It is difficult to secure any satisfactory information concerning the identity of Odin. If he actually founded the Mysteries of Scandinavia, he was undoubtedly an initiate of an Eastern school, possibly the Buddhistic. The etymology of the word Odin shows its various forms as Woden, Wodan, Wotan, Wuotan, and Odinn. These words are now generally defined as meaning “wood” or “wind.” On this subject that indefatigable worker, Godfrey Higgins, has made several important discoveries. He writes; “Thus it appears the Woden, the Northern God, is simply the Tamulic method of pronouncing Buddha. (Sir William Jones also believed that Buddha was Woden.) That Woden came from the North, not the South, of India cannot be doubted.”

The Tamils (Tamuls) are a branch of the Dravidian race. They are now scattered through Southern India and Ceylon. It is peculiarly significant the Woden should be linked through his name with the ancient source of Aryan culture in Northern India. Higgins further says: “In the Syriac tongue Odin is Adonis; but the O. in Syriac or Pushto (Which we have found is the same as Tamul.) was the emphatic article THE. Then Odin would be the Dn, Dun or Don; we have found, meant wisdom or knowledge. Thus we came again to the tree of knowledge or of the garden of knowledge, or garden of Adonis.” As Wodentherfore means both “wood” and “wisdom,” it does not require a great stretch of the imagination to see in this symbolic name an allusion to the tree of knowledge growing in  O-DON (thE-DON, or EDEN), the garden of wisdom.