King Ragnar & Concepts of Spiritual Warfare

by Soren Dreier

Yesterday the temperature here in Andalusia went from very hot to unbearable in the shade. Since the house isn’t equipped with AC, the metal shutters went down to keep the heat out. It has been so for quite some time, so I thought: too hot to work, but not too hot to chill to a series on TV. I am not plugged into the Matrix via TV, so it’s either DVD or Netflix.

I gave ‘Vikings’  a go, and it caught my interest so I stayed with it for four seasons.

I understood when I researched it, that it is fairly correct, historically. There have been some doubts whether they wore the right clothes, but it’s minor. In the center of events we have Ragnar Lothbrok and we follow his early years as well as his last? Time will tell.

During the first part of Ragnar’s life he is busy conquering land and women and engaging in sneaky business to get himself to power, first as an Earl – Later a King.

Ragnar has a feminine side to him that is shown brilliantly by little gestures of his hands and eyes and in his relationship to women. He only conquers them with consent, dazzled by their softness, and he does not engage in rapes on women and children. He finds that disgusting.

Ragnar is curious about this world and his need for power combined with his thirst of knowledge leads him to go West, and as the first Viking, to set his foot on English and later French soil.They loot and they slaughter and that story is generally well known.

Ragnar finds his soulmate in a British monk named Athelstan.

He finds himself drawn to Christianity and the monk only survives because Ragnar sees him as a source of knowledge and protects him against the hard-core Norse Religion followers who wish to kill his ‘pet’ Christian.

Ragnar taps into him and his knowledge and expands his love for Mysticism. I will not pinpoint the full story here – since it would be a spoiler if ‘Vikings’ is on your entertainment to do list.

In Season Three, we find Ragnar seeking solitude. He goes on different Vision Quests in the mountains and his behavior alters. He becomes ‘illusive’ to his fellow Vikings who respect him too much to kill him. It becomes a consensus to let him be: A bit off, except for his friend Loki, who starts to see him as a threat to the Viking Gods which are the glue that hold this society together spiritually. Anybody can tell stories of the Gods and nobody contradicts these stories, so it evolves into fantasyland – often, strung out on funny mushrooms.

This illusive period in the life of Ragnar is necessary, since he doesn’t judge Christian people, which he is in a way obligated to, because of his position. He drinks with great spiritual thirst of the Monk’s mystical cup and forms his own hybrid of Norse and Christian religion.

He also sees that the brutality of the Vikings is mirrored in the Churches of England and France who in the name of Christ torture and abuse on a ‘higher’ level than The Vikings. The Vikings don’t justify their killings in the name of the Gods so much as the Christians do. They actually excuse torture by the words of Jesus.

So Ragnar is expanding his mystical beliefs and has to go illusive to protect himself and keep up good appearances in order not to make unnecessary enemies. While doing that, his Warfare skills expand on a practical level, culminating in his conquest of Paris. That is just plain epic warfare. “Only the dead shall conquer Paris,” a seer told Ragnar. So it was…

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Philosophers stone – selected views from the boat http://philosophers-stone.co.uk

Source: http://www.philosophers-stone.co.uk/?p=13630