Neolithic Shamanism: Spirit Work in the Norse Tradition - Raven Kaldera 2012
Seagull
The Brown World: Animals
Raven: I work with ocean spirits, and what Crow is to the land, Seagull is to the ocean—a messenger, a trickster, a liminal and amoral figure. The Gods and spirits of the sea are not above employing these messengers to fly the hundred miles inland that it takes to be there in the store parking lot when I arrive, chomping down garbage, standing in front of my car (or on the hood), and refusing to move until I acknowledge that yes, I need to go to the ocean and honor my allies there. Then, of course, they expect some payment for having made the journey to hassle me—gulls are extortion artists, but I throw them some popcorn anyway.
Galina: Seagulls can be pushy and loud. They know how to make their voices heard and get their fair share (and then some). I don’t work with Gulls myself, but I have observed them extensively in my work with our Gods and goddesses of the sea, and I live on a large river that flows into the Atlantic and attracts its share of gulls. They are high-flying scouts, and much of their wisdom lies in seeking out necessary resources or unexpected boons. They can be rude and are not afraid to be obnoxious in claiming what is theirs. There is something to be said for that type of boldness.
Norse folktales tell of a seagull woman who puts her wings aside when she goes on land, and they are found and hidden by a fisherman who forces her to marry him and bear him children. When she finally recovers her wings, she turns her row of children into gulls, and they all fly away together. This story is found in other forms all over coastal northern Europe, with the magical wife in the form of a seal or other sea creature, but it is the seagull version that we will emphasize here. No wild bird wants to be kept in a cage, but seabirds especially are wanderers. To be in one place for too long kills their souls—and “too long” could be a matter of hours.
It’s said in legend that the sound of the sea makes people restless and calls them away, and this is why young people ran away to become sailors; the sea whispered in their ears and suddenly any four walls seemed like a trap. Seabirds are born with that voice in their blood—in fact, it could be said that they are living incarnations of that voice, that their cawing is its aural channel to the world. Knowing this, it makes sense that when the mountain goddess Skadi divorced the sailor god Njord, one of her complaints was that the sound of the gulls kept her awake and made her restless. The sound of gulls can make anyone restless, if their energy manages to connect with the person. This is the greatest danger in working with Seagull—it can literally make you long to run away from home. That sea voice doesn’t care where you go, as long as you are moving.
Seagulls do not belong to any one deity in Norse mythology, although they seem to be much loved by various sea Gods, including Njord, the sailor god; Aegir and Ran, the king and queen of the sea; and their daughter Unn, the undine whose name means “billow” and who is affiliated with the Moon and the sea air. In many coastal Native American folktales, Seagull and Raven are enemies, both being tricksterish scavengers who compete for similar territory. However, their natures are different: Raven (like Crow) plots and schemes and thinks ahead, while Seagull lives for the moment. As an incarnated meeting of Wind and Water—thought and emotion—Seagull is driven by feelings as wayward as the sea spray and acts entirely on impulse. She doesn’t want to know where things stand. Nothing stands anywhere in her world of open water and myriad coastlines. She wants to see how things will turn out, because in her world anything could go any way at any time. Working with Seagull means learning to develop immense flexibility.
Exercise: Borrowing the Wings of Gull
Seagulls are long-distance flyers, which you can tell by looking at their longer, narrower, more airplanelike wings, in contrast to short-migration crows, which rarely fly more than a hundred miles from their home. Some gull species migrate and have been known to go from Maine to Labrador in search of food. Others don’t seasonally migrate, but have flown hundreds of miles inland—or, more strenuously, out to sea and back. To work with Seagull as a regular ally, it’s really best if you live near the coast. By near, we mean within the flight range of a gull, and reasonably able to visit the ocean on a regular basis. Sometimes one has to inconvenience oneself in order to deal with a spirit and gain its alliance. Should budding shamanic practitioners pack up their household and move to another area in order to be close to a spirit? That depends on how much that spirit means to you and your practice . . . and how much your shamanic practice means to your life. Shamans have done far more extreme things to themselves and their lifestyle because their spirits felt it necessary. If Seagull ends up being your main ally for whatever reason, you’ll end up living near the coast, because that’s what Seagull wants of you. Go back and reread the last part, the bit about her nature, before making eyes at her.
Go down to the shore and leave her food. This should be easy, because gulls abound on shores, and flocks of her children will gladly take your offerings. Sit and watch them, and ask her to come to you. She may; she may not. She is very flighty and wayward. More food may help. Trying again another day may help. Be patient, and don’t take it personally, because it probably isn’t personal. She may have just been distracted by something on her way over to you. If she does come, the process will proceed rather like the one with Crow, explained above, except that she may abandon you in the middle for no reason. Again, don’t take it personally. She combines the most changeable aspects of both her elements as part of her nature. She has a rough, slapstick sense of humor, though, and laughter or a joke can get her wandering attention quickly. Don’t work with her if you’re not much for humor or being funny.
One gift that Seagull can give, once you have learned to fly with her, is an awareness of where you are in space on the planet. This is particularly useful for those of us who have little directional ability. Seagull is intuitively in touch with her directional relationship to everything else—any given point on land or sea, and even the stars themselves. To us, the sea is an amorphous mass with no markings other than land masses. To Seagull, there is this part of the sea, and that part, and that part over there, and they are all distinct. Telling Seagull that the sea is an amorphous blob is like telling citizens of Chicago that their city is an amorphous blob and there’s no way to tell where you are. They’d probably look at you like you were crazy and point out the street signs. Seagull will likely just laugh at you, because she knows you can’t see the street signs . . . but if you establish a relationship with her, she might let you borrow the sense needed to see them. That sense can be like Dorothy’s magic slippers for a journeying shaman—an automatic intuition of where “home” is, and anywhere else you’ve ever been, from where you are now.