Comment on The Making of Midgard by MabusTheDark
Good to know. But you're an honest Thorsman, this much is plain to see. Not some clown who has a religious experience at a Marvel Comics expo and decides that the Blood compels him to develop a fake Norse accent and threaten anaemic British men.
Thor and the Dwarf. That was one of my favourites, too. What truly respect about Thor is his clarity of purpose. The old Nords had raised Thor up as the paradigm of manhood - his flaws were laid bare, but he always overcame them. He was versatile and not locked in a skill-set. Whereas with my patron God, Odin, he remains almost entirely mysterious and somewhat foreboding. (Which is why I rather the English view of Odin = Woden, as he is more agrarian and somewhat less ominous than the Norse rendering, Odin.) And then there's Braggi, about whom we know comparatively little.
Absolutely, the darkness is a counterbalance to the light. Sadly, however, the way the Norse Myths come to us - at the mercy of Christian scribes - somewhat obfuscates the nature of things. The darkness, the gloom, the stoicism is somewhat overrepresented in Scandinavian Asatru. Wotan, the continental Germanic aspect of Odin (specifically German) has a very warlike nature. Woden (the Anglo-Saxon) has a deeply agrarian side. It actually speaks to the psyche of both the people, because the values of their Gods reflect the necessities of their life. Norse Odin was a survivalist whose appearance of "loose" morality illustrates the harshness of Scandinavian life, and how their mysticism arose in accordance with tribulation and hardship. England has a much softer climate, so Woden is more the wizard of popular lore whose wisdom is rooted in the earth, the now, the here, as opposed to Odin whose wisdom is transcendental and otherworldly for the presence of death. Wotan, his power lies in masculinity, in primal force. Of course, it is all the same Personality, the same Deity, but the distinctions are important - at least I think they are.
Braggi/Brage is indeed a poet. We might call him Skaldatyr - the God of the Poets. According to the Younger Edda he is to be invoked by those dedicated to speechcraft and is the Ese of Eloquence. Since I am a poet of indeterminate value, it seems logical I should expand my spiritual enterprise from seeking to emulate Odin to incorporating other respective deities whose interests reflect my talents.
Oh, yes. Wodenaz is THE Aryan manifestation of Wisdom, its hypostasis. Don't get me wrong, my friend. In my mind, clouded by Jungianism though it might be, I view the psychology of a race or tribe by how they worship a God. How the different outcroppings of the Indo-Aryan progenitors changed their views of the Primal Deities, speaks to how their environments captured them. That's what I was trying to say.
So keep on keeping on, and we'll all get there some day!