Horse Magick: Spells and Rituals for Self-Empowerment, Protection, and Prosperity - Lawren Leo 2020

The Pagan Horse

The horse played a central role in Viking and Teutonic (Germanic) religious ceremonies and magick. For instance, there is a ritual for cursing in seidhr, a form of Norse magick, in which a horse's head is mounted on a rune-inscribed “shaming pole” (nidstang). It was hoisted aloft or planted in the ground and made to face the enemy. Horse burial, however, was the most common use of equine magick in Viking, as well as Celtic and Anglo-Saxon, practices. This attests to the noble position the horse held in these societies, for they placed nearly no other animal in their tombs.

Viking Horse Magick

Horse sacrifice was customary for burials as well as for securing the fertility of the land. Examples of this extend from the British Isles to Scythia (present-day Iran). In graves, horses not only marked social status, but also provided a means of transportation to and within the spirit world. They may also have been symbolic of the sun. Archaeologists have excavated and studied thousands of horse burials. A 10th-century chronicler, Ahmad ibn Fadlan, gives an eyewitness account of a burial he saw during his travels as part of the embassy of the Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad. He writes of a large ship burial among the Rus (Volga Vikings) in his Risala (“journal”) of c. 921—22 CE. The elaborate ceremony took many days and, at one point, included the use of an intoxicated young slave girl who was made to have sex with multiple partners, after which she was killed and buried with the dead man. At another stage in this same event, two horses were made to run until they were overheated and were then dismembered and added to the grave.

Horse sacrifices were an integral part of solemnizing ceremonies, such as the one that was held every nine years for the Swedish provinces. Adam of Bremen records that nine humans, horses, and dogs were sacrificed to placate the gods, their bodies hung from trees in sacred groves near the great temple at Uppsala. As a result, these trees became divine entities.¹ The tales in the Icelandic writer Snorri Sturluson's 13th-century Prose Edda are also filled with references to the ritualistic use of horses, including an instance in which a horse was cut apart and cooked in a broth in which the king was meant to bathe and to drink. The horse, it must be remembered, served as food in many societies.

Sturluson also names the mighty steeds that served the Nordic deities, as well as the horses that created the cycles of night and day and the seasons—Hrímfaxi (Frost Mane) and Skinfaxi (Shining Mane). Sturluson was penning myths passed down orally for generations, as the images on the earlier 8th-to-11th-century-CE memorial runes and picture stones from Gotland Island, Sweden, make clear.

Perhaps the best known of the Viking steeds is the god Odin's eight-legged stallion named Sleipnir (Sliding One), which carried him through the air. Odin's wife, Frigg, the goddess of marriage, love, and precognition, had a divine messenger named Gná, whose mount, Hófvarpnir (Hoof-Thrower), could fly through the physical and spiritual realms and travel on water. It is here that we will choose to focus, on the more lighthearted nature of Vikings, as we turn to Frigg for help with love.

SPELL FOR A SUCCESSFUL LOVE LIFE

This spell calls on the powers of the Norse goddess Frigg, her divine messenger, Gná, and Gná's magickal mount, Hófvarpnir (Hoof-Thrower), to dispel loneliness and to bring you success in your love life.

What you need:

Florida water (a sweet, citrusy cologne water used traditionally in Hoodoo, Voodoo, Santería, and Wicca for a variety of ritual work), a Pyrex bowl, parchment paper, one pen with black ink, one pen with red ink, and a long-nosed lighter.

Instructions:

On a piece of parchment paper, using a pen with black ink, write “Frigg,” “Gná,” and “Hófvarpnir” in large letters, layered over one another. First, write “Frigg.” Then, on top of that, write “Gná.” On top of “Gná,” write “Hófvarpnir.” Center these layered names on the front side of the parchment. On the other side of the parchment, using the pen with black ink, write out this spell:

I hold my hand out into the ether,

For I do not wish to be alone in this lifetime.

Frigg, goddess of love and marriage, surely there is another

holding [his/her] hand out as well.

Reweave part of destiny's web for me;

Bring us together; find me that treasure that seems to be

hidden so well—true love.

Send your messenger and her beautiful horse; let them race

over the waters of the ethers.

A successful love life is the future I have always wanted to

create.

Catch it in a flash; hold it in an orb.

Let it be now.

Each day for four days (that means you'll be writing five days in total), trace the spell that you have written in black ink using the pen with red ink. On the fifth day, put the parchment paper in the Pyrex bowl and pour Florida water over it until it is soaked completely. Light it with a long-nosed lighter. (For safety reasons, please use caution when working with fire!) Blow the ashes to the wind and make your wish in affirmation form:

Now I have a successful love life!

Why did I choose Florida water? Primarily for its flammable property (it has a high alcohol content), but also for its pleasing scent of clove, orange, and lavender, which is appropriate for attracting the spirits of love.

Why did I choose five days for the spell? Five is the magickal number of the pentagram. Each point of the pentagram represents an element: air, water, fire, earth, and spirit. Together, these five elements create life. Blowing the ashes into the wind is symbolic of blowing them into the ether, where your spell takes on a life of its own.

