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

Noon
The Golden World: Sun

The Sun is made of fire. We all know that, but there is by definition a good deal of affinity between them. In the cosmology of the North, the Sun goddess is a fire giantess, as is most of her family of sky giants. There are strong links between Fire and Sun, but at the same time there are marked differences. The Sun’s energy feels “higher” than Fire’s, in the sense of being lighter and more joyful. It’s also, obviously, more removed from the Earth. (Unlike her brother, Sunna is rarely if ever distracted from her course by the foibles of humanity. She’s very task oriented.) Fire is more serious; it can dance happily, but its joy is always a little more intense, just this side of becoming destructive wrath. The Sun’s joy is less wrathful and more exuberant. Sun is distant, the queen on her throne who gives out largesse to the populace and honestly wants them to thrive. We don’t see her danger until we are up close and personal, and then she is more dangerous than earthly fire. Fire is more personal, living in everyone’s hearths and homes. We can have tiny fires if we like, and contain and control them in small spaces. We have to be careful, because fire can sometimes either escape or go out, but we obviously have much more control over fire than over the Sun. It remains to be seen whether the Sun can be said to be merely a large instantiation of the element of Fire or if every fire on Earth is actually the messenger of the Sun, whose birth threw out the molten pieces of rock that later congealed into our planet. Perhaps both are true. Real truths are often paradoxical.

Exercise: Prism Fire

There are many ways of making sacred fire, all of which will be discussed in the Red World chapter except for this one, because this is making solar fire. You will need flammable materials, such as bits of paper, a candle stub, and kindling laid for a fire. You will also need a piece of glass that will reflect and concentrate the Sun. Raven uses a fist-size solid glass ball, originally a paperweight, that he got at a yard sale. It didn’t occur to him to use it as a firestarter until one hot solstice when he placed it on an outdoor altar . . . and when the Sun sank to the right level, it caught the ball and set the table and the surrounding grass on fire. (He, of course, had to spend the next hour playing with it and setting things on fire until the Sun got too low to cast rays.) You will have to experiment with prisms and glass balls and chunks until you find the best one to do the job—some people have even lit a spark with eyeglasses in an emergency.

Sacred fire from the Sun can be used as part of a ritual to burn away depression. Start the fire on a bright day with the glass firestarter, and build up to a blaze. Give the depressed person a bowl of water to hold to his or her heart, and tell the client to concentrate on the sadness and visualize it trickling out into the bowl of water. While this takes place, stand or sit or kneel behind the person, with your head level with his or her heart chakra. You will be working to move that depression out of the individual and into the bowl, and then filling the empty space with solar energy.

First, as you stand there, focus on the Sun above you. (No, you are not going to set your client on fire!) Reach out with your awareness from your head and visualize a tendril (or limb or thread or whatever works for you) going up and connecting with the Sun’s energy. If you’ve connected, you should feel a trickle of warm, “golden” energy coming down that line. Once that line is secure, extend a second one, this time from your heart chakra, to the fire burning in front of you, the “child” of the Sun that she has sent down in her goodness. Create a line to that fire, which should be easier than the Sun because it’s closer. Breathe in and let the two lines of energy meet in your throat chakra, one coming from your heart and the other from your head, where the Sun beats down.

Now let that solar fire energy, the combination of the two, come out your mouth in a sung note. It can be any note or words or a tune; let the energy choose the form. With your voice and the exhalation of your breath, “push” the energy at the heart chakra of the person in front of you. (For more information on how to use the voice to push energy, read the White World chapter.) Visualize the warm red-gold energy going in straight between the client’s shoulder blades, hitting the heart full of gray dampness that the person is trying to push out, and let the energy do the pushing. As you intone your note and push the energy, visualize it filling your client’s heart and pushing out all the sorrow like a wave into the bowl. Part of depression is inertia—emotional, physical, and energetic. By calling on Sunna and her energy in this way, you’re breaking the hold of that energetic inertia, which in turn can help upset the hold that depression has on the client.

When the process feels done—and you will learn intuitively over time when a process is done—tell the client to move to the fire and very slowly drip the water into it. The trickle should never be enough to put the fire out. The idea is to turn every bit of that water to steam, little by little. If the fire gets low, have the client stoke it with more wood, saying, “I feed the fire of the Sun within, and I do not let it overcome the sorrow.” When it is done, recan the client with herbs, and you’re finished.

If the client is suffering from some sort of chemical depression, this will provide only temporary relief. The actual problem is larger and cannot be solved by a temporary infusion of positive solar energy. If the sorrow is from an ongoing situation that cannot be resolved, it may or may not be ephemeral. However, even temporary relief can be better than nothing, and there should be no negative side effects from this treatment.