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

The Fire Within
The Red World: Fire

Galina: I am positively awful at the technique that is sometimes called tummo, but it is the one of the earliest lessons that you will have to learn with fire, after learning to use flint and steel. The word tummo is not Norse; it is Tibetan. I don’t know what the Norse term for this is. I was told to master it by Surt and didn’t bicker about taxonomy with the Lord of Fire. Tummo is the ability to raise one’s internal body temperature at will. It is the kindling and tending of one’s internal fire.

There are two parts to tummo; the first is maintaining the body’s energy stores. This means eating properly, getting enough sleep, and energetically building up a store of energy. The second is actually learning to adjust and manipulate the body’s internal thermometer. There are several techniques by which one can do this. I struggle with it in part because the internal switch for me is tied very strongly into the berserkergang, the battle rage that I inherited from certain of my ancestors. I haven’t yet mastered the art of losing one without the other! This is simply a matter of the way I am wired, however, and it will probably not be the case for everyone. Anyhow, the Lord of Fire ordered me, in the dead of winter, to venture outside and go about my business without a coat or anything more than a light sweater. I was to learn this technique or freeze. I achieved a bare minimum of skill with it. It was a very cold winter!

Raven: I was first taught this technique by my first love at the age of fourteen, the son of a traditional Gardnerian Wiccan high priestess who watched me shiver while we waited for the bus. He casually put his hand on my solar plexus, told me that the third chakra was the home of the inner fire, and that all I had to do was this—and he triggered something—and I would never be cold again. We broke up a month later, and he moved away, but I retained the skill and practiced it often at school bus stops in New Hampshire winters. It does use up psychic energy at a fast rate, though, and if you haven’t eaten well or if you are generally low-energy, you can burn yourself into a shivering shock rather quickly. This just means that you have to prepare well for this gas-guzzling technique . . . and ask the spirit of Fire to help you.

Exercise: The Fire Within

Begin by focusing on the movement of your muscles, the contraction and release, the internal friction. That is heat. That is the spark that must be caught and tended. Feel that heat contained deep within the muscles. Feel the warmth of the blood running in the veins. Focus on the internal sun, the solar plexus. If you are able, feel the snake of power running up the spine. Focus on those kernels of warmth, of internal heat, the speeding up of molecules. Grab the heat in your mind’s awareness, and feel it expand. Feel it expand, and feel the fire of your solar plexus expand until it fills you and radiates from you. Feel the internal rhythms of your body speeding up. Breath is an excellent tool by which to access and command one’s internal energies, and this is an example of the way Fire and Air may partner in a specific goal. Air, after all, fans fire.

If you are having trouble, find a fire-colored stone of any sort, and wear it on a long chain so that it hangs at your solar plexus. Ask the spirit of Fire to help you spark your internal warmth. Do this by placing your stone under your char cloth and tinder pile, and sparking a fire on top of it. With tongs or long tweezers, lift the stone out from under the fire without letting it go out. Wash off any soot, and put it around your neck. When you practice this method next, press the stone into your solar plexus and ask the spirit of Fire to spark the internal flame for you.