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

Making Fire
The Red World: Fire

Galina: The very first thing I ever learned about fire work was how to make fire from flint and steel. As I was learning more and more about what being Odin’s shaman meant, I was pushed to commit to gaining what we call Fire mastery, knowledge and practical skill in application of an element’s mysteries and power, its “medicine.” The very first step to doing so, in our tradition, is learning to make fire yourself by some ancient method. This is in part an homage to our ancestors. Without fire, they would never have survived for us to be here today. Fire was essential to their world, to their health, to the growth of civilization. Think about all the things we have that are dependent on some type of fire: cooking, plumbing, central heating, metalworking, glass shaping, electricity. Fire enabled our ancestors to tame their world and craft something better for their children. I was required as part of my training to go outside when it was windy and cold and make a bonfire using flint and steel. It’s not easy, and struggling against the wind while engaged in a battle of endurance with the biting cold gave me some small, infinitesimal taste of what our ancestors must have gone through in the frozen North. The sense of triumph when the char cloth flares into flame, and then again when the tinder starts crackling, is an amazing thing. My tribe will never freeze.

Raven: In Siberia, new shamans are given firemaking tools that have been blessed by their teachers and the spirits. The first time I read about that, I was seized with a fit of wistfulness. I had only the spirits and no human teachers in my attempts to reanimate this long-dead shamanic tradition. Just for a moment, I wished that I’d had an elder to acknowledge me and give me sacred tools. Then I shrugged it off and went on with my life.

Then I visited a dear friend I considered family, a woman whose husband—whom I’d long admired—had died a few years earlier. She was still giving away his things, and out of nowhere she brought out his firemaking kit and asked me if I wanted it. It contained copies he’d made of copper tools from a kit found in a Norse burial, and his children were not interested in it. Out of nowhere, what I’d wanted had come to me. The shaman who served the Goddess of Death clutched the sacred firemaking tools, given to me by a dead loved one, and was grateful. I went home and learned how to make fire, in the name of the ancestors and all my dead.

Exercise: Your Tribe Must Not Freeze

Before you can work with fire or commit to learning its mysteries in this tradition, you must learn to make fire with flint and steel. So much of fire work is about communication, particularly from master to apprentice and teacher to student. That is the nature of fire, because each fire is part of the same fire. Each fire kindled is part of that first, ancient fire that sustained our ancestors, part of the fires bubbling and crackling away in Muspelheim, part of that great conflagration at the beginning of our time. Each fire is a powerful, living connection to every person who ever gazed into its beauty or depended on its mercy or fled from its might. It is, in a way, our most ancient, eldest ancestor. Communicating its mysteries face-to-face taps in to a deeper lever of its medicine. It allows us to connect in a very fundamental way to that unbroken thread of knowledge and experience stretching all the way back to the time of the beginning. So if you are able, find someone to teach you how to do this in person.

It is not difficult to learn to make fire. You must have the following tools: A piece of flint large enough to be held comfortably in the hand, a steel fire striker (we recommend www.ragweedforge.com; he usually has a nice selection), char cloth, and tinder (birchbark, cotton balls, bits of paper, etc.).

This method works because in striking the flint, small flakes of steel are knocked off and heated. It’s friction, basically. It can take some practice to catch the spark on the char cloth, and even more to get out of the habit of holding back. You really have to strike as though you mean it. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Before you try to make fire, you must have char cloth to catch the spark. This is cloth that has been specially prepared so that it is will catch and hold a spark, without either putting it out or going up in flames. To make char cloth, we recommend getting a small tin box. Altoids tins are perfect for this. Pack it tightly with small squares of cotton or linen cloth—it must be natural fabric. Untreated cotton works best, and we recommend gun-cleaning cotton cloths. Punch a hole in the top with a nail. Place it in a fire for fifteen minutes. Galina just puts it right on top of the burner on her gas stove; Raven puts his in the firebox of his woodstove. The box will smoke a lot. Be sure to use kitchen tongs to remove it, as it will be quite hot. Let it cool completely, then open it and test out your now blackened cloth. You have just made char cloth.

When you have your flint and steel striker, your aim is to strike a small spark onto a piece of char cloth. Strike downward hard, at roughly a 45-degree angle. Don’t be afraid of it. Sometimes there is a tendency to hold back on the strike, but you really need to put some strength into it. It may take some time to get the hang of it, but keep practicing. Some people hold the striker in one hand and strike the flint down on the striker, while others hold the flint and strike down with the steel striker. It doesn’t matter which way you choose.

Once you catch the spark on the char cloth, enfold it in your tinder and blow. (Cotton balls make good tinder, believe it or not, and we both carry some in our firemaking kits.) Keep blowing, making sure the tinder is lightly enfolding the char cloth so that air can pass through. It will flare up pretty quickly into flame, and when it does, you put that in the rest of your prepared tinder and fan it into a fire, slowly adding sticks, twigs, and eventually wood. To practice this effectively, you need only to get to the point where the char, enfolded in tinder, becomes flame. You can do that even if you live in an apartment. Just be sure to have a fire extinguisher and water at the ready. Fire is tricky and mischievous and high-spirited, and it will escape you if it can.

Galina keeps a portable brazier at her house for lighting small sacred fires. Raven has a fire pit in his back field for large bonfires. If sacred fire is required, flint and steel is the best way to go about making it (using a fire bow is also a good choice). It is perfectly acceptable to light a candle from your tinder so you don’t have to go through the trouble of kindling flame a second time should your tinder go out. Camping candles that are enclosed to protect against the wind are best. Carrying a few candle stubs with your kit is a good idea. It’s the final lesson of fire survival: as soon as you have fire, you make more fire, just in case.