Living the Odhinnic Life

I was recently in a discussion regarding the notion of "relationship to deity" as we Heathens understand it. It's nothing like the mainstream Christian notion of "relationship to God"- though many people who would be Heathen, and who have had the Christian model of relationship demonstrated to them all their life- expect that we will approach our Gods in the same familiar and intimate terms.

We don't. I've discussed it before, in many places, but it never really gets old: the Gods are busy running the universe and keeping the Worlds safe from being destroyed by wicked, destructive powers. This is not to say that they don't sometimes give visions or guidance to individual human beings, but it's far from a common occurrence. The Gods don't micromanage our lives, nor do they give out their "personal cell numbers" to just anyone who decides that they'll worship them. The Gods- led by Allfather- have given mankind many great and powerful assets, including the Godly spirit within each man and woman, and their ceaselessly effective wisdom, as embodied in texts like "Havamal" and other writings in the lore of the past.

The Gods give us the capability to be wise, brave, clever, resourceful, and enduring. Their spirit in us tends towards these things. They give us copious advice through the ancestral lore. They inspire us with their very presence, which can sometimes be experienced in moments of sacred might. They upheld the ancestors who knew them, and they uphold us now, even if most human beings won't give them the time of day anymore.

The Gods have fulfilled their role in the Fate of human beings; we have to stand and do our part now- return the favor, as it were, and make the most of their gifts and their aid when we can get it. Humans have to live their lives on what powers and merits they can manifest in themselves.

The only "outside aid" we can expect beyond what the Gods have done is the help and protection of the spirits of our family-lines, and our ancestral powers, who do provide us with luck and guidance, in their own strange way. Life is full of uncertainties, and there is no reason to be overly concerned about this simple and universal fact. You just accept it and live the best way you can. That's real peace; conflict begins when you either delight in delusions about life's true nature, and the true nature of death- or when you sit around wishing that the way the world works was different. We're not going to improve the world; it is being woven out by Fate. We can, however, improve our perspectives and find peace.

Organic religions, like Heathen traditions, don't come pre-packaged with "instruction books" for life. You learn all that you can from wherever you can- your elders, parents, friends, and from ancestral tradition, like the myths and lore. Then you live. You are helped, and you help others. Most importantly, you try to gain wisdom from living- wisdom, that true manifestation of the supreme solar-minded insight and inspiration which rained onto mankind when Odhinn, the Allfather and Master of the Mysteries completed his timeless quest for the deepest vision of reality. Those same blessings are mediated by his strange doings (in the mythical past and in our here-and-now present) to those who are cunning and brave enough to be "Allfather's Own".

It's odd indeed to think that the Gods can be so important to us- and to all life- and yet we don't imagine that we are having two-way phone calls with them every time we pray, fain, or sacrifice. There is no reason to be perplexed here; it is the mighty example of the Gods that supply our needs for relationship with the ruling powers. Living the "Odhinnic Life"- living by the example of the great Godly Sorcerer himself- makes one "move in his channel"- move, think, and live according to his own ancient wisdom and his own actions, and thus, we channel many of the same experiences he had.

The result of this is twofold: a precious chance to find the secrets that Allfather found, and a chance to know that we are not living a life merely of our own making, but living in accordance with a greater pattern of Wyrd, a timeless pattern with proven results: results that end in wisdom, the death of the self, given over to the Greater Self- and if we are lucky, the arrival at the same condition that Allfather resides in, perpetually.

We don't become "Allfathers", ourselves; we become what we have the potential to be inside- wise and free spirits that drink from his endless cup of inspiration, served to us by his handmaidens. That we can achieve such a blessed state is the evidence we need that, at the core of us, is that deathless spirit "in-breathed" (in-spired) by Allfather. If we were only lumps of mud and organic material, as modern science would have us believe, no such realizations or awakenings would be possible.

There are no "lumps of dead matter" to be found, anywhere in the Nine Worlds. All matter is coexistent with the fire that impelled the creation of the world-system; all matter is energetic and alive in its own way. All energy and matter, which can be reduced to the strong, impelling subtle forces and the inert, tending-to-stasis forces, (Fire and Ice) are themselves arisen from a deeper layer of reality- the layer of Ginnungagap, the void of Ginn-powers, the extremely subtle and mysterious roots of all things which not even the wisest can penetrate unless he or she dies to all relative notions of "world" and "self".

Those extremely subtle and mysterious roots are not known to me directly, but I will say one thing about them: I know that they are living powers, for the reality of sentience, spirit, and mind arose from them, and no dead thing can produce something alive. Effects are always something of the nature of their causes. The cosmos is a storm of mighty living powers, many risen to high levels of sentience, like the Gods and humanity, others not so high, tending towards darkness and chaos as they do. But the entire "cosmic event" is a powerful and timeless explosion of life and life-interaction.

And the Allfather is the Master of its many mysteries. To live in respect and worship of Odhinn is very good- very wise; it is good and right that people should worship such a being who is so tied to our own arising as human beings and our own greatness as humanity. But it is even greater and wiser to live like Odhinn- to follow in his footsteps and actualize the stages of his quest for the mysteries. Living like him places you in an intimate relationship with him, even if you never see him in a dream or see him in person.

In a sense, living like him means that you "see" him in everything that you do, for the reality of these things is such that you can't separate their power from him. The goal is to "see" that undying spirit of yourself, which he breathed into your ancestors. When you "see" that, you have seen the very essence and nature of the Gods. It frees us from despair, doubt, and death. That's what real wisdom is, to me- freedom from despair, confusion, doubt, and death.

What does it mean to live the Odhinnic way of life? It means that you look to sacred accounts of Allfather's interactions and his own quest to wisdom, to inspire your own. Below are a list of "Odhinnic perspectives" that I have crafted as a means to guidance for myself and others who are interested in the greatest path to wisdom that a human being can walk.


1. The Allfather Sacrificed his lesser self to his Greater Self, in the name of wisdom.

The quest for wisdom is greater than any other quest. Odhinn was willing to "die" to everything he thought about himself, everything he believed, and every doubt, attachment, joy, and fear he knew, just to attain wisdom. Does this mean we should give up on everything we find important in our lives, and become monks? Naturally not- "dying" or releasing ourselves from the snares of the lesser self isn't about scorning the lesser self and letting it die of starvation; it is about understanding that a Greater Self exists, and understanding what the true relationship is between lesser and Greater.

The Greater Self, to use an example, is an ocean compared to the lesser self, which is like a fish in the ocean. The fish depends so much on the great (and to it, invisible) medium of the oceanic body. There is no fish without it; it is the source of life and sustenance to the fish. It is the medium in which the fish moves and thrives. It is the resting place of the fish when the fish dies and its body comes apart.

But in the meantime, the fish swims on, blithely unaware of this great oceanic power upon which it relies, depends, and in which it moves and lives. If we were reflections on the surface of a mirror, the surface of the mirror- which effortlessly upholds all reflections as they come and go- would be like our Godly nature, our undying Greater Self. No part of a reflection is exempt from depending on the mirror, or being upheld by it. Just so, no part of our so-called "lesser self" can be apart from the Greater; the Greater is merely silent, perpetual, and supportive- the very "strong force" that holds the entire cosmos together. To die to the lesser is to grasp oceanic consciousness while still having command of fish consciousness- it is to become both lasting mirror and temporary, passing reflection at the same time.

So, dying to our lesser self is really about understanding the reality of the greater and no longer according single-minded limitation and importance to the lesser things that live and die, constantly. You don't have to give up your house, your beautiful wife or handsome husband, or give up all your money- these things that most people are quite fond of and attached to- you just have to see them with the proper, greater perspective. You have to see them with a wiser perspective.

Understanding the insubstantial nature of lesser things is precisely how we "give them up"- even if we keep them after our breakthrough in understanding, and even if we go on enjoying them, we've still "given them up" in a very important way. We've given up our slavery to our limited ideas about the natures of these things- and the nature of what we call "ourselves".

Like Odhinn, you can be alive and dead at the same time, rich and poor at the same time, loaded down with possessions and free of possessions at the same time. You only "have" the Greater Self when you let greater, wiser perspectives temper and change how you experience the "lesser" self. This is a matter of being willing to sacrifice yourself, and things about yourself that you may enjoy- beliefs you may enjoy, feelings you may enjoy, or habits you may enjoy. You have to be willing to take risks, to lose and to suffer in order to gain. Odhinn gouged out his eye to have a drink from a well that gave him much wisdom- what will you tear out to gain wisdom?


2. Allfather Welcomed a Dark Figure to his Table, and Offered his Hospitality and Friendship

Loki the Wolf's Father became bound to Odhinn through blood and troth. They shared horns and cups! Why ever? Such a dangerous, tricky figure being welcomed by Allfather? Won't Loki's giant Wolf-Son Fenris destroy Odhinn one day, with Loki leading the army that Fenris will be a part of? Sure. But the indistinct future doesn't mean squat when it comes to dealing wisely with what exists right now. Odhinn knows what role Loki has to play in the unfolding of things. Odhinn knows Loki's necessity, and he shows his acceptance of "things being risky and dangerous"- an acceptance that we all need to consider.

We all fail to live up to our highest ideals at times, and we all have risky behaviors, ideas, habits, and other dangerous powers in our lives. What do we do? Whine? Try to destroy the "other side" of things, as though it weren't necessary? It is necessary, even if it has disastrous consequences. Neither the universe nor these human societies or bodies are going to be around forever. Those dangerous powers that threaten to overthrow things are our constant companions and teachers, in a very real way- they keep us on our toes and they keep us preparing for the inevitable tests we must all face, when we are forced back down to the roots and to what is true and real.

Might as well set aside a cup of ale for the things you don't like about your life- because Fate wove them into your life for a reason, and wisdom comes from discovering that reason, not struggling against what cannot be changed. Every glorious feast or delightful meal ends up as a steaming pile of shit, eventually- that's no reason not to enjoy the feast.

Sure, every good thing is destined to be broken down- and destruction forever follows along with creation (and creation follows along with destruction)- and as much as these things might seem to be a real tragedy, consider it: Allfather and the Gods still made humans, and endowed us with spirit and life, and taught us to live well. Why would they, if all this was meaningless? Take the hint- live life happily. There must be a good reason why they thought it was worth it.


3. Allfather Wanders the World, In Many Shapes and Guises, in Search of Wisdom

He never seems to get enough! In many guises the Old Man treks about; his comings and goings are very mysterious. He seeks heroes to take as his own, seeks occult knowledge, new forms of sorcery to master, and seeks for goodness knows what else. He is the eternal student of the world- even a God in possession of omniscience still feels the need to wander and learn.

