Neolithic Shamanism: Spirit Work in the Norse Tradition - Raven Kaldera 2012
Ice
The White World: Air
Raven: Ice is one of the most frightening of the wintry spirits. One can laugh at Frost’s antics, or admire Snow’s beauty, but Ice . . . just makes you shiver. Ice locks things up and traps them, and we know it, and our animal selves smell the trapper with the cold glance and we shy away. Still, if you are brave, Ice can be a strong ally. It’s perhaps easiest for people who already have a bit of Ice in their nature. You know, the ones whom people accuse of being cold. Like me. I still shiver, but I understand Ice, because it’s in me.
Galina: In order to work with Fire, I had to learn how to work with Ice. They are equals and, in some ways, partners. For all that, their lessons are quite different. Ice is about power and dominance. It is the most hierarchical of the elemental spirits, the one most exquisitely poised to gauge your position in whatever hierarchy you’ve stumbled into. It is a tremendously attractive element and tremendously deadly. Ice is about long-term species survival, and it is absolutely ruthless in enforcing that. Emotional pleas will get you nowhere with Ice and may in fact cause you to be met with potentially deadly contempt. Ice is about personal control, and also about learning how to acknowledge currents of power and how to recognize and accept your place in those currents. Knowing your place, knowing who is above you and who is below you without casting any judgment on those placements, is essential for working with this elemental spirit effectively. Learning how to effectively govern your emotions and put them aside when necessary is also part of this element’s “medicine.” It will teach you about power, and what you are and are not willing to sacrifice in order to gain it. It will teach you your place and whether you are predator or prey (as well as instill the knowledge that there is honor in both). If you are prey who plays at being a predator, it might just crush you out of existence. It may also show you exactly what your mettle and worth is, exactly what you’re willing to do to survive. That is Ice. Its ancestors carved the Earth to their liking, moving in glacier form across the globe. They wiped out entire species and challenged early humans to prove their resilience and their worth. It is the most unforgiving of elements and one of the most compelling. It has a voice like no other; like Fire, it sings, and its song is a very ancient one.
Isa, or Ice, is one of the major Norse/Germanic runes, and the most simply written. It is just a single vertical line, reminding us of the icicles that hang off our houses. The second son of the North Wind, Jokul, the icicle giant, is an embodiment of this energy, as are the various legends of ice maidens. Ice may show up as either male or female and is just as likely to appear androgynous or asexual. Ice spirit, or Icicle spirit, has an affinity for clear glass and especially mirrors. One can scry in a bowl of ice, or the surface of a frozen pond, or a mirror with a deep frame that has been filled with a thin layer of water and frozen while horizontal. Icicle spirit is cold and seems very inhuman due to its unemotional nature, but Icicle spirit also reflects things back to you, which is hard for us to take. Often the things Ice reflects back are the frozen parts of ourselves, the parts that we didn’t like so we put them in psychological cold storage . . . but there they are staring out at us through the glass when we talk to Ice. It’s not done to mess around with us; it’s just part of the nature of Ice. It is attracted to what is trapped, and if we can get over ourselves, we find that this quality can be useful. Ice is not completely still, though; it’s always moving, expanding, contracting. Even beneath the glaciers one finds power in motion. That is important to remember: Ice, like Fire, is never really still. It simply keeps up a warrior’s face, showing nothing of the tumultuous currents underneath.
For example, one of the easiest ways to do a binding on someone is to tie nine knots in a string while saying the person’s name and putting your Intent into each knot, and placing the string into a vessel of water, which you then stick in the back of your freezer. Of course, some readers at this point will be asking, “Why bind someone? Isn’t that unethical?” That depends. Even holding to the most stringent ethical standards that this path requires, there still could be very good reasons to do this. The Northern Tradition is a practical one. If you are being actively harmed by someone, then it is lawful to bind them. It depends on the circumstances and the people involved, but bindings have many uses. Maybe someone is having trouble quitting a bad habit and agrees to be energetically bound, but doesn’t have the willpower to do the binding him- or herself. Maybe someone has made a promise and wants some help keeping it. Maybe someone is doing something that is clearly harmful and it needs to be stopped.
For the latter situation, in which energetic binding is done without consent, we strongly recommend that practitioners pray to their Gods and spirits and get at least two separate positive divinations from neutral parties before they take this on. If the omens are all good, sometimes it is a matter of Dire Necessity, stopping harmful behavior that cannot be stopped any other way. Ice understands this. Ice is a spirit of Dire Necessity. Ice is also, by human mores, amoral. It has its own code of ethics and its own culture, and we are not part of that. Ice will do what needs to be done without any emotional qualms whatsoever.
When it comes to putting magic into water, it’s actually easier to put it into ice and make it stay than into liquid water. Most people haven’t discovered this fact because working with ice is inconvenient in so many ways. It’s hard to touch, it melts quickly in temperatures that we find comfortable, and it requires either being outside in winter or having a freezer nearby. Most people would rather work with liquid water, and they may not have made the ice connection yet. Why is it easier? Because ice is water turned, however ephemerally, to crystal. Crystals hold energy very well due to the shape of their matrix; that’s why so many people use them. Ice is, ironically, the cheapest and most readily available crystal around, and you can ingest it with ease on top of that. Unlike stone, it is transient, which is probably why it hasn’t caught on for crystal uses—why advertise something that almost anyone can get for free? Still, if you can’t afford crystal stones or need “disposable” crystal for something, ice is a very reasonable alternative. One can even make it in specifically shaped molds for the purpose.
Exercise: Raven’s Ice Cleansing
Get a large bowl of ice, just small enough that you can wrap your arms around it. The bigger the chunks of ice, the better. Pour a little bit of some offering liquid into it for Icicle spirit—milk, white wine, clear soda, liqueur. (Raven likes to use vodkas with the word ice on the label—there are a few of them of various levels of costliness—for offerings to the wintry spirits, perhaps with a little raw milk mixed in. Galina likes to use good cognac or sometimes ice wine.) There should be enough ice in the bowl that the offering hardly makes a dent. Ask the Icicle spirit to take the filth that has built up inside you. Blow across the ice with a warm breath, and watch the steam that rises. If you can catch a glimpse of Icicle spirit nodding his head, that’s a good sign.
Hold the bowl in your arms, against your chest. You can rest it on your lap if need be, but don’t protect yourself too much from the cold. The cold is uncomfortable, and that’s part of the process. (Whether you do this outside in cold weather or inside in a heated house is up to you and your ability to deal with the cold.) Take deep breaths, and with each exhalation try to empty your lungs completely. Breathe directly onto the ice, and as you do so, try to feel the negative energy in your body leaving through your lungs and getting sucked into the ice crystals. You may also channel the negative energy into the ice through your hands holding the bowl. After a while, if Icicle spirit is helping, it will feel as if the psychic filth is drawing up out of the rest of your body and down from your head, and going into your lungs, and then each exhalation is being pulled out of you and into the ice. Do not touch the ice with your hands or body, as it is taking away what you don’t want coming back.
As you do this, the ice will slowly melt. Continue this exercise until the ice is entirely melted, a bowl of cold water. Take the water outside and fling it into the air, being careful to throw it away from you. Pour out more of the offering for the Icicle spirit, and say thank you.