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

Mountain
The Beginning Place: Earth

Galina: Every night I sleep in the belly of the mountains. They rise in lush magnificence around the valley in which my home rests, watching over those of us who live in their shadow. Morning and evening I look to that great dragon, the spirit of the mountain, giving thanks for the shelter and security he provides. He is my touchstone, both visually and energetically. I, who come from mountain-etin bloodlines, descended on one side of my family from Gymir’s get, find immense comfort in knowing my world is ringed about by that immense, watchful presence.

I’ve traveled extensively in Switzerland, partly to visit the places my maternal ancestors hailed from and partly to experience the glaciers and massive mountain ranges that so defined their awareness of their world. The presence of the Mountain spirits is so strong in parts of Switzerland that, if one is unprepared, it’s almost smothering. Sometimes, you can even actually see their faces, etched in bold relief in the sides of the stony cliffs, highlighted by the jagged peaks and deep ravines. Then there is the sound. It’s not a sound heard with the ears so much as a resonance that moves through one’s entire body. Glaciers sing, and the song is the sound of earth and stone and the passage of ice kissed by breath of fire. It’s older than we shall ever be, and it echoes through all the worlds with equal power. It is a very shocking experience to be recognized by the Mountains, to know that you are being watched and seen and known. They miss nothing, you know, and there are no words for the respect and awe these spirits engender. I am grateful to have been allowed a connection to them.

I did find that grounding was difficult in the passage between the mountains. In Zermatt, as I was paying homage to a very old, very gruff Mountain spirit, I actually feared I would not be able to tolerate staying overnight in the town. For the first few hours there, I felt as though I could barely breathe. My mom, with whom I was traveling, told me I looked dead white, as though I were on the verge of becoming ill. The problem was that I couldn’t ground. In fact, I found it almost impossible to ground at first. It was as though I had been cut off from that connection almost completely. After a couple of hours of disorientation, I actually asked the Mountain spirit for help, after setting out offerings for him, and I was told that grounding in the presence of the mountains is not like grounding into the soil. Theirs is a harder way. Mountains teach you to ground in stone.

I took an hour or so, sat down, and under the guidance of Zermatt’s Mountain powers, extended my awareness down, not into the earth but into the stone that rested beneath the soil. I learned that there are many types of grounding and that to ground in stone one must patiently reach deeper, open further, stay the course longer. That’s when I began to understand working with Mountain spirits. That’s when I began to understand my own ancestry. Stone does not yield. Stone does not move, and the heart of the Mountain powers will never be breached.

Mountains are powerful beings. They’re powerful and ancient and very, very protective. They are the ancient guardians of the land from which they rise. Not only are Mountains powerful, but they are said to contain many magical secrets. Some are even doorways to Otherworlds. Of course, Mountain spirits know how to guard their riches well, and those doorways may not be crossed without permission.

In the Northern Tradition it is said that the first mountains were created from the bones of the proto-giant Ymir. Ymir, along with the mighty cow Auðumla, whose name means “wealth,” were the first beings to evolve out of the primal clash of fire and ice. They birthed themselves from the synergy and protoplasm that resulted from that awesome collision. It was from this big bang that all life, and all the worlds, eventually evolved. Ymir was later slain by his descendants, and from his body the human world was created. The bones of his spine became mountain ranges.

Like the spine within the human body, the wisdom of the mountains sustains and protects us on all levels, but especially energetically. Mountains teach us the power of endurance, of holding one’s own despite any assault. A mountain stands tall and proud and is not affected by any storm winds raging around it. Mountain spirits may be very, very dangerous if their boundaries are crossed. Their anger, once roused, is ferocious. Their anger results in the roaring, unstoppable rush of the avalanche that destroys or devours everything in its path. It results in destruction that cannot be outrun or warded against.

Mountain spirits will teach you how to rise above the inessential, how to maintain yourself and the integrity of your boundaries against any threat. They will teach you how to become unmovable as they are unmovable. It is to the Mountains we turn to learn how to shield.

Exercise: Shielding

Knowing how to effectively ground and center is an absolute prerequisite to learning how to shield. Those techniques are the framework upon which a strong, effective shield matrix rests. They are the foundation, and without them the shield will not hold, just as with building a house, if the foundation is weak, the walls of the house will not stand.

There are numerous ways to shield. Galina highly recommends the book Spiritual Protection, by Sophie Reicher, which includes an excellent chapter on building and maintaining personal shields of all sorts. To get you started, however, it’s important to realize that a shield is a filter. It can be as hard or porous as you determine. It is a vehicle powered by your own focus and will. It is a tool to help make your life and work better, safer, and more efficient. This means that because you create it, you can alter it to suit any situation. In fact, most skilled spirit workers and magicians of our acquaintance maintain several different, well-integrated layers of personal shielding.

To raise a shield, first make sure that your grounding and centering are solid. If they’re not, address this before you attempt to craft a personal shield. When you ground, you create a channel through which you can shunt energy into the Earth. Using your taproot, locate a source of energy. Eventually, you may gain permission to draw from many of the realms that we will be exploring in this book, but first and foremost you must be fully grounded in the mundane, human world. So we recommend drawing energy from the Earth itself.

Once you have determined an energy source, draw energy up through that grounding cord. It can take time to really learn to sense or see energy, and that’s all right. If you can’t do either at first, imagine that you are drawing energy up. Imagination is a powerful tool; it’s often the key to unlocking our talents and learning to circumvent internal censors, the little voice that tells us “that’s not possible” when in fact it is.

So draw up that energy and do one of two things, either: 1) draw it up inside you and feel it moving up the center line of your body until it exits the crown and flows over you, at which point you can give it texture, shape, and purpose; or 2) draw up the energy around you, forming it and giving it texture, shape, and purpose.

It doesn’t matter which way you do it, but ultimately you are creating a force field around yourself. This is the purpose of a shield: to create a barrier between you and any nearby energetic and psychic garbage. Ideally, you don’t want your shield to be too flashy, because it will advertise to anyone or anything with the Sight that you are a person of burgeoning power. Therefore, Galina recommends raising a second shield around the first as camouflage. Its intent should be to make you look like a perfectly normal person. This can take a little practice, but it is essential before doing any other type of work.

Eventually, as you gain in both confidence and skill, you will be able to cut the shield’s connection to your grounding line or taproot. It’s much better to make shields self-sustaining than to have them pulling constantly from an energy source. It is possible to create a shield that will feed on incoming or ambient energies to sustain itself. Ideally, while it’s acceptable to have one of your shield layers connected to your ground constantly, it’s best if the others are in some way either latent until needed or self-sustaining. Again, we highly recommend Reicher’s book for an in-depth description on just how to manage this.

As always, when shielding, remember the strength of the mountain. Think of how immovable it is, how impervious to the small annoyances of life. When you shield, you are that mountain: impenetrable and strong. Practice is the key to proper shielding. As with grounding and centering, repetition truly is the mother of learning.