What can this mean? That knowing everything and working to know everything are not truly different- two sides of one coin. It tells us that omniscience is hard work, and that even a being that has the power to know everything- all the tidings of the earth, through his sorcery- still enjoys getting out sometime and seeing things with his own great eye.

The learning process must never end. It will never end. There's always new perspectives to learn, even on old knowledge that one may believe they have mastered. It is this "infinite" nature to wisdom and learning that makes them what they are, and makes them attributes of the Godly spirit in us. If they could reach some "limit", leaving us static and with nothing new to do or learn, they would not be worthy of a Godly essence. Our interactions with the world are never done, and the process of learning is ongoing.

There is no such thing as "forbidden knowledge", and no limits to what you should be interested in learning. Odhinn crosses every country and every region of every world looking to learn useful things. So do his men and women.


4. Allfather Rules the Gods and the Worlds through Subtlety, not Might of Arms

Yes, he has powerful weapons, like his enchanted spear Gungnir, but his real weapon is his mastery of the Runes and of sorcery- the power to alter the perspectives of other beings, to outwit them and to shift his shape like the God he is. His great knowledge, insight, and wisdom is what makes him Ruler of the Gods and the Worlds, not his magic spear. The penetrating Eye of Odhinn sees all things and through all things, to their roots- though what it "sees" there is not for us to know, but to discover.

If beating Giants to death and crushing the enemies of the Gods with brute force was enough to Rule the Cosmos, then Thorr would be in charge, not his father Odhinn. Wisdom rules the world- not savagery or muscle. It may not seem that way now, in our human world, in our times where wisdom doesn't seem to be high on the agendas of many governments, but cosmically speaking, it is wisdom that sits above strength in dominance and importance.

Might fades. Strength fades with age. Empires and armies fall. But wisdom remains, and a person strong in wisdom dies well, whereas a person who can only really beat people up well is carried away by death in terror- for their fists are useless when Hel casts Her noose around the fool's neck.

The men and women of Odhinn seek to fight smarter, not fight harder.


5. Allfather has a Dark Sense of Humor

...And so would you if you lived in perpetual awareness of your true self as an indestructible reality of spirit, and could now wander around the world, in many temporary, relative forms, enjoying life, experiencing excitement and fulfilling the needful work of Fate, without ever once having to slip into despair and doubt on account of your lost wits.

On your happy journeys, you'd meet a Hel of a lot of beings who are nothing like you- whiners, greedy bastards, poufs, idiots, and drool-cup specials that seem to think that they are the most important beings in existence, and who cause themselves and others an enormous pile of trouble.

Glaring from under the brim of his hat with his drilling eye, Allfather knows the true nature of these confused beings. He knows what role they play in the scheme of things. He knows what forces wove them they way they are. He knows what the outcomes of their stupidity must be.

If you were like Allfather, you wouldn't be able to help yourself- you'd have some fun at their expense, at least some of the time. And in so doing, you'd show them a different way to be- maybe they'd get better. Maybe they'd whine even more and just end up being a lesson for posterity. Or maybe you'd help eliminate them, if that was better for them and for the world. From the outside, it might look like you were being a sneaky, slippery bastard. You might look lethal and cruel. But from the inside, the story is very different. For the truly wise, the story is always different.

They say "ruthlessness is the kindness of the wise"- and there is a drop of truth to that, when the whole story is seen. Sometimes, the wisest thing to do is pretty savage seeming. But you will always know real wisdom by its ends- when it leads to good places, to greater harmony, then it was good all along. The scale is long and hard to see, unless of course you see with the eye of wholeness. Most humans don't. Most men and women of Odhinn don't. And those that do, well, I doubt we'll ever know about them, fully- like Odhinn, they won't ever be what they appear. Their comings and goings will likely be obscure to us. But we can honor their ideal.

There's nothing left to do but have a good laugh when the truth about things is known. The show is all decided, falling away to the Ragnarok- Orlog will unfold as it must. All of the things that we've feared so much are really meaningless. We are fully free, at heart, and fully trapped by our paranoias and self-interested delusions. We won't take the gold drink that is offered us every day by the Fylgja-Women, the handmaidens to Odhinn who accompany us; we prefer to lick our spit and call it champagne.

Imagine that you took the drink! You'd be a drinker of the sweetest mead, awakened to the truth of things, and yet still surrounded by spit-drinkers. After you got over the shock of it (a shock you might not even have, considering how much you'd understand the necessity of spit-drinkers- you too, were once one, after all, and you managed to get some good out of it) you'd have to smile at the great perfection of it all. After that, it would be time for some fun.

Things that seem so tragic to others might be seen by you as cosmic comedy of the greatest quality. And the opposite is true- things others delight in may not delight you as much, knowing as you do what the true nature of things is. You'll be doomed to be like Allfather- always going your way in your own special sort of unconquerable freedom, destined to be misunderstood, feared, and ignored by people who drink spit.

And like Allfather, you'll be a great champion of the Gods and humankind, and of all worlds in which sentient life dwells. Your sorcery- your great insight- will see to it that you end up in places on your journeys where you need to be, for things to work out as they must.


6. Odhinn's Conquest of the Vertical Axis of Reality- the World Tree- gave Solar Salvation (Sig and Sal, the possibility of Victory and Health) to All Beings

And your conquest of the world-axis can do the same. Stop living an "all around me" life, that life that deals with a flat plane, north, south, east, and west- stop living on the horizontal. Look to the vertical, which allows perception and consciousness to rise to the heights and sink to the depths. In the depths of Hel are the Ginn-Powers, hidden, though come forth now as the Runes, as taught by Allfather after he won them. From the depths comes the Mead of Inspiration, won by Allfather and mediated to the whole world by him, in the form of his great Solar Eagle.

From the Depths and the Heights come different perspectives- perspectives that are co-existent with every "place" and "moment" here on the horizontal plane- and Allfather's Ravens forever fly back and forth whispering the keys to those perspectives. In the form of a serpent, he hisses about the great inspiration he found below, in the depths.

It is not the sun and life-force that Allfather mediates; it is the sun of spirit and the life-force of deathless eternity. It is the sun behind the sun, the life behind life. Those two suns are never separate; those two lives are never separate. His two Ravens are never separate, and he and his blood-brother, dark Loki, are never separate in spirit. His two wolves are with him at all times.

Allfather's lesser self (which is doomed to die at Ragnarok) is never separate from his Greater Self, which will live on from age to age, never dying. From that Greater Self he will emerge again in the regenerated world as the Reader of the Blood-Twigs, and continue on like nothing happened.

When will you rise to the heights, make the two into one, and overcome death and obscurity? Can you? The road is long and hard. Can our modern day produce such heroes? Allfather is still wandering about, waiting to see a few himself.

Night Road

Inside of wind-driver, horse-hoof rider,
A height to wood and tangle flies this ghost:
A ghost in that bird-shelter, deer-shelter,
Serpent home among the hidden:
To the hollow tree this fetch has flown
And into his darkness, into the ground.
To the dark-way, the Hel-way wide
And dim, flying by the thunder, the horse deep sound
Pounding hoof-waves, a shudder in body's cloak
Taken down to shadow's home, uncounted leagues.

And lo, an unlit forest deeper, earth-blue,
And the long wind-limbs of night-caller,
The shadowy flutter of mouse-bane's wings
To shake the earth of the bones,
To rumble in body's rivers,
This is the bath of evening-howler's strong power.

And visions in the dark rise to sealed-shut eyes
Dreams so strange and far from sleep, and yet more:
The wind of rushing to lich-home's bed
From the deepest places of the world to awake,
Yet the midnight-beak comes again:
To fill heart's hall with powerful breath
To make swift the spirit of Gods in me
To establish me again, by pact, in his company.

Mythical

I just got done writing a narrative regarding spiritual ecology, but beyond that, it is a full philosophical treatise regarding Land-Based Traditional Paganism and Witchcraft, and the animistic principles that I have internalized over many years of my own experiences. It is found at the link below- on the cover page is an image of a full moon; click on it to enter.

Mythical: The Voice of the Land

Human and Spirit Ecology: Shamanic Cognition and a Movement Towards a Broader Vision of the Sacred System of Life

Earlier today, in the depths of trance-exploration, my helping spirit helped me to see some of the intricacies of our hidden existence. When I say "our", I am referring to all of us together as human beings who must exist within the context of a greater ecological system than we realize. When a person becomes aware of extra-sensory reality, they are given a glimpse of a greater context for our lives.

Most people believe in the unseen world in some form or fashion, but people- especially, I find, animists- have a heightened sense of awe for the mysterious nature of the unseen. It is always good to cultivate a sense of "unknowing"- there is wisdom in not having an answer for everything, and the wise have always known that the spiritual world (of which this world is a part) is a very mysterious thing, which evades our attempts to map it out or codify it.

The dynamism of the unseen world is not itself a mystery or a thing so hard to understand; it is a neat reflection of the dynamism that is at the heart of the system of life that we call "this world". Things seem to be changing all the time, and in the shifting web of forces that we call our lives, things seldom reliably stay the same for very long. Thus, the "wisdom of uncertainty" is a name given to the honest attitude that doesn't try over-much to explain how the world works, or how things "have to be" at any given moment. If anything, there is a great pleasure and peace in not having to know these things, and being comfortable with uncertainty.

Today, I was given to understand something of the nature of spiritual interactions. I thought I'd share what I discovered, so that others might be inspired to their own quest for insight.

I have long discussed the nature of systems, using the metaphor of a "web" of power- which I call Wyrd when working in the context of Asatru and Seidr- that connects and influences all things and beings in reality. In this world, we are all bound together by the web of life, the web of causality and recursion that shapes our every moment of experience. This web extends into the regions of extra-sensory reality; if anything, those parts of the web that we can intellectualize or see represent a very small part of its timeless and vast interactions.

Since we are indisputably parts of a web of connections, a web through which the sacred process of communication is made possible, then prayer, communion with the dead, conversations with humans and non-human sentient beings, all of these things are possible. It is impossible to see the far-reaching effects of our manipulations of the web, but our every word and deed does have far-reaching effects.

Awareness of this sort of "distantly echoing recursion" that is a part of our lives in the great web of reality is central to living life in a sacred manner, but also to living life in a sorcerous manner, if a person is so inclined and if they have been granted the power to comprehend and perform sorcery by allied spirits.

There is both an intimate connection for all living beings to one another, as well as a constant recursive, two-way power exchange; for humans, as for many beings, this power-exchange can be experienced in terms of communication, such as with human language. All power-exchanges are a form of communication, when you think about it; but not all communication has to be framed as humans do with their idea of language, and the reality of language. Language, as we know it, is one of the most magically powerful gifts that humans possess, and with it, we can call many things into conscious being.

