sense of purpose to their lives. They are merely automatons for the consumer
society, robots blindly going about their lives without really thinking what
its purpose is, what they hope to achieve or what they might leave behind them
as a legacy. Many of our ancestors were
too busy trying to survive to worry too much about such things. But our generation has little excuse.
These verses are telling us that a good life is one that leaves
something behind it, one that achieves something however seemingly small. Not necessarily a famous act remembered for
its individual glory. But a good life
that has purpose and helps advance the individual and the folk – part of the “glory of the great
dead”.
The EFC teaches that it is a person’s duty to lead fruitful,
productive lives and to help the process of evolutionary advance of our
folk. That way, they help their own
spiritual evolution. This is the inner
meaning of the Thor’s Hammer and the Fylfot – a constant spiral upwards towards
a new Golden Age.
This is why Germanic Christianity is a warrior religion. It is one that strives to achieve, overcome the odds and leave a positive legacy
behind.