as laid down in the Scriptures, so we venture to assert that a profound study of the Odinic mythology will enable the student to elicit a sublime harmony in its doctrines and principles.
The strict construction of the asa-doctrine appears to be this, that although man in the intermediate state, between death and Ragnarok, was divided between Odin and Hel, yet each one's share of his being, after death, was greater or less according to the life he had lived. The spirit of the virtuous and the brave had the power to bear up to heaven with it after death the better part of its corporeal being, and Hel obtained only the dust. But he whose spirit, by wickedness and base, sensual lust was drawn away from heaven, became in all his being the prey of Hel. His soul was not strong enough to mount freely up to the celestial abodes of the gods, but was drawn down into the abyss by the dust with which it had ever been clogged. Perhaps the representation of Hel as being half white and half pale-blue had its origin in this thought, that to the good, death appeared as a bright (white) goddess of deliverance, but to the wicked, as a dark and punishing deity.
When the drowned came to the halls of Ran, the sea-goddess took the part of Hel; that is, Ran claimed the body as her part, while the spirit ascended to heaven.
Bondsmen came to Thor after death. This seems to express the idea, that their spirits had not the power to mount up with free-born heroes to the higher celestial abodes, but were obliged to linger midway, as it were, among the low floating clouds under the stern dominion of Thor;—a thought painful to the feelings of humanity, but nevertheless not inconsistent with the views of our ancestors in ancient times. But when the bondsmen, as was the custom in the most ancient Gothic
