Odin drinking from Mimir's Horn"No man am I, O Mimir, but Odin, Father of Asas and men. Refuse not to me the gift of wisdom; for though I can see all things that happen in heaven and earth, I cannot see what lies beneath the deep nor can I see what shall happen in the future. Give, me, therefore, the draught of wisdom and I wil pay you whatsoever you demand." But Mimir still refused. "We giants are of elder race than ye Asas be," he said, "and all the wisdom in the world is in our hands. If I give you to drink of this water you will become wise even as we are, and an enemy more dangerous than ever.""Nevertheless," replied Odin firmly, "you must give me the water, and I will pay you whatsoever you may ask."Then Mimir, feeling sure that such a payment would be refused, said, "I will give you the magic draught in return for one of your eyes."But to his amazement, for the god was very proud of his keen vision, Odin at once plucked forth an eye and handed it to him, saying: "No price is too high to pay for wisdom." from How All-Father Odin Became Wise http://heathengods.com/temple/modules/articles/article.php?id=1

from “2: URHDR’S WELL: THE WORKINGS OF WYRD” Gundarsson’s TEUTONIC MAGIC, c1990, published 1990 ISBN 0-87542-291-8

“Perhaps the most notable difference between modern thought-patterns and those of the ancient Germanic people, which relates to the most essential theory of runic working, is the concept of time and being in relationship to time. Modern Western culture has absorbed the threefold Greco-Roman concept of time as “past” (that which has gone before), “present” (that which is), and “future” (that which will be). It is easy to associate these concepts with the three Norns Urdhr, Verdhandi, and Skuld. It is also incorrect. The Germanic time-sense is not threefold, but twofold: time is divided into “that- which-is,” a concept encompassing everything that has ever happened–not as a linear progression, but as a unity of interwoven layers and “that-which-is-becoming,” the active changing of the present as it grows from the patterns set in that-which-is. That- which-is is the Germanic “world,” a word literally cognate to the Norse ver-öld, “age of a man.” One will notice that even in modern English, there is no true future tense; the future can only be formed through the use of modal auxiliaries. For the Teutonic mind, all that has been is still immediate and alive; the present only exists as it has been shaped by the great mass of what is, and the future only as the patterns of that which is becoming now should shape in turn. Without this understanding of time in the Teutonic world, your power of reading and writing the runes will be at best limited, at worst in error and unpredictable in result.” p.7

…

“The second level of the Well of Wyrd is the well of Mimir, whose name means “memory.” Mimir is described as “wisest of the etin-kind,” having gained his wisdom by drinking every day from this well, which is to say, by the continual internalization of the entire temporal unity of the ever-growing world. It is significant that Mimir is an etin and that the description of Mimir’s well places it in Jotunheimr, the dwelling of pre-conscious forces, when you consider the nature of this level of the well: the primeval forces welling from Hvergelmir are here filtered through the awareness of every- thing that has happened since the first union of fire and ice. It is in this level of the well that the intertwined layers of that-which-is may be found and understood; students of general occultism will see a resemblance to the Akashic Record here. Everything that has happened-all the events and patterns making up the entirety of the world (“ver-öld”) exists within Mimir’s well. This is the aspect of the Well to which one comes in order to reawaken the ancestral memories, as described in the Rite of Mimir (p.282).” p.9