Slow Havamal: 157

[kylec]

In verse 157, Odin says he knows a twelfth spell: If he sees a dead man hanging from a tree, he carves and paints certain runes and the dead man will walk and talk with him.

Jackson Crawford notes that Odin is the Lord of the Noose, owing perhaps to his hanging from Yggdrasil, and he has an affinity with all hanged men. To hang is an Odinic death, and perhaps one that earns favor in the High One’s eyes. That said, I think it’s misleading to assume that what’s going on here is Odin paying some favor to someone who died in a preferred manner. I don’t discount the possibility that he brings these men back as some consolation, or for some higher purpose of his, but I believe what this verse refers to is something more ordinary in the world of magic: the evocation of spirits.

We don’t need to take the walk and talk part literally. Throughout the rest of the magical world it’s common practice to call on the spirits of the dead—new and old—to learn secrets or ask favors. The corpse does not reanimate. Instead, practitioners contact an astral impression of that person as they were when they lived. In some cases, a spirit may never have lived, but rather be contacted through a certain name or symbol. To walk and talk with a hanged man could be Odin’s poetic description of the process of calling forth (ex-vocatio) a certain being for whatever purposes the mage has in mind. There’s little point in speculating on Odin’s intentions, as I doubt they’re simple enough for a mortal to understand.

Rather, he lists one of his abilities, something you might learn from a devotional relationship with him. The exact details aren’t mentioned of course, but we know that it involves using certain runes. Those who wish to dismiss runes as merely an alphabet have not read Havamal and other texts very closely. We’ve already heard hints of their other uses in the previous verses, and now we see their wide application in the conjuration of spirits.