Gullveig

"War, the very first war of our world,
When the treacherous witch was killed
Three times burned and three times born,
By searing flames was Gullveig torn."
Amon Amarth - War of the Gods

Gullveig has perhaps been one of the most frequently recurring figures in my internal process for the past two years.  Yes, there is a connection to Angrboda within her myth, but curiously, the recurring presence has very little to do with Angrboda's role as mother of my principle gods.  Sorting out the significance has been a very tenuous and downright odd process for me, and considering that she continues to surface in new contexts all the time, one that is far from complete.

At first, it was the connection to Angrboda that I thought was the be all and end all.  Her role as a master of magic was relevant, and her heart connected through myth to Loki siring the race of "troll women" or "wolf women" (or in some very viable interpretations where Angrboda is Gullveig-re-incarnated, Fenrir himself, but I consider that closer to UPG even though it agrees with mine) certainly fit form with what I was always drawn to.

Soon though, I started to realize that her significance was more than that for me.  In a lot of ways, I realized that she (right up to her association with Angrboda) was emblematic of my past relationships.  I'm not comparing myself to Gullveig here, I'll get that out of the way now.  In a sense, I've always had a very specific "type" for the most part, and every subsequent relationship has brought me closer to understanding what my ideal woman is actually like.

Gullveig, to me, has come to represent the same thing as the phoenix in mythology.  A conceptual entity who dies and is reborn in flames, becoming more refined and pure with each rebirth.  It's complicated, to say the least.  Obviously it isn't a literal death and resurrection, but rather the death and resurrection of the idea of what the ideal woman should be.  I've noticed a distinct pattern over the years.  Every relationship has put me through a new set of challenges that prepares me quite specifically for the next.  Now, obviously I can't go so far as to apply this to every emotional attachment, but only to the ones since Gullveig became relevant.

I'm not going to go into specific details here, because that's just metaphorical dirty laundry.  But it has been a recurring matter that I can't really brush off.  It's easy to say that it's because I have a specific "type" of woman that I'm attracted to and interested in, but that element has really been quite narrow in terms of why I've been in the situations I've been in, and the women have been very different aside from a very short list of personality traits.  Ordinarily, I'd just chalk it up to coincidence, but it's the specific ways that I seem to be receiving this guidance that makes me wonder.

What's more pressing is that the situation I find myself in currently is the fourth in the iteration since Gullveig started to show up in my meditations and my dreams.  I've always put a lot of faith in signs and portents, even if I don't necessarily understand their relevance at the time that they occur.  I've yet to receive a message that I felt was a divinely inspired signal that didn't somehow come to pass, even if it was only in hindsight that it made sense (we all know the "So that's what was..." moment).  And predictably, I don't know what the relevance of Gullveig's thrice-burned heart means to me right now.

In the sagas, Gullveig was burned three times by the Aesir, and reborn three times before becoming the one known as Heid.  How her heart wound up in the woods for Loki to find is unclear to me, but is likely relevant all the same, just in a way that won't necessarily make sense.  It's an odd thing, too, because I really don't associate myself with Loki, except as it relates to him as father of my principal deities.  Even so, I find the image of Loki finding the heart of Gullveig in the woods too full of resonance to overlook.

It's a difficult thing to sort out.  On one hand, the heart could represent my own, burning and burning and burning until reaching the state it needs to be in to find true happiness.  On the other, the heart could represent the heart of the one I'm meant to find, thrice burned and restored with my assistance.  Or it could have another meaning all together that I've yet to sort out.  No matter what the meaning, I'm confident that Gullveig will prove to be a source of wisdom in bringing me to the right outcome.