But other orders of being, other forms of animate life, have "language", or a means of communication- what is different, I have learned, is that they don't create with their language in the way that humans can or very powerful spirits can, and they don't call other beings to the same height of conscious awareness that humans can. When humans communicate with the spirit of a tree, for instance, it knows itself immediately in the same way that humans know it- for the time of the communication, it is known and it knows itself, as a human knows him or herself.

This is a secret to the power of human language. In the great web of life, in the system of reality, communication and knowledge are inseparably linked.

Now, let me return to the basics of spiritual ecology as I know it- all are intimately connected and related, and all constantly experience recursive power exchange with the rest of the world, in many far-reaching ways, both conscious and unconscious. Becoming more conscious of our connections, and the ways in which we give and receive communication and power with the other organic and non-organic powers in the web of life is the chief goal of the spiritual quest, or the life of spiritual growth.

When a person is able (either through a rare act of natural will or by the help of an allied spirit) to pull back the animate power that makes up the very "stuff" of their awareness, and which makes up the pylons of their conscious experiences, and by pulling it back, separating it, at least a little, from the portals of sense, they experience something unique- if that animate, living power makes contact with the inner sense portals, shamanic cognition results. The unseen world, the subtle world, can be experienced.

Under the influence of my helping spirit, I have done this many times, and today, I came to understand something that I feel the need to communicate- I saw and understood, for a moment, how spiritual beings see and encounter us. When I say "us", I mean human beings.

The Unseen world may not have a linear or solid "geography" that can be mapped out, but it is a continuum of life. It does not seem to be limited by space in any manner, and how it appears to a person's inner senses seems to depend largely on the observer. It is hoped that the best and wisest observers will be those who have practiced emptying their own minds of expectations, so that they can, through a true act of supernatural skill, remove themselves as far as possible from the blinders of syntax and cultural assumption. Without this effort and skill, our experiences of the unseen can quickly become tainted by what we expect, and we may miss what is truly there.

Of course, what is there will never appear to us in any form other than communication and sense; even the inner senses have to give us inputs that are filtered, once we arrive back into ordinary cognition, by our habitual punctuation of syntax, language, and cultural assumption. The wisest are those who keep this fact in mind, and balance their reports of the unseen with a good deal of humility. Skill in communication is what is required here. One must be ready to admit that while they can't be 100% certain that they can communicate perfectly what they experienced, they will at least try to be a good, open-minded story-teller and try to help others to come to their own conclusions that are in line with the spirit of an experience- no pun intended!

Today, I was given a vision of a forest of human powers. What I mean by that is, I saw what we humans appear as to spiritual beings who are non-organic yet sentient living things, dwelling unseen among us, in a continuum that we may call "otherworldly" but which is still a part of reality undivided, a part of this web that we are all in.

I'd like to use the example of the forest that we've all seen- the trees, leaves, moss, and fungus that we've all experienced. Call to mind the last time you walked through the trees in a patch of woods or a forest. You remember the many trees all around, standing silently there. Of many different types, sizes, and shapes- and around them wandered many animals, birds and beasts. You too, were wandering around them. Some were the homes of animals. Some had fungus growing on them; others had rotted or were rotting. Some were the hiding places of beasts, some were young, some were old.

Whatever we humans are, we are certainly power. There is animate power within and beyond these organic forms that we label as our own. When we withdraw from the portals of sense, and see with the other eyes, we see other human beings as power, too. All over the world, humans are there, going about their daily business, and to a being with only the other sight, humanity would seem to be a great collection of individual powers, staggered all over the planet, surrounded by many other organic and non-organic powers. A forest of light and life might be another way of saying it.

Each human, whether or not they know it, has a spirit that surrounds him or her, and follows them quietly through life. Sometimes, as the Mystery of our existence would have it (call it Fate if you like) more than one spirit surrounds a person, and affects them in many ways. Some have no such spiritual protection, though they are never usually very well off. In that forest of light-forms, these spirits appear as beasts- many kinds of animal, and they inhabit the forest like you'd expect animals to inhabit a forest.

The difference here is that this isn't a worldly landscape; this is an otherworldly landscape, where the rules aren't quite the same; the spirit that looks like a deer can be living its life in the seeming "location" where the human-power of their partner dwells, and next to it, that of a shark or a lion or an otter- there is no strictly defined range of habitat like we see in this world.

But here is where I make the point that I learned- there is a habitat, but it is a human one. If you were to walk through the forest here, you'd come into the territories of certain animals, who keep others out. Some animals are afraid of others, or in competition with others, or preyed on, so they avoid each other. In the part of the forest which is densely populated with owls, for instance, you'd see fewer mice.

Humans occupy their own habitat in the unseen world, a habitat, a human region that is patrolled and peopled by their helping spirits, who mostly remain vigilant for our protection. In the larger ecology of the unseen world, there are many spiritual powers, all very natural, but some dangerous to humanity. These dangerous powers are largely prevented from straying into the human spiritual habitat by the guarding spirits that most of us go through our lives unconscious of. The more conscious we become of our helping spirit(s), the more capable they become of doing their job, and the healthier and happier and more secure we become.

But spirits, whatever they happen to be, just like the mice and owls of this world, have boundaries, relationships with one another, natural ecological relationships of the unseen world- and they avoid certain "places", compete with one another, and attract or repel one another, pursuant to natural ties of spiritual ecology and unseen interaction/recursion.

You recall the forest you walked through- some trees were ill, eaten by rot or fungus; some humans are, too, eaten by illness or disease. This is no different, in our human experience, as it is the forest; sometimes, harmful powers slip into the habitat of other organic powers, and spread their harm. Sometimes, a predator may slip into the habitat of another animal and kill them or hurt them; it is the same with spirits. What I am trying to get you to visualize, to see, is that the unseen world is a massive habitat, not unlike this world, with the same sorts of boundaries, territories, and relationships. It is all a system.

To spirits, we humans don't look like humans. We look like power. What does power look like? I can't tell you, even though I've seen it. The reason why I can't tell you is because all I can tell you is limited by my selection of words and my own assumptions- my experience was colored and is still colored by my own limitations as a human. I can use the term "light"- a great white luminescence, but what does that mean? That is how I punctuate the experience. There's certainly something there, but not being a non-human spirit, I can't say what they see. But I can say this- they don't see us as human men and women. They see us as they see us, and I was told that their way of experiencing us is not unlike how we experience trees when we walk through a forest- to them, we're still, vibrant perhaps, or mysterious.

This should help us to understand how seemingly evil or destructive spirits may not consider themselves to be so, anymore than we may not consider ourselves wicked when we cut down a tree or tear out a plant from the ground to get wood or to eat.

The real vision here, that you should try to cultivate, is this: we see trees standing about, still and living, but what is really there? In the same way that spirits do not see us as we see us, perhaps the spirits of trees do not at all experience themselves as the thing we call a "tree". I can pretty much guarantee you that they do not- when a human beings swings an axe at a tree, here in our "ordinary reality", the spirit of the tree does not experience it as such; but they do sense that something is hurting them, damaging them, in the same way that a human experiences sickness or pain from a tumor or an infection.

We may not "see" a wicked or destructive spirit sucking the life from the power that we are, over in the cognitive state we call "non-ordinary reality", but we experience tiredness and sickness. We don’t often get sick, but then, sickness- causing spirits don’t usually have a chance to intrude far into our spiritual habitat as humans; we have good protectors, and only those whose protectors have failed or been lost are truly vulnerable to constant sickness or accident.

Natural disasters in ecology in this world can cause a place to become depopulated; in the spirit, this is also true- natural and unseen disasters or disturbances can dis-empower human beings and even places. In the same way we must be careful with how we behave around and within ecological systems in this world, we must be as cautious with the spirit. In the same way we can heal damaged ecological systems in this world, we can heal them in the spirit, if we have the ability to experience those extra-ordinary states. The shaman or mystic, that person devoted to developing and utilizing extra-ordinary cognition, is the person that must be employed in this capacity, and this is a sacred vocation of healing and help.

When the ancients discussed all life as a community of relationship, all of this is central to understanding what they were saying- we may think of trees as still lumps of wood, huge plants, and we may consider them living things, but we do not consider the hidden "other" lives of trees, anymore than wicked spirits or other spirits may consider or know about our "other lives" as human beings- all they "see" is the affect or the presence of our living power over in their unseen world. Maybe some spirits don't consider us people at all, or care about us, anymore than many people care about trees. There certainly seem to be some careless or hateful spirits out there. Some spirits may not even know what we are.

Of course, I call spirits wicked or careless based on my own human preferences- how dare they not recognize our humanity and our uniqueness! How dare we not recognize the same among the trees, or animals, or the spirits unseen? These are all good things to consider, when we consider the mysteries of sacred ecology.

What is good to remember is that sickness is not always some evil attack against us, the work of vicious monsters; it is easy for a sick person to think of things that way, because he or she feels their very self to be threatened or to be in misery, but spirits that can cause misery among humans often do not realize what they are doing, or don’t think about it at all- in the same way that a fungus doesn’t sit around and make evil plots to attack and rot an oak tree. They simply live according to their own ecology, and that’s that. In the system, some powers damage others; this is true in this world and in the other world.

When I looked into the unseen, I could see that my own helping spirit would not allow some harmful spirit to invade what seemed to be the "place" where my power "resided". The same went for the "place" of my home, my family, or anyone elses- in communities, human powers are clustered and often very safe- so fear not. But the more unconscious humans become of their helping spirits, and the more unconscious humans are of their intimate connection to things, and to the exchange of power that is part and parcel of our existence, the more we name into reality our own destruction, and allow ourselves to be victimized by spiritual powers that we would not otherwise want "near" us or our loved ones.

Spiritual protection is the issue that I discussed with my helping spirit- he showed me how a place could be made safe, but most places where people live, fortunately, are already kept safe by other powers. But sometimes, spiritual "wards" of safety are required, and the art of creating them is not difficult. It is a matter of being able to empower physical items in such a manner that they take on a new and specific form of reality that even things in the unseen can experience. Such a thing is a useful skill to have.

In the future, please consider the vastness of spiritual ecology; we owe a great debt to awareness, for we have forgotten so much about our true place in things.

Seid, Vision-Asking, and the Bone Grove

Seid-working is a vocation. A person is admitted to this vocation through Wyrd, through Fate. Some say that if a person feels as though they should be performing a shamanic role in a modern-day community, this itself is a sign that the Wyrd of the shamanic vocation is there. I'm not so certain. For me, such things are a sign of the power of Seid and Shamanic workings; they bewitch the human mind with fascination.