Svetovid

According to the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus (1150—1220), Rügen Island, off the northern coast of present-day Germany, was the focal point for the worship of Svetovid (Svantovit), the Slavic god of war, abundance, and fertility. The island made a distinct impression on Saxo and he felt it worthy to have both its monuments and its customs described for posterity's sake. He tells of a gigantic red wooden temple hung with rich purple textiles that held the cult statue of Svetovid. The statue was immense beyond imagining, with four heads and four necks, two facing front and two back, each looking in a different direction.

What Saxo found most curious, however, was the god's prized possession—an oracular white stallion. The Slavs, he recounts, held this horse in such high esteem that it was a sacrilege to pluck even a single hair from its mane or tail. The sacred horse was cared for by a long-bearded priest, who used it for soothsaying. The people believed that Svetovid rode the stallion to war nightly against all those who did not worship him. As evidence, they cited the fact that, according to all accounts, the horse was clean when it was retired to the stables at night, but every morning was found spattered with dried mud, sweat, and blood.

Before going to war, Svetovid's followers consulted the priest to seek signs of the god's consent through hippomancy (horse divination). After praying, the priest led the horse through three equidistant rows of crossed spears laid out on the ground. If its right front foot did not lead in three successive paces, it was taken to be a bad omen and all plans for battle were canceled.

SPELL TO STOP BULLIES

Where there is deep hatred, tunnel vision, bigotry, and discrimination, a countermeasure is necessary. Enter the Slavic god of war, Svetovid, and his oracular stallion. This pure-white, sacred stallion is a wise, fearless, all-seeing force that is ready and able to do battle for you.

What you need:

Pen, paper, lighter or matches, and a Pyrex bowl or large cauldron.

Instructions:

At midnight (for the horse rode out to battle only at night), write the name(s) of the person, persons, or group that is bullying you on a piece of paper. Using your right hand only, draw an “X” over the name(s) three times, one atop the other. This is symbolic of the white stallion's sign that you will be victorious in battle—it had to step over three sets of crossed spears, leading each time with its right hoof. Now, since the god Svetovid rode the stallion, seal the bully's fate by writing his or her name over it all in large letters. Crumple the paper in your right hand by making a fist. Place it in the Pyrex bowl or cauldron and light it. Burn it until only ashes remain (no paper left to litter). Now, imagine your enemies scattered and vanquished as you blow the ashes to the wind.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Primary sources

Byock, Jesse, trans. The Prose Edda (London: Penguin Classics, 2005).

Herodotus. The Histories, ed. Paul Cartledge, trans. Tom Holland (New York: Penguin Books, 2015). See Book IV for a lively account of horse burial in royal tombs.

Saxo Grammaticus. The First Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus, trans. Oliver Elton with notes by Frederick York Powell (London: David Nutt, 1894).

Smyser, H. M. “Ibn Fadlan's Account of the Rus with Some Commentary and Some Allusions to Beowulf.” In Jess B. Bessinger, Jr. and Robert P. Creed, ed., Franciplegius: Medieval and Linguistic Studies in Honor of Francis Peabody Magoun, Jr. (New York: New York University Press, 1965), pp. 92—119.

Secondary sources

Duczko, Wladyslaw. Viking Rus: Studies on the Presence of Scandinavians in Eastern Europe (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2004). On the account of the Rus funeral in Ibn Fadlan's Risala, see pp. 137—154.

Hermes, Nizar F. “Utter Alterity or Pure Humanity: Barbarian Turks, Bulghars, and Rus (Vikings) in the Remarkable Risala of Ibn Fadlan.” In The [European] Other in Medieval Arabic Literature and Culture: Ninth-Twelfth Century AD (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 80—84.

Ivantchik, Askold. “The Funeral of Scythian Kings: The Historical Reality and the Description of Herodotus (IV, 71—72).” In L. Bonfante, ed., European Barbarians (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 71—106.

Lomand, Ulla. “The Horse and Its Role in Icelandic Burial Practices, Mythology, and Society.” In Anders Andren, Kristina Jennbert, and Catharina Raudvere, ed., Old Norse Religion in Long-term Perspectives: Origins, Changes, and Interactions (Lund, Sweden: Nordic Academic, 2006), pp. 130—133.

Lunde, Paul, and Caroline Stone. Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North (London: Penguin Classics, 2011).

Mitchell, Stephen A. Witchcraft and Magic in the Norse Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010).

Page, R. I. Chronicles of the Vikings: Records, Memorials, and Myths (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995).

Rowsell, Thomas. “Riding to the Afterlife: The Role of Horses in Early Medieval North-Western Europe,” MA Thesis, University College of London, 2012.

Shenk, Peter. To Valhalla by Horseback? Horse Burial in Scandinavia during the Viking Age (Oslo, Norway: The Center for Viking and Medieval Studies, University of Oslo, 2002).

NOTES

1 Page, 1995, p. 221.