The Principle of Evolution

Hail — a seed
the whitest thing,
the wind bears it,
it comes from the heavens,
then it will become water.”

The Second Att begins with the rune Hagalaz, which establishes the foremost law governing the existence of manifested existence: everything that is born must die.

This rune expresses the activity of the Second Att: the driving force behind the establishment of laws relates life to death.

Mythologically Hagalaz (hail, egg, sometimes Hagal, Hagl) corresponds, of course, to Helheim and its mistress Hel.

Hel is the child of Loki and the Dark Mother (Angrboda); she is not an original being and appears only when Creation reaches the stage of Dense manifestation.

Therefore the forces of Hagalaz arise when there is a need for renewal, the breaking of the unnecessary and obsolete, and also for the removal of extraneous influences.

Death is a necessary condition for advancement, transcendence — in whatever sense one speaks of it — whether in the death of beings, in the evolution of ideas (the death of the old for the birth of the new), or events.

Thus Hagalaz is regarded as destruction insofar as it ensures development and new birth.

Moreover, such destruction is always sudden and dramatic.

At the same time, destruction can also be seen as a return to a state of primordial unity, and so Hagalaz also expresses the action of the forces of primordial Chaos.

Yet paradoxically, the forces of Chaos, at Hel’s level, serve the cosmos, and death is not only an aid to restoring balance disrupted in the process of life but also a necessary condition for the purification of being.

Graphically, Hagalaz is composed of two Uruz runes (one upright and one inverted), which shows the deep connection of death and rebirth with uncontrollable elemental forces.

Therefore it is clear that the magical use of the rune Hagalaz includes not only change and transformation but also the facilitation of embodiment, an ordering achieved through the removal of obstacles.

Another mythological figure associated with the rune Hagalaz is the Primordial Aesir – Heimdall. The great White Aesir, standing at the crossroads of worlds guarding the foundations of the cosmos, unites opposites and establishes the immutability of the world’s laws, and thus Hagalaz also bears the mark of the Mother Rune

from which other runes can be derived, which corresponds to the idea of death opening possibilities for manifold new births.

Heimdall (as Veles is for the Slavs) is not only the Father of Life; he is also a god of death, since he protects Yav from Nav and also protects Nav from Yav. He not only prevents the leakage of life from the living; he also does not allow the dead to approach life before their time, and if they somehow manage it (for example in the form of restless dead), one must resort to the aid of the Great Aesir and his Wild Hunt.

At the same time, those sudden and profound changes expressed by Hagalaz are always subjectively experienced as trauma, psychic or even physical, so the clumsy application of this rune can lead to various destructions and losses.

In this aspect Hel is perceived not as the vestibule of new birth but as a dark and gloomy netherworld where souls drag out a pitiable and semi-conscious existence.