Huginn, Muninn, and Thinking with the Soul

Reflections on the Art of Gnosis through Odin’s Ravens

Nov 22, 2024

Personal Gnosis #2 — This article belongs to my collection entitled “personal gnosis,” where the goal is less academic, and instead reflections on the experience of reality. Enjoy!

I’ve always been a curious person. I have a deep love of learning and figuring things out. I have felt my best, my most real, when engaged in an inner monologue; sitting in the deep waters of the psyche as I think about life, people, and what this all means. I feel very blessed to have such an inquiring mind and that I enjoy figuring things out, especially when it can benefit other people.

If you’re here reading this, chances are you’re in a similar place. You can only seek the soul by going through the gates of the mind.

Although as many cerebrally orientated people can attest, the mind is not always a welcoming place. On the Shadow side of reason and intellect lies anxiety, worry, and even paranoia. Our small perception of self—our egoic consciousness—is but a mere fraction of the colossal pool of the unconscious. When we engage our mind we are deliberately flirting with this presence, expanding the territory of consciousness as we try and assimilate order from seething chaos.

Understanding the tool of thought is critical to navigating the realm of the psyche. In this write-up I will be primarily discussing my own experience with the dialectic of thinking. While there are a multitude of theories and explanations for what thinking is objectively, what I’m interested in is the subjective experience of the mind. How you and I, as conscious individuals, can utilize our minds to align with real, deep, and pervasive truth about ourselves and the reality we inhabit.

There is an intrinsic current to consciousness that we can either swim against or flow with. Nothing is ever truly at rest, there is always some level of vibration occurring somewhere. Time consistently marches forward, and the ever present moment never rests. So too does the experience of consciousness flow, like a river, through our minds.

This flow of consciousness is the fundamental process in any creature that carries consciousness. Animals experience this flow as well, and as far as we can tell, have no choice but to comply with its demands. When impulses arise, they act without questioning. In the animal kingdom, life depends on instantaneous action.

What is unique to humans is that we can be aware of, and move against the flow. The very nature of ego development (which I just wrote about in an article: here), predicates that we have a profound ability to listen to the cosmic current and act against it. Our free-will enables us to question instinct and impulses, and to sit with our feelings for an extended period of time before acting.

While this has done wonders for the development of science, technology, reason, and wisdom, it has also crippled our connection to our natural, embodied self. The entire western world has unduly given all power to those who we consider “smart” (and an arbitrary assessment at that).

We have severed the head from the body, and placed its still dripping skull on the throne.

This dissociation is nothing new, and is much of what I write about on Archetypical. I personally believe that in light of this rather disconnected world, we have been given the gift of getting to rediscover embodied living.

Philosophers and cutting edge cognitive scientists are all starting to see how consciousness is really defined solely by the subjective experience. That consciousness is much more intertwined with our ability to feel, rather than think in some robotic, detached way.

We can see this emerging in the face of AI. As AI becomes increasingly more intelligent, we keep moving the goalpost on what we would consider to be conscious. This is done with the Turing test, a test given to entities (like AI) that if they pass, we would consider them as conscious as we are. As AI has progressed, we simply keep moving the line because AI keeps scoring as “conscious.”

Eventually the realization is being made that consciousness is really all about feelings. Machines can think, but they can’t feel. To be aware is to be connected to the living organism you are inhabiting.

We can stuff our brains with facts, but that is not real knowing. Real knowing, real understanding of something, occurs only when it has been integrated into the very limbic system of the individual. When you feel it down to your bones and in your viscera.

This is the idea behind attaining gnosis.

Ok, preamble aside, let’s get into how Odin’s ravens connect to this.

In Norse mythology, Odin is frequently accompanied by two ravens: Huginn and Muninn. These two names are often translated as “thought” and “memory.” However the meaning is rather unclear, as Muninn doesn’t exactly mean memory as we would think of it today.

The translation of Muninn comes from the Old Norse word munr, which has a range of meanings from “mind,” “memory,” and even “desire.” This distinction between two different kinds of thinking is important and reveals interesting insight into the nature of understanding.

According to Norse myth, each morning Odin would send out his two ravens to fly around the world and gather information. At the end of the day they would come back and recount all they had found.

One important aspect of Odin was his intellect. He presided over knowledge, and there is even a myth of him gouging out his eye so that he could drink from the well of mimir, and thus gain eternal wisdom. So it is natural that his two ravens are indicative of the thinking process.

Let’s discuss Huginn first.

Thinking as we know it mostly involves a process of order. Usually one has a question, or a problem, and is attempting to “solve” this problem by finding an underlying sense of order to the issue. If you ask, “why does x happen?” then your process of thinking is intended to find a reason why. You are starting with an open-ended state of chaos, and bringing order to it through an assimilation of information.

Once the problem is solved, the need to create order recedes. This can be applied to how one decides to navigate their day, as much as it can to larger, philosophical issues.