I think that some people are simply curious, or enthralled with the powerful aesthetic of the Seid-worker or Shaman's task. These sorts of fascinations are also Wyrd, but not evidence of the true calling to the work. The true calling is known on a deeper level, by a sort of obsession that overrides the rhythm of everyday life. Some would say that it overrides everyday "common" sense. The Seid-man or Seidkona has little choice but to remain fascinated with all aspects of the shamanic art- myths and stories about shamanic experience, occult practice of spirit-contact, and trance work and the tools of the shaman's trade. But this is only the beginning. An inner awakening is required before the Wyrd of the Seid-worker or the Sorcerer becomes fully capable of living out the life that the Fate-weavers have woven for them.

Some people are thrown by Wyrd into situations and experiences that awaken their inner senses, whether they want them to be awakened or not. The situations and experiences I am talking about can be physical or mental traumas, traumatic or extreme life-changes, or the "lightning" that strikes at midnight: the spiritual insight, sent from Wyrd and the Otherworld, that re-defines how a person thinks about everything, and prevents them from going back to their old way of seeing the world.

Must the Seid-worker or Shaman experience something of this nature? The answer is yes- and more often than not, it isn't nice. But the timeless pattern of Shamanic initiation requires the candidate to undergo a "death" of types- from Odin's death on the Tree, up to the wild visionary and mind-transforming experiences of Taliesin, and his death in the maw of the great Initiatrix in the Underworld.

I'm not discussing "guided visualizations" in which a person "visualizes" themselves being killed or dismembered. I'm talking about something far more intense and immediate. At some point in most people's lives, they encounter a situation that they cannot escape from, a terrible situation that allows for no escape-scenario that seems bearable. This situation of dark Wyrd forces them to conform to it, not the other way around. This situation won't let them leave unless they sacrifice something they desperately do not want to sacrifice.

Fear and terror are normal parts of this experience. It can come in the form of facing the death of a friend or a dearest loved one, or in the form of facing one's own death, such as a sickness or condition that has a chance at being fatal before it gets better- if it ever gets better. We can be dealing with the white-hot terror that dawns on the minds of people who have their entire belief system torn away from them through the uncovering of evidence that what they have dearly believed is a lie.

The forms of the Initiation-Wyrd are countless. But they end in the same place- the person emerges and re-integrates themselves into this world, seeing it in a completely different manner. The more of these initiations that come, the more powerful- or perhaps crazy- a person will become. Some cannot deal with any sort of such experience, and they will succumb to death or psychosis. Others take longer. Some even survive many such experiences to achieve great power. But even those who survive don't fully recover to who or what they were before; and few are as happy as they were before, for dealing with shamanic reality- reality naked and unchained- is disturbing. It is natural and needful, but always disturbing for the mind that must be molded by Wyrd into an instrument capable of interacting with Spirits.

One must be cautious- not all people who have survived initiation experiences come out healthy on the other end. The Shaman, the Seid-worker, is not a victim of spirits. If a person claims to be constantly "possessed" by spirits or unable to control or influence the frequency of spiritual contact or shamanic-type work, that person is a victim of spiritual forces, not a worker with them.

Spontaneous spiritual experiences and spontaneous spiritual work is a normal part of Seid-craft and shamanism. I don't mean to say that shamans who fall into spontaneous trances or have visions in that manner are not good at what they do- but Seid, like Shamanism in any form- is a skill. It comes from an open mind, from spiritual senses inside that have been opened by Wyrd-initiation or by the hands of other spirits, but the techniques of utilizing those deeper senses, and the work of Seid, is a skill which must be developed after the awakening.

If not, the person will not be able to function as part of a kindred or a family or a society. In ancient times, Shamans were not merely maniacs wandering in the woods- they were people who worked on behalf of communities. They may have had times where they went crazy and wandered the woods, but this was a technique of ecstacy, an intentional submerging into the world of spirits and madness, which had a point and an end. The Shaman must return to ordinary consciousness, to the world of human beings, and mediate what they experienced, and what power they found, to others or to this world. The shamanic worker is not simply crazy; they are in possession of an ability to use madness, seeming insanity, and loss of self into another world, for the purposes of uncovering truth, healing, seeking advice and wisdom, and other needful ends.

Spirit-possession can be a part of this, but it too, is a skill, a sort of "abandonment of self" that shamans submit to with a purpose. They may not know where it will end or where it will go, but no shaman worth his salt is "taken" without warning, with the exception of when he or she is being initiated by spirits. Otherwise, if a shamanic worker is often victim to being "taken" by spirits and wights, without control or purpose, they would cease to be a use to anyone, and likely a danger to themselves. It is also doubtful that their minds could survive the constant radical shifts and "thefts" they'd have to endure.

Seid-workers or shamanically sensitive people who deal with spirits on a daily basis must always remember that the wights and spirits of this world are not the lords of this world; the Gods are. Shamanic workers that refuse to deal with the powers of Troth and religion, who refuse the Gods, are likely dominated and corrupted by the minor ghosts and wights and spirits of this world. Simple ability to talk to spirits doesn't make a person worth keeping around- spirits can have many agendas and be dangerous, and they can dominate people and make those people dangerous. I have, sadly, seen this with my own eyes.

To be a Seid-worker, or a shamanic worker, is not to be dead. It's also not a matter of being "alive" in the usual sense. The Seid-worker breathes and eats like most people do- but they are also "alive" in another way, a way that allows them to vividly experience the world of the dead and the world of spirits. Contact with such powers renders the Seid-worker familiar with some very deep and sometimes dangerous forces, and it transforms their personal power. The Seid-worker has not "given up" their power completely; they have transformed it, or should I say, it has been transformed by Wyrd. What Wyrd has transformed it into is a thing that is as familiar with the darkness of Hel as it is with the sun-lit spaces of this world. The more a Seid-worker experiences the otherworld, the more they begin to feel and seem "detatched" from this one. They may feel or even seem dead, but they are not- they are "transformed in the otherness".

By being capable of existing and operating in the worlds of humans and of spirits, the Seid-worker, in common with all shamanic trance-workers, really belongs to neither world. This is the original source of the legends of the "un-dead", the entity who is neither fully alive nor fully dead- the legends of vampires or upyrs, with all their shape-shifting, night-flying, cadaverous appearance, terrifying aspects, and other magical abilities, certainly come from ages of folk-memory of Indo-European and Native European sorcerous workers.

The Seid-worker occupies unfamiliar spaces "between" the threads of Wyrd, but is still very much a part of Wyrd, as all things must be. While they live in human forms, they are alive, but their inner essence belongs to more than one world, and they speak to spirits as easy as another person may speak to their husband or wife.

Western anthropologists originally tried to classify Shamans in primal societies as mentally ill, or schizophrenic. It is easy to see why; but these white anthropologists simply lacked the ability to understand the subtle world of the Shaman's mind and reality. With the Seid-worker or Shaman, nothing is ever what it seems, and nothing is "one way or the other". They can tread on paths of sanity and insanity with equal ease, empowered to do so by their spiritual helpers and the transformations they have undergone.

There really is no mental "category" that the Shaman can be put in; in some way, they demand their own category- and this is another aspect of "not belonging"- the Shaman doesn't belong in one world or the other, but goes back and forth between them, in the misty, indistinct border between the two. This is a hard place for some people to get used to, and the demands of being sensitive to the Unseen easily fills a person's schedule up- the Seid-worker has ties to another world that he or she can never again ignore.

There are some in the modern Germanic and Celtic Pagan communities that take exception to people using the term "shaman" and "shamanism". This is due largely to the abuse of the term by new-agers. I, along with every other educated person, know the Siberian origin of the term, and it's time that people accepted the reality: the term "shaman" now refers to more than just Siberian tribal mystics. It has come to exist in a new convention, referring to all cultural workers who use trance and ecstatic states to interact with the unseen world, on behalf of their tribes or people or communities.

There are some well-known writers who refuse to see that Seid and even Rune-Galdr craft are aspects of shamanic-type mysticism and operation. Seid and Rune-crafts among the Germanic peoples are products, descendants if you will, of primal European shamanic practices. It is the height of foolishness (and a species of intellectual dishonesty) to assume that Germanic or Celtic or other peoples didn't have "shamanic" practices, when these "shamanic type" practices appear worldwide as common denominators for all primal cultures.

It is important to bear in mind that "Shamanism" or "Shamanic-type practices" refer to a huge body of archaic techniques of ecstasy, and not to an easy-to-identify and specific "style" of practice that is common to all shamanic workers in every culture. Primal cultures alive today show immense variation in their mystical and shamanic practices and understandings. There is no reason to believe that it was different in the past, or even different in ancient Europe. To assume that it was- to assume that ancient Europeans were the ONE group of people on the planet that somehow managed to not have shamanic-style techniques in use among their mystics, is simply a position that cannot be justified or defended. Such a conclusion is only popular among those who have an agenda- an agenda to get as far from the "new age" as possible. It's a noble impulse, but it leads them to absurd conclusions.

With this overpowering desire to distance themselves from the "new age", some people who ought to know better actually make the statements that the Germanic peoples "had no shamanism".

No, it wasn't called "shamanism" in the lore, but that's only because the word "shaman" wasn't an Indo-European word, nor a Germanic word. They used the terms that they had- Seid, for instance; they refer to "seers" and "sorcerers" and "spakonas" and the like. I do not believe in any "magic" or "sorcery" that exists apart from the basics of mystical experience- and those basics were expressed simultaneously with shamanic-type workings and experiences which sprang intuitively from the minds of all primal peoples. There is no true "magic" or "sorcery" apart from trance and working with the powers of the Unseen world. "Magic words" and "magical formulas" are only degenerate understandings in the modern world of what were originally shamanic songs and invocations. The "highest" forms of theurgy and magic, the very intricate and boring forms of ceremonial magic and the like, are descendants of the same impulses that inform shamanic practices.

Fasting for "purity" and for contact with "god", a practice common to ascetics from the Christian tradition all the way to mystical traditions in India, goes back to a common shamanic starvation-ordeal used to aid in the receiving of visions. This "fasting ordeal" is common both in Siberia and in Native America. Even the act of invoking the Gods themselves for sacrifices with ritual words and actions is a distant relic of shamanic-type practices. If you go back far enough, "religion" and "magic" blend and overlap nearly seamlessly. Some have gone so far as to deny that Odin was a God of shamanic-type activities, and to deny that his vision-quests and ordeals to win wisdom from the Underworld has anything to do with shamanic-type practices!

Unless a person has set their mind to specifically ignore the clear shamanic elements in Germanic sorcerous lore, they will clearly see it there, just as it is there among the Druids of Celtia, or the Iatromantoi in Greece, and in practically every other Indo-European culture. I do not believe that "trance" or trance-induction is unique to any one culture; a person drumming or singing/chanting to achieve a trance is not "ripping off the Siberians" or "stealing from Native Americans". These sorts of techniques can be done in any cultural context, and were done in every culture, in some form or fashion.

