NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 7750390" data-attributes="member: 58172">... He is magically throwing a magical hammer.Þórr is more like a psychic warrior, or a superhero, who channels the magic into physical feats, super strength, super toughness, and so on.Something like adding his Charisma bonus to his AC. His intimidating presence strikes disabling fear into the hearts of his enemies.If in a rage, his eyes spark electrically, and if I recall correctly, his nostrils flare with fire. This suggests an aura of lightning and fire.This is animism. In this case, having a nature spirit as a friend is literally the same thing as having a thunderstorm as a friend. The friend shows up to rain on you when you need water, or to chase an arctic blizzard away, maybe hurl lightning at someone who tries to harm you.These nature spirits also have psychological qualities. In the case of Coyote, the animal inspires a sense of humor, pranks, and goodhearted trickery. In the case of Þórr, the storm inspires a sense of heroism, courage, defending the weak, honoring oaths, and so on.In the Norse worldview, shamanic techniques enable psychically powerful individuals to send their consciousness outofbody, even to manifest physically elsewhere. They often did this to manifest into the form of an animal, to utilize the characteristics of the animal.The other nature spirits, besides humans, are doing something similar. The thunderstorm is a living psychic presence. But at the same time, the psychically powerful presences can project their consciousness in a human or animal form. When the nature spirit does this, he seems quite human. Physical manifestations seem rare, but are known. For example, Óðinn the muse is said to visit humans incognito.In prehistoric worldviews, what we might call ‘parables’ are the way that cultures record and transmit information about the world around them. Among the Norse, the seasons changing from winter to summer, are understood as the friendly thunderstorm defeating deadly arctic ice and blizzards. This parable is the mode of cognition − is the way experiences are understood − is the reality. To these semi-hunter-gatherer cultures, the features of nature have very human (or very animalistic) qualities. Natural phenomena interact with each other in human ways.A human has a physical body, and a psychic inner life.At a sensory physical level, it is a thunderstorm, and at a meaningful psychic level, it is a living person.</blockquote>

Verification