Thinking is, above all else, a tool. Its purpose is to create order and subsequently create a more pleasurable existence for the individual. In all technological, scientific, and even philosophical pursuits, the underlying drive has been to create a safer, more pleasurable existence.

In this case, this is the active side of thinking.

Huginn thus represents the drive to create order. To participate in the process of thinking. Huginn flies out each day to gather the information necessary to build; to research and formulate ideas. Thinking here is representative of the creative spark inherent in all humans. The active participation of the cosmos and our ability to “create in the image of God.”

In contrast, Muninn represents a more passive, reflective role of thinking.

In this dialectic, Muninn represents the functions of the mind that are outside of our control. While we can hone and refine our memory, much of what is stored in our mind lies dormant in the unconscious.

Often when we least expect it—memories, words, song lyrics even—will suddenly pop into our heads at seemingly random times. The flow of thought can indeed be chaotic and random.

This is where it starts to get interesting.

School systems, as well as societal and parental expectations have pushed an agenda of Huginn thinking. Where critical thought is an active process involving only the parts you can see. There is a tremendous amount of pressure to create order; to follow a well worn path of success—go to college to get a good job, marry and settle down by a certain age, plan for retirement etc.

What has been looked down upon is Muninn thinking.

The fact is that the frantic desire for order is driven by a deep rooted survival fear. Life is naturally ambiguous. Every day we must face the void of uncertainty—that today could literally be our last for reasons far outside our control. Because of this, we cling to what we think will ensure survival. We form attachments and, through a warped form of rational, reason why they are good for us.

Overcoming this innate survival fear and allowing the mind to open up is, frankly, very difficult. The catch is that this form of thinking ensures for a greater nuance and depth to one’s understanding of reality.

This lies in the inherent nature of Muninn thinking. It involves not a monologue solely with oneself, but a dialogue between the person and their unconscious.

As mentioned, much of what we know lies dormant in the unconscious. We can seek the answer, but often this pushes the answer farther away. We’ve all had the experience of something being on “the tip of our tongue,” and yet we couldn’t remember it. Rather frustratingly it would appear much later when the moment had long passed.

Imagine now, that we can posit an answer to ourselves, our deeper, unconscious self, and instead wait for it to respond. This is Muninn thinking.

With the psyche, like attracts like. Seeking an answer only brings more seeking. Not knowing brings more not knowing. Even when the answer is found, it only generates more questions. This is the endless echo chamber of the mind, and only leads to endless anxiety and distorted understanding.

Needing to know taints the truth with that desperation. In a desire to land on a solid conclusion, the mind will deliberately ignore alternate viewpoints.

Instead, when one calls into the void of the unconscious and lets it go, the answer usually comes in a quiet burst of intuition. If seeking only attracts seeking, then its opposite is true as well. When you let go of the need to know, the answer is free to find you.

This is often the purpose behind those random bursts of memory and song lyrics that like to float into consciousness. The psyche doesn’t work in a linear fashion—often we receive these intuitions at inopportune times. But when treated with respect, you may find that they hold the answer to questions you have.

I cannot count the number of times a song I haven’t heard a song in years, and suddenly it’s ringing in my head. I’ll then listen to it, or read through the lyrics and analyze the meaning. Often the theme is relevant to my own problems, and indeed offers some insight into them.

This is also the idea behind synchronicities. That certain “messages” catch your attention in the outside world as they hold some clue to your issues.

This type of thinking is powerful as it conditions the psyche to return to a state of pure awareness. In the chaos of everyday life, too many variables tend to spoil the mental broth. Learning to recenter oneself into a place of content by removing the desire to come to a solid conclusion leaves the door open for something trully beneficial to come in.

So much anxiety is the product of this overbearing sense of order. We feel anxious because we have a feeling that does not align with a perceived value—how something should be. The mental loops we can get stuck in are a product of trying to force the harmonization of the distress within.

Now imagine letting these states remain discordant rather than trying to force them to align. It’s difficult, but detaching from the need to tune them into something sonorous allows the feelings to naturally do that themselves.

Recentering the self in pure awareness clears the mind so that viable solutions can come sauntering in.

Let Muninn find you. Don’t go seeking him.

So we can see how these two ravens form a dialectical process of attunement to one’s self, to the soul. They represent left and right brain processing, that when used in balance, guide the individual down the path of self-liberation. To true gnosis.

It is the flow between focused formation, and pure, unaltered awareness.

Too much of one or the other only leads to delusion, as a large part of the bigger picture is missing. Too much Huginn thinking leads to rigidity and narrow perspectives. Too much Muninn thinking leads to delusion and nothing ever really being understood.

We can listen to the quiet voice of the soul and the loud voice of creation. The soothing sounds of the mystic and the comforting verdicts of the scientist.

So let your ravens of thought fly out into the world. When they return, listen to what they have to say. Our expectation of the truth is often what holds us back from understanding what we actually need.

There is no striving, only arriving.