While I admit there is a grave danger when using unqualified terms like "shamanism" and dealing with new-agers who violate cultural boundaries in their "do whatever works" free-for-all, there is no reason to swing so far in the other direction, or become so reactionary, that we alienate ourselves from the truths of the matter. If we do that, we cripple ourselves and our understanding even before we have a chance to examine the facts and revive these needed practices in our own ancestral context. Instead of saying the absurd statement that "Germanic peoples had no shamanic-type arts", why not say "Germanic peoples, in common with all people, had shamanic-type arts which were expressed in ways unique to them, and so while they had commonalities with others, you can't simply lump them together with Siberian Shamans or other cultural shamanic workers and assume you understand them"?

It is a fact that there were shamanic-type practices on the parts of the Proto-Germanic and Germanic peoples, and some of them survived well into the Christian period. The later lore we have is influenced greatly by worldviews espoused by Christianity, so Seid and other such arts take on a decidedly dark reputation, but then, there is a darkness in Seid, though not evil, anymore than Odin was evil- and he, as a God, was certainly possessed of a darker nature and character. Even among primal cultures alive today, Shamanism and Shamans are not always seen as wonderful "goodness and light" workers- they are seen as needful agents of chaos as well, and sometimes feared for their darker wisdom, their ability to manipulate others or know the secrets of others, and their experience with dangerous spirits. In some places, in ancient times and even now, such people have been targeted for persecution or killing by communities that fear them.

Dangerous sorcerers and shamans appear in the pre-Christian myths of many peoples, showing that even these spiritual workers could "go bad" as it were, especially those that succumbed to dark powers. Perhaps they were never "good" from the perspective of their people; "black magic" did not come only from Christian imaginations, and shamanic mystics are famous for their moral ambiguity and their potential for helpful aid or for destructive influence.

My own shamanic "birth" came on the wings of one of the worst sicknesses I had ever experienced- a fever that went untreated and got out of hand. As Wyrd would have it, this was right on the heels of the most powerful visionary experience I ever had- I had (somewhat frivolously) decided to descend into the Underworld under the influence of my Fetch-beast and reach the Elder-Mother. It was a few months from the time I had met my Fetch-beast, and I was intoxicated with the visionary states the Fetch could bring me to if I asked. This experience was strong; I felt "taken" from my body and far below, to a place where wooden masks were hung on trees guarding a wooden building and a large elder tree. At this point, the vision-experience, which was like a lucid dream that I couldn't wake up from, got out of control- I had no more influence over how it unfolded.

I encountered a powerful spiritual being in an Elder tree, who appeared as a wooden cat, among other things. I saw an old man in this wooden building near her, whom I knew was death, a ghastly old man who had images of all the people I loved and the things dearest to me on the ground in front of him. I was terrified that he should have them, and tried to take them away from him, but this was to his amusement. I was shown nightmarish visions of my own death, and the death of my family, in the future, and I was "examined" from the inner level by the powerful entity in the tree. I was treated to the presence of two spirits who knew everything about what happened after death; they showed me a vision of a man dying, and then his death, and when I asked them what happened after death, they just grinned in a very sinister way and refused to answer.

I finally managed to "come back" from the experience, but I was wasted, exhausted physically and emotionally. For three days I was like the walking dead, listless, depressed, and unable to interact with others. Every time I closed my eyes, I went "back" to that place, as though part of me was trapped there. For three days, it was. My fever came on top of this, and after one point, I was unable to speak. I suffered anxiety attacks as well, and looking back, I realize that I probably needed to go to a hospital, but my friends and roomate at the time didn't realize that.

At the end of those three days, I felt myself again, but things had changed. I was later to discover the identity of the Cat in the Elder- none other than Freyja, the Seid-mistress. Even to this day, I recall the entire experience as a non-stop nightmare that I couldn't wake up from, but then, I also consider it to be one of the most important experiences of my life. It changed who I was, forever.

I still don't know what to do about the vision of my own death, along with my family; of course it frightens me on one level, but then, I am skilled at blunting deadly Wyrd. But Fate will not be denied; to this day, facing the hard realities of Fate is the center of my spiritual path, and with this disturbing vision to haunt me, I remember on a daily basis what "accepting Fate" means, and I don't lose my sense of seriousness, nor do I forget that this path isn't play; it is literally life and death.

Thanks to this experience, a "connection" had been made between myself and the deepest underworld, a conscious connection that I have been able to use to explore that deep place, both for myself and for others. I say that I was "playing" around with trance-work, but now I know that it was Wyrd that led me to work on achieving trance states, and Wyrd or Fate that led me to the folklore and legends about the Elder-mother, and attracted my attention to her. It was Wyrd that I should have sunk down deep enough to identify with my Fetch-beast, so that he could bring me to that grove surrounded by wooden masks. That Wyrd is still playing out, as I type this very post, and you read it. That Wyrd connects me to you right now. My expeirences meet with yours here, our threads tangling.

All that I have done since is influenced by this and other experiences I've had. My realization of the stark reality of both the Unseen World and the powers in it changed me for the better, and in ways for the worse, because I find (at times) that I have little patience for people who are blind to other realities, or who believe everything they are told just because they were told it. I have felt the arising of anger in myself, giantish powers that rose up from that same Underworld, and which have hurt me at the times I could not sublimate them. My Troth with the Gods and the power of my Fetch is what keeps these powers safely contained, making their great natural force available to me to use for creative ends. But it wasn't always so.

I find visions for people. My friend Turanona has recently been made aware of the possibility that she can get a job working for a very small company which installs special software at plants and factories. Only about 200 people in the United States actually are certified to do this job, so she stands to make 90-100 dollars an hour doing it. She would have to travel a lot, but she could own her own house and land and be debt-free in just 5 years if she committed to it.

Sometimes things sound too good to be true, and I went to seek a vision for her, to see what her future there will hold. Like any functional Seid-worker or shamanic worker, I do not have to wait to be yanked from my body by spirits that dominate me; I have the ability to sing to them and invoke these powers to come to me and help me to enter the Unseen. So I did.

After moving through the inner landscape, I came to the "outside"- the place where my own consciousness of this world is lost, but lucid experiences continue for me, in a mysterious space of reality. My fetch-beast filled my chest with a great radiance, and once I was able to see in a pool of water, in this vision-questing, the radiance of it sitting in me. The feeling cannot be described; it is the best feeling imaginable, a feeling of being connected, intimately connected, to something that is more real than real, something spiritually "right" and vital.

I was shown, in vision form, my answer- I saw a sunrise landscape; or perhaps it was sunset, but it was all rough land, like hills and mountains, and they were bathed in burning orange light, from the sun. My field of vision was obscured suddenly by a great and dark bird that was in full flight, perhaps an owl or a hawk, but its left wing had a hole in it. I could see the light of the sky through this hole.

That was the answer I was given. What does it mean? I think I know, but I've spoken enough on this for now.

Today, I went out to the woods to walk, and the first thing I saw was a rabbit, who watched me for a moment before darting into a gully. A minute later I heard an odd sound I'd never heard before. Perhaps the rabbit was making this angry shrieking noise, or perhaps it was a bird I had never seen before, but I walked in that direction, and finally went down into the deeper woods, to see how bad our flooding had been.

While wandering through the flooded woods, I saw an oak tree standing alone in a clearing. The clearing had power; it was a powerful place. It "felt" different. It had a "comforting" feeling about it. In that clearing, as I wandered around, I found the remains of a deer. It was all bones now, but I found leg bones, a hoof, a skull, two jaw bones, and the entire spine. I looked until I found the skull (the remains were spread over about 10 square yards, because of foxes and other predators) and I dropped down and sang the proper songs and invocations to gain my fetch-beast's attentions.

I had my Fetch carry my words to the spirit of the deer, telling it that I would use its remains in sacred rites, and honor them. I made certain that the spirit of the animal had made its transition into the Underworld safely and well, and prayed to the Father from whom both the deer and I descended from, and our common Mother. I began to "slip over" and feel the threads of Wyrd shaking as I chanted. I felt the power of the deer there, facing me, deep below. I was guided to this place by sounds and feelings and many other messages from the Unseen.

While washing my hands in a stream, I found the bones of a snake. Repeating the process for the snake that I did for the deer, I gained a snake's skull and many vertebrae for my workings. As I write this, these bones are soaking in their own vats of water. If you find bones and respectfully ask to keep them, and you want to clean and preserve them, you should never boil bones or bleach them; boiling forces the fat into the bone and makes them an unhealthy yellow color, and bleaching weakens them, making them turn into powder eventually. If the bones still have flesh on them, put them in an anthill for several days, then retrieve them. The ants will have picked them clean.

You then soak the bones in water until the water becomes smelly and greasy, and then pour out the water, replacing it with fresh water. You do this over and over again, every few days, for several weeks, or until the water runs clear everytime you change it. That means that the bacteria in the bones are done. Then you soak the bones in hydrogen peroxide to whiten them and disinfect them.

There were many powers and signs in the woods today, but they are there everyday- entire communities of wights and powers, seen and unseen.

Shamanic Journeys in the Northern European Traditions: Innerworldly Symbols, Visions, Seership, and Journeying

"I have always made a distinction between pictures seen in the memory of nature and visions of actual beings now existing in the inner world. We can make the same distinction in our world: I may close my eyes and see you as a vivid picture in memory, or I may look at you with my physical eyes and see your actual image. In seeing these beings of which I speak, the physical eyes may be open or closed: mystical beings in their own world and nature are never seen with the physical eyes."

-Anonymous Irish Seer interviewed by Evans-Wentz in The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries.

The greatest and most powerful gift that modern Pagan religion can offer us is a direct channel of communion with the Gods of our ancestors, and the other living, sentient beings who inhabit the world unseen. There is no spiritual illumination without the guidance and empowerments of these Gods, and we do not know the joy of our place in the great web of life until we learn to join the hosts unseen in some form of conscious fellowship that goes beyond mere belief in their existance. I am talking chiefly about our Gods, those beings who say of themselves:

"We are from the beginning of creation, without old age, without consummation of Earth."

While the reality that the Celts called Imbas or Awen- Spiritual Illumination- is certainly the "highest good" of the Ancestral Path, we cannot separate the reality of the Gods, nor the reality of our special relationship to them, from the path of wisdom and its supreme rewards. Socrates was correct to point out "There is no Wisdom without submission to the Gods", though one must not be put off by his wording- "submission" in this case refers to the simple and needful act of recognizing that the wisdom of the Gods, their immortal wisdom, is something we should seek and put before our own mortal wisdom, without discarding our own brand of mortal wisdom, which has its own uses with respect to the mortal world.

