Neolithic Shamanism: Spirit Work in the Norse Tradition - Raven Kaldera 2012

Stones
The Beginning Place: Earth

Galina: I love stones. I love the way they feel, and inevitably when I travel, I return with pockets and bags packed full of stones of all sorts. They call to me. The spirits of the stones speak to me in voices that I find very difficult to ignore. I have an ancestral connection to the wisdom of the stones, and because of that, one of the first tools that I learned to use were stones of all types. Each stone or crystal has its own energy. Each one is unique. They’re living things, believe it or not. They grow and change, but they do so far too slowly for human beings to perceive, something that scientists have noted. Many people find that they resonate best with one or two particular stones, and these can become allies in esoteric work. It’s not necessary to go out and buy fancy stones either; the pebble you find in your yard may be just as powerful as the crystal you buy at the local occult shop, sometimes more so.

Stones are useful for so many things—divination, drawing out energetic toxins, healing work, as “batteries” for energy work, cleansing, and much more—that it’s useful to have a widely varying collection with which to work. Begin to experiment to find the ones that resonate the best for you personally, and keep an eye out for unusual stones that may turn up in your daily meanderings. Stone spirits are no-nonsense and usually willing to share some of their knowledge if respect is given in return. There is much power and wisdom in stone. If you approach a stone correctly, you may be permitted to partake of some of that wisdom. They’ve been around for eons, after all. They’ve seen where we came from and how our world has evolved. They are, in their own way, memory keepers, our elders, an ancestral power.

I use stones to this day in my work. I keep hematite to help clients ground. I use certain stones to stabilize my house shields. I have a huge piece of granite that my land spirits like, and I keep it in my garden and pour regular offerings over it. Stone is enduring; that is its nature. In this way, it can symbolize the commitment and contract that we make with the Gods and spirits. Because of this, stones make fine offerings too. (The only stones that I can’t stand to touch are the manufactured ones. They feel wrong, robotic, unnatural, and sterile. With this we should leave well enough alone. There is a lesson in this for us: just because we have the ability to do something doesn’t mean we necessarily should.)

Raven: I began using stones as divination tools when I was a child, exiled to the school playground twice a day during weekdays. I was a loner, a strange child whom no one would play with, so I dawdled at the edges of the playground and talked to weeds and rocks. At that time, the plant spirits first began to talk to me, and I learned about the energy of stones. I’d pick up small rocks, nothing unusual—quartz, sandstone, granite—and feel their energy. Some “vibrated” on a higher frequency (like the quartz); others had a longer, slower feel. I later found out that geologists called my high-frequency stones macrocrystalline, meaning that their crystal formations were large and in some cases visible, and my low-frequency stones microcrystalline, meaning that their crystal formations were tiny and packed together. Since no one else was able to feel this but me, I created a divinatory game from any three pebbles selected from the ground, and played it during my lonely recess periods. I carried them around in my pockets, but I usually gave them back to the Earth eventually. Later I found stones to keep, stones that my wife carved with runes to use in more elaborate divination.

Stones are easy to work with, easy to find (they’re on the ground almost wherever you look), and can be used for a number of useful purposes. You don’t need fancy semiprecious stones from a store for these tricks; you can do them easily with nondescript rocks off the ground. Be aware that some store-bought stones came from land that was raped and clear-cut and strip-mined, not taken sustainably, and by finding local surface stones you avoid that negative taint. Stones can be “charged,” filled with energy and Intent by holding them and pushing the energy into them. They can then be placed in corners, behind doors, or on lintels above windows and doors, or they can be arranged in a large shape. These stones will then be your “anchors,” holding down the energy of protection or sacred space or anything else you like. Moreover, they are teachers, and if you work with them, they can instruct you in how to sense, move, and eventually use energy.

Larger stones can be a way to call the land spirit and give it a place to fill and “perch” on. Any spirit might choose a special stone as a home to inhabit or a door to come through. (See the section on spirit homes in the Gray World chapter.) Special stones can be chosen to carve into amulets or runes. Rocks can also be stacked on top of each other or laid in symbolic formations to create boundaries, such as a labyrinth.

Go around picking up stones and checking out their vibrations. What do we mean by vibrations? It’s hard to explain, as it’s the way the brain interprets data that is difficult to quantify. (Sensing energy translates in different ways for different people. Some feel it as changes in internal temperature; some feel a “hum” or “buzz”; others see colors, or even see the energy directly.) If you hold two stones of different geological material in separate hands and compare them, one may feel somehow lighter in a way that has nothing to do with its actual weight, or faster in a way that has nothing to do with its unmoving sessile nature. Practice holding and comparing stones until you can discern this energy frequency. We find that large single crystals have the highest frequency—to the point where Raven finds them uncomfortable and prefers microcrystalline stones—and the sedimentary rocks such as sandstone and limestone have the slowest frequency. Being heated and cooled by volcanic fire or frictive pressure speeds up the frequency of a stone.

Exercise: Stone Divination

Once you have learned about stone energy frequency, try this simple divination. It’s good for when you’re caught out somewhere with no other form of divination and you need to ask a yes or no question of the spirits. Pick up three stones that are high, medium, and low vibration in relation to each other. They don’t have to be pretty; they can be ordinary pebbles from the road. The medium-frequency stone is the indicator. Hold them in your fist, ask your question, and drop them. Look to see which one is closer to the indicator stone—if it’s the high-frequency stone, it’s a yes; the low-frequency stone means no. Afterward, thank the Earth for her gift to you and cast them back into the road or field or empty lot. There’s no real need to save them—there will be more rocks at the next place they are needed, and there’s a certain magic in working with the energy of the place you are in at the moment.