Neolithic Shamanism: Spirit Work in the Norse Tradition - Raven Kaldera 2012
Crow
The Brown World: Animals
Raven: Crows have always talked to me, even before I was given the name of their larger brothers. I figured out quickly that much of their language is insults—that’s how they show dominance among each other and establish a pecking order. They have often been messengers for me—when I lived in the city long ago, I often got lost, and if I could find a crow, I could sometimes ask it to lead me to where I needed to go. They would appear outside my window to wake me up in emergencies. They, like all of the Corvidae family, are dear to me.
When I journey in trance, I like to get to places quickly because I don’t want to make a client wait, and flying is the best trick for that. I shape myself into the form that my name gives me. I was taught how to do that by the Raven spirit, who is Crow’s big brother. Once he showed me how it felt to really be in a bird’s body, I realized how my idea of that was skewed and human-centered. Now I can fly fast, turn on an updraft, perch, and lift off without clumsiness. I’m probably still clumsy compared to an actual bird, but I’m definitely better at it.
Galina: Crows come with messages. They challenge assumptions; they prod and provoke. Most of all, though, they carry visions and information from the Realm of the Dead to the Realm of the Living, from the lips of the Gods to the ears of their servants. They know the keys to traversing the worlds, and if one is having trouble communicating with ancestors or finding that it’s difficult to establish a relationship with one particular ancestor, Crow can often be called upon to ease the way and facilitate communication. I work primarily with Raven, but I have found that Crow is friendlier toward the human world, more forgiving of faults, and more likely to take an interest in human affairs. They are blindingly intelligent. They tend to like pretty, shiny trinkets, and such things make good offerings. Crow teaches how to send messages and communicate between people in different Otherworlds. He can be particularly helpful when one’s signal clarity is blocked.
For the next three sections, we will move from the concept of borrowing qualities of the animal spirit—we figure that you’ve gotten the idea by now—to instead taking on the spirit’s whole shape during trance journeying. This is a different procedure than keeping the two energy bodies together while fully conscious and active. During trance work, most people walk about in their own form, even though it isn’t necessary, but it’s the form that they know, that they can move around most skillfully. When they take on other animal shapes—often to move across terrain that isn’t best for walking or to cover a lot of ground at once—they tend to shape themselves into a crude approximation of the animal’s form, and they don’t even know how clumsy and slow they are. No matter how imaginative you are, you can’t fully conceive of what an animal’s body feels like because you are constrained by a lifetime of habituation to a human form . . . unless the grandparent spirit of that animal helps you out.
Crows are the most common member of the Corvidae family, and they are found on every continent except Antarctica. The Corvidae—which include crows, ravens, jackdaws, and other birds—are known for having the largest brain-to-body-weight ratio of any birds, similar to chimpanzees. In other words, they are keenly intelligent and highly observational, learn quickly, and are not opposed to using tools to get what they want. Some have learned to communicate to an extent with humans, although they are also independent and somewhat perverse creatures who don’t like to be told what to do by anyone. Crows are also inveterate thieves who steal shiny items and hide them in their treasure troves, and they have been known to steal food right off the plates of picnickers. (There is a strain of the Sacred Trickster in the crow species.) Crows have been denigrated by humans since the dawn of agriculture for their habit of pulling up sprouting grain seedlings and eating them—a flock of crows can denude a whole spring field, leaving the farmers to starve. Scarecrows were erected to ward them off, and hundreds of generations of children were set to throwing rocks at crows and shooting at them with slingshot. They are also disliked for their noise, especially when they gather in loud groups. They learn to recognize individual humans and remember them years later—in some cases, bombarding them with garbage, if the human is one who has upset them.
They have a long history in mythologies the world over, both for their carrion eating—the ability to transform and recycle rotting garbage—and their intelligence. The combination of the two has resulted in the belief that members of the Corvidae family are messengers between the human world and the Underworld, unlike other birds, which are seen as messengers to the higher realms. The Corvidae have an inescapable association with death—a flock of crows is known as a murder. They are also linked with many different deities of death and war (the latter not because they are predators or fighters, but because they are scavengers that clean up battlefields). These include Odin, Hela, Morrigan, Bran, and Apollo. A Norse kenning for them was the blood goose, for their habit of eating dead bodies. They are teachers of hard wisdom, of dark secrets.
Don’t try to get anything by the Crow spirit. He will look at you with beady eyes and perceive this deceit, and then tell you harshly just what he thinks of you. Then he will laugh at you. His sense of humor is coarse and caustic, and if you’re overly sensitive, he’s not the friend for you. Roll with the punches, and he’ll appreciate you. Blunt honesty is more entertaining to him than polish and eloquence. (In fact, profanity is fine with him, and he uses it himself, liberally.) His teaching style tends to involve the occasional sharp peck when you’re slow . . . put up with it, or don’t be slow.
Exercise: Borrowing Crow’s Wings
Crows are fairly common, and if you put the word out to the Universe that you’d like a meeting with Crow, his representatives will probably start dogging you. If they don’t, that’s a pretty clear indication that Crow is not interested. If you see them appearing in trees near you and cawing to get your attention, pick a day and follow them. Crow is one animal spirit who can be easily approached in an urban area; his children have adapted well to our garbage-ridden cities. Follow the crows until they lead you to a place where many crows gather, and then sit and talk to Crow. If it’s a city park with distracting, noisy cars driving by . . . well, this is a good time to learn to do utiseta with distractions. That’s the kind of lesson that Crow likes. He’ll laugh at you if you complain that there’s just too much noise to concentrate. Crow likes noise and will have no sympathy.
If he’s willing to help you, ask him to allow you to take on his form when you journey internally. For this, you should first be able to put yourself into a fairly deep trance. Visualize yourself on the ground next to a high perch, like a tree, cliff, or pole. Wait for Crow to come for you. If he does, let him guide the lesson. Don’t shift yourself into some human idea of crow form. Let him do what it takes to get you there. It might be a gradual shift after he touches you, which will feel strange and disorienting, and you may flop about for a bit. He may even pick you up and peck you into shape. When he says that you are ready to attempt the air and flutter to the high place, follow him closely. If you can make it there, he will let you know where to fly next. Don’t go haring off on your own. It takes time to get used to moving a body that does not have human anatomy or neurology. If all you can do the first time is hop about on the ground and take short fluttering flights, there’s no shame in that. Practice makes . . . somewhat more skilled, anyway. Understand that Crow will probably taunt and insult you while he teaches you. Don’t let it discourage you; it’s just the way he works.
Your biggest job during all of this will be to maintain active concentration along with passive surrender to the experience, and do not get distracted by outside stimuli. If you do make it into the air and then a roommate bangs on the door and knocks you out of your trance, don’t fear—you won’t fall out of the sky and crash. You’ll just come back to your own body. However, it may take a little while for the feeling of being in crow form to entirely wear off. A short nap will help this, as will consciously realigning your energy body into human form. That is, after all, your body’s form, and you can always consciously go back there by mentally “mapping” your energy body to your physical form, one piece at a time if need be.
Ideally, once you’ve learned to do this with the entirety of your attention (and thus the majority of your energy body), you should learn to scale back your attention and use less of your energy body. To do advanced shamanic work, you will not only need to be able to journey in full trance with your entire awareness submerged in the experience, but also to be able to split your consciousness and put part of it into a useful “traveling” form while the rest of you is busy standing up, or working on a client, or singing, or drumming, or dancing, or doing energy work. Professional shamanic services—as opposed to shamanic practices designed only to bring nonprofessionals into better alignment with themselves and their world—require the ability to multitask your energy.