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

Fen
The Blue World: Water

Raven: I live on a property that is about one-quarter wetlands. It does make it difficult in the summer when the clouds of mosquitoes come—we make offerings to the Bat Mother, and ask her children to multiply and take care of them, and mostly we just stay inside when they are at their worst. We can’t build on those wetlands or camp on them or pasture animals. It isn’t even pleasant to go there . . . and that’s why wetlands are the epitome of land that guards itself from us humans, fiercely. The Wetlands spirit is, as you’d expect, foreboding and cranky. It is not friendly to me—or to any human being that I’ve met yet—but it will accept a certain amount of propitiation. It will also take things we don’t want, psychically tainted things, and suck them deep into its muddy depths.

Galina: Bogs were very sacred places to our Northern ancestors. They were places where deities were propitiated and offerings (weapons, gifts, sometimes even human sacrifices) were submerged. None of that, however, means that the bog or fen is a pleasant place. It isn’t. It isn’t in any way a place welcoming to humans, and that is as it should be. Human arrogance being what it is, it’s good for us to have some places where we cannot comfortably go. I respect the fen, the bog, and its spirit, but I do so at a distance. When I enter the perimeter of its territory, I do so respectfully, in order to leave offerings to the Gods, and I leave with equal respect. The bog is a place of silence, stillness, and death. The best gift we can give it is the gift of our protection. I honor the spirit of the fen by making donations to organizations dedicated to protecting the wetlands, my small way of trying to restore balance, of trying to undo the damage that human arrogance has wrought.

The wetlands are the place where Water mingles with Earth. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies wetlands into four categories: marshes, swamps, bogs, and fens. Marshes are filled with shallow water and weeds; swamps with deep water and woody trees; bogs with mosses and deep peat fed with rainwater; and fens are like bogs but fed with runoff water or underwater aquifers. In spite of being generally inhospitable to humans, all four types of wetlands are often buzzing with life. There’s a lot to eat in the wetlands if you’re not human, and in some cases even if you are. They are nurturing ecosystems even as they are filled with decay. It is this association with decay that gives wetlands their association with the Land of the Dead, and it is their liminal nature—neither fully earth nor water—that gives them their reputation as passages between the worlds.

Of all these words—which, EPA or no, originally meant the same thing—the oldest one is fen. This word goes back to at least 800 CE in most Germanic languages, and means exactly what it still means today. As such, this is the word we will use from now on in this section to describe any kind of wetlands. Fens go way back in prehistory as a place of sacrifice and mystery. Because the fen was both unpleasant and dangerous to live in, people considered it to be a taboo place, and what was taboo was powerful, an abode of the spirits. Sacrificial victims were bashed, strangled, stabbed, and thrown into fens to be given to the Gods when some terrible threat had to be averted. Weapons and other treasures were flung in as offerings as well. The fen’s reputation as a place where the veils between life and death are thin was helped neither by the occasional sucking bog that pulled in an unwary traveler nor by the bubbles of flammable gas that floated around and created the will-o’-the-wisp, or “corpse candle,” myths.

The “corpse candles” were considered to be faery lights by the Celts; they were called lambent light by the Norse and considered to be the lanterns that guarded the barrows of the dead. Either way, they could lead a person safely through the fen or straight into a sinkhole. One made it through a fen by being respectful and by propitiating the spirit. The Elder tree spirit is the guardian of the fen, as elders grow wild where there is ample water less than ten feet below the surface. If you want another spirit to broker an introduction to the Fen spirit, Dame Ellhorn is a good one to choose, as is the Alder spirit, as alders are also often found in wetland areas.

Exercise: Wooing the Fen

Fen spirits are notorious for being grim and suspicious of humans. Today, with the general threat to our wetlands by pollutants, the Fen spirit is even less likely to be immediately friendly. Start small. Leave the occasional offering in the fen, and ask nothing. (No spirit is ever obligated to help us, after all.) Then, after a while, make your offering and sit for a spell. Observe the life of the wetlands and appreciate it. Eventually you can work up to reaching out to the Fen spirit. Be warned that it is dark and swampy and may attempt to pull you in—if that happens, abandon the effort and leave. If it seems willing to tolerate you as long as you are courteous, you’re in luck. Don’t rush this process. Like many other aspects of spirit work, building a relationship with this spirit takes time, effort, and consistent attention. There are no shortcuts.

If you have an item that is filled with terrible energy (perhaps from some trauma) and cannot be cleaned enough to give away, you can take it to the fen and drown it in a sinkhole, with the permission of the Fen spirit. Keep in mind that you are not giving the nasty object to the Fen spirit as a gift. You are paying the Fen spirit to take it away to some Otherworld and transmute it into something else. In light of this, come with a sizeable offering as payment for this favor—food, drink, pretty stones, coins, and so forth. (In fact, whenever you go to a spirit or deity requesting a favor, it’s best to always go with full hands.)