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

Snow
The White World: Air

Raven: In northern Europe, snow was a part of every winter landscape. Where I live in New England, winter lasts for four months of the year, and there is usually snow for most of that period, sometimes several feet deep. One of my partners, upon moving up to live with me, observed his first New England winter and said, “The snow just doesn’t ever go away, does it?” Well, yes, it does—that’s how we know it’s spring! There are many different kinds of snow—powdery snow, Styrofoam snow, solid snow that’s nearly ice, ice-coated snow that looks safe but will treacherously sink your leg up to the hip and leave you scrabbling and floundering helplessly about. We have to move it, shovelful by shovelful, and find places to stack it or we can’t get around, or perhaps even get out of our houses. It collapses roofs and confines livestock to their barns. It takes an enormous amount of management for a significant section of the year. If it doesn’t come—if we get the ambivalent “open winter”—the subzero temperatures kill plants and trees, which need the insulating layer of snow to survive, and then there is drought in the summer. People in more southerly climates where snow either melts off quickly or never comes at all don’t really understand what a huge presence it is in certain areas of the globe, and the combination of beauty, danger, and struggle it engenders affects us so deeply. I can only imagine what it must have been like in ancestral climates even farther north than my own, and how important it must have been to beg the spirit of Snow to be merciful.

Galina: I also live in the north, though not so far north as Raven, and I’ve learned to become accustomed to brutal winters. Snow has its own voice, its rhythms, its smell. It also has a sense of its own magnificence. I’ve never sensed any malicious intent in snow, but rather a sense of expansive satisfaction at what it is, in its own way, giving to the Earth. Despite the inconvenience it brings to us, it provides necessary rest and rejuvenation to the land itself, and it’s very conscious of its necessity. Snow should be treated with respect and met with joy, if possible. It likes offerings and interaction, but it is ancient and as majestic in its nature as the oldest of mountains. That’s an important point that we ought not to forget: it is an elder worthy of respect. Snow’s purpose is not to cause us trouble. But sometimes we are in the way of what it must do, and the healing it must bring to the land. We’re inadvertent collateral damage. It’s best to make offerings early (the first snows are the youngest Snow spirits, by the way) and to be consistent and respectful throughout the year. Explain your position to the Snow spirit, and ask its blessing and benevolence. It can watch over you too. It’s used to dealing with people, after all, even if we’ve forgotten how to talk to it well. Oh, and as a Snow spirit once said to me: good liquor makes a good offering. Gather the strongest spirits you can, and give them happily. It goes a long way because given that a generation of our ancestors willingly broke faith with the spirits, they’ve really very little reason to be kind to us. It’s a grace, gift, and blessing that they are.

In some Northern cultures, Snow is the Snow Queen, as she is portrayed in the Hans Christian Andersen tale—beautiful, mysterious, utterly coldhearted. Snow maidens in Scandinavia and Russia were said to lure unwary and exhausted travelers to their deaths, showing themselves and their beauty in a vision to the hapless fallen ones just before they died, and then covering their bodies with snow. The whitest spirit brings what one colleague of ours once called “the kindest death.” It is not uncommon in cases of extreme hypothermia to have hallucinations, or at the least go into an altered state because the body and soul are very close to death. One could believe that those about to succumb to the dancing snow maidens would see their full beauty just before leaving the meat shell to dance with them.

In Norse myth, as we’ve mentioned above, Snaer (Snow) is the grandson of the North Wind, and his children are the powerful Thorri (Frozen Snow) and the three snow maidens Fon (Snowfall), Drifa (Snowdrift), and the sorceress Mjol (Powder). There are also hundreds of tiny ephemeral Snow spirits. They can be very playful or charmingly regal, and they love to talk and chatter with each other. Some, particularly the youngest, are also very curious about humans. If you’re not comfortable calling on greater Snow spirits by culturally specific names, just call out to the Snow Queen or Snow King; they’ll know who you’re talking about.

Just as the curse of Snow spirits is a cold death in the drifts, their gift is survival in the cold. Shamans (and many shamanic practitioners as well) often end up going out into all weather to do their work. Neither clients nor spirits are necessarily convenient, and sometimes you end up in inclement weather, doing the job because the job needs to be done. Snow spirits can give you the sturdiness to cope with snow longer than you otherwise would be able to, with fewer detrimental side effects. That doesn’t mean that you should be stupid about exposure and hypothermia, but it does mean that you will do better with Snow on your side.

Exercise: Snow Survival

This exercise should be done on a very cold night, the coldest night of the year that it is safe for you to be out in. (We are aware that in some areas of the world, the coldest night of the year is simply not safe for anyone at all. Use your judgment, neither cheating the spirit nor endangering yourself too much.) Snow seems to like sweets, like scattered candy or maple syrup poured over the frozen ground. It also likes good, strong spirits and aromatic teas.

First, find a white or clear stone that reminds you of snow. Then you need to bake some sort of cake or cookies with white flour and sugar, ideally dusted with powdered sugar after baking. Put the stone into the batter and bake it right into the cake or one of the cookies. (A crystal is not the ideal stone for this, as it may crack in the heat of baking. Macrocrystalline stones are better.)

Then go out on the coldest day. You’re not trying to be a martyr, so dress appropriately. Lay the white cake or cookies on the frozen ground. Make your offering of candy or syrup or sweet alcohol or milk to the Snow spirit, let it freeze on the ground, and then lay down on the cold earth, facedown. Snow’s invocation is this:

Pure and white, I have brought you the heat of the fire, Deadly and white, bring me safety from the bitter cold, Beautiful and white, steal not my warmth in the winter.

Lay there until you can feel Snow touching you, or contacting you in some way, or until you are certain that it is not going to happen. Either way, go inside and leave the cake or cookies there until the spring thaw and they fall apart. If they vanish, your offering was accepted, but the deal was not made. If they fall apart in spring and you can easily pick out the stone, the bargain was accepted. Keep the stone as your charm against frostbite and hypothermia, with Snow’s blessing. (It is advisable to have an assistant for this exercise. The call of a Snow spirit can be quite compelling. Often during such journeys time seems to work differently. It’s very easy to end up staying out for two hours when you really feel it’s only been ten minutes. We suggest having someone on hand who can come check on you if you fail to return after a prearranged amount of time.)