The North Star Podcast: Conversations on Pagan Life and Meaning

Podcast by Axenthof Thiad

The North Star Podcast: Conversations on Pagan Life and Meaning

The North Star Podcast is a podcast for pagans seeking deeper meaning, thoughtful practice, and a well-lived life. Hosted by four practicing pagans, the show explores pagan philosophy, theology, and ethics through both an academic lens and real-world experience. Each episode blends scholarship with practical insight as we examine rituals, worldviews, and daily practices that help orient us toward living a good, intentional pagan life—rooted in tradition, curiosity, and lived wisdom.

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Latest episodes

11 September 2026

Völuspá: Baldr, Loki, and the Coming of Ragnarok, Part 3

What does the death of Baldr reveal about fate, kinship, revenge, and the beginning of the end?

In this third part of our deep dive into Völuspá, the Prophecy of the Seeress, we move into some of the poem’s darkest and most consequential images: Baldr’s death, the mysterious role of mistletoe, the birth of Váli, the problem of kinslaying, and the terrible logic of vengeance within a Germanic moral world.

From there, the conversation turns to Loki’s binding, the suffering of Sigyn, the rivers and regions of the underworld, and the way the poem begins to slide from divine tragedy into Ragnarok. We explore the wolves, the darkening of the sun and moon, the breakdown of order, Heimdall’s horn, Odin’s final struggle, Surtr’s fire, and the collapse of the world the gods once shaped.

But Völuspá does not end with destruction alone. The poem also gives us the return of the earth from the sea, the reappearance of Baldr, the memory of the gods’ old deeds, and the possibility of a renewed world. Is this a clean rebirth, a new age, a return to an earlier pattern, or something more ambiguous?

Ultimately, this episode asks whether Ragnarok is simply the end of Norse myth—or whether destruction and renewal are part of the same sacred pattern.

This is Part 3 of our series on Völuspá, which explores Norse mythology, the Poetic Edda, Baldr, Loki, mistletoe, Ragnarok, fate, vengeance, and renewal.

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12 August 2026

Völuspá: The Norns, Fate, and the War of the Gods, Part 2

What did the Norse world mean by fate, and is the future truly fixed?

In this continuation of our deep dive into Völuspá, the Prophecy of the Seeress, we return to the poem just after the creation of Ask and Embla and move into one of its most important symbolic turns: from human beings shaped from trees to Yggdrasil, the great ash, the Well of Urðr, and the mysterious Norns who shape the course of becoming.

This episode explores Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld, the nature of time in Germanic thought, and the difference between the past, the present, and a future that is not yet fully solid. Rather than treating fate as simple predestination, we look at wyrd as the weight of what has already happened, the accumulated force of action, memory, debt, law, obligation, and consequence.

From there, the conversation moves into örlög, causality, death, seiðr, the role of the gods within fate, and the unfolding conflict between the Aesir and Vanir. We also consider whether the war of the gods is connected to worship, sacrifice, divine status, and the question of who receives honor.

Ultimately, this episode asks whether fate in Norse mythology is a closed script—or a living pattern shaped by what has been, what is becoming, and what must eventually be faced.

This is Part 2 of our series on Völuspá, Norse mythology, the Poetic Edda, the Norns, wyrd, Yggdrasil, fate, seiðr, and the war of the gods.

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14 July 2026

Völuspá, the Prophecy of the Seeress: Poetry, Creation, and the Norse Cosmos

Why did the Norse gods value poetry enough for Odin to steal it back from the giants?

In this episode of North Star, we begin our deep dive into Völuspá—the Prophecy of the Seeress, the first poem of the Poetic Edda and one of the most important mythological poems in the Germanic religious tradition.

Before entering the poem itself, we begin with the mythic origin of poetry: the truce between the Aesir and Vanir, the creation and murder of Kvasir, the making of the Mead of Poetry, and Odin’s dangerous theft of that divine inspiration. For the heathen mind, poetry is not merely ornament or entertainment. It is a sacred force that can reshape thought, reveal hidden order, and carry mythic truth.

From there, we turn to the opening stanzas of Völuspá, exploring the seeress’s call to the holy races, the memory of giants, Ginnungagap, Ymir, the ordering of the cosmos, the naming of time, and the gods’ first acts of creation. Along the way, the conversation moves through fate, identity, freedom, the soul as breath, the gifts given to the first humans, and the deep symbolic connection between Ask, humanity, and Yggdrasil, the World Tree.

This is the first part of a larger conversation on Völuspá, Norse mythology, the Poetic Edda, sacred poetry, Odin, and the origins of the Norse cosmos.

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15 June 2026

Yggdrasil, the World Tree: Serpents, Stags, and Odin, Part 2

What lives within Yggdrasil, the World Tree, and what do those beings reveal about the Norse vision of the cosmos?

In this conclusion to our two-part series on Yggdrasil and Norse cosmology, we return to the living tree at the center of the Norse mythic world. This time, we look more closely at the beings that move through, feed on, wound, and sustain the tree: the stags that eat its leaves, the serpents that gnaw at its roots, the eagle above, the squirrel Ratatosk, and the gods who move between worlds.

Rather than treating Yggdrasil as a static map of the nine worlds, we explore it as a living cosmic ecosystem, one where creation and destruction are inseparable, life feeds on life, death nourishes life, and nothing stands completely outside the whole.

Along the way, the conversation moves through world trees, sky pillars, sacred mountains, Axis Mundi symbolism, deer and serpent imagery, the fluid boundaries between gods, elves, dwarves, giants, and other mythic beings, and the strange possibility that Odin is tied not only to the tree, but also to the forces that sustain, damage, and transform it.

Ultimately, this episode asks what it means to be human inside a cosmos that is alive: a world that grows, decays, suffers, renews itself, and binds gods, ancestors, animals, death, and humanity into one vast process of being.

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16 May 2026

Yggdrasil, the World Tree: Norse Cosmology and the Living Cosmos

At the center of the Norse cosmos stands Yggdrasil—the world tree whose roots reach into the realms of the dead, the giants, and humankind, while its branches hold gods, creatures, and the structure of existence itself.

In this episode of North Star, we begin a deeper exploration of Yggdrasil as more than a mythological image. What does it mean to picture the universe as a living tree? How does that change the way we understand the cosmos, nature, death, renewal, decay, and our place within being?

Starting with passages from the Norse sources, we examine Yggdrasil’s roots, the beings that dwell around it, and the creatures that nourish, wound, and move through it—from Ratatosk and Nidhogg to the eagle, the deer, the giants, the dead, and the lands of men. From there, the conversation expands into the recurring shape of trees across reality: rivers, veins, neurons, genealogy, language, galaxies, and family lines.

Along the way, we contrast the Norse image of a living cosmos with more mechanical or architectural views of the universe. Rather than a machine built from the outside, Yggdrasil suggests a world that grows, decays, shelters life, suffers damage, and renews itself through cycles of exchange.

This is the first part of a larger conversation on Yggdrasil, Norse mythology, sacred cosmology, and the tree-like structure of being.

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17 April 2026

The Sacred and the Profane: Meaning, Nature, and Sacred Time

In Part 1 of Exploring the Sacred, the hosts dig into what “the sacred” actually is, using Rudolf Otto’s numinous and Mircea Eliade’s sacred/profane distinction as their main lenses. They unpack the emotional charge of awe, terror, and fascination, argue that the profane isn’t “bad” so much as ordinary, and insist that genuine sacred encounters have to bleed back into everyday life or they’re basically pointless.

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