Neolithic Shamanism: Spirit Work in the Norse Tradition - Raven Kaldera 2012
How to Use This Book
Introduction
Each section of this book deals with a particular type of spirit, large or small. Some, like the chapters on Sun, Moon or Fire, cover a variety of ways to interact with one larger spirit; others, like the chapters on plants and animals, deal with several smaller spirits of the same kind. Since we decided to limit ourselves to no more than nine subsections per chapter (nine being the sacred number of the Northern Tradition), or the book would have gone on forever, your favorite animal or plant is probably not in here. However, the same rules apply, and if none of the plants or animals here will connect with you, try the techniques on other ones. (And, for the record, some practitioners will connect only with animals, and others only with plants.)
No human being works well with every spirit. Some will form an instant connection with you, and some will never speak to you. That’s quite normal! Both of us are shamans of many years’ experience, and while we have many spirit allies, we also have plenty of experiences with spirits who weren’t interested in talking to us, or who took a firm dislike to us from the start. Remember that these are people. They aren’t human people, but they are People. Like all individuals, some will take a shine to you, and some will prefer someone else. Don’t take it personally. In addition, don’t be upset if the spirit you had romantic ideas about doesn’t connect with you, and don’t scorn the one who does just because it wasn’t what you wanted. It’s altogether possible that your romantic illusions about what a particular spirit ought to be were strong enough that the actual spirit, with its own reality that didn’t match yours, wouldn’t speak to you. It’s also possible that a spirit you hadn’t imagined in connection with yourself wouldn’t have to plow through your illusions in order to get to you. Again, as with human friends, be glad for the ones you’ve got.
We do encourage you to go slowly through this book, trying out the different exercises, and see what works for you. We strongly suggest that you start with the exercises in the Beginning Place chapter, and do them in order. Those are your basics. It’s really necessary to get the exercises in that chapter down before proceeding onward. From there, you can do the rest in any order. Doing all the exercises in the whole book should take you a minimum of a year, but most people will not do anywhere near all of them—the affinity or the skill isn’t there, and that’s all right. If a particular smaller spirit (animal, plant, craft, etc.) is not connecting with you, feel free to move on.
However, if one of the four basic elements—Earth, Air, Fire, and Water—isn’t connecting, make sure that you come back to it after a few weeks or months. It’s important for a shamanic practitioner to have at least some kind of relationship with each of the elements, although everyone does better with some than with others. Most of us, even experienced shamans, find ourselves cycling back to the individual Elemental Powers and to the lessons of our allied spirits again and again throughout our working lives, because we don’t ever get it all in one go. We learn and grow and our understanding grows, and then we learn some more. So much of this practice isn’t about what you can get, but what you can learn and thereby give: to the spirits; the Gods; the tribe; the community; or the aching, hurting, terrified person who comes to your door.
While we have provided an entire chapter on shamanic crafting in this tradition, we have also included a craft geared toward the elements in each of the other chapters. Unfortunately, we don’t have the room in this book to teach how to do each of these crafts; if any of them appeal to you, please find trained crafters to learn from. The exercises for these crafts assume a basic knowledge and skill, but getting those is up to you. The Resources is a good place to start for book knowledge.
Gods and Spirits, Spirits and Gods
We have a variety of names for spirits. In Old Norse, one of the most common words for a spirit was vaet, with the plural vaettir, and we will make numerous references to vaettir in this book. In addition, you may also see the word wight, which is the Anglo-Saxon version of the same term. It is pronounced “white” but has nothing to do with that word or the color. Another Old Norse term for generic spirits is náttúrar, and another generic Anglo-Saxon term is gæst, from whence comes our modern word ghost. (If you are interested in further detail about the many different kinds of spirits in our cosmology, check out Raven’s book Wyrdwalkers, listed in the Resources.)
Those of you who are familiar with our other works on Northern Tradition shamanism or on the Northern Tradition in general will probably be surprised when you read this book and see that it has very little mention of the Norse or Germanic Gods. There’s a reason for that—actually, a few reasons. First, when Raven was told to write a book on Northern Tradition shamanism for beginners—and for people not specifically chosen by Gods—he prayed about what it should contain, and the Northern Gods themselves told him: “Don’t write about us. Go back further. Go back to the very beginning, before humans in northern Europe made our acquaintance. Go back to the age of stone and fire, of survival in the snow, of the first shamans. Start where your ancestors started—fire and frost, plants and animals, Sun and Moon, the ancestors.” So we did. This book harks back to shamanism from the Paleolithic Age to the Bronze Age, or, rather, our extrapolation of that given that we are modern people who do work with the same spirits, and those spirits haven’t changed much even though we have.
