#*odin

Hail odin,

On tricksters

Seid was necessary for the survival of the tribe; hence breaking taboos was necessary. Odin had to be a queer god, because only by his doing seid and being queer could the world continue to exist. That androgyny was considered as a divine trait is known from several cultures and religions. Eliade has put it this way: “This idea of universal bisexuality, a necessary consequence of the idea of the bisexual divinity as a model and principle of all existence. [. . .] For basically, what is implied in such a conception is the idea that perfection, and therefore Being, ultimately consists of a unity-totality. Everything that exists must therefore be a totality, carrying the coincidentia oppositorum to all levels and applying it to all contexts” (Eliade, 1965, 108). I conclude with Jennifer Terry that “[i]n an ironic way, ‘deviance’ is central to the narrative history of normal” (Terry, 1991, 70–71)

More than just a description of his physical body, Óðinn’s singular eye signifies his personality and thereby his unquenchable search for more wisdom. His sacrifice of an eye for his wisdom is second-place to his reputation of possessing the keenest sight of the gods. By willingly giving up a critical earthly faculty he has gained a divine ability to see all. Óðinn is never criticized because of his impairment. In fact, the stories related to him emphasize that he has traded a mundane faculty for an ability of far greater social importance. His ability to use poetic language allows him to employ his wisdom as a bridge to both the liminal memories of the past and the present age. It also aligns those individuals who possessed a keen mind for poetry, particularly the Icelandic poets known as skalds, closely with the preternatural abilities of Óðinn. Such abilities overshadowed impairment due to their social importance and they likewise solidified Óðinn’s station as the All-Father, the chief of the Æsir gods.

[T]his can be viewed in terms of Óðinn as a sexual being. The association of Óðinn with sexual power is not commonly made, especially by comparison with more obvious fertility deities such as Freyr and Freyja, but this is very clear in the sources[....]. Again we should not make the mistake of thinking of Óðinn as a 'god of war', or poetry, or sorcery, or any other single sphere: the shifting, indeed treacherous, nature of his gifts is the essence of what Óðinn seems to have been. When we consider the facets of his personality, we always find he embodies each concept (war, for example) in such a way as to simultaneously enable him to be a god of everything else that he represents. Óðinn is thus a god of the mind whose power extends to the total destruction of the psyche, a god of war whose battle skills invade the thoughts of his opponents, a god of poetry in which all the other gifts are combined, above all a god not to be trusted. All this is combined in Óðinn's sexual persona, and we should remember here that the Norse did not have deities of love, on the Roman model. The fertility gods and goddesses of the North were at best powers of procreation, but more often patrons of sexual enjoyment. Thus Freyja has far more in common with the carnal violence of Aphrodite than the chaste sexuality of Venus, and it is in this light we should also view Óðinn. Abandonment and frenzy are familiar concepts here, united in the feeling of sexual danger. Inherent in this understanding of divinely inspired sex is that while a complete surrender to physical desire can bring destructive consequences, those following such a path may simply cease to care (the origin of the Trojan war provides a useful literary parallel, especially in the Greek gods' provocative role in the affair). The Norse deities of sex revelled not only in sated lust, but also in the slaughter that was its occasional byproduct.