When we seek the mysteries, it is the Masters and Mistresses of those Mysteries that we must endeavor to become students of, and they are to be found in the Otherworld- the Gods, Goddesses, divinized ancestors, and powerful spirits of wisdom that make up the pantheons of our ancestors. Wisdom in the sense of "attaining the mysteries" is not the same sort of wisdom that guides you through everyday life (such as the wisdom of getting out of the rain to avoid catching a cold). The Wisdom of the Otherworld is of a different kind; it is a spiritual gnosis that reveals to us the workings of a deeper reality, and renders some of the events in our world meaningful in surprising ways.

In some manner, the Wisdom won from the mysteries represents knowledge of the Gods and their unseen worlds, and insights into the common origins of Gods and human beings. Otherworldly Wisdom is the final, deepest "layer" of wisdom-reality to which the mystic inclines and upon which lasting happiness and undefeatable understanding depends.

The Unseen or the Innerworld reality is the new stage, the new "way of being" occupied by those who have gone beyond the world of common mortal life upon achieving true Wisdom and Illumination. This is no "escape" from the world on their part, mind you, but an intense deepening of their experience of it, such that those beings who are released from limitation through the actualization of spiritual Wisdom can extend their minds and even bodies into different reaches of reality. They do this, it is thought, to better continue their perpetual existences and act as guides and instructors to human seekers on a more available, essential level, and to act as the creators and sustainers of many aspects of our cosmos. Who else but these mysterious beings can say WHY they do as they do, or exist as they exist?


The purpose of this article is to discuss some of the most essential and important mental capabilities and exercises that mystics of the Northern Tradition, especially the ancestral or Native tradition of Britain, need to be proficient in, when it comes to directly experiencing the Innerworldly or Otherworldly reality of the Gods.

There are a few vocal modern Pagans who react with horror at the idea that Pagans should seek "contact" with the Gods. To this vocal minority, there are too many dangers involved. I mean, let's face it; what person alive today can be trusted to be mature enough, to recognize the vastness of the mystery of the Gods enough, and be wise enough to "communicate" with the Gods in a trustworthy manner?

Surely, the bulk of modern Pagan "new agers", with their book-fed pseudo-knowledge and lack of spiritual maturity should not be told "You can talk to the Gods, using this powerful visualization technique!" To do so would only feed a greater cycle of egocentrism and spiritual degeneration. To do so would be to cheapen who and what the Gods were to our ancestors, and what they can and should be to us, today. I admit that it is a fact that many people are attracted to new-age and "Pagan" religions for all the wrong reasons, and these kids will thrill to the idea that they can indulge their egos in the role of "mouthpiece of the Gods". But would they be talking to the Gods? Certainly not; they would only be "talking" to themselves, while visualizing the words coming out of the mouth of a God or Goddess.

The simple thought of it is enough to help a person understand why many modern Pagans are against the idea of mystical communion with the Gods at all. A few go too far with their ambition, and try to claim that even our ancestors in ancient times never believed that humans could speak with the Gods, or that there never were castes or mystical operants whose task it was to commune with the Otherworld. This is merely these people re-writing history. The Druids of old WERE the mediators between the people and the unseen reaches of the Otherworld, just as the native Shamans were before them, and just as shamans today all over the world still are.

And there's nothing in Celtic mythology to insinuate that the ancients would have had any problem with the idea of humans talking to the Gods or Otherworldly beings- interaction between these two worlds is a very common fixture in these mythologies. Our ancestors simply didn't have the idea of "hard division" between one world and another the way many modern people do; interaction between the two worlds was common and ongoing. It was the Druid or the Mystic's task to recognize the subtle points of that interaction and honor it with poetic and religious expression.

Let me be clear: interaction with the Otherworld is possible. Conscious experience of the realities of the Gods and other spirits is possible and even needful if we wish to take our Pagan religious paths to their final conclusion- that of true Wisdom. But there are many dangers along this path, and one of the chief dangers is that spiritually immature people will abuse these noble goals to serve their own egos. There is a danger that foolish people who are looking for ego-boosts and kicks will claim to talk to the Gods on a daily basis, and try to gain some sense of respect as a person who can "speak for the Gods".

But these dangers and pitfalls can easily be avoided. It is simply a matter of recognizing maturity and approaching these matters with respect common sense. No working group of Pagans should ever "elevate" one person to some "mouthpiece of the Gods" position and then rely on that person to hear the words of the Gods. Each member of a mystical working group should strive to achieve this contact for themselves, only trusting one another to act as a mediator when they are certain of the maturity and sincerity of the others. No matter how close someone is to another, you should never ask a person who may be biased for some reason to "consult the Gods" for you or to do some form of divination for you.

The only way to be certain that you may be getting a pure or true "message from the Gods or the Otherworld" through the vehicle of another person is by knowing that this person is mature, honest, sincere, and serious, and by asking them questions about situations that they are not involved in directly, or about persons that they have no interest in one way or the other.

Obviously, common sense should rule in other ways- a very young person who only recently began studying the path is not someone you should rush off to, no matter how sincere they are. The simple fact is this: the skills required to achieve the mental clarity in which the Gods can reveal themselves fully via inner vision take time to acquire. Even people who may be naturally sensitive to the Otherworld need time to build up clarity and the needed focus to get true impressions that come from beyond, in such a manner that they can help others.

The activity of "oracle", as I said, is something every person should be working to achieve. Going to another to fulfill this task for you is fine too, and sometimes it is needful, so long as you bear in mind all that I have said here.

Above all, communities who have a specialized "caste" or "office" of some mystical practitioners, like Druids, should carefully watch and examine the character of their mystics, and only give them such responsibilities when they are certain that these people have gone beyond ego-games and gained the calm mental maturity and working experience that such offices require. There is no child's play here, nor room for foolishness.

Communities should also watch for any dangerous increases of ego that can occur as these people preside over the spiritual life of the group. Bear in mind that they "preside" only as helpers, not as the unquestionable messengers of the Gods. They "preside" as people who have developed a special ability of mind that anyone can develop- a unique mental discipline that they use to help, to advise, and to guide, not to rule and command or create dogma. It is, in reality, a specialized form of intuition, by which they can access transpersonal wisdom and input and help others. I like to think of these mystics or Druids as a form of spiritual counselor. They don't command; they guide and give advice.


Learning to access and use these forms of clarity, inner vision, and intuition is a most important assignment for all people who follow the Native Tradition, the Land-Based and Animistic/Polytheistic stream of the Western Way. I would say that only persons in the mystical vocation really need to really develop these capacities, but more and more, I'm seeing how everyone who walks these paths should work on it, and try to access it on whatever level they can, for the benefits are many. While it may be the "mystic" who fully actualizes these skills, the meditative and transformative states that are involved with these techniques are beneficial to all sincere people. I would like to speak for a while here about the process of creating and increasing inner vision.

There are some people who turn their noses up at using symbols and visualizations for inner work. Why? Because they believe (in line with many ancient and modern pseudo-understandings of what they call the "absolute") that the ultimate reality, the aim of mystical work, is far beyond form or symbol. In a strange form of internal iconoclasm, they try to "free themselves" from form and symbol and any hint of concept.

It's very amusing to me that such a person should exist, but it's easy to understand. The idea of the Gods of the Pagan world being "idols" and "false" and "graven images" is a deeply ingrained part of western consciousness. The idea of the "true" God being beyond form or image is just as deeply ingrained.

But what, precisely, IS "form" or "image"? Why did our ancestors choose to see the Gods in representational form? Why did they choose to see them, at various times, as shape-shifting spirits, taking animal form, or human form, or even the forms of various natural phenomenon? Why did they create anthropomorphic images, in places, to "symbolize" the Gods?

When you look at the world around you, you see that nature has given rise to many forms- the forms that we call "animals", "trees", "elements", and everything else. Humans did not "create" trees; we didn't create birds or wolves or clouds or the sun. We didn't create the human face or our bodies, or anything about how we look or act. We are all products of reality; all things are. And because of that, each and every form is no mere accident- I have discussed before how "accidental" forces do not exist in this world, and in the system of Fate and destiny.

The Gods are no accidents; the sky and the Land are not accidental. Human beings, along with all the other beasts of forest, mountain, sea, and field are not accidents. All forms that we see are manifestations of harmonious cosmic principles, or should I say, if a form exists and survives, it is because it is in harmony with the cosmic order. To see a raven is not to see an accident of evolution; it is to see the physical aspect of a great power, and to wear the mask of a raven, wear its feathers, dance like one, make its sounds, as Shamans do in their dancing, is not dress up and make-believe; it is a direct invocation of an essential, living aspect of reality that wears the form of the corvid or raven, and which has its own place and power in the web of life.

All of this means something very powerful- it means that when this cosmos is "overwhelmed by water and fire", when the "day of doom" finally arrives at the end of the cosmos-cycle, and when the new cosmos is born, the forms we identify as "canine" and "feline" and "humanoid" or "Anthropomorphic" will all be there, somewhere in that new cosmos. They will evolve and come to be in that "future" time, just as they did here. The forms of trees, with roots in the ground, and branches reaching for the sky, will also exist again. Sky will be above earth again. Water will course through the lands again. Birds will fly again. Beings that look like us- that look like what we call "human", will walk again, after the long process of life's formation. In the unfolding of the universe, only things in harmony with cosmic laws ever "come to be"- and what is in harmony "now" always was in harmony and always will be.

"Form" is not accidental; it is a representation of cosmic harmony, not just now, but always. Thus, the Gods and spirits are not "reduced" in their power or mystery by being "dressed" in forms. In fact, the only way the Gods can "appear" and interact WITH the minds of humans, or with any other being that has a mind, is by using some form. And all the forms they can or will use are already there, all around you, out in nature. You are staring at them right now.

Go walk in the woods- you are seeing countless harmonious forms. Look at the form of the human being; it is not mental idolatry to approach the Gods in human form or animal form, or even as just the powers of nature; it is natural to do so. Forms are not limited; they are universal, just as the Gods are. If anything, to approach the Gods WITHOUT using form, in terms of some formless abstraction, is a violation of the natural world; it is a denial of the holiness of things, the rightness and fitness of things.

Living or dead, your mindstream will only ever apprehend the Gods under some form. There is no escape to some "Formless" world. The Gods will only ever appear using some holy form, sprung from nature, and like us human beings, they are not separate from any other form or force in nature. And what is the natural "form" of the Gods? That is a very, very profound question. Manannan Mac Lir said (speaking of Himself and his fellow Gods), "We are without consummation of earth". This can be taken in many ways, but I believe that it means the Gods don't have to be sealed or bound by Fate into only one form or another at a time; the Gods are truly free. They freely interact with forms just as easily as mortal men and woman may interact with various ideas or emotions.

