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

Elemental Disasters
Appendix

Working with the elements isn’t all fun and games. As we said earlier, the ancestors of the ancient North tended to first look at the most difficult and terrifying aspect of any natural force. This is a crucial part of understanding any element—or, for that matter, any deity or spirit. Euphemizing them is not right relationship, nor is anthropomorphizing them, because sooner or later you will run up against the aspects of them that are least human, least concerned with humanity, and most destructive.

Our friend and colleague Wintersong Tashlin, a shaman in another tradition, wrote to us about the four books that he suggests as reading material for all the students he trains in elemental spirit work. These books are good examples of the most frightening and disastrous aspects of the elements, which must be faced calmly before one can truly appreciate their positive aspects. We strongly suggest that readers pick up these four books, read them, and meditate on them while they are working on the exercises in this book. The descriptions are written by Wintersong, who has graciously allowed us to reprint them here.

Each book corresponds to an elemental force that humans in their hubris believed they had gained some form of mastery or dominion over, only to find out how dreadfully wrong they were. These books have been chosen in part for their unflinching descriptions of the personal consequences of tangling with the elements in their unfettered states, and in part because of the broad scale represented by the circumstances described in each one. Every story has broader historical implications than the described disaster, whether it be the evolution of land management, the story of the Eastern European immigration and the settlement of the Midwest, or the development of modern weather forecasting. Each book also looks at the heights of honor and courage, and sometimes the depths of cowardice that humans can be brought to when faced with disaster and horror beyond their ken.