Sep 04, 2026
Just for a change, I thought we might look at an alternative iconography for Virgo season and the mythology of Inanna, Shula, Ishtar, Isis, Aphrodite, Demeter, Ceres, The Hermit and The Empress.
This is a sculpture of the Norse Fire Giant, Surtr, own picture taken on a trip to Grosvenor Park in Chester in September 2021.
Chester is a beautiful city famous for its Roman history, but it also has a Viking history. The Danes occupied it for a while during the reign of the Christian Saxon king Alfred, until he drove them out by seizing their cattle and laying waste to the surrounding farmland. And then Alfred strengthened the city walls to make sure they didn’t come back.
But still the Danes left their cultural footprint. Chester has a most beautiful cathedral.
But in Norse mythology, to those uninvited squatters, the Danes, the primordial being, the Ice Giant Ymir was the Almighty creator of the cosmos.
There was in times of old, where Ymir dwelt,
nor sand nor sea, nor gelid waves;
earth existed not, nor heaven above,
‘twas a chaotic chasm, and grass nowhere.
From The Poetic Edda, translation B. Thorpe
This being, the Ice Giant Ymir, himself born from a “yeasty venom” found in the glaciers, fashioned the Earth from his own flesh; the oceans from his blood; the mountains from his bones, trees from his hair; clouds from his brains; the heavens from his skull; and from his eyebrows, he created Midgard. That’s us. Home Sweet Home. The middle realm in which humankind lives.
But the fire giant Surtr (Old Norse Surtr, “Black,” -possibly a reference to his charred appearance) would finally end this world, leading the other giants of Muspelheim…an ashen wasteland riven by rivers of lava…. into battle against the Aesir and the Vanir gods at Ragnarok, the destruction of the cosmos.
Ragnarok was foretold as series of future cataclysmic events, including a great battle in which great Norse mythological figures and many of the gods would perish during a catastrophic series of natural disasters, including the burning of the world, and culminate in the submersion of the world underwater.
Another great deluge in world myth. Noah, anyone? Deucalion, anyone? You might be interested in this article from Science News Today: The Great Flood. Scientific Evidence That Proves The Legends True.
After Ragnarok, the world would rise again, cleansed and fertile, the surviving and returning gods would meet, and the world would be repopulated by two human survivors
Surtr’s name, fiery black, could possibly be equated etymologically with the word “sooty.” His destiny was to kill the god Freyr, the great god of the Vanir, a group of gods associated with fertility, wisdom, and the ability to see the future. Freyr embodied kingship, peace, fertility, prosperity, fair weather…AND therefore by the same token of these things A GOOD HARVEST.
But Surtr was fated to kill Freyr, and to be slain by him in turn.
The old Norse rune associated with the god Freyr is ING or INGWAZ, signifying energy, drive, fire, seeds, germination, crops, and specifically masculine potency, can be connected to the words in English Ignition, Ingle-Nook.
The fire of ignition. The seeds of new life. This rune, associated with the god of the germination of crops, Freyr, is thereby pitting the eternal cycle, the fires of creation against Surtr’s fires of destruction.
While war, fire, drought and flood wreak havoc this El Nino season of mutable earth, this harvest time, 2026.
Thank you for reading.
Till next time.
True Tarot Tales 