Now, I hope that I have banished any confusion or fear you might have had about the dreaded "idolatry" of the Pagans- embrace forms! Use the symbols and mental representations of forms, in your head, in your mind's eye, as a means of interacting with the Gods and the living spiritual powers that are there, because symbol and form is the chief method by which human beings can interact with them.

"Visualization" is nothing more than using will to create representations of forms in your mind. Luckily for us, representations of forms work just as well as the forms themselves, so visualizing things has a profound inward transformative power.

To begin working with the Gods, to "contact" them, one must create an image of the God or Goddess they wish to make contact with. This image should be simple, aesthetic, and in-line with what we know of the God's character and appearance through mythology, and this image should be able to live in your mind with vibrant ease. Some Gods aren't described well, but with intuition, you can draw upon secondary and tertiary sources to create images, or draw from the common fund of symbols that seem to pop up universally among human beings.

Enough cannot be said about the importance of the act of creating "images" of the Gods and Goddesses within. Animals, natural forces, and plants that were totemically sacred to the God or Goddess should be intertwined with the image, and in some cases, if you are an advanced worker, you can approach the divinity completely through the image of a tree or plant or animal or natural force that was sacred to it. It is possible to speak to the Great Father through an Oak-tree or a Stag; it is possible to speak to the Lord of Sorcery through a Raven perched on an Ash tree or a lightning-storm; it is possible to speak to the Great mother or the Earth Mother through the ground beneath your feet or through rivers or springs.

You can "speak" to these beings through these forms, whether you are seeing them only in your inner vision, or seeing them with your eyes, "at" these various locations or before these various animals.

I suggest that you use anthropomorphic features- human features- when you create your inner visualizations of the Gods, at least at first. It is a profound statement of both our relationship to the Gods as well as their involvement with all forms, including the human form. It is also the easier for many people to make heart-level connections to these kindred beings if we see them as we see each other.

One thing is for certain- as you become more advanced in these practices, your internal visions will begin to change, completely on their own; this is a sign of "internal activity" and connection. This is how the true "achievement path" of internal visualization begins and progresses. When you begin to have spontaneous visions and feelings of connection with the Gods or spirits, then you will have progressed to an even deeper level. When you begin to meet with these forms and images in your dreams, another marker has been passed. What you are doing by creating and working with divine images is conditioning your mind to respond to the subtle touches and words of the Gods and other spirits. In some visions- especially the spontaneous ones that will begin to occur- you may find that your image has altered in some way. As I said before, this is a sign of power and progress.


Once you have created an initial image that you are comfortable with, (and please never forget that these images need not be complex, just meaningful to you, honest to what symbols and character we know from myth and history, and evocative) then you can being utilizing the image, in stages, to contact the being represented by it.

Internal meditation on the symbol is important, a practice in which you bring up the image to your mind while you are relaxed and peaceful, and say a short prayer or invocation to the deity or spirit, and then simply observe the image in as full detail as you can. Eventually, what you will want to do is visualize the image as though you were looking at a moving picture, or a movie screen, and see the wind blowing the deity or spirit's hair (if it has any) or see him/her moving, breathing, blinking, or doing whatever the form naturally does. It helps to imagine and then "hear" what sounds might naturally be made by the form, or what natural sounds might be in the background of the form's natural habitat or dwelling place, as revealed in the myths of places where he/she/it appeared.

The point is to try to bring the image "alive" in your mind, by easily, steadily meditating on it, and letting more and more features of the image "come to life". You can do this practice anytime of day or night, and the more you do it, the more powerful the image will become, and the stronger your connection to the deity or spirit so captured by it.

Once you have "enlivened" the image enough, you are ready to move on to the next stage of image-work. This is where Shamanic "journeying" becomes involved. Journeys are important things for many reasons, but most of all because they represent transition and effort. Journeys take us from one place to another, and they require effort of us. They force us to face uncertainties and dangers, as well. On all levels, journeying is an important and ancient human concept and practice.

It only makes sense that to speak to a God or Goddess or Spirit, you'd have to go to them or journey to them. We aren't necessarily talking about an outward journey; the journey within, the transition of the mind from one "way of being" to another is also a journey. Moving from ordinary consciousness to trance or nonordinary consciousness is also a journey of types. What your mindstream experiences during trance is a journey, a movement from one region of experience to another.

And this is what you need to understand, before you undertake the journey to reach the range of mental experience in which the Gods can speak with perfect clarity- you are not always moving on the outward level, but moving inwardly with great power. Of course, you can always journey outwardly, alongside your inner work, for the strongest possible experience. But for now, I will discuss the specifically inward work.

Once you have a living image of the God or Goddess you wish to reach, you have to consider for a moment what sort of place this God or Goddess mythologically inhabited, and what sort of Landscape the God or Goddess was native to. All of these things are related. If you can actually situate yourself in the actual physical locations sacred or related to that being, you need to do it- even if it means making an outward journey. As I said, such a practice is the most powerful thing of all.

If, for some reason, you can't journey as far as you need, a small, minor symbolic outward journey can do well to focus your mind and purify you through the effort you put out. Nothing is free, not in this world or the other, so a small journey made outwardly shows sincerity and effort, and may be required to achieve true Innerworldly contact.

Most of all, regardless of what you actually do outwardly, you will make an inward journey. You will do this by creating a scenario within your mind in which you encounter a "Boundary" of some type, representing the wall or boundary between this world and the next (usually a hedge, a river, a forest edge, an ocean, or a gateway of megalithic stone) and you will cross it in whatever way you imagine best- you may fly across it, be carried by a helping spirit, see stepping stones suddenly emerge from the water, see a boat appearing from the distance to take you across, or just by climbing or pushing your way through if your barrier happens to not be water).

Then, you will travel through a landscape (always taking your time, never hurrying the journey) that will eventually, gradually become very much like the landscape related to the God, Goddess or being you wish to meet, and there, in that landscape (or divine palace, or cavern, or shining plain or whatever) you will come to the enlivened image you created for that being.

You will call its name and invoke it in heart-felt words, and you will say whatever you need to say to it, and you will relax and watch the form of the being, just watch and open your heart and mind and intuition to whatever you happen to be feeling at that moment. In time, you will see its mouth move, or simply hear its voice, on some level. Maybe it won't talk at all, but move in certain ways or make gestures. Whatever happens, you must not try to "make it" do anything. Just watch the vision in your head without making any effort to affect it whatsoever; let the "natural motions" that you used to enliven the image be there, and then let it "run on its own" automatically.

At this moment of contact, you will have to make great effort initially to NOT adulterate the vision with your own desires or words. Place your own desires FAR from the action and really concentrate on how this image or form isn't just an image or form, but the vessel of a Godly or spiritual force which is ancient, living, perpetual, and beyond you. Let IT speak or interact with YOU. If nothing happens, just watch it move naturally and pay attention to how you feel- how you begin feeling can sometimes say more than any words. But don't pretend that the being said something or did something that it didn't, and don't expect this to work overnight. It is something that takes time and discipline.

When you are done, when the being has either made a gesture, or showed you something, or said something, or did nothing at all, or perhaps when you feel it is time to go, or when you have communed with the deity-image through emotional responses or whatever, you return the way you came, and cross back over the way you crossed. Take you time and do not hurry the return journey; it gives completion and transition back to your "normal" state of mind. I will go into more detail on other particulars of this "simple" or beginning practice further below.


What I outlined here is the basic technique of journeying; the advanced techniques must be assembled and put to use by you over time. A point comes when a straight, linear journey into the symbolic landscape of the Deity isn't enough. A point comes when you will have to go to the home of the deity or spirit more directly, through a more detailed inner visualization.

For instance, the Gods often were considered to have dwellings in the shining plains "above", and their underground palaces and mounds are reached through hills and grave mounds, but are still technically "plains of heaven", simply accessed through the earth. Of course, some of those realms are truly underground or Underworldly. One must realize that "up" and "down" are really not "hard and fast" in the "spaceless space" of mind that we experience the Otherworld in.

Either way, to reach these places, your journey will have to take you "up", either by you levitating in your vision or climbing a great tree or going up rays of sun, rising on the smoke of a fire, or the like, or going "under" the ground through a grave mound or a cave or a spring/well/pond- all to reach the legendary "home" of the deity or spiritual power in question.

Other mythological features have to be incorporated into your journeys, and should with time- guardians, for instance. The Three Cranes that guard the entrance to the Underworld is one example, within the Celtic framework. These Guardians, no matter who they are or how you encounter them, are "passed" by facing them squarely and refusing to retreat, and realizing that they are not ultimately separate from you- nothing is. Their tests are inner tests, self-tests, and that is how you must think of them. When you "encompass" the guardian by recognizing how you and the guardian(s) are parts of the same whole, and how the visionary test it is presenting to you represents a reflection of your own inner state, then their power fades and they stand back to allow you to pass. Sometimes, they disappear or turn into something else.

Facing dangers and guardians is more common in advanced journeying than you think, and the Innerworldly powers that actually guard the Otherworld appear in surprising ways. You may not realize it, but the feeling of boredom you suddenly develop, the feeling of frustration or the fear you have that you may be "making all this up" are actually manifestations of the power of guardians. It is how they run off people who are not worthy- and no one becomes worthy until they overcome those things. Everyone will experience them; doubts, lack of energy, fears, boredom, and many other negative emotions that interrupt your inner practice.

So guardians need not appear as vicious animals in our inner landscapes, or as testing humans or other figures; they are far more effective hitting you with wandering thoughts, lack of focus, and doubt. The secret is to recognize these things as the tests of guardians and then re-focus yourself. If the guardian refuses to go away, call him or her out! Internally demand that it appear and show itself to you.

Allow it to take whatever form it will, but don't imagine what it will look like. Just go with whatever appears first, no matter how odd or mundane it may be. Then, face this thing, and do as I suggested above. If you face it with square awareness, unwavering awareness, and consciousness of the fact that this thing and you are part of the same great reality, that you are inseparable, and that its tests are merely projections from within you, without the power to hurt you as some outside alien force, then it will vanish and you will be free of its interference.

You must accept guardians, in a radical way, but also refuse to allow them to stump you or push you around. You must come to terms with them, but never one-sided terms. They are there to reveal something to you, not hinder you. They are manifestations of blockages in you, which are also Otherworldly realities that you need to clear or transmute in your deep mind. They are there to make certain that only a certain type of disciplined and motivated person "gets past" them, so in a sense, they are Otherworldly quality control. In this way, these minor "enemies" or challengers become our teachers and helpers.

