As the literal form of the labyrinth mirrors the acausal, so the acausal form mirrors the labyrinth that exists as the human mind. The process of travelling around a microkozmic labyrinth in a meditative state, evokes the macrokozmic energies, and induces a change of consciousness, and perception. The figure of the labyrinth, as an actual, physical design, mirrors the subterranean or acausal fields of dragon labyrinthine energy that exist within the earth. The wouivre are akin to the eastern concept of the Kundalini, which is raised up through the body, altering personal patterns of energy, matter, and spirit. These energies are known as wouivre, and although related to Nidhogg, they are the serpentine energies of the Goddess in Her draconian manifestation. One of the most famous of such places is the so-called Saint Michael's line, which runs directly through a number of dragon-related sites in lower England. These earth energies are often regarded as dragon energies, because like the dragon, their power is forceful, almost unknowable, and resides deep within the earth and in stones. The dragon is an embodiment and expression of the geomantic energies that run throughout the earth, and in particular along ley-lines, and at the sacred megalithic sites that populate western and northern Europe. Ratatosk plays the same role as Loki does amongst the gods, causing trouble between powerful forces, but, at the same time, communicating between hel and heaven, and, thus, assisting the flow of the kozmos, and the flow of Wyrd.Īlthough Nidhogg's constant chewing on the roots of the World Tree will eventually shake it to its core at Ragnarok, and although it is a force of absolute chaos, the dragon still performs a pivotal role in Northern, and Rökkr magick. Ratatosk ( branch-borer) the squirrel runs up and down, back and forth, along the tree, exchanging insults and gossip between the dragon and the eagle, hoping to stir up trouble between the two. Nidhogg is in continual, and torrid, communication with an eagle that sits amongst the highest branches of Heldrasil, the World Tree. The dragon constellation is circumpolar, meaning that it never sets above 30° degrees latitude, suggesting the eternal nature of the great dragon. A sense of this can be glimpsed in the way that the dragon is also entwined around the polar constellation of The Lady's Wagon (Ursa Minor), representing the goddess in her maternal aspect. The same is also true of Hela (Hera's Norse counterpart as a mother goddess) and Nidhogg. Ladon was greatly loved by the goddess Hera, which is why she placed him in the stars after he was killed by Heracles. Ladon lay coiled around the tree of immortality which bore them in the western garden of the goddess just as the serpent imparted wisdom from a tree in the biblical garden of Eden. In classical astral mythology, Draconis represented the dragon Ladon, the guardian of the Hesperidean golden apples. Nidhogg is, further, represented by the traditional constellation of Draconis, as it winds its way around the North Pole, just as Nidhogg is coiled around the axis of the world tree. Instead, its nature is so incomprehensible, so chaotic, that it is simply beyond any such definition.Ĭonsequently the element associated with Nidhogg is Chaos, and a total summation of its nature, while the corresponding planetary sphere is the chaotic Saturn.

It is beyond gender, it is neither feminine, nor masculine, but not like the undivided lunar nature of Hela, or the androgynous solar nature of Loki. Certainly, Nidhogg has gone beyond the need for definition.

Suggesting at least that they both began their existence so remotely in the subconscious that they have gone beyond the need for any explanation. The dragon, like the World Tree on which it chews, appears to have arisen out of Wyrd itself, having no creation, no creator. Nidhogg is the chthonic counterpart of the aquatic serpent Iormungand, but unlike her, and all preceding Rökkr beings, the origins of Nidhogg are totally obscure. The dragons attention wavers only when it stops to gorge itself upon the corporeal remains of the dead (for its name means corpse swallower, or the lower one), and to hear the pronouncements of Wyrd when the volva speaks. It lies, coiled around the well of Hvergelmir, from which all the waters in the world flow, and chews on the roots of the World Tree, so that it constantly dies and is reborn. The dragon of darkness comes flying there,ĭeep within the earth, in the misty nætherworld of Nifelheim, lies the great dragon Nidhogg.

Nidhogg pronounce