Future,—watering its roots from the Sacred Well. Its boughs, with their buddings and disleafings—events, things suffered, things done, catastrophes,—stretch through all lands and times. Is not every leaf of it a biography, every fiber there an act or word? Its boughs are histories of nations; the rustle of it is the noise of human existence, onwards from of old. It grows there, the breath of human passion rustling through it; or storm-tost, the storm-wind howling through it like the voice of all the gods. It is Ygdrasil, the Tree of Existence. It is the past, the present, and the future; what was done, what is doing, what will be done; the infinite conjugation of the verb to do. Considering how human things circulate, each inextricably in communion with all,—how the word I speak to you to-day is borrowed, not from Ulfila, the Mæso-Goth only, but from all men since the first man began to speak,—I find no similitude so true as this of a tree. Beautiful altogether, beautiful and great. The machine of the universe! Alas, do but think of that in contrast!
The name Ygdrasil is derived from Odin's name, Yggr (the deep thinker), and drasill (carrier, horse). Ygdrasil, therefore, means the Bearer of God, a phrase which finds a literal explanation when Odin hangs nine nights on this tree before he discovered the runes. Thus the Elder Edda:
I know that I hung
Nine whole nights,
And to Odin offered,
On that tree,
From what root it springs.
On a wind-rocked tree,
With a spear wounded,
Myself to myself,
Of which no one knows.
