Irminsul

The Irminsul is a tall column from the Germanic-Celtic tradition. Our forebears erected it as a sign of connectedness – with their gods and among one another, for instance as a symbol of a new covenant after a conflict. At the Kyborg Institute we understand it, with a present-day image, as an “acupuncture needle for Mother Earth”: set at crossing points of the Earth’s magnetic field, it reorders – in this worldview-based view – the energy currents and creates small ley lines, energetic paths of connection. This is a spiritual conception, no natural-scientific demonstration.

What does the Irminsul originally mean?

In old times, Germanic and Celtic peoples were wont to erect columns as a sign of their connectedness. After a conflict, a new column symbolically sealed a new “covenant” – and, so the reading, brought the current of the Earth’s magnetic field between two important places into a new order. Between the columns there arose, according to this conception, new fine ley lines: ways of coming closer to one another in spirit.

How is an Irminsul constructed?

Formerly one took a slender, tall-grown fir or pine and gathered the trunk at the top with an iron band – as a symbol of iron fidelity. On it one set a ram’s head (a real ram’s skull or a head carved from oak) and, between the horns, a gilt or silvered sphere as a sun symbol.

The symbolism is dense: the sphere emblematically catches the sun energy; the ram’s horns stand for the power of the thunder god Thor, whose chariot is drawn by rams, and count at the same time as “antennae” into the force-fields of nature; the iron ring holds everything together. Technically read, the joining of two very different kinds of wood with iron and precious metal works – in this view – like an orgone generator that builds up fields of tension and leads them into the earth-grid network.

“Acupuncture needle for Mother Earth”

Like the Horus energy pyramids, the Irminsul works – according to this conception – with the natural magnetic field of the Earth: it can strengthen existing lines of force or activate new ones. We understand the Earth in this as a great, living whole (see also energy). This is a personal, worldview-based view – no medical and no geophysical assertion of fact.

The Irminsul in the 9-metre installation

The first model D. Harald Alke erected in 1984 at Le Braquet in southern France. In 1999 there arose there, together with seven energy pyramids, the present 9-metre-high Irminsul (steel mast, ram of oak, silvered sun-sphere) – as part of a roughly 240-metre-long pyramid field. Whoever stands there can, so the experience of many visitors, feel the power of the place immediately.

What the Irminsul invites the seeker of meaning to

Behind the old form stands a present-day concern: recollection and connectedness. The Irminsul is a sign of consciously taking up again the connection to nature and to one’s own roots – and of trusting one’s own sensations again more than constant brooding. Something in us knows the way. Whoever learns again to listen to this inner voice gains a calm inner certainty.

Note: This entry renders a personal, worldview-based view of the Kyborg Institute. It is no scientific or medical statement.

Autor: D. Harald Alke