Of late, I've been pondering the concept of "mythic time" as opposed to our linear perception of it. Framed against the background of Einsteinian physics, time, to us, is obviously not quite what our ancestors made of it.

Anyone else game for identifying Ginnungagap with that moment-that-was-no-moment immediately prior to the Big Bang? Perhaps we could speak of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics in association with the chaotic inhabitants of Jotunheim? If the narratives weren't so rich in symbology they'd be static set-pieces from which it would be difficult to pluck new and relevent meanings from. I'm not so woolly-minded as to suggest that the people who wrote the Eddas were in any way privy to mystical revelations about these contemporary concepts, but I do find it intriguing to find ways to relate the ideas of the past and the present.

The problem of how to speak or write of the myths themselves presents itself. Do we discuss them in the past tense, assign them to Urdh as it were, as though they have already occurred? This seems to work in most cases, yet fails utterly when we speak of Ragnarok, if it is to be viewed as "the end of the world as we know it." In one sense, it already has occurred, though, if we assert the heathen world came to its end some time during the middle ages.

Or would the present tense be more appropriate, since Asatruar interact directly or indirectly with our deities in such a fashion which makes it all seem vivid and immediate? Could it not also be said that they are in a sense still happening, as different people encounter them for the first time? As new insights and new inspirations are gleaned from them, are they not in the truest sense still "that which is becoming?"

By extension, if we place the context of the myths continually in the present, then they also occur in the future tense, since all of the stories are meshed, however imprecisely, with events which will be as a result of them. Or perhaps we ought to think of all three of these things occurring at different levels simultaneously. It is entirely feasible with such a frame of reference to accept that Loki can borrow Ran's net, something which he himself will not invent until shortly before his binding after Aegir's feast.

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