Second, working with Gods as a shaman (or even as a shamanic practitioner) is different from working with elemental or animal or plant spirits. It’s also different from simply worshiping them as a religious practitioner (and if you want more information on that nonshamanic angle, we suggest that you look into our book Northern Tradition for the Solitary Practitioner, published through New Page Books). Doing shamanic work with the Northern Gods (and the Alfar, Duergar, and Jotnar—elves, dwarves, and giants—that intermingle with them) is much more dangerous, and we consider it a more advanced level of shamanic practice. It can also, in some cases, become very nonconsensual very quickly. While elemental spirits will expect you to keep the agreements that you’ve made with them (and have the right to punish you if you break your word), they generally won’t go snapping you up and making you into a servant—or, in some cases, a shaman-slave. Some of the Northern Gods have far less compunction on that score. Similarly, while trekking through real Otherworlds is part of the shaman’s job, it’s an advanced and damned dangerous job, and often requires a patron deity to watch your back . . . which, as we’ve just said, creates its own complications.
This means that if you’re completely new to this and you don’t know yet whether it’s for you—much less whether you want it to become an integral part of your life, for the rest of your life—we feel that it’s best to stick to the spirits outlined in this book and become proficient with them. After all, the elements, plants, and animals are all around us, and your ancestors are always with you in your blood. You don’t need to journey to Otherworlds to access them. They are a part of you, every one—it’s just a matter of magnifying and becoming acutely conscious of that connection. If you do eventually end up being sought out by the Gods, having gained some measure of mastery with the techniques in this book will stand you in good and useful stead.
However, some will ask us what the difference is between a deity and a spirit, anyway. Well, obviously, it’s one of magnitude (kind of like an earthquake), but where do we draw the line? We don’t know, and neither does anyone else. We both like to quote a friend who says: “If it’s bigger, older, and wiser than I’ll ever be, I put it in the God category and give it the requisite respect.” So, yes, there is a gray area between them, but even so we’re going to stick to spirits who are less “personified” (which doesn’t mean that they lack personalities).
Those who are students of Northern mythology will notice that the structure of this book does reflect and honor the Nine Worlds that spin around Yggdrasil, the World Tree. That’s deliberate; some truths are found everywhere. However, this is not a book about the shamanic practices of the Nine Worlds; it’s a book about the shamanic practices of this one. If you are already called by a Northern god or goddess, we suggest checking out the list of advanced books in the Resources. But if you’re not—or even if you are—don’t jump the gun. Become knowledgeable and proficient with the spirits of our world first. To dismiss them because you have some romantic (and probably dangerously false) ideas about how the Gods and spirits of the Otherworlds are more exciting, or because you don’t like this world much for purely human reasons, is a crucial mistake.
How This Book Will Use You
Which brings us to another point. Humans don’t like this world much. We give lip service to the beauty of the Earth and of Nature, but we often dream about being somewhere else in some human-created fictional world. Many of us also resent the fact that we have bodies at all. Our culture denigrates the Earth and the physical body as far behind the work of the mind. If you begin shamanic work, however, the first thing that you will do is to connect with the natural world—what we call the Real World, not the human-created social world—and that includes the flesh world that you currently inhabit. This is so important within Northern Tradition practice that the physical body in each incarnation is even viewed as part of the soul. Yes, you read that right: our physical body, our flesh, is one piece of our soul.
Eventually the shamanic path does take you to a place of altered consciousness, of getting outside your body. That’s part of the practice, and we do talk a great deal about that in this book. But before you go there, you have to understand the physical world on a deep level. If you can’t connect deeply and physically with the Earth and your own body, and really know the spiritual connection between them, your various altered-state journeys will not take you out of yourself. Instead, you’ll just dreamily explore an inner world of your own deep mental meaning, populated by your own mental sock puppets. That’s not necessarily a bad thing—internal work can be useful in dealing with your issues and making you a more whole person—but it is not spirit work . . . and if you are disconnected enough, you might not know the difference. That’s a pitfall of beginning spirit work, and one that requires practice to solve—practice at being fully in the natural world and in your body that is part of that world.
Don’t like human culture? Fine. That’s not the Real World. Go look at a patch of dirt with ants crawling on it, or the moss at the roots of a tree. That’s the Real World. (In fact, there’s more life in a tablespoon of good soil than in a major metropolitan city.) Be in it, wholly and fully. Of course, part of how you know you’re fully in it is when you begin to want to protect and care for it, when its value has shot up past that of your own comfort and convenience. The Real World is under constant attack by the Unreal World, and if you consciously let it, it will use you to protect itself. Letting it use us in this way is how we pay for the privilege of living in it . . . and even further, making alliances with the elemental spirits who rule the Real World, and sharing in their power, requires more of us.
Spirit work of any kind changes your values, your lifestyle, your ethics, and your actions. It requires a high level of mindfulness in order to work, and that mindfulness will remake you life whether you like it or not. Working with plant and animal spirits will make you look long and hard at where your food (and clothing, paper, furniture, etc.) comes from. Working with the Sun and Moon will make you look at how you use your limited time. If you’re looking for power at little cost, or spirituality at little inconvenience, you’re looking in the wrong place. Shamanic practice of any kind requires great effort and thoughtfulness, and being in harmony with the Real World as much as possible. To get even halfway through this book will change you and your life in innumerable ways. You have now been warned.