What you are doing with all this is creating a detailed Innerworldly saga or drama in which you finally come into the presence of the God, Goddess, or spirit(s) that you feel that you should contact. You are creating a power-story, deep in the dimension of myth, deep in the place where power is born and humans and Gods walk with one another. You are orienting yourself inwardly to be "open" to these realities, both within and without. You are crafting within yourself the ability of the vision-seer.

Much detail can be added to these journeys, including many traditional symbols and places and cues to the spirit's reality. There can be tests and the journey can become detailed, ranging high into the Holy Plains above, to the far Western Isles, to the Ancestral Underworld, or even out into our own green world. Eventually, when you reach the God or Goddess or Spirit that you worked hard to communicate with, you may feel that it is them, but they may look different, or the landscape they are in may have changed- this is fine. It is the natural evolution of this practice.

This is not merely "mind play", though most people do take it that way, and never get beyond that stage. This is about training the mind to be sensitive to mythological themes and symbols. This is about increasing the inner eye's ability to visualize and be open to dreams and subtle realities. Most of all, it is about making closer inner ties between you and the Gods and spirits. It is about finding direction on the path to Wisdom.

* * *

I'd like to make a brief outline now, of the material I covered above, for your convenience. In this section I am also including specific journeying instructions that are based on living British Isles traditions, which may go back quite a ways.


CREATING AND ENLIVENING IMAGES

1. Begin with a being, a God, Goddess, or Spirit that you feel a connection to, and which it will be to your benefit to contact- if you work in a forest, for instance, the powers in that forest or the Spirit of a great tree near you is a good place to start. If you have a spring or lake or river running through your property or near your home, that can be a good place to start. If you have felt drawn to some God or Goddess from mythology (Lugus and Brigid are commonly approached by modern Celtic pagans, just as Freya, Frey, Thor, and Odin are by Germanic Pagans) then begin researching these beings, and opening yourself to their reality. This is more important than it sounds- opening yourself to their reality means putting aside any and all doubts and putting yourself completely in their hands, open completely to their interaction.

2. Make sure your image incorporates any natural force, beast, or traits and characteristics that the myths of the being or beings claimed they had. Look to folklore for clues as well. If you are lacking guidance from mythology, build up an image that feels right, purely intuitively. Make it as clear and simple as you can manage, but always aesthetically pleasing or awe-filling and powerful as possible. Always situate the God, Goddess, or Spirit in a "background" that fits in with mythological cues as to the being's home, or in a natural environment that suits it.

3. Begin daily sessions of relaxing and then bringing up your image to your mind's eye and observing it on an inward level. Always pray to or invoke the being or beings that are depicted in the image. Gods and spirits can "hear" and receive our prayers, even if we only say them internally, and seeing images of them containing their symbols and forms makes the connection between us and them stronger. See your image, without effort; just watch it, and gradually, as time goes on, add features to it that make it seem alive- let the being in the image breathe or blink, or see their hair waft in the wind, or what have you. If your image is just a tree or a fire or a stone, let there be environmental noises in the background like birdsong or the sound of wind, and rain, and see branches swaying, see the fire crackling, etc.

4. Keep letting the image build up more and more until it seems very alive, as though you were watching a movie screen. After that point, your image is enlivened.

This same technique can be done to make images of helping spirits in the form of totem beasts that you may wish to encounter and "talk" to on an inner level. Those who feel the pull to converse with or approach the powers of the Land directly may do so, whether we are speaking of the spirits of a particular Land or place, or the "Faery people" who live inside the Land and who are typically the subtle forms taken by the ancestral dead.

Some of the Fae appear as royal beings of light and actually present to us, (via that symbolic inner form) the timeless reality of the ascended "light-bodies" of the ancestral dead in their most spiritual, "illuminated" aspect. They are very difficult in this "body of light" form for most people to encapsulate within mental vision.

You can visualize and create images of the Land-powers or the Faery folk as hooded, dark-eyed groups of beings, smaller in stature, or (in the case of the Faery people) white-skinned, radiant and beautiful beings dressed richly and often riding or walking in stately processions.

The Faery people often gather to feast in otherworldly feasts under Hills and other powerful places in the land- but one should never accept their food if offered; you can politely decline. Accepting food from deities is different, but even then, one should never accept it from them unless you feel love and devotion for the Deity, a love and devotion that goes beyond your "self" into real selflessness. You should only accept food from deities if devotion to the Gods and the Old Ways is foremost in your heart, with no hint of temptations towards any other religion, and only if you have nothing less than Perfect Wisdom as the supreme spiritual goal of your life.


INITIAL INNER JOURNEYS

1. Begin, if you can, by making an outward journey of some type to a place that is sacred or related to the spiritual power in question, or just making some sort of journey to mark what you are about to do. The effort you put into the journey will act to purify you and align you to your intentions, and prove to the Innerworldly powers that you are serious about your intentions. Making "Red Meals" or food/drink offerings to the Gods or spirits that you will try to contact is very appropriate and powerful at this time, especially if done at an appropriate, meaningful place; they will always add a great amount of power to facilitating the journey and the contact.

2. Relax yourself, either in the place you journeyed to, or back at your home, or in a convenient place. NEVER try this technique if you are too tired; be as well rested as you can be. Let yourself "see" yourself standing in a forest clearing or in the middle of some non-descript plain or field, with some sort of boundary blocking you from seeing very far or leaving the clearing or field- there should be a hedge or a river or an ocean, a wall of mist, or something of that nature. It must clearly be known by you as the boundary between this world and the unseen world. Let this landscape and boundary form clearly in your head; it need not be complicated, just clear. If your boundary is of water, always have a willow tree hanging over the water on the bank, somewhere in the visualization. If your boundary is a dense treeline or forest edge, always have thorn and ash trees in the treeline, if you can visualize them well.

3. Imagine that you have some sort of traveling gear on- special boots, a traveling cloak, or a traveling staff and a pack or bundle. The staff is certainly necessary, as it represents the pilgrim or person on a journey. All this "traveling gear" represents the intention you have to journey on the inner level. If you are wearing some sort of protective talisman on your body, it should also be on you in your inner visualization.

4. Face your boundary and say words like these, which are paraphrased from John and Caitlinn Matthew's book "The Western Way, Volume 1":


"I am _______ (spiritual name or actual name),
The son/daughter of _______ (your mother or father),
The son/daughter of _________ (your mother or father's mother or father).

I stand at the boundary of my world,
Bearing my staff and pack;
May the Gods of my ancestors protect me on my way
And bring me safely back.

From this world to the other,
Across the threshold I go, in the name of ______
(insert the name of your guardian spirit/helping spirit, tutelary deity or divine protector)
And I go to the home of ______
(insert name of the spirit or spirits you are going to visit.)
From the light of this world I go to the light of another."



Then cross your threshold and journey, as I discussed in the main article. The crossing of the threshold is the important first symbolic step that triggers deep responses. Remember that you must NEVER "hurry" a journey. Let unfold in a leisurely way, but don't let it drag either. The best thing you can do is achieve a "middle" way of journeying in which the action happens almost as though it was out of your control, sort of generating itself. That is the key.

If you have an active relationship with a helping spirit, it will often be met near the other side of the hedge or boundary, and if you need help crossing the boundary, it may appear to take you across. Visualize this happening if you need to, or invoke the helping spirit seperately before you do this part of the work, only beginning this work when you feel it near you or with you. That way, when you begin the visualization, it should appear "within" it of its own accord.

Always be honest with beings you meet on the other side. Gods won't invite you back if you lie to them, and it will undo all your work, and spirits have ways of knowing when you are lying, especially guardians, who will instantly have power over you if you lie to them. Always obey the law of hospitality- if you enter a dwelling and are made welcome, be polite and don't become hostile to your host or your host's guests, regardless of what they do. Treat them as guardians, if it becomes apparent that they are, for guardians can appear anywhere in any shape or form.

Saying words such as those given above before you cross the threshold orients a person to the journey on more than one level, and it gathers the protection of the Gods, the attention of helping spirits, and gives you a fixed point of destination. It also signals the beginning of the transformation you are hoping to attain. When you have done what you came to do, the "words of return" are similar to the "words of departure", only changed to reflect the new goal- that of going home.

Before you begin the return journey, say something like this:


"I am _______ (spiritual name or actual name)
The son/daughter of _______ (your mother or father),
The son/daughter of _________ (your mother or father's mother or father).

I return now to my world,
Bearing my staff and pack;
May the Gods of my ancestors protect me on my way back."

And when you reach your boundary again, say:

"From this world to the other,
Across the threshold I go, in the name of ______
(insert the name of your guardian spirit/helping spirit, tutelary deity or divine protector)
And I go to the home of my human birth,
The home of my grandmothers and grandfathers.
From the light of this world I go to the light of another."


When you get back to your "Starting place" then open your eyes and sit up, and touch your feet. Then stand and breathe deeply three times, and touch both sides of your face with your hands. Then stomp one of your feet three times and you're done. Make it a point to write down or record all of your experience somewhere.


ADVANCED INNER JOURNEYS

Advanced journeys are done in the same manner as the initial inner journeys, but with the additions mentioned in the main text. You will begin to add extra "legs" of the journey, reaching mythical and actual locations that you may need to climb up or down to, or fly or walk long distances to "reach". As I said above, You must never hurry journeys of any kind; let them unfold naturally and slowly, leisurely.

Your journeys will become "advanced" on their own- they will become more complex through a mysterious natural process of inner growth, the more you take them. Guardians and their interference will begin to show up in various ways, and characters and turns of the lane that you never planned. That is a good sign that your Innerworldly senses are opening. Before long, you will be a walker in two worlds. But it takes years before you are ready to help other people with these techniques. In the beginning, it will be about your own personal growth.

You will find that the Otherworld is not sparsely populated. Deities and spirits are seldom alone, unless they choose to appear that way for some reason. The retinues and servants and companions of deities and Innerworldly heroes will often appear with them, and their halls and dwellings are often full of feasting parties, companies, and other beings. The Ancestors almost always appear as a company of beings. Do not force this "population" to appear, but let them appear naturally.

Always obey the laws of hospitality and truth, no matter what. Deal with "hostile" spirits as you would guardians, but any reptilian or amphibian creature of large size and red or reddish color with one large eye who may or may not show a threatening mouth of teeth should be avoided.

If you see such a creature, or some other intensely disturbing creature, immediately go back the way you came and end your experience, and do not try it again until you have built a large fire and jumped it at least three times, and prayed to the Gods for protection from dark powers, or until you have dropped three burning coals into pure water and washed your face and body with it, asking for Brigid and Lugus to preserve you from evil powers. If you follow the Troth of the Germanic peoples, pray to Freya and Odin for the same protection, and the High Thunderer.